Encountering the other: multiculturalism in Asian Australian women's fiction

In 2003 Tsen Ling Khoo pointed out that a new generation of Asian-Australians would soon be hailed by a body of diasporic texts that would reflect the experience of living in a white society as a minority group (108). What this experience might consist of as white Australia’s attitudes toward race relations have shifted from negative stereotyping to reify racial divisions and propagate a masked racism, a move described as ‘acceptance through difference, inclusion by virtue of otherness’, is both varied and predictable (Ang, 2001 146). In contemporary fiction written by second and third generation migrants contestations of selfhood, origin and identity experienced by hyphenated Asian-Australians, are represented through recurring narrative tropes: incomplete belonging encourages the multiracial protagonist to other the Asian ‘other’ in an attempt to diminish social alienation and difference: but there is also exoticising of such subjects as ’other’ by white Australians; return visits to the original Asian homeland in the hope of redressing the absences and tensions constitutive of migration reinforce the lack of belonging to either place. With reference to novels by authors like Simone Lazaroo, Michelle de Kretser and Alice Pung, read as strategic interventions into identity-based politics, this paper asks how recent Asian-Australian writing maps new cultural coordinates in the national landscape and negotiates interstitial positions between the white Australian present and the Asian heritage

In the name of the father: Manliness, control and social salvation in the works of George MacDonald

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University London.This thesis considers the representation of manly identity in the works of George MacDonald, and the way in which that identity is formed in relation to shifting power networks and contemporary social discourses. I argue that the environment of technological and societal change experienced in the mid-Victorian era (in the wake of industrialisation, urbanisation, changes in suffrage and war) led to a cultural need to re-align social, political, physical and economic power within a framework of male moral strength. Taking his lead from Thomas Carlyle and German transcendentalism, MacDonald promoted a paternalist ‗ideal‘ of manliness that articulated a synthesis of moral and physical power, yet which also served to promote a paradigm of domestic authority within diverse areas of male interaction. The dual purposes of this ideal were the defence of national identity (the purview of what I term the ‗Soldier body‘), and the enforcement of a paternalist authority hierarchy that is swiftly subsumed within a hierarchy of social status. As a result, we see the growth of close inter-relationships between the representation of manly identity and the language of class, heavily influenced by Christian socialist narratives of individual development through social education and quiescence. Moreover, we begin to witness disturbing scenes of violence and control, as aspects of MacDonald‘s culture defy confinement within his model of patriarchal domestic authority

Introduction to special issues : Reading animals

This article is an introduction to a special issue of Worldviews. It discusses reading animals

Psychiatry and psychoanalysis: A conceptual mapping.

The contemporary relevance of psychoanalysis is being increasingly questioned; Off the Couch challenges this view, demonstrating that psychoanalytic thinking and its applications are both innovative and relevant, in particular to the management and treatment of more disturbed and difficult to engage patient groups. Chapters address: Clinical applications in diverse settings across the age range. The relevance of psychoanalytic thinking to the practice of CBT, psychosomatics and general psychiatry the contribution of psychoanalytic thinking to mental health policy and the politics of conflict and mediation. This book suggests that psychoanalysis has a vital position within the public health sector and discusses how it can be better utilised in the treatment of a range of mental health problems. It also highlights the role of empirical research in providing a robust evidence base. Off the Couch will be essential reading for those practicing in the field of mental health and will also be useful for anyone involved in the development of mental health and public policies. It will ensure that practitioners and supervisors have a clear insight into how psychoanalysis can be applied in general healthcare

Promises of paradise: critiques of consumerism in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Martin Amis's Money: a suicide note and Michel Houellebecq's Atomised

The aim of this master's thesis is to examine the critical presentation of late twentieth- century consumerism as 'deception' in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Martin Amis's Money: A Suicide Note and Michel Houellebecq's Atomised. This study has two primary goals: (1) To outline how these texts provide critical perspectives on the way signs and language are used to stimulate consumer desire (2) To demonstrate how these authors undermine the consumerist ideals of the selfsufficient maximisation of pleasure through the immediate gratification of wants and desires. In the first section, the main characteristics of 'consumerism' are discussed, drawing primarily on Zygmunt Bauman and Colin Campbell's theories of consumerism as a social system of values prioritising the individual maximisation of pleasure. These social theories are combined with the semiotic methods of Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard to show how traditional religious, mythological and cultural signifiers are used to stimulate consumer desire. The following chapters are devoted to the analysis of the novels. First, the author's presentation of the seductive language used in consumerist discourse is analysed, highlighting the type of narrative voice and literary devices used to criticise it. Secondly, attention is drawn to how the authors use the metaphor of an earthly utopia or paradise to highlight the protagonists' fascination with the promises of unadulterated pleasure suggested in consumerist discourses, such as the mass media, Hollywood films and advertising. Special focus is given to the authors' use of metaphors evoking the paradisal conditions of eternal youth, oneness with others and the purification of personal shame, as intrinsic features of prelapsarian joy. It is highlighted how the protagonists in the novels think they can acquire this bliss through consumption. Thirdly, this study explores how these authors use subject matter and formal techniques to undermine the consumerist ideal, as formulated by Campbell and Bauman, of man as a self-sufficient individual autonomously creating his desires. It may be concluded that fictional texts provide an elucidating perspective on consumerist culture, as they enable both empathic and critical attitudes towards the states-of-affairs portrayed in the work. As consumerism is largely a symbolic and linguistic phenomenon, they demonstrate how aesthetic language can be used to undermine the seductive words and promises of consumerist discourse through the use of satire and parody.http://www.ester.ee/record=b4422819~S1*es

Mères fatales:maternal guilt in the noir crime novel

We argue in this article that the coupling of "noir" conventions with an interest in maternal subjectivity has characterised the work of a number of female crime writers. Recent theories of maternal subjectivities (developed, for example, in the work of Jessica Benjamin, Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Marianne Hirsch, Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy) have departed from the mother-blaming psychoanalytic emphasis of many earlier feminist critics, arguing instead the importance of recuperating the mother's perspective and voice, of disrupting "narratives that silence mothers" and allowing the maternal figure to be humanised. We compare male and female representations of "the guilt of the mother" in a range of crime fiction published from the 1940s to the present, and to analyse some of the ways in which an increasing interest in reclaiming the subjectivity of the mother has been reflected in noir crime novels written by women

Heimat, “Ostalgie” and the Stasi: The GDR in German cinema, 1999-2006

German cinema is experiencing something of a renaissance, with an assortment of remarkable films having appeared in recent years. Some, such as Gegen die Wand (‘Against the Wall’), focus on the experience of immigrants. Others are set in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Of the latter, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) and Good Bye Lenin! are the best known, both domestically and abroad, although Sonnenallee also received a mass audience in Germany. This article reviews Das Leben der Anderen and asks why it is so often presented as a fearlessly critical response to Good Bye Lenin! It explores the claim that Good Bye Lenin! and Sonnenallee are exemplars of ‘Ostalgie’ (nostalgia for the former GDR), before presenting a critical analysis of that phenomenon itself

In the Mean Season:Richard II and the Nostalgic Politics of Hospitality

In Shakespeare’s Richard II, the language of absent hospitality refracts the dire economic and food crises facing mid-1590s England, and it interrogates the contemporary response to the problem of dearth through its use of images of desolation, dearth, and grief. As absent hospitality proves to be a consequence of tyranny, the idealised past is invoked as a model for political action, to reclaim what is lost for the future. The respective future-oriented nostalgias of Gaunt and Northumberland articulate that possibility of reclamation, which Richard II ultimately rejects in its suspicion of past, present, and future