y separately published work icon Hecate periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Alternative title: Excess and Desire
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... vol. 43 no. 1/2 2017 of Hecate est. 1975 Hecate
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.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This issue of Hecate prints papers presented at the Excess and Desire conference in February 2017.1 A central topic of many of them is that of gendered corporeality, especially as this is represented in literary and cultural production that comes from a fringe, an edge, a periphery—that often stands (up) for a much larger group. The authors discuss texts from a range of contexts, with approaches to ways of reading that involve innovative practices of recognition, and a critique that evaluates writing that speaks out for silenced majorities, and for those who envisage paths for liberation.' (Carole Ferrier, Editorial introduction)

Notes

  • Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:

    Excessive becomings: Rethinking women and militancy by Shamara Ransirini

    Angela Carter's revelations and revaluations of dark desires: Unwinding the winding sheets of constraining myths and horror by Gina Wisker.

    Dislocation, feminine writing, and nomadic experience in Shahrnush Parsipur's 'women without men' by Hasti Abbasi

    Mimetic desire and aAbjection: The social construction of woman in Winterson's the passion and McBride's 'A girl is a half-formed thing' by Pete Walsh 

    Othered body, obscene self(ie): A Sartrean reading of Kim Kardashian-West by Elese B Dowden

    Sexual shame and subjectivity in Lorrie Moore's 'two boys' by Emily Barber and Grant Caldwell

    Schoolgirl sex and excess: Exploring narratives of Japanese girlhood and compensated dating in Ruth Ozeki's novel 'a tale for the time being' by Rebecca Hausler

    Desire as excess: Patriarchal control and resistance in South Asian (Indian) women's writing by Sanjukta Dasgupta

    Postcolonial recollections of a colonial encounter: Eliade's 'Bengal nights' and Devi's 'it does not die' by Bansari Mitra

    Lady Macbeth in AA and The river of names by Amber Moore

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2017 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Editorial, Carole Ferrier , single work essay

An introduction to this volume of papers from the Excess, Desire and Twentieth- to Twenty-First-Century Women’s Writing. A Hecate and Contemporary Women’s Writing Association conference held at the School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, 8–10 February 2017.

(p. 5-9)
Particular Bodies : Exploring a Corporeal Writing, Samantha Trayhurn , single work prose

Can women have some other way of writing? If so, what is it? Such questions have been asked in literary theory for a long time, and now, as a writer, I tried to gain my own understanding of the creative process. French theorists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray answered with a resounding yes, but the écriture féminine they posited still seemed constrained by the binaries they fought so hard against. Even though I knew that feminine meant much more than anatomical sex or performed gender in this context, when Cixous spoke of a “universal woman subject to emerge and bring women to their senses” (880), I couldn’t imagine what this universal woman might look like. What colour would she be? What characteristics would she have? Would she be she at all? 'Informed by the corporeal philosophies of Elisabeth Grosz and Karina Quinn (Eades), and the creative texts of Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector and Lidia Yuknavitch, I began to explore the idea of a corporeal writing. Writing of and through bodies, writing that seeks to increase diversity by representing body in all its complexities. The association of masculine texts with universality and feminine texts with particularity has been well documented and critiqued. Corporeal writing provides a platform and a counterpoint to the conception of universal experience, not only for women, but for all. Presented here is not a roadmap. I am not advocating a set of rules to be followed. Instead, this body offers reflections — one writer’s experiences — the sensations related to being one of a multitude.' (Introduction)

(p. 10-19)
‘Being Made into a Machine’ : An Extract from Eleanor Dark’s Unpublished Novel ‘Pilgrimage’, Melinda Cooper , single work essay

'Eleanor Dark’s novel “Pilgrimage” has never been published. She began writing it in January 1921, a year before her marriage, and finished it in the late 1920s, when she and Eric Dark were establishing their home in Katoomba.1 In the early 1930s, Eleanor tried to get “Pilgrimage” published, sending it to her literary agent in London, and showing it to P.R. Stephensen, who had published her novel Prelude to Christopher in Sydney in 1934 (Brooks with Clark 122). “Pilgrimage” was not accepted for publication, and Eleanor appears to have abandoned any attempt at this.' (Introduction)

(p. 95-104)
An Extract from Eleanor Dark’s Unpublished Novel ‘Pilgrimage’, Eleanor Dark , extract novel (p. 100-102)
From 'Journey to the Yellow Castle', Lau Siew Mei , single work prose (p. 105-108)
Chengdu Summeri"I often remember the pool after midnight", Isabelle Chigros-Fraser , single work poetry (p. 108)
Mountain Village in September, Matina Doumos , single work poetry (p. 109)
Peachesi"It was slicing peaches that started it", Matina Doumos , single work poetry (p. 110)
Waiting for Annai"A giant I stand,", Matina Doumos , single work poetry (p. 111-112)
Passingi"playful constructivist", Marion Campbell , single work poetry (p. 113-115)
The Gardeni"In the Vice Chancellor’s Garden", Margaret Zanardo , single work poetry (p. 116)
From 'Running as Fast as I Can', Gabrielle Walsh , extract autobiography

'A journey is not just marked by things. It is marked by our lived experience. My story is informed by my lived experience of the National Party government of Joh Bjelke-Petersen who became Premier of Queensland in 1968. The Queensland State parliament administers an area greater than Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined and to travel its length is to travel the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Bjelke-Petersen’s administration menaced us, threatened us and metaphorically acted like a crop duster, flying low whilst disgorging its contents. We expected to be showered with superphosphate. Instead, we were showered with something more akin to an organophosphate that had been stockpiled since the Cold War. Wherever it came from, we knew we were going to suffer. We were in for the fight of our lives: “don’t you worry about that.”' (Introduction)

(p. 148-157)
Feminist Fables and Alexis Wright's Art of the Fabulous in 'The Swan Book', Susan Sheridan , single work criticism

'Two recent award-winning Australian novels, both of a dystopian cast of mind, Alexis Wright's 'The Swan Book' (2013) and Charlotte Wood's 'The Natural Way of Things' (2015), employ fable to tell powerful contemporary stories. In both novels the issues explored are so violent and threatening to life itself that fable rather than realist narrative becomes the best vehicle for staging them. Here I begin by comparing these two novels briefly, considering the different meanings and uses that "fable" might have for a novelist dealing with such issues of violence (colonial, patriarchal, ecological). I go on to suggest some connections between the uses of fable made by these two novelists and some important feminist writers of the late twentieth century, most notably Angela Carter. The remainder of the essay is focussed on 'The Swan Book' and the way Wright uses the forms of fable to write a story geared to catastrophic times of climate change, representing country as a living entity and inventing a new fable of the black swan and the swan woman.'  (Publication abstract)

(p. 197-214)
‘The Silence’, Josephine Brown , single work prose (p. 215-220)
I Return to My Body (I Turn for Home)i"A bad day’s work", Angela Gardner , single work poetry (p. 221-222)
Early Lessons in Colonialismi"In the background in the hours to lift-off, the orbit, the undocking", Angela Gardner , single work poetry (p. 223-224)
Painting the Noosai"I daub-in the tumbling sea-roar,", Pam Schindler , single work poetry (p. 224)
If They Camei"If they came to find me,", Pam Schindler , single work poetry (p. 225)
Straighti"She always wears an outer garment of pleated black silk", Condell Rustichelli , single work poetry (p. 226)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Editorial Carole Ferrier , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 43 no. 1/2 2017; (p. 5-9)

An introduction to this volume of papers from the Excess, Desire and Twentieth- to Twenty-First-Century Women’s Writing. A Hecate and Contemporary Women’s Writing Association conference held at the School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, 8–10 February 2017.

Editorial Carole Ferrier , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 43 no. 1/2 2017; (p. 5-9)

An introduction to this volume of papers from the Excess, Desire and Twentieth- to Twenty-First-Century Women’s Writing. A Hecate and Contemporary Women’s Writing Association conference held at the School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, 8–10 February 2017.

Last amended 18 Sep 2018 10:47:02
Common subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X