'Literature and Censorship': 2012 Australasian Association for Literature Conference - deadline extended

In 2012, the Australasian Association for Literature conference will address the long and traumatic relationship of literature and censorship. Literature and censorship have been conceived as long-time adversaries, each opposed to the precepts of the other. This conference seeks to understand the degree to which they have been dialectic terms, rather, each producing the other, coeval and mutually constitutive. In 1994, Michael Holquist declared "To be for or against censorship as such is to assume a freedom no-one has. Censorship is. One can only discriminate among its more or less repressive effects." Articulating what was then a new poststructuralist take on censorship, Holquist posited it as not only inescapable but definitive; in fact foundational to speech itself.

After the opening of the USSR’s spekstrahn, the enormous collection of literature forbidden under the Soviets, containing more than one million items, this push to redefine censorship so expansively has encountered cogent criticism. German scholars describing the centralised control of East German print publication, for example, have wanted to insist on the substantive difference of pre-publication state censorship from such mundane forms of speech regulation in democracies. Work on South African apartheid censorship and the operations of censorship in colonial countries is also demonstrating its formative role in the institutional structures of literature beyond the metropole. Is literature ever without censorship? Does censorship need the literary? In a globalising era for culture, does censorship represent the final (failed) version of national control?

Offers for papers considering all aspects of literature and censorship are welcomed, but could address:
- Comparative national censorships
- Censorship and colonialism
- Obscenity and empire
- Literary sedition
- Beyond the literary: The censorship of popular and pulp titles
- Censorship histories of the book
- Publishing, library and self-censorship
- Literature, censorship and the law
- Blasphemy, religion and literary censorship
- Obscenity and the literary regulation of sexuality
- The limits of expression and the definition of offence
- Censorship and translation
- Political censorship ‘post-ideology’
- Censorship after the book

The conference will take place from 10 to 12 July 2012, at the University of New South Wales Canberra, Australian Defence Force Academy, Northcott Drive, Campbell, Canberra, ACT.

The keynote speaker will be Peter McDonald (Oxford University).

Please submit titles and abstracts for proposed papers by the extended deadline of Friday 6 April 2012 via the conference website, http://www.aal.asn.au/conference/2012/index.shtml. The conference organiser, Nicole Moore, is contactable at n.moore@adfa.edu.au.

‘Ego-Histoire’, Europe and Australian Indigenous Studies: call for articles

This book aims at bringing together the ‘ego-histories’ of Indigenous scholars working on European and Australian studies as well as those of settler and European scholars working in the field of Indigenous Australian Studies. ‘Ego-histoire’, a term introduced by the French historian Pierre Nora in the collection Essais d’ego Histoire (Gallimard, 1987), works at the intersection of personal memory and public history. Nora ambitiously claimed ego-histoire as a ‘new genre, for a new age of historical consciousness’. Major figures such as Georges Duby, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Mona Ozouf, Maurice Agulhon, Jacques Le Goff and Annie Kriegel are among the twenty or more prominent French scholars who have engaged in book length projects in this area. The works of key thinkers including Bourdieu and Lacan draw from this approach. The collection ‘European Egohistoires: Historiography and the Self, 1970-2000’, edited by Luisa Passerini and Alexander Geppert (special issue of Historien: A Review of the Past and other Stories, 2001) established ego-histoire as a new European tradition.

In Australia Indigenous Australian writers, playwrights, cultural custodians and historians have led the field in using life-story work to convey history. This has resulted in a double-sided effect: on the one hand, these life histories provide highly valuable Indigenous perspectives on Australian history, colonialism, cross-cultural history and Indigenous history; on the other hand, they expose Indigenous lives to an extent that is hardly comparable to that of non-Indigenous scholars. Yet the life experiences and social background of non-Indigenous scholars in Australia exert an important influence on their scholarship—what has driven them to engage in the field of Indigenous Studies and how do they relate their ‘selves’ to their studies?

Moreover, the expectation that Indigenous scholars will share about their lives has led to the paradox of them being thought to write only about ‘Indigenous’ issues. Indigenous perceptions on European history have thereby often been neglected—what motivates Indigenous intellectuals to write about Europe and how do they relate their ‘selves’ to such studies? Finally, there are some European scholars who, with considerable geographical distance, have been working on Australian Indigenous Studies—what is their incentive to research in Indigenous Studies and how do they relate their ‘selves’ to their studies? The focus on writing the self and other provides a methodologically innovative tool to understand the mechanisms and different power relations in scholarship. Our project conceives of Indigenous Studies as a transnational affair and as such offers fresh perspectives on national discourses and cultural categories such as ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’, ‘class’ and ‘whiteness’ in Europe and Australia.

This call for articles builds on an international conference held at the University of Paris XIII in December 2011, and is addressed especially, but not exclusively, to Indigenous scholars working on Australian history or on Europe, or drawing on European anti-colonial theorists from Fanon to Spivak and beyond. ‘Europe’ and ‘Australia’ are considered not only as a geographical place but as a set
of ideas.

Possible themes include but are not limited to ‘ego-histoire’ and:
- Perspectives on the European presence on Indigenous lands
- Indigenous experiences in Europe
- Indigenous perceptions of Europe past and present
- Indigeneity and research on European history (including the European expansion into Australia)
- Similarities and differences with Indigenous and/or ethnic groups in Europe (e.g., the Sámi People, Romany and Sinti People)
- Inter-generational changes in Indigenous ideas of Europe and Europeans

The volume will be edited by Vanessa Castejon, Anna Cole, Oliver Haag and Karen Hughes. It will be published by the Biographical Lives Series, ANU E Press and all chapters will be peer-reviewed. Please submit abstract of approximately 200 words in length by 16 March 2012 to karen.hughes@monash.edu or ohaag@staffmail.ed.ac.uk. Detailed information about style guide and length of chapters will be conveyed once acceptance of individual abstracts has been communicated.

ALS Gold Medal Longlist for 2012

The judges for the 2102 ALS Gold Medal, for a work of outstanding literary merit published in 2011, are pleased to announce that the following titles, in alphabetic order of author surname, have been longlisted:

Steven Amsterdam, What the family needed (Sleepers)
Christopher Edwards, People of the Earth (Vagabond Press)
Diane Fahey, The Wing Collection: new & selected poems (Puncher & Wattman)
Anna Funder, All that I am (Penguin)
Gail Jones, Five Bells (Random House)
Gillian Mears, Foal’s Bread (Allen & Unwin)
Alex Miller, Autumn Laing (Allen & Unwin)
Favel Parrett, Past the Shallows (Hachette)
Eliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper (Random House)
Gig Ryan, Gig Ryan: New and Selected Poems (Giramondo)
Jaya Savige, Surface to Air (UQP)

These titles have been selected from 106 entries. The judges would like to make special mention of the strength and quality of the poetry entries to this year’s award. A shortlist will be published in April and the winner of the ALS Gold Medal for 2012 will be announced at the opening of the annual ASAL Conference on 4 July at the University of Wellington, NZ.

Dr Bernadette Brennan, University of Sydney
Dr Ben Miller, University of Sydney
Dr Fiona Morrison, University of NSW

Poets shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Award 2010/2011

Six poets have been named on the short list for the prestigious prize, the Mary Gilmore Award, presented by ASAL for the best first book of poetry published by an Australian in the preceding two years. This prize has helped the careers of many now well-known poets, including Jan Owen, Judith Beveridge, Alison Croggon, Lucy Dougan, David McCooey.

The winner of the Mary Gilmore Award for 2010/2011 will be announced at the Association’s annual conference in Auckland, New Zealand in July 2012. This event draws together many of the people who organise the study of Australian poetry at universities, plus other writers, teachers, postgraduate students and librarians. The winning poet will have opportunities to meet with many of these people while at the conference.

The short list for the Mary Gilmore Award 2010/2011:
Warwick Anderson, Hard Cases, Brief Lives (Ginninderra)
Peter Coghill, Rockclimber’s Hands (Picaro)
Rosanna Licari, An Absence of Saints (UQP)
Vlanes, Another Babylon (UQP)
Chloe Wilson, The Mermaid Problem (APC)
Fiona Wright, Knuckled (Giramondo)

Judges for the 2010/2011 award are all associated with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University in Australia. They include Dr Mark Macleod (Senior Lecturer in English), Dr Derek Motion (Director of Booranga Writers’ Centre) and Chair of the Mary Gilmore Award judging panel, Mr David Gilbey (Adjunct Senior Lecturer in English).

For further information please contact Mr David Gilbey, Chair of the Mary Gilmore Award judging panel and NSW ASAL Representative, at dgilbey@csu.edu.au.

LETHBRIDGE10000 Art Award open for Entries

Stralian Books with Jean-François Vernay

We're very excited about our first issue of Trouble published exclusively online. Ceramics artist Penny Byrne's Green Wash Warrior graces our front cover (above). This gorgeous new format will ensure that we can deliver more of everything Trouble does best – such as listings that now include pics. To check it out click here.

Trouble goes to Tahiti this month with the latest from screen artist Jenny Fraser, who is on the island capital checking out the Festival International du Film Documentaire Oceanien.

In other news Danilo Paglialonga ponders the inherent wisdom of children in Greenwish #3, while Courtney Symes visits Heide, Bundoora Homestead and more in this month's Melburnin'. Erotic Australian fiction gets a guernsey in Stralian Books with Jean-Francois Vernay, while Karen Coombs finds out What Women Want, and Ben Laycock sends Greetings from Cradle Mountain. Plus more comics than ever from Mandy Ord, Ive Sorocuk, Matt Bissett-Johnson, Matt Emery and Darby Hudson.

Look out during the month for Facebook updates, giveaways and live tweets from openings and events around the country. Trouble is rocking the net in 2012. Come along for the ride.

Erotic Fiction: Love is a Four-Letter Word

With Valentine’s Day in the offing, couples will be reminded that love is a flame that needs rekindling now and again whereas singletons will make sure to call on their well-equipped pharmacist (pun intended) to stock up on contraceptive devices or antidepressants. So here is my uncensored selection of AO novels (in TV classificatory lingo) to cheer you up and put you in the mood for love.

The French have Le Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille and Guillaume Apollinaire to make them blush while Australian readers just need to turn to erotic fiction by Linda Jaivin, Peta Spear and Rod Jones to realize that love is a four-letter word. In the 1960s, a wind of libertarian change swept over Australian fiction to such an extent that not only the politics of sex became the backbone of the oeuvre of a knot of writers like Frank Moorhouse, Venero Armano and Christos Tsiolkas (see Nov. 2011 issue), but it also became a key ingredient in some sub-genres (like grunge literature and erotic writing) traditionally debased for being perceived as a lowbrow form of formulaic writing – if not mere smut – using sex scenes to boost book sales.

Linda Jaivin’s Eat Me (1995) – a quasi anagram of “tease me” – reads like a raunchy version of Sex in the City packed with the tantalizing fantasies of four man-eaters. Why not see the title as a letter-dropping version of “eat men”? Sex, ranging from the erotica to the exotica (deviations include but are not limited to stuffing, sadomasochism, fisting, group sex and felching), comes in all shapes and sizes in Eat Me, reminding readers that our consumer society tends to overemphasize sexual feats seen as trophies meant to pump up our egos.

Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and written in a fluid and elegant style, Rod Jones’s Nightpictures (1997) shares some striking similarities with the author’s internationally successful debut novel Julia Paradise (1986): a mental patient involved with a professional of the mind, incestuous desires, psychoanalytic culture, a clever twist and deceitful appearances. Nightpictures tells the story of Dieppe, a dark female character, who is having a bizarre non-committal affair with an Australian expat nicknamed Sailor, teaching at the Oxford School in Venice. Male sexuality – largely depicted as imperious, animalistic and performance-driven (what else could you expect from a male novelist?) – is meant to address Dieppe’s incestuous fantasies until narrator-cum-protagonist Sailor makes a terrible mistake. He cements the division of love and sex with emotional attachment and falls head over heels in love with his enigmatic and arousing sex friend: “I had entered the secret world of lovers, the quiet people who walk around with another person inside them, their thoughts continually forming the image of the beloved, which gives lovers in solitude the expression that they’ve just forgotten something.” Does this feeling ring a bell? I bet it does.

Dr. Peta Spear’s Libertine (1999) is certainly Exhibit A for how novels are nowadays the formatted product of PhD creative writing programmes: inspired content-wise, unoriginal style-wise (probably aimed at the mass market) and boringly realistic (i.e. highly descriptive). By mingling the erotic and the Gothic, Spear tells the wartime story of a manipulative prostitute who has a regular “fuck-buddy”, known as The General, and a lover named Sol. Sex does not purport to be an end in itself as in Eat Me and Nightpictures. In Libertine, sex – when not a commercial transaction – epitomizes the pap of life and becomes a means to indulge in an emotional embrace.

Incidentally, if this article has made you squirm, you can pride yourself on fuelling the wowserism that has “characterized Australian culture for so many decades” (Xavier Pons, Messengers of Eros). Love/ eros, like lust, is a four-letter word indeed. But so is life!

Further reading: The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama (Melbourne: Brolga, 2010)

Entretien SBS sur Patrick White

En février 2012, lors de mon passage à Melbourne, j'ai eu le plaisir d'accorder un entretien à Christophe Mallet sur SBS et d'aborder mon projet commun avec David Coad sur Patrick White: http://jfv-australiana.blogspot.com/2011/12/le-projet-patrick-white-avance.html

Cet auteur Prix Nobel de Littérature fera l'objet d'une conférence au Centre Culturel Tjibaou en juin ....

Alors bonne écoute et à bientôt, JF

http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/french/highlight/page/id/202205/t/Jean-Francois-Vernay-The-Australian-Philosopher-Patrick-White