Carole Ferrier

White blindfolds and black armbands: The uses of whiteness theory for reading Australian cultural production

Analyses or descriptions of the history of race relations (and cultural production) in what has been called Australia for about a hundred years, have frequently been informed by two orientations that might be simply categorised as the white blindfold and the black armband positions. In many cases, these two mindsets can be observed in other Western cultures although the interaction between them, and the society around them, gets played out differently in particular places at particular times.

Manifesting Australian Literary Feminisms. Margaret Henderson and Ann Vickery, eds, 2009. Wollongong, NSW: Australian Literary Studies. The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers. Maryanne Dever, Sally Newman and Ann Vickery, 2009. Canberra: Na

Re-narration, reinterpretation and transformation of old stories has been a characteristic feature of feminist methodologies, so it is not surprising that many aspects of the current state of feminist literary studies in Australia today, as recounted in these two books, show this still continuing*including self-reflexively. Along with that of class, feminism’s death has continued to be periodically pronounced ever since Virginia Woolf did so back in 1938 in Three Guineas:

Teaching African American Women’s Literature in Australia: Reading Toni Morrison in the Deep North

This chapter discusses reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), a novel set in the United States in 1941, in courses at the University of Queensland (the earliest, largest, and most privileged, in a state that has been both redneck and Red North) in Australia’s Deep North.1 I will discuss reading African American women’s writing here in relation to two principal concerns: teaching Black writing in the Australian academy in a historical context of usually unstated preferences for dead white men’s literature, and in relation to reading Black Australian women’s writing. With regard to the former, I want to situate the difficulties of adding Black women writers (African American or Australian) to the canon — or alternative canons — in the light of the racism that has flooded and continues to flood the social, economic, and political history of both the United States and Australia. Some of the issues that arise are: the relationship of teaching literature dealing with issues of race and gender politics to the society in which it is written and read; political interaction and interchange — especially since the 1960s — between activists, writers, and academics in Australia and the United States which have impacted considerably upon cultural politics and teaching in the universities; the expectation of the production of “truth effects” in reading Black narratives, or the expectation on the part of white readers that such writing will “educate” them and / or articulate a lost or silenced history; and the ways in which teaching of African American women’s writing (and notably Morrison) can most usefully be approached in Australia now.

Review of Anne Pender, "Christina Stead: Satirist" (Common Ground Publishing) Altona, Vic., 2002

The article entitled “Laparoscopic-assisted versus open ileocolic resection for Crohn’s disease: a randomized trial” is another excellent and important study on laparoscopy for inflammatory bowel disease written by a reknowned Dutch group of expert laparoscopic surgeons. This study represents the largest published multicenter prospective randomized trial to assess a homogeneous group of patients with terminal ileal Crohn’s disease. The authors have included 2 very well-matched groups of patients and achieved quite admirable results including a conversion rate of 10%, an operative time of only 25 minutes longer than laparotomy (115 versus 90 minutes), and a morbidity of only 10% in the laparoscopic group. Indeed, they have shown several substantial advantages conferred by laparoscopic as compared with open surgery including a shorter hospital stay of 5 versus 7 days (P 0.008) and a reduced morbidity from 33% in the open group to 10% in the laparoscopic group (P 0.028). Although they did not find improvement in initial quality of life parameters, they did find significant time effects on all scales of the Short Form-36 (SF-36) (P 0.001) and the Gastrointestinal Quality of Life Index score (GIQL) (P 0.001). Lastly, they revealed statistically significant costs savings by applying the laparoscopic approach, specifically a reduction in the median overall cost during the 3-month follow-up from €8196 (euros) in the open group to €6412 (euros) in the laparoscopic group (P 0.042). I would like to highlight several of the results and discussion points in this manuscript. First, in terms of the technique, I have evolved over the last 15 years from a 4-port to a 3-port technique. I use a slightly different port configuration than do Maartense and coworkers. Specifically, I use a 10-mm supraumbilical port and 2 additional 10 mm left-sided ports: one in the left paraumbilical region or left upper quadrant and one in the left lower quadrant. Although Maartense and colleagues also use the supraumbilical port, they favor a 10-mm right fossa port and a 5-mm suprapubic port. These differences highlight the fact that port placement is merely an issue of personal preference, and the differences between us relative to the size and position of the ports are probably of little consequence and I do not believe play any significant difference in either the ability to accomplish the procedure or the subsequent result. What is important is that, in most patients, these operations can be performed with 3 ports: one for the camera, one for a grasper, and one for a dissecting instrument. Maartense and associates prefer the surgeon holding the camera in the left hand and the laparoscopic scissors in the right hand. I prefer having an assistant hold the camera while I use a 10-mm diameter Babcock grasping forceps and a 5-mm diameter ultrasonic scalpel or a 5-mm diameter bipolar coagulating and cutting device. The remaining technical facets of the procedure appear identical, including extracorporeal vascular ligation, bowel division, and anastomosis, although again I prefer a stapled side-to-side rather than a sutured end-toside anastomosis. I think that the difference for anastomosis is predicated on the findings of Kracht et al. Kracht et al from the French Association for Surgical Research who published a prospective randomized multicenter trial that included 440 patients divided into 5 groups. Four types of hand-sewn ileocolic anastomoses were compared with stapled ileocolic anastomosis. Specifically, 84 patients underwent an end-to-end anastomosis with interrupted sutures, 77 patients underwent an end-to-end anastomosis with a continuous running suture, 82 patients underwent an end-to-side anastomosis with interrupted sutures, and 91 patients underwent an end-to-side anastomosis with continuous sutures. In all instances, polyglycolic derived suture was used. A total of 106 patients underwent a side-to-side anastomosis with a combination of the linear cutter and the stapling devices.