Australia and the Insular Imagination

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Terra Australis Infirma

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 1-14

3. Girt by Sea

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 15-32

4. “All the Water in the Rough Rude Sea”

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 33-51

5. Bodies, Boats, Borderscapes

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 53-73

6. Torturous Dialogues

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 75-92

7. The Gulliver Effect

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 93-111

8. Our Patch

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 113-136

9. A Pogrom on the Beach

   • Suvendrini Perera

   Pages 137-160

10. Conclusion: Blood or Water?

    • Suvendrini Perera

    Pages 161-167

11. Back Matter

    Pages 169-220

    PDF

This book maps the seascape borders of Australia's insular imagination. It explores how the boundaries and contours of the nation were made and remade in the first years of the war on terror, offering a striking reassessment of the territoriality of 'the island continent'.

• assessment
• Australia
• boundary element method
• Clearing
• Enzo Paci
• imagination
• nation
• terrorism
• tsunami
• war
• water

"This is a gentle but intensely provocative book which sets out to map the seascape borders of Australia s insular imagination. It has the potential to be part of the redefinition of the meaning of Australia as an island-continent." - Paul James, Director of the Global Cities Institute, RMIT

"In Australia and the Insular Imagination, Perera shows in fascinating detail the determining role of the ideology of the insular on the ways in which Australia has been imagined in contemporary political and cultural discourses.This is cultural studies at its best: historically grounded, theoretically sharp, and always alert to nuance and implication." - Peter Hulme, Professor in Literature, University of Essex

"Perera s book comes as a bolt of lightning to the increasingly stolid, and conservative, world of Australian Studies. Where the conventional approach has been to comment on the ways that the land has been constructed and worked over by colonial settlers, Perera offers a powerful and compelling understanding of the importance of the sea in the Australian imaginary and offers also a basis for critically engaging with recent political practices. While this is a book about Australia, the topics covered, such as race, asylum seekers, (post)coloniality, and identity, are all of importance in other societies descended from the British colonial order - including the United States, Canada, and Britain itself. In common with many of the best cultural studies, and inthe strong tradition of Stuart Hall s work, Australia and the Insular Imagination is a politically engaged book. It is a book that will remain relevant for many years to come." - Jon Stratton, Professor of Cultural Studies, Curtin University of Technology

SUVENDRINI PERERA is a Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University of Technology, Australia.

Policies and ethics