Description
Book SynopsisProvocative and disconcerting, The False Past confronts what many generations hold near and dear about their memorials.
What if everything we know about colonial history is wrong? What if history is driven by vanity and unexamined moral claims? What if fabrication and corruption are so integral to history that it must be written anew? These questions, posed by Nietzsche, are answered in this exciting new work.
The False Past takes a disturbing escapade through Australia's colonial past. Using a Nietzschean evaluation of how the eternal recurrence of suffering worked in practice, it announces a fresh vision for frontier history. And in the finest Nietzschean tradition, Price reveals the uncaring absurdity and inconsistency of settlers in the pioneer past as their supreme failing because it produces contemporary trauma.
The False Past evaluates claims to colonial nobility, too. Who were the souls aiming beyond humanity who rose up Down Under? Was
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements – Openings – Falsity, Trauma and Guilt – Hankering for a Coast – Speaking for the Palawa – Wild Ducks and Dispersals – The Limits of Nostalgia – Claims Beyond Humanity – Selecting Fictional Heroes – Remembering the Wheeler-Dealer – The Tiffs – How to See Yourself – Vanity – Prospectus – Rise above It – Closings – Index.
