People tend to attach a moral valuation to this approach which can be flipped into one of two positions: first, some see the Australians and virtuous, hard working, and trying to be responsible while the PNGians have their heads in the sand and are so blinded by patriotism that they refuse to see the truth. Second, the Australians are punitive colonizers who consider pathological anything that does not conform to their notions of propriety, while the Papua New Guineans fundamental decency and triumph in the face of adversity are insufficiently recognized.

These two positions are unsatisfactory — for one thing, they both assume that only Australians are educated. How, then, are educated Papua New Guineans to address the very real problems that plague their country? One option would simply be to take the first position and side, as it were, with the whites against the black. But this sort of thing doesn’t solve the problem that both points of view are inadequate, and it only leads to self-hatred.

Behind the occasionally cluttered prose of Andrew’s entry lies a very important point: not ‘what is the answer to the question’ but ‘how can we reimagine the cast of characters who are asking it?’ How can we provide new and better ways to think not just about PNG, but about the public sphere in which people talk about it, and what roles they would play there?

So… maybe the point is about figuring out not what the answer to our question is, but who ‘we’ are.

-R

Papua New Guineans often react strongly against claims that PNG is a failed state. They are often right to do so, since these claims are often inaccurate and politically motivated. However, there is a danger in this overreaction: sometimes Papua New Guineans do not merely disagree with academics who argue that PNG is a failed state, they argue that the academy as a way of knowing is itself illegitimate. On the one hand, this is going too far. On the other hand, it indicates a serious failure on the part of academics to engage with Papua New Guineans and demonstrate the value of knowledge produced by universities. Given the many problems facing PNG today, perhaps we should look past all of the politics that surround outsider assessments of PNG and ask ourselves a question: do they have a point?