AustLit

'What we might call, after Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the settlement "assemblage" of ploughing, requires a horse or bullock, a farmer, and a plough (and land): an assemblage that is undone by Ned Kelly and his gang. In the following article I read The Jerilderie Letter for the agricultural milieu that Kelly emerged from, a milieu that Kelly both mourned and rejected, or perhaps reinvented: his rejection expressed primarily by his misuse of the plough as armour and numerous metaphorical references in the text to anti-settlement style farming operations, including such extremes as manuring the land with those who helped the police.' (Source: Introduction)