Scientific conference in universities or research centers (Scientific conferences in universities or research centers)
“From another angle”: the Australian Reconciliation in Gail Jones’s Sorry and Five Bells
Belleflamme, Valérie-Anne
2016
 

Files


Full Text
Belleflamme_The Australian Reconciliation from another angle.pdf
Author postprint (279.96 kB)
Request a copy

All documents in ORBi are protected by a user license.

Send to



Details



Keywords :
Gail Jones; Reconciliation; Five Bells
Abstract :
[en] On 26 May 2000, an estimated 250,000 people – Australian novelist and essayist Gail Jones included – walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of the Australian Reconciliation process. More importantly, eight years later, Jones claimed that “in writing [her novel Sorry] [she] rehearsed [her] own concern that the reconciliation process not be forgotten – since it has certainly faded from the political agenda since the bridge walk of 2000[” (2008: 84). This and her claim that “the heartwarming Sorry Books [...] ought seriously to be considered within the genre of the poetics of political dissent, and not as casual or sentimental acts of mere signature” (2008: 164) are indicative of Jones’s writing and of her wish to subvert the stereotypical and ambiguous discursive manifestations of the Australian Reconciliation. By the same token, her novels Sorry (2007) and Five Bells (2011) offer a complex picture of the ethics of reconciliation, namely one that includes “an admission of uncertainty, a calculation of difficulty, and an awareness that justice – and human relations – is rarely written in black and white” (Jones 2008: 86). My paper will thus seek to explore how Jones, by drawing on forms of narrative indirections in both, Sorry and Five Bells, distances herself from white Australian writers who deal with the Stolen Generations in a way that seems to appropriate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ experiences. Sorry and Five Bells, then, offer an alternative to standard reconciliation practices, with a view to bridging the gap between white Australia’s history and the history of the Aborigines. References: - Jones, Gail. 2008a. Sorry. London: Vintage. - Jones, Gail. 2008b. Speaking shadows: Justice and the poetic. In Just Words?: Australian Authors Writing for Justice, Bernadette Brennan (ed.). St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland, 76-86. - Jones, Gail. 2012. Five Bells. London: Vintage.
Research center :
CEREP - Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche en Études Postcoloniales - ULiège
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Belleflamme, Valérie-Anne  ;  Université de Liège > Département de langues et littératures modernes > Littérature anglaise moderne et littérature américaine
Language :
English
Title :
“From another angle”: the Australian Reconciliation in Gail Jones’s Sorry and Five Bells
Publication date :
17 March 2016
Event name :
47th Annual NeMLA Convention
Event organizer :
Johns Hopkins University
Event place :
Hartford, United States
Event date :
17-03-2016 to 20-03-2016
Audience :
International
Available on ORBi :
since 11 April 2016

Statistics


Number of views
157 (13 by ULiège)
Number of downloads
2 (2 by ULiège)

Bibliography


Similar publications



Contact ORBi