tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/essays-9859/articlesEssays – The Conversation2023-12-17T19:17:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169102023-12-17T19:17:00Z2023-12-17T19:17:00ZConversing with the ‘restless dead’ – a posthumous collection of Hilary Mantel’s writing illuminates her singular literary achievement<p>Hilary Mantel’s writing career falls neatly into two periods: before and after Wolf Hall. </p>
<p>At the time of the novel’s publication, Mantel described her nine previous novels as a long apprenticeship for the first volume in her brilliant trilogy centred on the life of Thomas Cromwell: <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008366759/wolf-hall/">Wolf Hall</a> (2009), <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008366766/bring-up-the-bodies/">Bring Up the Bodies</a> (2012) and <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007481095/the-mirror-and-the-light-the-wolf-hall-trilogy-book-3/">The Mirror and the Light</a> (2020).</p>
<p>Her posthumous collection <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/hilary-mantel/a-memoir-of-my-former-self-a-life-in-writing">A Memoir of My Former Self</a> supports this self-assessment. </p>
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<p><em>Review: A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing – Hilary Mantel (Hachette)</em></p>
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<p>Wolf Hall and its sequel were both awarded the Booker Prize. Before Mantel, only Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee had won the prestigious prize twice; they have since been joined by Margaret Atwood. </p>
<p>But Mantel is the only author to have claimed the prize for two novels in a series and to have won it twice in such quick succession. There is an average of 16 years between the first and second wins for Carey, Coetzee and Atwood. </p>
<p>A shining thread through A Memoir of My Former Self traces Mantel’s impassioned engagement with the Booker, making me wonder whether she is also singular for so openly and honestly setting her sights on it as the pinnacle of achievement for a novelist.</p>
<p>In the essay <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/12/hilary-mantel-exam-stress-booker">Exam Fever</a>, first published in the Guardian in 2009, Mantel describes her Booker routine, which she compares to waiting for exam results when she was so “ill with nerves” and “feverish” that she could not attend school. </p>
<p>Until 2008, her publisher would call when the Booker shortlist was announced, “sounding like an undertaker”. Mantel then “swallowed hard” and continued work on her next book. She recalls that this routine varied only once, in 1992, when Adam Thorpe’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ulverton-9780099573449">Ulverton</a> did not make the shortlist: </p>
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<p>I cried, because if Ulverton wasn’t good enough, I couldn’t think what you’d have to do. </p>
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<p>The introduction of an official longlist in 2009 broke Mantel’s routine, so that “by the time the shortlist is released you simply don’t know what to do with yourself”. Describing a party for the shortlist announcement, she speculates that the writers’ calm public expressions are masks: </p>
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<p>Inside (unless they are very unlike me) they feel like mad axemen. </p>
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<p>For Mantel, to not have made the shortlist with Wolf Hall would have been to know that “words have failed me”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hilary-mantel-was-one-of-the-great-voices-of-historical-fiction-and-so-much-more-191282">Hilary Mantel was one of the great voices of historical fiction – and so much more</a>
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<h2>A celebration</h2>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self is a selection of Mantel’s writings by Nicholas Pearson, her book editor of two decades. To make his selection, Pearson read all of Mantel’s work for newspapers and periodicals, an experience he describes as “a revelation”. </p>
<p>Presented by its publisher as “a celebration of one of Britain’s greatest contemporary writers”, the book appears roughly a year after Mantel’s death as a salve to the many readers saddened that she will write no more. I feel confident Mantel would fully and deeply understand this response to the news of her death. I think, too, that she would appreciate my choice of tense here. In her own words, her “concern as a writer is with memory, personal and collective: with the restless dead asserting their claims”. </p>
<p>The book is published by Hachette’s literary imprint, John Murray, for which Pearson began working as Publishing Director in January 2023, around six months after he was let go by Mantel’s longtime publisher <a href="https://www.thebookseller.com/news/pearson-leaves-fourth-estate-after-26-years-following-redundancy-process">Fourth Estate</a>. Mantel was reportedly “<a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/publishing-giants-left-on-the-shelf-in-dash-for-youth-00q6jc2vh">furious</a>” about Pearson’s departure. There is thus the potential to read this book as a fascinating artefact of publishing history in the making. </p>
<p>Mantel frequently described the work of writing as a type of congress with “ghosts”, a description that extends to Pearson’s anthology. “You talk to the dead one way or another,” she <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/17/hilary-mantel-if-suffering-can-make-pay">observed</a>, “and you make it pay.”</p>
<p>There are ghosts asserting their claims everywhere in this book, and throughout Mantel’s oeuvre, including the ghost of the author herself. “As soon as you sit before the screen,” she wrote, “you start haunting yourself.” </p>
<p>Many of the pieces were written by Mantel to “subsidise, financially, the slow process of art”, to support her true calling as a novelist. Reading the collection’s first essay, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/22/featuresreviews.guardianreview1">On the One Hand</a>, I imagined the ghost of Mantel finding humour in the timing of this book’s release for Christmas, the season when the inseparability of art and commerce is most undeniable. “For many imaginative writers,” she insists, </p>
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<p>working for the press is a fact of their life. But it’s best not to like it too much. </p>
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<p>The goal and passion of the novelist, as Mantel presents it, is not to generate the columns, reviews and occasional lectures selected for A Memoir of My Former Self, but to produce a “couture response – lovingly tailored, personal, an unmistakable one-off”. </p>
<p>I am therefore reading with the grain when I write that, while I liked this book, I did not like it too much. </p>
<h2>The shock of personal connection</h2>
<p>I liked this book most for Mantel’s reflections on the distinctive sensibility and habits of readers and writers. I disliked this book most for its flagrant literary exceptionalism, which is communicated through Mantel’s repeated use of “ink” as a metaphor to communicate her essential writerly identity. She is a person for whom “ink is a generative fluid”. </p>
<p>A Memoir of My Former Self will be affirming for people seeking endorsement that, as avid readers of high-shelf literature, they are on the better side of human history and culture. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, there were many times when I felt that delicious shock of personal (almost too personal) connection with the writer that Mantel herself describes. It was as though the “author leaned out of the text and touched my arm”. </p>
<p>In 2015, reading Hilary Mantel was my work for several months. I read every one of her books, in the order of their publication, for my essay Hilary Mantel: Raising the Dead, Speaking the Truth, published in James Acheson’s collection <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-contemporary-british-novel-since-2000.html">The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000</a>. I thus felt directly addressed when Mantel, meeting an “amiable man” who remarks that she seems “to have plenty of energy”, asks “what are authors to academics, except more work?” </p>
<p>For avid readers, the potential for such moments of connection is abundant. Mantel recalls a time in her life when she was “unable to walk past a bookshop without going in”. She confesses that she once stole a book from her school library that had been “lying unappreciated on the shelves” since its publication. She claims she is “addicted to the physical act of reading”. </p>
<p>The book is subtitled “A Life in Writing” and Pearson concludes his short introduction with the claim, </p>
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<p>What emerges is a portrait of Hilary Mantel’s life in her own words, “messages from people I used to be”. </p>
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<p>What it means to succeed or to fail as a writer is the unifying question of A Memoir of My Former Self, but for readers new to Mantel this book is not the place to start considering her success. Instead, begin with Wolf Hall, the novel that explains why she was the first living writer to have her portrait commissioned by the British Library. </p>
<p>For readers who read and loved the Cromwell trilogy, I would recommend her 2005 novel <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007354894/beyond-black/">Beyond Black</a> or her 2003 memoir <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007142729/giving-up-the-ghost/">Giving Up the Ghost</a> (in that order), both of which connect deeply with the Cromwell books and may well inspire you to reread them rather than pick up this volume.</p>
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<p>Many of the pieces gathered here – articles from the Guardian, film reviews from the Spectator, the 2017 Reith Lectures – are freely available online. Charting your own journey through Mantel’s short-form writings might be a better route to the “revelation” Pearson experienced in making this volume. </p>
<p>There is, for example, a special pleasure in listening to the Reith Lectures, recorded live in Manchester and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcbrp">available to stream from the BBC</a>. Mantel’s breathy voice, simultaneously tremulous and supremely confident, gives the lectures a spectral quality they lack on the page. </p>
<p>Having read the 15 film reviews included, Mantel may now be my favourite film critic, and I am impatient to dig into the Spectator archive to read more. But I wish that I had found more coherence in Pearson’s organisation of this book. Perhaps I am simply missing the powerfully controlled authorial voice of Mantel’s books, which no posthumous selection can achieve. </p>
<p>It seems fitting to give the last word here to Mantel’s Cromwell, from the final pages of Wolf Hall: </p>
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<p>It’s the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.</p>
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<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of the article mistakenly referred to Thomas Cromwell as Oliver Cromwell.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Memoir of My Former Self is a celebration of one of Britain’s most beloved and celebrated novelists.Lisa Fletcher, Professor, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175442023-12-13T02:27:15Z2023-12-13T02:27:15ZBrio, style and close reading: a collection of essays celebrates a remarkable publication<p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/sydney-review-of-books-critic-swallows-book/">Critic Swallows Book</a> collects 22 diverse essays from the <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com">Sydney Review of Books</a> (SRB) to celebrate its ten-year anniversary. Established in 2013, the SRB is devoted to long form criticism and is an open access, online-only publication.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2146774/catriona-menzies-pike/">Catriona Menzies-Pike</a>, who edited the SRB from 2015 to 2023, (and is the editor of this collection) argues this has contributed to the SRB’s unique character, allowing for more experimentation with the subjects and forms of reviewing. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Critic Swallows Book: Ten Years of the Sydney Review of Books – ed. Catriona Menzies-Pike (Giramondo)</em></p>
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<p>Short form reviews are a vital part of the promotional life cycle of books. The place of longer review essays is less clear. They often emerge months after their subjects are first published. They may be best enjoyed after audiences have already read the book, or even serve as a substitute for reading it at all. The greater space and freedom the SRB allows its reviewers encourages diverse, thoughtful readings and this anniversary volume features a wide range of writing. </p>
<p>The collection begins and ends with powerful pieces of cultural criticism by Aboriginal writers. Yankunytjatjara poet Ali Cobby Eckermann’s essay from 2016 demonstrates how the abuse, imprisonment and denial of history and identity suffered by Australia’s Indigenous people can be understood as a campaign of terrorism. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ali-cobby-eckermanns-she-is-the-earth-is-unlike-any-other-book-in-australian-literature-206087">Ali Cobby Eckermann's She is the Earth is unlike any other book in Australian literature</a>
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<p>Paola Balla’s brief meditation on the environmental impact of colonialism was written during the bushfires of early 2020. It closes the collection with a haunting coda that wrestles with the prospect of a different kind of erasure. </p>
<p>The SRB’s excellent series of writings on place are represented by the late Ross Gibson’s Flowcharts and Suneeta Peres da Costa’s A Home in Ananda and the World. These essays touch upon the colonial and more contemporary histories of the Sydney suburbs of Alexandria and Annandale respectively. They also reflect on the authors’ personal connections and associations within those spaces. </p>
<p>Ben Etherington’s series of <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/project/critic-watch/">Critic Watch</a> features, which examine issues and trends in Australian literary criticism, have been a consistent highlight of the SRB. The collection includes his 2020 essay The Living and the Undead, which compares the public responses to the passing of poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Murray_(poet)">Les Murray</a> and writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudrooroo">Mudrooroo</a> (born Colin Johnson), who died within months of each other in 2019. </p>
<p>Etherington argues that the generally warm and celebratory memorialisation of Murray – and even some of the more critical assessments of his legacy – reaffirm both his position in the national canon, and the literary personality that he cultivated. His work and character are now fixed in public memory. </p>
<p>He compares this with the absence of almost any notice of Mudrooroo’s passing. Once a writer of considerable fame and influence, Mudrooroo is now principally remembered for the controversy surrounding his <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2015&context=kunapipi">disputed claim</a> to Aboriginal descent. Etherington explores how this reduces Mudrooroo’s diverse writing to the subject of historical study. Murray’s “living” corpus can still be appreciated and contested on its own terms, but Mudrooroo’s work has been rendered strangely “undead”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-his-last-poems-les-murray-offers-a-gentle-gracious-bow-of-farewell-and-just-a-few-barbs-176535">In his last poems, Les Murray offers a gentle, gracious bow of farewell, and just a few barbs</a>
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<p>The remaining essays focus on the core business of the SRB: reviewing books. The chosen authors often use the form of the review essay to explore their subjects within in broader cultural and literary contexts. They also tend to reflect on unexpected associations evoked by the text, or upon the experience of reading itself, in ways that give each critical piece a very personal voice. </p>
<p>For example, the 2016 essay Expert Textpert by James Ley (now an editor at The Conversation but not involved with this article), moves from an extended anecdote about the author being belligerently challenged to explain the “use” of literature as a young man, to a consideration of three books about reading and criticism. Ley’s memory of an aggravating encounter is used to illustrate the difficulty of making a case for the value of serious and thoughtful reading in a “flattened” contemporary world that is increasingly focused on immediate benefits. </p>
<p>Other critics in the collection showcase the wide range of approaches that can be taken to the task of reviewing. In Verisimilitude, Melinda Harvey discusses Rachel Cusk’s writings by replicating the technique of Cusk’s <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/series/outlinetrilogy">Outline trilogy</a> of novels. Harvey’s essay is delivered through a series of remembered conversations, which tease out recurrent themes and resonances in Cusk’s work. </p>
<p>Other highlights, for me, were Jeanine Leane’s rigorous reading of Evelyn Araluen’s 2021 poetry collection <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/dropbear">DropBear</a>, Tom Clark’s exploration of JRR Tolkien’s extended afterlife and Oliver Reeson’s review of Yves Rees’ 2021 memoir <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Yves-Rees-All-About-Yves-9781760879310/">All About Yves: notes from a transition</a>. It was also nice to see Ivor Indyk’s 2013 essay on Murray Bail included as a reminder of high standard of writing and criticism established in the first few months of the SRB. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-30-years-after-mabo-what-do-australias-battler-stories-and-their-evasions-say-about-who-we-are-187110">Friday essay: 30 years after Mabo, what do Australia's battler stories – and their evasions – say about who we are?</a>
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<p>It is worth mentioning Menzies-Pike’s own essay in this collection, from which it takes its title. She offers a strikingly critical assessment of Trent Dalton’s literary bestsellers <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460757765/boy-swallows-universe/">Boy Swallows Universe</a> (2018) and <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460753903/all-our-shimmering-skies/">All Our Shimmering Skies </a>(2020). To quote Philip Roth’s memorable characterisation of a negative review in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-anatomy-lesson-9781446401255">The Anatomy Lesson</a> (1983), it would make “Macduff’s assault on Macbeth look almost lackadaisical”. </p>
<p>Menzies-Pike takes issue with Dalton’s overwrought prose style and what she sees as a heavy reliance on crude contrasts and mawkish sentimentality in his narratives. However, she also questions why his novels have not been more extensively examined by critics. She concludes their sheer popularity and sales mean their literary quality has been taken as “self-evident” in many quarters.</p>
<p>Menzies-Pike notes the value of criticism is it can assert values other than those simply “decreed by the market”. The fear of being accused of snobbery or elitism may deter serious interrogations of Dalton’s novel. However, this means important questions of representation in the work of one of Australia’s most successful literary novelists go unchallenged. The essay is argued with such brio and clarity even some fans of Dalton’s work may enjoy it. </p>
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<p>Critic Swallows Book is not the first edited collection to emerge from the SRB. <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/the-australian-face-essays-from-the-sydney-review-of-books/">The Australian Face</a> (2017) focused on Australian literature. <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/second-city-essays-from-western-sydney/">Second City</a> (2021) collected writings on western Sydney. <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/sydney-review-of-books-open-secrets-essays-on-the-writing-life/">Open Secrets</a>(2022) took writing and cultural labour as its unifying subject. </p>
<p>While not meant to be a “best of” compilation of the now thousands of essays published on the SRB, its 22 entries are extremely well chosen. Taken together they ably illustrate the breadth and quality of writing that makes the SRB a remarkable publication.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Novitz has contributed seven essays to the Sydney Review of Books between 2013-2022. </span></em></p>Twenty two essays marking the tenth anniversary of the Sydney Review of Books make for a diverse, thoughtful collection.Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2058332023-06-11T20:52:07Z2023-06-11T20:52:07ZPossession and devotion inform Sarah Krasnostein’s compelling reinterpretation of Peter Carey’s art<p>Sarah Krasnostein’s <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/peter-carey">On Peter Carey</a> is the 12th instalment of Black Inc.’s highly readable series, Writers on Writers. The series is nicely conceived, as it pitches Australian writers not just against each other, but across a generational divide. </p>
<p>There is something quite exciting about hearing the intimate thoughts of Nam Le on David Malouf, Alice Pung on John Marsden, Christos Tsiolkas on Patrick White, Michelle de Kretser on Shirley Hazzard, <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-geraldine-brooks-writes-about-tim-winton-you-can-hear-the-axes-grind-195441">Geraldine Brooks on Tim Winton</a>, and Stan Grant on Thomas Keneally. </p>
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<p><em>Review: On Peter Carey: Writers on Writers – Sarah Krasnostein (Black Inc.)</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530509/original/file-20230607-23-h7jsry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>The covers of the books, innocently enough, place a small photograph of the commissioned writer above (“on”) an equally sized photograph of their subject. This element of intimacy called forth by the preposition “on” is what invests this series with its frisson of partiality. The fact that one writer has been asked to write “on” another implies the latter has obtained a canonical status, capable of sustaining the attention of posterity. </p>
<p>The essays’ authors are cast – despite their considerable acclaim (Tsiolkas, de Kretser, Brooks, etc.) – into the role of uncertain acolytes simply by virtue of the structure of the assignment. In effect, it has fallen to them to write a eulogy, even though many of their subjects are very much alive. </p>
<p>In this context, we see emotions appearing across the series that can feel slightly scandalous. Yet the books rarely fall into snippiness, maintaining at most a graceful resentment. </p>
<p>History also intrudes. In particular, the pairings highlight the pluralisation of Australian culture that separates the commissioned writers from their subjects. Pang on Marsden, Grant on Keneally and Nam Le on Malouf stand out in this respect, but it is something that the series more generally sets into motion.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530529/original/file-20230607-21-2nlkye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Carey in 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Random House/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The word “on” also casts these books firmly in the essay tradition that is traced to Montaigne. The preposition functions like a table on which an object is placed and viewed. To the essayist, the object they essay stares back at them in the form of an enigma, demanding but refusing to be known. </p>
<p>In this respect, we have in the essay, the spectacle of knowledge shamelessly choreographed according to the grammar of desire. The beauty of the essayistic mode is that it combines the task of observation – the subtle parsing of the object’s features, the running of a finger along the faintest of its fault-lines – with the quicksilver transitions of association, which open up the world of the essayist’s unconscious. </p>
<p>In Krasnostein’s book, these channels of association transport us effortlessly from metropolitan London and New York to the byways of Bacchus Marsh and the Victorian uplands. We cross thresholds of time and historical moments that should seem dizzying, but in fact feel seamless. This is the peculiar magic of the essay form, and Krasnostein is a brilliant exponent.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/when-geraldine-brooks-writes-about-tim-winton-you-can-hear-the-axes-grind-195441">When Geraldine Brooks writes about Tim Winton, you can hear the axes grind</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Mythopoeic connection</h2>
<p>Krasnostein’s book begins with a confession that it has taken her a long time to read Carey’s great book <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang-9781760896430">True History of the Kelly Gang</a> (2000). She is not quite sure why, but perhaps it is because Carey’s star has waned somewhat in the new millennium. </p>
<p>His books were feted in the 1980s and 1990s, when his early experimental short fiction of the 1970s gave way to the big novels <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/bliss-9781760896546">Bliss</a> (1981), <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/illywhacker-9781760896539">Illywhacker</a> (1985) and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/oscar-and-lucinda-9781760896515">Oscar and Lucinda</a> (1988), the last of which won the Booker Prize. </p>
<p>After Carey’s move to New York in 1990, the novels – and the accolades – kept coming: <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-tax-inspector-9781760896492">The Tax Inspector</a> (1991), <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-unusual-life-of-tristan-smith-9781760896478">The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith</a> (1994), <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/jack-maggs-9781760896447">Jack Maggs</a> (1997). In 2000, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/true-history-of-the-kelly-gang-9781760896430">True History of the Kelly Gang</a> won Carey his second Booker Prize, putting him in the company of Margaret Atwood, J.M. Coetzee and Hilary Mantel. He has also won the Miles Franklin Literary Award three times. </p>
<p>Carey has published six further novels after True History of the Kelly Gang, but they have struggled to gain the attention that flowed so steadily through the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>While touching on the other novels at various moments, Krasnostein focuses her attention on True History of the Kelly Gang, a book which does seem destined to endure, not just for its technical brilliance, but for the mythopoeic connection to Ned Kelly. </p>
<p>Krasnostein underlines the crucial mediating influence of Sidney Nolan’s <a href="https://nga.gov.au/on-demand/sidney-nolan-the-ned-kelly-series/">Ned Kelly series</a>, which Carey had first seen in the 1960s. Seeing the paintings again, this time displayed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994, sent Carey back to Kelly. Krasnostein elegantly connects the three Victorians – Kelly, Nolan and Carey – noting that Ned Kelly’s youngest brother Jim was still alive when Carey was born in 1943: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the next few years, Carey and Nolan and the youngest Kelly shared a time and a state. Three white males of Irish heritage. British subjects on stolen land. Separated by a few hundred kilometres, their beating hearts, if plotted on a map, would have formed a shaky isosceles triangle.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530772/original/file-20230608-17-a20fy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sarah Krasnostein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gina Milicia/Black Inc.</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-will-not-hide-helen-garners-radical-gift-is-the-shock-of-plain-speaking-179090">'I will not hide': Helen Garner's radical gift is the shock of plain-speaking</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Literary pilgrimages</h2>
<p>As a novelist, Carey was swept up in the postmodern impulse to pastiche. Oscar and Lucinda was a display case for his literary ventriloquism. For the Kelly book, narrated by Ned himself, Carey drew on the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/ned-kelly-jerilderie-letter/transcription">Jerilderie Letter</a>, a long rambling memoir-cum-manifesto that Ned Kelly wrote or dictated in 1878 or 1879.</p>
<p>The particularities of Kelly’s complaints have dimmed, but the constellations of his speech remain strange and arresting, partly because Ned speaks from a position that history, with its reliance on written documents, cannot usually hear. Kelly’s eloquence seethes past the <a href="https://readingaustralia.com.au/essays/the-jerilderie-letter/#:%7E:text=The%20Jerilderie%20Letter%20was%20composed,belief%20that%20Kelly%20was%20illiterate">bareness of his literacy</a>.</p>
<p>The climax of Krasnostein’s story has her entering the sanctum of the State Library of Victoria and holding the fragile pages of the original letter in her gloved hands. If this sounds somewhat mystical, then it is not out of keeping with the tenor of the book, which has a certain devotional character, and proceeds at times like a pilgrimage. In another scene, infused with a surprising transcendence, Krasnostein ventures out to see the car dealership that Carey’s parents once owned in Bacchus Marsh. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530522/original/file-20230607-15-el644i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ned Kelly in court. Illustrated Australian News, August 28, 1880.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria/Public Domain.</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This mode of literary biography was made famous by Richard Holmes’s <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780007204533/footsteps/">Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer</a> (1985), in which authors are lovingly reanimated as a series of fragments, traces and imagined encounters. The biographer is driven by a strange mania, in which they come to occupy the shadow left by their subject in the very moment they conjure it. This conceit of reciprocal haunting is also central to A.S. Byatt’s celebrated novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/possession-9780099503927">Possession</a> (1990). </p>
<p>Krasnostein, having dutifully avoided reading Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang for two decades, suddenly finds herself possessed by it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A couple of years ago, I cracked it open and started reading. I couldn’t stop. And then I couldn’t stop talking about it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As part of this possession, Krasnostein comes to identify strongly with Carey’s expatriation, which mirrors her own, albeit in reverse and displaced in time: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Carey was born in Australia and moved to America in 1991, when he was in his forties. I was born in America and moved to Australia in 1994, when I was in my teens.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Krasnostein’s position here, engaged in a literary minuet with Carey, typifies the series and is consistent with the turn to the personal essay in recent decades. The books in this series introduce us not just to the novelist, but to the essayist. </p>
<p>Krasnostein has worked diligently on her brief. She has read many of the novels, followed the breadcrumbs through the internet, visited places, consulted archives. But she wears this knowledge lightly and delivers it to us almost in passing. </p>
<p>What Krasnostein, in common with many of the writers in this series, seems at pains to insist is that they are not stitched to their subject by knowledge. Instead they are tied to them by something more than knowledge, which is a shared predicament. Brokering the terms of this shared predicament is the hidden engine of these books.</p>
<p>In Krasnostein’s case, she is connected to Carey by the traumatic kernel of exile that cannot quite be dislodged, no matter how many times one moves to where one thinks home might be. She notes the preponderance of orphans in Carey’s novels and draws attention to his complex relationship to his homeland, a relationship that led him to leave Australia and then write compulsively about it. She feels an instinctive kinship with Carey’s biculturality: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What I’m trying to say is that I understand what it is to write oneself into that somewhere space that exists nowhere as concrete as an address, but rather where longing itself pulses, just beneath the clavicle.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is this intimate dimension that defines the Writers on Writers series. Krasnostein has provided a great service to Carey, and to us as a reading public, because his work has suffered a little from being considered merely brilliant. She is largely indifferent to his stylistic accomplishment. Instead, she goes straight for – there is no other word for it – the soul of Carey’s writing. </p>
<p>She finds this soul encapsulated in the plaintive, charming thuggery of Ned Kelly, who stands for every lost rascal in Carey’s oeuvre and, beyond that, for the orphaned pathos of settler Australia. It might be that she casts a kind of spell. Ned Kelly, Sidney Nolan, Peter Carey and Sarah Krasnostein are surely not all the same figure beneath their backyard armour. But Krasnostein’s limpid associations, which gesture towards the contours of Australia’s repetitions, offer a welcome, evocative and compelling re-reading of Carey’s art.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Hughes-d'Aeth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In her latest book, Sarah Krasnostein goes straight for the soul of Peter Carey’s writing.Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2003142023-03-12T07:42:13Z2023-03-12T07:42:13ZChatGPT is the push higher education needs to rethink assessment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512841/original/file-20230301-28-24bhvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With proper teaching, students can use ChatGPT to develop their arguments and build their essays.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-is-the-push-higher-education-needs-to-rethink-assessment-200314&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to higher education <a href="https://www.iesalc.unesco.org/en/2020/05/27/iau-global-survey-on-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-higher-education-around-the-world/">systems everywhere</a>. But while some changes, like moving lectures online, were relatively easy to make, assessment posed a much bigger challenge. Assessment can take many forms, from essays to exams to experiments and more. </p>
<p>Many institutions and individual academics essentially outsourced the assessment process to software. They increased their use of <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-must-stop-relying-on-software-to-deal-with-plagiarism-113487">programs like Turnitin</a> to check for matched wording in students’ assignments. And for closed-book, timed tests they <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-shouldnt-use-software-to-monitor-online-exams-heres-why-188327">used tools such as Proctorio</a>, which monitor a student’s computer or phone while they write exams. </p>
<p>But universities did not seize this chance to reflect on what higher education is for and how assessment might be used to enhance its achievement. Instead they doubled down on the status quo, breathing a sigh of relief once isolation and lockdown orders were revoked and things could return to “normal”.</p>
<p>The advent of ChatGPT and similar chatbots provides another opportunity for the sector to reflect on why and how it assesses – and what higher education is for. </p>
<p><a href="https://mashable.com/article/what-is-chatgpt">ChatGPT</a> is a chatbot technology, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), that enables users to have natural, human-like conversations with a computer. It uses advanced language processing techniques to understand user input and provide natural, contextual responses. With ChatGPT, users can converse with a computer in a way that feels like talking to a real person. It scrapes information from a large database mined from the internet and uses this to create a unique response to a prompt.</p>
<p>So, for instance, it can write an essay on any topic – “the advantages of breastfeeding” or “the social complexity of the refugee crisis in Europe”. It can also be trained to provide context-specific essays. </p>
<p>We are academics from South Africa, Australia, the UK and the US, working in fields related to education, ways of learning and teaching, and academic practice. We believe ChatGPT could be a powerful impetus to shift from understanding assessment as the assurance of an educational “product” to assessment as learning. </p>
<p>Used properly, it could be a valuable way to teach students about critical thinking, writing and the broader role of artificial intelligence tools like chatbots in the world today.</p>
<h2>Threat or opportunity?</h2>
<p>The advent of ChatGPT has prompted a variety of reactions from universities all over the world. In the UK, for instance, the reaction towards ChatGPT and higher education has veered from <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/does-rise-ai-spell-end-education">the hyperbolic</a> – will AI ruin universities? – to the <a href="https://wonkhe.com/blogs/chatgpt-assessment-and-cheating-have-we-tried-trusting-students/">more measured</a>, such as considering what students think of the technology.</p>
<p>If the purpose of higher education is that students memorise and summarise a body of knowledge, and that this is then certified via assessment, then ChatGPT is an existential threat. The market value of credentials is directly threatened if universities can no longer confidently assert that the texts assessed by academics have indeed been produced by their students.</p>
<p>But if the purpose of higher education is to nurture a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/transforming-university-education-9781350157231/">transformative relationship</a> to a particular body of knowledge that enables students to see the world – and their place in it – in new ways, then assessment takes on a vastly different meaning. </p>
<p>Used well, ChatGPT and similar tools can show students the wonders and responsibilities of acquiring and building powerful knowledge. It can assist rather than being seen in opposition to their learning.</p>
<p>Here are four ways this might happen.</p>
<h2>Four potential applications</h2>
<p><strong>1</strong>. Students can reflect on articles produced by ChatGPT which have fabricated references and distorted information and then deliberate on the potential consequences of this in an era of fake news. </p>
<p><strong>2</strong>. Students can be set assignments that require them to compare ChatGPT’s answers to ones they have developed and ascertain whether they know the material and how it might be represented differently. </p>
<p><strong>3</strong>. ChatGPT can be used to support essay writing and to help foster a sense of mastery and autonomy. Students can analyse ChatGPT responses to note how the software has drawn from multiple sources and to identify flaws in the ChatGPT responses which would need their attention.</p>
<p><strong>4</strong>. Students can be encouraged to consider the extent to which their use of ChatGPT has enabled or constrained their access to powerful knowledge. This is a chance to critically reflect on where and how the use of AI is taking place in society and their potential future professions.</p>
<p>There is already <a href="https://www.learnersedge.com/blog/50-chat-gpt-prompts-for-teachers">a multitude of ideas</a> available online about how ChatGPT can be used to create prompts for assignments. Lecturers and students can explore these to see how they might be adapted for their own learning and teaching needs.</p>
<p>None of these ideas will be simple to implement. Academics will need support from their institutions in considering what such technological developments mean for their disciplines. And, we’d argue, that support must help academics to move beyond seeking ways to trick the software or to monitor students. </p>
<h2>Innovation and inclusion</h2>
<p>Society and the higher education sector squandered the opportunity that COVID presented to reflect on what higher education was for and how assessment might be used to enhance learning. </p>
<p>Rather than signalling the end of higher education, ChatGPT has instead presented the sector, and society more broadly, with another opportunity. This is a chance to develop innovative and inclusive teaching, learning, and assessment aligned to such understandings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Students could learn about critical thinking, writing and the broader role of artificial intelligence tools like chatbots.Sioux McKenna, Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes University & Visiting Research Professor in Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, Rhodes UniversityDan Dixon, Adjunct Lecturer, University of SydneyDaniel Oppenheimer, Professor of Decision Science and Psychology, Carnegie Mellon UniversityMargaret Blackie, Associate Professor, Rhodes UniversitySam Illingworth, Associate Professor, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992022023-03-07T19:05:38Z2023-03-07T19:05:38ZWhat do women want? Freud’s infamous question invites voyeurism – but examining what they do is far more revealing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513077/original/file-20230302-24-k7bk7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4361%2C2890&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Muniz/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years ago, artist Linda Fregni Nagler’s archival collection of more than a thousand studio-made portraits of infants went on show at the Venice Biennale. </p>
<p>Mostly dating from the 19th century, the pictures belong to a genre of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-hidden-mothers-of-family-photos">“hidden mother” photography</a>, featuring very young children supported by a mother whose presence is concealed in the composition, either swathed in blankets or curtains, or – with bizarre frequency – disguised as a chair. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Little Give: The Unsung, Unseen, Undone Work of Women – Marina Benjamin (Scribe) and What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth – Maxine Fei-Chung (Viking)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>To modern eyes, as Marina Benjamin writes in her exquisite book of essays, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/a-little-give-9781922585660">A Little Give: The Unsung, Unseen, Undone Work of Women</a>, the pictures are “uncanny, violent, disturbing” – particularly those in which the mother has been reduced to a dark blot, scratched, or burnt off the negative after the photograph was taken. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘hidden mother’ photographs unearthed by Linda Fregni Nagler make the invisibility of women’s unpaid labour ‘frightening and strange’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linda Fregni Nagler/MACK Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The photographs stage the infant as self-sufficient and autonomous, an ideologically fraught form of make-believe that requires the viewer to “unsee” the woman crudely concealed beneath the fringed damask cloak or piece of carpet. </p>
<p>The cruder the disguise, the more the image fits the definition of uncanny; it makes the social and cultural invisibility of women’s unpaid physical and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-emotional-labour-and-how-do-we-get-it-wrong-185773">emotional labour</a> both frightening and strange. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-to-describe-the-complexity-and-absurdity-of-motherhood-181066">Is it possible to describe the complexity and absurdity of motherhood?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Invisible labour</h2>
<p>Housework – all the “Cleaning”, “Caring”, “Feeding” and “Pleasing” (the titles of the essays in Benjamin’s book) – is an activity that makes homes, worlds and human realities. But it is also, as Benjamin writes, an “activity that erases itself”. </p>
<p>This is not just because a swept floor will soon be muddied again, or a spotless bookshelf covered in another layer of dust. Rather, as Benjamin writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the success of housework turns on its invisibility, on the quiet conspiracy of women who do it and then hide the fact of its doing, denying the physicality of their own labour. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/yet-again-the-census-shows-women-are-doing-more-housework-now-is-the-time-to-invest-in-interventions-185488">housework</a>, tracing the fine filaments that bind women to a system of gender inequality. Each thread is followed compellingly through Benjamin’s own life, as the daughter of Jewish-Iraqi migrants, as a conflicted or rebellious adolescent, and as a mother to a child she calls “my teenager”. </p>
<p>The book is a careful unravelling – or, more precisely, an unthinking – predicated on a very different form of storytelling to that in Maxine Mei-Fung Chung’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/what-women-want-9781529151121">What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth</a>. </p>
<p>Chung’s book is in the now firmly established genre of the therapist-patient memoir. Its title derives from <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dangerous-method-in-defence-of-freuds-psychoanalysis-5989">Sigmund Freud</a>’s question “What does a woman want?”, which Freud famously declared himself unable to answer, despite what he alleges was 30 years of trying. </p>
<p>One problem with Freud’s question – and, indeed, there are very, very many problems with it – is that it constructs women (or “Woman”) as a mystery to be solved. As it turns out, this creates problems for Chung.</p>
<p>Benjamin’s book takes a different tack. It zigzags between memory, discovery and reflection, taking the reader to the heart of the essay form. It is a journeying style of writing that constantly drives at its ideas without needing to be sure of their endpoints; it expects a question, not an answer.</p>
<h2>A gendered economy of care</h2>
<p>“Oh my God, a fairy has come and made magic …” </p>
<p>Benjamin’s aunt’s carer says this as she walks into the kitchen, where Benjamin, “a middle aged woman on her knees”, has spent hours squatting on the floor “skirt hitched up around her thighs”, “one hand splayed”, among the “bleach, floor cleaner, J-cloths, paper towels” and “anti mould spray”.</p>
<p>Benjamin’s aunt – frail, incontinent, and increasingly mute – sits with Benjamin’s mother in the sitting room adjacent. The author is attempting to restore “if not exactly her [aunt’s] dignity, then at least some version of order”. “I want to leave a physical marker, a totem of shiny pots and pans, a cairn”, she writes. This is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>payback for the care my aunt showered on me growing up; jumping in to take my side in my endless arguments with my mother: driving me home across London at maniac speeds on nights I’d changed my mind about sleeping over. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author is making her <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-women-for-low-libido-sexual-sparks-fly-when-partners-do-their-share-of-chores-including-calling-the-plumber-185401">housework</a> a gift. But then, the fairy idea brings her up short. </p>
<p>It is, Benjamin writes, “a clever thing to say”. It means the author has not “debased herself” by doing menial work, amidst the “swamp mist” and “dirty grey dishcloth[s]”. In a swift sentence, punishing housework has been vanished into “fairy dust and glitter; a wand waved rather than demeaning labour”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The success of housework depends on its invisibility – 'a wand waved’ – writes Marina Benjamin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels/Karolina Grabowska</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The essay in which this scene appears – titled “Cleaning” – delves deep into the politics of housework where one woman’s freedom or self care is frequently purchased through the work of another, and where oppression and privilege often sit alongside each other. </p>
<p>Benjamin summons the ghosts of the invisible servants that once populated grand Victorian homes. “Concealed behind walls, they moved through the many-storeyed houses they upkept using a labyrinth of back passages, narrow corridors and separate stairways”, then – at night time – were banished to the attics where they “melted into the air”.</p>
<p>The modern world parallels are striking. The vast economy of care that keeps the world turning continues to vanish under the weight of economic indices and measures of GDP. And the problem is a profoundly gendered one.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-sex-positive-feminist-takes-up-the-unfinished-revolution-her-mother-began-but-its-complicated-189139">Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the 'unfinished revolution' her mother began – but it's complicated</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Factory of femininity</h2>
<p>The gendering of housework is further explored in an essay called “Pleasing”. Here, vivid scenes paint pictures of Benjamin’s father’s couturier business, which, she says, transformed her childhood home into a “factory of femininity”; a “site of cultural reproduction” where gender inequality is manufactured from exquisite silk.</p>
<p>It is a world in which women, according to Benjamin’s mother, must work hard to “push [their menfolk] forward and have their backs, swallowing their own anger and aspirations in order to be the glue that bonds families together”. </p>
<p>Women should also be “easy on the eye”; a feat predicated on “shoving under the glossy cover of their exterior bodywork all the effort it took to get there”. And so it turns out that beauty – much like cleaning – is something that must appear effortless, for it to be appreciated as successful. </p>
<p>Benjamin’s concern is not to present <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-new-york-fashion-week-came-to-be-54389">fashion</a> as anti-woman or anti-feminist, but rather to explore the ways ideas about fashion get conscripted into ideas about women’s position in the world. Her father, for example, was a devotee of Dior’s “New Look” long after it gave way to other trends. He held Chanel’s lean, “androgenous” [sic] tweed suits responsible for creating “an army of cross-dressers as militant in the social freedoms they claimed as [Coco Chanel] had famously been”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marina Benjamin’s father was a devotee of Dior’s ultra-feminine ‘New Look’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laura Loveday/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oddly, Benjamin’s mother gets little sympathy. The author acknowledges her father’s “explosive temper”, describing him as “a volcano emitting noxious fumes”. She also acknowledges behind the scenes, it was always her mother who “exhausted herself, paddling madly […] to keep the shiny surface of our lives afloat”. And yet, her mother’s contributions to the family enterprise are comically described as “yanking her housewife’s agenda into the public sphere as far as it would go without pulling out its gendered roots”. </p>
<p>Her father receives more sympathy. “He and I had more in common than I knew”, writes Benjamin. When his business collapsed, his health imploded. Benjamin writes, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-the-patriarchy-start-and-will-evolution-get-rid-of-it-189648">Patriarchy</a>, it seems, could fell us both.”</p>
<p>Time is cyclical in this essay collection, much like the activity of housework itself. The essay “Launching” is as much about her father’s death as it is about the launching of “my teenager”. </p>
<p>The six years Benjamin’s mother spends caring for her father in the lead-up to his death gives way to the years Benjamin spends caring for her mother, “paying the bills” and “organising cleaners and tradesmen”. Increasingly it falls to the author to “bring food”, “fetch her cash, accompany her to the doctor, chiropodist and dentist – and to increasingly frequent hospital appointments” for “X-rays, ECGs, echoes, ultrasounds and lung capacity tests”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-did-turn-women-into-robots-why-feminist-horror-novel-the-stepford-wives-is-still-relevant-50-years-on-186633">'Suburban living did turn women into robots': why feminist horror novel The Stepford Wives is still relevant, 50 years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Uncomfortably voyeuristic</h2>
<p>Maxine Mei Fung-Chung’s book What Women Want follows a more linear trajectory. It gives an often-harrowing account of the lives of eight women who struggle with eating disorders, issues of childhood abandonment and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-intersectionality-mean-104937">intersectional</a> oppressions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-is-still-an-everyday-experience-for-non-white-australians-where-is-the-plan-to-stop-this-179769">racism</a>, gender and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-concept-of-class-is-often-avoided-in-public-debate-but-its-essential-for-understanding-inequality-187777">class</a>: including, in one story, the extraordinary cruelty of a mother who rejects her teenage daughter’s same-sex sexuality, labelling her “disgusting”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is Marianna who desperately wants a baby, Ruth who wants to understand her stepfather’s cruelty, and Agatha who wants her son to accept her desire to embark on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-love-in-the-time-of-incontinence-why-young-people-dont-have-the-monopoly-on-love-or-even-sex-198416">late-life romantic relationship</a>. And there’s Terri, who, in the opening chapter, attempts to force herself into a heterosexual marriage with an older man, then finds herself “skyfalling” into sex with strangers and attempting suicide, before she finds a woman who is right for her.</p>
<p>And yet, there is something uncomfortably voyeuristic in these fictionalised accounts of women’s experience, although Chung says she shares the stories with her patients’ consent. </p>
<p>There’s also a sense that the oddly gendered shopping list of things her patients “want” at the end of the book – including a baby, great sex and a man to love – may not bring them any kind of permanent joy. To the wary reader, these end-goals – though deeply felt – seem destined to give way to other wants. Or the patient may well decide their trajectory had been set in the wrong direction, before veering off elsewhere.</p>
<p>The things that are wrong with society – in this book, racism and homophobia, for example – have complicated dimensions, which need to be explored on a larger social canvas than afforded by a therapist’s couch.</p>
<p>“Women are not a mystery and neither are our wants and needs”, writes Chung. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But there is a complexity attached to our desire. What I want to understand more deeply is what it is that keeps us in denial, loveless, a constant state of longing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But are women perpetually so lost and longing? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-reproducers-to-flutters-to-sluts-tracing-attitudes-to-womens-pleasure-in-australia-87852">From reproducers to 'flutters' to 'sluts': tracing attitudes to women's pleasure in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What does a woman want?</h2>
<p>In taking off from Freud’s question, “What does a woman want?” Chung appears to succumb to Freud’s infamous construction of women as “lack” and “absence”; as perpetually needy (and, for Freud, hysterical). </p>
<p>The book’s promise to liberate and empower women to “claim what we truly want” is unlikely to be realised – despite the book’s blurb assuring the reader Chung “knows the answers”. </p>
<p>Changing the world, running a multi-million-dollar business enterprise, or managing a household and raising a child are unlikely to keep anybody – women or men – happy and joyful all the time. It will almost certainly leave you tired, cranky and exhausted. But it’s probably worth a try.</p>
<p>Benjamin points out that although housework’s “hard-won order is destined not to last”, women’s “never-ceasing housekeeping is not just beginning over”. There will be tensions and cruel divisions between working and caring, between the need to “earn my living without short-changing my child”, and doubts about work that may or may not have been “pursued at too high a cost”. And there will always be a shimmery illusion of “priceless freedom” on the “far side of constraint”. </p>
<p>In some ways, the end of Benjamin’s book points the reader back to the beginning. For me, the image that lingers is a sketch that appears in the early pages: a word portrait of her aunt and mother embarking on their journey from Baghdad to London. </p>
<p>They are “dressed in white shirts and full skirts, tightly belted at the waist in the 1950s style”. They are “leaning over the railing of the ocean liner that would sweep them away from Jewish Baghdad forever, faces turned to the wind […]” And it’s the wind, the salt air filled with possibilities, that makes Benjamin’s final point – it’s not the end-point that counts, but the way of travelling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marina Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of housework and ‘femininity’. Maxine Fei-Chung’s book gives an often-harrowing account of eight women who struggle.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002482023-02-27T16:57:21Z2023-02-27T16:57:21ZChatGPT and cheating: 5 ways to change how students are graded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511716/original/file-20230222-14-ufch1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C65%2C5472%2C3112&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teachers and university professors have relied heavily on 'one and done' essay assignments for decades. Requiring students to submit drafts of their work is one needed shift.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Universities and schools have entered a new phase in how they need to address academic integrity as our society navigates a <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2020/03/04/letter-to-toronto-how-profound-innovations-are-making-our-city-a-leader-in-the-digital-age.html">second era of digital technologies</a>, which include publicly available generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT.
Such platforms allow students to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/chatgpt-student-benefits-1.6731105">generate novel text for written assignments</a>. </p>
<p>While many worry these advanced AI technologies are ushering in a <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10031827">new age of plagiarism and cheating</a>, these technologies also introduce opportunities for educators to rethink assessment practices and engage students in deeper and more meaningful learning that can promote critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>We believe the emergence of ChatGPT creates an opportunity for schools and post-secondary institutions to reform traditional approaches to assessing students that rely heavily on testing and written tasks focused on students’ recall, remembering and basic synthesis of content. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hands seen on a keyboard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511720/original/file-20230222-26-7qud13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Schools and post-secondary institutions should revisit testing and written assignments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cheating and ChatGPT</h2>
<p>Estimates of cheating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1_4">vary widely across national contexts and sectors</a>. </p>
<p>Sarah Elaine Eaton, an expert who studies academic integrity, cautions cheating <a href="https://theconversation.com/cheating-may-be-under-reported-across-canadas-universities-and-colleges-129292">may be under-reported</a>: she has estimated that at Canadian universities, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-university-students-cheating-exams/">70,000 students</a> buy cheating services every year.</p>
<p>How the recent launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI will impact cheating in both compulsory and higher education settings is unknown, but how this evolves may depend on whether or not institutions retain or reform traditional assessment practices.</p>
<h2>Evading plagiarism detection software?</h2>
<p>The ability of popular plagiarism detection tools to identify cheating using ChatGPT to generate assignments remains a challenge. </p>
<p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04335">A recent study</a>, not yet peer reviewed, found that 50 essays generated using ChatGPT produced sophisticated texts that were able to evade the traditional plagiarism check software. </p>
<p>Given that ChatGPT reached <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/">an estimated 100 million monthly active users</a> in January, just two months after its launch, it is understandable why some have argued AI applications such as ChatGPT will spur <a href="https://repositorio.grial.eu/handle/grial/2838">enormous changes</a> in contemporary schooling.</p>
<h2>Policy responses to AI and ChatGPT</h2>
<p>Not surprisingly, there are opposing views on how to respond to ChatGPT and other AI language models. </p>
<p>Some argue educators should embrace AI as a valuable technological tool, provided <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4334162">applications are cited correctly</a>. </p>
<p>Others believe <a href="https://aaee.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AAEE2019_Annual_Conference_paper_180.pdf">more resources and training</a> are required so educators are better able to catch instances of cheating. </p>
<p>Still others, such as New York City’s Department of Education, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/01/30/chatgpt-going-banned-teachers-sound-alarm-new-ai-tech/11069593002">have resorted to blocking AI applications such as ChatGPT from devices and networks</a>.</p>
<h2>Forward-thinking assessment</h2>
<p>The figure below depicts three critical elements of a forward-thinking assessment system. Although each element could be elaborated, our focus is in offering educators a series of strategies that will allow them to maintain academic standards and promote authentic learning and assessment in the face of current and future AI applications.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three circles are seen overlapping in the middle; the circles say AI, student assessment and academic integrity." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/510970/original/file-20230219-4224-9widvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Institutions and educators must examine the intersection of AI, academic integrity and how we assess students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Louis Volante)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Teachers and university professors have relied heavily on “one and done” essay assignments for decades. Essentially, a student is assigned or asked to pick a generic essay topic from a list and submit their final assignment on a specific date. </p>
<p>Such assignments are particularly susceptible to new AI applications, as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1_9">contract cheating</a> — whereby a student buys a completed essay. Educators now need to rethink such assignments. Here are some strategies.</p>
<p><strong>1. Consider ways to incorporate AI in valid assessment.</strong></p>
<p>It’s not useful or practical for institutions to outright ban AI and applications like ChatGPT. </p>
<p>AI has already been incorporated into some <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-using-ai-tools-like-chatgpt-in-my-mba-innovation-course-is-expected-and-not-cheating-198957">university classrooms</a>. We believe AI technologies must be selectively integrated so that students are able to reflect on appropriate uses and connect their reflections to learning competencies. </p>
<p>For example, Paul Fyfe, an English professor <a href="https://news.dasa.ncsu.edu/professor-paul-fyfe-brings-a-humanistic-approach-to-data/">who teaches about how humans interact with data</a> describes a “pedagogical experiment” in which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01397-z">he required students to take content from text-generating AI software and weave this content</a> into their final essay.</p>
<p>Students were then asked to confront the availability of AI as a writing tool and reflect on the ethical use and evaluation of language modes.</p>
<p><strong>2. Engage students in setting learning goals.</strong></p>
<p>Ensuring students understand how they will be graded is key to any good assessment system. </p>
<p>Inviting students to collaboratively establish learning goals and criteria for the task, with consideration for the role of AI software, would help students to evaluate and judge appropriate contexts in which AI can work as a learning tool. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unlike-with-academics-and-reporters-you-cant-check-when-chatgpts-telling-the-truth-198463">Unlike with academics and reporters, you can't check when ChatGPT's telling the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>3. Require students to submit drafts for feedback.</strong></p>
<p>Although students should still complete essay assignments, research into academic integrity policy in response to generative AI suggests students should be required to <a href="https://edarxiv.org/mrz8h?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare-text">submit drafts of their work for review</a> and feedback. Apart from helping to detect plagiarism, this <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12382">kind of “formative assessment” practice is positive for guiding student learning</a>.</p>
<p>Feedback can be offered by the teacher or by students themselves. Peer- and self-feedback can serve to critically evaluate work in progress (or work generated by AI software). </p>
<p><strong>4. Grade subcomponents of the task.</strong></p>
<p>Students could receive a grade for each subcomponent — including their involvement in feedback processes. They would also be evaluated in relation to how well they incorporated and attended to the specific feedback provided. </p>
<p>The assignment becomes bigger than a final essay, it becomes a product of learning, where students’ ideas are evaluated from development to final submission. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students seen sitting with a teacher." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511717/original/file-20230222-21-mo6jbn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engaging students in establishing learning goals is part of creating meaningful assessment practices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>5. Move to more authentic assessments or include performance elements.</strong></p>
<p>Good assessment practice involves an educator observing student learning across multiple contexts. </p>
<p>For example, educators can invite students to present their work, discuss an essay in a conference format or share a video articulation or an artistic representation. The aim here is to encourage students to share their learning through an alternative format. An important question to ask is whether or not you need the essay component at all? Is there a more authentic way to effectively assess student learning? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A educator seen in a library with students." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/511713/original/file-20230222-14-61sitj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Encouraging students to present their work is a way educators can observe student learning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pexels/Kampus Production)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Authentic assessments are those that relate content to context. When students are asked to do this, they must apply knowledge in more practical settings, often making AI tools less helpful. </p>
<p>For help in rethinking assessment practices towards more authentic and alternative approaches, educators can consider taking the free course, <a href="https://queens-aeg.ca/transforming-assessment/">Transforming Assessment: Strategies for Higher Education</a>.</p>
<h2>Improve benefits for students</h2>
<p>Collectively, these suggestions may be more time-consuming, particularly in larger undergraduate classes. </p>
<p>But they do provide greater learning and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12382">synergy between forms of assessment</a> that benefit students: formative assessment to guide teaching and learning, and “summative assessment,” primarily used for grading and evaluation purposes. </p>
<p>AI is here and here to stay, and we must embrace it as part of our learning environment. Incorporating AI into how we assess student learning will yield more reliable assessment processes and valid and valued assessment outcomes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louis Volante receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don A. Klinger receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher DeLuca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Educators need to carefully consider ChatGPT and issues of academic integrity to move toward an assessment system that leverages AI tools.Louis Volante, Professor of Education Governance and Policy Analysis, Brock UniversityChristopher DeLuca, Associate Dean, School of Graduate Studies & Professor, Faculty of Education, Queen's University, OntarioDon A. Klinger, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Te Wānanga Toi Tangata Division of Education; Professor of Measurement, Assessment and Evaluation, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1974282023-02-20T19:01:09Z2023-02-20T19:01:09ZCan adultery be inherited? Kate Legge investigates after the ‘king hit’ of her husband’s affair – which seems to run in his family<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510992/original/file-20230219-22-f0e5i8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gregory Pappas/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What happens to individuals, families and communities when someone has an affair? </p>
<p>When journalist and writer Kate Legge first let her ex-husband read her work on infidelity – his infidelity (particularly with “a close girlfriend” of Legge’s, but also more wide-ranging) – he thought she was too judgemental. But the book she eventually published, <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/product/infidelity-and-other-affairs/">Infidelity and Other Affairs</a>, is a wonderfully thoughtful, mature and somewhat eclectic exploration of the breakdown of a marriage and Legge’s endurance through and beyond it. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Infidelity and Other Affairs – Kate Legge (Thames & Hudson)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When Legge uncovers her husband’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/lifes-short-have-you-had-an-affair-41019">affair</a>, that “cataclysmic king hit”, she soldiers on, researching to understand this catastrophe and seeking solace in the stories of others. She suggests there are many reasons given for infidelity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>drought in the marital bedroom, domestic discord, impulsiveness, insecure attachment, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-loneliness-is-both-an-individual-thing-and-a-shared-result-of-the-cities-we-create-198069">loneliness</a>, neuroticism, <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-narcissism-a-mental-health-problem-and-can-you-really-diagnose-it-online-188360">narcissism</a>, discontent, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-success-in-drug-rehab-programs-need-more-than-just-anecdotes-to-prove-they-work-76081">substance abuse</a>, a desire for risk-taking, a quest for self-discovery, an escape from the monotony of monogamy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet nothing on this extensive, yet slightly clinical list was a truly satisfying answer to why someone might have an affair: taking a step that in many monogamous relationships will stretch or break the bonds of trust, time and intimacy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509928/original/file-20230214-14-tlcb3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Legge’s discovery of her husband’s affair is a ‘cataclysmic king hit’, followed by a search for understanding of infidelity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Weedon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Adultery: nature or nuture?</h2>
<p>The first half of the book is a broad-ranging meditation on adultery. Legge speaks from lived experience – she shares her own story with calm generosity – but writes too with a journalistic inquiry. She probes the issues of love, lust, desire, domesticity and infidelity, prodding the many layers of married life to produce a rich and nuanced vision. </p>
<p>While her heart struggles to comprehend betrayal, her intellectual curiosity is stirred: she realises there are generations of philanderers in her husband’s family, both men and women. </p>
<p>Research, too, suggested there were familial links, possibly because affairs were normalised in some ways, or even because there is a biological core. Perhaps as a distraction from the tragedies surrounding her, she asks the question: is infidelity driven by nature or nurture?</p>
<p>And so begins her exploration of the layers of infidelity, passion and deceit in her husband’s family. They travel – together – to Broken Hill, to uncover the absorbing life of his grandmother Jean. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509996/original/file-20230214-28-nb1q42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Legge carefully crafts a life; the kind that is generally lost to the historical record, leaving no trace in the archive. The matriarch Jean is brought to life, painstakingly retrieved through rumours, family records and interviews. </p>
<p>In the harsh sand dunes deep in the outback, Jean had marked her world, first as a pregnant teenager, giving birth to an illegitimate child who she – unusually – refused to surrender to adoption; then as a wife and publican, scraping together a living in the harshest of physical and mental environs. </p>
<p>It is a magical read: Legge brings to life the beauty and tragedies of life at what must have felt like the end of the earth. She wrestles, too, with the ache and desire of Jean’s affair with her lodger Roy, described as “younger, carefree and cashed up, in stark contrast to the man of the house”. </p>
<p>Just as in Legge’s own situation, where seemingly everyone knew about the affair but her, Jean’s lover was common knowledge in the tiny town. Things came to a head when her son Colin (the father of Legge’s husband), full of rage, told his father about his mother’s affair. Colin was ejected from the family, while Roy too was booted out, to be tragically killed in war. Jean and her husband Fred endured: probably unhappily, but central to the web of family. </p>
<p>Colin – himself a victim of the illicit affair – would eventually grow up to be a philanderer too. This time, it is a specifically gendered treachery. His wife, Legge’s mother-in-law, was left to clean, cook casseroles for the children and steak for him, and handwash his socks, while Colin shook his tail feathers at business dinners and romanced the young and willing. </p>
<p>When it all fell apart, his abandoned wife was outraged by the domestic expectations as much as the infidelity: both plaintively and powerfully, she noted she should never have washed the damned socks. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-sex-why-people-have-affairs-and-how-to-deal-with-them-92354">It’s not just sex: why people have affairs, and how to deal with them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Forgiveness is healthier than bitterness’</h2>
<p>After her potent exploration of family logistics, Legge returns to her own life. At first, she attempts to forgive. Was the damage done by the affair itself, or did the affair simply shine a light on a limping and brittle love? Either way, a visceral and evocative chapter charts the eventual breakdown of her marriage. </p>
<p>It’s messy, non-linear, jarring. Legge writes of muddling through, until the unexpected occurred: the infidelity of their son. Again, we return to the question of familial trauma, bonding and brain chemistry – was this an intergenerational story written in genetics, or forged within the daily lives of the family itself? </p>
<p>I’m not sure we know the answer, but either way, as Legge gently suggests, “Forgiveness is healthier than bitterness.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509937/original/file-20230214-22-iyadce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kate Legge charts the eventual breakdown of her marriage in ‘a visceral and evocative’ chapter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodnae Productions/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The second half of the book is a series of vignettes that chart Legge’s new life, and her search for meaning and solace in the everyday. In some ways, it builds on the work on infidelity, tracing the ways our lives are shaped by family and memories and love and truth. </p>
<p>It continues the close and deep investigation into the commonplace, the unremarkable and the daily art of living. Legge explores the importance of green space, especially in Covid lockdowns, where communities flocked to parks as sanity saviours. She delves into a new love and his pet, the wolf-like white German Shepherd who frames their tripartite relationship. She remembers her Uncle Geordie, a family legend whose life was cracked by ASIO’s maladapt handling of an international scandal. </p>
<p>As readers, we can share her fears of climate change and the world we are leaving behind. The chapters dip and weave, often entirely enchantingly. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-skin-hunger-and-problematic-men-jessie-coles-memoir-investigates-desire-after-trauma-193440">Sex, 'skin hunger' and problematic men: Jessie Cole's memoir investigates desire after trauma</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As a reader, I found the first section of Infidelity and Other Affairs hard to put down – it was as gripping as a detective novel, while tearing at the soul just enough. The second half was less compelling – it was beautifully written, full of tender but important observations, but without the powerful driving question that framed the section on infidelity. </p>
<p>Infidelity and Other Affairs is ultimately a book about families and how they shape us – and potentially break us. Perhaps Legge’s biggest contribution here is the centring of a woman’s voice: as a journalist, a writer, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a lover. The finest chapters are profoundly domestic, and we are richer for this focus. </p>
<p>Legge has a gift of illuminating the ordinary, forcing us to take a closer look at the banal, everyday beauty that surrounds us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197428/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Featherstone receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). </span></em></p>Kate Legge’s husband was chronically unfaithful. So was his father, who was forced to leave the family home after revealing his mother’s affair. Legge reflects on generational love and infidelity.Lisa Featherstone, Professor in Gender History and the History of Sexuality, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1980632023-02-15T03:13:12Z2023-02-15T03:13:12Z‘The unlooked-for and idiosyncratic was her stock-in-trade’: last words from the unclassifiable Janet Malcolm<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509666/original/file-20230213-19-s1gmjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C42%2C5582%2C3690&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Janet Malcolm, who died in 2021 at the age of 86, left her readers this “memoir”, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/still-pictures-on-photography-and-memory">Still Pictures</a>, an apt and fascinating coda to a celebrated and provocative life’s work.</p>
<p>As a young girl, Malcolm fled Nazism with her Czech-Jewish family on one of the last boats to sail for America. Her father was a psychiatrist, her mother a lawyer, and her work is filled with the kind of attention to people, language and the “truth” that a child might inherit from such professionals, with their specific personal history. </p>
<p>Malcolm’s writing is <em>sui generis</em>. During her <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/28/remembering-janet-malcolm-who-wrote-and-lived-with-bravery-and-kindness">58-year relationship with the New Yorker</a> and over the course of 13 books, she covered psychoanalysis, literature, photography, art, archives and – notoriously – journalism and biography. Her huge subjects – life and truth, their representations in art and in person – were accessed via her attention to the minutest details of a subject’s dress or gesture, a slip of the tongue, and her persistent revisiting of contradictions. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory – Janet Malcolm (Text Publishing).</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509616/original/file-20230212-30-i2g3c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Malcolm’s shifting examination of her own premises, and her awareness of the poses and self-deceptions involved in our dealings with one another, led her works of literary journalism and biography to become commentaries on the forms themselves. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/08/23/the-silent-woman-i-ii-iii">The Silent Woman</a>, a study of the “afterlives” of Sylvia Plath, and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1989/03/13/the-journalist-and-the-murderer-i">The Journalist and the Murderer</a>, on the ethics of journalism, are famous examples.</p>
<p>To read a “memoir” from Malcolm, then, is to enter a realm where the very idea of memoir will be treated with mistrust. </p>
<p>Resistant to autobiography’s false claims and its “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2010/03/25/thoughts-on-autobiography-from-an-abandoned/">passion for the tedious</a>”, Still Pictures uses photographs as imperfect and contradictory <em>aide-memoirs</em>. The result is Malcolmesque: fragmentary, restless and extraordinarily vivid.</p>
<h2>I don’t think of the child as me</h2>
<p>Still Pictures opens with a photograph of Malcolm as an impish toddler, which she uses to access her biography. But she resists the urge to use archives as evidence that substantiates memory. Disavowing connection with this lovely girl, she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t think of the child as me. No feeling of identification stirs as I look at her round face and thin arms and her incongruously assertive pose. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Real memory begins offstage, with a procession of girls in white dresses scattering rose petals. Wanting to join them, little Janet is given peony petals by a kind aunt, but she knows these are inferior, and the flavour of disappointment lingers across a lifetime. “I have carried this memory around with me all my life,” Malcolm writes, “but never looked at it very hard.”</p>
<p>But then she does. What follows is an analysis of her disappointment according to the relative merits – aesthetic, sensory, culturally bestowed – of rose and peony petals. Partial but illuminative self-knowledge is achieved via oblique enquiry. Malcolm at last begins to identify with her childhood self. </p>
<p>Along the way, the writing “I” invites you to question the nature of the self and its means of access to its own story. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-janet-malcolm-her-intellectual-courage-shaped-journalism-biographies-and-helen-garner-163005">Remembering Janet Malcolm: her intellectual courage shaped journalism, biographies and Helen Garner</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The Pose</h2>
<p>The photograph that opens out this enquiry does not stand alone. Incongruously, it appears alongside a portrait by Ingres of Louis-François Bertin, a French journalist of the 19th century: “a powerfully bulky man in his sixties […] who sits with both hands assertively planted on his thighs as he engages the viewer with a look of determination touched with irony”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509627/original/file-20230213-14-xrlsaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Louis-François Bertin – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1832).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ingres, so the story goes, despaired of creating a successful representation of his subject, until he spied Bertin in public, sitting in “The Pose”. </p>
<p>The echoed pose brings the two images together. The young Janet appears to be copying him. But what both subjects are doing, observes Malcolm, is unconsciously drawing on “the repertoire of stereotypical poses with which nature has endowed all creatures, and which we tend to notice less in our own species than we do in, say, cats and squirrels and marmosets”.</p>
<p>Malcolm employs ways of seeing and reading that bring to light the dynamic between individual and group that guides our actions and gives them meaning. She makes them endlessly open to interpretation by those with a watchful eye and the instruments to decode their messages.</p>
<h2>Meaningful gestures</h2>
<p>Early in Still Pictures, Malcolm approaches memories of her mother, Hanka, via a picture of Hanka as a girl, with her sister Jiřina, and their mother Klara. In the photograph, Hanka is pushing her palm into Klara’s thigh. </p>
<p>As in the story of the pose and the memory of scattering petals, Malcolm interprets the gesture, “of mushing or squishing something”, through the connecting portals of memory. In her first language, Czech, the gesture, known as <em>patlat</em>, becomes <em>upatlaný</em>, or food that has been “over-meddled with”. It is a gesture she knows straight away. She recalls her mother performing it as a grown woman.</p>
<p>“I am not ready to write about my mother yet,” Malcolm states. So she broaches the subject of her mother indirectly, via her aunt’s family. The paths of memory are associative, and it is Malcolm’s uncle – Jiřina’s husband – who becomes the focus of the essay. He exposes the gradations of class between the sisters’ families. </p>
<p>Her own family, Malcolm realises now, were the poor relations, always visiting, never hosting, and it is another examined gesture that brings this dynamic to life, in the figure of her Uncle Paul: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remember the deliberation with which he chewed his food, the assurance and self-confidence the working of his jaws seemed to express.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The image is superseded by the revelation that Malcolm’s family considered themselves, with their interest in art and literature, to be “vastly superior” to her aunt’s, for whom money and business were central.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C1860%2C1428&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C1860%2C1428&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509617/original/file-20230212-27-ua8lf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Janet Malcolm, photographed in 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Nikitin/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>But wait a minute</h2>
<p>The essay is characteristic of her method. Malcolm begins with an image, then follows the nudges and connections of memory. She lingers on details that conjure a slice of a world in its interpersonal and social dynamics, before reversing, changing tack, advancing in a new direction. </p>
<p>She employs the bait-and-switch technique that is a central feature of her writing, and perhaps the key to how her writing always becomes <em>about</em> writing – its forms, methods and assumptions. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/24/helen-garner-on-janet-malcolm-her-writing-turns-us-into-better-readers">Helen Garner</a>, a great admirer, describes the way Malcolm always pushes beyond first readings, “undercutting the certainty she has just reasoned you into accepting”.</p>
<p>Malcolm wonders whether we can ever “write about our parents without perpetrating a fraud”. She undermines her own enterprise before tugging you further into it. Employing a metaphor, she asks whether “the lock on the bedroom door” protects our parents from scrutiny. “But wait a minute,” she says – then picks apart the metaphor and its supposed aptness. </p>
<p>That move, the swiping away of assuredness, occurs continually. It creates a compelling narrative quality. What more is there to know about this? What has been missed? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tourists-in-our-own-reality-susan-sontags-photography-at-50-197615">Tourists in our own reality: Susan Sontag's Photography at 50</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Old Not Good Photos’</h2>
<p>Malcolm was an accomplished photographer, but bad photographs – she discusses one she finds in a box labelled “Old Not Good Photos” – can yield particular rewards. </p>
<p>In an essay titled “Lovesick”, she compares photographs to dreams. Some are memorable, asking for interpretation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>However, as psychoanalysis has taught us, it is the least prepossessing dreams […] that sometimes bear the most important messages from the inner life. So, too, some of the drab little photographs, if stared at long enough, begin to speak to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509633/original/file-20230213-4443-1c7n6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud argued that we see each other imperfectly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So begins an interwoven account of the habits of love in youth, adolescent reading, and an explanation of Freud’s theory of transference. </p>
<p>The theory contains a key to Malcolm’s methods. Transference, for Freud, described the ways in which we see each other imperfectly, “through a haze of associations with early family figures”, who play out the same old dramas. The psychoanalyst reveals what is unnoticed and proposes “an alternative script”. </p>
<p>In reading photographs, people and memories, Malcolm is ever alert to what goes unremarked. She opens up the possibilities we miss the first time around. </p>
<p>In Still Pictures, she covers a range of compelling subjects. The topics include, among many others, her parents, the delineations of class via humour and, amazingly, the story of how she took speech lessons to defend herself in court. </p>
<p>What we learn, as Malcolm guides us into her memories via the clues and opacities of photographs and their associated memories, is that nothing is ever finished. There is always the possibility of new meaning if we take another look.</p>
<p>In an Afterword, Malcolm’s daughter Anne tells us that Still Pictures was supposed to have one last chapter on Malcolm’s “lifelong interest in taking pictures”. There is no use trying to second-guess what it might have covered. As Anne observes of her mother, “the unlooked-for and idiosyncratic was her stock-in-trade”. </p>
<p>As much as we might feel the loss of this chapter, the knowledge of its existence as a glimmer in Malcolm’s mind is a gift. Her great and enduring interest in her subjects – “the intense pleasure she gets from looking and thinking,” as Garner describes it – makes her work come alive in the inner world of the reader. It is gratifying to learn that, right to the end, the quality of attention that so enlivened the world, for her and for us, remained undiminished.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Belinda Castles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To read a “memoir” by Janet Malcolm is to enter a realm where the very idea of memoir will be treated with mistrust.Belinda Castles, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1976152023-02-05T19:00:59Z2023-02-05T19:00:59ZTourists in our own reality: Susan Sontag’s Photography at 50<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507462/original/file-20230131-2321-6pg9qz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C6%2C2274%2C1140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Susan Sontag. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks 50 years since Susan Sontag’s essay Photography was published in the New York Review of Books. Slightly edited and renamed In Plato’s Cave, it would become the first essay in her collection <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/on-photography-9780141035789">On Photography</a>, which has never been out of print.</p>
<p>The breadth of Photography is immense. It ranges over artistic, commercial, photojournalistic, and popular uses of photography; and it discusses the photograph’s role in both sensitising and desensitising us to other people’s suffering – a theme Sontag reconsidered 30 years later in her final book, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/regarding-the-pain-of-others-9780141914954">Regarding the Pain of Others</a>. </p>
<p>But perhaps nowhere is Sontag’s enduring relevance as a critic clearer than in the essay’s analysis of photography as both a symptom and a source of our pathological relationship to reality.</p>
<p>Sontag described photography as “a defense against anxiety”. She saw that it had become a coping mechanism. Confronted with the chaotic surfeit of sensation, we retreat behind the protection of the camera, whose one-eyed, one-sensed perspective makes the world seem maniable. </p>
<p>Sontag claimed that we photograph most when we feel most insecure, particularly when we are in an unfamiliar place where we don’t know how to react or what is expected of us. Taking a photograph becomes a way of attenuating the otherness of a place, holding it at a distance. </p>
<p>Tourists use their cameras as shields between themselves and whatever they encounter. According to Sontag, photography gives the tourist’s experience a definite structure: “stop, take a photograph, and move on.”</p>
<p>Having taken a photograph, we think of its subject as our captive: it’s there now, on the film, in the camera’s memory. This can make us inept observers. There is no need to experience something now, as we can always review it later. So we grab and run. </p>
<p>Even if we compose carefully, if we “make” rather than “take” a photograph, we are likely to feel the release of the shutter as the release of a bond, as if we now can (or must) move on – to other photographs. </p>
<h2>I was there</h2>
<p>Photography is a way of testifying <em>I saw this, I was there</em>. </p>
<p>Kodak’s marketing through the early 20th century testifies to this urge. “Take a Kodak with you” was one of the company’s earliest slogans. By 1903, they were announcing that “a vacation without a Kodak is a vacation wasted”. </p>
<p>Sontag wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507477/original/file-20230201-12-9z5cu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Duke University Library/Public Domain</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Through photography, Sontag argued, we sooner or later become tourists in our own reality. Sontag thought this happened mainly to the photojournalist, the person on constant lookout for their next subject. But it is true of most of us today. We have become discontents on the perpetual lookout for content. Photographic promiscuity is now one of our mores. It’s what we do: we shoot everything, not least ourselves.</p>
<p>In the revised version of the essay, Sontag says that “taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world.” Her claim is that photography has reframed the way we see the world and our place in it. </p>
<p>What we see is mediated by technology. When we look through the eye of the camera, everything is revealed as a possible photograph. This has an atomising effect: people and experiences appear discrete, the sort of thing suitable for collection in the miscellany of memory. </p>
<p>One way of approaching Sontag’s deeper point here is through her discussion of this Leica advertisement:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507265/original/file-20230131-11-81vexy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The people in the advertisement evince fear and shock, but the man behind his viewfinder is self-possessed. The promise is that the camera will make you the master of all situations. The Soviets crushing the Prague Spring, the Woodstock festival, the war in Vietnam, the winter games in Sapporo, the Troubles in Northern Ireland – all of these are “equalized by the camera”. They are reduced to the status of the “Event”: something that is “worth seeing – and therefore worth photographing.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/richard-avedon-truman-capote-and-the-brutality-of-photography-194904">Richard Avedon, Truman Capote and the brutality of photography</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An accessible world</h2>
<p>Sontag was critical of a reduction that takes place in the lives of the viewing public (itself an extraordinarily telling phrase). She wrote that photographs have the effect of “making us feel that the world is more available than it really is”. </p>
<p>We see photographs of people and events that are remote in space and time. This may seem to bring them closer, but the sense in which they are made available is a highly mitigated one. Elsewhere in On Photography, Sontag speaks of a “proximity which creates all the more distance”. She argues that “it is not reality that photographs make immediately accessible, but images”.</p>
<p>Flicking through a photo magazine, we encounter a disorienting welter of subjects: the horrific, the erotic, the mundane. Everything jostles for our attention as tokens of one all-engrossing category: “the interesting”. This confusion is the ordinary condition of today’s compulsive screen-stroker.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507501/original/file-20230201-26-qg0cdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawing of Søren Kierkegaard (c.1845).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederiksborg Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sontag’s complaint about the “levelling” effect of media is nothing new. It goes back at least to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s. At that time, new telegraph networks and faster printing presses meant that each morning more eyes were focussed on news about elsewhere. Kierkegaard thought that as we become more curious about distant events, our lives lose intensity. We cease to see ourselves as concrete individuals and become members of that abstraction “the public”, whose solitary duty is to be informed, to be conversant with the topics of the day.</p>
<p>Like Kierkegaard, Sontag’s purpose was, broadly speaking, ethical. She was concerned with our sense of ourselves and our place in the world. She thought that photographs were displacing us. What is furthest in space and time now reaches us as quickly as what is closest. It is not that the far has drawn nearer, but that everything is held at an equal distance. Our sense of situatedness has been upset. We are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere – an all-seeing, incorporeal eye. Our sense of orientation, our sense of what is relevant to us, has diminished. </p>
<p>This may give a false impression of Sontag’s argument. Her political commitment is beyond question (just read about her 1968 visit to North Vietnam, or her 1993 staging of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo). She was certainly not trying to justify inattention or insularity.</p>
<p>Sontag’s objection is primarily to the way we are transformed into, as she writes elsewhere, “customers or tourists of reality”. Our responsibility becomes perpetual consumption of what is served up by the media. We relate to the world beyond the media as if it were media, as if it were content. </p>
<p>Sontag’s criticism of “mediation” is, in part, about a loss of intensity. But more to the point, it is about (to use one of her key terms) a loss of <em>complexity</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507771/original/file-20230202-3208-i5vuod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Susan Sontag at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Probst/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reality?</h2>
<p>Contact demands more than an image hitting the eye. It requires immersion, it requires physicality, it requires understanding. Sontag envisages a responsibility beyond that of the so-called “concerned spectator”, whose attention she describes elsewhere as “proximity without risk”. </p>
<p>In a late interview, Sontag said that she was for “complexity and the respect for reality.” But what exactly does she mean by reality? Photography begins:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We linger unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, our age-old habit, in mere image of the truth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Plato, reality is a world of abstract ideas hidden behind sensory experience. His cave-dwellers are prisoners forced to watch flickering, evanescent images cast on the wall. Knowledge alone can loosen our bonds, allow us to discover the source of the illusion that we mistake for reality.</p>
<p>Sontag’s cave is a different proposition. It is the cave of the Cyclops and the Gorgon, where all that moves becomes ossified before that one enframing eye. What Sontag sought were not the truths of static facts, but those of lived experience. In the worn existentialist jargon, she was after <em>authenticity</em> in the relationship of the individual to themselves and to their society. She was also after <em>presence</em>, an immersion in the moment, so long as we do not assume this means the non-discursive presence advocated by her contemporaries in slogans such as “Be Here Now”. </p>
<p>Sontag was interested above all in enriching the sorts of stories which we tell ourselves and others. She was interested in “consciousness”, not in the narrow sense of the mind as opposed to body, but in the novelist’s sense of the narratives of embodied subjects. Understanding, for Sontag, is not a matter of taking things at face value, but a matter of interpretation. “Only that which narrates can make us understand,” she writes. </p>
<p>Sontag has a strong sense of the the interpenetration of mind and world. Her conception of consciousness is not Platonic but Proustian. How we look at things profoundly influences what we see. We are not extricable from what happens to us. Our present is pregnant with our past. The world is not a composite of objects <em>out there</em>, which can be put in our pockets. Our experiences are not objects <em>in here</em>, which can be filed away in the mind’s albums. </p>
<p>The psychological distance required to record an experience does not leave that experience unchanged. Not only that, but those recordings can come to dominate and displace our narratives, our memories.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-my-brush-with-susan-sontag-and-other-tales-from-the-gay-golden-age-121506">Friday essay: my brush with Susan Sontag and other tales from the gay 'golden age'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Memories in flux</h2>
<p>In the last of the On Photography essays, Sontag writes that photographs are “not so much an instrument of memory as an invention of it or a replacement”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507526/original/file-20230201-16-rsj2qx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1230&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our memories are in flux, our narratives are forever being rewritten. The photograph becomes iconic: as a tangible document to which we can return, it eclipses the subtle and always equivocal texture of multisensory association. <em>That</em> is what Aunt Léonie looked like. <em>This</em> is what happened on that trip to Combray.</p>
<p>Kodak knew this, too: humans forget, they said, but “snapshots remember”. To have a Kodak with you is to be able to capture the moment, to possess it. “They All Remembered the Kodak” – but perhaps it is all they remembered.</p>
<p>Our history thus begins to present itself as a set of snapshots, static events. Our memories are made readily available to us by the camera as <em>things</em>. But for Sontag, our memories are not possessions. Our memories possess us, haunt us. </p>
<p>Of course, photographs can haunt us too. In her last book, Sontag argued that we should let certain images do so. But her sense of the danger of what we might call a photographic relationship to reality is not only relevant today; it is liable to seem positively prescient.</p>
<p>The two decades since Sontag’s death in 2004 have seen the greatest changes in popular photographic practice since the Brownie brought photography to the masses a century earlier. </p>
<p>In 1973, Sontag spoke of the “omnipresence of cameras”. How does one trump a claim to ubiquity? When Sontag wrote that, only the most earnest shutterbug took their camera with them everywhere. But since her death cameras have become not only smaller but also indiscrete. The camera is no longer something one decides to pocket; it piggybacks on the presence of the smartphone. </p>
<p>The coupling of camera and internet has changed the nature of photography. Kodak tells us in a 2010 campaign that “the real Kodak moment happens when you share”. This marks an important shift in emphasis away from the experience one tried to capture and towards the experience of publicity.</p>
<p>We no longer have to wait to show others what we have seen. But more importantly, those others have changed. Not only can we show photos to more people, but the viewer no longer needs to be selected at all. Our audience has become vague: it is (that abstraction again) “the public”.</p>
<p>We now have a compulsion not only to record, but to share. And for what? Sontag said that everything exists to end in a photograph. Today everything exists to be scrolled past in a feed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Milne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Susan Sontag’s sense of the danger of a photographic relationship to reality is not only relevant today, but positively prescient.Andrew Milne, Lecturer in Philosophy, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943442022-12-05T01:29:58Z2022-12-05T01:29:58ZKim Mahood’s Wandering with Intent redefines the Australian frontier<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498630/original/file-20221202-26-grl0qz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C15%2C5145%2C3375&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kiwirrkurra Community, Gibson Desert, North Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kim Mahood came to prominence with the publication of her first book, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/craft-for-a-dry-lake-9781863591393">Craft for a Dry Lake</a> (2001), which detailed her efforts to reconnect with the land of her upbringing, a cattle station in the Tanami Desert.</p>
<p>Her journey was triggered by the death of her father, who was killed in a helicopter accident while out mustering in 1990. Craft for a Dry Lake is a mesmerising and prismatic account of a journey that folds together the author’s memories and her father’s letters and records. It is one of the defining works of memoir in Australian letters.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Wandering with Intent: Essays - Kim Mahood (Scribe).</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498146/original/file-20221130-26-j8zjqw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Craft for a Dry Lake bears certain resemblances to Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/wolf-willow-9780718197476">Wolf Willow</a> (1955), which also traces a pilgrimage made in mid-life to a childhood home on a remote rural frontier. In Australia, it might also be compared to Dorothy Hewett’s <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/wild-card-an-autobiography-1923-1958">Wild Card</a> (1990). When they return to their childhood homes, Mahood, Stegner and Hewett come up against the realisation that their home is no longer there. Of course, the place is still there, but the quasi-mythical quality of their origins is not answered by even the faintest sign that this place remembers them.</p>
<p>Had Mahood’s career ended with Craft for a Dry Lake, we would have been left with a poignant account of a childhood, flecked with wisdom and insight about the particular conditions that make life in Australia’s arid interior so distinctive. </p>
<p>But what distinguishes Mahood’s life and career since her first return to the Tanami in 1992 is that she has continued to go back. In time, she began to spend a good part of each year in the Indigenous communities that surround her family’s former cattle station. The other half of the year, she spends on the outskirts of Canberra, where she has developed associations with the Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia. </p>
<p>Something of this dual life was visible in Mahood’s second book <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/position-doubtful-9781925321685">Position Doubtful</a> (2016). The book preserved some of the spare lyricism that had been the hallmark of Craft for a Dry Lake. But Position Doubtful also exhibited a much sharper sense of the contradictions of present day reality in the Indigenous desert communities. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495772/original/file-20221116-23-14wfmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kim Mahood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scribe</span></span>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-kim-scotts-that-deadman-dance-22162">The case for Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance </a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Ground truthing’ and ‘deep mapping’</h2>
<p><a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/wandering-with-intent-9781925713251">Wandering with Intent</a> is Mahood’s third book – a collection of essays, some new, others originally published in Griffith Review, The Monthly, and Best Australian Essays. Where Position Doubtful was ostensibly a work of map-making, Wandering with Intent finds Mahood reflecting on the kinds of maps she finds herself trying to make. </p>
<p>They begin with Indigenous people, whose knowledge exercises a dimension of truth that will often elude the most accurate of maps. Like writer and academic <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/collections/paul-carter">Paul Carter</a>, Mahood settles on the concept of “ground truthing” to suggest that maps only gather their truth when they are forced to collide with the memories and understanding of people who live on the ground – that is to say, somewhere other than the Cartesian plane of the mind’s virtual map.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My version of ground truthing begins with the physical attributes of place, and moves onto what has happened there. It puts people into place, which brings into play science, stories, husbandry, history, metaphor, and myth. This form of mapping has been called various things — co-mapping, cross-cultural mapping, counter-mapping, radical cartography. The wordsmith in me likes the flamboyant suggestiveness of radical cartography, but my bullshit detector finds it pretentious. There’s nothing radical about what I do. The only surprising thing about it is that it hasn’t been done before. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In North America, the kind of cartography that Mahood is engaged in is sometimes called “deep mapping”, following the seminal work of historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Least_Heat-Moon">William Least Heat-Moon</a>. The concept has been picked up more recently in Britain and <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/four-rivers-deep-maps">Australia</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498152/original/file-20221130-22-o53nm0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1181&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In Wandering with Intent, we see Mahood describe and reflect on some of the deep mapping projects she has been involved in. These have included working with the Martu people of the east Pilbara in their exhibition We Don’t Need a Map (2012) and the National Museum of Australia on their Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters (2017) exhibition. That Indigenous art functions as a map is one of the intriguing lines of argument in this book.</p>
<p>In explaining the title of her previous book, Mahood notes that “position doubtful” is an epithet that often attaches to points on the sketchy maps of desert Australia. In doing so, she lays the emphasis on the epistemological uncertainty that marks the limits of a map’s purported knowledge.</p>
<p>In this latest collection, however, Mahood openly concedes that it is really her own position, and that of anyone who ventures to stand where she does – which is in doubt. She had always been aware that she walked, in her life and her writing, a particular edge.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But the edge I walked when writing about my interactions with the people and country that occupied such a significant place in my life was getting thinner and sharper. It had always been necessary to filter what I wrote through a lens of white readership for whom the remote Indigenous world represented everything from a utopian idyll to a wretched dystopia, but so far I’d managed to meet my own standards of truth-telling. This was becoming more and more difficult to do. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As this edge narrows and sharpens, it begins to resemble what it was once called, which is a frontier. The concept of the frontier is inherently imperial, insofar as it invokes the current extent of conquest. But frontiers have always been places of interchange, where overt power disparities often come disquietingly undone. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-literatures-legacies-of-cultural-appropriation-103672">Australian literature’s legacies of cultural appropriation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Politics and administration</h2>
<p>This is what Mahood’s writing is so good at showing. Among the essays included in Wandering with Intent are contemporary classics such as <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/blow-ins-on-the-cold-desert-wind/">Blow-ins on the Cold Desert Wind</a> (2007) and <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/kartiya-are-like-toyotas/">Kartiya are like Toyotas: White Workers on Australia’s Cultural Frontier</a> (2012), both originally published in Griffith Review. These essays depict the structural confusion that exists in remote communities in the Western Desert, where Indigenous people live in their evolving worlds next to the agencies of Australian government. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498153/original/file-20221130-18-uyc24q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1172&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>What Mahood is able to depict, often with a brilliant comic eye, are the fundamental dilemmas that beset those who take on the jobs of administering “government services” in remote communities. She also dramatises the fundamental mismatch that often accompanies these daily encounters. It turns out that what local Indigenous people want is often rather different from the desires of Australian governance – even as the latter swing around with the winds of policy and the gusts of politics. </p>
<p>Compromises are reached, bargains are struck, deals broken, items lent and lost, compensations offered and on it goes. For Indigenous people, this is just the accepted texture of life, but for the interloping administrators – health workers, schoolteachers, police – this is often a source of profound disillusionment. They feel betrayed. But how is it that the coloniser has become the victim?</p>
<p>Mahood should be commended for openly depicting these situations and her work is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand how the Australian frontier is by no means a thing of the past. The more romantic moments of her early memoir writing have been gradually washed away by her willingness to take seriously the present moment – to live it, in short. </p>
<p>In someone with less practical wisdom, cynicism would have taken hold. Indeed, at times Mahood seems haunted by the ghost of Heriot, the disillusioned priest in the Kimberley mission of Randolph Stow’s <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/8266093">To the Islands</a> (1958). Both Mahood and Stow had left childhoods forged with the image of station life to board at Perth’s prestigious private schools in the postwar years. </p>
<p>Unlike Heriot, however, Mahood does not fall into metaphysical crisis. Nor does she abandon a sense of the depth of desert life and culture. She knows that her profundity is not the same as that of her Indigenous companions, yet intuiting that it is only in taking seriously both the practicalities and profundities of life that something meaningful might be forged. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I write about what happens at the point of intersection, where traditional culture is still strong, where whites are in the minority but occupy most of the official positions, and where the unfolding narrative is complicated, nuanced, and evolving […]</p>
<p>That I exercise cultural privilege when writing about the desert Aboriginal people is a given. The question is whether I exercise this privilege in a way that can be justified. I have been grappling with this conundrum since I began writing, and it never gets any easier.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Hughes-d'Aeth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kim Mahood understands that frontiers have always been places of interchange, where overt power disparities often come disquietingly undone.Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1954252022-12-04T19:01:20Z2022-12-04T19:01:20ZHeather Rose writes with raw beauty about trauma and ‘hardcore spiritual work’ – so why does it leave me cold?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497904/original/file-20221129-12-dfo64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">dreamcatcher desert frankie k QHBEEOpjCDQ unsplash</span> </figcaption></figure><p>I have to begin my review of acclaimed novelist Heather Rose’s first foray into non-fiction with an admission: I am a deeply unspiritual person. I find “spiritual journey” narratives, generally speaking, solipsistic and tedious: I even grew impatient reading Herman Hesse’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036.Siddhartha">Siddhartha</a>. </p>
<p>This skepticism, atheism, irreligiosity — call it what you will — inevitably colours my reading of Rose’s memoir, which is an account of childhood trauma and adult pain overcome, or at least processed, through what I can only describe as hardcore spiritual work.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here – Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Looking for something</h2>
<p>The existential moment that presages Rose’s spiritual journey occurs early in her childhood in still-pastoral 1960s Hobart. Six years old, she finds herself gazing towards the sky above a eucalyptus tree in the school playground, making her own personal monastic vow. </p>
<p>“Hello,” she says to the sky. “I’m ready. Tell me what to do. Make use of me.” There’s both a questing and an offering of service in this. Rose is looking for something: spirit, meaning, transcendence — herself.</p>
<p>It’s appropriate that this occurs for Rose beneath the harbouring branches of a giant eucalypt and not the crossbeams of a church ceiling. Nature is central to her spiritual voyage, as well as to her philosophical commitments — her wonder at Tasmania’s beauty and wilderness begins in childhood and finds its apotheosis in political action she spearheads many decades later, to rid Tasmanian arts festivals of Forestry Tasmania funding. </p>
<p>There are echoes of Janet Frame’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/an-angel-at-my-table-9780143791065">An Angel at My Table</a> and Alice Munro’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14285.Lives_of_Girls_and_Women">Lives of Girls and Women</a> in the opening chapters of <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Nothing-Bad-Ever-Happens-Here-9781761066320/">Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497899/original/file-20221129-18-zk1idw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Heather Rose’s memoir echoes Janet Frame and Alice Munro in its opening chapters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rose’s Hobart is in the process of transforming into modern suburbia, but is still rugged enough, dangerous enough, to inspire awe. Hers is a televisionless childhood of rotating dinner parties and neighbourhood bonfires, played out in a landscape arced by mountains, lapped by waters, in which a piece of cardboard will suffice as a toboggan on a snowy day and oysters can be prised straight from the rocks and out of their shells with a chisel. </p>
<p>All this changes one day, when her grandfather and older brother Byron go out fishing in an inadequately weighted dinghy and do not come back. Their drowning, a local tragedy, is doubly tragic because it will eventually capsize Rose’s immediate family.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/40-years-ago-protesters-were-celebrated-for-saving-the-franklin-river-today-they-could-be-jailed-for-months-191579">40 years ago, protesters were celebrated for saving the Franklin River. Today they could be jailed for months</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Spirit-world encounters, post-tragedy</h2>
<p>It is in the aftermath of this tragedy that Rose’s spirit-world encounters begin. She becomes aware that she can see auras around people. She holds seances in which winter mists fog up the room and chains are heard dragging over rocks. </p>
<p>And, in the deleterious silence that pervades the house post-tragedy, in which her brother is not to be spoken of, she begins to have visitations from him. He appears in a doorway and in a chair: not as a frightening apparition but as a reassuring presence, offering succour and calm. She even has a premonitory vision of the son she will bear in the future, who appears before her as a grown man. </p>
<p>The deep enchantment of the Tasmanian landscape make such happenings seem as reasonable, as natural, as they are in Isabel Allende’s Chile or <a href="https://theconversation.com/among-colombian-nobel-winners-and-peace-seekers-gabriel-garcia-marquez-still-looms-largest-66840">Gabriel Garcia Marquez</a>’s Colombia, and I read these opening pages greedily. But Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is memoir, not <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-magical-realism-51481">magical realism</a>, and it soon morphs into a different and, for me, less enchanting book, more reminiscent of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/carlos-castaneda">Carlos Castaneda</a> than Janet Frame.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C5991%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C35%2C5991%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497886/original/file-20221129-18-34khkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The deep enchantment of the Tasmanian landscape makes spirit-world encounters ‘seem as reasonable, as natural, as they are in Isabel Allende’s Chile or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Colombia’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eddie Coghlan/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rose briefly entertains notions of conventional religion as a child, but gives them up when the Christian God fails to deliver a pony after several months’ prayer. In her teenagehood and twenties, she turns to alternative spirituality. </p>
<p>She becomes interested in the theosophical society, an eclectic spiritual group with its roots in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism">gnosticism</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-the-west-discovered-the-buddha-182140">Buddhism</a>, and the Findhorn Community, a Scottish group that invokes and practices environmental sustainability as a core part of its spirituality. She studies Buddhism in Bangkok and meditation in a monastery in Laos. And she voyages to New Mexico to undertake gruelling “sweat lodge” ceremonies, and commits to a four-year “vision quest” to dance the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Dance">Native American sun dance</a>: deprived of food and water, with eagle feathers sewn into her flesh.</p>
<p>This last is a visceral and unsettling experience. The Lakotan sun dance is a shamanic ritual that demands several days of dancing, alternated with intensive sweats, in the pursuit of a state of deeply altered consciousness. </p>
<p>Peace pipes are smoked. Neither food nor water is allowed. The flesh of Rose’s co-dancers is cut and bones are inserted in the wounds; ropes are attached to the bones and tied to trees, and from these ropes, dancers throw themselves multiple times until their skin splits and they are broken open, delivered, transcendentally freed. </p>
<p>I said this was hardcore.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/holy-womans-fleshy-feminist-spiritual-pilgrimage-is-a-warning-against-religious-coercive-control-185388">Holy Woman's fleshy, feminist spiritual pilgrimage is a warning against religious coercive control</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Rose wonders – as do I – how it is that her kidneys keep functioning during this marathon of sauna bakes and dance deliriums. There is no explanation: it is another of the mysteries she embraces in her quest for spiritual meaning. </p>
<p>When the sun dance comes to its end, Rose’s “self” is eradicated; she is without language, returned to Nature, exquisitely sensate and utterly insensate: “By the time the last day unfurls, I am earth, trees, wind, sun and sky.” </p>
<p>There is an ascetism in Rose that is drawn to fleshly mortification: cold-water swimming, fasting, acts of physical endurance. “If there wasn’t pain and suffering, I wasn’t sure it was valid,” she writes. But just as I recoil from the notion of monastic self-flagellation, I recoiled from Rose’s masochistic spiritual pursuits. I am a material girl; I like my spiritual experiences couched in comfort: a bit of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-yoga-paradox-how-yoga-can-cause-pain-and-treat-it-80138">yoga</a>, the occasional joint. </p>
<p>And I found myself ambivalent, concerned for Rose and her fellow devotees, when she recounts a spiritual retreat in Uluru many years later. Here, the eradication of self goes further: Rose transforms into what she calls a “Heather-being”, barely cognisant of her own name, while several of her co-participants experience psychotic breaks and end up in psychiatric hospitals. I found this material difficult to unreservedly absorb, let alone embrace.</p>
<h2>Moments of raw beauty</h2>
<p>Am I here wrongly questioning Rose’s life experiences rather than her book? The content rather than the writing? Perhaps I am, but the two seem inseparable to me.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497859/original/file-20221129-13-m7izl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rose is a masterful writer, astute to fine detail, and capable of conjuring both the wonder of the abstract and the specificity of the particular. She is the author of the acclaimed novels <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Museum-of-Modern-Love-9781760633394/">The Museum of Modern Love</a> (which won the 2017 Stella Prize) and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Heather-Rose-Bruny-9781761068775/">Bruny</a>, as well as three other novels and several young adult novels. </p>
<p>There are moments of raw beauty in Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, particularly when Rose recounts her experiences of meditation, where even the most humble temporal object is transformed into a thing of wonder and curiosity: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see the way my hand holds a bowl. I feel the wooden broom against my fingers […] My body has become a tuning fork for sensations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt like a windvane attuned to a weather system of energy and acutely sensitive to the pain of people in passing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These are intense experiences of humility and stillness and and they made me turn my attention to my own reality as an organic form amongst other forms. </p>
<p>But Nothing Bad Ever Happens is also marred by spiritual homilies of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/wellness-is-not-womens-friend-its-a-distraction-from-what-really-ails-us-177446">wellness</a>” variety: “Suffering is not simple”, “Joy is an act of courage”, “Forgiveness is a doorway to joy”. Yes, like all cliches, they contain a kernel of truth, but they are also somehow too easy in their summariness, too grammatically succinct to impart complexity. </p>
<p>And too structurally closed to allow for skepticism, confusion, resistance, argument: the things I need to make sense of the world. They don’t provide me enough pause or ambiguity. I can’t get a purchase on them.</p>
<p>Maybe I need to meditate more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding from Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She was the recipient of the 2020 Felix Meyer Creative Writing Scholarship and the Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarship for female researchers. She works for the Australian Education Union.</span></em></p>In her new memoir, Stella Prize winner Heather Rose reflects on overcoming childhood trauma and adult pain with spiritual work. But our reviewer wishes it allowed moments of ‘pause or ambiguity’.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1883692022-09-06T03:49:40Z2022-09-06T03:49:40Z‘In the place of creation there was only fear’: Oliver Mol rides to recovery in his memoir Train Lord<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481495/original/file-20220829-12-xcngmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C16%2C5582%2C3715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oliver Mol’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/train-lord-9780241525074">Train Lord</a> is a sequence of personal essays journeying around and into a ten-month episode of intense physical and psychic pain. Yet from the opening page of this compelling work, we are carried along by a humour and vitality that reads as courage.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Train Lord – Oliver Mol (Michael Joseph)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The premise is immediately arresting, carrying echoes of those stories of gifted athletes struck down by devastating illnesses and injuries. </p>
<p>In 2015, Oliver Mol emerged from the online alt-lit scene, releasing his first book, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/lion-attack-9781925106510">Lion Attack!</a>. Publication turned into a crisis, removing purpose, bringing exposure. Its aftermath was traumatic. Mol developed an extreme – literal, physical – sensitivity to the written word. During that ten-month period,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the pain never went away, not really. At certain hours of the day, and on a certain amount of drugs, it would dip, but the tension, the grinding, the electricity, the dulling, like a skull cut open, pierced or injected with lead was constant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now and then he chances it, tries to focus on something, to read even the price of food in the supermarket, but the pain is delivering a message:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the pain would return and hammer with such ferocity that I would hold my breath until I couldn’t breathe, alternating between fury and apology, promising that I would not try again, that I knew my place, that if the pain would just go away I would not try for all those things I had done before.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A simpler existence</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481438/original/file-20220829-50806-q2vdu3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1213&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>For Mol, writing had been everything. He studied it at university, worked at it for eight hours a day (a punishing schedule, mentally and physically), and threw himself into an international community of writers trying to connect with audiences in new ways. </p>
<p>But he receives the message of the pain and, when it recedes, he gives away the writing life to become a guard on Sydney Trains. To take a simple job, stepping away from constant self-scrutiny and uncertainty – this is a shared fantasy among many writers. There is a persistent appeal in the prospect of regular pay, regular people, a clear and unequivocal usefulness.</p>
<p>The job, of course, is anything but simple. During five months of train school, Mol gains an enormous amount of technical knowledge, including how to drive the train in an emergency. He is warned about assaults on guards, fights, and suicides – advice that does not avert this horrible drama occurring on his first shift.</p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, Mol learns how to “slow down, to not think, or to think only about what we had learned”. He remembers “how to breathe”.</p>
<p>Riding the trains is not a step away from stories, but a step into a life. Stories flicker continually. Sometimes these are just moments, grabs of character and speech – a guy with a rat’s tail, a tracksuit, and a stolen bike yelling “Hurry up, c—s! Move it along! Daddy’s got somewhere to be!” </p>
<p>Such moments are a continual gleaming thread through these stories; they spark an affection for the mind that records and treasures them. There are also quiet interludes that encourage Mol to remember his own stories. He picks through the events of his childhood towards the catastrophe that brought him here. In the guard’s compartment, fragments of the past return:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would sit and sketch scenes from those years I’d tried to remember – the words, until then, had been impossible, but I thought if I could just visualize, then witness those outlines I could, at the very least, give them titles and label whatever was inside me before throwing it, dramatically, in the bin.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A person riding the trains while his mind works over his personal stories, gathering the scraps, is a powerful image for what happens when we write. Mol is working through layers of resistance, the push and pull of his imagination, his language and his fear.</p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/206232/writing-as-a-way-of-healing-by-louise-desalvo/">Writing as a Way of Healing</a>, memoirist and Virginia Woolf scholar Louise DeSalvo wrote that “creativity is a basic human response to trauma and a natural emergency defense system”. But it is a particularly fraught response for Mol, for whom the means of creativity appears to be the cause of his pain.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-write-about-broken-trust-in-a-memoir-janine-mikoszas-homesickness-maps-trauma-in-bold-new-ways-179086">How to write about broken trust in a memoir? Janine Mikosza’s Homesickness maps trauma in bold new ways</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘None of this happened’</h2>
<p>Several of the essays that eventually emerge from Mol’s tentative starts are negotiations with childhood experiences and their key figures: a girlfriend he lost, an older boy who brought him face-to-face with the difficulties of growing up. At the traumatic epicentre of the months of physical pain is an ex-girlfriend, who is herself suffering acutely.</p>
<p>In telling these stories, Mol layers experience and fiction. Stories are told one way then returned to, discarded, reworked, with some nugget of the experience persisting through these attempts to get at the truth.</p>
<p>Mol is an admirer of the writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Brien_(author)">Tim O’Brien</a>, who blends truth and fiction in his stories of war and its effects. O'Brien often revisits the same events from different angles, working towards complex revelations. Perhaps Mol has O'Brien in mind when he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here’s the truth: none of this happened, or some of it did, but not like that. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We are told this, disconcertingly, after long, immersive sequences relating childhood experiences with deep pathos. There is a sense in which disavowing the stories in this way sits uneasily alongside the apparent straight-telling of the central facts of the memoir: publication, pain, the trains. </p>
<p>This unease is perhaps an effect of approaching the memoir with the expectation that it will be a continuous narrative, only to find you are reading a collection of pieces. These essays belong together; they loop around the event of the pain, implicitly and explicitly looking for sources. But they have different approaches to relaying the facts. </p>
<p>Adjustments in reading methods are required. Circling around the truth, layering and re-layering of experience and imagination to reach something psychologically and emotionally real, the tricky negotiations around the exposure of the lives of others; these techniques say something meaningful about the processes of working through experience. There is a consciousness of the process of translating of experience onto the page. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/true-writing-is-a-convulsive-act-inside-the-mind-of-elena-ferrante-180311">True writing is a convulsive act: inside the mind of Elena Ferrante</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reading the pain of others</h2>
<p>A reader might be tempted to look for some early trauma, based in family life, that settles the issue of cause and effect. The narrative evidence points away from such determinism. </p>
<p>Mol’s parents are delightful: funny, real and hugely loving. His mum, as his pain recedes, walks him gently into the library and guides him through little tests of his reading capacity, a kind of exposure therapy to the activity that will restore him to himself. </p>
<p>His dad, who is fond of the word “arseholes” for others generally and for the possums that plague his dog in particular, speaks with deep kindness to his suffering son. He sends Mol a Tintin book with a note recalling how they read these books together and how perhaps they could help him now, hoping it will “bring out the little boy in you again”.</p>
<p>The story recalls another account of reading Tintin through difficult times: an essay titled <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/herg-and-me-20111201-1o7jw.html">Herge and me</a> by Luke Davies. In both these recollections, Tintin connects a father and a son, and a boy with his former self across time. It is a delightful reminder, amid the pain, of the bonds that stories and reading can forge.</p>
<p>Reading a memoir requires a delicate negotiation between writer and reader, especially when the work deals with such a difficult experience. In her memoir <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780061863820/the-writing-life/">The Writing Life</a>, Annie Dillard asks: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The very subject of Train Lord is the cost of writing it. It is a fascinating subject, but it requires the reader to visit some disburbing places. There are methods, when relating such experiences, that might allow the reader a certain distance – a coolness of style, perhaps, or a critical or reflexive remove on the part of an older narrator. </p>
<p>Mol’s writing is skilfully orchestrated, but can tend towards an intense affective pitch. It is characterised by dramatic repetitions, the use of “and” rather than commas when listing, and a habit of directly addressing the reader: “Know this”, “Here’s the truth”, “Let me be clear”. This can create readerly resistance.</p>
<p>Mol tells his father:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want people to read this book and know that whatever they’re going through they can get through it too – because I would have given anything to have a book, a story like –</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The words break off. His father responds that he reads to be entertained, not to feel, but that when he read Mol’s first book, “You made me feel okay”.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482215/original/file-20220901-14-4ezpjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Train Lord, Oliver Mol writes with open-hearted sincerity about his experience of chronic pain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Perry C/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my reading lately, I have become more conscious, and happily, that although a book like Train Lord may have a clear value – entertaining, moving and vivid, fascinating on the subject of what writing is for – it is not actually written <em>for</em> me. At the centre of Train Lord is a writer speaking effusively, with open-hearted sincerity, to others in ongoing pain. He is speaking to some version of his old self, perhaps: “I would have given anything…”</p>
<p>Literature has always had the power to expand the world to which the reader has direct access. But one of its powers, one that is burgeoning of late, is the sense that the true addressee is an ally in experience. Others are welcome, but they may need to take a step towards the experience and the means of expressing it, rather than the other way around.</p>
<h2>Lord of the trains</h2>
<p>Mol, in explaining what happened to him, writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The mechanisms through which I created – blindly, playfully – had broken and in the place of creation there was only fear.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What charms in Train Lord is that its playfulness is irrepressible. It glimmers in every recorded instant of raw vernacular and in Mol’s jokes with his friends. It bubbles up even in the darkest times. The moment at which the title finds its resonance is when Mol begins teasing the passengers, warmly, lovingly, over the intercom. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Next stop is Ashfield. But for all you singles out there, we call it PASHFIELD.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is power, personal agency, in play. It is the best of being alive. This urge to play is sometimes why we make unnecessary things, like books. In the middle of the pain Mol is lost in his own narrative; it has no end. By the final pages of Train Lord there are jokes on the intercom, beauty in the city, the instinctive generosity of strangers, and a resolve to try.</p>
<p>Lives are not stories, and yet for a reader encountering this one, a happy ending beyond these pages seems to suggest itself. Mol has of late published several complex appreciations of books and admired authors. Joy, humour and pain glimmer within these interviews and essays. In them, it is clear that, for Oliver Mol, embracing reading and writing is the only way to live fully. The fact he is able to do so is a fine ending to a story its author once feared he could not escape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Belinda Castles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What happens when a promising young writer comes under attack from the written word?Belinda Castles, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825082022-07-04T07:09:07Z2022-07-04T07:09:07ZGregory Day’s essays are immersed in the natural world, but think beyond the category of ‘nature writing’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471727/original/file-20220629-23-b130gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C12%2C4073%2C2717&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wedge-tailed eagle.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russ Jenkins/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gregory Day’s essay collection <a href="https://upswellpublishing.com/product/words-are-eagles">Words are Eagles</a> is carefully subtitled: “Selected Writings on the Nature and Language of Place”. </p>
<p>The word “nature” has crept in there perhaps to give a nod to the reader to expect some version of “nature writing”. But this is not nature writing. In fact, the book gently but firmly suggests we should think beyond the category of “nature writing” as we have grown accustomed to it. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Words are Eagles: Selected Writings on the Nature and Language of Place – Gregory Day (Upswell)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Nature writing has traditionally been a celebration of both the pastoral and the wild. It speaks of nostalgic, rural borderlands and, beyond them, the “undisturbed” non-human world of imagined wilderness. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470431/original/file-20220623-51813-eny4r6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>“Natural or man-made?” used to be ideal as the first of Twenty Questions, in the game of that name. An object was either one or the other. In the tradition of post-Enlightenment Western thought, which most of us (including Day) are steeped in, sharp, confident lines are drawn between the categories of “nature” and “culture”. </p>
<p>But this book, in concert with ecocritical writing by <a href="https://www.robinwallkimmerer.com/">Robin Wall Kimmerer</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway">Donna Haraway</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Tsing">Anna Tsing</a> and others, proposes other ways of relating to the more-than-human world in which we find ourselves. Day depicts not separation and detached observation, but immersion and entanglement. </p>
<p>Here we are in the river, swimming upstream, past the new jetty built for the tourists, both of which Day, as a local, can’t help but disdain and resent. We are in the river, with him and his old childhood friend, breaststroking slowly around its bends, coming across sites of memory and local legends of tragedy and wonder: the place where the kids built a winter hideout; the place the old guy from the pub drowned himself; the place the kangaroo was said to have drowned the dog that was annoying it. </p>
<p>Or we are in the forest, up beyond the river flats, where Day goes at night, alone or with others, in search of the “whoo-hoo” of the Powerful Owl, the local “monarch”, which preys on ringtail possums hiding in the darkness, performing “the mid-air ballet of the canopies of midnight”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C1963%2C1416&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C1963%2C1416&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470446/original/file-20220623-51579-oomngq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Powerful Owl in Kinglake National Park, Victoria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Parks Victoria/AAP</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is Day’s world, and the world of these lyrical, meditative essays – this place that is his, as well as not his. This is the place called Mangowak by its people, the Wadawurrung, and by the settler-newcomers Airey’s Inlet. </p>
<p>Day deliberately adopts the former name, as he has in the trilogy of novels he has set along this coast. Mangowak lies on the western edge of Wadawurrung country, at the far southwest of the confederation of the Kulin Nations, at the border of the estuary the Painkalac River forms with the Gadunabanud country of the Eastern Maar.</p>
<p>Day was born there and has lived and worked by the river flats for most of his life. He has Irish ancestors, who were among the earliest colonists in the district, arriving poor and eager to make a new life in 1841. Another ancestor arrived at a similar time from Sicily. </p>
<p>On this country, he acknowledges, he will always be an outsider, as a settler descendant largely ignorant of its timeless language and culture. Nevertheless, it is the only place he feels like he belongs and wants to belong. </p>
<p>Words are Eagles finds Day turning over, again and again, the question of how to belong, and what it might mean to belong, in a country in which one is both foreign and local. Moreover, to look back at the second qualifier in the book’s subtitle – “language” – he asks how to express belonging. How does one craft in words, word-images and word-rhythms, the contours of being and longing, which are always wrapped up together: “How to write, to sing, to say?” </p>
<p>Insofar as it dwells inside these questions, Words are Eagles makes a valuable contribution to the broader collective project of settler Australians learning how to relate ethically to First Nations people and their country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470438/original/file-20220623-51813-wrrp6a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gregory Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pan Macmillan Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ecocriticism-environment-emotions-and-education-13989">Ecocriticism: environment, emotions and education </a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The concept of an album</h2>
<p>An essay collection is like an album, assembled so that it hangs together as a whole, even if it wears its “concept” lightly. One always has favourite tracks, and others that one finds less substantial, less hummable. </p>
<p>In Words are Eagles those are few and far between. I found almost all of the essays beguiling. Many of them play with the essay form, embracing its capacities for braiding scene and reverie, listing and fragmentation, the lyric, the personal and the critical. </p>
<p>Unlike a vinyl album, the collection has three sides. The first two sections roughly divide Day’s littoral (a word he loves) psychogeography – or as he calls it at one point “psychogeology” – into domains of land and ocean. The third section is devoted to what he calls “wreading”, borrowing a term from critic and poet Jed Rasula “for the collaborative momentum initiated by certain texts”. </p>
<p>I was at first suspicious that this last part of the book might be filler. Did I want to leave the river and the forest to read book reviews? It turns out I was happy to.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dying-earth-and-a-lament-for-lost-fathers-sheila-heti-strips-back-the-novel-and-makes-it-new-181938">Sheila Heti</a> says that writers need to bear in mind that approximately 10% of the effect of reading is what the writer intends to bring, while the other 90% is what readers bring from their own experiences, which the writer cannot imagine or predict. </p>
<p>Heti’s numbers are not scientifically derived. But they reflect Day’s sense of “wreading” as the transpositions a reader makes in bringing a story or a poem or a lyric essay and its characters into the physical settings he knows. For Day, Flaubert’s characters walk not in Normandy, but on a track in the Otway forest. </p>
<p>In his book reviews, Day is wreading, through the lens of his own situation, writers who are elsewhere, but who are, like him, negotiating their own encounters with place. His distant intimates include <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-writing-poems-across-oceans-cultures-and-emails-john-kinsella-on-creative-collaboration-176557">John Kinsella</a>, Patrick Modiano, Felicity Plunkett, Colm Toibin and Tove Jansson – poets and novelists entangled in the “everywhen”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470486/original/file-20220623-7584-g1hoe0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=675&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, one of many authors discussed by Gregory Day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frankie Fouganthin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Time and again one gets the sense that Day, through these readings, is attempting to arrive at a clearer definition of his own practice. For instance, at one point he describes Michael Farrell’s book <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/i-love-poetry/">I Love Poetry</a> (2017) as “something of a recruitment manual for a state of being, or even a way of living in our times, wherein landscapes both analogue and digital become live screens of endless poetic potential”. </p>
<p>This is surely a way of describing Day’s desire too, though the “something of” is crucial. Definitions are always provisional.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-poem-as-pantechnicon-the-poet-as-polymath-john-kinsellas-boundless-creativity-179954">The poem as pantechnicon, the poet as polymath: John Kinsella's boundless creativity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Broken rainbows</h2>
<p>The prize-winning first essay, <a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/the-watergaw/">The Watergaw</a>, originally published in Griffith Review, sets the mood and establishes the stakes for what will follow. These are essays borne of movement through and in country. </p>
<p>Day is taking a drive with his wife and three-year old son, forty kilometres north to the flat volcanic plains near present-day Inverleigh. Grieving for his father, he has come to revisit the place his ancestors, James and Mary, made their home on stolen Barrabool lands in the 1840s:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve entered their world, slipped between the layers of James and Mary and the Barrabool, let blood’s story lure me away a little from the gravity feed of my home coast and into this nearby back-country of reversed creation, of rifled waterways, penetrating absences, ostentatious farm gates, and GPS-programmed harvesters.</p>
<p>And there, in the gnaw of it, alights the watergaw.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Watergaw” is the Scots word for a “broken rainbow”. The Watergaw is also the name of <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46792/the-watergaw">a poem by Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid</a>, which comes to mind as Day is driving across the plains and he sees in the sky “a broken swatch of rainbow”. </p>
<p>The essay is a conversation between the son’s grief, the search for traces of his ancestors, and the example of MacDiarmid, who turned from writing in English towards a Scots creole that “tapped closer into the heartbeat of his land, to its structural braes and burns, its geologic fogs and onomatopoeic sleet”. It moves toward the insight that attachment to place is inextricably bound up with love, with family (“daggy, dun-ordinary”), with story (broken), and with language (imperfect): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For land is not place without sky, without the dark underneath, without the lit air of story and fable … This is us. The us of which we are never transcendent.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471730/original/file-20220629-12-wchzrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Cézanne – Self Portrait (c.1880).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hugh MacDiarmid is but one among many interlocutors. Historical figures as diverse as Paul Cezanne, J.S. Bach, William Buckley and David Unaipon all feature in one essay explicitly concerned with walking – walking as a way of thinking and feeling and sensing in motion, a method for encountering at the human scale. </p>
<p>This may start to make the collection sound abstract or academic, and it is true that Day, as well as being a novelist, holds a PhD. But it is the spirit of the lyric that asserts itself throughout Words are Eagles. </p>
<p>There is perhaps something of the Romantic lingering in these pages. But if so it is a new romanticism beyond anything imagined in the 1980s, a time and a cultural moment Day, who is also a musician, would well remember. This is romance in the sense that it is a story of love, and remembering that <em>roman</em> is the French word for novel. This is a novelist turning to the essay in pursuit of new ways to describe a love of place:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are walkers, heading to and from our maestri, heading for fish, flesh and fire, heading for home. Some make for the joyous fugues, some for the image, the sound, the freedom, the perpetual mythology.</p>
<p>At least one thing is common to us all. En masse.</p>
<p>We are arriving, we are always arriving … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“The heart must accept its dark inheritance, its skylark nest of place,” writes Day. This is his invitation to fellow settlers and settler-descendants living with the legacy of the invasion of Aboriginal nations’ lands and waters. It is an invitation to go beyond the tropes of fear and denial on one side, and virtue-signalling or hand-wringing on the other. </p>
<p>It is an urgent invitation to become local, while respecting what you do not know and cannot claim. For a reader, like me, who is familiar with this place (the “Surf Coast”), Words are Eagles conjures an astonishing sense of what is hidden in plain sight: the polychromatic ochre timbres of the clay earth beneath the roads, the “pottery nest” of the willie wagtail couple in the boobiallas by the “eely river”, the Wadawurrung language the children are learning at the local primary school. </p>
<p>It makes you want to be there, really be there.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-species-sightings-88643">Friday essay: species sightings</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Carlin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Questions of belonging inform a new collection of lyrical, meditative essays that interrogate the distinction between nature and culture.David Carlin, Professor of Creative Writing, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1784222022-05-01T20:04:30Z2022-05-01T20:04:30ZJudith Wright, an activist poet who was ahead of her time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460179/original/file-20220428-26-1t45jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C3982%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/National Library of Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Judith Wright is a giant of Australian letters. Though most famous as a poet, she was also a very fine writer in prose, and it is this dimension of her writing that is brought to life in a new selection of her non-fiction. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Judith Wright: Selected Writings, edited by Georgina Arnott (La Trobe University Press).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The works have been selected and introduced by Georgina Arnott, author of <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/the-unknown-judith-wright">The Unknown Judith Wright</a> (2016). Arnott draws on essays published by Wright during her lifetime in the collections Because I Was Invited (1975), Going on Talking (1991) and Born of the Conquerors (1991). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458109/original/file-20220414-25-z51qx6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She provides excerpts from key monographs written by Wright – namely, her sensitive study of Henry Lawson (1967), the pioneer history Generations of Men (1959) and the revision of this history The Cry for the Dead (1981), the great activist accounts The Coral Battleground (1977) and We Call for a Treaty (1985), and Wright’s autobiography Half a Lifetime (1999). </p>
<p>Arnott has also gone beyond these sources to provide a fuller picture of Wright’s prose writing than had previously existed. </p>
<h2>A visionary charge</h2>
<p>Judith Wright shot to prominence in the post-war years as the author of some of Australia’s most iconic poems. Her first collection The Moving Image (1946), published when she was 31 years old, remains one of the landmark Australian literary works of the last century. </p>
<p>Across its 20 devastating poems, each line still has the capacity to grab the reader by the scruff of the neck. Poems like “<a href="https://allpoetry.com/Bullocky">Bullocky</a>”, “Dust”, “<a href="https://allpoetry.com/Bora-Ring">Bora Ring</a>” and “<a href="https://allpoetry.com/Niggers-Leap,-New-England">Nigger’s Leap, New England</a>”, despite being endlessly anthologised and drummed into generations of school children, still carry a visionary charge. </p>
<p>For the next 20 years, Wright’s poetry emerged at the rate of roughly a volume a year and showed considerable formal and thematic range – poems about motherhood, about birds, about the nature of time and the cosmos. But during the 1960s, her career changed course. It swung decisively in the direction of activism, particularly toward conservation causes. </p>
<p>By the end of her life, cultural historian <a href="https://law.anu.edu.au/people/tim-bonyhady">Tim Bonyhady</a> concludes that, as great a poet as Wright was, she was a yet greater activist and her fullest legacy lies in her contribution to the causes she pursued with a unique eloquence. Reading her prose works, one feels the force of her intellect, but also the presence of something more, a profound capacity to understand the world.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-poem-as-pantechnicon-the-poet-as-polymath-john-kinsellas-boundless-creativity-179954">The poem as pantechnicon, the poet as polymath: John Kinsella's boundless creativity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The double consciousness of the colonial poet</h2>
<p>The volume’s earliest writings, from the late 1940s, are works of literary criticism. These culminated in Preoccupations in Australian Poetry (1965). The thesis advanced in that book was that Australian poetry (the poetry of the coloniser) is beset by a double consciousness, born of foundational exile. </p>
<p>Arnott’s collection now lets us see the seed of this thought in a contribution called “Perspective” that Wright made to the Jindyworobak Review in 1948: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, a kind of split in the writer’s consciousness is often manifest; he cannot solve his immediate problem, he cannot keep attention concentrated on the foreground, while his background keeps intruding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This image of an intrusive “background” that will not let current ambition have its way, exactly presages the subversion of Wright’s literary career by the burning issues of Australia’s situation. </p>
<p>Most particularly, in the “background” of Australian colonisation, beneath the nationalist and pioneering myths, is the wanton and seemingly inexorable destruction of the natural world and the violent dispossession of Indigenous people, ruthlessly robbed of their lands, languages, resources, cultures and, in many instances, their very right to exist. </p>
<p>What marks out Wright’s greatness is her surrender to the ethical demands of this “background”. </p>
<p>Of course, for those on the other side of Australian colonisation, this was no background, but the brutal stripping away of their entire way of life. It is this calling, what Wright would later term the “cry of the dead”, that provides a kind of narrative through his collection</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C2%2C374%2C508&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C2%2C374%2C508&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459014/original/file-20220421-25-1g927d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judith Wright, c.1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-eliza-hamilton-dunlop-the-irish-australian-poet-who-shone-a-light-on-colonial-violence-161592">Hidden women of history: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop — the Irish Australian poet who shone a light on colonial violence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A master of devastating understatement</h2>
<p>It is important to emphasise the sheer pleasure of reading Wright’s work. She is a gifted prose writer. Never showy, she is instead a master of devastating understatement. She writes aphoristically, but often you do not notice the aphorisms, because they spill out gently and without the showman’s characteristic pause for effect. </p>
<p>Her irritation almost never comes to the surface, but on occasion she takes the briefest moment to set certain presumptions back in their place. “To sentimentalise women is to despise them,” she writes in “Women Writers in Society”. </p>
<p>In a later essay, “Transcending Womanliness”, she begins by quoting the words of Vincent Buckley from the 1950s:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When [Wright] is content to be a woman, enduring the profound incident of woman’s life, she is able, paradoxically enough, to transcend her womanliness and be a very fine poet. When she attempts to be not a woman, but a bard, commentator or prophet, she becomes a bit of a shrew – which is the worst and most unwomanly of things that a woman may become.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That Buckley, a not insensitive poet, could blithely call someone of Wright’s stature a shrew is a reminder of what it was like for women who dared to write. The deep dignity of Wright makes this easy to forget, but she did not have the luxury of setting this matter aside entirely.</p>
<p>One sees traces of the stultifying sense of “culture” in the immediate post-war years in Wright’s earliest literary criticism. She was not averse to a certain Olympian coolness that was the keynote of mid 20th century Anglo-American literary criticism. Her review of Verse in Australia (1960) affects bemusement at the new speaking registers appearing in contemporary poetry. She finds in the work of younger poets, a poetry that “was conducted on an oddly conversational level”. </p>
<p>What is significant, though, is not this cultural moment, but what happens to Wright in the years just after this. Many of her contemporaries, including Buckley, doubled down on <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100056575">Leavisite</a> prescriptions grounded in a Great Tradition, but Wright opened herself to the world. As a publisher’s reader at Jacaranda Press, she promoted the manuscript of a book of poems that would become <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/we-are-going-oodgeroo-noonuccal-kath-walker">We Are Going</a> (1964)
by Kath Walker (later <a href="https://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/noonuccal-oodgeroo-18057">Oodgeroo Noonuccal</a>). </p>
<p>Oodgeroo’s volume was the first published book of poetry by an Indigenous Australian. It was dismissed by literary critics, who had their standards, but remained deaf to the call of history. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459001/original/file-20220421-63553-q5yz3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lance Corporal Kathleen Walker, later Oodgeroo Noonuccal, photographed in 1942. Her groundbreaking poetry was championed by Judith Wright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wright, however, immediately grasped the significance of Oodgeroo’s work, and if one looks at Wright’s life – which is what this collection affords – one sees moments like this time and again: moments that show Wright to be often decades ahead of her fellows. </p>
<p>Her essay, “The Koori Voice: A New Literature” (1973), is startlingly early in its appreciation of Indigenous writing in Australia. It shows how laggard others were to see what was staring them in the face. While other critics could only grimace at what they deemed a childlike earnestness in the poems of Oodgeroo and <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/indigenous-rights/people/jack-davis">Jack Davis</a>, Wright was able to calmly see the radical significance of the new Aboriginal writing. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-thousand-yarns-and-snapshots-why-poetry-matters-during-a-pandemic-138723">A thousand yarns and snapshots – why poetry matters during a pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Environmental activism</h2>
<p>It is a similar story with Wright’s apprehension of the environment. </p>
<p>Certainly, there were environmental voices prior to Wright. Elyne Mitchell’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28454812-soil-and-civilization">Soil and Civilisation</a> (1946), an impassioned plea for improved soil conservation, appeared in the same year as Wright’s The Moving Image. Yet Wright was one of the first to mobilise the newly globalised sense of the environment that reached a point of inflexion with the publication of Rachel Carson’s <a href="http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx">Silent Spring</a> (1962). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460232/original/file-20220428-19-j044p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pair of bilbies in the Scotia Wildlife Sanctuary, NSW. Wright was at the front line of some of Australia’s first major conservation campaigns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Supplied by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Wayne Lawler</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1962, Wright was one of the founders of <a href="https://wildlife.org.au/">The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland</a>. In 1964, the same year that Oodgeroo’s We Are Going was published, Wright became its president, a role she would serve until 1976. It was this role that took her to the front line of some of Australia’s first major conservation campaigns.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-kathleen-mcarthur-the-wildflower-woman-who-took-on-joh-bjelke-petersen-110269">Hidden women of history: Kathleen McArthur, the wildflower woman who took on Joh Bjelke-Petersen</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>With this collection of Wright’s work, one is able to watch her thought moving with persistent acuity through moments of epiphany and revolution. The steadiness of her voice can sometimes disguise the radical shifts in her thinking as she reconceives the basic coordinates of literature, environment, settler history and Indigenous reconciliation. </p>
<p>As well as being an activist, Wright was a crucial witness to the actions she undertook. Some years ago, I had occasion to read her book We Call for a Treaty (1985), which traced the work of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, on which she served from 1979 to 1984. Expecting a fairly dry account of the committee’s work, I was struck by how crisply the tale was told, how deftly it set the scene, how lucidly the problems were rendered. In fact, I found the book utterly riveting. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460167/original/file-20220427-12-n4jats.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Editor Georgina Arnott has provided a fuller picture of Judith Wright’s prose writing than previously existed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Inc.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among her other virtues, Wright’s expository prowess deserves more than a passing mention. On every page of this new collection, and across a multitude of topics, Wright’s writing voice never falters – the clarifying poise of her phrasing, her unerring eye for the telling detail and the timeliness of her counterpoints.</p>
<p>For me, though, and this may well be a matter of personal taste, I was most won over by Wright’s environmental writing. In particular, the triumvirate of essays that follow in quick succession in this collection, “Conservation as a Concept” (1968), “Our Vanishing Chances” (1972) and “Conservation: Choice or Compulsion” (1975) left me breathless with their scope and clarity of vision.</p>
<p>What these essays carry is not only Wright’s trademark erudition, and her acute sense of the fatal interplay of historical forces, but the grain of life lived in the service of environmental struggle – the day-to-day praxis of fighting to save things. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-judith-wright-in-a-new-light-67222">Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A path of repair</h2>
<p>And by things, we must say without hyperbole, the world. For what is Fraser Island, what is the Great Barrier Reef, if not the world in its substance? </p>
<p>Wright’s vision seemed to directly repudiate the instrumental logic that relentlessly removed life from the world under the euphemism of selective appropriation. Mining the sand from Fraser Island is not just the selective removal of a resource: it destroys the world. </p>
<p>Wright begins “Conservation: Choice or Compulsion” with these remarks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Until very recently, most Australians felt that they were in possession of a virtually unlimited country whose only problems were those of “development”, “progress” and population. This unexamined attitude has coloured the whole of Australian settlement, and still rules the thinking of many people. The older generation, brought up in times when it seemed true, still thinks and acts in such terms; and our whole legislative, economic system is based on it. It might be called the Australian Myth, and an accepted social mythology is very hard to change even when facts emerge to contradict it.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460230/original/file-20220428-16-at6cvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An aerial image of a fire on K'gari (Fraser Island) captured on Monday 30 November 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">QFES/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This essay goes on to provide an unblinking account of Australian environmental failure, and how ecological destruction is wired into the basic circuitry of the nation. She is under no illusion about the difficulty of change: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sweeping changes needed to cope with such a radically new position [i.e. “that we are coming hard up against certain limits”] are difficult enough to make any planning and implementation of them both unpopular and highly delicate from a political point of view.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though I knew many of the more famous essays in this collection, there were many I had never seen. One of the essays that had slipped beneath my notice was “Australia – Landscape Ancient and Modern”, which was published in the collection Australia Fair? (1984). </p>
<p>In this essay, Wright takes the reader around the continent of Australia, effortlessly offering up its geological and environmental history, floating like a kind of spirit through the diverse biomes of this unique land. </p>
<p>Under her pen, Australia, not as nationalist unity, but as an assemblage of lifeworlds, starts to pulse and come alive. At such moments, this collection brings this great writer back to us. </p>
<p>The collection ends with more intimate writings, including examples from Wright’s letters. A central part of her genius is that she never forgets where she comes from. Her most important thinking can be traced to her upbringing within her family’s pastoral empire.</p>
<p>Raised in the bosom of New England squattocracy, Wright was able to see firmly what everyone else was trying desperately and constantly to forget. Prising herself from the self-exculpatory myths of a pioneering family set her on a path to see the world for what it is. </p>
<p>The recognition that she was “born of the conquerors” was something Wright met with decisive courage. Her instinct was never to wring her hands or offer empty platitudes, but to set out a path of repair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Hughes-d'Aeth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new collection of non-fiction by one of Australia’s greatest poets enriches our understanding of her legacy.Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Professor, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1803112022-04-14T05:36:24Z2022-04-14T05:36:24ZTrue writing is a convulsive act: inside the mind of Elena Ferrante<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457820/original/file-20220413-16-c1je05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C11%2C1888%2C1264&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gaia Girace and Margherita Mazzucco in the television adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novel My Brilliant Friend (2018)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image: IMDb</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Where does great writing come from? How does the reading of writers shape their work? Perhaps the great writers are true originals, free from influence? </p>
<p>For many readers of Elena Ferrante’s celebrated novels of the relationships between girls and women, her stories are so distinctive they appear to have arrived fully formed. In the essays collected in her latest book, though, she offers a compelling account of the vital role her reading has played in the creation of her work.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing – Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa)</em></p>
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<p>Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym; the author’s true identity is unknown. And there is a connection between her anonymity throughout her long career – even as the Neapolitan novels brought her international fame – and the way she regards her inheritance from literature. This singular writer associates her anonymity with a refusal to promote the individual writer to “protagonist”. </p>
<p>During <a href="http://elenaferrante.com/reviews/the-paris-review-2/">a rare in-person interview</a> with her publishers, Ferrante argued against the media’s “demand for self-promotion”. All literature, she said, is the product of tradition:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a sort of collective intelligence. We wrongfully diminish this intelligence when we insist on there being a single protagonist behind every work of art.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the Margins, a collection of four essays on a life of reading and writing, makes clear the complex debt to literature that Ferrante and all writers owe, no matter how distinctive and celebrated they might be. Together the essays offer a fascinating commentary on coming to writing through reading. Importantly, they show how a restless critique of one’s reading and writing can add fuel to the fire.</p>
<h2>Writing inside the margins</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455448/original/file-20220331-24-j6b8lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) was the great female poet of the Renaissance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
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<p>The first essay, “Pain and Pen”, describes the young Ferrante’s first attempts to write and sets up the major theme of the book: the struggle between two kinds of writing. </p>
<p>At school, learning to write in her notebook, Ferrante was taught to write neatly, within the red margins of the page, often encountering punishment for straying over the right-hand line. From then on, she felt both a sense of danger when she strayed too close to the margin and a curtailment when her writing remained neatly within the red margins: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe that the sense I have of writing – and all the struggles it involves – has to do with the satisfaction of staying beautifully within the margins and, at the same time, with the impression of loss, of waste, because of that success. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ferrante’s novels, we come to understand, emerge from a battle between form and wildness. </p>
<h2>The female pen</h2>
<p>A parallel struggle arises for the young writer between what she reads – what has been decreed literature – and what she might write, from her own imperfect self. </p>
<p>For a young woman, there is an extra degree of difficulty. “I read a lot,” Ferrante says of her youth, “but what I liked was almost always written by men.” </p>
<p>She tried unsatisfactorily to imitate the “male voice” in her head. By the end of her adolescence, that male voice had left Ferrante believing that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not only was writing difficult but I was a girl and so would never be able to write books like those great writers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Literature is intimidating and excluding, but it will also articulate for Ferrante the nature of the problem and suggest solutions. Towards the end of high school, she tells us, “completely by chance I came across the Rime of Gaspara Stampa”. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/stampa-gaspara-1523-1554">Stampa</a>, the great female poet of the Renaissance, used her pain in love to inspire her pen, wishing to draw from within </p>
<blockquote>
<p>her own “human flesh”, a garment of words sewn with a pain of her own and a pen of her own. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Across the centuries, Stampa’s writing passes on its message: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the female pen, precisely because it is unexpected within the female tradition, had to make an enormous, courageous effort.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Several times in these essays, books arrive in Ferrante’s hands like a divine gift, offering just what she needs. Messages appear in chance readings, re-readings and re-evaluations of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and others.</p>
<p>She learns that writing requires deep courage, that the small “I” of a woman might link herself to history, that women can tell their own and each other’s stories. In Dante, she sees Beatrice speak with wisdom and authority, and it spurs her on.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-dantes-divine-comedy-84603">Guide to the Classics: Dante’s Divine Comedy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>True writing is tempting fate</h2>
<p>The books appear when the writer needs them, as if by magic, but it is clear that in Ferrante they find a hungry and perceptive reader, alert to the lessons of reading, ready to absorb what the young writer needs. </p>
<p>Writing, like reading, requires this kind of alertness to the gifts of chance. Ferrante portrays the writer as a patient being, keeping an eye out in the work for the spark of something alive that will capture the chaotic energy of the world. </p>
<p>“It’s one thing,” Ferrante writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to plan a story and execute it well, another is that completely aleatoric writing, no less active than the world it tries to order. </p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455367/original/file-20220330-23-1a2qpv0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Gertrude Stein in 1913.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Alea</em> in “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music">aleatoric</a>” is from the Latin for dice. The writer throws the dice and must be ready to follow where they lead her.</p>
<p>Reading the diaries of Virginia Woolf, Ferrante finds an image for the “true writing” she seeks. Woolf records a conversation with Lytton Strachey, in which she says that writing fiction is like rummaging in a bran pie. She is “twenty people” when she does this, and she does not know what will come out. </p>
<p>Writing, Ferrante reads from this, “is a pure tempting of fate”. It </p>
<blockquote>
<p>doesn’t pass through the sieve of a singular I, solidly planted in everyday life, but is twenty people, that is, a number thrown out there to say: when I write, not even I know who I am. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She waits for “other I’s” to pull her beyond the margins, to take her </p>
<blockquote>
<p>where I’m afraid to go, where it hurts me to go, where, if I go too far, I won’t necessarily know how to get back.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455447/original/file-20220331-21-m4arl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of Virginia Woolf - Roger Fry (c.1917)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-a-room-of-ones-own-virginia-woolfs-feminist-call-to-arms-145398">Guide to the classics: A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf's feminist call to arms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Frantamuglia</h2>
<p>It is easy to recognise here the novelist of the perilous emotional territory between girls and women, of the truths that others would be afraid to speak aloud. Ferrante understands that the work is to wait </p>
<blockquote>
<p>patiently to start writing with all the truth I’m capable of, destabilizing, deforming, to make space for myself with my whole body. For me true writing is that: not an elegant, studied gesture but a convulsive act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The truth of this writing comes from the subconscious. It is a “slip up” of the mind that draws on <em>frantamuglia</em>, what Ferrante’s mother called her internal terror: “a whirlpool of fragment-words … the debris from a land submerged by the fury of the waters”. </p>
<p>It is much more appealing to remain within the margins, to be a writer who orders the world “into neat narratives”, than to venture into this frightening territory. Yet Ferrante knows </p>
<blockquote>
<p>that the pages that finally persuade me to publish books come from there … beneath the order is an enduring energy that will stumble, disarrange …</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Frantamuglia</em> is also the title of a collection of Ferrante’s thoughts, letters and interviews published in 2016, soon after journalist Claudio Gatti published <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10/02/elena-ferrante-an-answer/">an article attempting to reveal her identity in the New York Review of Books</a>. The collection and the term stand as firm resistance to attempts to limit existence to the fully ordered and known. </p>
<h2>The difficulty of storytelling</h2>
<p>The perhaps inevitable result of the tension between order and some disarranging force is an increasing dissatisfaction with the realist form, with its pretence that the world leaves the imprint of truth on the page without an intermediary.</p>
<p>Ferrante becomes attuned to stories that illuminate the slipperiness of storytelling: “books that discuss how difficult it is to tell a story and yet intensify the desire to do it”.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Novelist Elizabeth Strout, author of My Name is Lucy Barton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Larry D. Moore/ Creative commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This becomes a lifelong obsession. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/05/i-felt-different-as-a-child-i-was-nearly-mute-elena-ferrante-in-conversation-with-elizabeth-strout">a recent correspondence with the novelist Elizabeth Strout</a>, Ferrante states that she particularly admires Strout’s novel My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) for the protagonist’s status as a writer and for its attention to the difficulties of saying, in writing, how something really was. Ferrante explains that she has a special shelf in her library for books that centre the problems of writing, and that My Name is Lucy Barton sits upon it. </p>
<p>We recognise Ferrante’s characters in such statements, the ways in which they make fierce attempts to narrate their lives. And we can very much see the author in the following, which Ferrante wrote in her notebook as a teenager: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The writer has a duty to put into words the shoves he gives and those he receives from others.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If “he” were replaced by “she”, Ferrante might be talking about any of her novels. </p>
<h2>The freedom of the cage</h2>
<p>Finally, the young Ferrante writes a book that doesn’t “seem too bad”. She develops a plan to send it to a publisher with a letter explaining the story’s origins and influences. What she will write in this letter seems clear to her. She describes the real people and places from which she began, and the distortions it has been necessary to apply, as well as the novels that have inspired her writing. </p>
<p>As she goes on, however, the truth of the letter becomes complicated. She sees her “urge to exaggerate defects, minimize virtues, and vice versa”. There is an inkling, too, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>of what I could have written in that book but that would have hurt me to write, and so I hadn’t done it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ferrante gives up on the endeavour, but over the years she makes important discoveries: about writing in the first person, about realism as a “repertory of tricks”, about the centrality of the narrator, about the inability of literature to order the “whirlpool of debris”. She credits these discoveries to the attempt to write that letter. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1083&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1361&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455445/original/file-20220331-18-kj80a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1361&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dante and Beatrice - Ary Scheffer (1851)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That letter and its dormant lessons might be considered an “exegesis”. An exegesis is a critical interpretation of a text, originally of scripture. It has become a genre of assessment within the study of creative expression. Students of creative writing, art and music, for example, will produce a piece and provide an accompanying exegesis. </p>
<p>An exegesis can be difficult to write, as the letter was for Ferrante. It is trying to get at an elusive kind of truth. How was the thing made? Where did it come from? </p>
<p>The exegesis forms a kind of partner to the art, as reading is to writing. It responds to and helps to create the artwork dynamically. The discoveries made in writing the exegesis, in considering what has been learned in trying to make the art, should help to develop the art further. Ferrante’s letter and these essays are stunning examples of this mode in practice over a life’s work.</p>
<p>The significance of exegesis arises from the importance of critical reading. All writers do the work of exegesis, even if they don’t try to write down the process. They interact with what they read, working through admiration and dissatisfaction. A writer I admire tells only a part of the truth – what can I make of that?</p>
<p>In these essays, Ferrante tells a gripping story of how the writing self is made by reading, of how literature is writing that both admires and is dissatisfied with the forms that it has been given. </p>
<p>“I’ve never stopped believing in the importance of the writing we’ve inherited, which the ‘I’ who writes … is made of,” Ferrante tells us. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The challenge, I thought and think, is to learn to use with freedom the cage we’re shut up in.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Belinda Castles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In her new essay collection, Elena Ferrante tells the compelling story of her reading and writing life, and the battle between form and wildness.Belinda Castles, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1777072022-02-28T07:55:50Z2022-02-28T07:55:50ZIndigenous voices, #MeToo and disrupting genre: how the tenth Stella longlist reflects its mission of creating change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448854/original/file-20220228-15-mgsr7j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The first three winners of the Stella Prize, at the 2015 ceremony. Left to right: Clare Wright (2014, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka), inaugural winner Carrie Tiffany (2013, Mateship with Birds) and Emily Bitto (2015, The Strays).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Stella Prize, Connor Tomas O'Brien</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now in its tenth year, the Stella Prize – <a href="https://stella.org.au/2021/08/stellas-story/">founded as a reaction to the under-representation of women in Australian literary culture</a> – has been a force for change. As conversations about representation continue to evolve, the prize does too.</p>
<p>This year’s longlist, just announced, reflects those conversations. </p>
<p>For example, five of the 12 longlisted writers are Indigenous. One writer is non-binary (the first non-binary writer to be recognised was just last year). And in the first year that poetry is eligible, there are three poetry collections (plus one hybrid collection). Overall, it’s a longlist that adventurously moves across genres.</p>
<p>The prize continues to recognise new and younger writers: seven of the longlisted titles are first books. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448851/original/file-20220228-25-19ethq9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The 2022 Stella Prize longlist is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/growing-age-terror/">Coming of Age in the War on Terror</a> by <strong>Randa Abdel-Fattah</strong> (New South Books)</p>
<p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/eunice-andrada-take-care/">TAKE CARE</a> by <strong>Eunice Andrada</strong> (Giramondo Publishing)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/dropbear">Dropbear</a> by <strong>Evelyn Araluen</strong> (University of Queensland Press)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/She-Is-Haunted-Paige-Clark-9781760879976">She is Haunted</a> by <strong>Paige Clark</strong> (Allen & Unwin)</p>
<p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/no-document/">No Document</a> by <strong>Anwen Crawford</strong> (Giramondo Publishing)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/bodies-of-light">Bodies of Light</a> by <strong>Jennifer Down</strong> (Text Publishing)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Bila-Yarrudhanggalangdhuray/Anita-Heiss/9781760850449">Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray</a> by <strong>Anita Heiss</strong> (Simon & Schuster)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/stone-fruit">Stone Fruit</a> by <strong>Lee Lai</strong> (Fantagraphics)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/permafrost">Permafrost</a> by <strong>S.J. Norman</strong> (University of Queensland Press)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.magabala.com/products/homecoming">Homecoming</a> by <strong>Elfie Shiosaki</strong> (Magabala Books)</p>
<p><a href="https://corditebooks.org.au/products/the-open">The Open</a> by <strong>Lucy Van</strong> (Cordite Books)</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/another-day-in-the-colony">Another Day in the Colony</a> by <strong>Chelsea Watego</strong> (University of Queensland Press)</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448839/original/file-20220228-14-83pugq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<h2>Life-changing win means inclusion is important</h2>
<p>For a writer, winning the Stella Prize is an economic and symbolic bonanza, guaranteeing sales, prestige, $A50,000 in prize money, and an associated stream of income from book tours and festivals. </p>
<p>After winning the Stella Prize last year for her novel The Bass Rock, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-22/stella-prize-winner-evie-wyld-the-bass-rock-gothic/100086620">Evie Wyld said</a> that even the money she had received for her longlisting ($1000) and shortlisting ($2000) helped her to survive during a time of pandemic and lockdowns. </p>
<p>“It really [did] mean that I don’t have to look for work elsewhere and so I can get on with writing”. </p>
<p>The stakes of the win make questions of inclusion – and who can benefit from the opportunities offered by the prize – especially important.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448835/original/file-20220228-26-1rd0003.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evie Wyld said her Stella Prize win enabled her to write during the pandemic, and not look for work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/">State Library of NSW/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Nine of ten Miles Franklin winners have been women since the Stella Prize launched</h2>
<p>The Stella Prize was created in 2012, as a response to all-male shortlists for the Miles Franklin Award in 2009 and 2011. The Miles Franklin Award had been dominated by male writers since its inception in 1957. </p>
<p>Since the Stella Prize began, nine of the past ten Miles Franklin Award winners have been women. In 2013, the year after the first Stella Prize was awarded, <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-years-miles-franklin-is-all-woman-13833">the Miles Franklin shortlist was all women for the first time</a>. </p>
<p>Since 2016, five of the six winners of the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (one of the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards) have been women. </p>
<h2>Gender gap continues – except in poetry</h2>
<p><a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-49142-0">A 2020 study</a> found a continuing gender gap in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards (1979-2015), the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (1985-2015), and the Miles Franklin Award (1965-2015), except in the genre of poetry. </p>
<p>It discovered that women were 29% of the Miles Franklin Award winners and 30% of winners of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. </p>
<p>Figures for other prizes were 39% for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 30% for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, 36% for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, and 48% for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. </p>
<p>The Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Poetry was the only prize where the majority of the winners were women (53%). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="woman speaking at podium" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448832/original/file-20220228-25-1lb27o3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Alexis Wright at Stella Prize Award Night Credit Connor Tomas OBrien x.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stella Prize</span></span>
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<h2>Criticisms: overwhelming whiteness and calls for attention to diversity</h2>
<p>Prizes for women’s writing are <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/stella-prize-sends-a-message-that-women-are-incapable-of-competing-intellectually-with-men-nicolle-flint/news-story/4e933e5d9923ca9ba623458c8fb8ff6e">sometimes criticised</a> for <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/sonya-harnett-on-children-golden-boys-the-stella-prize-and-animals/news-story/b6b7f80bada1904a5e83bf1684a32a2d">hiving off women’s writing</a>, or somehow marking it as secondary to that of their male contemporaries. <a href="https://cherwell.org/2020/09/23/a-prize-of-ones-own-do-we-really-need-the-womens-prize-for-fiction/">These arguments</a> seem to assume that prizes exist in a bubble, ignoring the surrounding power structures that shape the literary field.</p>
<p>The Stella Prize has also been criticised for the whiteness of its longlist choices. Alexis Wright is the only writer of colour <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexis-wright-wins-2018-stella-prize-for-tracker-an-epic-feat-of-aboriginal-storytelling-94906">to be awarded the prize</a>, for <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/tracker/">Tracker</a> in 2018. </p>
<p>While the Stella Prize is the organisation’s best known initiative, it also generates school resources and events, and its Stella Count surveys the extent of gender bias in book reviews. </p>
<p>The Stella Count has helped to close the gender gap in book reviewing, but has been criticised for not including authors who are non-binary and for <a href="https://theconversation.com/diversity-the-stella-count-and-the-whiteness-of-australian-publishing-69976">not considering diversity</a>. </p>
<h2>Genre, marginalisation and cultural value</h2>
<p>Feminist approaches to Australian literature have often overlooked genre as an issue. Yet the marginalisation or exclusion of particular genres in criticism and literary prizes influences how different kinds of literature are culturally valued. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448833/original/file-20220228-15-1l0xo4a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Three poetry books are longlisted this year: Eunice Andrada’s TAKE CARE, Evelyn Araluen’s Drop Bear and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-poetic-metre-53364">Lucy Van</a>’s The Open. Yet the longlist foregrounds the limits of generic categories. Araluen and Van’s collections include prose poetry, and Elfie Shiosaki’s hyrbid collection, Homecoming, draws together poetry, prose and the colonial archive to tell family stories that have been historically positioned outside literature. Anwen Crawford’s No Document blends the essay with lyric, and makes use of blank space to meditate on ephemeral art practice and lost friendship.</p>
<p>The longlist also includes a graphic novel. Lee Lai’s <a href="https://granta.com/stone-fruit/">Stone Fruit</a> contrasts the joy within a chosen queer family with the difficulties that emerge when trying to navigate older family ties and lack of acceptance. </p>
<p>Many longlisted works are hybrid in form, conveying complex ideas and feelings. Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Coming of Age in the War on Terror draws together memoir, historical record, and interviews to explore the impact of Islamophobia on the generation of children after 9/11. </p>
<h2>Calling out colonial violence</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448830/original/file-20220228-4024-1nslqy1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The five Indigenous writers on the longlist share a focus on intergenerational memory, calling out colonialism’s ongoing violence. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/chelsea-bond-the-new-closing-the-gap-is-about-buzzwords-not-genuine-change-for-indigenous-australia-143681">Chelsea Watego</a> is scathing about a discourse of hope, instead proposing a life of sovereignty, activism and joy. Evelyn Araluen casts a sharp eye over the racism of early children’s literature and the settler-colonial myths and desires that shape suburbia and poetry. <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-with-author-anita-heiss-on-growing-up-aboriginal-in-australia-102644">Anita Heiss</a> celebrates Wiradyuri language in her historical novel, which revisits Wiradyuri bravery during the 1852 flood of Gundagai. </p>
<h2>Thinking beyond Australia</h2>
<p>Many of the longlisted writers explore how histories continue to shape places and everyday life. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448834/original/file-20220228-15-qsxkr4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Lucy Van’s long poems meditate on aspects of familiarity, privacy and security. Indigneous writer S.J. Norman considers how ghosts haunt the contemporary consciousness at sites of past trauma. Paige Clark examines how young women of colour navigate expectations that come from within the family as much as without, and sometimes surreal strategies used to cope with vulnerability. Eunice Andrada explores how sexualised violence intersects with racism in war crimes, rape culture, harassment, and stereotypes. </p>
<h2>Stella and Miles</h2>
<p>Literary prizes operate in a shared ecology. Yes, the Stella Prize has significantly influenced the Miles Franklin Award, whose founder (<a href="https://theconversation.com/reclaim-her-name-why-we-should-free-australias-female-novelists-from-their-male-pseudonyms-144404">Stella Maria Miles Franklin</a>) it was named for. But the Stella Prize has also benefited from that prize’s authority.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="woman standing with umbrella, side on, wearing hat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448836/original/file-20220228-23-1xxj1p7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miles Franklin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Alexis Wright received a Miles Franklin Award eleven years before her Stella Prize. Evie Wyld also won the Miles Franklin Award, with <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/all-the-birds-singing-9780143791034">All the Birds, Singing</a>, seven years before her Stella win. This year’s chair of the Stella Prize, Melissa Lucashenko, <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-wit-and-tenderness-miles-franklin-winner-melissa-lucashenko-writes-back-to-the-whitemans-world-121176">was the 2019 Miles Franklin Award winner</a> for Too Much Lip. South African activist Sisonke Msimang was on the judging panel for both the 2021 Miles Franklin Award and the 2022 Stella Prize. Melinda Harvey, co-leader of the 2018 Stella Count, was a judge of the Miles Franklin Award from 2017 to 2021.</p>
<p>While such overlaps suggest a decreasing distinction between the two prizes, their missions are distinctly different. The Miles Franklin is guided by its founder’s desire to annually reward “a novel of the highest literary merit that presents Australian life in any of its phases”. </p>
<p>The Stella Prize’s mission is “to promote Australian women’s writing, support greater participation in the world of books, and create a more equitable and vibrant national culture”. </p>
<p>It is inherently about change – as reflected in the 2022 longlist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177707/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Vickery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As conversations about literary representation evolve, so does the Stella Prize. Five of the 12 authors on the tenth Stella Prize longlist are Indigenous, one is non-binary, and genre is in the mix.Ann Vickery, Professor in Writing and Literature, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1723842022-02-01T02:38:48Z2022-02-01T02:38:48ZCompelling even to his critics: Mission by Noel Pearson explores rights, land and justice<p>How does one tell the story of a life lived well in public service, and in service of your community? </p>
<p>That is the broad ambition of <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/mission-0#:%7E:text=Mission%20traces%20a%20life%20of%20politics%2C%20ideas%20and%20inspiring%20words.&text=There%20are%20indelible%20portraits%20of,Uluru%20Statement%20from%20the%20Heart.">Mission</a>, the latest book from Noel Pearson, First Nations lawyer, activist and founder of the <a href="https://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/our-partnership/cape-york-institute/">Cape York Institute</a>. </p>
<p>Mission, a series of Pearson’s essays, speeches and eulogies, is not as disjointed or disconnected as such collections sometimes are. </p>
<p>Instead, the collection presents a unified and coherent story of his life in public, his advocacy and the consistent views he has held over this time. </p>
<p>Mission portrays Pearson as only he himself could – a towering figure within the First Nations community, and one whose work has shaped decades of policy and debate on the issues most important to us and our communities: rights, land and justice.</p>
<p>It’s well worth your time to read to get an understanding of the man himself, and of the last several decades of First Nations affairs in this country.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A yellow book cover titled 'Mission' by Noel Pearson." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443305/original/file-20220131-25-1ywct87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/mission-0#:~:text=Mission%20traces%20a%20life%20of%20politics%2C%20ideas%20and%20inspiring%20words.&text=There%20are%20indelible%20portraits%20of,Uluru%20Statement%20from%20the%20Heart.">Black Inc. Books</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pearson the man, Pearson the politics</h2>
<p>I should be upfront at the outset of this review. I do not share much of Pearson’s politics, especially his idea of the “<a href="https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/white-guilt-victimhood-and-the-quest-for-a-radical-centre/">radical centre</a>”, and his views on some topics I strongly disagree with. I very much find myself to the left of politics, and see that as a legitimate way forward for First Nations communities. </p>
<p>This, however, is not a reason to discount what I have to say in this review. I would argue it is much better to be reviewed by people with whom you do not always see eye-to-eye, rather than devoted fans. Indeed, throughout this collection, Pearson outlines his positions in such clear and commonsense ways, even I found myself coming around on some of them. </p>
<p>It opens with the titular namesake essay, a 75-page reflection on his upbringing, early life and devotion to his community. The book then delves into many of the key parts of Pearson’s life and politics, including sections entitled After Mabo, The Radical Centre, Labor and Social Democracy, Profiles in Power and A Rightful Place. </p>
<p>All of these contain many essays on key issues of their time, and of today, all of which maintain their relevance to a contemporary audience. </p>
<p>His eulogy of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, praised at the time it was given as <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/noel-pearsons-eulogy-for-gough-whitlam-praised-as-one-for-the-ages-20141105-11h7vm.html">one of the best speeches ever in Australian politics</a>, channels Pearson’s usual intellectual rigour alongside his wit, and his clear values in advancing his own community. Apart from all the successes of the Whitlam government, he asked, what did that “Roman ever do for us?” </p>
<p>An excerpt from Pearson’s speech: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Only those who have known discrimination truly know its evil. Only those who have never experienced prejudice can discount the importance of the Racial Discrimination Act. This old man was one of those rare people who never suffered discrimination but understood the importance of protection from its malice. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JsXmYHiuJ8s?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Noel Pearson remembers Gough Whitlam.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-closer-look-at-noel-pearsons-eulogy-for-gough-whitlam-33932">A closer look at Noel Pearson’s eulogy for Gough Whitlam</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A call for constitutional recognition</h2>
<p>A number of Pearson’s pieces in Mission are much less known and also much more recent. The newest and final essays present some of the clearest and best language on the recognition of First Nations people in the Constitution. </p>
<p>Pearson is a strong advocate for constitutional recognition and a Voice to Parliament, and alongside Professor Megan Davis and Aunty Pat Anderson, will <a href="https://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/2021-sydney-peace-prize-award-ceremony-and-lecture/">receive the 2021 Sydney Peace Prize</a> this March on behalf of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. </p>
<p>Pearson writes strongly on why a Voice to Parliament is not only desired by First Nations people, but necessary for our full inclusion in this country, and to move forward on advancing issues of change for Blackfullas nationwide. </p>
<p>Pearson states: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why recognition? The answer is straightforward: because the Indigenous peoples of Australia have never been recognised. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not a dumbing down of complex issues to be palatable for an audience, it is presenting true and undoubtable facts about this nation and First Nations peoples’ place within it. </p>
<p>As Pearson writes in one of the essays entitled A Rightful Place, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>history is never resolved, and we should not make a shared future contingent on a shared path. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1465856927884324870"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/most-australians-support-first-nations-voice-to-parliament-survey-157964">Most Australians support First Nations Voice to parliament: survey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This series of essays on Uluru, recognition and the true place of First Nations people are the most powerful. They speak to a disenfranchisement, detachment and degradation of our people throughout history, and why a Voice to Parliament as a form of recognition is so necessary. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians is not a project of woke identity politics, it is Australia’s longest-standing and unresolved project for justice and inclusion. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words should be burned into the retinas of every politician, journalist and academic across the country. This project on First Nations constitutional recognition is not merely one in which we are engaged because we feel it is good politics. It is a project to fundamentally reshape the nation for the better, and to achieve justice and equity for our people after many centuries of dispossession and disregard.</p>
<h2>The power of his voice</h2>
<p>The only thing really lost in this collection is something which is not the fault of anyone but the format. In reading these essays, rather than listening to Pearson speak them, you lose the power of his presence and his articulation, and the way he captures an audience the way very few can. But what you don’t lose is his voice, which is as clear and consistent in his convictions, as if he were standing right before you. </p>
<p>Pearson is a strong advocate for his views and values, and presents them in a way that would be compelling even to his critics.</p>
<p>I’m not saying I walked away a changed man, but I definitely got a much better sense of who Pearson is from this book. On some things, I have come around more to his point of view, while on others, I feel even more sure of my own positions that counter Pearson’s. </p>
<p>Mission is a book worth reading whether you know of Pearson strongly or not, and whether you agree with him or not. You’ll find much to engage with here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172384/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Blackwell is affiliated with the Uluru Statement From the Heart Campaign, and is a member of the Australian Greens.</span></em></p>Mission, a series of Noel Pearson’s essays, speeches and eulogies, delves into many of the key parts of the author’s life and politics.James Blackwell, Research Fellow (Indigenous Diplomacy), Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1593102021-05-17T12:25:06Z2021-05-17T12:25:06ZHow student-designed video games made me rethink how I teach history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399882/original/file-20210510-19-1pw541d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C1017%2C544&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Ako: A Tale of Loyalty' takes players inside a young samurai's world in 18th-century Japan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epoch: History Games Initiative/University of Texas at Austin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine you’re a young samurai in Japan in 1701. You have to make a difficult choice between an impoverished life in exile, or the prospect of almost certain death while trying to avenge the death of your dishonored lord. Which do you choose?</p>
<p>“<a href="https://epochutaustin.itch.io/ako-a-test-of-loyalty">Ako: A Tale of Loyalty</a>,” a video game built in 2020, takes players along a difficult journey through early modern Japan filled with decisions like this one. It’s become an essential component of <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/ac73447#courses">my classes</a> on Japanese history, but it wasn’t developed by a professional game studio. Instead, it was created by a team of four undergraduate history majors with no specialized training.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Loading screen for black-and-white video game" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399244/original/file-20210506-14-151sndp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loading screen for the ‘Ako’ visual novel game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epoch: History Games Initiative/University of Texas at Austin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Designing a video game may seem like a strange assignment for a humanities classroom, but as a <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/ac73447">professor who teaches a range of courses in East Asian history</a> I have found that such exercises provide an engaging learning experience for students while also generating new educational content that can be widely shared. </p>
<h2>The gaming revolution</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.theesa.com/resource/2020-essential-facts/">Nearly two-thirds</a> of American adults play video games, and that figure rises steadily each year. Fueled by stay-at-home orders and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, global gaming sales rose to nearly <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/videogames-are-a-bigger-industry-than-sports-and-movies-combined-thanks-to-the-pandemic-11608654990">US$180 billion</a> in 2020. </p>
<p>Among university students, video games are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3078424">utterly pervasive</a>. When I ask my classes who consumes video game content, either as a player or via streaming services like <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/">Twitch</a>, it’s rare that a single student’s hand is not raised. </p>
<p>Schools and colleges have rushed to respond to these trends. Programs like <a href="https://gamestarmechanic.com/">Gamestar Mechanic</a> or <a href="https://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> help K-12 students learn basic coding skills, while many universities, including my own, have introduced <a href="https://sites.utexas.edu/gaming/">game design majors</a> to train the next generation of developers. </p>
<p>History professors, however, have been slower to embrace video games as teaching tools. Part of the problem is that the historical content contained within games is often, with some <a href="https://www.kingdomcomerpg.com/">exceptions</a>, repetitive and superficial.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Artwork from video game" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399247/original/file-20210506-17-d5dbfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Example of a player decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epoch: History Games Initiative/University of Texas at Austin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there are many games focused on Japanese history, for example, the majority reinforce the same tired image of the heroic warrior bound by the rigid code of “bushidō,” a code that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198706625.001.0001">scholars have shown</a> had very little to do with the daily life or conduct of most samurai.</p>
<h2>Designing humanities games</h2>
<p>In 2020, I asked four undergraduate history majors to design a fully functional video game with a clear educational payoff built around a controversial episode in Japanese history.</p>
<p>I was motivated by two ideas. First, I wanted to move beyond a standard reliance on academic essays. While I still assign essays, many students find them fairly passive exercises which don’t stimulate deep engagement with a topic. </p>
<p>Second, I was convinced that university professors need to get into the business of producing games content. To be clear, we’re not going to design anything even close to what comes out of professional studios. But we can produce compelling games that are ready to be used both in colleges and – equally important – K-12 classrooms, where teachers are always looking for vetted scholarly content. A conventional academic essay is intended for just one person, the professor. But a video game produced by a group of committed undergraduates can be played by thousands of students at different institutions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Video game artwork of two Japanese women" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399883/original/file-20210510-5469-1v0e4s7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The main character’s mother and sister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epoch: History Games Initiative/University of Texas at Austin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first, I worried the task I had set was too big and the technological barriers too high. None of the four team members was enrolled in a video game design program or had specialized training. It quickly became clear that such fears were overblown. </p>
<p>The team decided to work on a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/25/17879736/visual-novel-new-games-genre-neo-cab-solace-state-admiralo-island-witches-club-necrobarista">visual novel</a> game, a genre that originated in Japan and can best be described as interactive stories. The design process for such games is facilitated by programs such as <a href="https://www.renpy.org">Ren’Py</a>, which streamline development.</p>
<h2>Learning by design</h2>
<p>The team’s first task was to design a believable central character. Successful games push players to emotionally invest in their characters and the choices they make. In the case of “Ako,” the design team created a young samurai named Kanpei Hashimoto who was grounded in the period but also easy to relate to as a young person struggling to find his way in a complex world. </p>
<p>From there, the team created branching storylines punctuated by clear decisions. In total, “Ako” has five possible outcomes depending on the choices a player makes. Numerous smaller decisions along the way open up additional ways to navigate the game.</p>
<p>The next step was dialogue. A typical academic essay is around 2,500 words, and students often complain about how difficult it is to fill the required pages. In contrast, the “Ako” team wrote over 30,000 words of dialogue. It required extensive research. What would a samurai family have eaten for breakfast? How much did it cost to buy a “kaimyō,” or posthumous Buddhist name, for a deceased parent? How long did it take to make the <a href="https://www.wagasa.com/en/kyowagasa/">oiled paper umbrellas</a>, called “wagasa,” that many poor samurai sold to survive? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Video artwork of monk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399823/original/file-20210510-5525-b0i1vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engaging with different characters in the game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epoch: History Games Initiative/University of Texas at Austin</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, the students developed historically accurate artwork. The game has four chapters with 30 background images and 13 characters. Making sure everything was consistent with this period in Japanese history was a huge undertaking that stretched both me and the students. </p>
<p>Ultimately, the team learned more about samurai life and early modern Japan than any group of students I had worked with across a single semester. They read a dizzying array of books and articles while working and reworking the overall design, dialogue and artwork. And they succeeded in developing a fully functional video game that has already been used in other classrooms across the country. </p>
<p>Most importantly, I believe their experience provides a template for how student-designed video games can transform the humanities classroom. </p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159310/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Clulow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A history professor describes how student-designed video games have transformed his classroom and provided a substitute for academic essays.Adam Clulow, Professor of History, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1318982020-03-04T19:08:32Z2020-03-04T19:08:32ZWe should use ‘I’ more in academic writing – there is benefit to first-person perspective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318493/original/file-20200304-66064-1wuzbkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The use of the word “I” in academic writing, that is writing in the <a href="https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-writing-in-first-person.html">first person</a>, has a troublesome history. Some say it makes writing too subjective, others that it’s essential for accuracy.</p>
<p>This is reflected in how students, particularly in secondary schools, are trained to write. Teachers I work with are often surprised that I advocate, at times, invoking the first person in essays or other assessment in their subject areas. </p>
<p>In academic writing the role of the author is to explain their argument dispassionately and objectively. The author’s personal opinion in such endeavours is neither here nor there. </p>
<p>As noted in Strunk and White’s highly influential <a href="http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf">Elements of Style</a> – (first published in 1959) the writer is encouraged to place themselves in the background.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Write in a way that draws the reader’s attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This all seems very reasonable and scholarly. The move towards including the first person perspective, however, is becoming more <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1607509">acceptable</a> in academia.</p>
<p>There are times when invoking the first person is more meaningful and even rigorous than not. I will give three categories in which first person academic writing is more effective than using the third person.</p>
<h2>1. Where an academic is offering their personal view or argument</h2>
<p>Above, I could have said “there are three categories” rather than “I will give three categories”. The former makes a claim of discovering some objective fact. The latter, a more intellectually honest and accountable approach, is me offering my interpretation.</p>
<p>I could also say “three categories are apparent”, but that is ignoring the fact it is apparent to <em>me</em>. It would be an attempt to grant too much objectivity to a position than it deserves. </p>
<p>In a similar vein, statements such as “it can be argued” or “it was decided”, using the passive voice, avoid responsibility. It is much better to say “I will argue that” or “we decided that” and then go on to prosecute the argument or justify the decision. </p>
<p>Taking responsibility for our stances and reasoning is important culturally as well as academically. In a participatory democracy, we are expected to be accountable for our ideas and choices. It is also a stand against the kinds of anonymous assertions that easily proliferate via fake and unnamed social media accounts. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/post-truth-politics-and-why-the-antidote-isnt-simply-fact-checking-and-truth-87364">Post-truth politics and why the antidote isn't simply 'fact-checking' and truth</a>
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<p>It’s worth noting that <a href="https://www.nature.com/">Nature</a> – arguably one of the world’s best science journals – prefers authors to selectively avoid the passive voice. Its <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature-research/for-authors/write">writing guidelines</a> note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nature journals prefer authors to write in the active voice (“we performed the experiment…”) as experience has shown that readers find concepts and results to be conveyed more clearly if written directly.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>2. Where the author’s perspective is part of the analysis</h2>
<p>Some disciplines, such as <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/sites/default/files/docs/learningguide-firstpersonwritinganthropology.pdf">anthropology</a>, recognise that who is doing the research and why they are doing it ought to be overtly present in their presentation of it. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318544/original/file-20200304-66064-qi00nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There’s more to Descartes’ famous phrase than a claim to existence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cogito-ergo-sum-latin-philosophical-proposition-481385488">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Removing the author’s presence can allow important cultural or other perspectives held by the author to remain unexamined. This can lead to the so-called <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297525123_The_crisis_in_representation_Reflections_and_assessments">crisis of representation</a>, in which the interpretation of texts and other cultural artefacts is removed from any interpretive stance of the author. </p>
<p>This gives a false impression of objectivity. As the philosopher Thomas Nagel notes, there is no “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/View-Nowhere-Thomas-Nagel/dp/0195056442">view from nowhere</a>”. </p>
<p>Philosophy commonly invokes the first person position, too. <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/">Rene Descartes</a> famously inferred “I think therefore I am” (<em>cogito ergo sum</em>). But his use of the first person in <a href="http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/">Meditations on First Philosophy</a> was not simply an account of his own introspection. It was also an invitation to the reader to think for themselves.</p>
<h2>3. Where the author wants to show their reasoning</h2>
<p>The third case is especially interesting in education. </p>
<p>I tell students of science, critical thinking and <a href="https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf">philosophy</a> that a phrase guaranteed to raise my hackles is “I strongly believe …”. In terms of being rationally persuasive, this is not relevant unless they then go on tell me <em>why</em> they believe it. I want to know what and how they are thinking.</p>
<p>To make their thinking most clearly an object of my study, I need them to make themselves the subjects of their writing. </p>
<p>I prefer students to write something like “I am not convinced by Dawson’s argument because…” rather than “Dawson’s argument is opposed by DeVries, who says …”. I want to understand <em>their</em> thinking not just use the argument of DeVries. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/thinking-about-thinking-helps-kids-learn-how-can-we-teach-critical-thinking-129795">Thinking about thinking helps kids learn. How can we teach critical thinking?</a>
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<p>Of course I would hope they do engage with DeVries, but then I’d want them to say which argument they find more convincing and what their <em>own</em> reasons were for being convinced.</p>
<p>Just stating Devries’ objection is good analysis, but we also need students to evaluate and justify, and it is here that the first person position is most useful. </p>
<p>It is not always accurate to say a piece is written in the first or third person. There are reasons to invoke the first person position at times and reasons not to. An essay in which it is used once should not mean we think of the whole essay as from the first person perspective. </p>
<p>We need to be more nuanced about how we approach this issue and appreciate when authors should “place themselves in the background” and when their voice matters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ellerton is affiliated with the Centre for Critical and Creative Thinking. He is a Fellow of the Rationalist Society of Australia.</span></em></p>An academic should be able to use “I” in an essay which offers their point of view. In this way, they take responsibility for their argument.Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1299052020-01-23T19:01:16Z2020-01-23T19:01:16ZOK computer: to prevent students cheating with AI text-generators, we should bring them into the classroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311507/original/file-20200123-162228-ldmqif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8269%2C3367&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">AI systems may soon be able to generate texts that can pass for human work. Such technology has many positives, but could also result in widespread generation of false texts (including fake news). </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SHUTTERSTOCK</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Artificial intelligence-based (AI) programs are quickly improving at writing convincingly on many topics, for virtually no cost. It’s likely in a few years they’ll be churning out C-grade worthy essays for students.</p>
<p>We could try to ban them, but this software is highly accessible. It would be a losing battle.</p>
<p>Long-form writing, especially essay writing, remains one of the best ways to teach critical analysis. Teachers rely on this mode of assessment to gauge students’ understanding of a topic.</p>
<p>Thus, we need to find ways to help students of all disciplines thrive alongside advanced automation and smart systems, rather than resist them. This involves training students to work with AI tools, rather than banning them.</p>
<h2>What are AI-powered text generators?</h2>
<p>In February 2019, GPT-2, an AI-powered text generating system was released by <a href="https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/">OpenAI</a>. Those interested can try the system themselves by following <a href="https://minimaxir.com/2019/09/howto-gpt2/">these instructions</a>, or experiment with <a href="https://talktotransformer.com/">Talk to Transformer</a>, an online tool made using GPT-2. </p>
<p>The idea behind GPT-2 is similar to the predictive text function on a smartphone. A machine learning system was given 8 million web pages, and told to look at blocks of text to predict what word would come next. </p>
<p>The system compared its guess with the actual text to “learn”. This was repeated billions of times, resulting in the GPT-2 software.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-twitterbots-to-vr-10-of-the-best-examples-of-digital-literature-110099">From Twitterbots to VR: 10 of the best examples of digital literature</a>
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<p>Often within minutes, GPT-2 can generate texts that look like they <a href="https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/">were written by a human</a>. They’re grammatically correct, thematically coherent, engaging and even informative.</p>
<p>I gave GPT-2 this prompt: “The global system of
university ranking has recently…”. Here are some sentences it generated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The global system of university ranking has recently been the subject of heated debate, with many arguing that it is becoming increasingly irrelevant. In a report published in May, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the system has become increasingly irrelevant, with the gap between the best and the worst universities in the world narrowing in recent years. The OECD found that in the past decade, the average quality of a university’s research output has fallen to its lowest level since the late 1970s. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are several signs of a non-human hand at work, notably the repetition of “increasingly irrelevant”. There’s also the matter that no such OECD report exists. It was dreamt up by the machine. </p>
<p>That said, with a few revisions, the text could probably pass as being authored by a human.</p>
<p>There are a number of systems similar to GPT-2, including <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bert-explained-what-you-need-to-know-about-googles-new-algorithm/337247/">Google’s BERT</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/syncedreview/baidus-ernie-2-0-beats-bert-and-xlnet-on-nlp-benchmarks-51a8c21aa433">ERNIE2.0</a>, <a href="https://mlexplained.com/2019/06/30/paper-dissected-xlnet-generalized-autoregressive-pretraining-for-language-understanding-explained/">XLNet</a> and <a href="https://pytorch.org/hub/pytorch_fairseq_roberta/">Facebook’s RoBERTa</a>. But GPT-2 has caught on with tinkerers across the web – lauded for its <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953040/openai-text-generation-ai-gpt-2-full-model-release-1-5b-parameters">power</a> and ease of use in generating new texts.</p>
<h2>Available now near you</h2>
<p>GPT-2 comes in forms that let anyone use it easily, even without a powerful computer. Such tools are a looming problem for schools and universities.</p>
<p>In an experiment, I fed the system 188 student papers on Keith Basso’s book <a href="https://www.audible.com.au/pd/Wisdom-Sits-in-Places-Audiobook/1977379095?source_code=M2MOR131091619005N&gclsrc=aw.ds&ds_rl=1252391&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjarRvuyY5wIVCpOPCh3WogYQEAAYASAAEgKVy_D_BwE">Wisdom Sits in Places</a>, written for an anthropology course I teach. GPT-2 “learned” for about thirty minutes, after which it generated some paragraphs. </p>
<p>One begins: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this essay, I will show how conceptions of wisdom connect with place-names in Wisdom Sits in Places, by explaining how place-names serve as moral compass. I will also cover the cultural sphere of “notions of morality”, which is explained by the stories behind the place-names.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The text reads like an essay. It’s divided into four paragraphs and describes what appears to be examples from the book. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/technology-and-regulation-must-work-in-concert-to-combat-hate-speech-online-93072">Technology and regulation must work in concert to combat hate speech online</a>
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<p>I would have failed the text as is. The writing isn’t perfect, and in places the writer seems to lose their train of thought. However, with slight human revision, an essay worthy of a C would be within reach. </p>
<h2>Adapt, don’t resist</h2>
<p>People are already experimenting with GPT-2 for <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/14/gwerns-ai-generated-poetry/">poetry</a>, text-based role-playing games, and plays written in a Shakespearean style. Worryingly, it can also produce endless streams of fake news. </p>
<p>What can institutions do about such “plagiarised” work flooding their classrooms? </p>
<p>One response would be to ban AI tools. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/sep/27/university-chiefs-urge-education-secretary-to-ban-essay-mills">Leaders of 40 universities in the UK have taken this approach</a> against <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/essay-mills-prey-on-vulnerable-students-lets-stamp-them-out">essay mills</a>, pushing to make them illegal. Essay mills are run by people who charge students a fee in exchange for completing their work.</p>
<p>But it’s unclear how such a ban could be enforced once AI software is as easy to access as Candy Crush. Institutions could look to existing rules against academic misconduct, but accurate detection becomes a problem. As AI-generated texts get better, how will we prove (without watching them) that a student did or didn’t write a text themselves? </p>
<p>We can’t, so we should take a page from <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151201-the-cyborg-chess-players-that-cant-be-beaten">cyborg chess play</a>, where players embrace chess-playing computers to become better themselves.</p>
<p>Rather than pretending AI doesn’t exist, it might be time to train people to write <em>with</em> AI.</p>
<p>Most good writers don’t write in isolation; they talk and revise their work with others. Also, 90% of writing is revision, which means the ideas and arguments in a text change and develop as a writer reads and edits their own work.</p>
<p>Thus, systems such as GPT-2 could be used as a first-draft machine, taking a student’s raw research notes and turning them into a text they can expand on and revise. </p>
<p>In this model, teachers would evaluate a work, not just on the basis of the final product, but on a student’s ability to use text-generating tools. </p>
<p>Powerful AI tools could help us analyse and communicate complex ideas.</p>
<h2>What should we judge our students on?</h2>
<p>All of the above prompts a question we need to consider if we’re to live in an AI-friendly world: why do we teach students to write at all? </p>
<p>One major reason is many jobs rely on being able to write. So, when teaching writing, we need to think about the social and economic implications of a type of text. </p>
<p>Much of today’s media landscape, for instance, runs on the continuous production and circulation of blog posts, tweets, listicles, marketing reports, slide presentations, and e-mails. </p>
<p>While computer writing might never be as original, provocative, or insightful as the work of a skilled human, it will quickly become good enough for such writing jobs, and AIs won’t need health insurance or holidays. </p>
<p>If we teach students to write things a computer can, then we’re training them for jobs a computer can do, for cheaper. </p>
<p>Educators need to think creatively about the skills we give our students. In this context, we can treat AI as an enemy, or we can embrace it as a partner that helps us learn more, work smarter, and faster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant Jun Otsuki receives funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>AI-powered text generators are becoming increasingly easy to access. Rather than banning their use by students, educators should think about incorporating such tools into their curriculums.Grant Jun Otsuki, Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1134872019-03-19T14:08:43Z2019-03-19T14:08:43ZUniversities must stop relying on software to deal with plagiarism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264586/original/file-20190319-60953-djdgce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Often students plagiarise because they don't understand how to write in an academic setting.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Contimis Works/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Educational software – whether it’s a teaching aid or a program designed to help teachers with administration – is big business. The recent <a href="https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-03-06-turnitin-to-be-acquired-by-advance-publications-for-1-75b">multi-billion dollar acquisition</a> of <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ps13-billion-turnitin-sale-spotlights-intellectual-property-fears">Turnitin</a>, a program that is used around the world to flag possible evidence of plagiarism, is further proof of this. </p>
<p>But does this application mean that universities are actually dealing with plagiarism? <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2019.1573971">Our research</a>, conducted across South Africa’s public universities, suggests not. We found there was a reliance on software to identify plagiarism in ways that brought undesirable changes in students’ behaviour. Turnitin was broadly used by universities – but its purpose was largely misunderstood. It was considered plagiarism detection software rather than what it actually is: a text-matching tool. </p>
<p>Turnitin and similar programs don’t deal with the causes of plagiarism. Rather, they allow institutions to claim they’re doing something without really tackling the issues that lead students to plagiarise.</p>
<p>Educational software provides a number of <a href="https://theconversation.com/carrot-or-the-stick-technology-and-university-plagiarism-9802">powerful tools</a> for supporting the development of student writing. But when it is superficially used, as often is the case with Turnitin and similar programs at South African universities, that development is undermined.</p>
<p>Students should be taught how to write academically and to avoid plagiarism. Instead, they are being encouraged to write in ways that fool the software. This encourages an instrumentalist understanding of what constitutes academic writing. It portrays the academic process of writing as a technical endeavour – you must avoid the sin of plagiarism – rather than what it really is: a complex practice of knowledge production that draws on prior research.</p>
<h2>Software lacks nuance</h2>
<p>The software used by Turnitin and similar programs works by matching text. It identifies instances where a paragraph or sentence or phrase in an essay is identical to one in, for instance, an academic journal article. It then generates a report with a “similarity index” percentage. This shows how similar the essay is to other pieces of work. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, many academics believe this percentage equates to degrees of plagiarism. At some South African universities, if the similarity exceeds a certain percentage, a student is automatically assumed to have plagiarised – and fails the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2019.1573971">assignment</a>. They may also, depending on the institution’s plagiarism policy, face disciplinary sanction.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that Turnitin doesn’t claim its software detects <a href="https://www.turnitin.com/blog/does-turnitin-detect-plagiarism">plagiarism</a>. The company encourages those marking student work to remember this, and to apply their own discretion in deciding whether they’re dealing with malicious, deliberate plagiarism. </p>
<p>But despite that disclaimer, academics and students believe Turnitin is an accurate “plagiarism detector”. We have run staff and student development workshops about academic writing in institutions across South Africa, and in some other African countries. At such events, one question inevitably arises: “What is the acceptable percentage on the Turnitin report?”</p>
<p>By insisting that students achieve less than a certain percentage on a similarity report, universities encourage a “plagiarise, but don’t get caught” <a href="http://postgradenvironments.com/2017/09/22/misuses-turnitin-text-matching-software/">approach</a>. Students are being encouraged to rework and resubmit their assignments, paraphrasing the highlighted similar text, until their plagiarism evades the software. </p>
<p>This is not a solution to the problem of plagiarism. The act of plagiarism occurs along a continuum from intentional to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/plagiarism-the-internet-and-student-learning-improving-academic-integrity/oclc/166361347">unintentional</a>. Certainly, some students may purchase essays from <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-plagiarism-theres-a-new-and-bigger-threat-to-academic-integrity-46210">paper mills</a> or may cut-and-paste because they think they can get away with it. These students must be punished. Intentional acts of plagiarism require swift, clear responses.</p>
<p>But a great many students plagiarise because they have never been taught about the norms of knowledge production in the academy. </p>
<p>Setting a percentage on the similarity index won’t help. Telling students that a percentage flung out by a piece of software can have enormous consequences for their progress is both nonsensical and educationally unsound. Universities must invest time and resources in developing students’ understanding about writing and knowledge production in different academic disciplines.</p>
<p>Software lacks human nuance. The similarity index alone cannot tell academics whether the phrases it highlights are deliberately plagiarised, are examples of formulaic statements required by the discipline, or are just poorly referenced. The Turnitin report only becomes meaningful when interpreted by an actual person.</p>
<p>Software also can’t identify plagiarism when the student has paraphrased someone else’s ideas and is passing them off as her own. For this reason, plagiarising students whose home language is the same as the medium of instruction are <a href="https://www.peterlang.com/view/9783631781593/xhtml/chapter03.xhtml">unlikely to be picked up</a> by the software. </p>
<h2>Use software better</h2>
<p>Why do academics rely so heavily on software like Turnitin? A large part of the reason is probably the burden of <a href="https://www.che.ac.za/media_and_publications/monitoring-and-evaluation/vitalstats-public-higher-education-2016">growing class sizes</a>. Academics have more students, and less time. Writing development takes time. This may explain the abdication of responsibility to software programs.</p>
<p>Turnitin offers a range of capabilities. It can be used to show students how to build strong claims from multiple sources. But using it simply to detect and punish students entails a <a href="https://theconversation.com/policing-plagiarism-could-make-universities-miss-the-real-problems-45172">policing relationship</a> at odds with learning. </p>
<p>Academics need support to understand how to use the software in developmental ways and universities need to resist calling for simplistic solutions to complex issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Mphahlele receives funding from NRF Thuthuka. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioux McKenna and Amanda Mphahlele received funding from the National Research Foundation for a project looking at institutional differentiation. This research has been undertaken within the bigger project.</span></em></p>These programmes allow institutions to claim they’re doing something without really tackling the issues that lead students to plagiarise.Amanda Mphahlele, Lecturer, University of JohannesburgSioux McKenna, Director of Centre for Postgraduate Studies, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/840842017-10-17T10:33:03Z2017-10-17T10:33:03ZHow to write an essay Bake Off style<p>More and more students are turning to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/09/universities-urged-to-block-essay-mill-sites-in-plagiarism-crackdown">essay mills</a> – often paying hundreds of pounds for written-to-order papers. This has led to the university standards watchdog issuing new government backed guidance to help address “contract cheating”.</p>
<p>Given the extent of the problem, it is clear essay writing is an area of university life that students struggle with. But maybe this isn’t totally surprising, because it requires a unique skill set and is unlike any other type of writing students may encounter. </p>
<p>New students in particular can show the same stresses and strains of the amateur bakers on The Great British Bake Off when faced with the dreaded technical challenge. The good news though, is that the ingredients needed to write a good essay are fairly simple – it’s just about cutting things down into easily digestible chunks. </p>
<p>So here are <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Essays-Pictures-Alke-Gr%C3%B6ppel-Wegener/dp/0957665229">some top tips</a> for writing at university, Bake Off style.</p>
<h2>1. Don’t just focus on the icing</h2>
<p>Whether signature bake or showstopper challenge, some of the creations on the Bake Off look simply flawless. And while the decorative elements are carefully planned and certainly look impressive on television, when it comes to judging they never count as much as getting the flavour right or having your creation baked properly. </p>
<p>With your written pieces, the exact same is true – it is far more important to get the ingredients right and to mix them properly than to be perfect with all the formalities and the “academic” language, but have no proper content. </p>
<p>Make sure when you start out, that you dedicate a large chunk of your time to the research and don’t worry about the formalities until later. The most important thing is to make sure that your research is solid. The formalities are simply the icing on the cake. So while they might turn your essay from good to excellent, without the research and critical thinking to back it up, your essay won’t even pass. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189740/original/file-20171011-16644-1u8cm99.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Looks nice, but how does it taste?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Channel4 Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Don’t worry too much about the shape</h2>
<p>As any good baker knows, you first combine the ingredients and then worry about the shape and look. And the same goes for writing – sometimes it’s okay to just write, and not pay too much attention to the format, or the language, or the conventions. </p>
<p>Once you have it all down on paper (or on the screen) comes the time to attack it with the proverbial red pen. Now you can be ruthless – start by cutting the passages you don’t really need. Only now should you start paying attention to how it actually reads. Figure out if your words make sense, and highlight the bits you want to add to or change. The key here is just whacking everything down and then sprucing it up later on. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189743/original/file-20171011-16657-43dm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Just get it all in there.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Think of quotes like the cream and jam</h2>
<p>Quotations – and other ways of showing off evidence, like tables or images – are important because they add different voices to your essay. But you need to make sure you are not overusing them. </p>
<p>They are like the cream and jam in your Victoria Sandwich. The cake is the important thing, not the cream. So it is important to only include the part of a quotation that is crucial to what you want to say.</p>
<p>Your quotes should be sandwiched between an introduction and an explanation. Before the quotation tell your reader where it comes from, possibly explaining why they should pay attention to that source. After the quotation explain what it means in your context. </p>
<p>This is really important because very few quotations are actually self-evident, and if they are, you probably don’t need them. You should use quotes to emphasise your argument – but not overshadow it. Remember, the focus should be on the cake, not the cream.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189744/original/file-20171011-16678-1tvuwm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Essay writing: a piece of cake?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Give your creation time to rise</h2>
<p>Whatever you are baking, be it cakes or bread, there comes a time when you will need to leave your masterpiece alone for a while and let it do it’s thing. And this is similar to the process of writing. </p>
<p>You need to give yourself time to come back to your work with fresh eyes. This will allow you to get a new perspective on your writing, as it is easy to become attached to your existing content. </p>
<p>Often a little break from your essay can be all the more fruitful. And just like bread needs time to rise, and pastry dough needs time to chill, so too does your essay need time to mature before it can reach its full potential.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189746/original/file-20171011-16642-qxurv0.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Give your essay the time it needs to develop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Channel 4 Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Practice makes perfect</h2>
<p>Successful bakers in the Bake Off don’t just think through their bakes in advance, they also practice them. This is a great tip for budding writers, because it means you can ultimately make your initial draft better and better – until it becomes a showstopper. </p>
<p>And who knows, once you get the hang of it, writing an academic essay might even become a piece of cake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84084/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alke Gröppel-Wegener does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Students, don’t turn to essay mills, just learn to write a better paper.Alke Gröppel-Wegener, Associate Professor of Creative Academic Practice, Staffordshire UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/635082016-11-01T19:06:32Z2016-11-01T19:06:32ZGuide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143207/original/image-20161025-4696-1t3fzcn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Montaigne: his free-ranging essays were almost scandalous in their day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Montaigne-Dumonstier.jpg">Étienne Dumonstier/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Michel de Montaigne retired to his family estate in 1572, aged 38, he tells us that he wanted to write his famous Essays as a distraction for <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0008">his idle mind</a>. He neither wanted nor expected people beyond his circle of friends to be too interested.</p>
<p>His Essays’ <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0018">preface</a> almost warns us off:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reader, you have here an honest book; … in writing it, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end. I have had no consideration at all either to your service or to my glory … Thus, reader, I myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason that you should employ your leisure upon so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ensuing, free-ranging essays, although steeped in classical poetry, history and philosophy, are unquestionably something <em>new</em> in the history of Western thought. They were almost scandalous for their day. </p>
<p>No one before Montaigne in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Western_Canon:_The_Books_and_School_of_the_Ages">the Western canon</a> had thought to devote pages to subjects as diverse and seemingly insignificant as “Of Smells”, “Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes”, “Of Posting” (letters, that is), “Of Thumbs” or “Of Sleep” — let alone reflections on <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.20">the unruliness of the male appendage</a>, a subject which repeatedly concerned him.</p>
<p>French <a href="http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/davis/davis8-17-06.asp">philosopher Jacques Rancière</a> has recently argued that modernism began with the opening up of the mundane, private and ordinary to artistic treatment. Modern art no longer restricts its subject matters to classical myths, biblical tales, the battles and dealings of Princes and prelates. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143209/original/image-20161026-4706-vhlhds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French philosopher, Jacques Rancière.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jacques_Ranci%C3%A8re#/media/File:Ranciere.jpg">Annette Bozorgan/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If Rancière is right, it could be said that Montaigne’s 107 Essays, each between several hundred words and (in one case) several hundred pages, came close to inventing modernism in the late 16th century. </p>
<p>Montaigne frequently apologises for writing so much about himself. He is only a second rate politician and one-time Mayor of Bourdeaux, after all. With an almost <a href="https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/Socratic%20irony">Socratic irony</a>, he tells us most about his own habits of writing in the essays titled “Of Presumption”, “Of Giving the Lie”, “Of Vanity”, and “Of Repentance”. </p>
<p>But the message of <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book3.2">this latter essay</a> is, quite simply, that <em>non, je ne regrette rien</em>, as a more recent French icon sang:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that I am without … I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Montaigne’s persistence in assembling his extraordinary dossier of stories, arguments, asides and observations on nearly everything under the sun (from how to parley with an enemy to whether women should be so demure <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0098">in matters of sex</a>, has been celebrated by admirers in nearly every generation. </p>
<p>Within a decade of his death, his Essays had left their mark on Bacon and Shakespeare. He was a hero to the enlighteners Montesquieu and Diderot. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=d9J6CAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1517&lpg=PT1517&dq=voltaire+montaigne+least+methodical+wisest+amiable&source=bl&ots=NuH3iXhLOS&sig=csho5S6ETEuHOL04uKfIXvIlxd8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRk8_S64jPAhWHnJQKHQIJCLsQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=voltaire%20montaigne%20least%20methodical%20wisest%20amiable&f=false">Voltaire celebrated</a> Montaigne - a man educated only by his own reading, his father and his childhood tutors – as “the least methodical of all philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable”. <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Schopenhauer_as_Educator">Nietzsche claimed</a> that the very existence of Montaigne’s Essays added to the joy of living in this world.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143220/original/image-20161026-4729-1tdxe1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sarah Bakewell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/5520234327/">David Shankbone/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, Sarah Bakewell’s charming engagement with Montaigne, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7624457-how-to-live">How to Live or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer</a> (2010) made the best-sellers’ lists. Even today’s initiatives in <a href="https://theconversation.com/philosophy-in-schools-promoting-critical-creative-and-caring-thinking-44578">teaching philosophy in schools</a> can look back to Montaigne (and his “<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/education_of_children/">On the Education of Children</a>”) as a patron saint or <em>sage</em>.</p>
<p>So what are these Essays, which Montaigne protested were indistinguishable from their author? (“<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/repentance/">My book and I go hand in hand together</a>”).</p>
<p>It’s a good question. </p>
<p>Anyone who tries to read the Essays systematically soon finds themselves overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of examples, anecdotes, digressions and curios Montaigne assembles for our delectation, often without more than the hint of a reason why.</p>
<p>To open the book is to venture into a world in which fortune consistently defies expectations; our senses are as uncertain as our understanding is prone to error; opposites turn out very often to be conjoined (“<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0114">the most universal quality is diversity</a>”); even vice can lead to virtue. Many titles seem to have no direct relation to their contents. Nearly everything our author says in one place is qualified, if not overturned, elsewhere.</p>
<p>Without pretending to untangle all of the knots of this “<a href="essaysbymontaigne.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-1-chapter-8-of-idleness.html">book with a wild and desultory plan</a>”, let me tug here on a couple of Montaigne’s threads to invite and assist new readers to find their own way.</p>
<h2>Philosophy (and writing) as a way of life</h2>
<p>Some scholars argued that Montaigne began writing his essays as a want-to-be <a href="blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/what-is-stoicism/">Stoic</a>, hardening himself against the horrors of the French <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion">civil and religious wars</a>, and his grief at the loss of his best friend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_de_La_Bo%C3%A9tie">Étienne de La Boétie</a> through dysentery. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143216/original/image-20161026-4699-k62mud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Did Montaigne turn to the Stoic school of philosophy to deal with the horrors of war?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3343602">Édouard Debat-Ponsan/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly, for Montaigne, as for ancient thinkers led by his favourites, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarch">Plutarch</a> and the Roman Stoic Seneca, philosophy was not solely about constructing theoretical systems, writing books and articles. It was what one more recent admirer of Montaigne has called “<a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/hadot/">a way of life</a>”.</p>
<p>Montaigne has little time for forms <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/pedantry/">of pedantry</a> that value learning as a means to insulate scholars from the world, rather than opening out onto it. He <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book1.19.html">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Either our reason mocks us or it ought to have no other aim but our contentment. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">We are great fools</a>. ‘He has passed over his life in idleness,’ we say: ‘I have done nothing today.’ What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of all your occupations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One feature of the Essays is, accordingly, Montaigne’s fascination with the daily doings of men like <a href="http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlsocrates.htm">Socrates</a> and <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html">Cato the Younger</a>; two of those figures revered amongst the ancients as wise men or “<a href="http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Ejannas/Published%20Articles/sage.pdf">sages</a>”.</p>
<p>Their wisdom, <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.36">he suggests</a>, was chiefly evident in the lives they led (neither wrote a thing). In particular, it was proven by the nobility each showed in facing their deaths. Socrates consented serenely to taking hemlock, having been sentenced unjustly to death by the Athenians. Cato <a href="http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Minor*.html">stabbed himself to death after having meditated upon Socrates’ example</a>, in order not to cede to Julius Caesar’s <em>coup d’état</em>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143217/original/image-20161026-4714-15k0m6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Montaigne revered the wisdom of Socrates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMAntokolski_Death_of_Socrates.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve such “philosophic” constancy, Montaigne saw, requires <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.6">a good deal more than book learning</a>. Indeed, everything about our passions and, above all, <a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/force_of_imagination/">our imagination</a>, speaks against achieving that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia">perfect tranquillity</a> the classical thinkers saw as the highest philosophical goal. </p>
<p>We discharge our hopes and fears, very often, on the wrong objects, <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Essays_of_Montaigne/Book_I/Chapter_IV">Montaigne notes</a>, in an observation that anticipates the thinking of Freud and modern psychology. Always, <a href="http://essaysbymontaigne.blogspot.com/2012/02/book-1-chapter-3-that-our-affections.htm">these emotions</a> dwell on things we cannot presently change. Sometimes, they inhibit our ability to see and deal in a supple way with the changing demands of life. </p>
<p>Philosophy, in this classical view, involves a retraining of our ways of thinking, seeing and being in the world. Montaigne’s earlier essay “<a href="http://essays.quotidiana.org/montaigne/that_to_study_philosophy">To philosophise is to learn how to die</a>” is perhaps the clearest exemplar of his indebtedness to this ancient idea of philosophy. </p>
<p>Yet there is a strong sense in which all of the Essays are a form of what one 20th century author has dubbed “<a href="http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.hypomnemata.en.html">self-writing</a>”: an ethical exercise to “strengthen and enlighten” Montaigne’s own judgement, as much as that of we readers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book2.18.html">And though nobody should read me,</a> have I wasted time in entertaining myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? … I have no more made my book than my book has made me: it is a book consubstantial with the author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my life …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As for the seeming disorder of the product, and Montaigne’s frequent claims that he is <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.3">playing the fool</a>, this is arguably one more feature of the Essays that reflects his Socratic irony. Montaigne wants to leave us with some work to do and scope to find our <em>own</em> paths through the labyrinth of his thoughts, or alternatively, to bobble about on their <a href="http://people.virginia.edu/%7Ejdk3t/Montaigne3-4.html">diverting surfaces</a>. </p>
<h2>A free-thinking sceptic</h2>
<p>Yet Montaigne’s Essays, for all of their classicism and their idiosyncracies, are <a href="http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/montaigne-and-origins-modern-philosophy">rightly numbered as one of the founding texts of modern thought</a>. Their author keeps his own prerogatives, even as he bows deferentially before the altars of ancient heroes like Socrates, Cato, Alexander the Great or the Theban general <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaminondas">Epaminondas</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=655&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143218/original/image-20161026-4696-1jxyaba.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michel de Montaigne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michel_de_Montaigne_1.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a good deal of the Christian, Augustinian legacy in Montaigne’s makeup. And of all the philosophers, he most frequently echoes ancient sceptics like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho">Pyrrho</a> or <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/carneades/">Carneades</a> who argued that we can know almost nothing with certainty. This is especially true concerning the “ultimate questions” the Catholics and Huguenots of Montaigne’s day were bloodily contesting.</p>
<p>Writing in a time of <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.11">cruel sectarian violence</a>, Montaigne is unconvinced by the ageless claim that having a dogmatic faith is necessary or especially effective in <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">assisting people to love their neighbours</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Between ourselves, I have ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of singular accord …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This scepticism applies as much to the pagan ideal of a perfected philosophical sage as it does to theological speculations. </p>
<p>Socrates’ constancy before death, Montaigne concludes, <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book3.4">was simply too demanding for most people, almost superhuman</a>. As for Cato’s proud suicide, Montaigne takes liberty to doubt whether it was as much the product of Stoic tranquility, as of a singular turn of mind <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.11">that could take pleasure in such extreme virtue</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed when it comes to his essays “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.29">Of Moderation</a>” or “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.29">Of Virtue</a>”, Montaigne quietly breaks the ancient mold. Instead of celebrating the feats of the world’s Catos or Alexanders, here he lists example after example of people moved by their sense of transcendent self-righteousness to acts of murderous or suicidal excess. </p>
<p>Even virtue can become vicious, these essays imply, unless we know how to moderate our own presumptions.</p>
<h2>Of cannibals and cruelties</h2>
<p>If there is one form of argument Montaigne uses most often, it is the sceptical argument drawing on <a href="https://thephilosophyofscience.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/the-five-tropes/">the disagreement</a> amongst even the wisest authorities. </p>
<p>If human beings could know if, say, the soul was immortal, with or without the body, or dissolved when we die … then the wisest people would all have come to the same conclusions by now, the argument goes. Yet even the “most knowing” authorities disagree about such things, Montaigne delights in <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">showing us</a>. </p>
<p>The existence of such “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book2.12">an infinite confusion</a>” of opinions and customs ceases to be the problem, for Montaigne. It points the way to a new kind of solution, and could in fact enlighten us.</p>
<p>Documenting such manifold differences between customs and opinions is, for him, an <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2H_4_0114">education in humility</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His essay “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/complete.html#book1.30">Of Cannibals</a>” for instance, presents all of the different aspects of American Indian culture, as known to Montaigne through travellers’ reports then filtering back into Europe. For the most part, he finds these “savages’” society ethically equal, if not far superior, to that of war-torn France’s — a perspective that Voltaire and Rousseau would echo nearly 200 years later. </p>
<p>We are horrified at the prospect of eating our ancestors. Yet Montaigne imagines that from the Indians’ perspective, Western practices of cremating our deceased, or burying their bodies to be devoured by the worms must seem every bit as callous. </p>
<p>And while we are at it, Montaigne adds that consuming people after they are dead seems a good deal less cruel and inhumane than torturing folk we don’t even know are guilty of any crime <em>whilst</em> they are still alive …</p>
<h2>A gay and sociable wisdom</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143221/original/image-20161026-4706-1qcy8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voltaire celebrated Montaigne as one of the wisest and most amiable philosophers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atelier_de_Nicolas_de_Largilli%C3%A8re,_portrait_de_Voltaire,_d%C3%A9tail_(mus%C3%A9e_Carnavalet)_-002.jpg">Nicolas de Largillierre/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“So what is left then?”, the reader might ask, as Montaigne undermines one presumption after another, and piles up exceptions like they had become the only rule. </p>
<p><em>A very great deal</em>, is the answer. With metaphysics, theology, and the feats of godlike sages all under a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch%C3%A9">suspension of judgment</a>”, we become witnesses as we read the Essays to a key document in the modern revaluation and valorization of everyday life. </p>
<p>There is, for instance, Montaigne’s scandalously demotic habit of interlacing words, stories and actions from his neighbours, the local peasants (and peasant women) with examples from the greats of Christian and pagan history. As <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0098">he writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser and more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much rather have resembled.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the end of the Essays, Montaigne has begun openly to suggest that, if tranquillity, constancy, bravery, and honour are the goals the wise hold up for us, they can all be seen <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">in much greater abundance</a> amongst the salt of the earth than amongst the rich and famous:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: ‘tis all one … To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown; to … laugh, sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse with our own families and with ourselves … not to give our selves the lie, that is rarer, more difficult and less remarkable …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so we arrive with these last Essays at a sentiment better known today from another philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Science">A Gay Science (1882) </a>.</p>
<p>Montaigne’s closing essays repeat the avowal that: “<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.5.html">I love a gay and civil wisdom …</a>.” But in contrast to his later Germanic admirer, the music here is less Wagner or Beethoven than it is Mozart (as it were), and Montaigne’s spirit much less agonised than gently serene. </p>
<p>It was Voltaire, again, who said that life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. Montaigne <a href="http://www.equilibrium.org/montaigne/essay06.html">adopts and admires the comic perspective</a>. As he writes in “Of Experience”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/essays/book3.13.html">It is not of much use to go upon stilts</a>, for, when upon stilts, we must still walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are still perched on our own bums.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Sharpe is part of an ARC funded project on modern reinventions of the ancient idea of "philosophy as a way of life", in which Montaigne is a central figure.</span></em></p>Montaigne anticipated much of modern thought, and was profoundly shaped by the classics. His Essays, so personal yet so urbane, continue to challenge and charm readers.Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/543552016-02-09T04:32:54Z2016-02-09T04:32:54ZWhy Mbeki’s contested articles have a role to play in South Africa’s history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110625/original/image-20160208-2598-1sur90e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former South African President Thabo Mbeki is back in the public eye thanks to a series of open letters he's written since the start of 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Phil Moore</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s former president Thabo Mbeki kicked off 2016 by publishing a series of <a href="http://www.thabombekifoundation.org.za/SitePages/Letters.aspx">online essays</a> designed to rectify what he views as serious errors in the country’s modern historiography. </p>
<p>He claims that many recent works on modern South African politics have been uncritically accepted as “authoritative and definitive”, despite the fact that they were produced by observers rather than participants. These observers, he argues, have their “their own political and ideological mindsets”. </p>
<p>Mbeki’s critique of South African historiography, and his concomitant attempt to correct this body of work, has set off a significant public discussion.</p>
<p>Most of the responses to his posts have challenged the substance of his commentary. Others have speculated on his motivation for wading in to <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-14-mbeki-is-back-with-guns-blazing">public debate</a> on some of the controversial episodes of his presidency. </p>
<p>Like all leaders who write about their political careers, Mbeki is seeking to shape his legacy, justify his past actions, and remedy what he believes are important misunderstandings about his time in government.</p>
<p>Yet something has been missed in the uproar over the contentious content of Mbeki’s posts: the important historical contribution that the insights and recollections of such a key decision-maker make to our understanding of his presidency.</p>
<h2>What role did character play?</h2>
<p>The central focus of Mbeki’s posts thus far has been an effort to correct the view that his alleged personal flaws account for some of the policy decisions taken during his tenure. He has addressed, among other issues, the accusation that his <a href="http://www.thabombekifoundation.org.za/Pages/The-tragedy-of-history-When-caricature-displaces-the-truth0112-9781.aspx">“aloof”</a> nature caused him to become out of touch with the country he led. <a href="http://www.thabombekifoundation.org.za/Pages/The-tragedy-of-history-When-caricature-displaces-the-truth0112-9781.aspx">As Mbeki puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of this writing [South African contemporary history] has sought to define my character as I served as President of the ANC and the Republic, and argued that this characterisation helps to explain various developments during this period. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a sophisticated critique of the current historiography. Mbeki claims that the main factor observers use to explain outcomes during his presidency is his character. And, because he believes their understanding of his character is faulty, the associated explanations are inaccurate. </p>
<p>Mbeki’s objective is therefore twofold. He seeks to defend and correctly portray his character, and, by doing so, contribute to a more accurate understanding of South African history. The question that has animated many in South Africa for the last few weeks is: should he be believed?</p>
<h2>Miniature memoirs</h2>
<p>This is not a simple question. Mbeki’s posts, a series of vignettes on the key events and issues of his presidency, amount to a collection of miniature memoirs. And, as a data point for historians and informed citizens, memoirs come with advantages and disadvantages. </p>
<p>Because memoirs are by their nature public (as compared to private government documents not intended for the light of day), they are limited in important ways. </p>
<p>When addressing a public audience political figures think carefully about how their work will be perceived. This leads to self-censorship in which certain issues and ideas are emphasised and others omitted. This is done to craft a narrative that will elicit the reaction the writer hopes for. </p>
<p>On some occasions, future political calculations can shape the memoir’s content. For example, while Hilary Clinton’s recently published memoir, <a href="http://www.hillaryclintonmemoir.com/">Hard Choices</a>, is a helpful account of her time serving as the American Secretary of State, the hard choices as to which events to emphasise and which to downplay were likely made easier by her presidential aspirations. In addition, memoirs are memories of events, and memories can become faded or faulty over time casting their reliability into some doubt.</p>
<p>Despite these drawbacks, memoirs are a vital source of information because crucial policy decisions are frequently made in the company of only a few key individuals with little or no paper trail in their wake. Mbeki is one such key individual. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly his view, like all those involved in policy making, is marred to some extent by biases and blind spots. But, it is also enhanced by unique insights and deep personal knowledge of how events played out.</p>
<h2>Why the debates are important</h2>
<p>A second reason to welcome Mbeki’s posts is the valuable public debates they have sparked. The responses by the SA Communist Party’s <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=5074">Jeremy Cronin</a>, editor <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2016/01/13/sorry-mr-mbeki-but-i-just-don-t-buy-your-story">Ray Hartley</a>, Mbeki biographer <a href="http://www.702.co.za/articles/11243/mbeki-is-doing-his-own-legacy-a-disservice-says-mark-gevisser">Mark Gevisser</a> and African National Congress veteran <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/01/17/We-need-Mbekis-wisdom-to-rescue-SA-says-Mathews-Phosa-podcast">Mathews Phosa</a> among others are proof of the important discussions prompted by Mbeki’s posts. Any future historian of South Africa ignores Mbeki’s letters and the ripostes they have generated at their peril.</p>
<p>The value of the former President’s essays makes the criticism of his decision to reflect on his time in office concerning. Thus far, Mbeki has been lampooned by photo shopping his visage onto pictures of the new Star War’s villain, <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-01-26-trainspotter-thabo-mbeki-the-farce-awakened/#.Vqrqchh962w">Kylo Ren</a>, and a sheriff from the American West. The Mail and Guardian ran an editorial entitled, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-14-please-put-a-lid-on-it-mbeki">“Please, Put a lid on it, Mbeki.”</a></p>
<p>Another article by the respected journalist Mondli Makhanya argued that Mbeki ought to</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://city-press.news24.com/Voices/thabo-mbeki-let-sleeping-dogs-lie-20160117">Let Sleeping Dogs Lie</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is fair, and in fact desirable, that critics dissect the substance of Mbeki’s posts. But it is worrying that some in the media have indicated that his input on South Africa’s modern history is unwelcome.</p>
<p>Because memoirs are intended for public consumption, often self-serving, and sometimes drafted long after the historical event they relate, they are an inherently problematic source. </p>
<p>All this should prompt readers to examine them with circumspection. But a fair-minded assessment of these sources also reveals their value. Memoirs are first-hand accounts of critical events by those who moved history. As the Mail and Guardian’s Shaun de Waal wrote last year in his <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-23-pearls-in-an-oyster-of-ferment">review</a> of South Africa’s historiography:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need more fresh looks at what we assume to be true about our past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mbeki’s missives provide such a fresh look by a real insider, and thus constitute a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about South Africa’s history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Former President Thabo Mbeki’s critique of South African historiography, and his concomitant attempt to correct this body of work, has set off a significant public discussion.Christopher Williams, Visiting Lecturer and Researcher , University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/432662015-06-17T13:14:25Z2015-06-17T13:14:25ZCheating with essay mills: an extension of students asking each other for help?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85203/original/image-20150616-5835-4za08u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maybe I could pay somebody else to do it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Essay writing via Geo Martinez/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Given the sophisticated detection tools to stop cheating, it’s unsurprising that the Channel 4 <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/">Dispatches documentary</a> turned its attention to the migration from copy-and-paste internet plagiarism to cash-for-drafts “essay mills”. Universities seem relatively blind to this “<a href="https://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/documents/Plagiarism09_LancasterClarke.pdf">contract cheating</a>” in which students pay somebody else to do their assignment, but the scale of the business is sobering.</p>
<p>Having felt that I have been the occasional victim of professionally-authored student assignments, I recently explored the market as a mystery shopper. Others have <a href="http://www.shambles.net/pages/students/papermills/">documented a range of available services</a>, but just an hour of searching found me 25 websites that were suitable suppliers for a postgraduate essay I had just set. There is even a <a href="http://www.paperhelp.org/mobile-application.html">phone app</a> for the mobile plagiarist.</p>
<p>Sceptics have suggested that these sites are volatile, fraudulent, or different faces of the same organisation, but that was not my impression. Their online chat and telephone advice was distinctive, articulate and patient. Their follow-up contact was vigorous. Moreover, their service is engaging: <a href="http://www.essayempire.com/">front pages</a> feature fresh (usually female) students clutching books or folders (never computers) and often dressed for graduation. </p>
<h2>Slick approach</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://chroniclecareers.com/article/Video-Journey-to-the-Center/48413/">business processes</a> are impressive. Typically you specify your needs, the package is listed internally and contract writers bid for it (regular customers can request favoured authors). For a 4,000-word, merit level, education masters essay in 48 hours, a typical offer was £440. I could commission a 12,000-word masters dissertation (including fieldwork) in 30 days for £860. Authors are <a href="http://www.essay-writers.info/">carefully recruited</a>, perhaps postgraduates or <a href="http://unemployedprofessors.com/">unemployed faculty</a>. Sometimes they <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/why-i-write-for-an-essay-mill/2006074.article">justify their work</a> by referencing disillusionment with a broken and unsupportive education system.</p>
<p>But is their work any good? Evidence is largely circumstantial. Glimpses of job tickets suggest customers return, and sample texts are of respectable quality. The qualifications regulator Ofqual did fund research consultants to <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20141031163546/http:/ofqual.gov.uk/documents/mystery-shopping-exercise-support-services-students/">solicit A Level English and history essays</a>, which were then marked by experienced assessors who concluded that some fell significantly short of the grade As requested. However, the assessors were told that these were contract-commissioned essays and it is hard to believe that this knowledge did not influence their grading. Such findings are therefore less reassuring than the education community believes. </p>
<p>Students who have used these services are, understandably, reluctant to share their motives. Staff and student experiences around more conventional plagiarism have pointed to a number of <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/24/cheating">important themes driving this</a>. However, innocently misunderstanding the nature of authorship or the conventions of citation can hardly apply to the extreme case of submitting someone else’s writing for your own assessment. </p>
<h2>What goes through a student’s mind</h2>
<p>Although there must be awareness of personal misdemeanour in these cases, that should not imply that the student is not thinking things through. Consider the following diagram.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85278/original/image-20150616-5825-5ha0pf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Framing cheating in the culture of educational practice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The starting point is a student’s engagement with study – the vertical axis on the diagram above. This will vary across different continua. For example, from more to less understanding of the studied material. At the same time, lifestyle choices may place a student anywhere on this axis between freewheeling with lots of time for study, to a lifestyle full of commitments that constrain study time.</p>
<p>The essay-writing websites present this pressure against study as blameless inevitability, casting assignments as irritating demands that compete with learning purposes, rather than actually being part of those purposes themselves. “Today academic writing takes a serious toll on students. There are so many assignments to cope with and so many tasks,” <a href="http://essaywriter.org/">said one</a> website. </p>
<p>The horizontal axis represents the theory that cognition (remembering, reasoning, learning) is “<a href="https://mindmaps.wikispaces.com/Distributed+Cognition+and+Learning">distributed</a>” – not just trapped between our ears, but embedded into all our interactions with those around us – and so student learning becomes thinking that is <a href="http://eet.sdsu.edu/eetwiki/index.php/Social_constructivism_and_distributed_cognition:_Communities_making_meaning_and_achieving_intelligence">coupled into the social environment</a> around them. But this social integration is a continuum: one that runs from <a href="https://metranet.londonmet.ac.uk/celt/learning-teaching-assessment/peer-support.cfm">peer support</a> to <a href="http://www.tutorhunt.com/">personal tuition</a>, <a href="http://transtutors.com">contract tuition</a>, <a href="http://studentproofreading.co.uk">proof reading</a>, <a href="http://www.proofeditme.com/editing/copyediting/copy-editing-for-students-and-academics">copy editing</a> and onwards to contract writing. Students, but also staff, may struggle with where on this continuum activity starts to violate the expectations of assessment. </p>
<p>In the diagram, the diagonal “axis of rationality” maps how the student weighs up this encouragement to collaborate with the challenges of how they manage their understanding of the subject and their time. The more you don’t understand or the more life events impede you, the more you turn to others for help. But as the shading in the diagram is meant to imply, there may be genuine uncertainty about when dishonesty starts and when cheating becomes a real option. </p>
<p>Yet there must come a point when a student may overcome his or her doubts enough to go through with cheating and money changes hands. But any degree of unease at this point may be reduced by an academic climate in which learning is celebrated for being <a href="http://www.earli.org/special_interest_groups/social_interaction">grounded in social interaction</a>, whereby students learn through their relationships with those around them. Students may also be influenced by encouragement to cultivate an <a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245880">entrepreneurial mindset</a>. Perhaps, finally, universities are increasingly being drawn towards presenting education as a <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415584470/">commodity</a>. Thereby, we may all be playing our small parts in this corrosive growth of intellectual dishonesty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Crook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The contract cheating business is booming. What tips students over the edge to pay somebody else to do their work?Charles Crook, Professor of Education, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.