This book is about how Australians have responded to stories
about suffering and injustice in Australia, presented in a range of
public media, including literature, history, films, and television.
Those who have responded are both ordinary and prominent
Australians--politicians, writers, and scholars. All have sought to
come to terms with Australia's history by responding empathetically
to stories of its marginalized citizens.
Drawing upon international scholarship on collective memory,
public history, testimony, and witnessing, this book represents a
cultural history of contemporary Australia. It examines the forms
of witnessing that dominated Australian public culture at the turn
of the millennium. Since the late 1980s, witnessing has developed
in Australia in response to the increasingly audible voices of
indigenous peoples, migrants, and more recently, asylum seekers. As
these voices became public, they posed a challenge not only to
scholars and politicians, but also, most importantly, to ordinary
citizens.
When former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered his historic
apology to Australia's indigenous peoples in February 2008, he
performed an act of collective witnessing that affirmed the
testimony and experiences of Aboriginal Australians. The phenomenon
of witnessing became crucial, not only to the recognition and
reparation of past injustices, but to efforts to create a more
cosmopolitan Australia in the present. This is a vital addition to
Transaction's critically acclaimed Memory and Narrative series.
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