Feminism

When I mentioned to one of my exceptionally brainy friends that I was reviewing Jocelynne Scutt’s recent collection of speeches and papers – most of which were written during the late 1980s and 1990s and which have now been edited for a two volume work entitled The Incredible Woman – I was, strange as it may seem, not surprised to hear her say that the very thought of reading anything by Scutt made her anxious. For while those of us who are familiar with Scutt’s work will be aware of how wonderfully accessible it is, those who are familiar instead with Scutt’s formidable reputation might well presume that her writing will be heavy­going. It’s not. And because Incredible is both accessible and an important contribution to feminist politics, it would be a pity if people shied away from it.

The serious academic study of war has grown considerably in Australia in the last ten to fifteen years, bringing with it an often welcome diversification in focus and a willingness to subject old issues to fresh scrutiny. One sign of the increasing acceptance of war as a subject of serious study in the universities is the increasing number of university historians and other who, with little knowledge of or interest in the mechanics of war, nonetheless extend their work to include consideration of war and the military as these affect their particular areas of interest.

In the last eighteen months three Australian feminist collections have appeared, each apparently addressed in its different way to the women’s studies market. Each title, or subtitle, is anxious to proclaim itself of the moment: Australian Women: Contemporary feminist thought (OUP); Contemporary Australian Feminism (Longman Cheshire); and now, only prevented by the limits of the print medium from flashing its red light, Transitions: New Australian feminisms from Allen & Unwin. To cultural analysts that extra ‘s’ will speak volumes.

Feminism is one of the great, enduring intellectual movements of the twentieth century. This collection of essays, mainly by academics, examines how that movement has advanced to date and where it appears to be headed.

Volatile Bodies is an important book: its challenge is nothing less than the development of a non-essentialist, feminist philosophy of the body.

Lyn Hughes’s One Way Mirrors begins with a white horse impaled on headlights. It’s autumn, ‘the stars look cold and pinched’. You know it’s going to end badly and it does, mostly.

An ancient grammarian who had pondered Horace’s remarks on whether a good poem is the product of natural aptitude (ingenium) or acquired skills (studium) opted for ingenium and produced what was to become a much-quoted aphorism: poeta nascitur non fit, ‘a poet is born, not made’. His privileging of ‘nature’ over ‘art’ is favoured by those anxious to preserve the mystery of poetry by deriving it from an inscrutable faculty called ‘genius’. Others, eager to unscrew the inscrutable, favour the rival and demystificatory claim that poets are made, not born, which enables human interventions to overcome biological determinism.

This is a powerful and accomplished anthology. The fiction, poems, and autobiographies of thirty-seven women writers offer a collection where the individual pieces coalesce into much more than the sum of the parts.

The editors have chosen writing from a field of over 350 manuscripts, seeking that which challenges and revises dominant versions of national identity.