Imagining the Antipodes Culture, Theory and the Visual in the Work of Bernard Smith

This book analyses Bernard Smith's work and is the result of careful and systematic research into Smith's published works and his private papers.

Bernard Smith is widely recognised as one of Australia's leading intellectuals. Yet the recognition of his work has been partial, focused on art history and anthropology. Peter Beilharz argues that Smith's work also contains a social theory, or a way of thinking about Australian culture and identity in the world system. Smith enables us to think matters of place and cultural imperialism through the image of being not Australian so much as antipodean. Australian identities are constructed by the relationship between core and periphery, making them both European and Other at the same time. This 1997 work is a book-length analysis of Bernard Smith's work and is the result of careful and systematic research into Smith's published works and his private papers. It is both an introduction to Smith's thinking and an important interpretive argument about imperialism and the antipodes.

Introduction; 1. Beginnings; 2. Encountering art in Australia; 3. Imagining the Pacific; 4. The Antipodean manifesto; 5. Death of the hero as artist; 6. Modernity, history and postmodernity; 7. Conclusions - imagining the Antipodes.

This is the first book-length analysis of Bernard Smith's work and is the result of careful and systematic research into Smith's published works and his private papers. It is both an introduction to Smith's thinking and an important interpretive argument about imperialism and the antipodes.