Vol. 11 No. 1 (2005): Desecration

What happens when sacred sites are destroyed? What are the effects of being dispossessed and of having one’s own existence denied? Desecration of the sacred, of land and of self are themes explored in a group of essay co-edited by Deborah Rose and Peter Read. These studies of PNG, Havana, Sarejevo and parts of Australia bring living beings and the dead into a realm in which violence that refuses life confronts life that refuses obliteration. These essays offer rich and resonating thought.

 

In other essays Marcus Breen ponders cultural criticism and life in the USA, Nicola Evans shows how sensational trials catapult private matters into the public sphere, and Ross Chambers writes a poetic supplement to Peter Cary’s My Life as a Fake. The Provocations section showcases Iain McCalman, making his case for state and popular support for the humanities and social sciences, and Isabelle Stengers on ‘ecology of practices’ as a tool for thinking. In New Writing Jane Messer reflects on the maternal heroine in memoir and fiction.