ABSTRACT

De-Scribing Empire is a stunning collection of first-class essays. Collectively they examine the formative role of books, writing and textuality in imperial control and the fashioning of colonial world-views. The volume as a whole puts forward strategies for understanding and neutralising that control, and as such is a major contribution to the field. It will be invaluable for students in post-colonialist criticism.

chapter |12 pages

INTRODUCTION

The textuality of Empire

part |2 pages

Part I POST-COLONIAL THEORY

chapter 1|18 pages

THE SCRAMBLE FOR POST-COLONIALISM

chapter 2|12 pages

EXCESS

Post-colonialism and the verandahs of meaning

part |2 pages

Part II RACE AND REPRESENTATION

chapter 4|9 pages

THEORIZING RACISM

chapter 5|16 pages

THE MYTH OF AUTHENTICITY

Representation, discourse and social practice

chapter 6|12 pages

BREYTEN BREYTENBACH AND THE CENSOR

chapter 7|15 pages

DE-SCRIBING ORALITY

Performance and the recuperation of voice

part |2 pages

Part III READING EMPIRE

chapter 8|16 pages

INSCRIBING THE EMPTINESS Cartography, exploration and the construction of

Cartography, exploration and the construction of Australia

chapter 9|10 pages

THE UNFINISHED COMMONWEALTH

Boundaries of civility in popular Australian fiction of the first Commonwealth decade

chapter 10|11 pages

‘THE SOFTEST DISORDER’

Representing cultural indeterminacy

chapter 11|17 pages

‘THE ONLY FREE PEOPLE IN THE EMPIRE’

Gender difference in colonial discourse

part |2 pages

Part IV RE-WRITING AND RE-READING EMPIRE

chapter 12|14 pages

DE-SCRIBING THE WATER-BABIES

‘The child’ in post-colonial theory

chapter 13|16 pages

MODERNITY, VOICE, AND WINDOW-BREAKING

Jean Rhys’s ‘Let them call it jazz’

chapter 14|17 pages

SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

London, Cambridge and the Caribbean

chapter 15|12 pages

THE SPEAKING ABJECT

The impossible possible world of realized Empire