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Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Coda
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

1. Refusing to be Silent 

While the early 1990's saw the Mabo and Wik land rights decisions and the mid-1990s the release of the groundbreaking Bringing them Home Report, the years that followed have brought little of what might be termed 'progress' in terms of racial equality. The twelve years of the Howard government (1996-2007) must be mentioned within this context as it is from this period that the most virulent expressions of racism and social conservatism emerged. This was partly to do with the conservative policies of the coalition and partly to do with an increasingly volatile global political climate. Considerable damage was done to the intellectual and cultural life of Australia during this time. After the wave of optimism following Rudd's election and the apology to Indigenous Australians, there has been a disappointing lack of practical action...' (Introduction)

Notes

  • Epigraph:

    What are the Black Mirror stories [...]?

    They are myself, unrecognisable. They are myself, writing disaster. I looked into a mirror and darkness looked back. -Gail Jones, Black Mirror

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Falling Backwards : Australian Historical Fiction and The History Wars Jo Jones , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2018 14523219 2018 multi chapter work criticism

    'Some stories are hard to tell. During a period known as the Australian History Wars, consideration of the national past was vexed, contested territory. There was marked vitriol – to an unprecedented extent – in public debate about the “reality” and interpretation of the events of colonisation. This study investigates the output of novelists who were brave enough to contribute to this vital cultural moment and the issues of politics and form they attempted to negotiate.

    'This book deals with the publically-waged debate over the suitability of novelists to render authoritative versions of significant events or periods as its starting point. From there, however, it delves deeper into the politics of form, analysing the connection between the realist modes of traditional, empiricist histories and the various explorations of the colonial past that have been figured through different historical novels. The forms of these novels range from classic realism to frontier Gothic, various Romanticisms, magical realism, and reflexive post-modernism.

    'The relative formal freedoms offered through historical novels, when compared to conventional history writing offer the chance to confront the past in all of its contradiction and complexity. The terrain of the postmodern and historical sublime — of loss and uncertainly — is one in which historical fiction can perform an important political and ethical role. The immeasurably vast space which lies beyond history, that space of those who are often unrepresented, often victims, often silent, is an abyss into which fiction, particularly historical fiction, is able imaginatively and ethically to descend.'  (Publication summary)

    Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2018
    pg. 251-257
Last amended 18 Sep 2020 07:19:19
251-257 Codasmall AustLit logo
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