Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Fiction and Fakements in Colonial Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The imaginations of convicts in Australia became attuned to the pairing of opposites and this led to strange tensions in their way of representing things. On Norfolk Island the meanings of words were reversed, so that ‘good’ meant ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ meant ‘beautiful’. This undermining of official meanings produced the argot called the ‘flash’ or ‘kiddy’ language of the colony. Designed at first to keep private sentiments from being inspected, it eventually supported a system of dissident actions called ‘cross-work’ or ‘cross doings’. One word loomed large amidst these inversions: ‘fakement’, meaning booty, forgery or deceit. The verb has more extensive meanings: rob, wound, shatter; ‘fake your slangs’ means break your shackles. It also meant performing a fiction and accepting the consequences of it.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Postcolonial Studies Catalysts of Change: Colonial Transformations of Anglo-European Literary Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century vol. 23 no. 3 September 2020 20386803 2020 periodical issue 2020 pg. 360-370
Last amended 8 Oct 2020 14:56:08
360-370 Fiction and Fakements in Colonial Australiasmall AustLit logo Postcolonial Studies
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