Anxiety and Hope of Imagining the ‘Country’ : Writing Women’s Belonging in the 21st Century

HORÁKOVÁ, Martina. Anxiety and Hope of Imagining the ‘Country’ : Writing Women’s Belonging in the 21st Century. In Australia as a Risk Society : Hope and Fears of the Past, the Present and the Future, 29 March - 1 April, 2021, University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy. 2021.

Základní údaje

• Originální název: Anxiety and Hope of Imagining the ‘Country’ : Writing Women’s Belonging in the 21st Century
• Autoři: HORÁKOVÁ, Martina (203 Česká republika, garant, domácí).
• Vydání: Australia as a Risk Society : Hope and Fears of the Past, the Present and the Future, 29 March - 1 April, 2021, University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy, 2021.

Další údaje

• Originální jazyk: angličtina
• Typ výsledku: Prezentace na konferencích
• Obor: 60206 Specific literatures
• Stát vydavatele: Itálie
• Utajení: není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství
• WWW: URL
• Kód RIV: RIV/00216224:14210/21:00119571
• Organizační jednotka: Filozofická fakulta
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Australia; belonging; women's life writing; 21st century; Chinese Australian; Monica Tan
• Štítky: rivok
• Příznaky: Mezinárodní význam, Recenzováno

Anotace

There is a rich literary tradition of white women travelling to the Australian Outback and writing memoirs and travelogues about what has often been a life-changing experience for them. They invariably begin their journey as a quest—whether one for spiritual, national, gender or personal belonging, it is almost always a quest to come to terms with a sense of ungrounded being. If memoirs of settler belonging in general have framed the sense of belonging in terms of spatial anxiety (particularly at the turn of the 21st century), often questioning the legitimacy of settler belonging, then women writers complement this picture by integrating the perspective of gender: they thematize their affective as well as intellectual responses to the landscapes, encounters with (female) Indigeneity and rural Australia, and female solitude. While such narratives have been written almost exclusively by white settler women, it is noteworthy that recently other than Anglo-Celtic perspectives have been voiced. The journalist Monica Tan, a first generation Chinese Australian, wrote Stranger Country (2019) as an accessible travel narrative intended for wide readership, a strategy endorsed by the marketing of the book. Keen to explore remote areas as they still elude the “authentic” Australia, Tan both perpetuates and challenges some of the most stereotypical and clichéd images of the continent. The paper will analyse Tan’s reflections and social commentary with emphasis on the ways in which Tan’s narrative deviates from (or extends) the tradition of the other settler women’s travel memoirs, particularly since Robyn Davidson’s Tracks.

Návaznosti

• GA19-11234S, projekt VaV: Název: Topos sounáležitosti s místem v memoárech australských osadníků

Investor: Grantová agentura ČR, Topos sounáležitosti s místem v memoárech australských osadníků