Alexis Wright's the Swan Book

PERFORMING ECOLOGIES - SPECIAL ISSUE

Priyanka Shivadas ALEXIS WRIGHT’S THE SWAN BOOK: NARRATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANIMIST REALISM

ABSTRACT Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) is a work of fction set in a dystopic future that has been altered irreversibly by climate change. The text, in terms of how it functions as a narrative and represents its narrative space, emerges as a potent example of the absolute interdependence between the non-human environment and the human. In my paper, I explore how such a narrative form deployed on a spatial language not only dissolves the strict division between nature/culture, but also emboldens the discourse on ‘new animism’. It is my argument that when a climate change novel, taking the example of The Swan Book, is also animist realist, it meets one of the biggest challenges facing climate change fction at present, which is to enable its readers to recognise the fallibility of human exceptionalism.

Keywords: New Animism; Anthropocene; Indigenous Australian Literature; Climate Change Fiction; De- colonisation

The Swan Book is Alexis Wright’s third novel. with the frst two of Wright’s novels in that they Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the are all part of her heartfelt and conscientious southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. undertaking to talk about the devastating efects She attributes her love for stories and writing of European colonisation on the Indigenous to her grandmother, who had passed on to people of Australia. her stories of her country and her heritage, and the importance of not letting these go. Reviewed widely, The Swan Book has been called As a political activist involved mainly in the a “counter intervention” (Williamson 2013), in struggle for Aboriginal self-determination direct reference to the attack it makes, among and land rights, Wright has been working with other things, on the Australian government’s 1 Indigenous Australian communities since the Northern Territory Intervention of 2007. Writing 1970s. She turned to writing fction as a means for the Sydney Review of Books, Jane Gleeson- of decolonisation. She found that “literature, the White (2013) notes, “It bears all the hallmarks work of fction, was the best way of presenting of Wright’s astonishing narrative powers: her a truth – not the real truth, but more of a truth linguistic dexterity, mashing words and phrases than non-fction” (2002, p.10). Wright’s debut from high and low culture, from English, novel was published in 1997. Titled Plains of Aboriginal languages, French and Latin; her Promise, it targeted the assimilation policies put in humour and scathing satire; her ferce political practice by the government and state authorities purpose; her genre bending; her virtuosic gift for of Australia that had a shocking impact on its 1 The Northern Territory National Emergency Indigenous people. The year 2006 marked the Response of 2007, famously called the ‘Intervention’, was publication of Carpentaria, which won the Miles started as the Howard government’s response to cases of Franklin Literary Award. The huge success of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities living in this novel catapulted her to the position of being the Northern Territory. The intervention included a series of steps, ranging from installation of pornography flters one of the foremost contemporary Indigenous on public-funded computers to deployment of armed writers of Australia. The Swan Book converges personnel and police ofcers in the traditional land of remote Aboriginal communities.

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interweaving stories on multiple levels, from the President of Australia, who comes for her from literal to the metaphoric, the folkloric and the the other side of the swamp. Shortly after the mythic”. In another review, Katherine Mulcrone wedding, Finch leaves Oblivia behind in a city remarks: in the south of Australia, locked in a building called The People’s Palace. Stuck in the palace, Nothing about The Swan Book is one night, suddenly, Oblivia fnds that the black easy or straightforward, least of all a conclusion on its merit ... Wright, swans that were with her in the swamp have it seems, is determined to keep come back to her. Soon after the arrival of the her readers unmoored, which swans, Finch is assassinated as he re-enters the she accomplishes via omniscient city, leading to the Australian government’s narration that tends more toward decision that his dead body will be taken on a stream of consciousness than linear fnal journey to farewell the nation, during which thought, challenging readers to the government can settle on the burial place of untangle which strand of narration belongs to which character. The his cofn. It is also decided that, as long as the author complicates this task by decision is not made, the journey shall go on and dispensing with any commitment to Oblivia will accompany Finch’s dead body in a standard syntax, so that sentences vehicle. Nonetheless, Oblivia leaves the corpse of wind over and around themselves in Finch behind. Yet again, she fnds her black swans such a way that only multiple readings from the swamp. “They were heading north, on can unpick the threads. (2014, p.518) the way home” (Wright 2013b). She decides to The composition of the novel consistently evades follow them. In the end, we are told that Oblivia the usual conventions of literary narratives, can be regularly spotted walking around the old making any understanding of it seem less dry swamp as a teenage girl, “screaming, kayi, thorough than it should be. The Swan Book, set kayi kala-wurru nganyi, your country is calling in the near future, takes place when the world out for you” (Wright 2013b). as we know it has changed drastically because With such a complex narrative, the novel of anthropogenic climate change. People have unlocks discussions on themes that include been rendered stateless and homeless, and have the loss of Indigenous traditions, Stolen migrated to any place possible on the planet Generations, detention camps, dispossession, where life can be sustained even in a nominal the disappearance of Indigenous languages, and condition. Consequently, hordes of climate the ongoing struggle for Aboriginal rights and refugees have forced themselves into Australia. sovereignty. Every sentence is a refection on all The central character of the novel, Oblivion these issues. However, the idea for writing The Ethylene or Oblivia, is a young Australian Swan Book, as Wright reported in an interview Aboriginal girl who was raped by a gang of petrol- with Arnold Zable, came to her when she was snifng youths, after which she has fallen into working in Central Australia in the year 2003 and the underground bowel of a giant eucalyptus tree people started telling her about “swans that they where she remains locked in a state of sleep. Her had seen in the desert, sometimes on very shallow family and community have stopped searching stretches of water. People were surprised to see for the missing child, when Bella Donna of the them in these places, so far away from coastal Champions – a European climate refugee in and wetter regions of Australia” (2013a). The Australia – fnds her. Together, they live in an old swans had moved far from their natural habitats, rusty hulk stuck in the middle of a swamp, which and this was accompanied by a change in the is an Army-run Aboriginal detention camp. weather patterns, explaining why the swans were Oblivia, however, is unable to recover from the migrating in the frst place. More importantly, it trauma of her past. Symptomatically, she remains was the cumulative result of human activities; mute for the entirety of the novel. climate, the environment, and non-human beings After the death of Bella Donna, she is claimed were being impacted by human beings. Inspired as wife by Warren Finch, the frst Aboriginal by these events, Wright wanted to write a story for

96 PERFORMING ECOLOGIES - SPECIAL ISSUE the Anthropocene. Thus, The Swan Book can be The Swan Book, have been read with the purpose considered frst and foremost a climate change of revealing the gap in new materialism and novel.2 post-human theories that critically interrogate nature-culture dualism, such as those posited In literary fction, climate change is generally in the works of Jane Bennett and Bruno Latour, regarded as an intrinsically difcult topic to which let Indigenous materialism fall through write about, as writers confront a set of scientifc without any mention of it. Ravenscroft’s essay and cultural phenomena that is bewildering in begins with the all-important question of her its complexity and scale (Garrard 2013). Adam own position as a non-Indigenous reader/scholar Trexler and Adeline Johns-Putra (2011), in their approaching Indigenous texts. Consciously and survey of fctional representations of climate conscientiously, she comes to the point that there change, conclude that the depiction of climate is a need for new reading practices, and proposes change in literary fction, particularly in science one “where the non-Waanyi reader takes up Alexis fction, relies on the construction of other-worlds. Wright’s invitation to be ‘welcomed strangers’… These other-worlds are either planets other than [Ravenscroft is] interested in the possibilities Earth made habitable for life, or Earth with an of a reading practice based in estrangement altered climate located in the future. Narratives for the possibilities it may hold for de-centring set on Earth rather than other planets have been the Western-centric knowing reader-subject” referred to as “future histories” by Trexler and (2018, p.359). While I am grateful to Ravenscroft John-Putra (2011, p.186). The Swan Book is a future for confronting the issue of positionality as it history in this regard, but it also goes beyond many afects non-Indigenous readers/scholars like other climate change novels that are also future myself who study Indigenous literary texts, and histories by exhibiting an exceptional approach for ofering an enabling reading practice that is in terms of its setting and characterisation. It based on an acknowledgement of the limits of has not only tried to depict how human and non-Indigenous understanding of Indigenous non-human planetary life can be afected by self-representation, I hope to tackle the question climate change, but has constructed the narrative of the binary relation between nature and culture space of the novel such that it helps us think from a diferent angle. That is, I do not use the about the fallibility of human exceptionalism or term Indigenous materialism, for I have the anthropocentrism in radically new ways. This, I objective of rehabilitating and decolonising the argue, has been achieved by grounding the text term ‘animism’, which was once – and to some 3 in animism. degree remains at present – used in relation to In an illuminating piece of scholarship by Alison Indigenous peoples and practitioners of non- Ravenscroft (2018), the novels of Wright, including mainstream religions in a derogatory fashion. The term ‘animism’ was frst used by English 2 There is a growing body of scholarship that anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917). Tylor engages with The Swan Book as a climate change novel. See, lived and worked in a Europe that had begun for example, Mead, Philip (2018), ‘Unresolved Sovereignty and the Anthropocene Novel’, Journal of Australian Studies experiencing the spread of the Enlightenment, 42 (3), pp. 24-538. Also, White, Jessica (2014), ‘Fluid Worlds: the ideology of scientifc progress, and the theory Refecting Climate Change in The Swan Book and The Sunlit of evolution. Consequently, for Tylor, animism Zone, Southerly 74 (1), pp.142-163. However, it is outside the was not a desirable quality, but was rather an scope of this article to discuss the existing literature on the novel unless directly relevant to the argument being made. indication of primitiveness among certain 3 This is not equivalent to the claim that The Swan cultural groups. It is in his text Primitive Culture Book is magic realist, posited by some scholars who have (1871) that we fnd his frst detailed account on since then been criticised for it, as it superimposes onto animism. Now, when scholars refer to animism, an Indigenous novel a literary narrative strategy developed primarily by Latin American writers and formulated into as detailed in Tylor’s study, they refer to it as ‘old a theory by Western critics. For more on the diference animism’, by way of ushering in the concept of between animist realism and magic realism, please ‘new animism’. refer to Harry Garuba’s article ‘Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, New animism is animism reinterpreted and Culture, Society’.

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redefned to become “a self-designation among fabula, and the fabula becomes sub-ordinate to some Indigenous and nature-venerating the presentation of space. The fact that ‘this is religionists, many of whom are well aware that it happening here’ is just as important as ‘the way can carry negative associations but reject these in it is here,’ which allows these events to happen” favour of its more positive associations” (Harvey (Bal 1997, pp.135-136). In The Swan Book, the 2005, p.3). Graham Harvey, a religious studies narrative space is an acting place. It is not just the scholar based in the United Kingdom, who characters that sufer the consequences of the published Animism: Respecting the Living World great climactic derangement, but the space which in 2005, defnes animism as that which “names is the Aboriginal country has been presented as worldviews and lifeways in which people seek to sufering equally. In fact, there is no separation know how they might respectfully and properly between the characters’ experiences and the engage with other persons” (2005, p.xiv), and country’s; they are interconnected and deeply animists as those “who recognize that the world entangled with each other. is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with In the frst chapter, ‘Dust Cycle’, Oblivia’s rape others” (2005, p.xi). In literary studies, Nigerian and her subsequent fall into the bowel of a poet and scholar Harry Garuba was one of the eucalyptus tree has been linked with the severe frst to discuss certain texts, especially by African drought in the country; one’s trauma has a writers, and to place them in the tradition of bearing on the other: “Some say that there was ‘animist realism’. Graham Harvey, building an accident before the drought. A little girl on Garuba’s study, ofers more examples from was lost” (Wright 2013b). By speculating on literatures, especially Indigenous novels and the supposed connection between the natural poetry, that exhibit an animist conception of the phenomenon of drought and the Aboriginal girl world. going missing, the narrative is drawing a parallel between the sufering of the country (induced by Of the characteristics of Indigenous animist realist climate change) and the traumatic experience writings listed by Harvey, the most prominent is of Oblivia. Furthermore, this section of the text that they are not defned solely or predominantly neatly illustrates how, in Aboriginal cosmologies, by the presence of magic or spirits in their content. everything relates to everything else, and how the Their primary trait is that they habitually assume country – along the same lines as a living person a radically plural, “larger-than-human social – possesses language, memory, story and even cosmos” (2014, p.461) in which it is possible for emotions that are always being transmitted and human beings to relate intimately to non-human transcribed on itself. beings, whether they are animals, plants, spirits, artefacts, ancestors, or divine beings. Another To go back to Harvey’s defnition, animism signifcant feature of Indigenous animist realist recognises that the world is full of persons, texts is that boundaries are transgressed all the only some of whom are human beings. Wright time. “Whether it is in relation to the putative understands the non-mutability of this statement division between this and other worlds (whether and the role it plays in Indigenous worldviews, of spirits or other species), between times, thus weaving non-human agency and subjectivity between conscious states (wakefulness or sleep) seamlessly into the narrative of The Swan Book. or between the everyday and the larger-than- Moving beyond examples of anthropomorphism, human, boundary crossing is rife” (Harvey 2014, at a more intricate level, the swans in The Swan Book p.465). ofer a fgure of extreme complexity that remains irreducible and yet open to interpretation. What The principal way animism materialises in The is quite remarkable is that the characterisation of Swan Book is through its narrative space. “Spaces the swans has escaped the instrumentalisation function in a story in diferent ways. On the one that non-human characters are often subjected hand they are only a frame, ‘a place of action’. to in literary fction. The swans in The Swan Book On the other hand, it becomes an ‘acting place’ are animate beings and bring their own unique rather than the place of action. It infuences the energy to the environment in which they are

98 PERFORMING ECOLOGIES - SPECIAL ISSUE present. The following passage describes Oblivia’s perpetuating and furthering the ontological opening encounter with the swans: split between humans and nature. Emily Potter (2009), in ‘Climate Change and the Problem Oblivia remembered thinking that of Representation’, considers this to be the dust had a way of displacing destiny the frst time she saw a swan … In inheritance of Western thought that operates all of this vast quietness where the in binaries. “Within these binaries, power is summer sun was warming the dust allocated unevenly, with the capacity to do, to spirit’s mind, the swan looked like have creative impact, and to author, invested in a paragon of anxious premonitions, the human. Where the non-human environment rather than the arrival of a miracle for ‘acts’ – for instance, in the case of a ‘natural saving the world. Seeing the huge bird disaster – it is interpreted with the human at the fying through the common dusty day like this, disturbed whatever peace of centre of concern: what does the occurrence mean mind the stick-like Oblivia possessed. for humans?” (Potter 2009, p.70). It is, therefore, Everyone watched a swan’s feather important that we turn to alternative modes of foat down from the sky and land narrative that do not sideline the non-human on her head. Oblivia’s skin instantly others in their depiction of the Anthropocene if turned to a darker shade of redbrown we are to overcome the overpowering infuence of ... She knew as a fact that the swan the nature/culture dualism. The Swan Book, being had been banished from wherever it should be singing its stories and was an animist realist environmental narrative, ofers searching for its soul in her. (Wright such an alternative. 2013b) Wright’s subjects in the novel are both human and In the above passage, the fgure of the swan, grey- non-human. The Aboriginal country, inclusive black and alone, has been presented not as a of all beings, is itself sentient and collapses our bird that has found itself in a new place, looking conventional understanding of the terms ‘life’ and perturbed or guarded to be devoid of its fock and ‘non-life’. In Environmental Culture: The Ecological away from its former habitat. Rather, it presents a Crisis of Reason, where Val Plumwood (2002) powerful image of a person that has arrived with argues that the logical structure of Eurocentrism, a mysterious purpose. This purpose unfolds as it ethnocentrism, and androcentrism is the same, drops a single feather on Oblivia. In my reading she lists the tendency to homogenise the other of the text, this is the moment of entangling as one of the chief features of such structures. In when Oblivia and the swan(s) become conjoined the case of the nature/culture divide, the other- in their common purpose of fnding a place of than-human entities are conceptualised as belonging. In the prelude, the only section of the being interchangeable, replaceable units located text written in the form of a frst-person narrative under broad categories, whether they are trees, told from the viewpoint of Oblivia, she says: “I fowers, or animals. As Plumwood puts it, “an must continue on, to reach that one last place Anthropocentric culture rarely sees animals and in a tinder-dry nimbus where I once felt a sense plants as individual centres of striving and need, of belonging” (Wright 2013b). This confrms the doing their best for themselves and their children connection between the swan(s) and Oblivia. in their condition of life” (2002, pp.107-108). This They are fellow-travellers on the same journey, type of culture, as Plumwood explains, promotes exiled from their homeland and in search of a human insensitivity toward non-humans, an home that has perhaps been lost forever to the underestimation of the complexity of nature and ravages of time. a mechanistic culture – all of which predictably

Elizabeth DeLoughrey (2015), writing in Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches, believes most current narratives of the Anthropocene position the human subject at the centre of the discourse and as exceptional to non-human species,

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polarises nature from culture.4 Aboriginal people.

“To counter polarisation, it is necessary to It is necessary to bring in the concept of ‘deep acknowledge and reclaim continuity and listening’ at this point, because treating nature as overlap between the polarised groups as well alive and interactive may not be sufcient if we do as internal diversity within them” (Plumwood not invite human beings to be attentive observers 2002, p.102). Wright has, throughout The Swan and listeners. In fact, Val Plumwood considers Book, consciously tried to decentre the human/ “listening and attentiveness to the other” (2002, nature contrast by attending to the factors of p.194) to be one of the most important of the both continuity and diversity. In recognition of counter-hegemonic virtues that resist the nature’s amazing diversity, Wright has featured instrumentalisation and othering of nature. in the novel brolgas, owls, monkeys, myna birds, This is so because it is only by paying attention crows, dogs, and other hybrid fgures such as that and having an open stance that the relationship of the ghost, genie and the Chinese dragon. More between the human and the non-human can prominently, Wright recognises the continuity move from being monological to dialogical. and convergence between all life forms, with During my research, I found that there is, in fact, Oblivia’s relationship with the swans being a term used by some Aboriginal people, even emblematic of this continuity. Throughout the though not mentioned by Plumwood, for the text, there are more instances of cross-species quality of listening and attentiveness that helps contact. The ancestral tree in whose bowel one receive the disclosures of nature. It is called Oblivia lay asleep for almost a decade shares a dadirri.5 Indigenous elder Mirriam Ungunameer, divine relationship with the Aboriginal people from the Ngangikurungkurr tribe, describes it as of the swamp. “Old people said that the tree was “inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness”. like all of the holiest places in the world rolled Ungunameer attributes this special quality to the into one for us, no wonder [Oblivia] went straight to years of practice of listening to stories passed on it ... The tree watching everything, calling out to by the ancestors, the cumulative result of which is her when it saw some people had broken the Law that Aboriginal people become skilled listeners. ... This ancestor was our oldest living relative for She explains: “In our Aboriginal way, we learnt looking after the memories, so it had to take her” to listen from our earliest days. We could not live (Wright 2013b). In this instance, Wright makes the good and useful lives unless we listened. This was sacred ancestral tree the only witness to Oblivia’s the normal way for us to learn – not by asking rape which, as a protective, generous guardian, questions” (‘Dadirri’ n.d.). This kind of attentive takes her in and ofers her shelter. What is more listening, practised by the Indigenous community important here is the recognition of rape as an act to which Miriam Ungunameer belongs, can be of violation of justice and Aboriginal Law by the developed only by having the patience to stay ancestral tree. Here, Wright is pointing not only still, by being truly comfortable with silence, and to the profound failure of the constitutional law by exercising mindfulness. This attentiveness, of Australia to protect the Aboriginal population, at last, is what will truly enable us to enact the but at the same time showing the durability of refusal to consider humans as the only repository Aboriginal Law while restoring its relevance to for agency and re-envision the nonhuman as a source of action and intentionality for the sake of 4 An interesting article to refer to on Plumwood’s environmental philosophy is Deborah Bird Rose’s ‘Val the health of the entire planet. Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Interactions in the Sentient World’. In the article, Rose recounts the event in which Plumwood was almost killed and eaten by a crocodile at Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, 5 Indigenous scholar Judy Atkinson of Jima, Australia. In the moment of near-death, Plumwood had Budjalung and Celtic-German heritage, in Trauma Trails, understood that she, a human being, was to a crocodile its Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Efects of prey, its food, whereas the entire anthropocentric culture Trauma in Indigenous Australia (2002) has used dadirri as an is based on denying the reality that humans are part of the Indigenous cultural tool in the promotion of individual food chain and thereby part of a cycle of reciprocity that and community healing through transgenerational trauma links the natural world with the cultural sphere of the experienced by Indigenous people as a result of the violent human. history of European colonisation of the country.

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Atkinson, J. (2002) Dadirri: Listening to One Another. Wright, A. (2013b) The Swan Book (Kindle edn). New South Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Wales, Giramondo. Efects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia. Melbourne, Spinifex Press.

Dadirri: Inner Deep Listening and Quiet Still Awareness. Miriam Rose Foundation. Online. Retrieved from https:// www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au/about-dadirri, 05/05/17.

Garrard, G. (2013) Solar: Apocalypse Not. In Sebastian Groes (ed.), Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (2nd edn). London, Bloomsbury Academic.

Garuba, H. (2003) Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature, Culture, Society. Public Culture 15 (2), 261-285.

Gleeson-White, J. (2013) Going Viral. Sydney Review of Books. Online. Retrieved from http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/ going-viral/, 25/04/19.

Harvey, G. (2005) Animism: Respecting the Living World. South Australia, Wakefeld Press.

Harvey, G. (2014) The Handbook of Contemporary Animism. New York, Routledge.

Mulcrone, K. (2014) Wright’s Cygneture Achievement Eludes Conclusions. Antipodes 28 (2), 518-519.

Plumwood, V. (2002) Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London, Routledge.

Potter, E. (2009) Climate Change and the Problem of Representation. Australian Humanities Review 46, 69-79.

Ravenscroft, A. (2018) Strange Weather: Indigenous Materialisms, New Materialism, and Colonialism*. Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5 (3), 353- 370.

Rose, D. B. (2013) Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Interactions in the Sentient World. Environmental Humanities 3.

Trexler, A & Johns-Putra, A. (2011) Climate Change in Literature and Literary Criticism. WIREs Climate Change 2, 185-200.

Williamson, G. (2013) Alexis Wright Stages a Counter Intervention with The Swan Book. The Australian. Online. Retrieved from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/ review/alexis-wright-stages-a-counter-intervention- with-the-swan-book/news-story/01891a074e8371288af744 60c0f0f69e, 26/04/17.

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Wright, A. (2013a) The Future of Swans. Interviewed by Arnold Zable. Overland 213. Online. Retrieved from https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-213/

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