AustLit

Epigraph:

‘Speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of communication; they are above all acts of compulsion. Please follow me. Trust me, for deep feeling and understanding require total commitment.’ — Trinh T Minh-ha

‘If we look at the process of “understanding” beings and ideas as it operates in western society, we find that it is founded on an insistence on this kind of transparency. In order to “understand” and therefore accept you, I must reduce your density to this scale of conceptual measurement which gives me a basis for comparisons and perhaps for judgements.’ — Edouard Glissant

 Authors' note: 

We have enacted adjustments to the lineation to some of the citations included in this exchange. Such alternations are not intended merely to conform the writing of others into our chosen poetics — but for the sake of offering and opening up previously written ideas within the specific context of this exchange which for us could/can only occur within a form where lines are broken and fractured so as to leak out spills of new thoughts/understandings.