AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This introduction to our special issue “Island Narratives of Persistence and Resistance” focuses on the ongoing proliferation of neocolonial, neoimperial and neoliberal constructions of the island in western and continental texts and discourses. It discusses the double and paradoxical logic of the island trope – which simultaneously suggests confinement and freedom, isolation and connection, over- and underdevelopment, inclusion and exclusion – and the evident material effects that these persistent figurations continue to have on the lives of islanders. It then places the focus on the mechanisms of resistance to these island narratives as exemplified in a range of fiction and non-fiction works from or about various island locations: Singapore, Vanuatu, Samoa, Nauru, Manus Island, the Bahamas, St Lucia, New Zealand, Staten Island, and the island continent of Australia. The essays engage with recognizable tropes and uses of the island: islands of exception and offshores, treasure and trash islands, island fortresses and militarized zones, fantasy and tourist islands.' (Melissa Kennedy and Paloma Fresno Calleja : Editorial introduction)
Contents
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Refuse/Refuge : Castaways on Islands of Exception,
single work
criticism
(p. 11-29)
'At various points in their (post)colonial histories, the border-protective politics of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have mobilized off-shore islands as spaces of “inclusive exclusion”. Yet, even as spaces of exception and/or exclusion, off-shore islands dismantle inside/outside distinctions. I discuss a selection of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand novels featuring both literal and metaphorical islands used for removal, internment or containment of Indigenous peoples and wartime “enemy aliens”. Through their attention to the poetics of island form, and coasts as more-than-human spaces, the novels underscore how islands bring the relation between inside and outside into question, complicating the articulation of borders.' (Publication abstract)
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Exposing Islands of Refuge : Journalism of Wealth Havens and Refugee Prisons,
single work
criticism
(p. 64-80)
'Refugees and wealth refuges are two sides of the same coin by which global human and financial inequality, illegality and injustice find their most extreme expressions. At opposite ends of the spectrum, both embodied humans and disembodied wealth are stateless, untouchable, out of sight, and exist outside of the experience and understanding of most people. Journalism is an important mechanism to expose and criticise the social, legal and political frameworks that allow and encourage these discourses of silence. This essay analyses the impulse to reveal, divulge and shock, and its potential to change public perception, laws and policies through aesthetic representation as resistance in Behrouz Boochani’s journalistic refugee memoir, No Friend but the Mountains (2018), and in investigative financial journalism that exposes offshore wealth havens by Oliver Bullough, Moneyland (2018) and Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands (2011).' (Publication abstract)
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An Island Under Siege : Negative Australian Media Narratives of Asylum Seekers and the Opportunity for Counter-Discourses,
single work
criticism
(p. 81-99)
'Asylum seekers to Australia in the early twenty-first century have been largely depicted in the national press as an anonymous threat demanding military action and offshore detention. Australia’s responses to asylum seekers have taken place within a paranoid atmosphere of a nation under siege. This essay examines the negative narratives regarding asylum seekers in Australia and the historical and cultural structures they are built upon. The essay suggests eyewitness accounts as a way to pierce the blanketing anonymity of asylum seekers in the media and traces some of the methods made possible by social media and corresponding networks to bring these narratives to the public at large.'(Publication abstract)
