“The Whole Island Is a Jail and We the Warders” : States of Exception in Tasmanian Historical Fiction

“The Whole Island Is a Jail and We the Warders” : States of Exception in Tasmanian Historical Fiction single work criticism

Author:agent Ellen Turner

Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 “The Whole Island Is a Jail and We the Warders” : States of Exception in Tasmanian Historical Fiction

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'Looking at two historical romances by women writers, Kathleen Graves’ Exile: A Tale of Old Tasmania (1945) and Isabel Dick’s Wild Orchard (1946), this article seeks to examine narratives of an early nineteenth-century Van Diemen’s Land that are apparently at odds with the 1940s Tasmania it was to become. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception” as the theoretical underpinnings for this essay, I read both the nineteenth- and twentieth-century island as a site for the proliferation of bare life whereby the whole of society finds itself defined by its prison-like capacity to strip individuals of their right to life. In telling these stories in which not all lives are equal, it seems that Dick and Graves are attempting to situate their narratives firmly in the past where they cannot contaminate the present, and indeed, future of their island.' (Publication abstract)

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y Commonwealth : Essays and Studies Revolution(s) vol. 42 no. 1 Autumn 2019 19248450 2019 periodical issue Abstract
'In 2018, the theme for the annual conference of the SAES (Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur), held at Nanterre University, itself a site of student revolution in the past, was “Revolution(s),” a notion which has particular resonance for the New Literatures panel which provided the genesis of many of the articles included in this issue. Previously colonised countries, as diverse and geographically disparate as India, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada, and Australia (to name but these), have all experienced revolutions in various forms, both during the colonial period and after independence. These revolutions, among which the Canadian rebellions of 1837 and 1838, the 1857-8 uprising in India, the New Zealand wars between 1845 and 1872, the first chimurenga (“uprising” in the Shona language) in Zimbabwe (1894-97), the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), and the Biafran war (1967-70) in some cases paved the way for later twentieth-century rebellions which led to independence and, in some cases, to further revolutions.' (Christine Lorre-Johnston and Fiona McCann : Introduction)
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