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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Related Works
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Benang : From the Heart
Fremantle
:
Fremantle Press
,
1999
Z135862
1999
single work
novel
(taught in 31 units)
'Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.' (Publisher's website)
Works about this Work
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Australian Voices : Presence and Absence in the Senior Literature Classroom
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 31-51) 'Recently I listened to an Indigenous educator respond to the draft Australian Curriculum and it would be hard to have been in that audience and not be infected by the sheer relief expressed, that at last the knowledges of Indigenous peoples will be brought into the curriculum in a consistent and self-conscious manner. This at least is the potential of the curriculum, as this educator saw it. While most of us at the forum were expressing disappointment about what we saw before us as an atomised, technicist approach to English in the consultation draft, with its attendant matrix of strands, standards and levels, here was a firm reminder of the nature of 'standpoint'. Despite many of the criticisms voiced about the Australian curriculum, and the sense of opportunity lost for an imaginative national discussion about what we value as important learning, I've heard no one question the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives...' (From author's introduction, 31)
-
Un-Singing Historiography : Kim Scott's Benang
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 103-115) -
Unsettling the Colonial Linear Perspective in Kim Scott's Benang
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Autumn vol. 33 no. 1 2010; (p. 35-44) 'This paper focuses 'on how Kim Scott undertakes in his novel Benang (1999) to subvert the simplistic, destructive and ultimately self-defeating doctrine of progress championed by colonists whose eugenicist policies aimed at 'breeding out' the Aboriginal heritage. Scott shows how pioneering megalomania drove those white visionaries of the future of Australian race to aspire to being their own beginning and their own end. To counter this colonial narrative which maps out progress as a process of purification, and posits sameness as the only desirable goal on the national horizon, he deploys a circuitous and ultimately circular exploration of time and space. This narrative is informed both by the memories of his narrator's Aboriginal relatives and by the narrator's imaginative empathy with his ancestors, which eventually enables him to substitute a pattern of return and permanence for the narcissistic and misguided abstraction of linear progress.'' (p 35) -
'The Great Dirty Joke Black Velvet'
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 157-178)'The issue of sexual contact across the racial divide-that is, for the most part, of white men having sex with black women-has long agitated Australia's culture and society. The unintended result of such contact, the appearance of a growing 'half-cast' population, was seen as a grave threat to the racist dream of a white Australia, and led to the policy of systematically removing mixed-race children from their mothers in order to 'breed out their colour,' thereby creating the 'Stolen Generations'. The policy so earnestly promoted the likes of A.O. Neville and Cecil Cook found widespread approval throughout Australia: hardly any voices were raised in dissent, and several decades later many still regarded it as entirely justified.' (p. 157)
-
'The Great Dirty Joke Black Velvet'
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 157-178)'The issue of sexual contact across the racial divide-that is, for the most part, of white men having sex with black women-has long agitated Australia's culture and society. The unintended result of such contact, the appearance of a growing 'half-cast' population, was seen as a grave threat to the racist dream of a white Australia, and led to the policy of systematically removing mixed-race children from their mothers in order to 'breed out their colour,' thereby creating the 'Stolen Generations'. The policy so earnestly promoted the likes of A.O. Neville and Cecil Cook found widespread approval throughout Australia: hardly any voices were raised in dissent, and several decades later many still regarded it as entirely justified.' (p. 157)
-
Unsettling the Colonial Linear Perspective in Kim Scott's Benang
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Autumn vol. 33 no. 1 2010; (p. 35-44) 'This paper focuses 'on how Kim Scott undertakes in his novel Benang (1999) to subvert the simplistic, destructive and ultimately self-defeating doctrine of progress championed by colonists whose eugenicist policies aimed at 'breeding out' the Aboriginal heritage. Scott shows how pioneering megalomania drove those white visionaries of the future of Australian race to aspire to being their own beginning and their own end. To counter this colonial narrative which maps out progress as a process of purification, and posits sameness as the only desirable goal on the national horizon, he deploys a circuitous and ultimately circular exploration of time and space. This narrative is informed both by the memories of his narrator's Aboriginal relatives and by the narrator's imaginative empathy with his ancestors, which eventually enables him to substitute a pattern of return and permanence for the narcissistic and misguided abstraction of linear progress.'' (p 35) -
Australian Voices : Presence and Absence in the Senior Literature Classroom
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 31-51) 'Recently I listened to an Indigenous educator respond to the draft Australian Curriculum and it would be hard to have been in that audience and not be infected by the sheer relief expressed, that at last the knowledges of Indigenous peoples will be brought into the curriculum in a consistent and self-conscious manner. This at least is the potential of the curriculum, as this educator saw it. While most of us at the forum were expressing disappointment about what we saw before us as an atomised, technicist approach to English in the consultation draft, with its attendant matrix of strands, standards and levels, here was a firm reminder of the nature of 'standpoint'. Despite many of the criticisms voiced about the Australian curriculum, and the sense of opportunity lost for an imaginative national discussion about what we value as important learning, I've heard no one question the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives...' (From author's introduction, 31)
-
Un-Singing Historiography : Kim Scott's Benang
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 103-115)
Last amended 23 Apr 2007 12:28:06
