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In this important and beautifully written book, Aileen Moreton-Robinson gives us a compelling analysis of white Australian feminism seen through Indigenous Australian women's eyes. She unpacks the unspoken normative subject of feminism as white middle-class woman, where whitemess marks their position of power and privilege vis-a-vis Indigenous women, and where silence about whitemess sustains the exercise of that power. And she examines the consequences of practices for Indigenous women and White women.' (Source: Preface, Talkin' Up to the White Women, 2000)
Notes
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Dedication:
For the warrior women of Quandamooka
especially my nan Lavinia Moreton (1905-1989)
my mum Joan Moreton and my daughter
Rhiannon Moreton-Robinson
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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November in Nonfiction
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , November 2020;
— Review of Watsonia: A Writing Life 2020 collected work essay ; Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism 2000 single work criticism -
Intersectionality, More or Less : A Review Essay
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , December no. 67 2020;'The COVID-19 pandemic and the resurgence and spread of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and protests within the US and beyond have drawn fresh attention to the usefulness of intersectionality as an analytic and political lens through which to comprehend the world. Intersectionality demands we notice and address structural inequality and its effects on particular groups and individuals and eschews a universalist approach that glosses over—for example—the fact that some people are much more likely to die of disease or at the hands of police or in prison than others, or indeed to protest about it. Its champions argue an intersectional approach should inform everything from humanitarianism to health policy to protest movements to arts funding to domestic violence services, all of which have been recalibrated in 2020 as COVID-19 exacerbates and creates social inequalities. These advocates include intersectionality’s central theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a Professor of Law at Columbia University and UCLA, who through her Intersectionality Matters! podcast and #SayHerName campaign has provided cogent analysis and activism around both the pandemic and #Black Lives Matter.'
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'I Have Never Stopped' : Aileen Moreton-Robinson on 20 Years of Talkin' Up to the White Woman
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 5 August 2020;'When yarning with distinguished professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, the Goenpul author of Talkin’ Up to the White Woman, your first priority is to keep up. Moreton-Robinson has a famously-sharp intellect, and is never not observing and evaluating social systems.'
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So White. So What.
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 79 no. 1 2020;'Somewhere before White Fragility became the lingo du jour of anti-racism workshops, white people stopped telling me out loud that they were ‘one of the good ones’. They chuckled and said ‘Oh, I’m so white’. They offered me a conspiring wink. It’s not as suave when I reciprocate. I can only blink, or hold my hand over one eye like an optometrist, testing just what it is I’m meant to be seeing.' (Introduction)
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What I’m Reading
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2016;
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The Velvet Glove
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 62 no. 2 2002; (p. 187-191)
— Review of Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism 2000 single work criticism -
Race and Gender in Australia and New Zealand
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: Politics and Culture , no. 2 2001;
— Review of Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism 2000 single work criticism ; Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand 2000 anthology criticism biography ; Belonging : Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership 2000 multi chapter work prose -
[Review] Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Indigenous Women and Feminism
2002
single work
essay
— Appears in: Queensland Review , May vol. 9 no. 1 2002; (p. 91-93)
— Review of Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism 2000 single work criticism 'Aileen Moreton-Robinson's Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism, is, as the author herself points out, a book that many white people may find uncomfortable. It is the first book-length study of the relationship between Indigenous women and white feminism in Australia, and, as such, is an important and timely contribution to Indigenous studies, gender studies and the emerging field of whiteness studies.' (Introduction) -
November in Nonfiction
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , November 2020;
— Review of Watsonia: A Writing Life 2020 collected work essay ; Talkin' Up to the White Woman : Aboriginal Women and Feminism 2000 single work criticism -
Negotiating Subjectivity : Indigenous Feminist Praxis and the Politics of Aboriginality in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise and Melissa Lucashenko’s Steam Pigs
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 185-202) -
Long Marches across the Landscape of Gender
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Feminist Studies , December vol. 25 no. 66 2010; (p. 379-389) -
Perpetuating White Australia : Aboriginal Self-Representation, White Editing and Preferred Stereotypes
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Creating White Australia 2009; (p. 156-172) -
Complicity, Critique and Methodology: Australian Con/texts
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Modern Australian Criticism and Theory 2010; (p. 218-228) -
White Closets, Jangling Nerves and the Biopolitics of the Public Secret
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 57-75) 'This essay attempts to outline the relationship between the 'raw nerves' that Denis Byrne describes in the epigraph above, and the cultivation of 'indifference' that Stanner identifies as being characteristic of 'European life' in Australia. Here I situate indifference as numbing the 'jangling' of 'raw nerves' and as cultivated, disseminated and feeding specific forms of public secrecy. How did the white men who enforces segregation by day and pursued Aboriginal women by night manage their 'jangling nerves, if indeed they did jangle? How did they manage to be seen and known and have their secrets kept for them, as much as by them. How did this contradiction of segregation and sexual intimacy, if indeed it is a contradiction, work, My hope is that if we can understand how the white men (and those around them), regulated these jangling nerves, then we might be able to understand the relationship between indifference, public secrecy and the biopolitical forms that Australian whiteness took in the twentieth century, and specifically in the period of assimilation, extending from the 1930s to, roughly, the end of the 1960s.' (Author's introduction p. 57)
Awards
- 2001 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
- 2001 shortlisted Stanner Award