School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemContentious Routes: Ireland Questions, Radical Political Articulations and Settler Ambivalence in (White) Australia, c. 1909 - 1923( 2021)This thesis is a transnational history of the ‘Ireland Question' in the imperial and ethico-political imaginary of radical and labour movements in (‘White’) Australia during the ‘Irish revolutionary period’, broadly conceived. It traces the contestation of 'Ireland' as a political signifier, with attention to its constitutive differences, transnational circuitries, utopian investments, relations of recognition and desire, and articulatory practices. Where previous studies of Irish nationalisms in Australia have deployed 'the nation' as a consensualist category of analysis, this study reinterprets the ‘Ireland Question’ in postnational terms as contentious and within routes. Combining attention to settler-colonial difference with the discursive articulation of political forms, it situates the 'Ireland Question' firstly in relation to the political as a signifier of settler ambivalence, and secondly to politics as a social movement. Drawing on archival research in Australia, Ireland and Britain, it analyses personal papers, letters, political periodicals, state surveillance records, political ephemera and pamphlets. Beyond the 'Ireland Question' in the imperial labour movement, this study affords serious attention to historical dimensions at the hybrid boundaries of ‘long-distance nationalism’ including political travel performances in Ireland, non-nationalist transnational political networks ranging from feminist to socialist connections, and non-Irish political identification with 'Ireland.' It proposes that this unstable play of meanings comprised a heterogeneity of political positions and networks whose convergence during the conjuncture of 1916-1921 was both contingent and politically contested: one that signified in excess of either Australian nationalist historical teleologies or a coherent 'transnational Irish revolution.'
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ItemRed shadow: Malayan Communist Memoirs as Parallel Histories of Malaysia( 2019)The Malayan Emergency (1948-60) has long been understood from the perspective of the incumbent British and Malay(si)an governments and is universally regarded as a successful counter-insurgency operation against foreign-inspired communists. To date we still have a very limited understanding of what the struggle meant for members of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and rarely have their voice voices, those who fought on the other side of this struggle, been considered. However, over the last two decades, in the twilight of their lives, a number of members of the MCP have begun to share their personal stories about what they fought for and why. These new first-hand accounts present different insights into the struggle. This thesis uses a unique and as yet underutilized source for studying the members of the MCP: the Chinese-language memoirs of former MCP members. These memoirs present, in the words of MCP members themselves, their motives for why they joined the movement and what their life in the movement was like. I critically analyze these accounts paying attention to the ideas MCP members had for an independent Malay(si)a and the way in which the authors identify with that ideal. Through closer evaluation of the memoirs, this research gives voice to these largely forgotten revolutionaries.