Author(s)
Chris Healy
Institution(s)
University of Melbourne
Year
2018
Citation
Healy, Chris. 'Reading the Country after travelling television.' Reading the Country: 30 Years On. Eds. Healy, Chris, and Philip Morrissey. UTS ePress and Sydney University Press, 2018, pp.159-169.
Description
This essay considers how some popular television engages with Indigenous experience and might connect up with the rich intellectual heritage of Paddy Roe and Stephen Muecke.
Attachment(s)
Abstract
It’s important to state from the outset that I am not proposing any symmetry, correspondence or analogy between Reading the Country: An Introduction to Nomadology (1984) [the product of Paddy Roe, Stephen Muecke and Krim Benterrak experimenting with what it might be like to think together about country] and travelling television. However, as narratives, they do share a connection with what Michael Taussig has called ‘the origin of storytelling … in the encounter between the traveller and those who stay at home’. Here I want to argue that, as storytelling, Reading the Country and aspects of travelling share some concerns; with journeys, with clearing away habits of thought, with how things move, with the circulation of ideas and with modes of being-in-place. I want to suggest that in both we can find resources for the future in the present.
