INTIMATE IMMENSITIES: the Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship INTIMATE IMMENSITIES: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Stephane Cordier A thesis submitted to fulfil the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sydney Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences School of Literature, Arts & Media, Department of English September 2019 Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Statement of Originality This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Stephane Cordier 23 September 2019 i Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Authorship Attribution Statement This thesis contains a later version of material previously published as “Tim Winton’s In the Winter Dark and the Settler Condition,” Antipodes 32, nos.1&2 (2018), 58-72. In addition to the statements above, in cases where I am not the corresponding author of a published item, permission to include the published material has been granted by the corresponding author. Stephane Cordier 23 September 2019 As supervisor for the candidature upon which this thesis is based, I can confirm that the authorship attribution statements above are correct. Professor Robert Dixon 23 September 2019 ii Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ vi Introduction: Issues of Spatial Representation in the Settler Colonial Present .......... 1 Chapter 1 Deconstructing Australian Space: The Poetics of Unsettlement in Ross Gibson and Tim Winton’s Badlands ................................................................... 23 Part 1 An Unsettling Spatial History: Empathetic Unsettlement in Ross Gibson’s Seven Versions of an Australian Badland .................................................... 27 Part 2 Communal Neurosis and Settler Anxiety: Epistemological Vertigo in Tim Winton’s In the Winter Dark ................................................................................ 45 Chapter 2 Place and Self in Crisis: From Unproductive Identities to a Poetics of Unbelonging ............................................................................................................. 61 Part 1 Riding the Crisis: Double Aspect, Non-place and Shadow Space in Tim Winton’s The Riders .................................................................................................... 66 Part 2 Real and Imagined Australia: Non-place and Ontological Vertigo in Eyrie and Breath .......................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 3 An Imaginative Non-fiction for a Re-imagined Outback: Nicolas Rothwell’s Geopoetics ................................................................................................ 102 Part 1 Self, Place and Nation in Crisis: From Metaphysical Void to Metaphysical Recovery .............................................................................................. 106 Part 2 Ethics of Representation and Self-reflexivity: Nicolas Rothwell’s Narrative Essays ......................................................................................................... 134 Part 3 Nicolas Rothwell’s Ethics of Non-belonging: From “relations of co- dependency” to a “soft kind of reverse assimilation” ................................................ 150 Chapter 4 Tim Winton’s Decolonising Poetics of Space: Intimacy with Immensity ................................................................................................................... 162 Part 1 Renegotiating Relationships with Space and Time: “Big World” and “Aquifer” .................................................................................................................... 166 Part 2 Decolonising Ways of Seeing: That Eye, the Sky ............................................ 179 iii Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Part 3 Renegotiating Relationships with the Non-human Realm: Dialogical Interspecies Ethics in Dirt Music ............................................................................... 188 Conclusion and Caveats: Towards a Post-national Literature ................................ 227 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 241 iv Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Abstract Much of Australia’s literary landscape reflects a quest to represent its immense space. Empirical modes of investigation and Eurocentric literary models have resulted in alienation. For non-Indigenous Australians, Australia’s space remains an unsettling and unsettled space. Colonial erasures, legal fictions and national mythologies have failed to turn space into place. Too much remains unresolved to write from the perspective of a place literature. A lack of intimacy with Australia’s immensities has led to much misrelation, with devastating consequences for Indigenous Australians and the non-human environment. The Aboriginal Turn of the 1980s and postcolonial literary theory have been invaluable to progress towards more ethical modes of representation. Yet, we continue to live in the settler colonial present. My thesis makes connections between authors, modes and genres to offer a compelling case for a complementary poetics of space which embraces intimacy with immensity. Ross Gibson’s nonfiction, Tim Winton’s fiction and Nicolas Rothwell’s narrative essays position readers in front of temporal and spatial hinges that interrogate reified notions of an Australian identity; these hinges include the colonial archive, the age of exploration or the 1988 Bicentenary. Key to their poetics of space is a reorientation towards Country so that Indigenous thought and culture may reform settler society. As well as writing back to Empire, Gibson, Rothwell and Winton write from and to the settler colonial present, decolonising modes of perception, representation, time, space and the sacred, as well as relationships with Indigenous people and the non-human realm. Their works double as critical tools that serve to forge a poetics of Reconciliation. My methodology draws critically from concepts developed in the fields of postcolonial studies, ecocriticism and trauma theory. Because French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century were instrumental in reforming spatial theory, I use concepts developed by Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to identify principles that inform contemporary spatial representations. From within the colonial present Intimate Immensities evokes the possibility of a post-settler dynamic of non- belonging, with placelessness and movement as key markers of a renegotiated identity. v Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Acknowledgements For this research project, I want to thank my supervisor, Professor Robert Dixon. It has been a privilege to work under his guidance. His erudition and subtle advice have helped me refine my textual analyses and theoretical approaches. The thesis, as it stands, has been much improved from our rich conversations and exchanges. Thanks to Tim Winton for his kind support of my research project. And above anything else, thanks for writing all these narratives and essays. It has been a pleasure to work in the company of all these characters (OK, maybe not Eyrie’s Clappy and Stewie) and amidst such settings for the past four years. This thesis would never have seen the light of day without Daniela Brozek, who dragged me out of France’s striated space and immersed me in Australia’s immensities, almost two decades ago. Her extensive knowledge of Australia’s geography, history, natural environment and literature has helped me develop a more subtle understanding of this continent. This thesis is, in many ways, the culmination of these countless discussions and life-changing perspectives. Thank you! Stephane Cordier September 2019 vi Intimate Immensities: The Poetics of Space in Contemporary Australian Literature Introduction: Issues of Spatial Representation in the Settler Colonial Present Immensity is to space what eternity is to time. Etymologically, immensity is “the un- measured” – not what cannot be measured, but what has not yet been measured.1 The difference matters. A person may give up when confronted by the unmeasurable but they will strive to fill in the gap of the unmeasured. That attempt has defined much of Australia’s history, social interactions and of course its literature. Endeavours to map unknown space are instrumental to the act of conquest. The European reading grids that accompanied the colonial gaze operated as levelling machines that determined future relations towards Indigenous populations and the non-human environment: “The space of Empire is universal, Euclidean and Cartesian