Page - 239 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 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