policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Ending ignorance
A professor’s call for more media
and information literacy.
Tara Brabazon interviewed by Loren Smith
P
eople may as well have sung
‘Unhappy Anniversary’ to US president
Donald Trump on January 20 as he
marked two years in office. Trump is in the
trenches. He presided over the longest
government shutdown ever and suffered a
humiliating defeat after not getting funding
for ‘the wall’. The inquiry into his collusion
with Russia in influencing the 2016 election
looms large, with more and more of his
allies being indicted. And his popular
support is waning – it sits at under 40 per
cent. With fewer loyalists to lean on, he is
set for even leaner political times.
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Yet, with the 2020 election nearly two
years out, there is time to contemplate how
we got to this point, this era of political
madness and mayhem.
“The people who voted for Donald
Trump were the white working class in
the rustbelt cities,” says Tara Brabazon,
professor of cultural studies and dean of
graduate studies at Flinders University.
“They were most impacted by the Global
Financial Crisis, the implosion of the real
estate market, and the bailout of the banks.
Yet they voted for a reality television star
with no experience in government
“Similarly, in the UK, the areas that voted
for Brexit gained directly from subsidies
and grants from the European Union. Yet
xenophobia, racism and fear of difference
triumphed over self-interest.”
Together with her colleagues, the late
Professor Steve Redhead and PhD graduate
Runyararo S Chivaura, she has written a
book exploring the causes behind these
outcomes. Trump Studies: An Intellectual
Guide to Why Citizens Vote Against Their
Interests is wide-ranging. It encompasses
Baudrillardian philosophy and celebrates
the role of universities in truth-telling and
morality-setting.
“We live in an era where ignorance is
celebrated,” she says. “The subtitle of this
book is important.”
Campus Review asked Brabazon to parse
out her position in an interview.
CR: You write about the causes behind world
events such as Brexit and Trump, and that
people vote for things that actually work
against them. Could you outline some of
those causes?
TB: Yes. I suppose the first thing I would
say is I don’t believe in causality or linearity.
We’re probably 30 years on from a cause
and effect conversation. I think the world is
much more complex than this.
One of our co-authors, the wonderful,
late, Steve Redhead, said: “We’re now in
accelerated modernity.” So I think causality
is almost impossible to prove.
When we’re dealing with correlations,
it becomes interesting. Our theoretical
argument is clear: we’re living in a period
of what Jean Baudrillard referred to as a
double refusal – the refusal of leaders to
lead and the refusal of people to be led.
This results in an incredible series of very
odd events, like we’re seeing with Brexit and
Trump, and also the revolving door that is