Mind Hoards. "Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood (Quarterly Essay 11)" by Germaine Greer and "Made in England: Australia's British Inheritance (Quarterly Essay 12)" by David Malouf. [review]

Abstract

With Greer proposing that white Australians embrace Aboriginality, that ‘the gubba move towards the blackfella’, and with Malouf working to the title "Made in England: Australia’s British Inheritance", one might expect, at best, a frisson of dissonance. But the gods had more in mind. The two essays, about as different as can be in cadence and argument, nonetheless intersect, sometimes run parallel. Malouf, like Greer, is engaged in a radical exploration of the way Australians understand themselves and their history, and in a language alive to depths of thought and feeling, not just the surface reflexes of nationalism. In the ripples of deep thought, the writers overlap.