Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 'Knowing This Country' : Confronting the Nuclear Uncanny in Aboriginal Life Writing
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'Nuclear phenomena have been described as ‘uncanny’ because they disrupt rationalist ways of understanding space and time, but also because they are sites for the return of a variety of cultural repressions. In this essay, I explore an Australian instance of nuclear uncanniness—the ‘black mist’ that followed the first nuclear trial at Emu Field, South Australia, in 1953—through a work of life writing by witness and Anangu woman Jessie Lennon. I find that I’m the One that Know this Country! (2000) offers an Anangu critique of the nuclear uncanny, in which the various disruptions of the nuclear age are revealed to be part and parcel of the processes of colonisation. The work of life writing itself is the means for the Aboriginal survival of the nuclear apocalypse and its associated epistemological upheaval, structured around Lennon’s authorial position as ‘the one who knows this country.’' (Publication abstract)

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    y separately published work icon JASAL Conference Issue : Reading and Writing Australian Literature vol. 21 no. 2 2021 22894191 2021 periodical issue 'This issue of JASAL publishes essays first presented at ASAL2020 Virtual, an online conference that replaced a conference at James Cook University, Cairns, after COVID-19 restrictions necessitated a reimagination of the face-to-face program. At the time of writing this introduction, twelve months after ASAL2020, many of those who attended the conference are again in lockdown as new strains of COVID-19 test the capacities of health and civic authorities, and the patience of a population seeking to comprehend this ‘new normal.’ Many of those who attended ASAL2020 also logged on again in July 2021 to join the Australian Literary Studies Convention, hosted by Victoria University, confirming the value of virtual communion to the development of the work we do as literary scholars and the spirit in which we do that work.' (Roger Osborne : Reading and Writing Australian Literature: Introduction 2021
Last amended 2 Sep 2021 13:04:07
https://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14900 'Knowing This Country' : Confronting the Nuclear Uncanny in Aboriginal Life Writingsmall AustLit logo JASAL
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