Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/52341
Type: Creative work
Title: Arrested motion and future-mourning: Hybridity and creativity
Author: Castro, B.
Citation: Cultures in Transit, 2009; 4:83-99
Publisher: Southerly
Publisher Place: C/O English Assoc Univ Sydney Dept English Sydney Australia NSW 2006
Issue Date: 2008
ISBN: 9781921556012
ISSN: 2105-2549
Statement of
Responsibility: 
Brian Castro
Abstract: Melancholy seems always to have had a bad press. In this essay I explore the ways in which the expression of negativity, ambivalence and dissonance in melancholy influenced and shaped my writing. Much of this melancholia stemmed from transplantation and dissonance and from the need to make oneself heard in a host country whose blindness to alterity ran parallel to an identitarian politics framed by exclusion. When a nation is unable to mourn its history, writers tend to be paralysed, being unable to detach themselves from a nation-building canon. I investigate melancholia as a productive agentin employing critique to produce counter-traditions and to offer resistance to dominant ideologies. I focus on writing in order to explore distinctive moments when melancholia, expressed in forms ranging from dissimulation to irony, played a decisive role in my writing career.
Keywords: melancholy
Henry Kendall
crossing cultures
Description: 2008 Blaiklock lecture
Rights: Copyright © Tous droits réservés
Description (link): http://www.brandl.com.au/southerly/backcopies/2008.htm
Appears in Collections:Aurora harvest 5
English publications

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