AustLit

'Is colonialism a failed project? This is not a simple question. While contemporary oppositional discourse – any thinking that supports moves towards post- and decoloniality – rejects the colonial project, an assessment of its failure might mean that its aims weren’t realised, or that it has come to the end of its life, like a light bulb or bank, or prime ministership, or site that can no longer be accessed, or document that won’t load. I’m writing this unable to check my email on my computer, unsure if this is a browser failure, but knowing it’s my own failure, in not keeping up to date, not so much with the colonial (although the colonial, like all extant concepts, is now inseparable from the digital), but with Empire more broadly speaking.' (Introduction)

'At Macquarie University’s Indigenous Futurisms conference, Gomeroi writer Alison Whittaker speaks about publishing her first book of poetry. She tells us about being in unstable housing, and desperately needing money at the time she made the book deal. She says she was completely unprepared for the experience of writing about traumatic and personal events in her life, and then being asked about those experiences again and again for a year at panels and writer’s festivals.' (Introduction)