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Looking for/at Australia : Roots and Repulsion in Contemporary Australian Women's Writing single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Looking for/at Australia : Roots and Repulsion in Contemporary Australian Women's Writing
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'No matter how seriously attacked and deranged, identity remains a keyword for contemporaneity. Political agendas and propagandas are packed full with claims and calls for new or old senses of belonging; nations and narrations abound with discourses focussed upon finding ro recuperating personal and collective memories, which might thus safeguard one's dreamy rootedness and secure location in the world. And yet, within these manifestoes lie dispersed and abjected bodies, weak and nomadic subjects which crowd the bitter arena of contemporary philosophical reflections as well as political praxis and 'vernacular' reality (CF. Kreisteva 1982; Vattimo 1999; Butler 1990, 1993; de Lauretis 1990; Bugliese 2007c) Ethnicity is another term one often encounters in the public as well as private spheres, especially in the Anglophone context. It has replaced the previous race markers in general as well as in critical parlance. And yet, it is a term which seems to be still deeply dangerous in its constructing borders of inclusion and exclusion in/out of any given community. In this view, (visible) ethnics exist insofar as they are recognized (and recognize themselves) as such in vertiginous and self-perpetuating but distorted mirror scene. What is obliterated in such positions is the obvious fact that every human being is ethnically located; of course, the term is a useful tool in the hands of mainstream, powerful groups often advocating multi-forms of marginalization (cf Knippling 1996; Yoshino 1999).' (p251)

Notes

  • Epigraph: We are lacking models that explain how identity might be retained whilst impregnated with otherness [...] (Battersby 1998, p 18)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe Renata Summo-O'Connell (editor), Berne New York (City) : Peter Lang , 2009 Z1642638 2009 anthology criticism

    'From 'Terra Nullius' to Land of Opportunities and Last Frontier, the European dream has constructed and deconstructed Australia to feed its imagination of new societies. At the same time Australia has over the last two centuries forged and re-invented its own liaisons with Europe arguably to carve out its identity. From the arts to social sciences, to society itself, a complex dynamic has grown between the two continents in ways that invite study and discussion.

    A transnational research group has begun its collective investigation project of which this first volume is the outcome. The book is a substantial multidisciplinary collection of current research and offers critical perspectives on culture, literature and history around themes at the heart of the 'Imagined Australia' project. The essays instigate reflection, discovery and discussion of how reciprocal imagining between Australia and Europe has articulated itself and ways and dimensions in which a relationship between communities, imagined and not, has unfolded.' -- Publisher's blurb

         Berne New York (City) : Peter Lang , 2009     pg. 251-263
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Last amended 26 Feb 2010 11:31:37
251-263 Looking for/at Australia : Roots and Repulsion in Contemporary Australian Women's Writingsmall AustLit logo
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