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'W.E.H. Stanner's words changed Australia. Without condescension and without sentimentality, in essays such as 'The Dreaming' Stanner conveyed the richness and uniqueness of Aboriginal culture. In his Boyer Lectures he exposed a 'cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale,' regarding the fate of the Aborigines, for which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian silence'. And in his essay 'Durmugam' he provided an unforgettable portrait of a warrior's attempt to hold back cultural change. 'He was such a man,' Stanner wrote. 'I thought I would like to make the reading world see and feel him as I did.''
'The pieces collected here span the career of W.E.H. Stanner as well as the history of Australian race relations. They reveal the extraordinary scholarship, humanity and vision of one of Australia's finest essayists. Their revival is a significant event.' (Source: Black Inc Books website)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille and electronic resource
Works about this Work
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City Dreaming : Making Peace with Belonging
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Griffith Review , no. 52 2016; (p. 202-216)'These words, spoken by an old Aboriginal man to the anthropologist WEH Stanner more than six decades ago, still resonate in the Australian imagination. There is pity in the speaker's words and wistfulness in Stanner's as he recalls them. In following his own road, the white man has missed a better way: the mysterious Aboriginal man's knowledge he called 'Dreaming'. Dreaming, Stanner explains in his famous essay of the same name, is not just a mythical world located in a distant past, but a living force that operates in the here and now. It defies the pervasive binaries of Western thought -present/ past, nature/culture, sacred/profane - testifying instead to a deep 'abidingness' manifest in the intimate relationship between Indigenous people and their land. 'No English words are good enough to give a sense of the link between an Aboriginal group and its homeland,' Stanner later wrote in 'The Dreaming and Other Essays' (Black Inc., 2009). The Dreaming expresses a belonging beyond the white man's ability to understand or attain.' (Publication abstract)
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Moving through Space and (Not?) Time : North Australian Dreamtime Narratives
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands 2015; (p. 15–35) 'This chapter is concerned with an analysis of narrative structure in the endangered non-Pama-Nyungan language Jaminjung and Australian Kriol. Previous analyses of Aboriginal narratives and story-telling techniques focused on the significance of place in plot and content (McGregor, 2005; Klapproth, 2004; Bavin, 2004). This study aims to extend these observations to include expressions of motion as a major structuring device in narratives. Furthermore, spatial may take precedence over temporal ordering of events in narrative. I argue that spatial narrative structuring is deeply rooted in cultural and environmental features creating a connection of unique identity for every ‘owner’ and audience of a story.' (Publication summary) -
Australian Voices : Presence and Absence in the Senior Literature Classroom
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 31-51) 'Recently I listened to an Indigenous educator respond to the draft Australian Curriculum and it would be hard to have been in that audience and not be infected by the sheer relief expressed, that at last the knowledges of Indigenous peoples will be brought into the curriculum in a consistent and self-conscious manner. This at least is the potential of the curriculum, as this educator saw it. While most of us at the forum were expressing disappointment about what we saw before us as an atomised, technicist approach to English in the consultation draft, with its attendant matrix of strands, standards and levels, here was a firm reminder of the nature of 'standpoint'. Despite many of the criticisms voiced about the Australian curriculum, and the sense of opportunity lost for an imaginative national discussion about what we value as important learning, I've heard no one question the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives...' (From author's introduction, 31)
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White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
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Untitled
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2010; (p. 111-112)
— Review of The Dreaming and Other Essays 2009 selected work criticism ; An Appreciation of Difference : WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia 2008 single work biography
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Well Read
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 18 April 2009; (p. 27)
— Review of The Dreaming and Other Essays 2009 selected work criticism ; Unearthed : The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island 2002 single work biography -
Untitled
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 196 2009; (p. 84)
— Review of The Dreaming and Other Essays 2009 selected work criticism -
Untitled
2010
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , March vol. 41 no. 1 2010; (p. 111-112)
— Review of The Dreaming and Other Essays 2009 selected work criticism ; An Appreciation of Difference : WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia 2008 single work biography -
White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
-
Australian Voices : Presence and Absence in the Senior Literature Classroom
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 31-51) 'Recently I listened to an Indigenous educator respond to the draft Australian Curriculum and it would be hard to have been in that audience and not be infected by the sheer relief expressed, that at last the knowledges of Indigenous peoples will be brought into the curriculum in a consistent and self-conscious manner. This at least is the potential of the curriculum, as this educator saw it. While most of us at the forum were expressing disappointment about what we saw before us as an atomised, technicist approach to English in the consultation draft, with its attendant matrix of strands, standards and levels, here was a firm reminder of the nature of 'standpoint'. Despite many of the criticisms voiced about the Australian curriculum, and the sense of opportunity lost for an imaginative national discussion about what we value as important learning, I've heard no one question the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives...' (From author's introduction, 31)
-
City Dreaming : Making Peace with Belonging
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Griffith Review , no. 52 2016; (p. 202-216)'These words, spoken by an old Aboriginal man to the anthropologist WEH Stanner more than six decades ago, still resonate in the Australian imagination. There is pity in the speaker's words and wistfulness in Stanner's as he recalls them. In following his own road, the white man has missed a better way: the mysterious Aboriginal man's knowledge he called 'Dreaming'. Dreaming, Stanner explains in his famous essay of the same name, is not just a mythical world located in a distant past, but a living force that operates in the here and now. It defies the pervasive binaries of Western thought -present/ past, nature/culture, sacred/profane - testifying instead to a deep 'abidingness' manifest in the intimate relationship between Indigenous people and their land. 'No English words are good enough to give a sense of the link between an Aboriginal group and its homeland,' Stanner later wrote in 'The Dreaming and Other Essays' (Black Inc., 2009). The Dreaming expresses a belonging beyond the white man's ability to understand or attain.' (Publication abstract)
-
Moving through Space and (Not?) Time : North Australian Dreamtime Narratives
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands 2015; (p. 15–35) 'This chapter is concerned with an analysis of narrative structure in the endangered non-Pama-Nyungan language Jaminjung and Australian Kriol. Previous analyses of Aboriginal narratives and story-telling techniques focused on the significance of place in plot and content (McGregor, 2005; Klapproth, 2004; Bavin, 2004). This study aims to extend these observations to include expressions of motion as a major structuring device in narratives. Furthermore, spatial may take precedence over temporal ordering of events in narrative. I argue that spatial narrative structuring is deeply rooted in cultural and environmental features creating a connection of unique identity for every ‘owner’ and audience of a story.' (Publication summary) -
WEH Stanner : The Dreaming and Other Essays.
2010
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 1 2010; (p. 124-125)