AustLit

In this, the opening editorial to this issue of Typereader, Sneja Gunew argues: 'If we are really attempting to create something new then we must stop making England and English culture the inevitable and privileged reference point for defining our own difference' (9).

This article provides both a discussion of the issues involved in the production of 'A Bibliography of Australian Multicultural Writers' and a rejoinder to Robert Dessaix's criticism of multicultural writing and writing produced in Australia in languages other than English.

Nikos Papapastergiadis reads Robert Dessaix's critique of multicultural and migrant writing as an expression of anxiety regarding 'authentic Australian cultural criticism' and the role of 'foreign agents' (22, 23).

Efi Hatzimanolis argues that Dessaix's and Docker's objections to the terminologies of migrant and multicultural writing are related to anxieties of power reverals. If the feminist writer/critic resists the category of 'victim,' she is repositioned as 'victimiser' (25). Hatzimanolis insists that the debate needs to move beyond this binary thinking.

Beth Spencer argues that any debate regarding the ethnic identity of a writer needs to begin with an acknowledgement of the body and how a writer's body is situated by both physical and cultural traits.

Sneja Gunew responds to Dessaix's article by way of four concepts: host, guest/parasite, contagion and disease/noise. She writes: 'In Australia those who occupy the host's chair operate according to the time-honoured imperialist principle that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Those other displaced ones, guests by definition, are anxiety-provoking reminders of the unstable status of their hosts' (35).

Sneja Gunew interviews Joseph Pivato, who in 1991 was based for some months at Macquarie University.