Wilson, J. M. (2016) (Not) saying sorry: Australian responses to the Howard Government's refusal to apologize to the stolen generations. In: Collier, G., Davis, G. V., Delrez, M. and Ledent, B. (eds.) The Cross-Cultural Legacy: Critical and Creative Writings in Memory of Hena Maes-Jelinek. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi. pp. 295-312.
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| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Abstract: | This volume pays tribute to the formidable legacy of Hema Maes-Jelinek (1929-2008), a pioneering post-colonial scholar who was at Professor at the University of Liège, Belgium. The Howard Government’s refusal to apologise for past injustices to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, after the publication of the Bringing Them Home Report (1997), inflamed protest among many Australians. In the eight years before Prime Minster Kevin Rudd delivered a formal apology in the 2008, the Sorry Movement kept the issue alive in the public domain. This article compares two fictional responses from this era, Ray Lawrence’s feature film Jindabyne (2006), and Gail Jones’s novel Sorry (2007), focusing on the performativity with which the act of apology is uttered. It reads these trauma narratives as political allegories which challenge the official narrative of Reconciliation by representing white settler responses to abusive acts committed against indigenous people, ranging from denial to guilt and remorse. |
| Additional Information: | Paper presented at the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) Conference: The Invention of Legacy: A Tribute to Hena Maes-Jelinek held 24-26 March, 2010 at Windsor, England. Published as part of the Cross/Cultures series, ISSN 0924-1426. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Stolen generations, Australia, tribute, Hena Maes Jelinek, Saying Sorry, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Australia, Bringing Them Home, Jindabyne, Ray Lawrence, Gail Jones, apology, The Sorry Movement, trauma, reconciliation |
| Subjects: |
P Language and Literature > PR English literature > PR9080 Postcolonial literature H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Women > HQ767 Children. Child development > HQ789 Children's rights D History General and Old World > DU Oceania (South Seas) > DU80 Australia |
| Creators: | Wilson, Janet M |
| Editors: | Collier, Gordon, Davis, Geoffrey V, Delrez, Marc and Ledent, Benedicte |
| Publisher: | Brill/Rodopi |
| Faculties, Divisions and Institutes: |
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing |
| Date: | November 2016 |
| Date Type: | Publication |
| Page Range: | pp. 295-312 |
| Title of Book: | The Cross-Cultural Legacy: Critical and Creative Writings in Memory of Hena Maes-Jelinek |
| Series Name: | Cross/Cultures |
| Volume: | 193 |
| Place of Publication: | Leiden |
| Number of Pages: | 428 |
| Language: | English |
| ISBN: | 9789004336421 |
| Media of Output: | |
| Status: | Published / Disseminated |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Related URLs: | |
| References: | WORKS CITED Ashcroft, Bill, Frances Devlin–Glass & Lyn McCredden. Intimate Horizons: The Postcolonial Sacred in Australian Literature (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2009). Attwood, Bain. “Learning about the Truth: The Stolen Generations’ Narratives,” in Telling Stories: Indigenous History and Memory in Australia and New Zealand, ed. Bain Attwood & Fiona Magowan (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001): 193–201. Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1962). Carver, Raymond. “So Much Water, So Close to Home,” in Short Cuts (London: Harvill, 1995): 69–92. Delrez, Marc. “Fearful Symmetries: Trauma and ‘Settler Envy’ in Contemporary Australian Culture,”Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 42 (2010): 51–65. Eagle, Christopher. “‘Angry Because She Stutters’: Stuttering, Violence, and the Politics of Voice in American Pastoral and Sorry,” Philip Roth Studies 8.1 (Spring 2012): 9–22. Feldman, Shoshana, & Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Routledge, 1992). Frow, John. “A Politics of Stolen Time,” Meanjin 57.2 (1988): 351–66. Gelder, Ken, & Jane Jacobs. Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1998). Gooder, Haydie, & Jane M. Jacobs. “‘On the Border of the Unsayable’: The Apology in Postcolonizing Australia,” Interventions 2.2 (2000): 228–47. Grunebaum, Heidi. “Talking to Ourselves ‘Among the Innocent Dead’: On Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Mourning,” PMLA 117.2 (March 2002): 306–10. Herrero, Dolores. “The Australian Apology and Postcolonial Defamiliarisation: Gail Jones’s Sorry,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47.3 (July 2011): 283–95. Huggan, Graham. Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007). Jaggi, Maya. Review of Sorry, Guardian (26 May 2007): 17. 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Janet Wilson, Gerri Kimber & Delia de Sousa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2013): 63–75. Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 49.3 (1995): 467–83. Moses, A.D. “Official Apologies, Reconciliation, and Settler Colonialism: Australian Indigenous Alterity and Political Agency,” Citizenship Studies 15.2 (2011): 145–59. Mulgan, Richard. “Citizenship and Legitimacy in Post-Colonial Australia,” in Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities, ed. Nicholas Peterson & Will Saunders (Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1998): 179–95. Regan, Paulette. “An Apology Feast in Hazleton: Indian Residential Schools, Reconciliation, and Making Space for Indigenous Legal Traditions,” in Indigenous Legal Traditions, ed. Law Commission of Canada (Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007): 40–76. Royo–Grasa, María Pilar. “In Conversation with Gail Jones,” Journal for the Association of the Study of Australian Literature 12.3 (2012): 1–12. Rymhs, Deena. “Appropriated Guilt: Reconciliation in an Aboriginal Canadian Context,” ESC 32.1 (March 2006): 100–123. Szeman, Imre. “Who’s Afraid of National Allegory? Jameson, Literary Criticism, Globalization,” South Atlantic Quarterly 100.3 (Summer 20001): 803–27. Tavuchis, Nicholas. Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Palo Alto CA: Stanford UP, 1991). Visser, Irene. “Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47.3 (July 2011): 270–82. Weaver–Hightower, Rebecca. “The Sorry Novels: Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, Greg Matthew’s The Wisdom of Stones and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River,” Postcolonial Issues in Australian |
| URI: | http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/9482 |
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