Prosthetic gods
Subtitle: travel, representation, and colonial governance
By: Robert Dixon.
Series: UQP Australian studies
Publisher: University of Queensland Press in association with the API Network
Published: 2001
Place of publication: St. Lucia, Qld
Language: eng
Number of pages: 191
Subjects: National characteristics, Australian.; Postcolonialism -- Australia.; Popular culture -- Australia -- History -- 20th century.; Travelers' writings, Australian -- History and criticism.; Australia -- Civilization -- 20th century.; Australia -- Colonization -- Historiography.
Description: "Prosthetic Gods is a contribution to Australian Studies informed by the recent concerns of postcolonial theory. Its main subject is the relationship between travel, representation and colonial governance, focusing on white Australia's involvement with Melanesia during the first half of the twentieth century. Its scope is interdisciplinary, dealing with the travel writing, cinema, and photography of Frank Hurley, Frank Clune, Ion L. Idriess and James McAuley in the context of colonial legislation and the policies of specific colonial administrations. While reflecting postcolonial theory's concern to connect colonialism with culture, Dixon's meticulously researched case studies reveal that colonialism is not a single or coherent project, and result in a nuanced account of how representation and rule are - or perhaps are not quite - connected."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [176]-185) and index.
Table of contents: title: Laboratories of modernity : modernity, tropical medicine, and the colonial body; title: Frank Hurley and the Ross Smith flight : modernity, aerial vision, and empire; title: Frank Hurley's Pearls and savages : travel, popular culture, and colonial governance; title: Captives and inmates : Ion L. Idriess' Torres Strait trilogy and the Aborigines Protection Acts; title: The Frank Clune industry : travel writing, corporate sponsorship, and colonial governance; title: James McAuley's New Guinea : colonialism, modernity, suburbia.