Beyond the Wire: Levinas Vis-à-Vis Villawood

Praise for

Beyond the Wire

My doctoral thesis of the same title as this book was awarded a place on the Chancellors List for outstanding calibre scholarship. Scholars, students and colleagues continue wanting to read it. For this reason I have published Beyond the Wire staying true to the thesis that received the highest academic recognition.

For those who are curious about an awarded thesis I have included some of the examiners comments. More than to satisfy curiosity though, I hope to inspire those who may be wondering how to carve a space in the academy that is suited to their 21st Century minds and lived experiences—for their souls to be enlivened. I needed such a space for myself. I wanted to be present. I wanted to write beautifully.

Stand on my shoulders and expand the space I have carved with structure, research methodology and philosophy by taking it to your substantive field of inquiry.

lt was a great pleasure to read this dissertation. It is one of the precious few dissertations infused with moments of great beauty and insight-it is a page turner. The argument is clearly laid out and the work overall is well structured. Wainer has admirably accomplished the difficult task of creating a non-traditional dissertation that balances both scholarly components and creative elements. The work comes off as an impressive whole that makes significant contributions in several scholarly areas of inquiry; theoretically, substantively, and methodologically.

Theoretically, it concretizes Levinas’ thought in more palpable ways than is customary while remaining faithful to it. Too many scholars appropriate Levin as’ thought as some form of simple ethical concern for the other, and then attempt to create an ethical politics that is not faithful to his radical notion of transcendence. Instead, Wainer develops an extended phenomenology on the Hineni moment and the involuntary, immediate response of Chesed, the act with no cause, through a subtle reading of Levinas’ writings in juxtaposition to passages from the Torah and Talmud, and some surprising uses of Buber’s work. Through this reading, she captures the essence of Levinas and fills out what is only promissory in his writings. Her phenomenology should be required reading for all scholars seeking to apply Levinasian insights to social and political issues.

Wainer, at the same time, has developed a fecund new way of approaching qualitative research methodology and if anything should be more bold in taking ownership as the creator of Midrash Methodology, or at minimum, she could more explicitly state its novelty, especially how it moves beyond Leavy’s arts-based research methodology. Research as visceral, as a form of healing! What a wonderful way to approach social science research methodology!

Too often, those who engage in qualitative, ethnographic work bring theoretical and methodological baggage that does injustice to the substantive topic at hand. Instead, Devorah has allowed the theoretical (her phenomenology based upon Levinas) and the methodological (participatory ethnography and self-analysis) to be informed and inform the subject matter (the experiences of detainees and their visitors). The three simultaneously shape each other, thus contributing significantly to our understanding of theory, method, and the experiences of detainees.

Her writing style is refreshing and exceedingly ambitious. It is the persistence of questioning in the style of midrash, that is brutally honest, and self-critical, without losing the self. She is negotiating several tensions simultaneously between form and content. She even successfully serves as her own exegete, and can rightly (and shockingly) claim that her midrashim were already starting to become research literature per se. Her methodology/writing must have involved a type of trauma in its original etymological sense of wearing through by constant rubbing. Indeed, sections are wonderful extended meditations on trauma, and should be read next to some of the best personal narratives in the genre like those of Terri Jentz and Dorothy Allison. This clearly required a level of cogitation and critical reflection that is rare among Ph.D. students or more established scholars.

William Paul Simmons, Arizona State University

October 17, 2010

***

In the visitor’s yard of Villawood Detention Centre, Devorah Wainer finds what American nonfiction writer Rebecca Solnit calls paradise in hell. In an expansive and compassionate address to the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, Wainer teases together an embodied understanding of theory and compassionate engagement in an effort to make right relations with the people she encounters. This dissertation is clearly written, elegantly conceived and manages to translate complex theory into language available to a broad readership.

At the beginning of the thesis Wainer describes a meeting with South African writer and activist John Kani. Kani asks her, What will you do? This is a question any aware and concerned citizen asks herself, but not many accept the challenge and answer it as thoroughly and self- consciously as Wainer. More to the point, her answer is not only verbal, not only written, but lived.

After Wainer has placed her story firmly in the world of Australian refugee policy and Levinasian ethics, she draws confidently from Hannah Arendt’s theory of right to rights to examine difficulties with traditional problem-centred and historical human rights approaches to refugees. In her background and structural analysis, she weaves striking moments of contact and individual detail together with political, governmental, social and research frameworks. In a fascinating discussion of Midrash Social Research Methodology she explores messy texts and storied approaches to encountering the stranger, the other, and the self of the author. She gives a solid exegesis of Levinas’ basic precepts: loving kindness as action, ‘here I am’ as an availability that shows oneself as present to answer the call of the ‘otherwise than being’.

The author’s discussion of ‘applied’ Levinas and Talmudic thought as embodied engaged dialogic practice is particularly riveting. Wainer is linking material that I’ve rarely seen so practically applied to this pragmatic ethics. Although Levinas is considered a pragmatic ethical philosopher, much writing about his work is highly theoretical and does not take the kind of risks Wainer takes, grappling with the deeply personal and reaching across disciplines. To her credit, she is able to combine the plain speaking, the personal and the theoretical with considerable ease, to call upon what she calls a ‘’third-telling voice, a voice of authenticity and trustworthiness". In the short-story type chapter Cherry Ripe Wainer lays herself bare with her refusal of the chocolate and, through the chocolate, the invitation from Rami to risk mutuality, to make herself vulnerable. In a moment that both annihilates his freedom and names its possibility, all the while illuminating her own imprisonment, the author beautifully turns the tables and reverses- for a moment- the roles. It is her child who is able to see more than the mother in the simple observation, you don’t sound OK, Mum. There is more to learn, more to regret, more to attempt.

The Writing in this dissertation is deceptive in its simplicity and the author handles difficult material well. She is able to write candidly without resorting to the confessional, or at least, not the indulgently confessional. This is not an easy task, there are many dissertations and published writings that bring the self into the story of others in ways that are distasteful and self-centred. That Wainer avoids this trap is remarkable, in particular considering the depth of her experience and commitment. She is startlingly open about her fears, her limits, yet rather than simply squirming in liberal anxiety she articulates the dignity of fear. She draws attention to the profound space and place of privacy, both its character and the complex negotiations it demands.

I am impressed by the structure of the thesis as a relatively seamless integration of analysis, overview, narrative documentary and short story. It is the muscle in the writing and the honesty that makes this work. I think … this will make an important book able to provide a window on this world to a broad audience. The thesis makes a substantial contribution to knowledge both in its marriage of Levinas, Talmudic thought, midrash as a research methodology and the specific encounters and story of this refugee situation; and, in its accessible language. This is one of the few dissertations I have seen that makes Levinas available to a broad public and, as mentioned above, to undergraduates.

Wainer cites Levinas’ efforts to engage in a living dialogue wherein it is more important to find out who is speaking and why; more important to know the ‘who’ than to merely know ‘what’ is said. Wainer has given us a ‘who’ in this writing.

Dr. Julie Salverson, Queens University, Canada

October 4, 2010

***

It is a rare experience to examine a thesis that embodies its topic of inquiry with such courage, originality and conviction. Devorah Wainer’s thesis exemplifies the unique embodiment of her topic of inquiry: an intellectually cogent and emotionally affecting transposition of Levinasian ethics to the asylum seekers and refugees.

Incarcerated in Australian’s immigration detention prisons. I say embodied precisely because Wainer, in keeping true to Levinasian philosophy, refuses to reduce her subjects to· disembodied objects of inquiry, even as she courageously proceeds to flesh out her own corporeal, affective and intellectual investment in this project. As such, she produces a thesis that overturns that standard academic disjunction between theory and practice. On the contrary, at every reflexive juncture in this thesis, Wainer works to materialise a text that proceeds to embody how theory, philosophy and intellectual analysis and reflection must, if they are to be worth anything in terms of the larger social good, be grounded indissociably in practice: in thinking, writing and action. The strength and originality of Wainer’s thesis resides in embodying her thesis in practice.

Taking as her point of departure the Levinasian burden of exposing how the asylum seeker and refugee have been framed and reviled politically, juridically and socially - as Australia’s unwanted Other, Wainer proceeds to deploy Levinasian ethics in order to disrupt this discriminatory frame and to mark the ethical call for hospitality and justice that must attend the call of the other: stranger, orphan, outcast or refugee. In order to keep true to the principles of Levinas’ ethics of ethics, Wainer refuses traditional social science or humanities methodologies that repeatedly risk objectifying the very subjects on whose behalf they appear to be advocating. In order to avoid this pitfall, which would effectively undermine her commitment to Levinas’ ethical approach to the Other, Wainer deploys, in an original and convincing manner, what she terms a Midrash arts-based social research methodology. This Midrashim approach enables her to assemble a collectivity of theories, practices and genres in order to do justice to her social justice oriented approach. Critically, her commitment to this Midrashim methodology enables her to interweave academic theory and critical reflection with testimonies and her own lived experiences in the time of her research and writing up of her thesis. Situated in this context, if one of Wainer’s goals in this thesis is to blur the distinctions between epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, then she absolutely and productively fulfills this. As a result, what emerges in the course of this thesis is a complex and rich multi-dimensional text that strives to embody the heterogeneity of voices, experiences and subjects that encompass her field of inquiry. Importantly, Wainer, throughout her thesis, is ethically attentive to give the incarcerated refugees and asylum seekers whom she visits, helps and writes about a platform from which to speak in their own voices. The moving recount of the two incarcerated refugees, Sara and Ahmed, of Jew and Muslim, sharing food through the wire - She fed me through the wire, piece by piece - exemplifies the materialisation in this thesis of this ethical imperative:

In refusing to disqualify the importance of the personal within the frame of her thesis, as something that is absolutely integral to the ethos of her thesis, Wainer

proceeds to materialise all the critical dimensions that repeatedly get censored,

effaced or devalued in the actual material production of intellectual/academic work.

Wainer, in the course of this thesis, refuses to play it safe on this count, refusing with conviction, and in practice, what Levinas terms the cruelty of the impersonal. Rather, she inscribes the gamut of her experiences - intellectual, affective and sensorial - that mark her relation to her topic of inquiry. As such, her work is marked by a vulnerability in her exposedness to the Other .... this is yet another testament to her courageous embodiment and her profound understanding of Levinasian ethics. The junctures in this thesis where affect is materialised work to establish other forms of knowing as spurs to critical reflection, and as an incitement to compassion for those incarcerated unjustly behind the razor wire.

In this thesis, Wainer demonstrates a good grasp of the literature relevant to the field under inquiry.

This thesis is distinguished not only by its profound understanding of Levinasian philosophy in order to illuminate the topic of inquiry, but by the inscription of palimpsests of history, biography and autobiography that serve to mark the serial logic of state violence as it is exercised and experienced across different spaces (South Africa and Australia) and different subjects (South African anti­apartheid activists and Australian refugee advocates). These historical palimpsests are powerfully illuminated, in tum, by the effective use of Buber, Arendt and, of course, Levinas.

If, to cite one of the Levinasian epigraphs that mastheads this thesis, philosophy is the work of reflection that is brought to bear on unreflective, everyday life, then Wainer’s thesis emerges as an effective testament to this philosophy.

Associate Professor Joseph Pugliese

Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies

Macquarie Universtity, Sydney

Copyright © 2015 by Devorah Wainer

www.devorahwainer.com

Diggle de Doo Productions Pty Ltd

PO Box 1176

Cronulla NSW 2230

Australia

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry : (ebook)

Creator: Wainer, Devorah, author.

Title: Beyond the Wire: Lévinas vis-à-vis Villawood : a Study of

Emmanuel Lévinas’ Philosophy as an Ethical

Foundation for Asylum-seeker Policy / Devorah Wainer.

ISBN: 9780977510498 (ebook)

Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Subjects: Lévinas, Emmanuel, 1906-1995.

Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.

Political refugees--Australia.

Political refugees--Legal status, laws, etc.--Australia.

Detention of persons--Australia.

Australia--Emigration and immigration.

Dewey Number: 325.21

Publishing Consultant: Linda Diggle – www.bookboffin.com

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. All inquiries should be made to the author at www.devorahwainer.com.

Dedication

For Beloved Betty and Izzy

Mum, I promised to dedicate my book to you. Here it is.

Dad, you gave me the knowledge of love and the love of knowledge.

Mum and Dad, you gave me life. I honor and thank you.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many individuals and organisations for supporting and sustaining me during this project.

My whole hearted thank you and deep regard go to Bill Simmons, Julie Salverson and Joseph Pugliese for their encouraging feedback and wisdom. I wish to thank Merril Shead for her editorial advice and her patience.

My thanks go to the special friends who shared the many painful, dark hours—as well as the lighter moments—in the Visitors’ Yard of Surveillance at Villawood Detention Centre. I wish to acknowledge, respectfully and with affection, the special relationships and lifelong friendships born inside Villawood Detention Centre. Each one of you called me to my better self. For each of you I pushed beyond my boundaries and found a person I like better than before I met you inside. I’m glad you came to Australia. You enrich our lives and our country.

And thank you to all the indefatigable Aussie visitors to Villawood Detention Centre who I met inside and those with whom I became friends. Our conversations and friendship were the oxygen that enriched my life in ways too many to list. Thank you Judy McLellan for sharing your food with me on the pavement outside Villawood Detention Centre when we were too tired and down-hearted to walk the few meters to our cars.

I wish to thank Merril Shead for her editorial advice and her patience. Your knowledge is awesome! My appreciation goes to my publisher Linda Diggle, who has always felt rock solid and calm despite my personal oversights and forgetful moments. Thanks for keeping me moving forward to the published book!

I am grateful to my family who I adore. Mum for always being ready to hold me tight when my tensions and concerns grew too much for me. Dad, you were always ready to read my work, share your academic knowledge and insights with me. Hil, you are my only and beloved sister. You made me laugh when there was nothing to laugh about. You reminded me who I am and why I am when I forgot. You cared for and brought me back to life when I should have done so for you. Alexander Massey, my brother (in-law) thank you for your insightful, stimulating and reinforcing conversations. Your wonderful mind brought mine to places of knowing and understanding in ways no one else could. Bryan Conyer our exciting and challenging conversations were exactly what I needed when my thinking became careless.

My very special friends in Sydney who fed me, sustained me, visited, encouraged and understood when I cancelled arrangements. You accepted that I was not available and each one of you taught me again and again about the power of honesty and the appreciation of friendship. I also deeply appreciate the many friends around the globe who have waited with understanding and patience for me to return to The-world-after-the-project.

More than anyone else my gratitude and love goes to my exquisite daughters who were prepared to walk this path with love and tolerance. Together with me you relinquished much when I gave up an income to complete this project with joy for my endeavours. Never one complaint. If you didn’t understand more than I, if you couldn’t give me the space I needed, this long project could not have been completed.

Precious Kim Nicole Wainer (Kimmie) I treasure your ongoing interest in my current thinking, the penetrating questions you ask and for lightly cheering me on. Quietly checking on my progress and health so that I know how much you care.

My deep gratitude to my magnificent daughter Casey-Ann Wainer, whose calm presence, good sense, intelligence and practical help increased to daily for the last few weeks. You came round to cook for me, told me when to sleep, read each chapter as I completed and without you I could not have completed this book.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prelude

Part One: Ubuntu—To Save a Life

Part Two: The Tree—Foe or Friend?

Introduction

Overview

The right to rights

The ethical event

Midrash as an arts-based social research methodology

Boundaries, spaces and lacunae

Midrashim

Conclusion

Chapter One

Overview

Refugees’ right to rights of protection

Separating land, law, logic and lives

The missing piece: aneu logou

The interpersonal and the intrapersonal

Chapter Two

Overview

The ethical event

Chesed

Hineni as the ethical event

Hineni—I present myself

Hineni—היניני Here I am

Talmud

Adieu

Chapter Three

Overview

The midrash in social science

Formation of Midrash Methodology

I was bothered.

I wrote.

I read. I saw the lack. I analysed.

I wrote.

Chapter Four

Attention awakened

A tension awakened

I remember …

The windmills of my mind: my story becomes midrash

Entering Villawood Detention Centre: resonances across space and time

Once upon a rainy day

Chapter Five

Scars revealed

High-alert warning cry

Kinship behind the wire

Shabbat

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Overview

Space One—Sinister alarm-signals

Alarm-signal 1: Indifference

Alarm-signal 2: Rhetoric and double-speak

Alarm-signal 3: Mechanisms for reducing the human to the merely existential

Alarm-signal 4: Human commodities

Alarm-signal 5: Numbing

Alarm-signals are the links in a chain

Space Two—Ethical signals for quiet study

Ethical-signal 1: Acting with moral conscience

Ethical-signal 2: Voice … agency

Ethical-signal 3: Hineni

Ethical-signal 4: Engaging with the Others

Ethical-signal 5: Freedom

Ethical-signal 6: Responsibility to the Other

Space Three—The in-between

Collapsing boundaries

In-Between

Chapter Eight

Overview

Contributions and future research

Midrash Methodology

Vis-à-vis Levinas

Australian story

Coda

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Appendix F

Appendix G

Appendix H

Appendix I

Appendix J

Bibliography

Glossary

Preface

I have written this book to closely resemble my doctoral thesis. It is a labour of love for students and scholars alike encouraging them to find new ways of research, knowledge creation and new voices acceptable to the academy and themselves. I am encouraging courage and creativity in your work.

Soon after my doctorate was awarded one of my PhD examiners asked my permission to use the thesis, just as he had received it as an examiner. He gave it to his classes for readings. He also gave it to a legal team working with seekers of asylum incarcerated in the USA.

Since then I have had many requests from scholars and students—national and international—to read the thesis. Their reasons vary. Some are interested in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas; some are excited by the Midrash Methodology and want to use the methodology for their research or to teach their students, and some working within the substantive fields of Human