THE P(LOVER) PARADOX A Fictocritical Poetics of Detection Rosslyn Winifred Prosser Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Discipline of Gender, Work and Social lnquiry University of Adelaide, Australia December 2005 AN EXEGETTCRI. AIPTTRBET... .............'..,2 Antip o de an Art efoc t s ... ....'....''..,...2 10 B is for BEING Clues and detours........ 15 Detective... 23 Echo kiss is a poem..... 25 Fragment......... 27 Fictocriticism .. 30 For grief .......... 33 Hybrid 34 Incest 36 J ourney s, j oke s, j ournals...' 39 40 Innd is memory..... 41 Memory 44 Nomadology 46 48 O is for the ordinary and the mundane 49 P is for photographic mernory'... P(Iover) ..... 50 52 Queensland...... Recollection 58 9tory......... 60 62 T is for text ............... Uncertainty 63 Visible traces, suggested invisibility and woven writing 64 x/Yz^................ 66 iii IT STRRTBO WITH AN ANECDOTE ........67 Memorial Drive ........ ..,,.,,.7] Guilt Shame Fear..... ........76 Clue # 1 ................... ........81 On innocence............ 84 The Slq ..........88 Mud Map ..........90 Anecdotal Evidence.. ..........94 Sub-textual P\ot........ ..........98 Here lies: 99 The WaIk... 105 Story is to memory as memory is to story 108 Poeus oF MEMoRY AND UucpRrenrY.................... 110 Detective Fiction... Horizon Madness .. CIue # 2 Lesbian Detective Biographical Details'....'.. Unspoken Knowledge Inve FiIe. Sleepwalking ............... .......130 Manifu sto of Love ........ .......132 CIue # 3 ....................... .......136 CIue # 4 .......141 Clue # 5 Resolution........ .......144 Her house: the place of constructing identity .......150 Song of the Shirt........ 153 Cqnoe Tree.......... .....154 Memory cannot be cloned.. ..... 155 If there is an echo in me......... .....1s6 Skin Types. ..... 158 Embroidery .............. 160 The archetype is møde up .............. 162 IV Engram /................... ..163 She is a boat .............. 166 On Memory 168 171 Little fishes swimming past , Lifiing the skin...... 172 Records Office........ 178 Postcard: Kangaroo Island 180 In the botanical gardens..... .....184 You give me your memory.' .....185 Collage as Method .....186 Echo Kiss .....188 It's too late now for the maniftsto of love.... .....190 Return .....192 Travelling .....194 Mother makes gardens that become memorials...---- .....195 Engram 2......... .....196 I want to lcnow. .....197 Memorialising the thylacine -... .199 .200 The story - almost extinct Writing + Memory = Memor! Writing .202 INvgNroRv oF CHILDHooD ........... .206 Object Lessons .208 Vulcan Junior Sewing Machine Made in England."' .209 Idle Hands ................210 l3 Piece Porcelain Toy Tea Set -..."...... ,................211 Small blue wooden piano with three legs and numbered keys" ,................2 I 3 Ornarnent... .................214 Dolls for Christmas Every Year ....'.'............ .................21 5 Greeting Cørd ......... .................216 Child's Cane Chair .................217 Music Box. .................218 V Hair 219 Miniature glass birds 220 221 Suc c e s s/failure...... 222 Exp e ct ation"ldis app ointment'. -.. " ... "' BIBLIOGRAPITY ......... 223 VI Errata P4 comma aller anekdota, semi-colon after unpublished P5 comma after all, semi-colon after talking P6 shows should be show, comma after family home P7 comma after moving P8 replace comma with semi-colon after museum P8 delete 'a', 'Often' start of new sentence P9 semi-colon after out of order,'comma after model P17 Fullstop after specificity, capital He. P2lsemi-colon after events P22 semi-colon after belonging P27 colon after Barthes, it's should read its last and second last lines P30 should be Barthes' P32 remove comma after prose, P32 remove venture - second last line P35 full-stop after constructs, semi-colon after chronologies P35 comma after end P40 comma after King P42 full stop after configurations, comma after official, semi-colon after identity P43 comma after lesbian P44 comma after discourses P49 semi-colon after life P63 full stop after value P84 comma after six P 96 remembrances should be remembrance P 98 new sentence after different, semi-colon before this is fair P100 comma after ideas P101 Barthes', comma after embroiders P102 semi-colon after room, after engagement P104 semi-colon after departures P107 full stop after somewhere, factory-built P108 comma after Queensland P114 dyes should be die P 1 15 full stop after scenery, mise en scene P 117 semi-colon in the photos, semi-colon after why not? P118 comma after gaze P120 everythingilt should be everything P 121 comma after together, comma after come P122 colon after bleaching, full stop after country P 123 semi-colon after other P 124 semi-colon after me, after romance P 126 semi-colon after spectacle P 132 semi-colon after terminology P136 Pavlov-like P 140 comma after missus, semi-colon after groom P178 semi-colon after grief P196 it's should be its P202 Wings' P206 comma after joy P211 it's should be its P214 semi-colon after child P215 semi-colon after femininity, semi-colon after casual P216 semi-colon after child Abstract This thesis is a work of fictocriticism. The exegesis is both an alphabetical poem that works as an introduction and overview to the material, with further exegetical elements placed throughout the fictional, autobiographical and the poet¡c. lt is not a factual or conventional historical or autobiographical account but rather takes up questions of the place of memory in the construction of subjectivity. lt argues that the self is, in part, a product of discourse. The work is set in Queensland but ventures into parts of Australia to think about questions of travel and nomadology. lt develops a notion of a domestic archive where the home is seen as a kind of museum of the self and family. The work is based around a mother and a daughter who is written as the persona of detective. One of the elements is the telling of an incest story. The mode of telling attempts to break from standard modes of writing in order to develop ideas of how memory structures lives and the ways in which the ordinary and the mundane become ways in which events can be read, as registers of pivotal moments. The work builds on ideas about place and landscape. It works with anecdotes, stories and secrets in the construction of autobiography. lt plays with the idea of a narrator through the use of poetry and fictocritical writing. ln an attempt to disrupt the cohesion of dominant narrative modes the work moves between events and ideas, shifting perspectives are used as a way of achieving this. lt uses the techniques of collage or montage in an effort to disrupt realist representation. ln this way questions of subjectivity and history are put fonivard. These ficto-critical writing practices are made possible through recent developments in theory and practice. The work uses mixed genres producing a form of hybrid writing that interweaves poetry, prose and theory. vlt Acknowledgements I wish to thank my supervisor Associate Professor Margaret Allen for her patience and encouragement. I also wish to thank Professor Kay Schaffer for her supervision in the early stages of the thesis and ongoing enthusiasm and critical commentary. A very special thanks to Veronika Petroff who contributed to the editorial processes and has been a wonderful support throughout the thesis' Pam Papadelos provided help in the formatting and has been a supportive colleague and friend. Thanks also to Lynda Forrest for ongoing friendship and support. Thanks to Terri-Ann White whose writing friendship has been an inspiration. The staff and post-graduate students in the Department of Gender, Work and Social lnquiry have been attentive listeners providing excellent feedback. Thankyou to Thalia Palmer for her administrative help throughout the process' IX 1 Will the collage/montage revolution in representation be admitted into the academic essay, into the discourse of knowledge, replacing the "realist" criticism based in the "notions" of truth as correspondence to or correct reproduction of a referent object of study? (Ulmer 1983, p.86) ... there are surely (lesbian) readers who would find, say a Roland Barthes to be a far more "lesbian" autobiographer than some explicitly lesbian writers. (Martin 1988, P.78) ...writing itself is a practice located at the intersection of subject and history - a literary practice that involves the knowledge (linguistically and ideological) of itself as such. (Trinh 1989, p.6) The ability to communicate certain realities can sometimes depend on the genre in which one writes. (Young 1997, p.64) Producing 'lhings" always involves value - what to produce, what to name the productions, and what the relationship between the producers and the named things will be. Writing "things" is no exception. No textual staging is ever innocent. Styles of writing are neither fixed nor neutral but reflect historically shifting domination of particular schools or paradigms' (Richardson 1 994, P.51 8) 2 An Exegetical AlPhabet Antipodean Artefacts as a summary of all that has gone before and is to come 200 plus years, invasion or discovery? A is for Antipodes: diametrically opposed to Europe - Eporue Emoh Ruo I think of the body in the landscaPe but what I'm really trying to explain is the landscape in the bodY and the landscape on the bodY. (you can take the girl out of Queensland but you can't take Queensland out of the girl). Each moment caught against the light light fractured and disseminated. ln basic terms parts of the body that m¡ght remember place. Feet remember sand and grass, ditt. Walking then, as an act of memory as the point of soldering onto the body an experience. Walking through the streets of Queensland country towns it all comes back to me I've been here before remember clearly the step into your house change from outside to inside smell of humidity, taste of air One Nation stickers on Toyota Hilux dual cabs alongside stickers that say'l shoot and I vote'. How men walk hand in pocket 3 stiff hips shofter movements in the walk, in the wait.