The new issue of JEASA presents articles submitted to the first, general issue in 2017.
In her article “Matriduxy?: Tracing Colonial Adumbration in Australian Womanhood via a Psychoanalytical Reading of Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children,” Theresa Holtby investigates the notion of matriduxy (the alleged dominance of women in Australian families), including its mixed reception by Australian feminist critics, in relation to expressions of imperialist masochistic ideology in fiction, namely in Stead’s novel. She argues that there are striking parallels between the role of the dominatrix in Deleuze’s theory of masochism and the alleged phenomenon of matriduxy, concluding that the concept of masochism offers a means to reconcile the ostensibly incompatible readings of Australian society through the lens of matriduxy or, on the other hand, misogyny.
Rebecca Johinke, in “Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: Misogynistic Trash, Scatological Rhetoric, or an Ode to Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto?”, examines the self-proclaimed (and seemingly unlikely) inspiration of Cave’s text in American radical feminist Valerie Solanas’ manifesto. Providing a close reading of the novel’s misogynistic scenes, she concludes that Cave, in this particular case, has used feminism rather strategically in order to provoke a reaction, and proposes to read the novel rather through the lens of Cave’s music.
Éva Forintos provides an analysis of written mixed-language discourse. In her article “The Communicative Aspect of New Linguistic Discourse-a Case Study of Language Alternation in Multilingual Written Texts”, she frames her examination of the newspapers published by Hungarian community in Australia within the fields of language contact and bilingualism, arguing that the code-switching and code mixing on the part of contributors is intentional and expedient, serving the purpose of successful communication of the content.
In “Heading South: An Embodied Literary History of the Cape to Cape Track and the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Region of South-west Australia”, John Charles Ryan provides a creative as well as theoretical rendering of his trekking experience in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste region. Partly a travelogue, partly a cultural and literary history, the article offers an insight into the palimpsest history of a particular place, contemplating the embodied experiences of walking while also exploring current theories of emplacement in order to better understand the imbrications between bodies, landscapes, journeys and narratives.
Finally, Karen Lamb reviews for JEASA the latest scholarly book-length study of Thea Astley’s oeuvre in The Fiction of Thea Astley published by Susan Sheridan in 2016 in Cambria Press.
Enjoy reading new JEASA!
Martina Horakova, JEASA general editor