Average Stray Aliens': An Average Australian Conversation on Eurocentrism
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- Culture, Theory and Critique, 2002, 43 (1), pp. 17 - 31
- Issue Date:
- 2002-01
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Prompted by a recent error in an Australian newspaper, by which voice-recognition technology inadvertently transformed `average Australians into `average stray aliens, this paper appears as a conversation about Eurocentrism between five participants, all of whom work in European studies as teachers and researchers in Australia, the place of `stray aliens. Our dialogue proceeded cumulatively in August 2001, with e-mail responses circulating between contributors. Our aim was to dislocate the debate about `Europe and `Eurocentrism away from the Eurocentre to one of Europes blind spots, Australia. Emerging in the debate is a strong sense of the ways in which power and privilege inevitably accrue centrifugally: Eurocentrism affects and re-writes itself on us in ways perhaps unimagined in the Eurocentre. As a bid toward resistant practice against the centre, we have refrained self-consciously from explaining every local reference in our self-reflective, dialogic, and open-ended discussion about the ways `Europe and `Eurocentrism touch us as teachers, researchers and `average stray aliens.
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