AustLit

'The definition of time as the "fourth dimension" by Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski in relativity theory and the adoption of the "fourth dimension" by Charles Howard Hinton to indicate the immensity of space have both fired the imagination of modernists. This essay juxtaposes two Antipodean writers, Robin Hyde and Ethel Anderson, and argues that the implications of the fourth dimension are reflected in both Hyde's and Anderson's outbound-cum-inbound creative routes, directed by their encounters with places and cultures situated in between the Asian and metropolitan North and the Antipodean South. It investigates both Hyde's and Anderson's representation of the intercultural space and the way they commingle different locational points to present an otherwise flat memory and reality. The prominent trans-Tasman adjacency in Hyde's writings and the evocative bond among the southern island countries in Anderson's works allow their representation of the Antipodean home grounds to take on a new light. Hyde's and Anderson's creative sensibility, closely related to their traveling routes, brings in a different way of looking at the "colonial tag" attached to the Antipodean South. The writerly and creative scopes developed from home and from abroad enable both writers to write through a different dimension and with openness, giving direct shape to their literary modernism.'  (Publication abstract)

'An unacknowledged whiteness remains at the center of Australian theater, which prevents a richer cultural and linguistic diversity from taking hold. This essay is driven by two questions: Why, despite genuine efforts to improve access, has there been limited progress for Asian Australians in theater? Could theater in Australia be normalizing whiteness in ways that alienate the very people it seeks to help? Vu draws on concepts introduced by Frantz Fanon, Ghassan Hage, and Audre Lorde, along with her own experience as a playwright, to examine how Vietnamese Australian identity is represented and contested on Australian stages, including the obstacles that preclude cultural diversity from achieving the aspirations that many people hold for it in Australia. The essay has three sections. First is a discussion of the history of Australian theater in the context of colonialism and the white gaze. Second is a case study of a playwrights’ development program aimed at Asian Australians to address the glaring lack of scripts written by members of this minority. Third, the author analyzes her own play Coloured Aliens and its production in order to explicate how the white gaze operates. The essay ends with a brief analysis of critical reviews that the play received, which show that greater ethnic diversity in Australian theater remains an incomplete project because efforts to diversify concentrate on peripheral “inclusion” while leaving the centrality of whiteness intact.' (Publication abstract)

'Indonesian immigrants use Australia as a mirror by which they examine and perceive their homeland, but not all in the same way, nor is the experience of liminality in their host country the same. Rather, ethnicity seems to trump national origin when it comes to how Indonesians in Australia perceive their hostland and in their patriotic attachments to homeland. This difference in attitude to both homeland and hostland stems largely from the differing status of ethnically native Indonesians, who only temporarily reside in Australia, and ethnic-Chinese Indonesians, who are often permanent residents. Ethnicity and residency status are related in this case, partly because the long victimization of Chinese Indonesians in Indonesian history contributes to their reason for immigrating to Australia in the first place. This is the reality depicted, and whose consequences are dramatized, in the two works of fiction considered here: a collection of short stories titled Satu Pertanyaan dari Selatan: Kumpulan Cerpen Berlatar Australia (A Question from the South: A Collection of Short Stories Set in Australia), whose characters and authors are mostly Indonesian students studying in Australia; and Rani Pramesti’s digital graphic memoir The Chinese Whispers, which represents the experience of ethnic-Chinese Indonesians. Juxtaposed, the two texts dramatize the extent of the differences in these two groups.'  (Publication abstract)

'Underlying the desirability and fetishization of Asian women are the objectified representation of Asian femininity and colonial fantasies of power. Represented in polarizing archetypes—the subservient China doll, the ferocious dragon lady, the ingénue schoolgirl—Asian women are marked as either hypersexualized or devoid of sexuality, none of which takes account of the agency of Asian women. Born into a Hmong refugee family, Michele Lee is a Melbourne-based writer, playwright, and emerging theater artist. In her exploration of the Hmong identity, Lee juxtaposes her sexual adventures as a young and modern artist with her recognition of her ethnic and cultural background as a way of understanding her dual identities. Michele Lee’s Banana Girl provides a narrative that does not conform to the sexualized stereotypes or deploy white, mainstream feminist models. Instead, the author transgresses Western stereotypes attributed to Asian women and subverts hierarchical and racialized dichotomy, at the same time rebelling against patriarchal authority and Asian family values, breaking the taboo of writing about her own sexual adventures, questioning the blatant double standard regarding sexual morality, and creating her own narrative of a second-generation Asian Australian woman who seeks to find how interconnections of race, sexuality, and culture have contributed in the constructions of her identity.'  (Publication abstract)

'Teo Hsu-Ming’s Love and Vertigo (2000) follows multiple generations of a family through Singapore and Sydney, as they are racialized in these neoliberal contexts. It also repeatedly explores the dynamics of decision-making, presenting its characters with impossible choices and lose-lose scenarios. This article investigates the relation between choice, neoliberalism, and migrancy in Singapore and Sydney, the main settings of Teo’s novel. It argues that the idea of choice is mobilized here to illustrate structural limitations to decision-making in the context of neoliberalism’s regimes of racialization. By exploring the way choices are circumscribed and then made, the dynamics of neoliberalism and racialization in Sydney and Singapore are examined afresh. In so doing, this article interrogates the degree to which choice is liberating and celebrates the ways in which “decision and domination” (following Jane Elliott) can be resisted.' (Publication abstract)