AustLit logo

AustLit

Cornelis Martin Renes Cornelis Martin Renes i(A102790 works by) (a.k.a. Martin Renes)
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Sung by an Indigenous Siren : Epic and Epistemology in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria Cornelis Martin Renes , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 27 2019;

'One of Australia’s most distinguished Indigenous authors, Alexis Wright, stages the fleeting presence of a popular character of Northern European folklore, the mermaid, in an awarded novel of epic proportions. The mermaid is not a haphazard appearance in this Antipodean narrative, but one of the multiple, cross-cultural ways in which Carpentaria, first published in 2006, invites the reader to reflect upon the ongoing tensions between the disenfranchised Indigenous minority and the empowered non-Indigenous mainstream, and their serious lack of communication due to the antagonistic character of their respective universes, one rooted in a capitalist paradigm of ruthless economic exploitation and the other in a holistic, environmentalist one of country. This essay addresses how Carpentaria, by writing across Indigenous and European genres and epistemologies, makes a call for the deconstruction of colonial discourse, for an invigorating Indigenous inscription into country, and for intellectual sovereignty as the condition sine-qua-non for the Indigenous community to move forward.' (Publication abstract)

1 Philip McLaren and the Indigenous-Australian Crime Novel Cornelis Martin Renes , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 20 2016; (p. 22-37)
'This paper locates the postcolonial crime novel as a space for disenfranchised groups to write back to the marginalisation inherent in the process of colonisation, and explores the example of Australia. From its inception in the mid-19th century, Australian crime fiction reflected upon the challenging harshness and otherness of the Australian experience for the free and convict settler, expelled from the metropole. It created a series of popular subgenres derived from the convict narrative proper, while more ‘standard’ modes of crime fiction, popularised in and through British and American crime fiction, were late to develop. Whereas Australian crime fiction has given expression to the white experience of the continent in manifold ways, up until recently it made no room for Indigenous voices – with the exception of the classic Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series written by the prolific Arthur Upfield in the first half of the 20th century. For the longest time, this absence reflected the dispossession, dispersal and disenfranchisement of the colonised Indigenous peoples at large; there were neither Aboriginal voices nor Aboriginal authors, which made the textual space of the Australian crime novel a discursive terra nullius. This paper will look at the only Indigenous-Australian author to date with a substantial body of work in crime fiction, Philip McLaren, and elucidate how his four crime novels break new ground in Australian crime fiction by embedding themselves within a political framework of Aboriginal resilience and resistance to neo/colonialism. Written as of the 1990s, McLaren’s oeuvre is eclectic in that it does not respond to traditional formats of Australian crime fiction, shifts between generic subtypes and makes incursions into other genres. The paper concludes that McLaren’s oeuvre has not been conceived of as the work of a crime writer per se, but rather that its form and content are deeply informed by the racist violence and oppression that still affects Indigenous-Australian society today, the expression of which the crime novel is particularly well geared to.' (Publication abstract)
1 Postcolonial Rewritings of Bram Stoker´s Dracula : Mudrooroo’s Vampire Trilogy Cornelis Martin Renes , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 18 2016; (p. 23-37)
'Indigenous-Australian fiction has experimented with subgenres of the Fantastic in various ways to secure an empowering location from which to address post/colonial dispossession. In the mid-1990s, the Australian writer and critic Mudrooroo, formerly known as Colin Johnson, proposed Maban Reality as a genre denomination for fiction which introduces the reader to the powerful and empowering universe of the Aboriginal maban or shaman, also known as the Dreaming. Mudrooroo’s coining of Maban Reality was a way of establishing an Australian variant of Magic Realism which defied a European epistemology of the universe, engaging and enabling Dreamtime spirituality as a solid pillar of Aboriginal reality. Mudrooroo had already experimented with a postcolonial reversal of the Gothic, a dark version of the Fantastic, in the first of his Tasmanian quintet, Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983), but left its gloomy resignation to a dire Indigenous fate under colonial rule behind for the upbeat Master of the Ghost Dreaming (1993). Yet, as the result of a deep personal crisis—believed not to have an Aboriginal bloodline, in the mid-1990s he was barred from the tribal affiliation he had long claimed—Mudrooroo resorted to the gloominess of the postcolonial Gothic again in a vampire trilogy to reflect on the devastating impact of colonisation on Australian identity at large. This essay comments on the ways in which he has reflected on the present state of Australianness by rewriting Bram Stoker’s Dracula.' (Publication abstract)
1 Anne Brewster, Giving This Country a Memory: Contemporary Aboriginal Voices of Australia Cornelis Martin Renes , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 7 no. 1 2016;

— Review of Giving This Country a Memory : Contemporary Aboriginal Voices of Australia Anne Brewster , 2015 multi chapter work interview
1 [Review]: Ngapartji, Ngapartji. In Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity Cornelis Martin Renes , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 39 no. 4 2015; (p. 567-570)

— Review of Ngapartji Ngapartji, in Turn, in Turn : Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia 2014 selected work criticism essay ; In the Eye of the Beholder : What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity Barbara Dawson , 2014 single work criticism
1 Editorial : When Time Stands Still Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 14 2014; (p. 3-4)
1 Alexis Wright’s Latest Novel : From Australian Swansong to New Indigenous Songline Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 5 no. 1 2014;

— Review of The Swan Book Alexis Wright , 2013 single work novel
The Swan Book, Alexis Wright’s latest novel, further expands the fascinating Indigenous universe the Indigenous-Australian author of Waanyi descent has created over the past decade and a half. The Swan Book is a literary tour de force that critically engages with Western “end times” (San Roque 2007). Wright relies on the strength of her Waanyi ancestors’ oral tradition to create an apocalyptic view of Australia in the face of global warming, capitalist greed and the Indigenous fight for political power. Thus, The Swan Book is a political, economic and climatic dystopia struggling to regain the environmental and social balance the continent once enjoyed but that now has all human, animal and vegetal populations under threat, displaced and suffering. [From the journal's webpage]
1 Reconciling Historical F(r)iction : Exploring the Uncanny Edges of Australianness in David Malouf’s 'Remembering Babylon' Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 5 no. 1 2014;

David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (1993) chooses an imagery that evokes a Indigenous-inspired way of dealing with historical experience so as to “heal” the nation. Thus, his fictional attempt at the Reconciliation of mainstream and Indigenous Australia partakes in the official revision of contact history which recognises Indigenous claims upon a de-Aboriginalised past from which an Anglo-Celtic national identity has been constructed. Yet, Malouf’s revision of Australianness is as troubling as the official Reconciliation process proved to be. Malouf’s romantic adaptation of the life of the historic James Murrells—emulating the iconic figure of the white man gone native—replicates the tense 1990s debate on Reconciliation and Apology but takes it out of its political context. Unlike his real-life model, the cultural hybrid Gemmy Fairley is consistently infantilised and feminised at his return to white civilisation, which undercuts his possibilities for agency and takes the reader back to the very tensions in race and gender the narrative underplays but cannot overcome. Whereas Malouf’s subscription to a romantic literary project aims to bring the nation into contact with itself through a healing re-Dreaming of history, this produces a f(r)iction in which re-imagination and distortion of the past uncannily circle through each other, unsettling the political correctness the tale aims to forward. This postcolonial uncanny ambiguity, the result of competing histories and world views, is in tune with the open-endedness of Malouf’s novel: as a postmodern Australian explorer narrative, rather than offering a notion of resolution, its longing for a repaired or “full” Australian identity remains trapped in nostalgia. [From the journal's webpage]

1 Wandering Beneath the Grace of Clouds : An Interview with Janie Conway-Herron Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work interview
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , April vol. 18 no. 1 2014;
1 'Looking Back to Look Forwards' : An Introduction Maria Grau Perejoan , Isabel Alonso-Breto , Bill Phillips , Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 13 2014; (p. i-iii)
1 Reel Indigeneity : Ten Canoes and Its Chronotopical Politics of Ab/Originality Cornelis Martin Renes , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 28 no. 6 2014; (p. 850-861)
'The awarded film Ten Canoes (2006) broke new ground in the cinematic representation of Indigenous Australia. Indigenous life in the remote area of Arnhem Land's Arafura Swamp was both documented and fictionalized in collaboration between the independent Dutch-Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer and the Yolngu community in Ramingining. This essay draws on Homi Bhabha's work on the articulation of cultural difference in his essay ‘DissemiNation’, published in his volume Nation and Narration (1990), Martin Nakata's work on the Indigenous/non-Indigenous contact zone in the Australian context (2007), and the film's accompanying documentary, The Making of Ten Canoes, to analyse the eventful process of Ten Canoes' creation. The questions and doubts raised about the film's structure and content inside and outside the Aboriginal community reveal a dynamic yet tense ‘Cultural Interface’ of cross-cultural collaboration. Its very nature issues a call to veer away from a nostalgic search for Indigenous-Australian ‘authenticity’, ‘fidelity’ and ‘originality’ when Indigenous-Australian cultural dynamics inevitably move towards the incorporation of new, hybrid means of cultural production, as Ten Canoes' fruitful spin-off activities amongst the Yolngu prove.' (Publication abstract)
1 Kim Scott’s Fiction within Western Australian Life-Writing : Voicing the Violence of Removal and Displacement Cornelis Martin Renes , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 10 2013;
'It is nowadays evident that the West's civilising, eugenic zeal have had a devastating impact on all aspects of the Indigenous-Australian community tissue, not least the lasting trauma of the Stolen Generations. The latter was the result of the institutionalisation, adoption, fostering, virtual slavery and sexual abuse of thousands of mixed-descent children, who were separated at great physical and emotional distances from their Indigenous kin, often never to see them again. The object of State and Federal policies of removal and mainstream absorption and assimilation between 1930 and 1970, these lost children only saw their plight officially recognised in 1997, when the Bringing Them Home report was published by the Federal government. The victims of forced separation and migration, they have suffered serious trans-generational problems of adaptation and alienation in Australian society, which have been not only documented from the outside in the aforementioned report but also given shape from the inside of and to Indigenous-Australian literature over the last three decades. The following addresses four Indigenous Western-Australian writers within the context of the Stolen Generations, and deals particularly with the semi-biographical fiction by the Nyoongar author Kim Scott, which shows how a very liminal hybrid identity can be firmly written in place yet. Un-writing past policies of physical and 'epistemic' violence on the Indigenous Australian population, his fiction addresses a way of approaching Australianness from an Indigenous perspective as inclusive, embracing transculturality within the nation-space.' (Author's abstract)
1 Spectres of Mudrooroo: A Suspended Corpo-Reality That 'Matters' Cornelis Martin Renes , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: European Journal of English Studies , April vol. 15 no. 1 2011; (p. 45-56)
1 Dreamtime Narrative and Postcolonisation: Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria as an Antidote to the Discourse of Intervention Cornelis Martin Renes , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 2 no. 1 2011; (p. 102-122)

'On 21st June 2007, Alexis Wright won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin Prize, for Carpentaria (2006) and received broad national attention as the first Indigenous Australian to be its sole recipient. This recognition of Indigenous cultural output coincided with the Federal decision to intervene the highly troubled, dysfunctional Aboriginal population in remote communities of the Northern Territory with a military and police task force. This paradox of recognition-repression highlights the tense edges of the Indigenous/non-Indigenous interface in contemporary Australia and reveals the continuing gap between Indigenous fact and fiction, reality and hope for a better future. As a textual locus of Indigenous cultural regeneration, Carpentaria questions the invasive nature of the Federal intervention in several ways. Not only does the novel stand out for bending Western literary genres into an Indigenous story-telling mode, but also for having “Dreamtime Narrative” critically engage with the neo-colonial management of Australian resources and human relations. Mainstream readers are exposed to the “strange cultural survival” (Bhabha 1990: 320) of the Indigenous diaspora that proposes drastic solutions for the devastation wreaked upon the Australian land through capitalism and its cultural corollaries. This article contextualises Wright’s fiction within wider developments in recent Indigenous literature and history, and traces how her awarded novel Carpentaria activates an Aboriginal epistemology of understanding human and country which defies mainstream politics of I/intervention and beckons towards a fresh beginning for Australia through a profound change of paradigm.' Source: Martin Renes.

1 Sally Morgan: Aboriginal Identity Retrieved and Performed Within and Without 'My Place' Cornelis Martin Renes , 2010 single work criticism essay
— Appears in: Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense , vol. 18 no. 2010;
1 Echoes of a Not so Mythical Past : Memories of Race in Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well Cornelis Martin Renes , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 3 2009; (p. 116-122)

'Critical discussion of Elizabeth Jolley's The Well (1986) has largely focused on issues of gender, but little has been said about the racial inscription of the novel. This lack is especially relevant when criticism, despite praising the author's experimentation with narrative technique and genre, tends to voice dissatisfaction with the novel's conclusion in medias res, which never solves the tension between a presumed return to the patriarchal norm and the voicing of liberating alternatives.

This paper proposes a postcolonial perspective so as to come to terms with this dilemma, and argues that the text signals the impossibility of suppressing the Native from the contemporary Australian land and textscape, whose Gothic articulation in the uncanny shape of the male well-dweller haunts the novel's engagement with female empowerment. The female protagonist may only start overcoming a crippling gender discourse in the White postcolonial pastoralist setting by inscribing herself into 'Australianness'. Reconciling her body with the land is significantly staged in terms of an Aboriginal cosmogony, as it is a 'walkabout' that allows Hester to start controlling her body and story. Thus, The Well may be understood to be inconclusive because it struggles to map gender across race at a time of Aboriginal-exclusive multiculturalism. Written in the mid 1980s, it announces a point of inflection in thinking about nativenonnative relationships which would soon lead to attempts at "Reconciliation" by mainstream Australia.' Source: Cornelis Martin Renes.

1 1 Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well : Fathoming Postcolonial Depths in the Female Gothic Cornelis Martin Renes , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 1 no. 1 2009;

'As a sample of the Australian female Gothic, critical discussion of Elizabeth Jolley's The Well (1986) has centrally focused on issues of gender, but not considered its racial inscription. This lack is especially relevant when criticism, despite praising the author's experimentation with narrative technique and genre, tends to voice dissatisfaction with the novel's conclusion in medias res, which never solves the tension between a presumed return to the patriarchal norm and the voicing of liberating alternatives.

After reviewing issues of genre, gender and class, this paper proposes a postcolonial perspective so as to come to terms with this dilemma, and argues that the text signals the impossibility of suppressing the Native from the contemporary Australian land and textscape, whose Gothic articulation in the uncanny shape of the male well-dweller haunts the novel's engagement with female empowerment. The female protagonist may only start overcoming a crippling gender discourse in the White postcolonial pastoralist setting by inscribing herself into 'Australianness'.

Reconciling her body with the land is significantly staged in terms of an Aboriginal cosmogony, as it is a 'walkabout' that allows Hester to start controlling her body and story. Thus, The Well may be understood to be inconclusive because it struggles to map gender across race at a time of Aboriginal-exclusive multiculturalism. Written in the mid 1980s, it announces a point of inflection in thinking about native-nonnative relationships which would soon lead to attempts at 'Reconciliation' by mainstream Australia.' (Author's abstract)

1 Discomforting Readings : Uncanny Perceptions of Self in Alexis Wright's 'Plains of Promise' and David Malouf's 'Remembering Babylon' Cornelis Martin Renes , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Eucalypt , February no. 2 2003;
X