Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 “One Should Never Go Back” : History Writing and Historical Justice in Thea Astley’s A Kindness Cup
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 essay situates Thea Astley’s 1975 novel of the Queensland frontier, A Kindness Cup in relation to the rise of projects of postcolonial revisionist history writing in Australia. I argue that we can read Astley’s novel as reflecting upon the political and affective uses and limits of history writing for the redress of violence at a moment when history writing was undergoing major shifts in Australia. Much Australian left wing revisionist history embodies the optimistic liberal political belief that uncovering and representing the unacknowledged violence of the frontier might act to redress violence and injustice. Astley’s novel, by contrast, offers a critique of what I call  ‘the politics of exposure’—that is a politics that works from the assumption that violence, inequality and injustice are mostly the result of ignorance and that therefore better knowledge will help prevent them. The novel asks what fantasies and blind spots inhabit an uncritical investment in the politics of the exposé and suggests some of the ways that the desire to expose violence might itself be a form of violence.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL Recurrent Preoccupations - General Issue vol. 3 no. 18 2018 15639489 2018 periodical issue

    'This last issue of JASAL for 2018 brings together a diverse body of essays on Australian literature and critical debates. Although unanticipated, there are numerous resonances between the essays, whether in the critical approaches adopted by a critic or in the choice of texts selected.' (Tony Simoes da Silva, Recurrent Preoccupations, introduction)

    2018
Last amended 19 Feb 2019 10:26:30
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X