Manners maketh the diversion

Senator Thorpe might’ve been rude, but she was perfectly civil

For most people, civility means something like politeness. So when, as inevitably happened, DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara Senator Lidia Thorpe was accused of incivility for confronting the King and Queen of Australia in Parliament the other day, most people read this as criticism of her for being rude, of not obeying certain “rules” of decorum.

“One does love Orstralia”

To understand “civility” in these narrow terms is an incredible sleight of hand, an assertion of power that is effective because it leans into our “common sense” understanding of the word.

The nature of the sleight of hand is that it is more useful for the governing class to talk about manners and civility, in this limited sense, than it is for them to acknowledge the truth of our colonial history. Lidia Thorpe gets chastised, in other words, for being rude, not for being wrong.

The point is civility isn’t just about politeness and the word’s roots in “civil” or “civic” gives us a clue as to what else it might mean.

Civi…