Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Historiography of the International Student Policy Trajectory

Margaret Kumar
Through Gayatri Spivak’s1 strategy of historiography and the notion of ‘reading against the grain’ this article provides, by way of the formulation of a model of the international student policy trajectory, a descriptive and interpretive discourse analysis of Australian policy concerning international students. The objective is, to borrow from Spivak, to attempt to retrieve the subject ‘in an attempt to undo a massive historiographic metalepsis’.2 In this way, this argument ‘situates’ the effect of the subject so that any discourse that takes place ...
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Network Review of Books

Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 (2006)

Reviewed by Adam Atkinson in the July 2006 issue.
As Sherman and Nardin note in their introduction to Terror, Culture, Politics, of all the rhetorical, jingoistic gestures and formulas to emerge from September 11, the notion most in need of critique is that '9/11 changed everything' (p 4). Implicit, of course, is the question for whom precisely 'everything' has been altered. The United States, certainly, has discovered its vulnerability, and its security fears have impacted on the international community in numerous ways. Further, many of America's allies, including the Howard government, seem determined to follow Bush's lead in justifying a ... 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 Sleepers Almanac 2006: The nervous system (2006)

Reviewed by Catie Gilchrist in the July 2006 issue.
Anthologies of short stories are by their very nature fragmented and momentary. At times, this can make for a fractured reading experience, a literary equivalent of eating tapas when you crave something rather more solid and substantial. On the other hand, leaving the reader with a yearning desire for 'more' is perhaps the subtle art of crafting a good short story. The Nervous System succeeds remarkably well in this respect. It is an illustrated, irreverent anthology of short stories by established and unknown writers, offering an eclectic mix of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and recipes. Some ... 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.

Beyond Good and Evil? Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region (2006)

Reviewed by Mads Clausen in the May 2006 issue.
Haskell, McKinlay and Rich's Beyond Good and Evil: Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region is borne out of what the authors see as the re-emergence of perilously rigid notions of evil in post-September 11 discourse. The editors see this monolithic conception of evil as 'a theological term of frightening certitude and simplification' particularly evident in the Bush administration's rhetoric, but that it also spills over into other debates about culture and identity, sustaining existing chasms in political and cultural discourse. The collection seeks to query this ... read more.

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.

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