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Lisa Slater Lisa Slater i(A7572 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 A Politics of Uncertainty: Good White People, Emotions and Political Responsibility Lisa Slater , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies , vol. 34 no. 6 2020; (p. 816-827) 'My purpose is to consider the role that uncertainty might play in reimagining political responsibility in Australia. There is a growing body of scholarship that is re-examining what it might mean to be settler colonial and politically responsible. It urges settlers to not only comprehend their complicity in structures of violence and oppression – colonialism, environmental degradation, racial inequality, for example – but more so, to know how they are constituted by the racial logic of settler colonialism. In a sense, it is asking progressive settlers not to turn away from the uneven distribution of suffering, trauma and vulnerability towards the ease, certainty and satisfaction of much good white politics. I want to reflect upon how fundamental certainty is to the reproduction of settler colonialism. Or more so, the refusal of uncertainty, which is a denial of being implicated and the limitations of one’s knowingness. To do so, I bring critical Indigenous studies and settler colonialism into conversation with studies of emotion and affect. If the white settler emotional economy stymies anti-racism – innocence, fragility, anxiety – then emotions are a site for ethical and political action. Doubt and uncertainty don’t feel good, but they tell of other political possibilities, and ways to reform responsibility.' (Publication abstract)
1 Good White People: Settler Colonial Anxiety and the Endurance of Racism Lisa Slater , 2019 single work single work essay
— Appears in: Emotions: History, Society and Culture , vol. 3 no. 2 2019; (p. 266-281) The focus of this essay is the racialised political emotions of ‘good white people’. I examine what Berlant names ‘public feelings’, focusing on the way emotional states are part of communal experiences. My interest is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ repeated calls for mainstream Australia to genuinely engage with political and cultural difference, and listen. Such claims often make ‘good white people’ anxious. They protest, insist they are trying but don’t know what to do. Good white people’s anxiety is much more telling than the stories that are told about bad racists. Thus, it is a productive site to analyse the cultural dynamics of settler–Indigenous relations, and to understand how race structures Australian culture and the endurance of racism. (Source: publisher's abstract)
1 Feeling Lisa Slater Lisa Slater , 2019 single work prose
— Appears in: Cultural Studies Review , December vol. 25 no. 2 2019; (p. 224-226)
1 [Review] Settler Colonialism and (re)conciliation: Frontier Violence, Affective Performances, and Imaginative Refoundings Lisa Slater , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 2018; (p. 81-83)
1 1 y separately published work icon Anxieties of Belonging in Settler Colonialism : Australia, Race and Place Lisa Slater , New York (City) : Routledge , 2018 15303687 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'This book analyses the anxiety "well-intentioned" settler Australian women experience when engaging with Indigenous politics. Drawing upon cultural theory and studies of affect and emotion, Slater argues that settler anxiety is an historical subjectivity which shapes perception and senses of belonging. Why does Indigenous political will continue to provoke and disturb? How does settler anxiety inform public opinion and "solutions" to Indigenous inequality? In its rigorous interrogation of the dynamics of settler colonialism, emotions and ethical belonging, Anxieties of Belonging has far-reaching implications for understanding Indigenous-settler relations.'  (Publication summary)
1 The Land Holds All Things : Kim Scott's Benang–A Guide to Postcolonial Spatiality Lisa Slater , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott 2016; (p. 37-48)
1 Waiting at the Border : White Filmmaking on the Ground of Aboriginal Sovereignty Lisa Slater , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Decolonizing the Landscape : Indigenous Cultures in Australia 2014; (p. 129-148) Examines the role of white film-makers in making films of and on Aboriginal land. Particular focus on Tasmania and the conflicted state of White Australian discourses about Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
1 "They Seemed Unbearably Foolish and Fragile" : Apple Trees, Intimacy and the Strangeness of Possession Lisa Slater , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Halfway House : The Poetics of Australian Spaces 2010; (p. 276-292)
1 Untitled Lisa Slater , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , December vol. 32 no. 4 2008; (p. 564-565)
— Review of Just Words? : Australian Authors Writing for Justice 2008 anthology criticism essay
1 Becoming Postcolonial : Getting Lost For a While With Stephen Muecke's 'No Road' and Remaking Australia Lisa Slater , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fact and Fiction : Readings in Australian Literature 2008; (p. 353-367)
1 And So Our Story Begins Lisa Slater , 2006 single work short story
— Appears in: Kalimat : An International Periodical of Creative Writing , March no. 23 (English) 2006; (p. 107-114)
1 Untitled Lisa Slater , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 66 no. 3 2006; (p. 217-222)
— Review of Writing Never Arrives Naked : Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia Penny Van Toorn , 2006 single work criticism
1 Benang, this 'Most Local of Histories' : Annexing Colonial Records into a World without End Lisa Slater , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 41 no. 1 2006; (p. 51-68) The article 'examines Kim Scott's novel Benang as a counter-history and an ethics of speech, which participates in a regeneration of Nyoongar cultural knowledge. ... Scott has composed Benang both to question the adequacy of the novel, and the English language, to represent Indigeneity, and to propose a style of writing that generates new speaking positions for Indigenous people' (51).
1 1 Kim Scott's Benang : An Ethics of Uncertainty Lisa Slater , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 4 no. 2005; (p. 147-158) Issues of writing, language and power are central to Kim Scott's Benang. Lisa Slater identifies some of the ethical difficulties faced by Scott in writing Benang ... before discussing some of the narrative strategies Scott employs to destabilise fixed notions of identity and open up a space for cross-cultural dialogue ' (Editorial p. 9).
1 Kim Scott's Benang : Monstrous (Textual) Bodies Lisa Slater , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 65 no. 1 2005; (p. 63-73) Slater contends that 'Throughout Benang, Scott suggests that it is the body's openness to the environment that unsettled the colonisers and made them determine that to establish and maintain sovereignty it was necessary to make a white nation.'
1 Making Strange Men : Resistance and Reconciliation in Kim Scott's Benang Lisa Slater , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Resistance and Reconciliation : Writing in the Commonwealth 2003; (p. 358-370)
1 Possibilities for Australia Lisa Slater , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 62 no. 3 2002; (p. 197-200)
— Review of The City of Sealions Eva Sallis , 2002 single work novel
1 Is Any Body Home? : Rewriting the Crisis of Belonging in Margaret Somerville's Body/Language Journals Lisa Slater , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 62 no. 1 2002; (p. 181-192)
1 "Benang : From the Heart" : 'I Found Myself Among Paper' Lisa Slater , 2001 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 61 no. 1 2001; (p. 220-226)
— Review of Benang : From the Heart Kim Scott , 1999 single work novel

'In his first novel True Country, Kim Scott established himself as a writer who is determined to investigate the continued traumatic effects of colonial violence. Harley, the protagonist of Scott's second novel Benang: from the Heart (the co-winner of the Miles Franklin award), takes up a pen in response to reductionist assimilationist records. He states:

But I found myself among paper, words not formed by an intention corresponding to my own, and I read a world weak in creative spirit. (472)'  (Introduction)
1 I Caught an Illusionist.... i "I caught an illusionist act on late night tv", Lisa Slater , 1999 single work poetry
— Appears in: Sidewalk , December no. 4 1999; (p. 31)
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