AustLit

Anne Brewster states: 'My concern in this article is to situate the personal turn in Australian whiteness theory within its discursive, cultural and literary contexts and to speculate about the ethical work it aims to effect. My interest lies in the 'dialogue' and exchange between the traditions of indigenous and white literary and scholarly production; and in the rhetorical transformations of the scholarly narrative modes of white writing about race (eg the essay). I want to resist the claim that the personal or self-reflexive turn in critical whiteness studies enacts a complete divestiture of the privilege and entitlements of whiteness. I want also to explore the idea that the discursive shift in the textualities of whiteness reorients both the subject and object of the scholarly enterprise.'