AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The proliferation of trauma fiction has given rise to a debate about the
ethical challenges of representing and responding to trauma. An abuse of this
theoretical framework may lead to an unethical appropriation of the trauma of others.
The main aim in this article is to study Gail Jones's use of poetic indirection in her
short story "Touching Tiananmen" (2000). This strategy raises awareness about the
historical trauma of the Tiananmen massacre, and takes how its victims may be
represented into consideration. Firstly, the ambivalent meaning and relevance of silence
in the short story will be explained. This discussion is supported by a detailed analysis
of the formal and stylistic strategies used in Jones's narrative to evoke the 1989
traumatic event. Secondly, the story's construction of temporal, place and positional
forms of circumspection will be examined. Finally, Homi Bhabha's notion of "now
knowledge" will be used to comment on the story's anti-climatic turning-points and
ending. By way of conclusion, it will be argued that Jones's choice to "speak shadows"
proves to be a powerful strategy to denounce forgetfulness and call for our recognition
of responsibility towards the victims.' (Author's abstract)
Notes
-
Epigraph: From my grandmother Bridget I inherited a vision […] A ship. The Titanic. The sinkable Titanic. There it is sailing through darkness, slow and magisterial, with all lights ablazing. It is absolutely resplendent […] And it proceeds, cumbrous and steady, sailing forward into a more dazzlingly white embrace, smack into its fatal icy rendezvous, smack into history. See it shudder, tilt and slowly submerge. It upends with a kind of sigh as though the sea opens a mouth. Tiny human beings fling themselves from it. Screams. Drownings. The gradual engulfment. Those lights in an eerie and wavering descent. The sea at last sealing lips over its watery secret and shock waves going sshh!, sshh!, sshh! (Jones 1992: 148)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 10 Jan 2013 10:08:30
32-46
http://www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/jeasa324%20royograsa.pdf
Forgetfulness and Remembrance in Gail Jones’s “Touching Tiananmen”
Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia,