A Comment on Paul Muldoon's "Contesting Australian Asylum Policy"

Abstract

The core of Paul Muldoon’s “Contesting Australian Asylum Policy” is a subtle and sophisticated reading of Plato’s tale of the last days of Socrates which he uses it to throw light on the dilemma facing Australians who despair of their government’s asylum-seeker policy. While I do not dispute his commentary on Socrates, its bearing on the position of those who reject Australia’s asylum-seeker policies is less straightforward than Muldoon suggests. I argue firstly, that the parallel he draws between the situations of the latter and Plato’s Socrates is too big a stretch, and secondly, more specifically that, while both the Athens of Plato’s Socrates and contemporary Australia present their citizens with dilemmas of democratic citizenship, the two dilemmas are so radically distinct as to render problematic any attempt to draw lessons for one from the other.