Hecate articles from May 2003

Hecate archives from May 2003

Editorial.
May 1, 2003... This issue has a strong emphasis upon literary and cultural representations of women and the feminine. How do we locate feminism in fictional texts by women? How do we figure the pleasure of women readers where the narratives they consume turn...

Modernity and the white imaginary in Australian feminist theatre.
May 1, 2003... In her book The Gender of Modernity, Rita Feiski argues for a reassessment of the significance of women and the feminine in the history of modernity. Changes in women's lives--and feminism itself--are manifestations of modernity even though...

Out of type: Bessie Mitchell (Guthrie) and Viking Press (1939-44).
May 1, 2003... This article seeks to re-evaluate women's roles and significance within Australian book publishing, especially during its formative years from 1931-73. Such a revision not only challenges the traditional view of publishing as an 'occupation for...

The 'heterosexualisation' of sadism and masochism.
May 1, 2003... When initially researching this article, I intended to examine the myth of female masochism and how this is employed, problematised and reinvented in female Gothic and feminist detective fiction. But as I began the research I realised that this...

The right language for rape.
May 1, 2003... The sphere of language has become a privileged domain in which to interrogate the causes and effects of social injustice. (1) What is the right language to resist rape? Why is the language women use during rape frequently considered to be...

Grain of dirt.(Excerpt)(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... The elderly woman feels a quiver of excitement as she stares at the photograph in her calloused hands. The black and white picture has been preserved with meticulous care, even the frame is made of solid silver and dusted with precise...

Indigo blue.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... indigo blue Tara Leonard tonight I'm blue these four walls are hot this bed an ocean of pearled moonlight my skin milky so cool & white I'm blue soft breath warm vapour from geographies lichens silky...

From the kitchen window.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... From the kitchen window Anna Kerdijk Nicholson When I came to live here I saw just grit and av gas thick pollution on the shower curtain Did my eyes change when the storm was on watching the windscreens go in with...

Yesterdays.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... yesterdays Luna Dolezal i. such are yesterdays insouciance invades the rime of being and instead a hunk of ice, crude and cruel mocks. inside flames wither. I grow hard, a forgotten curl of cheese I ferment...

Meditation for the Unenlightened.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Meditation for the Unenlightened Kelly Pilgrim Prelude We're lying side-by-side Our fingers touch (just enough) to keep me from thinking I am alone. Muladahara We prefer east Indian terms even though...

Rubber Tapper.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Rubber Tapper Ahila Sambamoorthy She is a candlewick on whom sorrow burns like a flame. The tapper ravages slivers of bark, watches thick white blood drip into halved coconut shells. Mouth gap toothed. Eyes kohl...

Temple at Bangalore.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Temple at Bangalore Ahila Sambarmoorthy An elemental voice throbs within massive stone walls. Rumble of thunder, boom of conch shells conceived by the human breath. The wick consumes itself in its earthen lamp. From the...

Temple of the Goddess.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Temple of the Goddess Ahila Sambamoorthy A gale felled its gold-and-whitewash spire. White ants attack rafters where sparrows built. Elephant shaped buttresses, black marbled Shiva statues, are weathered and crusted with crows'...

Seal's Sonnet.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Seal's Sonnet Ngama Grzesik (For the seals that die in Port Philip Bay) Words haul as choking seals hunger and thrash. Were, in rippling silver, plastic bottles, knives of oily waves Sleeping, in turgid nets of a fisher's weary...

The Inside.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... The Inside Christine Paice I catch sight of your wry smile in a photo on the back of a book your head over slightly to one side my stomach's aching that old witch she poisoned me splattered cherries on my insides I'm trying...

Blood plums.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... She was young. All spindle legged and sandy coloured. Her fair hair cropped unfashionably close to a pointed face that carried more than a hint of adulthood. I'm a mouse, she thought as she tiptoed from her bedroom. Not even the bright eye of...

Fragments.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Fragments Dipti Saravanamuttu That will never leave me or silence the dark edges of a heart the waking lines of a poem my clearest thoughts May those who love Release the heart of a bird in flight delighting a...

So what was it like (in the home)? Institutional Labour--pre 1980s, South Australia.
May 1, 2003... So what was it like (in the home)? Institutional Labour -- pre 1980s, South Australia Cathy Young It was the raw heat of ironing room presses not giving the cool of summer morning a chance to breathe as you walked through...

Genes.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Genes Ashlley Morgan Shae My father had unloved genes from his mother who battered him with a hairbrush. He met my mother who had her own genes. She had been the smallest and had watched her sisters go out to balls while...

Like a Rose.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Like a Rose... Ashlley Morgan-Shae Ring a ring of rosies rosy rash, A pocketful of posies a pocketful of petals as protection, A-tishoo! A-tishoo! a sneezing symptom, We all fall down we all fall down and die of the...

Family Portrait.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Family Portrait Andrea Sherwood My father showed the photograph from the suitcase. Not of Poland, but of Deutschland. And the family. He had placed a rose in an immaculate black vase; the coffee cups were doll's size,...

East of Seville: Sunways.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... East of Seville: Sunways Andrea Sherwood I remember a garden so secret even you laughed when you found me In the beginning everything had a place. Agapanthas watched the sky eye to eye, red...

Shadows.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... Shadows Kate Maxwell We'd parked the car outside the flat I used to live in; dirty white fibro leaning floor, smell of mince and mould. Stepping out of the Saab into kerbside mud that sucked the cuffs of my pants with a...

A good Italian boy.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... The Last Supper It was Christmas, the holy day none of us celebrated, not even Nonna. It was as if she had finally given up the hope of prayer. She was seventy, small, saggy breasted with drooping ear lobes. She had Parkinson's disease and...

Islam, women and Australia's cultural discourse of terror.
May 1, 2003... Now it will be a case of, is that a kilo of C-4 in your pants or are you pleased to see me? (1) The debate about how Islam situates women's rights has proven to be an enduring one. (2) The struggle of women within Islamic societies,...

Earth eaters.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... Mum had said I had to go up there, to Margot: Sherrie was on her own. I was 15 and finished grade ten and was supposed to start work at the newsagent's. I had wanted to go to Sherrie's, to get away from mum, especially from her voice that had...

Marie Bjelke Petersen's 'virile story': Jewelled Nights, gender instability, and the bush.
May 1, 2003... Introduction The older man looked him over silently for some moments, before saying, with a slight change of manner, 'Ever feel kind of -- lonesome around here in the evenings?' The boy moved suddenly. 'No -- oh no - I - I - generally...

Forming feminism: structure and ideology in Charades and 'The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye'.
May 1, 2003... Some months ago I gave a paper on a postmodern work by a female author and, during the subsequent discussion, several people took issue with the ways in which the author portrayed female characters. Their implication was that these portraits of...

This girl.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... Do you recognise this girl? Have you seen her before? I have, around and about,, a glimpse in the mirror or in the shadows which fell on my face in a particular way in an old photograph. Her. Carrying a little extra weight like it was a...

Media implosion: posthuman bodies at the interface.
May 1, 2003... In keeping with the rhetoric of technology as a dehumanizing force, the participant in communication technologies has often been interpreted as passive in the information network. In this context, engagements with electronic forms of...

If I was good I'd tell everyone I know.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... You always read of bad luck stories and how the heroine wins out big time in the end, right? She gets her fabulous job and even better man and their lives together stretch into some fairy tale length proportions of love and adventure. That's...