The pain of unbelonging : alienation and identity in Australasian literature / edited by Sheila Collingwood-Whittick ; preface by Germaine Greer.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Collingwood-Whittick, Sheila.

Series:

Cross/cultures ; 91.

Cross/cultures, 0924-1426 ; 91

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alienation (Philosophy) in literature.

Alienation (Social psychology) in literature.

Australasian literature--History and criticism.

Australasian literature.

Australian literature--History and criticism.

Australian literature.

Identity (Philosophical concept) in literature.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

New Zealand literature--History and criticism.

New Zealand literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (255 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York, NY : Rodopi, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Beyond the obvious and enduring socio-economic ravages it unleashed on indigenous cultures, white settler colonization in Australasia also inflicted profound damage on the collective psyche of both of the communities that inhabited the contested space of the colonial world. The acute sense of alienation that colonization initially provoked in the colonized and colonizing populations of Australia and New Zealand has, recent studies indicate, developed into an endemic, existential pathology. Evidence of the psychological fallout from the trauma of geographical deracination, cultural disorientation and ontological destabilization can be found not only in the state of anomie and self-destructive patterns of behaviour that now characterize the lives of indigenous Australian and Maori peoples, but also in the perpetually faltering identity-discourse and cultural rootlessness of the present descendants of the countries’ Anglo-Celtic settlers. It is with the literary expression of this persistent condition of alienation that the essays gathered in the present volume are concerned. Covering a heterogeneous selection of contemporary Australasian literature, what these critical studies convincingly demonstrate is that, more than two hundred years after the process of colonisation was set in motion, the experience that Germaine Greer has dubbed 'the pain of unbelonging' continues unabated, constituting a dominant thematic concern in the writing produced today by Australian and New Zealand authors.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Towards Settler Auto-Ethnography: Nicholas Jose’s Black Sheep / Marc Delrez

Australia Re-Mapped and Con-Texted in Kim Scott’s Benang / Pablo Armellino

“One more story to tell”: Diasporic Articulations in Sally Morgan’s My Place / Elvira Pulitano

Belonging and Unbelonging in Text and Research: “Snow Domes” in Australia / Eleonore Wildburger

Reconciling Accounts: An Analysis of Stephen Gray’s The Artist is a Thief / Christine Nicholls

The Spectral Belongings of Mudrooroo / Lorenzo Perrona

The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and the ‘Pain of Unbelonging’ / Sue Ryan–Fazilleau

the bone people Contexts and Reception, 1984–2004 / Sarah Shieff

Integrating, Belonging, Unbelonging in: Albert Wendt’s Sons for the Return Home / Françoise Kral

Margaret Mahy’s Post-National Bridge-Building: Weaving the Threads of Unbelonging / Anne Magnan–Park

Notes on Contributors.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

94-012-0427-6

1-4294-8083-1

OCLC:

714567237

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401204279 DOI