image of person or book cover 4436648371456889683.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Imagine the document you have before you is not a book, but a map. It is well-used, creased, and folded, so that when you open it, no matter how carefully, something tears, and a line that is neither latitude nor longitude opens in the hidden geography of the place you are about to enter.

'For the past twenty years, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to roam the harsh and beautiful desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed: the station has been handed back to its traditional landowners; the mining companies have arrived; and Indigenous art has flourished.

'By immersing herself in the life of a small community and its art centre, and in her ground-breaking mapping projects, Mahood has been seeking to understand her own place in the country she loves, and to find a bridge across the fault line between the profoundly disparate cultures that inhabit it.

'Position Doubtful is a meditation on that experience. Containing astonishing writing about art and landscape, it is a beautiful and intense exploration of memory and homecoming. Written with great energy, insight, and humour, Position Doubtful is a unique portrait of black-and-white relations in contemporary Australia.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Pam, Margaret, Dora, Patricia and Anna

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Brunswick, Brunswick - Coburg area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria,: Scribe , 2016 .
      image of person or book cover 4436648371456889683.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 1 August 2016
      ISBN: 9781925321685

Works about this Work

From Landscape to Country : Writing Settler Belonging in Post-Mabo Australia Martina Horáková , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 19 no. 2 2021; (p. 295-314)

'One of the debates which Australia continues to witness with various degrees of intensity involves the complex ways of articulating settler (un)belonging in the postcolonising settler nation. While one of the most significant moments which re-defined settler-Indigenous relationship took place around the turn of the twenty-first century, the critical scholarship examining settler anxieties regarding the sense of (un)belonging is flourishing in the post-Mabo period, as is the production of cultural and literary narratives engaging with this topic. This article explores two recent memoirs of settler belonging in Australia and contextualises them in a broader tradition of settler memoirs in the first decade of this century. By comparing and contrasting Tim Winton’s Island Home (2015. London: Picador) and Kim Mahood’s Position Doubtful (2016. Melbourne: Scribe), the article demonstrates a visible shift from earlier forms of writing settler (un)belonging, which often thematised settler anxiety and desire to belong through various acts of appropriating Indigenous ways of belonging. Winton’s and Mahood’s memoirs, however, offer a different vision of settler belonging: one that is deeply embedded in local, bioregional and environmental histories, recognition of Indigenous knowledges as significant agents shaping post-Mabo aesthetics and politics, and a commitment to transformation of settler relationship with the land from territory to Country.' (Publication abstract)

From the Miniature to the Momentous : Writing Lives through Ecobiography Jessica White , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: A/b : Auto/Biography Studies , vol. 35 no. 1 2020; (p. 13-33)

'This article contemplates ecobiography, a little-researched form of life writing which depicts how human selves are supported and shaped by their environment. It details the author’s ecobiography of botanist Georgiana Molloy (1805–1843) and the plants she collected from the Southwest Australian Floristic Region, alongside an analysis of an Australian ecobiography, Kim Mahood’s Position Doubtful.' (Publication abstract)

[Review Essay] Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories Tom Denison , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Archives and Manuscripts , vol. 45 no. 3 2017; (p. 261-262)

'In Position Doubtful Kim Mahood, a Canberra-based visual artist and teacher, describes how since 2004 she has travelled each year to spend time in Mulan, a Walmajarri community in Western Australia, close to the Mongrel Downs station where she spent her childhood, and which has since been returned to the traditional owners. An intensely personal memoir, she describes how she grew up between two cultures. Her interest lies in exploring ‘what happens when the unconscious mind experiences a fundamental displacement … when the body feels an almost cellular affinity to a place that has been constructed by a different cultural imagination’ (p. 296). The result is a book that is fascinating on many levels, but is particularly valuable for the insights it brings to themes relevant to those working in archives and memory institutions – issues such as identity, memory, the meaning and interpretation of records (maps in particular), the importance of place, and cross-cultural relations.'  (Introduction)

Memoir Bridges a Cultural Chasm Suzanne Leal , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3-4 September 2016; (p. 21)

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
Kim Mahood, Position Doubtful CG , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 20 August 2016;

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
Kim Mahood, Position Doubtful CG , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 20 August 2016;

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
Memoir Bridges a Cultural Chasm Suzanne Leal , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3-4 September 2016; (p. 21)

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
A Tattoo of Movement Barry Hill , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Age , 15-16 October 2016; (p. 23)

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
Artist Maps the Desert on Her Skin Barry Hill , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 15-16 October 2016; (p. 34)

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
Binocular Vision Michael Winkler , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 384 2016; (p. 22)

— Review of Position Doubtful : Mapping Landscapes and Memories Kim Mahood , 2016 single work autobiography
'At the bottom of one of Kim Mahood's desert watercolours, she scrawled, 'In the gap between two ways of seeing, the risk is that you see nothing clearly.' A risk for some, but not Mahood. Her work as a visual artist and writer attests to an eye that is unfailing and a lifetime of looking. The subtle gradations and veristic detail of Position Doubtful attest to sustained attentive observation.' (Introduction)
Kim Mahood Susan Wyndham (interviewer), 2016 single work interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 20-21 August 2016; (p. 18) The Saturday Age , 20-21 August 2016; (p. 24)
Terra Incognita 2016 single work interview
— Appears in: Good Reading , August 2016; (p. 50-51)
'For many of us, the streets of London or New York are more familiar than the towns and settlements of the remote north and centre of our own country. But non-Indigenous artist and writer KIM MAHOOD, who spent many years of her childhood on a cattle station amid Indigenous lands, knows these parts of Australia well. In her new book, Position Doubtful, she recounts her frequent journeys from her home in Wamboin, near Canberra, back to Indigenous communities in NT and WA. We caught up with Kim in Alice Springs just as she was preparing to head out on a 1000 km road trip.'
[Review Essay] Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes and Memories Tom Denison , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Archives and Manuscripts , vol. 45 no. 3 2017; (p. 261-262)

'In Position Doubtful Kim Mahood, a Canberra-based visual artist and teacher, describes how since 2004 she has travelled each year to spend time in Mulan, a Walmajarri community in Western Australia, close to the Mongrel Downs station where she spent her childhood, and which has since been returned to the traditional owners. An intensely personal memoir, she describes how she grew up between two cultures. Her interest lies in exploring ‘what happens when the unconscious mind experiences a fundamental displacement … when the body feels an almost cellular affinity to a place that has been constructed by a different cultural imagination’ (p. 296). The result is a book that is fascinating on many levels, but is particularly valuable for the insights it brings to themes relevant to those working in archives and memory institutions – issues such as identity, memory, the meaning and interpretation of records (maps in particular), the importance of place, and cross-cultural relations.'  (Introduction)

From Landscape to Country : Writing Settler Belonging in Post-Mabo Australia Martina Horáková , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 19 no. 2 2021; (p. 295-314)

'One of the debates which Australia continues to witness with various degrees of intensity involves the complex ways of articulating settler (un)belonging in the postcolonising settler nation. While one of the most significant moments which re-defined settler-Indigenous relationship took place around the turn of the twenty-first century, the critical scholarship examining settler anxieties regarding the sense of (un)belonging is flourishing in the post-Mabo period, as is the production of cultural and literary narratives engaging with this topic. This article explores two recent memoirs of settler belonging in Australia and contextualises them in a broader tradition of settler memoirs in the first decade of this century. By comparing and contrasting Tim Winton’s Island Home (2015. London: Picador) and Kim Mahood’s Position Doubtful (2016. Melbourne: Scribe), the article demonstrates a visible shift from earlier forms of writing settler (un)belonging, which often thematised settler anxiety and desire to belong through various acts of appropriating Indigenous ways of belonging. Winton’s and Mahood’s memoirs, however, offer a different vision of settler belonging: one that is deeply embedded in local, bioregional and environmental histories, recognition of Indigenous knowledges as significant agents shaping post-Mabo aesthetics and politics, and a commitment to transformation of settler relationship with the land from territory to Country.' (Publication abstract)

From the Miniature to the Momentous : Writing Lives through Ecobiography Jessica White , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: A/b : Auto/Biography Studies , vol. 35 no. 1 2020; (p. 13-33)

'This article contemplates ecobiography, a little-researched form of life writing which depicts how human selves are supported and shaped by their environment. It details the author’s ecobiography of botanist Georgiana Molloy (1805–1843) and the plants she collected from the Southwest Australian Floristic Region, alongside an analysis of an Australian ecobiography, Kim Mahood’s Position Doubtful.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 15 Nov 2021 11:38:41
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