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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
McMahon addresses the 'geopolitics of Australian place' as seen through debates relating to border control and asylum seekers. She writes, 'In the specific context of literary studies, traditions and habits of represenation have been reframed by the evident potency and resonance of a rhetoric of belonging and insularity that has been harnessed to great effect. Galvanised by the press of contemporary politics, this essay will seek to identify and analyse the operations of this rhetoric, focusing on the condensed and contradictory status of Australia as an island continent.'
Mcmahon's analysis includes some reference to Robert Gray's 'Malthusian Island', Randolph Stow's To the Islands and Patrick White's Voss.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Australian Transnation
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 71 no. 1 2011; (p. 18-40) 'The world is more mobile than it has ever been and in many different fields, most notably literary studies, it has led to a growing, and now well established interest in cultural and ethnic mobility, diaspora, transnational and cosmopolitan interactions. This rise in global mobility at the same time as state borders have become more hysterically protected, has interested post-colonial cultural critics for some time. The concept of the nation, or at least the nation state, has often been robustly critiqued because the post-colonial nation is marked by disappointment, instituted on the boundaries of the colonial state and doomed to continue its oppressive functions. Almost universally the nation is contrasted with "the transnational" and the global movement of peoples. It is held to be a fixed entity, a pole of attraction or repulsion orienting transnational relationships at state level. But if we distinguish the nation from the state we discover that mobility and border crossing are already features of the phenomenon we call nation.' (Author's introduction)
-
Australian Transnation
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 71 no. 1 2011; (p. 18-40) 'The world is more mobile than it has ever been and in many different fields, most notably literary studies, it has led to a growing, and now well established interest in cultural and ethnic mobility, diaspora, transnational and cosmopolitan interactions. This rise in global mobility at the same time as state borders have become more hysterically protected, has interested post-colonial cultural critics for some time. The concept of the nation, or at least the nation state, has often been robustly critiqued because the post-colonial nation is marked by disappointment, instituted on the boundaries of the colonial state and doomed to continue its oppressive functions. Almost universally the nation is contrasted with "the transnational" and the global movement of peoples. It is held to be a fixed entity, a pole of attraction or repulsion orienting transnational relationships at state level. But if we distinguish the nation from the state we discover that mobility and border crossing are already features of the phenomenon we call nation.' (Author's introduction)
Last amended 25 Oct 2005 10:59:36
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