« Gendered resistance against settler colonialism: Coralie Annick Monique Buquet, Unveiling Colonial Narratives and Amplifying Indigenous Voices: The Role of Kanak Women in Resisting Settler Colonialism in Kanaky/New Caledonia, MA dissertation, The Arctic University of Norway, 2025
Parking settlers: Laura McKinley, ‘Commemorating Contested National Park Landscapes: The Canada 150 Discovery Pass and White Scopic Disremembering’, in Lourdes López-Ropero, Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż (eds), Literary and Cultural Responses to Mnemonic Landscapes, Springer, 2025, pp. 55-72 »

Cruel nation: Julie Macken, Australia’s Schism in the Soul: Colonialism, Immigration Detention and a Nation’s Failure to Mourn, Springer, 2025

26Jul25

Description: How has it become possible for the Australian state to gain public acquiescence to develop one of world’s most punitive systems of processing asylum-seekers; one that not only contravenes Australia’s international humanitarian commitments, but that, in the words of activists, medical professionals, and the detainees themselves amounts to torture? In this highly readable account academic, journalist and advocate Dr Julie Macken takes a psychoanalytic approach to both the country and its public to uncover why. Dr Macken’s investigation begins by outlining how the nation’s failure to mourn its colonial past has led to a state of collective melancholia, with the result that denial and psychological splitting have prevented genuine reconciliation with First Nations peoples. The central part of the book offers a compelling account of the development of Australia’s current system of privatised immigration detention and the political, economic and media forces that have sustained it that will resonate globally. In conclusion the book posits that political action in these circumstances—however distressing and visceral—should be adopted as a mental health strategy for both the person and the nation.


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