The Institute's book
series Writing Past Colonialism aims to communicate the unique intellectual
excitement and academic excellence which characterise the Institute
to a broader Australian and global constituency.
Current Book Series News
The Editorial Board of Writing Past Colonialism is delighted to announce that three titles have now been published under the University of Hawai'i Press imprint.
Boundary Writing is a timely book aimed at destablising the binary concepts that have underpinned mainstream notions of Australian identity since the time of European invasion. But the book doesn’t simply interrogate Australians’ sense of cultural and racial identity, it extends its analysis of binaries governing Australians’ lives to the subjects of sexual and gender identity as well, arguing that there are signs that these too are undergoing a series of radical shifts or transformations that require new kinds of conceptualization and new theories. The book makes good use of Homi Bhabha’s concept of a third space, which is one of the reasons why analyses of such diverse topics as gay beats, Latin American diasporas and the new archaeology harmonise so successfully. It consists of eight chapters plus an introduction by Lynette Russell.
Selves in Question presents an exciting and broad-ranging introduction to the variety of “auto/biographical accounts” of life in southern Africa. Literary texts involving some significant degree of auto/biography have been a principal means through which an international public has gained knowledge of African everyday life. Usually, the exposure to such texts has been haphazard and restricted, in the main, to novels and short stories – typically by white authors. This collection promises a great service to such readers, first by documenting the historical and cultural range of writers and other auto/biographers. Second, by indicating, and then “sampling” via interviews, the variety of genres through which auto/biographical accounts have been presented. Third, by providing a detailed mapping of the field.
Postcolonising the International brings postcolonialism
directly into engagement with the contemporary international, while
at the same time reflecting back on the discourse so that it more
productively engages with the established writing on international
relations, development and the North-South divide. All the
contributors are closely associated with the Institute of Postcolonial
Studies. In addition to the more or less conventional academic
chapters, the book features two interviews (with Ashis Nandy and
Marcia Langton), three short stories (by Sekai Nzenza and Nabaneeta
Dev Sen), and one poem (by Nabaneeta). Introductory notes
by Phillip Darby to the three parts of the book discuss the significance
of language and narrative form. The book is dedicated to the Institute’s
patrons, Michael Kirby and Lowitja O’Donoghue.
Forthcoming Titles
The Editorial Board is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication
of two monographs in the series with University of Hawai’i
Press. These are:
Anoma Pieris - Hidden Hands and Divided
Landscapes: The penal history of Singapore’s plural society
During the nineteenth century, the colonial Straits Settlements
of Singapore, Penang and Melaka were established as free ports for
British trade in Southeast Asia and proved attractive to large numbers
of regional migrants. The Straits government organized the migrant
population into a colonial racial hierarchy using the urban grid,
ethnic enclaves and public institutions to manage its social divisions.
Desperate for a source of inexpensive labour, following the abolishing
of slavery in 1833, it transported convicts from Indian presidencies
to the Straits Settlements, specifically for public works. In this
divided landscape the prison was the primary experimental site for
the colonial plural society and convicts were graduated by race
and by the labour needed for urban construction. They built the
infrastructure and the public architecture of the colony and manufactured
building materials. European ideas of modernity, industry and citizenship
were communicated to natives, through the colonial prison system.
“Hidden Hands and Divided Landscapes: The penal history of
Singapore’s plural society” investigates how a political
system aimed at managing ethnic communities in the colonial urban
context was first imagined and tested through the physical segregation
of the colonial prison. It relates the story of a city, Singapore,
and a contemporary city-state, whose plural society has its origins
in these historical divisions. The multi-racial categories maintained
by the colonial government intersected with overlapping systems
of self-regulation that were experimented with through a secular
political structure, a liberal economy and a self-governed prison.
Despite the modern liberal context of the colonial urban economy
it remained dependent on the “hidden hands” of forced
labour.
Anoma is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building
and Planning, University of Melbourne
Paul Carter - Dark Writing: geography, performance,
design
In this publication Paul Carter makes an argument for a richer
inscription of the environment. His thesis is that our dominant
modes of spatial representation, and in particular the maps and
plans that underwrite all forms of territorialisation and environmental
construction, repress what he calls 'movement forms', broadly that
surplus of marks that constitute the collective history of passage
that brings places into being. This, he says, is rooted in epistemological
paradoxes inherent in inductive reasoning - here the book focuses
on the construction of geographical discourse in the late 18th century
– and continues to be played out in the idealist techniques
used to mediate our designs on the world. Using place-making case
studies in which he has been involved as an artist, Paul shows how
he used these to develop analytical and graphic techniques for notating
the performative production of space whose spatio-temporality design
documentation discounts. But the focus of the book is philosophical
and poetic, and these excursions into the particular are brought
back to address a deep-rooted and persistent mentalism in the human
sciences, one which an attention to the world's 'dark writing' might
begin to dissolve.
Paul is professorial research fellow in the Faculty of Architecture,
Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. His recent books
include Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research
(2004), Mythform, The Making of Nearamnew at Federation Square,
Melbourne (2005) and Parrot (2006).
About Writing Past Colonialism
The Institute's major international book series Writing Past Colonialism
is published by University
of Hawai'i Press. A publication agreement for selected books
within the series has also been reached with Melbourne
University Press.
The understanding of postcolonialism which guides editorial policy
is broad and alternative and contesting formulations are welcomed
and celebrated. The series has a particular interest in engaging
with the people's of the world often marginalised by the Western
academy.
Books from the series are available from major bookstores. Contact
postcol@netspace.net.au
for further details.
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