"White Australia is the land of failed mourning. Which is to say it is the land of melancholia. Which is to also say it is the land of malignant narcissism. And if we learn to do the work of mourning (probably only Aboriginal people and asylum-seekers and a few others are engaging with that work currently – we make them do it for us) then yes we lose an ideal. But it’s a malignant ideal. Literature is full of these malignant narcissistic ideals. I’d argue that the recent furore over the Slattery poetry plagiarism has more to do with the loss of an ideal, about poetry and its production. Posts about murder and massacre have excited less comment at Overland, and Slattery didn’t do anything that terrible. Faked a poem. But what he did do was challenge – albeit unintentionally – literature’s pompous and highly-controlled modes of production and policing, which so many of us are significantly invested in. And unable to mourn the revealing of that, writers resort to moral outrage, an outrage that is just a manifestation of our narcissism." overland.org.au/2013/09/thirteen-years-of-proust
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 01:58:18 +0000
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