"Suffer Little Children": The Representation of Aboriginal Disadvantage through Images of Suffering Children, and the Wages of Spectacular Humanitarianism

Contemporary Australia is plagued by scandals concerning Aboriginal children, which gesture to a broader injustice to First Nations peoples. The cycle of abuse and reaction prompts two questions: (1) why are wrongs to Indigenous peoples brought to crisis through the situation of children?; and (2) why does the situation remain unchanged? Drawing on Lacanian theory and Debord's account of the spectacle, this paper argues that colonial subjectivity draws upon the spectacle of wounded Aboriginal children as a source of self-knowledge (or enjoyment). It proposes that healing cannot take place, for First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians, before this 'enjoyment' is addressed.