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Performances
'. . . history is my passion. Writing it, teaching it, reading it fills the days and years of my life. In all passions, there is pain and pleasure.' Greg Dening In this collection of writings-some new, some previously published-Greg Dening reflects on his experiences both as a historian and a participant in history. Performances brings together the personal and the scholarly, demonstrating how our lives are saturated with history, how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. Each of these essays can be enjoyed on its own, yet throughout them all run the common themes of the intricate relationships between past and present, the personal and the political, historical research and the imagination. Dening writes with elegance and candour, inviting readers to reflect upon their own participation in the 'performance' of history.
Readings/writings
Reading is a dance on the beaches of the mind, writes Greg Dening. His reading-dances are about the pain of cross-cultural encounters, of loomings beyond the horizons of discipline, gender and race, of the pleasures of a hundred texts. In Readings/Writings his aim is to cultivate our imaginations so that we might see further, understand more deeply and hear more acutely. This book opens with Dening's extraordinary piece, 'Memorial', a deeply moving reading of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Dening's profound yet lucid reflections on the meanings contained in this stark, simple memorial set the tone for the book.
Beach Crossings
The history of the virtually unknown Marquesas islands, located about 500 miles south of the equator and 1,000 miles east of Tahiti, reflects a society's horrific past in these narratives. Based on an anthropologist's fieldwork diary, this contemplative account explores the Marquesas's neglected history in four fabled stories detailing passionate and powerful images of national struggle and freedom.
Mr Bligh's Bad Language
Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty have become proverbial in their capacity to evoke the extravagant and violent abuse of power. But William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox which inspired Greg Dening to ask why the mutiny took place. His book explores the theatrical nature of what was enacted in the power-play on deck, on the beaches at Tahiti and in the murderous settlement at Pitcairn, on the altar stones and temples of sacrifice, and on the catheads from which men were hanged. Part of the key lies in the curious puzzle of Mr Bligh's bad language.
Dangerous Liaisons
Collection of 18 essays to record the contribution of Greg Dening, former professor of history at Melbourne University, to the study of history and anthropology. Discusses themes and areas of research relating to Dening's work such as the boundaries between cultures, particularly in the Pacific region. Includes an interview with Dening and endnotes.
The Death of William Gooch
A penetratating study of the young astronomer on board the Daedalus.
Islands and Beaches
None
Across the Great Divide
Across the Great Divide tracks a Pacific historian's fruitful, ambivalent engagements with History and Anthropology, anticipating experiments in each discipline with the other's theories and praxis. The revised and new essays comprising this collection provide systematic critiques of aspects of received scholarly wisdom about Oceania and are linked by reflexive commentaries addressing recent postcolonial concerns. A varied but coherent set of ethnographic and historical narratives about colonial encounters in Island Melanesia is informed by particular critical focus on the paradoxes and politics of knowing indigenous pasts through colonial texts.
Eluding Karma
With elegance and candor, Greg Dening offers a panoramic collection of rich and densely textured essays that demonstrate how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. For Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and personal existence. Yet he is keenly aware that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable. All histories are culturally crafted artifacts, commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making sense of what has an...
