The University of Sydney: Sydney eScholarship Journals online
Not a member yet
10041 research outputs found
Sort by
Daozhi Xu, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children’s Literature: Peter Lang, 2018. 238 pp. AU $115 ISBN 9781787070776 (print); 9781787070783 (electronic)
No full textRevie
‘One Red Blood’: Multi-species Belonging in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book
Get PDFNon-human animals feature prominently in Alexis Wright's novel, The Swan Book. In addition to the avian creatures of the novel's title, The Swan Book includes representations of fish, owls, mynas, brolgas, rats, cats, dogs, and snakes. Building on previous scholarship into the novel's focus on non-human species, this article explores the centrality of multi-species being and interconnectedness within an Indigenous cosmological framework. The Swan Book demonstrates the pivotal role of non-human animals in communicating the ancestral stories and historical knowledge of Aboriginal nations. As a result, an Indigenous worldview centred on the notion of Country is presented as a potential solution to current environmental challenges in our world. The article also draws attention to the muteness of Oblivia, the central character of Wright's novel. Employing concepts from disability studies and critical animal studies, the article finds that Oblivia's muteness demonstrates the interlocking discourses of racism, ableism, and anthropocentrism at work in Western colonialism. As a result, the character's muteness indicates how the category of ‘animal’ has been discursively employed to justify the dual exclusion of Indigenous and disabled people from the category of the human. Oblivia’s embrace of the black swans and her subsequent refusal to communicate in ways that are normatively acceptable to hearing people is an important reminder for readers to orient themselves ethically to others whose embodiments, minds, and ways of life may be (radically) different from their own
Walking in Merri Circles
Get PDFThe weight of planetary problems is distressing, and the forgetting seems to have multiplied when I wasn’t looking. In late 2020, whilst a global pandemic is also multiplying with disastrous and tragic consequences, I get my mask on. I make sure my shoelaces are tied and tell my children who are studying remotely, or streaming with screens blazing unchecked, that I am disappearing for a walk along the Merri Creek. Walking for one hour and now two for exercise, as mandated by the Victorian State Government, has been an activity that propels people out of their houses. Walking has taken on new significance for Melburnians living in COVID-19 lockdown: exercise is a reason to legally leave your house and you are reminded as you put one foot in front of the other that you can walk five kilometres in any direction. Knowing that is a quiet freedom. We are enmeshed and complicit, in the way we are also entangled, unpredictable, clever, complex, stupid and amazing, just like other organisms. Every action has a consequence, no matter how big or small
Drawn Chorus: Creation of embodied drawing processes responsive to the detrimental impact of human-produced sound on humpback whales
Get PDFSound is essential to humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae. It is their primary means of communication. Noise—unwanted sound—travels through the sea as pressure, and it travels further in the sea than in air. This practice-led research situates my drawing practice within the context of aesthetic developments arising from responses to environmental pollution that originates in human activity. The methodological investigations underpinning the research speculate on and imagine the humpback whale’s experience of human created sound as it interferes with their oceanic waters. Through the development of an in-depth drawing research process that tunes into bodily, sensory and gestural responses to ocean acoustics, a visual language for the unseen sound forces experienced by whales has evolved. Relational encounters with science and ‘nature’ played a role in the production of this knowledge
Re-materialising: Considering dominant understandings of value and systems of production within industrial plastics and the plastic arts
Get PDFThis paper considers how systems of art production are changing in response to climate crisis, and how artists are re-materialising extractive materials like plastic. This discussion centres on the creative practice of Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Ōtautahi based Pākehā artist Raewyn Martyn and thinks through connections with Pākehā, tauiwi and Indigenous practitioners in the context of earlier ecologically engaged practices. Extreme weather is escalating concerns about cycles of industry reliant on carbon emissions and waste production, and within contemporary art industries there is heightened dissatisfaction with dominant models of production, curation, collection and market-led valuation. We discuss parallel changes within systems of production in the plastics industry (with a focus on bioplastics) and within the art world, specifically Martyn’s investigation and creation of biopolymer forms which simultaneously comprise context, ground, and ‘image’ within each site responsive painting. Attention will be focused on the potentials of circular economies and aesthetics, alongside values that complicate an art ecology within the wider transition away from petro-hegemonic culture
