Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
ance of more constructive and less totalized
approaches which set multiculturalism and
reactions to it in a larger critical context.
Despite its broad title, Framing
Marginality is a fairly focused project. Sneja
Gunew has been a central force in drawing
attention to the work of non-Anglo-Celtic
writers in Australia and in addressing the
problematic place of multiculturalism in
Australian writing. In Framing Marginality,
Gunew draws on a fairly broad range of
theory to address issues of multiculturalism
and literature and to break down some
troubling borders within the study of
Australian literature.
Gunew gives her book a specific purchase
by reflecting on the rise of multicultural literary
studies in Australia, a rise in which
she has played a large role as an academic,
critic, editor and anthologist. Her introduction
thus serves as useful preamble by
conveying some of the critical debates
about "NESB" (non-English-speakingbackground)
writers and their tenuous
position in the development of an
Australian literary canon.
Gunew then broadens the scope of the
discussion by drawing on post-structuralist,
post-colonial, and feminist respsonses
to the essentialism and universalism of
European modernity in order to theorize
multiculturalism in Australian writing.
Because of the tendency to describe the
work of ethnic writers in Austrialia as
"migrant" writing—with all its associations
of the transitory and the foreign—Gunew
opts for "ethnic minority writing" as the
most workable term, a usage which furthermore
ensures "that cultural majority
groups no longer remain invisible." An
important gesture Gunew makes, therefore,
is to denaturalize the majority culture,
foregrounding its own ethnicity.
Gunew delves into contemporary critical
theory in her examination of the dynamics
of multiculturalism in Australian literature,
and she is careful to delineate the differences
between this specific context and
multiculturalism as it has taken shape in
other largely Anglophone countries like
Canada, Britain and the United States. At
the same time, Gunew's exploration of literary
multiculturalism has clear implications
for those countries as well, as she
addresses question of ethnicity and community,
the relationship between ethnicity
and subjectivity, ethnicity and race, and the
role of ethnicity in the national imaginary.
The second half of the book is in large
part a response to critics' tendencies to read
ethnic minority literature as uncomplicated,
almost sociological studies—the
equivalent of oral testimony rather than
written artifact. Gunew demonstrates the
centralizing impulses behind such reading
strategies and argues for more sophisticated
readings of these texts. She supports
her position and fleshes out her theorizing
of marginality and multiculturalism by
approaching Rosa Cappiello largely
through Bakhtin and Kristeva, and by reading
Anna Couani's work in the context of
Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis,
with another chapter devoted to poets
Antigone Kefala and Ania Walwicz.
Given the book's relative slimness,
Gunew's treatment of ethnicity is fairly
nuanced, though the lack of a conclusion
leaves the two halves of the book sitting
somewhat uneasily together (it may well,
however, have been Gunew's intention not
to "frame" the discussion of the texts in
such a fashion).
Unthinking Eurocentrism:
Multiculturalism and the Media is much
more substantial than Framing Marginality,
providing a wide-angle lens take on multiculturalism.
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam
make a case for the need to understand
multiculturalism in relation to the history
of Eurocentrism which is as compelling
(though for some reason not as frequently
articulated) as viewing feminism in relation
to the history of patriarchy. At a time when
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