I Pity the Poor Immigrant single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 I Pity the Poor Immigrant
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Many years ago I read a now forgotten novel by a now forgotten author, which had a truly wonderful preface. It read, simply, this bloody book nearly killed me. I therefore dedicate it, dear Reader, to myself. There is a delicate irony at play, I think, in my long remembering this dedication while the book itself is erased completely from my memory. I’ll touch on the interplay of knowledge and memory in due course. What I want to start by saying, though, is that in my case, as in the case of that forgotten preface’s author, while writing can be a horrifically stressful business - and while writing this paper did indeed feel like it was going to kill me - the Author is emphatically Not Dead.' (Introduction)

Notes

  • Dedication: Dedicated to all refugees currently imprisoned by the Australian State

  • Barry Andrews Memorial Lecture

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL Empire/Dissent vol. 17 no. 1 2017 12713236 2017 periodical issue

    'Working with the archives of the North American frontier, non-Indigenous historian Richard White noted in 1997: ‘A large chunk of our early documents … are conversations between people who do not completely understand each other. We are connoisseurs of misreadings’ (93). White’s couching remains provocative for literary scholars and writers working in settler cultures—what does it mean to be skilled at misreading? What misreadings does a culture rely on, perpetuate? Is this a way to describe the mechanisms of denial at work in settler overwriting, re-interpreting and rhetoricising of Indigenous points of view and testimony, in so far as they are acknowledged in settler culture? Who is the ‘we’ here, more precisely; who is collected in White’s use of ‘our’?' (Nicole Moore : Editorial introduction)

    2017

Works about this Work

Turning the Inside Out : Interiority and Australian Fiction Peter D. Mathews , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 227-234)

'The notion of interiority in Australian literature can be thought of in two main ways: as a physical, geographical location, such as the outback, or as a subjective notion of what constitutes our identity. Examining a range of representative examples, this chapter examines the way in which Australian fiction has explored, transgressed, and questioned the overlap of these two metaphors of interiority. For authors like Patrick White and Tim Winton, for instance, these liminal moments are often presented as mystical experiences, whereas novels like Kate Grenville’s Joan Makes History or Kim Scott’s Benang explore their colonial and political dimensions. The common intersection for all these narratives lies in their shared ethical confrontation between self and other, internal and external, a contested line that challenges readers of Australian fiction to rethink the borders of their own interiority.'

Source: Abstract

Turning the Inside Out : Interiority and Australian Fiction Peter D. Mathews , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 227-234)

'The notion of interiority in Australian literature can be thought of in two main ways: as a physical, geographical location, such as the outback, or as a subjective notion of what constitutes our identity. Examining a range of representative examples, this chapter examines the way in which Australian fiction has explored, transgressed, and questioned the overlap of these two metaphors of interiority. For authors like Patrick White and Tim Winton, for instance, these liminal moments are often presented as mystical experiences, whereas novels like Kate Grenville’s Joan Makes History or Kim Scott’s Benang explore their colonial and political dimensions. The common intersection for all these narratives lies in their shared ethical confrontation between self and other, internal and external, a contested line that challenges readers of Australian fiction to rethink the borders of their own interiority.'

Source: Abstract

Last amended 18 Jan 2018 13:27:48
https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/12122/11484 I Pity the Poor Immigrantsmall AustLit logo JASAL
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