Helen Tiffin | University of Wollongong (original) (raw)

Book Chapters by Helen Tiffin

After Writing Back: Present and Future Perspectives on Postcolonial Studies, 2019

Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent, 2020

This chapter is by Sandra Williams and Helen Tiffin, offering individualv accounts of the damage ... more This chapter is by Sandra Williams and Helen Tiffin, offering individualv accounts of the damage done to a unique and iconic Australian Environment - the Great Barrier Reef. It is intended as a joint reflection on perceptions of local and, by extension, global phenomena of environmental devastation, transcending scholarly analysis. The individual viewpoints are presented in one chapter.

Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent, 2020

We have learned little, it would seem, since either Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and its ... more We have learned little, it would seem, since either Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and its exposure of the results of our chemical warfare on other species, (and its inevitable repercussions for ourselves), or from the environmental histories of so-called aliens whether deliberately or inadvertently introduced. We still seek that return to a "pristine" precolonial Australia, an anti-evolutionary "purity" of line now ethically unthinkable were it to be re-applied to humans. And we have not yet absorbed the notion that the impact of climate change will most certainly mix ecologies and genetic strains, and make us, in the end, grateful for almost all extra-human life that manages to survive us.

Nature and Environment in Australia, 2018

As so many of the world's extra-human habitats are lost to so-called "development", "productivity... more As so many of the world's extra-human habitats are lost to so-called "development", "productivity", and the pandemic pressures of human overpopulation, protection of wilderness areas, (for example in National Parks), and the animals and plants they have retained, is of primary importance. But even where conservation areas can be legislatively set aside from human encroachment, their ongoing protection and maintenance still raise numerous problems. Protecting species which cannot be confined within Park boundaries, or determining the most appropriate protection measures can be confined within Park boundaries, or determining the most appropriate protection measures can be contentious. While the attempt to maintain biodiversity is a worthy goal, what are the most appropriate strategies in an era of radical climate change? While ecosystem categories such as "aliens", "invasives", "natives", "endemics", may seem to offer philosophical and practical bases, evolution is itself a continuous process, rendering such categories both protean and often inappropriate. Moreover, the philosophies of ecosystem conservation and animal welfare are increasingly at odds, making proponents of extra-human preservation, antagonists, rather than the allies they might ideally be. The paper discusses two examples of such philosophical and practical entanglements: protecting native Australian East Coast bats (flying-foxes), and an experimental move to eradicate rats from Lord Howe Island by chemical carpet bombing.

Uncommon Wealths in Postcolonial Fiction, 2018

BROADLY DEFINED, the Congo region of Africa might be considered a territory of the European or We... more BROADLY DEFINED, the Congo region of Africa might be considered a territory of the European or Western imagination. The ‘boundaries’ drawn by European treaty in the nineteenth century were products of European politics and European greed.1 They had nothing to do with any knowledge of the territory being carved up by Europe’s rulers, nor with the Congolese peoples themselves. But the area had been, and would continue to be, a place of European imagination in another sense: a ground upon which Western writers, many of whom had never set foot on the African continent at all, conducted often heated debates about conditions there.

The Future of Postcolonial Studies, 2015

While the right of humans to occupy land is usually taken for granted (except for internecine hum... more While the right of humans to occupy land is usually taken for granted (except for internecine human competition), conflict over the remainder often arises between those who champion the interests or rights of individual animals and environmental proponents who regard animals as indispensable ecosystem components or as disruptive and destructive exotics.

Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, 2010

Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin's Postcolonial Ecocriticism is a compelling study of the ways in w... more Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin's Postcolonial Ecocriticism is a compelling study of the ways in which the critical agendas of postcolonial studies and ecocriticism can mutually inform and energize each other. Their objective, as per their introduction, is to bring together the fields of postcolonialism and ecocriticism by examining how the creative tensions between the two fields and their critical methodologies are mutually enlightening. They describe postcolonial ecocriticism as performing what they call an ‘advocacy’ function that makes explicit forms of human and non-human exploitation.

Five Emus to the King of Siam: Environment and Empire, 2007

... As a less cohesive discipline (both conceptually and methodologically), “English” in general ... more ... As a less cohesive discipline (both conceptually and methodologically),
“English” in general and postcolonial studies in particular have yet to
resituate environmental concerns at the very centre of their disciplinary
inquiries. Nevertheless, for postcolonial studies, examination of this interface between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is pertinent and increasingly urgent.
Postcolonialism’s concerns with conquest and colonization; with race; with
the imposition (and, more rarely, ‘exchange’) of cultural knowledge; its
investment in theories of indigeneity and diaspora and of conceptions of
and relations between native and invader are also the central concerns of
animal and environmental studies. ...

Captured: The Animal Within Culture, 2014

Such images of the octopus (or giant squid) capturing us remain potent, particularly in Western c... more Such images of the octopus (or giant squid) capturing us remain potent, particularly in Western cultures, persisting into the present century in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and its epigones. In these popular cinematic images, writhing tentacles still threaten to capture and sink us, dragging us down to the depths of 'Davy Jones Locker'; but octopus and giant squid can also appear as part-human part-octopoid crosses, thus suggesting both a repelling distance from ourselves, and troublingly, some similarities. Through such images we attempt, paradoxically to domesticate ancient fears while repeating and thus reinforcing them, exemplifying the very contradictory attitudes we hold and practices we pursue in relation to Cephalopods.

Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human–Animal Relations, 2011

Notwithstanding scientific and philosophical denials of the possibilities of animal speech, most ... more Notwithstanding scientific and philosophical denials of the possibilities of animal speech, most human societies are familiar with speaking animals in a variety of written and oral genres, but most of these, whether or not they are anthropomorphic, have certainly been anthropocentric, and such representations of animal speech have generally been generically specific and thus circumscribed. Science, as the dominant paradigm of our times and authoritative arbiter of knowledge about animals, represents animal behaviour, motivation, and communication within particular disciplinary parameters. Behavioural science may "translate" gestures and sounds for us, but never represents animals as speaking objects.

Journeying and Journalling: Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing, 2011

Neither Jean Rhys' 'Unfinished Autobiography', Smile Please, nor Elise Aylen's The Night of the L... more Neither Jean Rhys' 'Unfinished Autobiography', Smile Please, nor Elise Aylen's The Night of the Lord fits neatly into these paradigmatic post-colonial patterns even though the journeys they inscribe are also generated out of colonial/postcolonial circumstances. Both authors thematise the journey and the significance of writing in relation to journeying, and both base their accounts on earlier journals each wrote. Rhys' 'passage to England' is both literal and figurative; and although she spent most of her adult life there after a childhood in Dominica, her autobiographical and imaginative writings reveal her alienation from both white English society and, (to her sorrow), that of black Creoles in Dominica. Rhys' writing about England and the Caribbean, however, like the classic settler-colonial journey of indigenisation, facilitates her life-long desire to identify with the black Caribbean rather than her 'ancestral' England. By contrast, Elise Aylen uses an account of a journey-in this case a pilgrimage, not to the imperial centre, but to another British ex-colony, India-to identify with India rather than with her country of birth, Canada.

Symbols of Australia: Uncovering the Stories Behind the Myths, 2010

If attitudes to the destruction of sharks have changed, the image of the death-defying beach-lovi... more If attitudes to the destruction of sharks have changed, the image of the death-defying beach-loving Aussie has not. But just as, in Australia, conservation of endangered sharks, such as the grey nurse, is being increasingly accepted, so the overseas image of Australia as a continent surrounded by 'jaws' may itself be weakening. In Dean Crawford's 2008 cultural history of the shark and shark images, Australia barely rates a mention. While like the Tasmanian tiger, the image may outlive the species...

Something Rich and Strange: Sea Changes, Beaches and the Littoral in the Anitpodes, 2009

... scientific knowledge rarely influences our expectations of sharks in the ways in which it can... more ... scientific knowledge rarely influences our expectations of sharks in the ways in which it can inform our perceptions of, for instance, wombats or lions. Given that the actual danger to humans from shark attack is miniscule (on average nine fatalities per year worldwide), it is clear that it is the shark's symbolic freight, rather than its real depredations on humans, which most strongly influences popular imagery, (re)contributing in turn to the (re)formation of popular perceptions. What lies behind this psycho-cultural complex of shark images, metaphors and symbols thus demands investigation if public attitudes are to be challenged in the interests of conservation of sharks (and the ecosystems of which they are an intrinsic and essential part) ...

Knowing Animals, 2007

Although anatomically, physiologically and even socially, we 'share' so much with pigs, we raise ... more Although anatomically, physiologically and even socially, we 'share' so much with pigs, we raise them in increasingly appalling conditions for the purpose of killing them and experimenting on them so that, whether by ingestion or by surgery, we can take them into our fleshy substance. Although the ultimate 'cannibalistic' horrors of European explorers - the imperfect sight of a cut of meat being roasted on the fire or the 'grisly remains' hanging in a string basket from the roof of a dark 'native' hut - are now believed more often to have been pig rather than long, the Western obsession with its apparently 'cannibal' others still facilitated the torture, killing and enslavement of these apparently 'savage' flesh eaters.

Nation in Imagination: Essays on Nationalism, Sub-Nationalisms and Narration, 2007

In spite of this perception of the nation, however, the precise historical roots of European nati... more In spite of this perception of the nation, however, the precise historical roots of European nationalism and nation-formation are discernible in interactions between developments in the settler colonies and revolutionary movements in Europe from the seventeenth century onwards. But so naturalised have these relatively recent 'primary' affiliations become that we are prepared to die for our countries and to accept affinity with individuals we have never seen nor will ever see, and who occupy 'land spaces' we regard as 'ours' but on which we may never actually set foot. Thus our imagined community of 'nation' remains an extremely powerful one, just as in earlier centuries the concept of a united Christendom had been. And even under the current pressures of 'globalisation', the nation still affects its members in a powerful way while continuing to underpin economic, political, social and cultural relations across the globe.

Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture, 2005

In this essay, I wish to focus on the ways in which a number of Caribbean writers at the intersec... more In this essay, I wish to focus on the ways in which a number of Caribbean writers at the intersection of Caribbean nature and culture are obliged by these tangled perceptions of the Caribbean in order to fully encounter and represent their own place. Caribbean tropical landscapes are 'always already' imbricated with that normative or temperate ideal, most usually in the hierarchized order that colonial relations imply. Moreover, the Caribbean was often perceived as richly but degeneratively tropical, frightening, fecund, even pathological; and, through colonialist interpellation, it became exoticized for its own inhabitants by the dominant European visions.

Ebony, Ivory and Tea, 2004

'White men read books; we hunt for heads instead' is an intriguing remark reportedly made by an I... more 'White men read books; we hunt for heads instead' is an intriguing remark reportedly made by an Iban warrior to the English administrator, adventurer and diplomat, Spenser St. John. The Iban's remark is cryptic but resonant. Relationships between Britain (or Europe) and Borneo, between 'books' and 'heads' - both literal and figurative - have long and fascinating histories from at least the 16th century. In this paper, however, I concentrate on different modalities of 'head-trading' in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

Disrupting Preconceptions: Post-colonialism and Education, 2004

This paper focuses on one particular aspect of that education - literary education - and its ambi... more This paper focuses on one particular aspect of that education - literary education - and its ambivalent application and reception in colonial/postcolonial contexts. At a time when not only literature but all Arts/Humanities scholars in Australia are being pressured to 'produce real results' (usually understood as 'make money'), it is instructive to look back to a time when some of the most important political and educational 'results' - both good and bad - were seen to be a direct product of literary education throughout Britain's Empire

The Regenerative Spirit: Polarities of Home and Away, Encounters and Diasporas in Post-colonial Literatures, 2003

Although they are often difficult to sustain, distinctions do exist between voluntary mass migrat... more Although they are often difficult to sustain, distinctions do exist between voluntary mass migrations and diasporic displacements. In the West, at least, the term 'diaspora' is increasingly employed to describe significantly large groups of people now established in countries or regions away from their ancestral homelands. The traditional meaning of 'diaspora' however, recognises its Biblical application to the dispersal of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity and evokes an exiling and scattering of people under duress, thereby conjuring not simply migration from an original homeland, but some form of captivity. Within the histories of the territories of the former British Empire, the experience of tropical Africans captured and transported across the Atlantic in chains to labour on 'New World' plantations best fits this traditional pattern; and it has been West Indian artists, writers and musicians (not least the late Bob Marley) who have drawn extensively on the Jewish comparison, singing, as a famous lyric expresses it, 'King Alpha's song is a strange land'.

In Transit: Travel, Text, Empire, 2002

Borneo had had a reputation for the 'exotic' as far back as the 1600s. Many of its 'meanings' had... more Borneo had had a reputation for the 'exotic' as far back as the 1600s. Many of its 'meanings' had already been fixed as European stereotypes well before any first-hand British accounts were available. Because Borneo offered the travel writer such a plethora of exotic subject matter, my concentration here must be on the treatment of one particular trope only, that of head-hunting. In ways which are both similar to, yet significantly different from, the trope of cannibalism, head-hunting could (and can) become a limit marker between self and Other, the civilized and the savage, Britain and Borneo. In these works, it is often the locus of interesting tensions and negotiations between (in Célestin's terms) home, the world of the Other, and the authorial subject.

After Writing Back: Present and Future Perspectives on Postcolonial Studies, 2019

Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent, 2020

Nature and Environment in Australia, 2018

Uncommon Wealths in Postcolonial Fiction, 2018

The Future of Postcolonial Studies, 2015

Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, 2010

Five Emus to the King of Siam: Environment and Empire, 2007

Captured: The Animal Within Culture, 2014

Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human–Animal Relations, 2011

Journeying and Journalling: Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing, 2011

Symbols of Australia: Uncovering the Stories Behind the Myths, 2010

Something Rich and Strange: Sea Changes, Beaches and the Littoral in the Anitpodes, 2009

Knowing Animals, 2007

Nation in Imagination: Essays on Nationalism, Sub-Nationalisms and Narration, 2007

Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture, 2005

Ebony, Ivory and Tea, 2004

Disrupting Preconceptions: Post-colonialism and Education, 2004

The Regenerative Spirit: Polarities of Home and Away, Encounters and Diasporas in Post-colonial Literatures, 2003

In Transit: Travel, Text, Empire, 2002

Wild Man from Borneo offers the first comprehensive history of the human-orangutan encounter. Arg... more Wild Man from Borneo offers the first comprehensive history of the human-orangutan encounter. Arguably the most humanlike of all the great apes, particularly in intelligence and behavior, the orangutan has been cherished, used, and abused ever since it was first brought to the attention of Europeans in the seventeenth century. The red ape has engaged the interest of scientists, philosophers, artists, and the public at large in a bewildering array of guises that have by no means been exclusively zoological or ecological. One reason for such a long-term engagement with a being found only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is that, like its fellow great apes, the orangutan stands on that most uncomfortable dividing line between human and animal, existing, for us, on what has been called “the dangerous edge of the garden of nature.”
Beginning with the scientific discovery of the red ape more than three hundred years ago, this work goes on to examine the ways in which its human attributes have been both recognized and denied in science, philosophy, travel literature, popular science, literature, theatre, museums, and film. The authors offer a provocative analysis of the origin of the name “orangutan,” trace how the ape has been recruited to arguments on topics as diverse as slavery and rape, and outline the history of attempts to save the animal from extinction. Today, while human populations increase exponentially, that of the orangutan is in dangerous decline. The remaining “wild men of Borneo” are under increasing threat from mining interests, logging, human population expansion, and the widespread destruction of forests. The authors hope that this history will, by adding to our knowledge of this fascinating being, assist in some small way in their preservation.

In Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin examine relationships between humans... more In Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin examine relationships between humans, animals and the environment in postcolonial texts. Divided into two sections that consider the postcolonial first from an environmental and then a zoocritical perspective, the book looks at:

- narratives of development in postcolonial writing
- entitlement and belonging in the pastoral genre
- colonialist 'asset stripping' and the Christian mission
- the politics of eating and representations of cannibalism
- animality and spirituality
- sentimentality and anthropomorphism
- the place of the human and the animal in a 'posthuman' world.

Making use of the work of authors as diverse as J.M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Jamaica Kincaid and V.S. Naipaul, the authors argue that human liberation will never be fully achieved without challenging how human societies have constructed themselves in hierarchical relation to other human and nonhuman communities, and without imagining new ways in which these ecologically connected groupings can be creatively transformed.

The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explo... more The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture.
The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language.
This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.

As a subject, post-colonial studies stands at the intersection of debates about race, colonialism... more As a subject, post-colonial studies stands at the intersection of debates about race, colonialism, gender, politics and language. In the language of post-colonial studies, some words are new, others are familiar but charged with new significance. This volume provides an essential key to understanding the issues that characterize post-colonialism, explaining what it is, where it is encountered and why it is crucial in forging new cultural identities. This comprehensive glossary has extensive cross-referencing, suggestions for further reading at the end of each entry, a bibliography of essential writings in post-colonial studies and is presented in an easy-to-use A-Z format.

Commonwealth literature (English) - History and criticism - Bibliography Decolonization in litera... more Commonwealth literature (English) - History and criticism - Bibliography Decolonization in literature - Bibliography Commonwealth countries -- In literature -- Bibliography

Decolonising Fictions: Comparative Studies in Post-Colonial Literatures

Animal Studies Journal, 2019

Colonialist concepts continue to drive Parks and Wildlife/ Conservation Department policies and p... more Colonialist concepts continue to drive Parks and Wildlife/ Conservation Department policies and practices in Australia and other settler colonies. In the case of Australia, returning the country to its pre- European invasion (pristine) condition becomes policy dictate, even where the often draconian implementations of these parameters prove unsuitable or even dangerous. And the notion of restoring Australian ecosystems to their pre-1788 condition is closely linked to the fetishisation of species purity. Australia has one of the world's highest extinction rates, and conservation of what remains is obviously of paramount importance. But the emphasis on eradication of so-called ‘pest’ species can sometimes become counterproductive – reducing rather than enhancing or shoring up biodiversity. An instance of the latter is provided by the recent Rat Eradication Project on Lord Howe Island, where losses promise to be greater than gains, biodiversity reduced rather than increased, and unethical animal suffering simply ignored.

Animal Studies Journal, 2016

This paper briefly considers the broad social and scientific background to research into the poss... more This paper briefly considers the broad social and scientific background to research into the possibility of insects experiencing pain sensations analogous to our own. There has been increasing use of insects in pain experiments generally, as ethical constraints on the use of other animals increased through the last century. The ways in which scientists have tackled the question of insect pain, particularly in trying to distinguish between nociception and pain are then selectively summarised. These include opioid, hormonal, evolutionary, neurophysiological and behavioural approaches, as well as experiments designed to elucidate the difficult area of insect consciousness, from the 1980s to the present.

Australian Humanities Review, 2011

During the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, dogs and men were thrown into several different, so... more During the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, dogs and men were thrown into several different, sometimes contradictory relationships. The Greenland dogs were considered to be ‘semi-wolves’ who required thrashings to keep them in line (Madigan 146), but were also at times treated as pets and were certainly loved. They were working dogs on whose muscle the success of the expedition partly depended, but no one had any prior expertise in caring for or training them. These contradictions came to a head in the Far Eastern sledging journey undertaken by the expedition leader, Douglas Mawson, along with the doghandlers Ninnis and Xavier Mertz. Its main events are well known to polar enthusiasts: Ninnis’s sudden plunge into a crevasse with the healthiest dogs and most of the supplies; Mawson and Mertz’s desperate flight back towards base; Mertz’s mysterious death; and Mawson’s astonishing—to some, suspicious—
completion of the journey on next to no rations. The remaining dogs, who until Ninnis’s death had been partly fed on native Antarctic animals (as well as each other), suddenly found themselves fodder for the men, with unpredictable results. In this essay, we examine the relationship between dogs and men during the AAE, and in particular on the Far Eastern sledging journey, looking at who ate whom on the journey, and what the consequences were of eating—or not eating—meat.

Southerly, 2009

Like fellow South Australian resident J. M. Coetzee, Peter Goldsworthy has, in a number of his wo... more Like fellow South Australian resident J. M. Coetzee, Peter Goldsworthy has, in a number of his works, sought to raise crucial ethical issues for a predominantly post-Christian Western world where problems posed by technologies and their products precipitate new moral, ethical and psychological dilemmas. It is increasingly clear that our current legal frameworks and traditional moral guides are inadequate in dealing with developments over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Both John Coetzee and Peter Goldsworthy then, have used fiction to raise these issues, and, reaching imaginatively 'outside the box,' drawn our attention to the directions in which we might seek at least partial solutions.

Interventions, 2007

... But whatever its politics, green postcolonialism brings out a truism that clearly applies to,... more ... But whatever its politics, green postcolonialism brings out a truism that clearly applies to, but is not always clearly stated in, the different strands of both postcolonialism and ecocriticism: no social justice without environmental justice; and without social justice for all ecological beings no justice at all.

Mosaic, 2007

The world-wide panic occasioned by outbreaks of BSE was (and is) incommensurate with the number o... more The world-wide panic occasioned by outbreaks of BSE was (and is) incommensurate with the number of human fatalities incurred. This apparent over-reaction can in part be accounted for by BSEs simultaneous disruption of cherished "boundaries" between those categories (civilization and savagery; cannibalism and carnivory; human and animal) upon which our human self-definition depends.

Journal of West Indian Literature, 2006

... Yet as I began to read more and more literature and history from the Caribbean, and visited m... more ... Yet as I began to read more and more literature and history from the Caribbean, and visited more regularly, I increasingly re-read and re thought England - her imperial history and her place, both past and present, in our landscape(s). If England had simultaneously enriched and impoverished our geography, and contributed to my later love of the Caribbean - part memory and nostalgia, a recognition of differences and similarities in Anglo imperial refractions - it had done so through a history, not of idealism and glory, but of genocide, slavery and displacement. ...

Kunapipi, 2006

I am interested in macro-photography, particularly in the ways that natural objects or substances... more I am interested in macro-photography, particularly in the ways that natural objects or substances, when viewed at close range, are transformed into intriguing abstract patterns or conjure unfamiliar worlds. My favourite subjects for this are bark, sand, rock and snow, and, to a lesser degree, flowers and fruit. The colours, textures and shapes of the everyday things we take for granted or simply pass without noticing can become fascinatingly alive.

Mosaic, 2005

The nature/culture dichotomy finds uneasy meeting ground in the garden. But particularly in sett... more The nature/culture dichotomy finds uneasy meeting ground in the garden. But particularly in settler cultures, "the garden" introduces other unresolved dichotomies: indigenous and imported; wild and domesticated; pests and pets; traditional myth and scientific rationality. This essay considers these issues by focussing on the public debate over fruit bat colonies in the Melbourne (Australia) Botanical Gardens.

New Literature(s) Review, 2004

While issues of plant and animal conservation have also become important in Europe, it was (and i... more While issues of plant and animal conservation have also become important in Europe, it was (and is) in the settler colonies particularly that paradoxes of human/animal accommodation (or lack of it) were and are most starkly realised. The particular example I wish to explore in more detail here concerns the late 1990s 'invasion' of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens by a colony of grey-headed native bats or 'flying foxes'.

Mosaic, 2017

The following roundtable discussion took place at the University of Queensland, Australia on 12 J... more The following roundtable discussion took place at the University of Queensland, Australia on 12 June 2001 as the concluding session of the No Sense of Discipline conference. The discussion brought together Mosaic Editor Dawne McCance (DM) with conference plenary speakers Sander Gilman (SG), Linda Hutcheon (LH), Michael Hutcheon (MH), and Helen Tiffin (HT). Mosaic is pleased to publish this roundtable discussion, which originally appeared in Mosaic 35.2 (June 2002)

Kunapipi, 2001

From a twentieth-century point of view, the life and works of Sir Spenser Buckingham St. John off... more From a twentieth-century point of view, the life and works of Sir Spenser Buckingham St. John offer a not dissimilar instance of apparent contradiction. Spenser St. John is remembered in the Caribbean as a particularly influential nineteenth-century racist, a writer whose Hayti or the Black Republic (1884) both supported those Haitian stereotypes already in circulation, (for instance, at the time of the Morant Bay Uprising), and vastly extended their influence. St. John's work on Haiti remains notorious for its uncompromising dismissal (one that echoes that of J.A. Froude) of the very possibility of blacks being able to govern themselves, and for its sensationalist treatment of cannibalism (particularly child-eating) in nineteenth-century Haitit.

SPAN, 1998

This paper is primarily concerned with the ways in which three contemporary Caribbean writers - J... more This paper is primarily concerned with the ways in which three contemporary Caribbean writers - Jamaica Kincaid, Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison - deploy gardens, flowers, and flowering trees to represent this "entangled" cultural history. Representations of crops and flowers in contemporary Caribbean writing can never escape their history, that is, their constructedness within Caribbean historical circumstances (and their part in that very construction) whereby the landscape and agriculture (or floriculture) have particular significance.

The Yearbook of English Studies, 1997

In this essay I want to address two related issues for postcolonial criticism: the politics of in... more In this essay I want to address two related issues for postcolonial criticism: the politics of intertextuality through the relationship between colonialist texts and the material conditions of colonial practices; and the politics of rewriting, by the former colonizers, of such colonialist texts. To do this I will focus on one particular context and cluster of texts: Randolph Stow's Visitants (set in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea) and the pre-texts it interrogates.

Callaloo, 1993

Recent West Indian literature by women offers a locus of debate over the retrieval of the body fr... more Recent West Indian literature by women offers a locus of debate over the retrieval of the body from and within western discursive erasure. This erasure of the female body and its possible reclamation is of course central to contemporary feminist debate, and has its own genealogy within feminist discourse. My interest in this question, however, is in the ways in which colonialism's discursive and institutional apparatuses obliterated and continue to obliterate the colonised (specifically female) body, and the counter-colonial strategies by which this "lost" body might be reclaimed. In their fiction Erna Brodber and Jamaica Kincaid anatomize the body's erasure under a colonialist scriptive drive and explore potentials for the re/cognition of corporeality and sexuality. ...

Journal of West Indian Culture, 1993

In this paper I wish to focus on V.S. Naipaul's Guerrillas, a novel now almost 20 years old, to e... more In this paper I wish to focus on V.S. Naipaul's Guerrillas, a novel now almost 20 years old, to explore issues with which post-colonial critics and theorists and some post structuralist critics are currently engaged - issues that cluster around intertextuality, agency and the body. I do not intend to offer a comprehensive reading of Guerrillas, but to focus on these issues by considering Naipaul's novel as a critique of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

Meridian, 1993

This paper considers malaria and its constructions within biomedical and literary discourse in th... more This paper considers malaria and its constructions within biomedical and literary discourse in the context of nineteenth-century European colonialist and twentieth-century post-colonial and neo-colonising configurations.

Commonwealth Novel in English, 1992

Interview with Christopher Koch.

SPAN , 1990

Achebe's famous statement, 'I would be quite satisfied if my novels ... did no more than teach my... more Achebe's famous statement, 'I would be quite satisfied if my novels ... did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf, delivered them,' has by now become a commonplace of post-colonial critical commentary. Yet curiously, even though it is much quoted, and directs us specifically to the relationship between text and audience, there has been relatively little attention paid to this question in post-colonial criticism. Nationalist critics and commentators have castigated writers for seeming to write for British or foreign audiences and markets; the provision of glossaries has been adduced as evidence of continuing hegemonies in publishing and marketing; Questions such as 'For whom should Indian, African, or Aboriginal writers write?' have often been raised and have provoked heated debate. Yet there has been little detailed study of the relationship between texts and their captive colonial (indeed post-colonial) audiences, and there have been few studies of the implied audience or audiences of post-colonial texts. This is a curious omission given the degree to which questions of this kind have direct bearing on any analysis of the discursive field within which texts and textuality are enmeshed in post-colonial societies.

Australian-Canadian Studies, 1989

A number of Canadian writers (as Max Dorsinville, Diana Brydon and Chantal Zabus' have noted) hav... more A number of Canadian writers (as Max Dorsinville, Diana Brydon and Chantal Zabus' have noted) have taken up the challenge by rewriting particular European pre-texts, notably Shakespeare's The Tempest: but in Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984) Timothy Findley interrogates that ur-text of Western imperialism, the Bible, rewriting the account of Noah and the Great Flood, source myth in Western civilisation for motifs of destruction and salvation.

Western exploitation of other peoples is inseparable from attitudes and practices relating to oth... more Western exploitation of other peoples is inseparable from attitudes and practices relating to other species and the extra-human environment generally. Colonial depredations turn on such terms as 'human', 'savage', 'civilised', 'natural', 'progressive', and on the legitimacies governing apprehension and control of space and landscape. Environmental impacts were reinforced, in patterns of unequal 'exchange', by the transport of animals, plants and peoples throughout the European empires, instigating widespread ecosystem change under unequal power regimes (a harbinger of today's 'globalization').This book considers these imperial 'exchanges' and charts some contemporary legacies of those inequitable imports and exports, transportations and transmutations. Sheep farming in Australia, transforming the land as it dispossessed the native inhabitants, became a symbol of (new, white) nationhood. The transportation of plants (and animals) into and across the Pacific, even where benign or nostalgic, had widespread environmental effects, despite the hopes of the acclimatisation societies involved, and, by extension, of missionary societies “planting the seeds of Christianity.” In the Caribbean, plantation slavery pushed back the “jungle” (itself an imported word) and erased the indigenous occupants – one example of the righteous, biblically justified cultivation of the wilderness. In Australia, artistic depictions of landscape, often driven by romantic and 'gothic' aesthetics, encoded contradictory settler mindsets, and literary representations of colonial Kenya mask the erasure of ecosystems. Chapters on the early twentieth century (in Canada, Kenya, and Queensland) indicate increased awareness of the value of species-preservation, conservation, and disease control. The tension between traditional and 'Euroscientific' attitudes towards conservation is revealed in attitudes towards control of the Ganges, while the urge to resource exploitation has produced critical disequilibrium in Papua New Guinea. Broader concerns centering on ecotourism and ecocriticism are treated in further essays summarising how the dominant West has alienated 'nature' from human beings through commodification in the service of capitalist 'progress'.

Table of Contents
Introduction (Helen Tiffin) pp. xi.
Empire's Proxy: Sheep and the Colonial Environment (Leigh Dale) pp. 1-14.
Representations of Landscape and Nature in Anthony Trollope's The West Indies and the Spanish Main and James Anthony's Froude's The English in the West Indies (Claudia Brandenstein) pp. 15-30.
Polluted River or Goddess and Saviour? The Ganga in the Discourses of Modernity and Hinduism (Meennakshi Sharma) pp. 31-50.
Ecotourism: A Colonial Legacy? (Helen Gilbert) pp. 51-70.
Colonial Nature-Inscription: On Haunted Landscapes (Andrew McCain) pp. 71-84.
'Transported Landscapes': Refections on Empire and Environment in the Pacific (Ruth Blair) pp. 85-112.
The 'I' in Beaver: Sympathetic Identification and Self-Representation in Grey-Owl's Pilgrims of the Wild (Carrie Dawson) pp. 113-31.
The Sandline Mercenaries Affair: Postcoloniality, Globalization and the Nation-State (Robert Dixon) pp. 131-48.
Planting the Seeds of Christianity: Ecological Reform in Nineteenth-Century Polynesian London Missionary Society Stations (Anna Johnston) pp. 149-64.
Five Emus to the King of Siam: Acclimatization and Colonialism (Chris Tiffin) pp. 165-76.
'Back to the World': Reading Ecocriticism in a Postcolonial Context (Susie O'Brien) pp. 177-200.
Views from Van Diemen's Land: Space, Place and the Colonial Settler Subject in John Glover's Landscapes (Catherine Howell) pp. 201-220.
Colonial Cordon Sanitaire: Fixing the Boundaries of the Disease Environment (Jo Robertson) pp. 221-234.
'The Animals are Innocennt': Latter-Day Women Travellers in Africa (Gillian Whitlock) pp. 235-46.

The essential introduction to the most important texts in post-colonial theory and criticism, thi... more The essential introduction to the most important texts in post-colonial theory and criticism, this second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include 121 extracts from key works in the field.

Leading, as well as lesser known figures in the fields of writing, theory and criticism contribute to this inspiring body of work that includes sections on nationalism, hybridity, diaspora and globalization. The Reader's wide-ranging approach reflects the remarkable diversity of work in the discipline along with the vibrancy of anti-imperialist writing both within and without the metropolitan centres. Covering more debates, topics and critics than any comparable book in its field, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader is the ideal starting point for students and issues a potent challenge to the ways in which we think and write about literature and culture.

Table of Contents Preface pp. vii-viii. Acknowledgements pp. ix. Progress and Ambivalence in the... more Table of Contents

Preface pp. vii-viii.
Acknowledgements pp. ix.
Progress and Ambivalence in the Colonial Novel (Chris Tiffin) pp. 1-10.
Exiles from Tradition: Women's Life Writing (Gillian Whitlock) pp. 11-24.
Concealing Her Blue Stockings: Femininity and Self-Representation in Susanna Moodie's Autobiographical Works (Misao Dean) pp. 25-36.
Atwood and Drabble: Life after Radiance (Lee Briscoe Thomson) pp. 37-46.
Out of the Blank: Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic (Stan Dragland) pp. 47-66.
Rite of Reply: Shorter Fiction of Jean Rhys (Helen Tiffin) pp. 67-78.
Sound, Depth and Disembodiment in Mittelholzer's My Bones and My Flute (Russel McDougall) pp. 79-90.
Elements of the Mock-Heroic in West Indian Fiction: Samuel Selvon's Moses Ascending and Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance (Victor Chang) pp. 91-.

This book is an examination of two major literary movements which are often misleadingly conflate... more This book is an examination of two major literary movements which are often misleadingly conflated. The post-colonial differs from the post-modern in its provenance in former British colonies and dominions, in its historical reach extending from the time of Imperial dominance down to the contemporary, in its critical commitment to context, and in its development of an independent body of theory.

Table of Contents
Introduction (Helen Tiffin) pp. vii-.
Modernism's Last Post (Stephen Slemon) pp. 1-12.
Narration in the Post-colonial Moment: Merle Hodge's Crick Crack Monkey (Simon Gikandi) pp. 13-22.
Waiting for the Post: Some Relations between Modernity, Colonization and Writing (Simon During) pp. 23-46.
'Numinous Proportions': Wilson Harris's Alternative to All 'Posts' (Hena-Maes Jelinek) pp. 47-64.
'The Empire Writes Back': Language and History in Shame and Midnight's Children (Aruna Srivastava) pp. 65-78.
Breaking the Chain: Anti-Saussurean Resistance in Birney, Carey and C.S. Peirce (Ian Adam) pp. 79-94.
Post, Post and Post. Or, Where is South African Literature in All This? (Annamaria Carusi) pp. 95-108.
SLIP PAGE: Angela Carter, In/Out/In the Post-Modern Nexus (Robert Rawdon Wilson) pp. 109-124.
Decolonizing the Map: Post-colonialism, Post-structuralism and the Cartographic Conection (Graham Huggan) pp. 125-38.
What Was Post-modernism? (John Frow) pp. 139-52.
Being there, being There: Kosinsky and Malouf (Gareth Griffiths) pp. 153-66.
'Circling the Downspout of Empire' (Linda Hutcheon) pp. 167-90.
The White Inuit Speaks: Contamination as Literary Strategy (Diana Brydon) pp. 191-204.

Introduction (H. Tiffin and C. Tiffin). Invitation (J. McQueen). Hello Camel (A. Badger). Gamalia... more Introduction (H. Tiffin and C. Tiffin).
Invitation (J. McQueen).
Hello Camel (A. Badger).
Gamalian's Womann (Subramani).
Swimmers (B. Baer).
Not without Rain (L. Houbein).
The Guru (S. Nandan).
Good old Joe (R. Conway).
Balandja, the Cockatoos (B. Wongar).
When the Ants Look Like People (M. Richards).
The Boss (J. Kolia).
A Good Marriage (O. Masters).
Go, Said the Bird (C. O'Brien).
Dear Primitive (Subramani).
The Well-bred Thief (E. Jolley).
Crocodile (P. Sharrad).

Interventions, 2007

The incursion of Europeans into other areas of the world from the fifteenth century onwards catas... more The incursion of Europeans into other areas of the world from the fifteenth century onwards catastrophically resulted in genocide or the dispossession and marginalization of indigenous peoples across the globe. It also caused drastic changes in extra-European temperate as well as tropical environments. As Alfred Crosby argues, environmental impact in the form of disease - human, plant and animal - forest felling, the casual or systematic slaughter of indigenous animals, and the introduction of European crops and livestock were both prime cause and continuing consequence of environmental change incurred through the post-1492 European diasporic intrusions (Crosby 1986).

Table of Contents:
Green Postcolonialism (Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin) pp. 1-11.
Global Designs and Local Lifeworlds: Colonial Legacies of Conservation, Disenfranchisement and Environmental Governance in Postcolonial India (Shalini Randeria) pp. 12-30.
Estranging an Icon: Eucalyptus and India (Paul Sharrad) pp. 31-48.
Conservation in Colonial Indonesia (Robert Cribb) pp. 49-61.
Quantum Landscapes: A 'Ventriloquism of Spirit' (Elizabeth DeLoughrey) pp. 62-82.
Survival Strategies for Global Times: The Desert Walk for Biodiversity, Health and Heritage (Susie O'Brien) pp. 83-98.
'Postcolonial' Describes You as Negative: An Interview with Amitav Ghosh (T. Vijay Kumar) pp. 99-105.
Laughing Out of Place: Humour Alliances and Other Postcolonial Translations In an Antique Land (Christi Ann Merrill) pp. 106-123.
'Daughters Who Know the Languages of Power': Community, Sexuality, and Postcolonial Development in Tess Onwueme's Tell it to Women (Kanika Batra) pp. 124-138.
Book Reviews pp. 139-164.

New Literature Review , 1980

Rachel Carson Centre Lunchtime Colloquium, 2014

Helen Tiffin (University of Wollongong, Australia) presents on "Philosophies Clash: Conservation ... more Helen Tiffin (University of Wollongong, Australia) presents on "Philosophies Clash: Conservation versus Animals" at the RCC Lunchtime Colloquium on Thursday, 24 April 2014.

The RCC Lunchtime Colloquium series allows fellows of the Rachel Carson Center to present their research to other fellows, to staff, and to the general public. It takes place weekly from 12-2 p.m. Entry is free and lunch is provided. Talks last approximately 30 minutes and are followed by a Q&A session.

Knowing Animals, 2019

In this exciting episode of Knowing Animals I am joined by Helen Tiffin. Helen is an adjunct prof... more In this exciting episode of Knowing Animals I am joined by Helen Tiffin. Helen is an adjunct professor at the University of Wollongong. We discuss her upcoming book chapter ‘Australian Conservation Policies and the Owls of Lord Howe Island’ which will soon appear which will be published by Brill and edited by Beate Neumier from the University of Colon, coming out in 2019.