Whiteness as Goodness: White Women in PNG & Australia, 1960's to the Present

Abstract

In this thesis I examine the contemporary nexus between White women and the raced and classed institution of White womanhood. More specifically, I focus on White Australian women who are middle class, rich in cultural capital, and generally consider themselves to be progressive; that is race privileged women but women who are not usually associated with overt racism. My analysis unfolds White Australian women in the discursive context of the ideologies of feminism and feminist-influenced anti-racist politics, as well as the ideologies of femininity. The thesis shows how this nexus is enacted through a vision of White women as Good as expressed in the political commitments, mentalities, relationships, narratives and corporeality of such women. The research problem that I identified and worked through in the thesis is as follows: for middle class White women, (who can be seen and see themselves as generic 'women'), Whiteness has been seen and played out as Goodness. Further, in the playing out of this Goodness White women accumulate and defend the prestige and privileges of Whiteness. Specifically, I argue that Whiteness is reproduced in some of the discourses and practices of White feminism, by the progressive White women involved in anti-racist politics, and in the femininity industry and the ways it is taken up. The nub of the problem I identify is that White women's involvement in the structures and narratives that support Whiteness is often grounded in the very qualities of character and conduct that emerge from the colonial and class-constructed ideal of White womanhood and which have historically distinguished them from denigrated others. These qualities- notably virtue, innocence and self-restraint- whilst differently nuanced in other contexts are an ongoing expression of the uses made of White womanhood as the visible sign of race and class superiority. The work examines four key periods: the Australian colony of PNG during the decolonising 1960's and 1970's; the high years of 1970's and 1980's feminism; the race debates of the 1990's; and the bodily practices of present day White women gripped by fears of fat and aging. I explore the ways in which White women's Whiteness is played out in benevolent Black/White relationships, the over-reach of difference feminism, particular kinds of anti-racist identities and activism, and body-improvement practices. In all these cultural sites, White women's Whiteness is often represented as a kind of moral being and deployed as moral authority in ways that are consonant with the raced and classed construction of White women as moral texts. My research approach was determined by the research problem I identified. Given my argument that White women mis-recognise Whiteness as Goodness in a race-structured society, then the collecting of data through interviews or surveys would have yielded material subject to this blindness. Instead, I explored sites and material where moral claims were being pressed, and case studies where 'women' were enacting themselves or being represented or interpellated as moral texts. My selection of primary source material ranges from feminist newsletters, women's and other magazines, literature, film, event programs and flyers, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and websites, as well as reflections on my own experiences. Secondary source material includes feminist theoretical texts as well as texts drawn from a range of other disciplines, and other historical background materials. I lay out and support my arguments using a technique not dissimilar to collage, aiming to construct a picture that is compelling in its detail as well as coherent in its overall effect. This thesis is a contribution to the de-naturalisation of Whiteness. Navigating a course between the opposing hazards of essentialising Whiteness and understating its effects in contemporary Australian society, I have brought into clearer view some of the strategies which maintain the authority of Whiteness.