Frontier Skirmishes

Literary and Cultural Debates in Australia after 1992

Russell West-Pavlov (Ed.), Jennifer Wawrzinek (Ed.)

45,00 € *

Add to shopping cart

1. Edition, 2010
332 Pages

ISBN: 978-3-8253-5761-0
Product: Book
Edition: Hardcover
Subject: Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Series: Anglistische Forschungen, Volume No.: 409
Available: 17.12.2010

Keywords: indigene Literatur /Australien, Australien /Kulturkonflikt, Gewalt, interkulturelle, Nationalliteratur /Australien, Grenze /kulturwissenschaftlich, australische Literatur, Aborigines

The frontier has been the central metaphorical figure governing discursive configurations in the last two decades in Australia. The cultural landscape since the Australian High Court’s ‘Mabo’ decision of 1992 has been increasingly openly defined as a site of animosity and hostility. Frontiers, both real and imagined, past and present, continue to haunt the cultural landscape of Australia. This volume explores a range of paraliterary and literary discussion of recent years which can be interpreted as displacements into the cultural realm of erstwhile frontier conflicts along the borders of white colonial settlement. The collection gathers together a distinguished group of scholars and writers from Australia, Europe and Asia to investigate the dual manifestations of frontiers – both genuinely historiographical and more broadly metaphorical – in the cultural debates taking place in the Australian public sphere from the early 1990s onwards. Long since terminated as real armed conflicts, these past skirmishes none the less continue to resonate in the consciousness of white Australia, leaving their mark upon literary texts, films, artworks, and public discourse.