The narrative explores John Docker's upbringing in Bondi, shaped by his Communist parents—his Jewish mother from London's East End and his Irish father. Rather than a typical beachside paradise, Docker's Bondi is depicted as a vibrant hub of immigrant experiences and political engagement, reflecting the complexities of identity and heritage in his formative years.
Examining the intricate relationship between history and fiction, this book delves into the complexities of historical narratives and their truthfulness. It traces the evolution of historical thought from foundational figures like Herodotus and Thucydides to modern theorists such as Nietzsche and Foucault. The authors address postmodern challenges to traditional historical writing and update their analysis to include contemporary debates like the History Wars and emerging fields such as world and environmental history.
The problem of identity is one of the key issues in the present discourse on multiculturalism. This volume brings together historians, cultural theorists, literary scholars and political scientists whose common aim is to address questions of identity and identity formation in multicultural societies, concentrating on European historical models and current questions and perspectives. The challenging, progressive or positive aspects relating to multiculturalism appear in a sharper focus in this strongly interdisciplinary collection, compared to other volumes which generally tend to concentrate on the “problematic” or limiting aspects of this important phenomenon of contemporary European societies.
In this provocative study, John Docker takes his readers on an intellectual adventure. The journey includes a guided tour of the history of modernism, consideration of the development of postmodernism, explanation of structuralism and poststructuralism, and discussion of the debates and conflicts around each. It ranges widely, from theoretical discussion to consideration of everything from architecture, television and detective writing to Sydney's monorail. The book engages with some of the most important debates of our time, combining polemical force with intellectual rigor, and reclaims popular culture from the forces opposed to it.