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This discussion between Gunew and Chakravorty Spivak arose out of a desire to clarify the extent to which the project of post-colonialism and anti-imperialism was both distinct from, as well as overlapping with, the project of multicultural politics in Australia. Given the recent setbacks to the promotion of a multicultural Australia (where all Australians would eventually be seen as belonging to specific cultures), these are urgent questions.
SG: We might begin with the whole notion of authenticity -- a question that keeps coming up in relation to the kind of writing that I am publicising at the moment. I now refer to it as non-Anglo-Celtic rather than Migrant writing, since within Australia, Migrant connotes an inability to speak English. Thus, it is the writing of non-Anglo-Celts but in English. The question that keeps arising in relation to this is the question of authenticity. And it takes various forms but I suppose one way of, in a sense, caricaturing it but, also, making it accessible is: "Aren't Patrick White's middle-Europeans or Beverley Farmer's Greeks just as authentic as the Greeks created by O's poetry or by Antigone Kefala?" In a sense, putting the question this way covers over, or makes invisible, other forms, other questions that could be posed, such as: "But why do these Anglo-Celts have access to publishing, to writing, to be part of Australian literature, and why are other writers like Kefala, Ania Walwicz, Rosa Cappiello, etc., not seen as part of these cultural productions, why aren't they given a full measure of cultural franchise? In fact, in some senses, far from being invisible, the Migrant has always been constructed within Australian discursive formations, not just literature; and in literary forms the first such construction was Nino Culotta, who was an Irish journalist posing as an Italian, and wrote the most famous book for many, many decades about being an Italian immigrant trying to make it in Australia. And this book, I remember, was given to numerous immigrants as they arrived in Australia as some kind of explication of their status within the community, and is quite horrendous in all sorts of ways.
GCS: For me, the question `who should speak?' is less crucial than `who will listen?' "I will speak for myself...