Thinking The Antipodes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A group of people sit around a table theorising, categorising and telling stories. Their real purpose is never quite clear, but they continue on, searching for the monstrous. Part satire, part sacred rite, Annie Baker's play The Antipodes asks what value stories have for a world in crisis. First seen at Signature Theatre, New York, in 2017, the play had its UK premiere at the National Theatre, London, in 2019. 'The most original and significant American dramatist since August Wilson' Mark Lawson, The Guardian

"If you dug a hole all the way to the other side of the earth, where would you be? What animals would you see?"--

How do we understand a country? At a time when many easy assumptions about how we live and how our society functions are being questioned there is room for contemplation of a country that is ancient, occupied for at least sixty thousand years, and young, a national federation for only twelve decades. Belinda Probert, a migrant from England sets out to question in words and action how well she understands the landscapes she has seen and the people that have shaped them. She takes with her a set of writers who have asked the same questions, or provided interpretations of our sense of belonging, to test their words against her own emerging views. Wondering how a nation of immigrants can fully settle here she decided she needed to buy a property in the ‘country’ so she could observe it more closely, and learn to garden differently. Trees fell on her, ants bit her, bowerbirds stole her crops, but from the exercise she discovers much more about soil, trees, water, animals and protecting herself from fire emergencies. Driving back and forth she learns to see the ancient heritage all around us, and rural industries that have destroyed and created so much. ‘A wonderfully friendly and likeable book. It put me in a good mood for days, and taught me a thousand important things.’ —Helen Garner

This is a study of the phenomenology of the special state of mind induced by Ayahuasca, a plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. The author's research is based both on extensive firsthand experiences with Ayahuasca, and on interviews conducted with a large number of informants.

This book is a new history of an ancient geography. It reassesses the evidence for why Europeans believed a massive southern continent existed, and why they advocated for its discovery. When ships were equal to ambitions, explorers set out to find and claim Terra Australis. Antipodes charts these voyages?voyages both through the imagination and across the High Seas?in pursuit of the mythical Terra Australis. In doing so, the question is asked: how could so many fail to see the realities they encountered? And how is it a mythical land held the gaze of an era famed for breaking free the shackles of superstition? That Terra Australis did not exist didn?t stop explorers pursuing the continent, unwilling to abandon the promise of such a rich and magnificent land till it was stripped of every ounce of value it had ever promised. In the process, the southern continent?an imaginary land?became one of the shaping forces of early modern history. Includes 48 pages of b & w and colour images.

A study that uses critical theory to investigate the history of how people have thought about the antipodes - the places and people on the other side of the world - from ancient Greece to present-day literature and digital media.

Bernard Smith is widely recognised as one of Australia's leading intellectuals. Yet the recognition of his work has been partial, focused on art history and anthropology. Peter Beilharz argues that Smith's work also contains a social theory, or a way of thinking about Australian culture and identity in the world system. Smith enables us to think matters of place and cultural imperialism through the image of being not Australian so much as antipodean. Australian identities are constructed by the relationship between core and periphery, making them both European and Other at the same time. This 1997 work is a book-length analysis of Bernard Smith's work and is the result of careful and systematic research into Smith's published works and his private papers. It is both an introduction to Smith's thinking and an important interpretive argument about imperialism and the antipodes.