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Extracts from reviews of By Alison Bartlett Canberra: ASAL 1998. |
| Gail Jones. 'Disruptive Tenancy.' Australian Book Review (Dec/Jan 98/99): 30-31. | "… an energetically unconventional academic text, committed and passionate in its reading position, explorative in its structural and discursive mechanisms, and open to the wholesale reconfiguration of the business of literary criticism - particularly in the relations between critics and authors." |
| Margaret Henderson. Journal of Australian Studies 58 (1998): 199-200. | "highly readable, thoughtful, and provides interesting readings of texts that are relatively marginalised … I was struck and impressed by its unconventional structure and techniques that gestured towards ficto-criticism." |
| Bronwen Levy. Imago 10,3 (1998): 144-46. | "the book enacts a very postmodern form of feminism that would not have been possible until recently." |
| Bronwyn Davies. LiNQ 25,2 (1998): 63-67. | "a provocative and important study … There is a profoundly important question about authority that is reworked in this book … In other words she addresses the ethics of critical practice in a way which is urgently called for." |
| Tseen Khoo AUMLA 93 (2000): 120-22. | "The style is certainly engaging and the range of theory and primary texts over which Bartlett leads readers is fascinating. ... [Its] persuasive, detailed readings of texts which are not often focused upon earns this collection a place on any listing of contemporary Australian literary criticism." |
| Sylvia Martin Australian Women's Book Review 11 (1999): 8-9. | "Jamming the Machinery is a brave piece of work and one that brings the reader many pleasures, not the least of which I found to be the disruption of the conventional linear reading trajectory ... Written in an engaging and accessible style, Jamming the Machinery is a valuable addition to the body of critical work on contemporary Australian women writers. Through the use of fictocritical techniques, it also blurs the boundaries between author and critic, and between academic and creative writing." |
| Deborah Hunn Australian Feminist Studies 14, 30 (1999): 437-38. | "given the need for interrogative and theoretically informed feminist work in the still conservative domain of Australian literary studies, Bartlett's selection of challenging texts with strong concern for gender issues in contemporary Australian life, her interviews with the writers and her inclusiveness and enthusiastic openness to a range of ideas ... are all undeniably valuable." |
| Tony Simoes da Silva Westerly 44,1 (1999): 131-32. | "In Jamming the Machinery, Bartlett allows the writers whose work she investigates to talk back to her, and about themselves, to discuss their writing practices, indeed to question her critical exercise ... As a reader I was persuaded by the sheer inventiveness of her insights, the fluidity of her interpretative models to reconsider some of my own readings ... [It] will be indispensable to any student of Australian literature." |
| Shane Rowlands Australian Literary Studies 19,2 (1999): 233-35. | "Bartlett's project involves thinking self-reflexively about the French feminist theories of écriture féminine and about how far she can enact them, and thus contribute to them through her academic practice. To this end, she refuses to assume a single, linear, consistent and authoritative voice as author ... Bartlett's work is useful in opening up serious critical evaluation of the seven writers ... I cannot recommend Jamming the Machinery more stongly." |