Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Tempest: Creating dialogue from points of difference

Angela Campbell
Dismantling imperial history is a complex process which requires more than merely filling gaps with untold stories, or substituting culturally specific narratives for Euro centric ones. It is inevitable that history will present a productive site for hybridity in post-colonial drama when several narratives coexist in however uneasy a union. (Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama)1 Life, my little man, lacks rehearsals. That’s why it so often fails. Now in the theatre … (Rene de Obaldia, Exobiographie: Memoires)2The most pressing cultural challenge for contemporary ...
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Network Review of Books

Drawing the Crow (2006)

Reviewed by Eva Chapman in the July 2006 issue.
This collection of essays is told through a 'set of South Australian eyes', those of Adrian Mitchell who grew up in Adelaide in the 1950s and is now a Professor of English at the University of Sydney. At the outset of this memoir, the author explains that the phrase, 'drawing the crow' can mean 'coming off worst in any allocation'. Having drawn the crow myself when I landed in Adelaide in 1950 as a three-year-old refugee from Eastern Europe, I was curious to read about that era from the point of view of a person born and bred in Adelaide. I was not disappointed. This book is a real treat. I ... read more.

Sharing Spaces: Indigenous and non-Indigenous Responses to Story, Country and Rights (2006)

Reviewed by Linn Miller in the July 2006 issue.
In regard to sharing stories, spaces and belongings, accounts we are accustomed to hearing in Australia--or want to hear--are often misleadingly simple and one-sided. Sharing Spaces not only succeeds in disclosing and exploring the ground--conceptual, geographical, socio-cultural and political--that connects people to place, past to present and indigenous to settler-Australians, it also acknowledges the complexity of the issues it tackles and respects the multiplicity of their phenomenal expression. Most refreshingly, where and when differing perspectives and understandings exist, and are ... read more.

Deconstructing Sport History: A Postmodern Analysis (2006)

Reviewed by David Rowe in the May 2006 issue.
The discipline of history and postmodern thought have rarely been happy travelling companions, not least in the subdiscipline of sport history. Without wishing to caricature the latter, or discount its honourable exceptions, much of it has displayed the 'reconstructionist na�ve empiricism' (p viii) bemoaned by Alun Munslow in the Foreword to this book. In sport history, furthermore, the easily obtained 'facts' of who played, lost and won have tended to be accompanied by nostalgic, romantic celebrations of its object. This is, then, not an intellectual space generally much given to ... read more.

The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (2006)

Reviewed by Rosemary Hollow in the May 2006 issue.
The destruction of architecture has regrettably become a regular feature of our daily news, even on the front page at times. We have watched the bombing of the sacred Shiite shrine in Iraq, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes along the West Bank, the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and the repeated televised images of the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers. Death does not always accompany the destruction of architecture, but the effect can still be catastrophic and long term. The dismantling and displacement of a community, the removal of centuries-old places of worship, means the ... read more.

Devotion (2006)

Reviewed by Marion May Campbell in the July 2006 issue.
For this elegantly constructed and potent first novel Ffion Murphy chooses cyberspace and the hospital corridor for the literally haunting narrative front, off-setting the potential claustrophobia of these spaces by broadly brushed estuary and beach vistas around Perth, Western Australia. The suburban gothic opens in elegiac mode with a backlit idyll underscored by dread -- the family picnic at Mt Eliza is disrupted by a visitation and a portent of loss. The pregnant body of the young mother, Veronica Peterson, is the site of contestation: the baby son will be reluctant to be born; the husband ... read more.

Will Dyson: Australia's Radical Genius (2006)

Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress in the July 2006 issue.
Following Sir Donald Bradman's death in 2001 Prime Minister John Howard has been slow in pronouncing a new 'greatest living Australian'. Perhaps he might have had Shane Warne in mind but if so he has kept such an idea to himself. Poet Les Murray has been mentioned in the press but the idea seems to have died a natural death. Poets don't score as well as cricketers and in any case it's not something average Australians generally feel the need to talk about. Around ninety years ago cartoonist Will Dyson might have been a candidate for the title, and he was certainly described in London as 'the ... read more.

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