Typologies of memory and forgetting among the expatriates of Rabaul

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 57-73

  Wehner, Monica ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748858394     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00223340220139270     Document Type: Review

References (46)

1. See Alice Yaegar Kaplan, 'Theweleit and Spiegelman: of mice and men', in Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani (eds), Remaking History (Seattle 1989), 151.
2. For a famous discussion on the social frameworks of memory, see Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed., trans. and intro. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago; London 1992).
3. Another useful discussion on memory can be found in James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford 1992).
4. Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, 1.
5. The testimonies of expatriates still living in Papua New Guinea were collected during fieldwork there in 1995. Testimonies of former expatriates living in Australia were collected in 1995 and 1996. They form part of a larger study on community structures and memory within the white Australian diaspora.
6. Interview with Julian Murphy recorded at Keravat National High School, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, 20 Oct. 1995;
7. with John Beagley in Kavieng, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, 1 Dec. 1995; with Jean Bourke in Canberra, Australia, Sept. 1996.
8. For an excellent discussion on Rabaul nostalgia and the eruption of the Rabaul Volcano more generally, see Klaus Neumann, Rabaul: yu swit moa yet (Boroko 1996), 163-6.
9. An exception is Myra Jean Bourke et al. (eds), Our Time but not Our Place: voices of expatriate women in Papua New Guinea (Carlton 1993). Bourke confirmed that the editors of this collection wanted to stress the point that while expatriate women have spent time in Papua New Guinea, they have never claimed to 'own' or truly belong to the place.
10. For a discussion on this, see Neumann, Rabaul: yu swit moa yet, 66-70.
11. Judith Whelan, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Sept. 1994.
12. Sarah Harris, Daily Telegraph Mirror, 25 Sept. 1994, 49-50.
13. Neumann also addresses the issue of neo-colonial nostalgia. See Neumann, Rahaul:yu swit moa yet, 66-70.
14. See Hank Nelson, Taim bilong Masta: the Australian involvement in Papua New Guinea (Sydney 1982), 88.
15. For an account of this, see Neumann, Rabaul: yu swit moa yet, 20-7, 6.
16. Nikki Barrowclough, 'The return of the natives', Good Weekend Magazine, The Age, 11 June 1994, 25-34.
17. Thank you to Hank Nelson for emphasising this point to me.
18. E.g., The Reader's Digest Complete Atlas of Australia published in 1968 had, as its subtitle, Including Papua-New Guinea. The subtitle- suggests a relationship of proximity and difference. See The Reader's Digest Complete Atlas of Australia -Including Papua New Guinea, preface by Percy Spender (Sydney 1968).
19. They can, of course, be places of extreme violence.
20. See Zlatko Skrbiš, Long Distance Nationalism: diasporas, homelands and identities (Aldershot 1999), 38.
21. See Craig Skehan, 'Apocalypse now: Rabaul's year in ashes', Sydney Morning Herald, 16 Sept. 1995, Spectrum 6A.
22. See Frank Kermode, 'Memory and forgetting: palaces of memory', Index on Censorship, 30, 1 (Jan./Feb. 2001), 89.
23. See Günter Grass, 'I remember, Index on Censorship, 30, 1 (Jan./Feb. 2001), 63.
24. See M. Shaw and G. Chase, 'The dimensions of nostalgia', in M. Shaw and C. Chase (eds), The Imagined Past: history and nostalgia (Manchester 1989), 8.
25. Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: a life in a. new language (London 1995 [1989]), 115.
26. Skrbiš calls this the 'myth of return'. See Skrbiš, Long Distance Nationalism, 48.
27. For an evocative discussion on the complex relationships between loss, memory and place in the Australian context, see Peter Read, Returning to Nothing: the meaning of lost places (Cambridge and Melbourne 1996).
28. See also his Belonging: Australians, place and Aboriginal ownership (Oakleigh 2000).
29. Original italics; see David Lowenthal, 'Nostalgia tells it like it wasn't', in Shaw and Chase (eds). The Imagined Past, 29.
30. Drawing on the work of psychologist Marc Fried, Peter Read argues that one of the reasons why an individual feels despair when visiting a 'lost' place or homeland is because their 'sense of continuity as person and community [is] intimately bound up with spatial identity'. See Read, Returning to Nothing, 21.
31. See Kermode, 'Memory and forgetting: palaces of memory', 91, 88.
32. See Hoffman, Lost in Translation, 242.
33. In 1995, 100 kina was worth approximately $A100.
34. See Neumann, Rabaul: yu swif moa yet, 89.
35. See. Georgie McKie and John Beagiey, 'Diary of a disaster, Paradise, No. 109, Mar.-Apr. 1995, 5-10.
36. Mother - an affectionate name bestowed on the mountain by the English explorer and navigator Phillip Carteret in 1767 - is also known as Mt Kombiu to the Tolai. Carteret named the mountains near her South Daughter and North Daughter; the Father mountain (Mt Ulawan) 'doesn't live at Rabaul with his family but in a place of his own up the coast'. See Jan Roberts, quoting Mamie Masson, in Voices from a Lost World: Australian women and children in Papua New Guinea, before the Japanese invasion (Alexandria [NSW] 1996), 121.
37. As noted by Chase and Shaw, 'The dimensions of nostalgia', 1.
38. Klaus Neumann also picks up on this relationship in his discussion of Rabaul nostalgia. See Neumann, Rabaul: yu swit moa yet, 163.
39. C. Nadia Serenietakis, 'The memory of the senses, part 1: marks of the. transitory', in C. Nadia Seremetakis (ed.), The Senses Still (Boulder 1994), 2.
40. Lesley Brown (ed.), The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford 1993), 2775-6.
41. As Proust remarked in his famous passage from Swann's Way, smell and taste alone are '"more fragile but more enduring, more insubstantial, more persistent, more faithful . . . amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection'". Quoted from Jeffrey Masson, Dogs Never Lie about Love: reflections on the emotional world of dogs (London 1998), 190.
42. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York 1990), 20, 11, 6.
43. Serenietakis, 'The memoiy of the senses', 4.
44. See Roberts, Voices from a Lost World.
45. A fascina ting example of this is found in a story by Jorge Luis Borges. See his 'Funes the Memorious', in Labyrinths: selected stones and other writings, ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, preface by André Maurois (Harmondsworth 1970).
46. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: the making and unmaking of the world (New York; Oxford 1985), 110.