Peter D Mathews
Biographic Data
| ID | 181565 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter D Mathews |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter D |
| FAMILY NAME | Mathews |
| SIGNATURE | MATHEWS P D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hanyang University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9228-0318 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The ethics of opacity in Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton interrogates the Enlightenment fantasy that literacy guarantees emancipation. This article argues that the novel exposes writing as a pharmakon, both remedy and poison, by showing how reading and authorship bind Frannie, a formerly enslaved Black woman, to epistemologies of law, science, and morality that equate agency with culpability. Framed by the Old Bailey’s demand for motive and narrative cl…
Out of Focus
This article examines how contemporary Asian Australian writers reconfigure memoir through autotheory, developing what I term an “out-of-focus” life writing that resists demands for coherence, authenticity and national legibility. In Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice and André Dao’s Anam, theory functions not as an explanatory framework but as a dispersive force that interrupts, complicates and defocuses the…
Losing the Power to Say “I”
Across the four novels Daniel Davis Wood has published to date, it is possible to delineate an evolving ethics of literary voice. His initial step in Blood and Bone is to subvert the third-person omniscient voice by drastically expanding the imaginative abilities of the first-person narrator, thus showing how the narrator must always speak through a subjective position. The second step involves examining the extent to which the narrator's desire …
The Symbolism of Clothing
In the work of Jacques Lacan there exists an extended metaphor of clothing, whereby the ‘naked’ truth is always ‘clothed’ in deception. For Lacan, clothing functions at the intersection of the symbolic and the imaginary, with outward appearance shaping what we imagine to be underneath in order to determine the landscape of symbolic desire. Joan Copjec considers the political implications of this metaphor, arguing that utilitarianism, in particula…
The Moral Economy of Sadie Jones’s The Snakes
Sadie Jones's The Snakes (2019) examines the overlap between secular capitalism and religious thought. Jones contemplates how Christianity and capitalism have shaped the moral economy, blending wealth and virtue to create a modern system of values. The essay first examines the responses of Jones's characters to this system: the protagonist, Bea, renounces her family's fortune to live the life of a saint, whereas her brother Alex sees himself as a…
Prophetic Time and the End of Capitalism in Iain Pears's Stone's Fall
This essay sets out to examine the connection between capitalism and ideas about time, focusing on Iain Pears's novel Stone's Fall (2009). Capitalism, with its endless promises of future returns, tends to deploy a model of time oriented around progress toward the future. Pears's narrative, by contrast, subverts this by reversing the timeline, each section of the novel a step backwards in time. The first section of the paper examines how other cri…
Tim Winton and the ethics of the neighbour here and now
This article explores the ethical concept of the neighbour, an idea central to the fiction of Tim Winton. The first part focuses on how the ghosts in Cloudstreet symbolize an Australian culture haunted by the injustices of colonization, especially the dispossession of the Indigenous people. The second part looks at the paradox of being commanded to love one’s neighbour, comparing an early story, “Neighbours”, to Winton’s recent novel Eyrie. The t…
“What Are Novelists For?” Atonement and the British Novel
This essay emerged from the intersection of two texts: a 2009 article by Alistair Cormack claiming that Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) was a rejection of postmodernism in favor of a return to F.R. Leavis’s “Great Tradition,” and the protagonist Briony’s closing question: “What are novelists for?” This essay criticizes the ongoing legacy of Leavis’s association of literature and moral improvement, an argument still being recycled today by critics l…
Unraveling A. S. Byatt’s “Racine and the Tablecloth”
A. S. Byatt’s story “Racine and the Tablecloth” (1987) has received little critical attention, even though it appears at a pivotal moment in her career. Nonetheless, Byatt herself highlighted its importance when she published “Arachne” (2000), a reflection on Ovid that further articulates the inspirations and themes of the earlier story. Considering these two texts as companion pieces, this article sets out to unravel Byatt’s metaphor of the text…
Who is My Neighbour
The psychology of guilt as debt is a recurrent theme in Tim Wintonâ s fiction. A number of scholars have recently examined the theme of haunting in Wintonâ s Cloudstreet (1991), arguing that the ghosts which appear in the story represent an engagement with Australiaâ s colonial past, in particular the mistreatment of its Indigenous peoples. The latest of these, Michael R. Griffiths, highlights the shortcomings of Wintonâ s treatment of this theme…
Fool That You Are
On the Genealogy of Democracy
Discusses Carey's examining of 'the historical rise of democracy in a way that challenges the prevailing consensus, from Churchill to Fukuyama, that this system represents the indisputable apex of human political organisation
The Mandatory Proxy
This article explores how Jean-Luc Godard's film Vivre sa Vie (1962) sets about deconstructing-rather than reproducing-the autobiographical act within cinema. Central to Godard's exercise is the decision to cast Anna Karina, his wife at the time, as the lead actress. Godard repeatedly demonstrates that the cinematic image functions as an opaque screen, a "mandatory proxy," between actor and viewer that renders a truly authentic autobiography impo…
Being a Philosopher
The Seating of the tun
Hieroglyphic and comparative linguistic evidence indicate that a Lowland Maya stela cult had been in existence, with monuments being erected predominantly or exclusively at the end of the 360-day year, in Late Preclassic times. These data corroborate Hammond's (1982) evidence for Late Preclassic stela erection. With his demonstration that the stela cult was associated with public architecture and a sacrificial burial at Cuello, the inference that…
The Seating of the tun
Hieroglyphic and comparative linguistic evidence indicate that a Lowland Maya stela cult had been in existence, with monuments being erected predominantly or exclusively at the end of the 360-day year, in Late Preclassic times. These data corroborate Hammond's (1982) evidence for Late Preclassic stela erection. With his demonstration that the stela cult was associated with public architecture and a sacrificial burial at Cuello, the inference that…
Tim Winton and the ethics of the neighbour here and now
This article explores the ethical concept of the neighbour, an idea central to the fiction of Tim Winton. The first part focuses on how the ghosts in Cloudstreet symbolize an Australian culture haunted by the injustices of colonization, especially the dispossession of the Indigenous people. The second part looks at the paradox of being commanded to love one’s neighbour, comparing an early story, “Neighbours”, to Winton’s recent novel Eyrie. The t…
On the Genealogy of Democracy
Discusses Carey's examining of 'the historical rise of democracy in a way that challenges the prevailing consensus, from Churchill to Fukuyama, that this system represents the indisputable apex of human political organisation
The Seating of the tun
Hieroglyphic and comparative linguistic evidence indicate that a Lowland Maya stela cult had been in existence, with monuments being erected predominantly or exclusively at the end of the 360-day year, in Late Preclassic times. These data corroborate Hammond's (1982) evidence for Late Preclassic stela erection. With his demonstration that the stela cult was associated with public architecture and a sacrificial burial at Cuello, the inference that…
Being a Philosopher
The Mandatory Proxy
This article explores how Jean-Luc Godard's film Vivre sa Vie (1962) sets about deconstructing-rather than reproducing-the autobiographical act within cinema. Central to Godard's exercise is the decision to cast Anna Karina, his wife at the time, as the lead actress. Godard repeatedly demonstrates that the cinematic image functions as an opaque screen, a "mandatory proxy," between actor and viewer that renders a truly authentic autobiography impo…
On the Genealogy of Democracy
Discusses Carey's examining of 'the historical rise of democracy in a way that challenges the prevailing consensus, from Churchill to Fukuyama, that this system represents the indisputable apex of human political organisation
Fool That You Are
“What Are Novelists For?” Atonement and the British Novel
This essay emerged from the intersection of two texts: a 2009 article by Alistair Cormack claiming that Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) was a rejection of postmodernism in favor of a return to F.R. Leavis’s “Great Tradition,” and the protagonist Briony’s closing question: “What are novelists for?” This essay criticizes the ongoing legacy of Leavis’s association of literature and moral improvement, an argument still being recycled today by critics l…
Unraveling A. S. Byatt’s “Racine and the Tablecloth”
A. S. Byatt’s story “Racine and the Tablecloth” (1987) has received little critical attention, even though it appears at a pivotal moment in her career. Nonetheless, Byatt herself highlighted its importance when she published “Arachne” (2000), a reflection on Ovid that further articulates the inspirations and themes of the earlier story. Considering these two texts as companion pieces, this article sets out to unravel Byatt’s metaphor of the text…
Who is My Neighbour
The psychology of guilt as debt is a recurrent theme in Tim Wintonâ s fiction. A number of scholars have recently examined the theme of haunting in Wintonâ s Cloudstreet (1991), arguing that the ghosts which appear in the story represent an engagement with Australiaâ s colonial past, in particular the mistreatment of its Indigenous peoples. The latest of these, Michael R. Griffiths, highlights the shortcomings of Wintonâ s treatment of this theme…
Tim Winton and the ethics of the neighbour here and now
This article explores the ethical concept of the neighbour, an idea central to the fiction of Tim Winton. The first part focuses on how the ghosts in Cloudstreet symbolize an Australian culture haunted by the injustices of colonization, especially the dispossession of the Indigenous people. The second part looks at the paradox of being commanded to love one’s neighbour, comparing an early story, “Neighbours”, to Winton’s recent novel Eyrie. The t…
Prophetic Time and the End of Capitalism in Iain Pears's Stone's Fall
This essay sets out to examine the connection between capitalism and ideas about time, focusing on Iain Pears's novel Stone's Fall (2009). Capitalism, with its endless promises of future returns, tends to deploy a model of time oriented around progress toward the future. Pears's narrative, by contrast, subverts this by reversing the timeline, each section of the novel a step backwards in time. The first section of the paper examines how other cri…
The Symbolism of Clothing
In the work of Jacques Lacan there exists an extended metaphor of clothing, whereby the ‘naked’ truth is always ‘clothed’ in deception. For Lacan, clothing functions at the intersection of the symbolic and the imaginary, with outward appearance shaping what we imagine to be underneath in order to determine the landscape of symbolic desire. Joan Copjec considers the political implications of this metaphor, arguing that utilitarianism, in particula…
The Moral Economy of Sadie Jones’s The Snakes
Sadie Jones's The Snakes (2019) examines the overlap between secular capitalism and religious thought. Jones contemplates how Christianity and capitalism have shaped the moral economy, blending wealth and virtue to create a modern system of values. The essay first examines the responses of Jones's characters to this system: the protagonist, Bea, renounces her family's fortune to live the life of a saint, whereas her brother Alex sees himself as a…
Losing the Power to Say “I”
Across the four novels Daniel Davis Wood has published to date, it is possible to delineate an evolving ethics of literary voice. His initial step in Blood and Bone is to subvert the third-person omniscient voice by drastically expanding the imaginative abilities of the first-person narrator, thus showing how the narrator must always speak through a subjective position. The second step involves examining the extent to which the narrator's desire …
The ethics of opacity in Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton interrogates the Enlightenment fantasy that literacy guarantees emancipation. This article argues that the novel exposes writing as a pharmakon, both remedy and poison, by showing how reading and authorship bind Frannie, a formerly enslaved Black woman, to epistemologies of law, science, and morality that equate agency with culpability. Framed by the Old Bailey’s demand for motive and narrative cl…
Out of Focus
This article examines how contemporary Asian Australian writers reconfigure memoir through autotheory, developing what I term an “out-of-focus” life writing that resists demands for coherence, authenticity and national legibility. In Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice and André Dao’s Anam, theory functions not as an explanatory framework but as a dispersive force that interrupts, complicates and defocuses the…
Art (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Literature (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Theology (4 works)