New release: December 6 2004

John Dawson

WASHOUT

On the academic response
to the fabrication of Aboriginal history

Macleay Press

The latest front in the history wars

Waged across airwaves and newspapers for the past two years, the history wars have spread fear and loathing through the besieged halls of academia. The veracity of university-based historians and their versions of our past have been under assault as never before.

The Fabrication of Aboriginal History by Keith Windschuttle fired a broadside whose aftershocks are still reverberating. Given the intellectual capital and political energy many academics had invested in the Aboriginal cause, it was expected they would close ranks and retaliate. In Robert Manne's anthology Whitewash, a score of the authors under siege mounted a counterattack.

In Washout, John Dawson uses Whitewash as a telescopic sight into current academic codes of conduct. In a piercing inspection of the methods, standards and philosophic premises within Australia's humanities faculties, Dawson finds they have adopted irrationalism as their standard and abandoned their patriotic oath to defend the truth.

Washout should be read by anyone who still cares about the quality of academic scholarship and the integrity of Australian intellectual life.

Publication information
Publication date: December 6, 2004
Recommended retail price: $34.95 (inc.GST)
Paperback, 260 pp, notes, index
ISBN 1 876492 12 0

Publisher:
Macleay Press, PO Box 477, Paddington NSW 2021
Telephone 02 9360 2534 Fax 02 9331 7368

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