Male Gaze and Racism — Page 7:
31 The constructedness of the norm as norm is particularly visible if contrasted against the background of other norms and in times of "crises" as presented in Richard Dyer’s now classic essay "White". The films he analyzed show being-white in a legitimacy crisis, which is unable to unfold without criticism of the standard white norm, a criticism, however, "that in the face of the eventual re-establishment and affirmation coagulated to a wistful pose" (Warth 128). In the sources that I am about to quote, the readers will also find this combination of critical representation of the normative vision, which is restricted by affirmative moments in their subversive power. In my contribution, however, I will focus on the questioning of the racist and sexist gaze regime.
32 Film and literary scholars besides historians, myself included, have in the past placed too much emphasis on the unity of gaze, the gaze regime, and the look that is intertwined with desire (Klarer; Finzsch Discourses and Settler Imperialism). However, a one-sided analysis of this seemingly totalizing view runs the risk of reproducing within the empirical material that which it postulates as a theoretical model. This circular reasoning, which in the long run will always prove what it hypothetically assumes, can only be broken if other readings are authorized and legitimate. An alternative strategy of reading the racist gaze would consist of a deliberate search for signs of a non-normative view in which the racialized and sexualized Other is able to return the gaze.
33 Although it is true that in the majority of descriptions of white male explorers a gaze prevails in which the black female body is fixated and described in its alleged features, researchers have until now looked too little at the counter-discourses that resist the hegemonic construction of indigenous femininity as an objectified, available, sheer physicality. First, I will present some results of the research on gaze regimes in the history of colonialism in Australia and then proceed to search for alternative readings and interpretations as indicated above.
Historical application
34 In 2005, I examined a relatively extensive body of sources about the literature pertaining to the European discovery and colonialism in Australia. (Discourses) It consisted of 31 travel and discovery descriptions of white men, between the late 18th and the mid-19th centuries. I put great emphasis on the fact that these men had made their "observations" on the spot and had not quoted other descriptions left by third parties. My reading of these sometimes lengthy sources was based on the assessment of the axes of evaluation of the indigenous Others, which I arranged in a matrix designed for conducting a discourse analysis.
35 This matrix contained 15 evaluation categories. I was looking for observations and remarks about religion or spirituality, about work, about the physical appearance of the indigenous population, for indicators of "civilization" and for the indigenous form of government. I browsed the sources for information on clothes, sexuality, gender relations, on morals and ethics, on property, on food, on language and orality, on the demography of the indigenous, on housing, on weapons and warfare, and on alleged cannibalism.