A Fringe of Leaves: Australian modernity and Southern perspectives

Abstract

Patrick White's novel A Fringe of Leaves, written in the 1970s, resonated with a renewed questioning of the European presence on Australian land and its significance for cultural issues. A debate about coloniality in the social sciences is now happening globally, especially questioning the global North's apparent monopoly of theory. Multiple structures of knowledge are found in the colonized world: indigenous knowledges, the analysis of colonialism by the colonized, and analysis of the societies and global structures produced by imperialism. Key authors on these topics are introduced. Australian modernity needs to be considered in the light of the lively debates about these issues now occurring across the global South.