Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent

by Dany Adone (Contribution by), Katrin Althans (Contribution by), Eva Bischoff (Contribution by), C.A. Cranston (Contribution by), Melanie Brück (Contribution by)

Overview

Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent investigates literary, historical, anthropological, and linguistic perspectives in connection with activist engagements. The necessary cross-fertilization between these different perspectives throughout this volume emerges in the resonances between essays exploring recurring concerns ranging from biodiversity and preservation policies to the devastating effects of the mining industries, to present concerns and futuristic visions of the effects of climate change. Of central concern in all of these contexts is the impact of settler colonialism and an increasing turn to indigenous knowledge systems. A number of chapters engage with questions of ecological imperialism in relation to specific sociohistorical moments and effects, probing early colonial encounters between settlers and indigenous people, or rereading specific forms of colonial literature. Other essays take issue with past and present constructions of indigeneity in different contexts, as well as with indigenous resistance against such ascriptions, while the importance of an understanding of indigenous notions of “care for country” is taken up from a variety of different disciplinary angles in terms of interconnectedness, anchoredness, living country, and living heritage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498564014
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/08/2019
Series:	Ecocritical Theory and Practice
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Beate Neumeier is professor of English literature at the University of Koln in Germany.

Helen Tiffin is adjunct professor of post-colonial and animal studies at the University of New England, Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Beate Neumeier

Section 1: Politics of the Land and Indigenous Knowledge

1 The Museumesque in Pristine Wilderness

Alexis Wright

2 The Smooth Spaceof theNomads: IndigenousOutopia, IndigenousHeterotopia

and the Exampleof Australia

Norbert Finzsch

3 From Reverence to Rampage: Care for Country vs. Ruthless Exploitation

Catherine Laudine

Section 2: Colonial Legacies and Current Environmental Concerns

4 Australian Conservation Policies and the Owls of Lord Howe Island

Helen Tiffin

5Biological Colonisation in the Land of Flowers

Anna Haebich

6 Moving Trees and Trading Melons: Reconstructing Local Knowledge and Settler Practices in 1840s South Australia

Eva Bischoff

Section 3: Ecocriticism and Fieldwork

7 Ecologies of the Otherwise: Glimpses of Australia after the Resources Boom

Carsten Wergin

8 On The Beaten Track: Ambiguous Wilderness in the Tourist Space of Indigenous Australia Anke Tonnaer

9 Yan-nhaŋu Language of the Crocodile Islands: Anchoredness, Kin, and Country

Dany Adone, Melanie Brück, Bentley James

Section 4: Ecocritical Approaches to Colonial Art

10 Reconstructing Representations: ‘Australia’ as Ecocritical Andragogy

CA Cranston

11 Killing and Sentiment in the Colonial Australian Kangaroo Hunt Narrative

Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver

12 Marriage, Mining and Environmental Destruction in Nineteenth-Century Fiction about Australia

Philip Mead

Section 5: Ecocritical Concerns Across Contemporary Arts: Indigenous Voices in Fiction, Poetry and Performing Arts

13 Performing the Anthropocene: Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky

Helen Gilbert

14 Corporate Interest and the Power of Mines in Indigenous Writing and Film:

Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) and Ivan Sen’s Goldstone (2016)

Victoria Herche and David Kern

15 Defying the ‘Ecological Indian’: The Urban Ecopoetry of Samuel Wagan Watson

Katrin Althans

Section 6: Coda – Crossing Boundaries

16 Australia’s Great Barrier Reef: Two Personal Accounts

Helen Tiffin and Sandra Williams

About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

The book does a splendid job in opening up important and inspiring conversations—between writers and scholars, ecocritical as well as postcolonial critics, literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, and history. A timely must-read for everyone interested in research on Australia and the Environmental Humanities that exemplifies why postcolonial studies should be inherently ecocritical while ecocriticism is inherently postcolonial.

Roman Bartosch

This is a timely and wide-ranging interdisciplinary volume that offers both breadth and depth in its expert coverage of contemporary ecocritical issues in Australia. It comprises an important collection of essays that will be essential reading for environmental humanities scholars and all those concerned with the global and local effects of the Anthropocene.

Sue Kossew

This timely and topical volume, with contributions from leading figures in the field, demonstrates the value of ecocritical studies for understanding human agency in a time of environmental crisis. The Australian focus reveals vital global themes including the significance of Indigenous knowledge for the past and future.

Paul Arthur