‘“Verbal Sludge”: Mud and Malleability in the Novels of Patrick White.’ (original) (raw)

A phenomenology of whiteness

The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they 'take up' space, and what they 'can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way.

Ambiguities of the Future: Theological Hints in the Novels of Patrick White

Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies, 2010

This essay explores the presence of and relationship between different visions of the future in the novels of Patrick White. In works such as Voss, A Fringe of Leaves, Riders of the Chariot and The Vivisector we can detect traces of what Moltmann calls "calculable" and "desirable" visions of the future. White's treatment of the themes of the body and the land speak of a future that is made possible from within the framework of existing possibilities. Yet throughout his writing White also hints at a future that can only be received, often in moments of intense, and sometimes spiritual illumination. This dual vision comes to expression in the figure of the outsider, the judgement of art and, crucially, in White's repeated use of crucifixion imagery. In this way White, though in many ways a quintessentially Australian novelist, helps us to reflect theologically on aspects of the human situation and the tensions inherent within it. 1. This present essay is a heavily revised and expanded version of an earlier article by me, "Patrick White and the Vision of God", Christian 9/4 (1985) 42-55, which is drawn on by kind permission of the editor and publishers of Christian.

Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2005

85 As I will show, this returned distorted appearance can have powerful somatic consequences for nonwhite bodies, leading to profound levels of self-hatred, double consciousness, feelings of body distortion, and psychological rupture. Moments of living one's non-white body as the object of white projections is not limited to the identification with, or the internalization of, the distorted projections. It is enough that the white engages in a set of racist communicative practices that signify for me that I am somehow disturbingly different. Because we are always already social, we come to develop a certain semiotic literacy regarding how bodies react to us. Hence, a young Black child in a class with all white students will become aware of her difference-perhaps becoming hyper-vigilant about her darkness in ways that she had not been prior to coming to that class-as she is summarily not called upon when she raises her hand to respond to a question. She will begin to cognize herself, feel herself, indeed, live her being in the mode of an outsider, a stranger.