Another Country, really?

There is a sentiment at loose in the world of Tasmania letters that carries the mark of frustrated secessionist aspirations.

While on the most part a furtive, fugitive longing, it occasionally finds a champion who is famous, crazy or desperate enough to carry its standard into the battlefields of the public arena.

Pete Hay's celebration of the sub-historical 'Van Diemonian' counter-culture is one recent high-profile instance of its enunciation. Richard Flanagan's declaration that Tasmania is "another country", yoked into the Australian nation-state by little more than an accident of history is another.

There is nothing particularly shrill or jingoistic about this growing body of public statements. It finds its inspiration in well-established arguments about place, identity and regional self-determination and declares an affinity with post-modern critiques of centre-periphery models of global space.

That it's a great topic for hopelessly pissed exchanges at parties, the Tasmanian equivalent of the Bengali practice of Adda, doesn't do it a disservice either. And just try it on when there are a few mainlanders around. The panic of forced incredulity it provokes is gratifyingly predictable.

Hay and Flanagan honour the conventions of the genre of collective emancipation by uncovering secret veins of dissent running right back to the flimsy origins of European occupation, and even though they purport to be satisfied with "imagining the place anew" they clearly harbour hidden ambitions that exceed the limits of interpretation.

The darker side of this 'subaltern' determination to reappropriate the power of representation from its Apollonian and imperialist gatekeepers derives from the frustrated political will, the ressentiment, it carries within itself.

Even though Flanagan in particular is careful to insulate himself against charges of xenophobia by asserting the rights of foreign, by which he also means mainland Australian, authors to set their novels in Tasmania. The qualifier that makes this right dependent on the 'quality' of their prose puts him on some seriously shaky ground.

Who, we have to ask, will be vested with this Leavisite power of adjudication? The reductio ad absurdum that haunts Flanagan's 'nativist' position is powerful and obvious. To claim a drinking right at the 'great well' of the Tasmanian 'collective unconscious' must one be a 6th generation Tasmanian, a 5th a 4th a 3rd or a Palawa? Do ancestral ties to 'polite society' disqualify you as a latent imperialist? Will a D.NA test be required for a passport in the revolutionary republic of Van Diemen's Land Mark 2?

Asking these kinds of questions in Tasmania's current cultural climate stirs up a difficult mix of emotions. Despite his down-at-heel demeanour, Flanagan is a giant among men, his books bear the mark of a rare genius and his economic contribution alone should be enough to merit a sizeable grant from the Department of State Development.

Hay, meanwhile, is more the quiet achiever. Burrowing away in the Geography Department at the University, he has shepharded at least two world-class academics through the valley of the shadow of PhD death and with the publication of his monumental 'Major Currents in Western Environmental Thought' and its country cousin 'Van Diemonian Essays' has clinched a double victory on the (in his eyes equally important) local and global stages to rival that of his beloved Penguin football club in the 1967 state final.

But just as Voltaire admitted that he would defend to his death the right of his enemies to air the opinions he despised, Flanagan and Hay would surely not place themselves beyond the reproach of their peers, by which I mean their fellow Tasmanians, their tribesmen and kinsfolk...and after all, even if given the chance, it's not like we're going to vote them off the island.

Quite the contrary. Should Flanagan be the first President of Tasmania? Undoubtedly yes. Should the Flanagarchy be allowed to go uncriticised? Definitely not.

Which brings me to the simple, straight-ahead point of this tirade. If you want to secede, why not just come out and say it? Desire is supposed to exceed reality, that's its job.

Why be satisfied with the poor victory of imaginative control of the archipelago when everyone knows your real goal is political autonomy?

Let's set up some surveys and find out if Tasmania really is a separate country. We have our own history, our own indigenous people, our own literary traditions, our own discreet landmass. Lets see if there's a groundswell of support waiting to be released.

Sure we don't have the musical vocabulary of the Newfoundlanders but it's never too late to start.

The mainland, government and private industry alike, keep us underdeveloped and throw us a couple of extra transfer payment crumbs to shut us up.

All we need is some high profile figures who are willing to take secession seriously. Flanagan and Hay, I call on you. Reclaim your birthright as we emerge from the darkness of 200 years of depression.