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value as an educative tool inAustralia, even if this did not extend to thinking
about addressingcontemporary issues inaconcreteway.
Readersbornoverseashadadifferentkindofexperiencethatcontrastedwith
those born inAustralia; it was not their history, and they explicitly stated that
they felt less implicated. For a Swedish-born reader the book groupdiscussion
broadenedherworldview:“They [theAustralian-bornreaders] find something I
didn’t,youknowitreallydoessomethingformebecauseyoucanhearwhatother
people think,hear themdisagreeing, raising things that Iwouldnothavethought
of”. (FG2)
Reflectionsoncontemporaryracerelationsasaresultof thenovelwerenotso
much evidence of ‘changed’ thinking, but engagementwith the plot and char-
acterswasawindowtounderstandingcontemporaryimaginings.Statementslike
the above, suggest that reading SarahThornhill enabled readers in our study to
implicatethemselvesinhistory;asAustralians,andasparticipantsinandwitnesses
tothe ‘silencing’ofhistorythatissuchadominantfeatureofhegemonicdiscourses
of thenation’spast.
Readinganddiscussinghistorical fictionhasthepowertoevokethepast,and
act as adoorway to appraise the impact of past events. This ideahasparticular
resonance in postcolonial cultures, such as Australia. Insofar as postcolonial
literary theory promotes the power of political literature to inspire social re-
flectionandchange, thenit isnecessarytounderstandhowthe ‘readingpublics’
of postcolonial cultures use their readings of postcolonial literature. This is to
say, any postcolonial literary theorymust appreciate vernacular literary criti-
cism. InherbookPostcolonialTheory, LeelaGandhi suggests that“the colonial
aftermathcalls foranameliorativeandtherapeutic theorywhichisresponsiveto
thetaskofrememberingandrecallingthecolonialpast.”12Forsomepostcolonial
literaryscholars,suchatheoryentailsdevelopingreadingpracticesthatfacilitate
readers’ reckoningwith the past through themediumof fiction.However one
understands the roleof fiction in thepostcolonial refashioningofnational his-
torical narratives towards reconciliation, the reading subject of such theory is
generally assumed tobe anacademic reader: a readerwhooccupies a position
within or in relation to formal, usually tertiary, educational institutions; not
unlike the theorists who posit such views in the first place. An unintended
consequenceof this is that thevernacularcriticismofordinaryreaders iselided,
ignored, discounted, or rendered suspect. This oversight is a clear challenge to
manyassumptionsofpostcolonialtheory,anditisonethatisbeingaddressedby
researchers such as Kimberly Chabot Davis13, and James Procter and Bethan
12 Gandhi1998,p. 8.
13 ChabotDavis2014.
ReadingFiction,TalkingReconciliation 239
Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0
Über Bücher reden
Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften
- Title
- Über Bücher reden
- Subtitle
- Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften
- Author
- Doris Moser
- Editor
- Claudia Dürr
- Publisher
- V&R unipress
- Date
- 2021
- Language
- German
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-7370-1323-9
- Size
- 15.5 x 23.2 cm
- Pages
- 262
- Category
- Lehrbücher