This publication is dedicated to John David McLaren BA Hons BEd PhD Melb MA Monash (1932-), who served Victoria University and its predecessor institution Footscray Institute of Technology with great distinction and foresight, from the time of his initial appointment, as
the Head, Department of Humanities, in 1976, until his final retirement in 1997. Those 20 years were times of great change in Australian academic life, as well as in the humanities generally, and John McLaren played a central role in the debates and issues which characterised those two decades. He adapted and developed a broadly radical national nationalist view of Australian life and letters into a contemporary literary and social theory which lost little of its progressive character. Included is John McLaren’s valedictory lecture delivered in 1997, entitled: Fear and loathing in the South China seas: the challenge of nationalism in Australia and Southeast Asia.