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https://theconversation.com/bennelong-and-phillip-wrestling-with-our-historical-assumptions-through-the-entangled-lives-of-two-very-different-men-215423>
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Review: Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled – Kate Fullagher (Simon &
Schuster)
Despite the inherent chance and coincidence of Australian history, there’s a
certain sense of inevitability when we trace our national narrative in
hindsight. The sequence of chapters in our textbooks and syllabuses seems
logical and coherent. Colonisation follows European imperialism and
exploration. Suffrage follows the discovery of gold. Federation is realised
after a growing national consciousness.
There’s a reason historians construct timelines: drawing a thread between
moments turns the past into a sequence that forms the skeleton of our stories.
We make narratives out of stuff that happened over time.
That form of chronological sequencing isn’t innate, however. Western historical
practice feels natural because it’s the way many of us have learnt history. The
discipline is presented and understood “chronologically” – but its intrinsic
nature belies the attention required to craft and curate a seamless logic of
time.
As postcolonial scholars such as Dipesh Chakrabarty and Priya Satia have shown,
the discipline of history itself has helped fashion a sense of inevitability,
especially in histories of colonisation and imperial expansion. Indigenous
histories and perspectives have often been relegated to the fringes of national
narratives or framed in predictable tropes that saw them overwhelmed by
historical “progress”.
How do we nudge at that overwhelming sense of inevitability? How might we
inhabit the past and consider its chance and open-endedness, as well as its
contrasting cultural readings?
Kate Fullagar’s important new work,
Bennelong and Phillip: A History
Unravelled, reaches into Australia’s early colonial history to tease out,
quite literally, the threads of its past. In doing so, it brings a creative and
original lens to a foundational relationship."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
