{"id":255,"date":"2014-11-19T15:08:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T15:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/?p=255"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:24:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:24:17","slug":"playing-prometheus-some-reflections-from-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/2014\/11\/19\/playing-prometheus-some-reflections-from-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Prometheus: some reflections from Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have had the privilege to visit Australia for the past two months on a research trip thanks to the generous funding of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies.<\/strong> I\u2019m now a little halfway through my trip and have visited all but one convict sites where large numbers of \u2018my\u2019 convict subjects stayed or passed through in four different states (New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia). I can now understand how easily Cockatoo Island\u2019s convicts would have seen people going about their business in Balmain. I can now imagine how isolated a peninsula can feel (just as much as an island) after passing through the narrow Eagle\u2019s neck to Port Arthur. More noticeably, everywhere I look, and when I\u2019m not expecting it, the legacies of the hard work of convict labour are there in the infrastructure of bridges and buildings that survive to this day. And I can\u2019t help but notice how the plaques that mark them continue to anonymise the workers, and give credit to those who worked them.<\/p>\n

\"Richmond<\/a>

Richmond Bridge (Tasmania) \u2013 the plaque credits \u2018convict labour\u2019 but it is the commissioner, the engineer and the stonemason who are named.<\/p><\/div>\n

Of the many convict heritage sites I\u2019ve visited two experiences in particular stand out \u2013 both in Tasmania in scenarios where I interacted actively with the environment or people within it. (and both, interestingly, UNESCO world heritage sites)<\/p>\n

No amount of reading could prepare me for the feeling that the floor and walls were all the wrong way up, and the nausea that followed (and was slow to abate) in the utter-darkness of the refractory cell at Port Arthur. Even with prior warning, I could not account for the panic that rose up rapidly even as I could hear the voices of my friends (faintly) on the other side of the thick wooden door.<\/p>\n

At the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart I took part in an interactive performance called Her Story<\/em>, which tells the tale of Mary James (not her real name).<\/strong> Having read many analyses of convict agency, I was surprised by the strength of my own fear when I was silently appraised by a potential \u2018master\u2019 for assignment. In that moment I tensed up and felt uncertain of even where to look. My later reluctance to volunteer to report the warder for cruelty towards the protagonist of the story, in the face of no actual reprisal showed me that I would probably not have been one of the convicts who \u2018stands\u2019 out from the archive (as heroic, or resistant, or both) \u2013 rather, I\u2019d probably slip away into the margins.<\/p>\n

\"Her<\/a>

A frowny face from the (frankly) terrifying actor in Her Story<\/p><\/div>\n

And it is this \u2013 the way in which the extraordinary stand out of the archive, and the rest can seem to blur together \u2013 that confronts me when I\u2019m in the archive rather than in those spaces where convicts lived (and died). After all, much of my time in the archive is spent mindlessly photographing to build up a digital archive for when I get back to the UK. I often catch myself \u2013 in my bid to complete my work \u2013 depersonalising the convicts just as the imperial records had done \u2013 with whatever transportation register, warrant or deposition I\u2019m looking at becoming not the story of a person, but another number to process. Thus these people \u2013 with their full lives and countless stories \u2013are diminished into insubstantial versions of themselves, or worse amalgamate into a mass. When I catch myself doing this, I take the time to read this page and try to imagine \u2013 but in reality, it is not until I get home, that I can give these stories the time they deserve. As a result, I sometimes feel like Prometheus trying to breathe life into the subjects I see, while they remain curiously faceless.<\/p>\n

\"Rottnest<\/a>

The conviction warrant of Jimmie Jandie (State Record Office WA)<\/p><\/div>\n

I would love to hear about your experiences of finding (or not finding) historical subjecthood in heritage sites and in the archives \u2013 so please comment below or tweet @katwee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have had the privilege to visit Australia for the past two months on a research trip thanks to the generous funding of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. I\u2019m now a little halfway through my trip and have visited all but one convict sites where large numbers of \u2018my\u2019 convict subjects stayed or passed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10,9,30,41],"tags":[55,82,59,83,60,57,58,61,56,62],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-carceral-archipelago","category-convicts","category-heritage","category-postgraduates","tag-archives","tag-australia","tag-cascades-female-factory","tag-convicts","tag-her-story","tag-heritage-2","tag-phd","tag-port-arthur","tag-tasmania","tag-unesco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}