Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Sanity at the Mercy of Language : Interpreting the “nonsense” of a Chinese Miner in Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Written in an interlanguage of English and Chinese, Jong Ah Siug’s autobiography “The Case” (1872) is rich in ambiguity; this makes it urgently in need of interpretation. Tried unfairly and detained in a lunatic asylum, Jong wrote “The Case” to narrate the cause, process, and aftermath of a fight to prove his innocence, yet unknowingly he introduced another case with the use of highly individualized language: does his “nonsense” imply that he was of unsound mind? This article will analyze “The Case”, first to deduce what Jong’s case really is, what it tells us about Australian colonial culture, and how medical knowledge was powerfully channeled in the colony. Secondly it will examine the case of “The Case”: how the text is accepted by contemporary critics, translators, and psychiatrists, why they are prone to regard the narrator as mad, and what part language plays in the construction of Jong’s insanity.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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    y separately published work icon Journal of Postcolonial Writing vol. 59 no. 6 2023 27634295 2023 periodical issue '“Diaspora” is an old word and idea but is also one that is still debated. The word in English comes from the post-classical Latin diaspora or its etymon in the “Hellenistic Greek διασπορά act of dispersion, group of people who have been dispersed < ancient Greek δια-dia-prefix + σπορά sowing, seed (see spore n.), after ancient Greek διασπείρειν to disperse” (“diaspora, n.”, OED Online). The word beginning with a capital letter in English, from the 1690s, means Jews living outside Israel; and the term in lower case, from the 1740s, signifies any people beyond their origin or homeland. In some ways, it might be better to go to the earlier word, “dispersion”, from the 1340s, referring to the scattering of the Jews (definition 5 in “dispersion, n.”, OED Online). An alternative title for this Special Issue could be “Chinese Dispersed Writing” as dispersed is an earlier and perhaps less loaded term, but here, given the debate in colonial and postcolonial studies, “diasporic” is used even if the term seems more loaded (Braziel and Mannur ' (Jonathan Locke Hart : Introduction: Chinese diasporic writing : Introduction)
     
    2023
    pg. 754-767
Last amended 5 Mar 2024 09:24:46
754-767 Sanity at the Mercy of Language : Interpreting the “nonsense” of a Chinese Miner in Australiasmall AustLit logo Journal of Postcolonial Writing
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