The Roving Party & Extinction Discourse in the Literature of Tasmania. Submitted by Rohan David Wilson, BA hons, Grad Dip Ed & Pub. School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. October 2009. Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts (Creative Writing). Abstract The nineteenth-century discourse of extinction – a consensus of thought primarily based upon the assumption that „savage‟ races would be displaced by the arrival of European civilisation – provided the intellectual foundation for policies which resulted in Aboriginal dispossession, internment, and death in Tasmania. For a long time, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were thought to have been annihilated, however this claim is now understood to be a fallacy. Aboriginality is no longer defined as a racial category but rather as an identity that has its basis in community. Nevertheless, extinction discourse continues to shape the features of modern literature about Tasmania. The first chapter of this dissertation will examine how extinction was conceived of in the nineteenth-century and traces the influence of that discourse on contemporary fiction about contact history. The novels examined include Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World by Mudrooroo, The Savage Crows by Robert Drewe, Manganinnie by Beth Roberts, and Wanting by Richard Flanagan. The extinctionist elements in these novels include a tendency to euglogise about the „lost race‟ and a reliance on the trope of the last man or woman. The second chapter of the dissertation will examine novels that attempt to construct a representation of Aboriginality without reference to extinction. These texts subvert and ironise extinction discourse as a way of breaking the discursive continuities with colonialism and establishing a more nuanced view of Aboriginal identity in a post-colonial context. However, in attempting to arrive at new understandings about Aboriginality, non- Aboriginal authors are hindered by the epistemological difficulties of knowing and representing the Other. In particular, they seem unable to extricate themselves from the binaries of colonialism. Novels analysed here include Drift by Brian Castro, Elysium by Robert Edric, and English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. Declaration This is to certify that the thesis comprises only my original work except where indicated; due acknowledgment has been made in the text to all other material used; the thesis is 40,000 words in length, not inclusive of the bibliography or abstract. Signed, Rohan Wilson Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Chapter One: Extinction Discourse in the Literature of Tasmania 7 3. Chapter Two: Subverting Extinction Discourse 39 4. Conclusion 55 5. Appendix: The Roving Party 59 6. Bibliography 117 The Roving Party & Extinction Discourse in the Literature of Tasmania Introduction When considering the issue of genocide, Tasmania is often cited – wrongly, I will argue – as the location for the only fully documented case of racial annihilation to have ever occurred. The symbolic moment of extinction supposedly came for the Aboriginal Tasmanians in 1876 with the passing of Trukanini, a member of the Bruny Island people, aged approximately 64. Her death did not come as a shock, but rather as the culmination of decades spent imagining the eventual fate of the Aborigines, predicting their doom, and planning for their demise. Belief in a Tasmanian extinction pre-dated the death of Trukanini, just as it continues to maintain a foothold in the public consciousness more than 130 years later, informing the way academics, historians, and writers portray Aboriginal Tasmanians in literature. It is a belief that underpinned the colonial project in Tasmania from the earliest days of settlement, a belief that continues to manifest in the representations of Aboriginal people today. The nineteenth-century discourse of extinction – a consensus of thought primarily based upon the assumption that „savage‟ races would be displaced by the arrival of European civilisation – provided an intellectual foundation for the policies which resulted in Aboriginal dispossession, internment, and death (Brantlinger 2003;1). Furthermore, the limits this discourse placed upon the thoughts and actions of policy makers and settlers greatly increased the likelihood of a genocide, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of genocidal actions followed by extinction predictions. What is more alarming, however, is the way in which extinction discourse continues to shape the features of modern literature about Tasmania. It would not, given the prominence of the Aboriginal Tasmanian community, seem to be a controversial claim to say that a group of people who identify as Aboriginal Tasmanians actually exists but the catastrophe of colonisation was thought for a very long time to have caused their extinction. This assumption was based on what has been called the „falsity of race‟ – the categorisation of people into social groups by physical traits or other naturally occurring divisions (Wetherell 1992; 14). As a race, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were thought, under the terms of extinction discourse, to have been destroyed or otherwise to have vanished. However, this claim is dubious. Firstly, it is now widely accepted that grouping people by superficial physical traits is not an adequate description of a social group. Secondly, the „vast majority of Aboriginal people‟ prefer to define themselves as descendants of Indigenous Australians who are recognised as Aborigines by their community, a definition that is much more social than racial (Langton 1993; 29). It would, therefore, seem counter-productive, as well as incorrect, to suggest that the Aboriginal Tasmanians are in fact extinct. To do so is to accept race as the sole source of group or individual identity, a position that is extremely difficult to defend. The first chapter of this dissertation examines how extinction was conceived of in the nineteenth-century and traces the influence of that discourse on contemporary fiction about contact history. The demise of the Aborigines was discussed widely in public, planned for in government policy, and lamented in literature and historiography. It follows then that the literature about settlement would reflect this. While most of the novels to be examined are written by non-Aboriginal authors – that is to say, an author who does not specifically identify as a member of the Aboriginal Tasmanian 2 INTRODUCTION community – there is a good body of writing by Aboriginal writers in Tasmania available for research. However, as this writing consists largely of poetry, biography and short story, it falls outside the criteria for selection I have decided upon, namely extended works of fiction. Due to word limit constraints, a number of novels deserving closer examination have been overlooked, including Richard Flanagan‟s Gould’s Book of Fish, Mudrooroo's Master of Ghost Dreaming, Beth Robert‟s Magpie Boy, as well as a number of self-published titles of varying quality and availability. Instead, greater attention will be given to a smaller sample of novels that cover a range of positions and ideas. The second chapter of the dissertation examines novels that attempt to construct a representation of Aboriginality without reference to extinction. They are texts deeply engaged with the process of comprehending Aboriginality and arriving at a representation that is acceptable to Indigenous Tasmanians. What is perhaps most interesting about these texts is the way in which writers are subverting extinction discourse as a means of understanding or representing Tasmanian Aboriginality in order to reveal its discursive continuities with colonialism and establish instead a more nuanced view of Aboriginal identity in a post-colonial context. In this regard, they mark a shift in thinking away from extinctionism as a source of authority on Aboriginality and towards an understanding of identity that, as Stephen Muecke has described it, is about the self as a „multiplicity of identities‟ engaged in a constant process of becoming (1994; 251). However, as the study of the subaltern has shown, representations in non- Indigenous writing often portray Indigeneity as a subject position knowingly adopted by the colonised peoples as a means of resistance. This strategically essential vision of Aboriginality develops out of the colonised/coloniser dichotomy which, as a strategy for writing history, might be seen as an oversimplification of a complex period. Represenations of this kind also tend to preserve the view of Aboriginality as a fixed or stable identity and reinforce the notion that Aboriginal colonial identity is precisely the same as Aboriginal contemporary identity, and my examination will show that this seems to be the case in some literature about Tasmanian contact history as well. The approach I intend to take in forming this critique is what Marcia Langton might refer to as an „anti-colonial‟ approach (1993; 7). The literature about Aboriginal INTRODUCTION 3 contact history is written overwhelmingly by white authors and therefore represents overwhelmingly white concerns. It has been said that the desire of non-Aboriginal writers to „narrate themselves in relation to the Aboriginal Other‟ is an example of their willingness to embrace Aboriginal culture as a part of their own experience of an Australian identity (Muecke 1994; 249). It might also be said that this desire stems from a deeply held moral abhorrence at the