2êt,t. "THE DARKNESS AT OUR BACK DOOR": MAPS OF TDENTITY IN THE NOVBLS OF DAVID MALOUF AND CHRISTOPHER KOCH by Amanda E. Nettelbeck, B. A. Hons. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Adelaide February 1991 CONTENTS Absract I Statements ü Acknowledgements üi Abbreviations iv Foreword 1 1. Definition Through Difference: The Emergence of a National Tradition 8 2. "The Mapping of a World": Discourses of Power in David Maloufs Fly Away Peter 26 3. The Pattern of History: Discursive Conflict in David Malouf s Child's Play 51 4. Masculine Desire and the "Other": Intra-Discursive Conflict in Christopher Koch's The Boys in the Islønd and Across the SeaWall 72 5. Frustration of Desire: The Shifting Subject in David Malouf s Johnno and Other Texts 96 6. Ambivalence of Desire: The Split Subject in Christopher Koch's The Year of Living Dangerously t19 7. Negation of Desire: The Lacanian "Reversal" in David Malouf s An Imaginary Ltfe r39 8. Illusions of Desire: Admissions of Lack in Christopher Koch's The Doubleman 155 9. Invention of Narratives: The Identification of Self and World in David Maloufs The Great World r73 Afterword t94 Endnotes 199 Select Bibliography 201 ABSTRACT The intention of this thesis is to examine the novels of David Malouf and Christopher Koch from both a post-colonial and a psychoanalytic perspective. My argument is that the sense of displacement and preoccupation with "other" worlds which characterise these novels reflect a national tradition which positions Australian life at the "edge" of a culturally and politically dominant "centre." Such a perspective is not so much geographical as discursive; Australia was first defined, after all, through a European discourse which assumed its own centrality. Any discourse is codified in language, and in this respect post-colonial themes are related to wider, less politically-specific concerns of alienation and quest for identity. These concerns are readable in Lacanian terms, whereby human desire for a sense of identifying "unity" is recognised as being inextricable from the function of language. Language is the vehicle by which we gain access to the world of the "real," yet because of its role as mediator and its arbitrary and relational nature, language also stands between the speaking subject and the [anscendental fulfi lment of desire. - In an Australian context, then, environment and society carry the burden of "otherness" which is imposed by a Eurocentric discourse; and in a broader context, a preoccupation with "otherness" ma¡ks the lack or absence which is intrinsic to all social discourse. The novels of both Christopher Koch and David Malouf describe a world of fragmentation and shifting signification, but offer this world view in different lights. In Koch's novels, shifts in the construction of identity, both personal and national, only illuminate an irresolvable tension between the desire for unity and the actuality of division. In Maloufs novels, on the other hand, a world view of fragmentation and ambiguity opens human consciousness to imaginative possibility: life is at the "edge." STATEMENTS This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any University, and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text or notes. I am willing to make this thesis available for loan and photocopying if it is accepted for the award of the degree. Amanda Nettelbeck ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks to Andrew Taylor, whose patience, encouragement and ready advice on questions of theory and structure has been of great help to me throughout this project. Many thanks also to Robert Sellick and Russell McDougall for valuable suggestions on content and provision of refetences, and to Robin Eaden and my other friends who gave time and effort to the unenviable task of proof-reading. Lastly, thank you to the friends I have made in the Department of English who have helped make my time here such a happy one. A modified version of Chapter 2 has been published in Kunapipi ll.3 (1989) as "'The Mapping of a V/orld': Discourses of Power in David Malouf s F/y Away Peter." A modified version of Chapter 3 has been published in SPAN 29 (October 1989) as "The Pattern of Power: Discursive Conflicts in David Maloufs Child's Play." ABBREVIATIOI{S Works of Christopher Koch and David Malouf A David Malouf, Antipodes AIL David Malouf, An Imaginary Ltfe ASW Christopher Koch, Across the Sea Wall BI Christopher Koch, The Boys in the Island CP David Malouf, Child's Play CTG Christopher Koch, Crossing the Gap ES David Malouf, 12 Edmondstone Street FAP David Malouf, Fly Away Peter GV/ David Malouf, The GreatWorld J David Malouf, Johnrn HHA David Malouf, Harland's Half Acre TD Christopher Koch, The Doubleman TP David Malouf, The Prowler YLD Christopher Koch, The Year of Living Dangerously Reference Texts AF Henry Handel Richardson, Australia Felix E Jacques Lacan, Ecrits FMH Peter Carey,The Fat Man in History TTI Randolph Stow, To the Islands TWH Henry Handel Richarson, The Way Home V Patrick White, Voss Full references to these texts will be found in the Select Bibliography FOREWORD It has been suggested that post-colonial writing and theory are, in their resistance to institutionalised norms of form and content, involved in an overlapping relationship with postmodernism.l Thi, is not to suggest that one is merely a localised instance of the other. The focus of this thesis is on post-colonialism and I do not intend to conduct an extended analysis of postmodernism. However it is useful to note that postmodernism, as Ihab Hassan claims in his book The Postmodern Turn, acts to examine and to "reconceive" the "powerful cultural assumptions" of any (Western) society (84). The post-colonial project, on the other hand formed as it is within a specific social and - historical context - works within the political framework it challenges. Nevertheless, there is a nexus between the two movements in their deconstructive roles, in their mutual concern with what Gareth Griffiths calls "the accidental, the apparently contingent, the less (or more) than logical, the fact refusing to be contained, the fortuitous occurence, the 'random'event, the unplaceable object (in time or in space)" ("Being there, being There," 133). Such concerns take the focus away from what has always been, in Australia's last two centuries of colonisation, a search for national definition. Within a truly post ' colonial mentality, the preoccupation with defining a "distinctly Australian experience" should be not central but comfortably invisible. To use John Matthews' phrase: "One does not make a clearing. One is a clearing" ("Lifeboats for the Titanic," 36). In Australian writing, however, the shift from colonial self-consciousness to post- colonial unself-consciousness has not been an altogether clear one. Unlike some other post-colonial nationalities, who have been able to throw off the weight of imperial influence to reassert the validity of their own culture, political system and language, post- politically colonial Australia - and it is important here to recognise that this term is.itself biased, referring as it does to the politically, socially and economically dominant group of white Australians who are both victims and perpetrators of different acts of marginalisation has no pre-existing reassert. Rather, it has a culture, a - systems to political framework and, most importantly, a language which are grounded in a European ancestry, in imperialist imports. The colonial concerns with "identity" and "place," with 1 their suggestions of displacement and of loss, therefore spill over into post-colonial concerns. Nevertheless, one thing that has developed from post-colonial patterns of thought is the postmodem acknowledgement that, no matter how important a sense of nationalism may be to the people it serves, it cannot "exist" as an entity in and of itself. Rather, it occupies a cultural position within a chain of cultural positions, and therefore only has status through a relationship of relativity. [n the opening paragraphs of his book Inventing Australia, Richard White writes: There is no real Australia waiting to be uncovered. A national identity is an invention . When we look at ideas about national identity, we need to ask, not whether they are true or false, but what their function is, whose construction they are, and whose interests they serve. (viii) White's remark suggests another reason, besides inter-cultural relativity, as to why national identity is questionable as a stable concept. The very notion of "national identity" presupposes an equitable and unshifting society to which it can apply. But as White continues: "Every powerful economic interest likes to justify itself by claiming to represent the 'national interest' and identifying itself with a 'national identity.' In this view of the world there is no room for class conflicts, and sexual and racial exploitations are also obscured" (ix). For Australian nationalism in particular, which was forged upon a frontier mythology of white masculine power, the idea of 'national identity' becomes all the more problematic. The colonial question of determining "identity" then becomes, in a post-colonial context, the question of identifying the discourse(s) through which we operate. Within Australia's culture the discursive hierarchy determining social and political power is quite complex. On the one hand, post-colonial Australia is involved in an inter-discursive struggle to de-polarise the relationship between the sociopolitical "centre" and its relegated "margin," to destabilise the very notions of centrality and marginality that have so far maintained Australia's position of subordination to Europe. Yet on the other hand, within the national discourse which emerges from this struggle, other centre/margin relationships have developed regarding gender and race.