Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Problematising Identity: Governance, Politics and the ‘Making of the Aborigines’

Terry Moore
A politics of authenticity or hybridity? This article is in two parts. In the first part I use two case studies to illustrate the identity politics in which Aboriginal Tasmanians are routinely immersed. In these cases, several authoritative discourses — primarily those of liberal governance and state, non-Aboriginal popular opinion, and the counter-discourse of hegemonic Aboriginality — compete to position Aboriginal Tasmanians as Aborigines and as citizens. All the discourses refer in some way to an essentialist, traditionalist authentic Aboriginality. None acknowledge the lived ...
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Network Review of Books

Yes, Premier: Labor Leadership in Australia's States and Territories (2005)

Reviewed by Michael Alexander de Percy in the August 2005 issue.
For the first time since federation, one political party dominates politics in Australia's states and territories. Yes, Premier, edited by the ubiquitous John Wanna (see, for example, Public Policy in Australia, Institutions on the Edge? and Managing Public Expenditure in Australia) and Paul Williams examine this situation by considering the ways current Labor premiers and chief ministers 'operate within the constraints and parameters imposed on their office'. This book is a collection of personal and political biographies of each of the individual state and territory leaders (with the ... read more.

The Literary Larrikin: A Critical Biography of TAG Hungerford (2005)

Reviewed by Meredith Whitford in the September 2005 issue.
Perhaps I should start by declaring an interest. I was editor and production manager of TAG Hungerford's latest book, What happened to Joseph?. (Jacobyte Books, Adelaide, 2005) I don't know him well, except through his writing: we've met only once, and our relationship, although cordial, is professional rather than personal. However, I do know that he did not want this biography written, and he withdrew cooperation and access to sources. As the Foreword says, he does not feel able to endorse the book. (And that's putting it mildly) This is not to say that Crouch is ever unfair to his subject. ... read more.

History, Historians and Autobiography (2005)

Reviewed by Susan Tridgell in the July 2005 issue.
It's a rare and delightful experience to read a perfect book. This is especially the case with academic books -- even the most impressive normally generates a wish to argue with it. Yet Jeremy Popkin, despite being a newcomer to the field of life writing (he is well-known as a historian) has managed to achieve this miracle. The only 'but' he manages to generate in my mind is to write so fascinatingly about his chosen subject -- the autobiographies of historians -- that I felt immediately impelled to go and read even the autobiographies he warns are dull.This is one of the central and ... 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.

Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey (2005)

Reviewed by Victoria Kuttainen in the January 2006 issue.
As we usher in 2006, the world these days is not so unlike a futuristic Peter Carey story: its borders expand and contract, coincidences abound, vast geographical expanses unravel. The circuits of culture have bizarre dreamscape logics, and time, history, and nation are no longer recognisable in the text-books we once relied upon for guidance and authority. Peter Carey's short-story 'A Windmill in the West' comes to mind: borders are dizzyingly arbitrary, yet nation and empire have direct and pernicious material effects on its main character despite, or perhaps even because of, their ... read more.

Australia: Nation, Belonging and Globalisation (2005)

Reviewed by Matthew Lamb in the January 2006 issue.
A lot of books about globalisation look at the issues involved -- quite obviously -- from a global perspective. It is one of the fundamental claims of globalisation that other perspectives are no longer tenable; or at best, that other perspectives should by now be subsumed under this more dominant point of view. Individuals, regions and nation-states are now subordinate to the global level of analysis. And even when these other perspectives are entertained, it is usually to reinforce this claim. Take for example a book I reviewed previously in these pages, Globalisation: Australian Regional ... read more.

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