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The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate: Shortlist 2007
Judges: Philip Morrisey (Convenor), Jim Carlton and Barry Jones
Shortlist
| The Exiled ChildMeera Atkinson
(Griffith Review)
In an essay bridging the academic and popular, Atkinson - herself a survivor of chronic trauma - opens up a public discussion of chronic trauma resulting from the childhood experience of family violence. Providing a definition of trauma as ‘injury to the mind or body that requires structural repair’, Atkinson introduces a personal perspective drawing on her experiences as a child-witness of family violence. She makes the point that the trauma children experience from being exposed to family violence damages their self-esteem and has a clinically proven deleterious effect on their neurological development. Atkinson discusses the recurrent effects in adult life of undiagnosed and untreated chronic trauma. Atkinson’s timely essay is founded in a commitment to the primary
rights of children as well as the necessity for wider understanding of the recurrent effects of trauma. |
| Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in AustraliaAmanda Lohrey
(Quarterly Essay/Black Inc)
In considering the contemporary phenomenon of evangelical Christianity, Lohrey adopts a multi-faceted approach taking in culture wars, evangelical mega-churches and their influence on Australian politics, and the relation between forms of evangelical belief and consumerism. In an essay distinguished by its lucid writing and clarity, Lohrey explores the religious perspectives of young evangelical Christians, disclosing the differences and fine shadings of belief between individuals, and the manner in which evangelical Christianity provides them with a framework to
engage with ethical issues. Notwithstanding the apparently doctrinaire aspect of evangelical Christianity, Lohrey is surprised at the variety of belief she encounters and hopes for a new reformation where the ‘mysterious unknowability of someone else’s faith is respected and
protected.’ |
| The Writer in a Time of Terror
Frank Moorhouse
(Griffith Review)
Moorhouse engages in a disciplined and nuanced discussion of freedom of expression in an age of global terror and frames it with a consideration of Sir Robert Menzies’ attempt to ban the Communist Party in the 1950s, and the morals censorship of the 1960s that prohibited the import of books and performances such as Portnoy's Complaint and Oh! Calcutta. Moorhouse catalogues in detail disturbing incidents of Federal Government raids on the homes and offices of writers and publishers, the seizure and destruction of their computers, and the subsequent pressure put on them to sign non-disclosure agreements to maintain the secrecy of the raids. Discussing the apparent intimidation of intellectuals and wide-ranging censorship including the closing down of websites and banning of texts, Moorhouse deduces a series of maxims that strike a balance between freedom of expression and the State’s responsibility to protect its citizens from terrorism. |
| White Guilt, Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical CentreNoel Pearson
(Griffith Review)
In characteristically forthright style Pearson challenges conventional thinking on Aboriginal governance and implicitly invites his critics to debate questions relating to the entrenchment of Aboriginal disadvantage. His essay combines powerful rhetorical writing with erudition and analysis. Taking the divergence between early African American leaders and intellectuals Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois as a starting point, Pearson analyses ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ and questions of ‘self-regard’ and ‘other-regard’. He adds a contemporary dimension to this with his discussion of contemporary African American thinker Shelby Steele. Passionate and challenging, Pearson advocates the concept of the ‘radical centre’ as the ideal of social policy and explains why he chose to champion the Indigenous responsibility agenda in his home community of Cape York. | |
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