Les Morgan

The Significance of Diaspora Politics in the Visual Arts: Art, Protest and Belonging Les Morgan

The author's own awareness of having a â¿¿diasporicidentityâ¿¿ was brought about by my having livedthrough two historical junctures of heightened racismin my home countries of Britain and Australia. As aconsequence, this book presents material that relatesto historical moments relevant to the authorâ¿¿s livedexperience: Powellism (the far-right Britishpolitician Enoch Powellâ¿¿s intervention in 1968 in thefield of race relations) and Hansonism (theracialised terrain of Australia, and Queensland inparticular, that surfaced following the creation ofPauline Hansonâ¿¿s One Nation party from themid-1990s). The cultural counterweights to Powellismand Hansonism â¿" Rock against Racism, The Black ArtMovement and Pauline Pantsdown â¿" each devised novelways to resist the resurgence of populist racism. More significantly perhaps, the book will shed newlight on the seemingly exhausted debate concerningart and protest, by positioning the disaporicsensibility as thinking â¿¿in the intervalâ¿¿ andforging new ways of signifying belonging.