106-093 Contested Sites

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually admission to the Postgraduate Diploma or Fourth Year Honours in English, see Honours entry.

Semester

Subject Description

This subject offers a space for reflection and debate in areas often neglected in postmodern perspectives; that is, in the politics and ethics of writing. Drawing upon a wide range of imaginative, critical and theoretical texts, the subject focusses on the text as a site of contestation in terms of intertextuality and interspatiality. The focus is on both competing narratives and voices (in terms of the politics of gender, ethnicity, cultural experience); and the sites ('real' or 'fabulous') conjured or performed by the writing. The subject enables students to explore the limits of writing, to examine writing as testimony and writing as contestation, without discounting writing as productive of new modes of subjectivity and desire. By taking into account the silenced stories or histories that any writing involves, the subject should give students a chance to reflect and exchange on the theoretical, political and ethical implications of choices made in their creative writing practice.