Colloquy, Issue Seven, Southerly, Lines of Concern

Issue Seven

Southerly, Linesof Concern. ISBN 1 875684 433.

Sam Everingham

This edition of Southerly, the oldest standing Australian literary journal, is an interesting revue of what constitutes contemporary Australian literary practice and its intrinsic and qualitative ethos. If Southerly is to be seen as an inclusive forum for Australian writers, if it is to be seen as representative of such writers, then we should imagine that contemporary literary practice is in a position to illuminate even the darkest recesses of what has been represented as a kind of cavity in our collective, social, heart.

In this way, Lines of Concern traverses the subjects of politicised racism in the form of mandatory detention, of indigenous rights, and issues of post-colonial concern such as the reconfiguring of various ethnic histories within the varied voices of the ethnicities such histories seek to account for. It is an attempt to define a literary model of, broadly speaking, social justice in a particularly local context. And although the term social justice tends to be used overly muchóa corollary of which is that it loses its edgeóLines of Concern segues perfectly comfortably into such a description.

However, there are a number of (minor) concerns with this issue of Southerly that should not be overlooked. For example, is it possible to edify a broad scope of social attunement and understanding within a literary context without also having to specifically delimit what constitutes such attunement and understanding? Also, what benefits the isolated and marginalised members of our cultural experience: is it the very self-determination that Southerly seeks to illustrate?

At the heart of such concerns lie the troubling issues of reception and representation. For a genuine, large-scale reception of such issues the question should be asked, is a (relatively elite) Australian literary revue a legitimate forum in which to raise the concerns of social justice? And on the issue of representation we should ask, on whose behalf and under what extent of editorial positioning does Lines of Concern appear?

However, ultimately, Southerly should be congratulated for its audacity in undertaking to illustrate the kinds of issues about which other publications are generally reticent in attempting to negotiate. And it is true that Lines of Concern attempts to provide a forum for literary practice to examine the issues of social inequity that illustrate our contemporary political framework.

Because of this, we could argue in Southerlyís favour that any narrative practice which is overtly politicised will ultimately have to question the validity of its own representational value, and Lines of Concern is at least endeavouring to provide a forum for dialogue with those it seeks to represent.