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L Joseph Whole Brimstone Flowers: Towards an Antipodean Poetics of Space LAURA JOSEPH A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW Submitted for examination August 2010 Abstract This thesis contends that the ancient topos of the antipodes offers a productive means of reconceptualising location in an age characterized by increasingly global and virtual concepts of space. I demonstrate through analysis of range of literary texts that the location offered by the antipodes is neither a simple return to the premodern, nor the apprehension of a coherent, linear succession of times and places, but rather a realization of the simultaneity of these. The texts I analyse, diverse in historical and geographic location as well as mode and genre, are all produced in and associated with key moments of modernity. Comparing these texts that range across early- modern, colonial and postmodern (specifically post 9/11) historical moments, I map the tropological function of antipodean space as it pertains to identity and inhabitation. As a real and imagined space where geographic location and classical and Judeo-Christian cosmologies collide, representations of the antipodes are circumscribed by a metaphorics of classical and biblical underworlds. I demonstrate that these tropisms are key to relationships between the imaginative operations of antipodean space, transformations in the geographic imaginary and the emergence of particular formations of subjectivity. Showing how contemporary antipodean fiction uses the tropisms of the past to make sense of what Bill Brown has called a moment of temporal, spatial and ideological “bewilderment” in Western thought, I examine how literature both informs and responds to dilemmas of real and symbolic location. In the contemporary texts analysed in the second half of the thesis, the imaginative tradition of the antipodes with its affinity with, and proximity to hell and classical underworlds is able to offer contingent and materially grounded resolutions to contemporary bewilderment. Finally, I argue that from this imagination a new vertical metaphorics can be seen to emerge, where the material specificity of region as a location of possibility departs from colonial and national spaces. Acknowledgements I could not have done this without the support of my family and friends, especially my parents, Jennifer and Patrick Joseph. This thesis is dedicated to them. Nor would this have been possible without my inspiring and brilliant supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth McMahon. While a few sentences can’t convey the work of a great supervisor and just how much she is a part of this work, I would like to use this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to her. The word inspiration seems insufficient for the profound illumination she has lent this work, and the guidance she has offered when I was, so many times, bewildered by the task. She has also been the best editor anyone could hope for, and a source of motivation, encouragement and above all, enduring patience. Here, along with Dr. McMahon I would also like to include my co- supervisor, Dr. Brigitta Olubas. Thank you both for teaching me to think not only critically and creatively, but also poetically, and showing me the pleasure, possibility and worth of this kind of work. Thank you also for sharing your insights about Dead Europe that provided the initial inspiration for this project. Further thanks to Dr. Olubas for her brilliant insights and advice on the final draft. I would also like to thank Prof Elizabeth Wilson for her advice and support early on in the project and for her invaluable feedback during the review process. I am deeply appreciative of the support of the Women’s and Gender Studies convenors (Dr. McMahon, Dr. Olubas and Prof Wilson) for this project throughout my candidature, for not only encouraging me to move between literature and gender studies, but for establishing an intellectual culture and community that promotes interdisciplinary work. I am also grateful for the teaching opportunities they have provided to me. My sincerest thanks to Lorraine Burdett and Dr. Devon Indig for proofreading the final drafts, often at very short notice. An additional faculty scholarship provided by the UNSW Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences made it infinitely easier to focus on my research throughout my candidature. Funding from the Postgraduate Research Support Scheme made it possible to attend the national literatures conference held by the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. I would also like to take this opportunity to express gratitude towards the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) for postgraduate scholarships that made it possible to attend a number of ASAL conferences throughout Australia. ASAL has not only provided a forum for presenting and receiving feedback on research throughout my candidature, but has also made me feel very welcome in a vibrant intellectual community. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: Hell’s Antipodes 25 An invention of the poets 37 Dante’s antipodes: the way among the lost 40 Petrarch’s antipodes: manufacturing grace 48 Rabelais’ antipodes: “salvos of the bum” 57 Swift’s antipodes: proto-colonial chaos 70 Figures 1-7 81 Chapter Two: The Gardens of Hell 88 The fifth part of the earth 96 Sodom of the south 103 Type of a coming nation 116 Brimstone roses 123 Chapter Three: Digital Demons and the Real Hell of Postmodernity 142 Undead realism and the politics of fantasy 149 A temple and a skyscraper 154 This is not digital 165 Inhuman ethics 168 Abject dissent 179 Faustian bargains 189 Chapter Four: Opening the Gates of Hell 192 Poetics of space in Carpentaria and Dreamhunter 198 Serpents and golems 211 Poetics of place 217 Opening the gates of hell 221 Conclusion 232 Works Cited 239 1 Introduction `--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say). Presently she began again. `I wonder if I shall fall right THROUGH the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think--' (she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) `--but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland1 The reconsideration of space is a defining characteristic of the present moment. Indeed, John R. Gillis named the last decade the “second great era of global expansion” in which “what once seemed such firm geographic distinctions are dissolving” (Gillis 19). Writing just before the current proliferation of virtual cartographies such as Google Earth, Gillis’ comment is even more pertinent in light of the present trajectory towards increasingly virtual spaces. As the nature of relations between premodernity, modernity and postmodernity becomes increasingly ambiguous, the statuses of not just spatial positions but also temporal location are definitive dilemmas of this moment of globalization. In his 2005 PMLA essay “The Dark Wood of Postmodernity (Space, Faith, Allegory)”, Bill Brown addresses these dilemmas when he speaks of the “cognitive impasse provoked by late capitalism” (Brown 736), where individual, collective, ideological, ontological and rhetorical positions are deeply unstable. Invoking the figure of Dante lost in the wood, Brown calls this rhetorical, temporal and spatial crisis “bewilderment”, and argues that this dislocation is a crucial ambiguity of our time. 1 Thank you to Beth Franklin for drawing my attention to this passage. 2 This bewilderment is directly addressed by recent critically-acclaimed and award-winning Australian and New Zealand novels, Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe (2005), Elizabeth Knox’s The Vintner’s Luck (1998), Daylight (2003), and the Dreamhunter duet (2005, 2007), and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006). These novels negotiate this spatial, temporal and rhetorical dislocation by invoking the older spatial co-ordinates of prehumanist cosmologies: for Tsiolkas and Knox, this is the Judeo-Christian cosmology of heaven and hell. Wright invokes this cosmology also, but in combination with, and challenged by, her incorporation of the ancient world of Indigenous creative spirits. This thesis takes up these shared returns of older spaces, arguing it is these returns that enable the texts to rethink the relationship between location and identity within the dislocations inherent in this moment of globalization. Further, it is through the invocation of past worlds that the novels, particularly Wright’s Carpentaria and Knox’s Dreamhunter, depart from colonial and national imaginaries and move toward a new metaphorics of inhabitation. By incorporating these ancient cosmologies into the contemporary world through realism, and thus rendering them material rather than metaphoric, these texts demand a critical rethinking of space. The questions of location and identity that the novels negotiate in this rethinking of space are not grounded in the specific terms of Australian or New Zealand nationality. Rather, these novels offer ways to inhabit and become according to the terms of the antipodean imagination. This thesis argues that, as the subterranean stratum of contemporary globalised relations, the ancient topos of the antipodes offers a way to navigate and rethink these relations and contemporary questions of location and identity within economies of representation. Specifically, I demonstrate how poetic and rhetorical operations of the older spatial coordinates of the antipodes, such as they are deployed in these contemporary novels, can make sense of this present bewilderment. The innovation and intervention of these novels in relation to contemporary bewilderment and attendant questions 3 about the statuses of spatial and temporal location as they are formulated by Brown are inaugural to this thesis.
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