Australia and the Insular Imagination Beaches, Borders, Boats, and B
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
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By the S ame Author Reaches of Empire: The English Novel from Edgeworth to Dickens Asian and Pacific Inscriptions: Identities/Ethnicities/Nationalities (ed.) Our Patch: Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post-2001 (ed.)
Australia and the Insul ar Imagination Beaches, B o rd ers, B oats, a n d Bo di e s
Suvendrini Perera
AUSTRALIA AND THE INSULAR IMAGINATION
Copyright © Suvendrini Perera, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61353-9 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37814-2 ISBN 978-0-230-10312-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230103122 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perera, Suvendrini. Australia and the insular imagination : beaches, borders, boats, and bodies / Suvendrini Perera. p. cm. 1. National characteristics, Australian. 2. Australia—Boundaries— Social aspects. 3. Geopolitics—Australia. 4. Ocean—Social aspects— Australia. 5. Human beings—Effect of environment on—Australia. I. Title. DU107.P436 2009 304.2'30994—dc22
2009008634
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: November 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction: Terra Australis Infirma
vii 1
1
Girt by Sea
15
2
“All the Water in the Rough Rude Sea”: Insular Dreamings
33
3
Bodies, Boats, Borderscapes
53
4
Torturous Dialogues: Bare Life, Dangerous Geographies, and the Politics of Proximity
75
5
The Gulliver Effect: Australia in “The Arc of Insecurity”
93
6
Our Patch: Racial Horizons and the War on Terror
113
7
A Pogrom on the Beach
137
Conclusion: Blood or Water? “Fluid-State Nationalism” and Terra Australis Infirma
161
Notes
169
Select Bibliography
199
Index
213
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of a life lived on islands, large and small— Lanka, Manhattan, Australia—and in a succession of port cities— Colombo, New York, Sydney, Fremantle. In these places, what Edward Said describes as “the struggle over geography,” as destiny and destination, as ideology, identity, and institution, is everywhere evident. Not only is there no getting “beyond geography,” but there is no escaping the signs and scars of the struggles it engenders, its marking of bodies and sites, its everyday traces. Although Australia is the main focus of this book, it is constituted as much by other struggles over geography, and by the very po
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