Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Robert Lawlor Tells a 'White' Lie

Mitchell Rolls
Over the last decade a considerable and growing body of literature has appeared in which Aborigines are proffered as the bearers of the primal knowledge and longlost cultural mechanisms that are required for the successful reintegration of an ailing West and its constituency of alienated selves. The literature urging the appropriation of Aboriginal cultural property for these purposes is filtered through a range of ideologies, theories and faiths. Most of the authors write from the perspective of personal experience, using either their work with Aborigines, or more commonly, a journey to where ...
Click here to read more.

Network Review of Books

Bluff Rock: Autobiography of a Massacre (2005)

Reviewed by Rob Edwards in the January 2006 issue.
The various ways in which we understand and tell history as well as the multiple variations on the 'truth' of an event are explored in brilliant detail in Katrina M Schlunke's book Bluff Rock: Autobiography of a Massacre. This book examines a story of 'massacre' from Schlunke's childhood home, the New England area of New South Wales. The event in question, known as the Bluff Rock Massacre by everyone in the area, involves the killing of Aboriginal people by white settlers. The massacre is a battleground for multiple versions of a history that most want relegated to the 'past'. Schlunke ... read more.

Textual Spaces (2005)

Reviewed by Rhian Healy in the October 2005 issue.
How does one talk about Aboriginality? Is it best talked 'about' by academics? Or talked 'through' by Aboriginal people? In the end, does academic discourse represent Aboriginality, negotiate it, or perhaps, somehow, own it? Must it be discussed in English, or by using individual aboriginal languages or Aboriginal English? Through written languages, spoken languages, through physical depictions? Textual Spaces: Aboriginality and Cultural Studies discusses the implications of the use of language, especially in the politically loaded relationships between the speakers and those spoken ... read more.

The Latham Diaries (2005)

Reviewed by David Ritter in the February 2006 issue.
Mark Latham was elected to Federal Parliament in March 1996 as the Australian Labor Party member for Werriwa, serving a term as a backbench member in the Keating administration. When Labor lost office in 1996, Latham was promoted to the front bench of the Beazley-led opposition, a position he held until retiring to the backbenches on his own motion between the 1998 and 2001 elections, at both of which the ALP were defeated. When Simon Crean became Federal leader in 2001, Latham was invited back to the front bench, serving in various positions until the incumbent resigned in late 2003. In ... read more.

The Dog Rock (2005)

Reviewed by Tony Smith in the June 2005 issue.
The production of history is no straightforward matter. At every stage, from research to interpretation to communicating findings, there are historiographical debates. Some scholars admit artefacts and physical evidence while others are sticklers for footnotes and documentation. Some insist that the appropriate term is 'histories', because divergent viewpoints are valid. In any case, the popularity of historical fiction and romance certainly suggests that many readers long to be immersed in a past era and happily embrace characters created for that specific purpose. Miriel Lenore does not ... read more.

Original Face (2005)

Reviewed by Mads Clausen in the July 2006 issue.
Based on a true murder, Original Face, Jose's thriller-cum-novel, opens with the first of many taxi-fares across the Glebe Island Bridge and with a body found in a rubbish tip, face sliced off in an attempt to erase the victim's identity. The search for the identity of this horribly mutilated corpse reverberates throughout the book (and the stunning front-cover), setting in motion a chain of events that extend far beyond the criminal investigation. Set in a pulsating, but oftentimes seamy and dangerous Sydney, where criminal ties and even Chinese government meddling are plentiful, the plot ... read more.

The Vision Splendid: A social and cultural history of rural Australia (2005)

Reviewed by Anette Bremer in the September 2005 issue.
The Vision Splendid's cover illustration, Arthur Streeton's The Selector's Hut, shows a man with a broad-brimmed hat resting on a partially hewn log, enjoying a midday smoke. Behind him, under a tall, scraggy gum, is his unfinished slab hut. Above, a soft blue sky with whispery clouds; surrounding the hut, the golden brown landscape typical of rural Australia. It is such classic images of the solitary pioneer that The Vision Splendid complicates. Streeton's painting symbolises what is popularly understood as 'the Bush' and while Waterhouse uses the same term (with a capital B) to invoke rural ... read more.

Need to Contact Us?