Description
Book SynopsisEcocritical 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 co
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Beate Neumeier Section 1: Politics of the Land and Indigenous Knowledge 1 The Museumesque in Pristine Wilderness Alexis Wright 2 The Smooth Space of the Nomads: Indigenous Outopia, Indigenous Heterotopia and the Example of 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 5 Biological 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
