Time Travel: Teaching Australian History Through Speculative Fiction
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Research & Scholarship TEACHR Time travel: Teaching Australian history through speculative fiction Lynnette Lounsbury Avondale University College, Cooranbong, NSW [email protected] Charlotte O’Neill Newcastle, NSW [email protected] Keywords: Colonisation, contemporary issues, history and its people is enhanced by the cross-curriculum, historiography, indigenous, experience of reading Australian speculative speculative history, speculative fiction, Australian histories. history, Terry Pratchett, Clare G Coleman. At first glance, speculative texts have little in common with historical ones. One represents Abstract what has happened, one attempts to predict what Farah Mendlesohn, in speaking to the Children’s might take place. And yet, the speculative allows Literature Association Conference - Imagined an exploration of the potential that historical writing Futures (2017), made the following observation: does not. It is moldable and predictive in a way that “Science fiction is a fiction whose raison d’etre can allow the writer to create a new vision of the is the idea that human beings can fix the world” past. A strong focus in the history curriculum, as (para. 1). For writers retelling a colonisation historiography becomes of greater significance and narrative such as Australia’s recent history, this the subjectivity of experience both past and present point has significant resonance. The rhetoric continues to grow, is leading students to a personal around colonisation is, after all, describing an understanding of the abstract nature even of history. attempt, however parochial or misguided, to For decades historians have taught history as an For decades “fix” the world. Many speculative novels explore explicit and ‘true’ common ground, but the fabric of historians the idea of colonisation, particularly of other this is unravelling as teachers approach classrooms “have taught planets following the destruction or invasion of in which diverse cultural histories form the basis of history as Earth. Many of these also base their ideas on student understanding. an explicit the ways in which colonisations have occurred As an example, Mirandi Riwoe’s The Fish Girl and ‘true’ in the past with new scenarios and characters offers a speculative take on female oppression common to either teach us a lesson about the ills and and trade in the Pacific Islands – a potentially ground, but foibles of the past – or show us a way forward powerful adjunct to the study of Australian history the fabric for the future. often taught in Year 9 (Riwoe, 2017). Texts like of this is When Mark Salber Phillips (2003) suggested this can be valuable in opening conversation unravelling that history could be written as a type of around contemporary issues so that students can combinational genre, with traditional empirical meaningfully connect with past lives and cultures. elements and fictional, literary elements working Following this, their awareness of actual historical together to create temporal distance between events can be easily contextualised by research and the reader and the events, he saw this as a enhanced through discussion of their unique post- ” way of forcing us to look more broadly at the modern lens, and can be further deepened through meanings of history, rather than focusing on dialogue or writing on the ways that context can a singular event. Using his claim that history offer re-imagining of past events. Even excerpts cannot be understood as a singular form, from these texts can offer an empathetic reading but rather as “a cluster of overlapping and of history that adds an additional layer to historical competing genres” (p. 218) that press the reader inquiry and creates opportunities to view history as a to a new degree of involvement in a story, it can dialectic between the past and present. be argued that an understanding of Australian Teaching speculative texts also offers 28 | TEACH | v14 n2 v14 n2 | TEACH | 29 TEACH Journal 14-2.indd 28 24/5/21 4:37 pm Research & Scholarship opportunities for cross-curriculum learning. have invaded, defeated and colonised Australia, Tracker, the Miles Franklin winning take on the life subjugating the inhabitants and treating them as little of a ‘visionary’ Aboriginal tracker by Alexis Wright more than another troublesome part of an already (2017) lends itself to reading aloud, and could be difficult landscape. The novel reveals the power of powerfully incorporated into the Year 11 Reading to speculative fiction to critique political and historical Write English module and connect well to the Year moments and takes a strong political stance on 11 topic ‘Ancient Australia’ which requires a focus the 1788 invasion of Australia by the British and on “representations of ancient Australia” (Ancient the subsequent dispossession, mistreatment and History Syllabus 2019-2021). This topic encourages genocide of Indigenous owners of the land. a focus on values and versions of the ancient Terra Nullius seems upon first reading to be past, and using this potent text encourages an such subtle speculation that it takes time before the understanding of the value of language to historical reader can even tell when the story is taking place. storytelling. It isn’t now. But is it then? Or is it soon? And while The power of Socratic teaching in History is not we do speculate on some parts of the story, others to be underestimated. Offering students selected are far more familiar—a coloniser, an oppressed, episodes, clips and excerpts from fiction within misunderstood and despised native people. It is her an inquiry-based framework that allows students history as a Noongar woman rewritten as something to explore these texts with the goal of answering new, and it is this newness, this speculative history, important historical questions like “to what extent is that jars the reader into rethinking their engagement the alien our understanding of history subjective?”, or “can we with the past. The novel reads like an account, setting of evaluate the significance of the speculative lens in perhaps fictive, perhaps not, of Australia’s colonial “speculative representing the past?” can increase engagement history some time post-1788. It is only later that it fiction makes and encourage students to view sources as becomes clear, incrementally, that this is not a story it possible interpretive lenses into the past. Speculative fiction from a past they are familiar with, but from a future … to engage can also offer a powerful extension for gifted that echoes it; a karmic cycle of the coloniser and with historical students whose capabilities may be developed colonised that opens up a new vision of both our thought in through challenge and variety. past and our future. a new way, Two valuable examples of these speculative The story begins with a young man, called a extramural histories are Clare G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius (2017) “Native”, escaping a mission run by nuns who are to the usual and Terry Pratchett’s The Last Continent (1998). both charitable and unsympathetic, harsh and and culturally Both are atypical engagements with Australian yet benevolent. He is trying to find his home and defined history that examine influences on Australian cultural family while hunted by everyone from the local notions behaviour and evolution through re-imagined militia to his own people. The story moves from interactions with the nation’s history, environment the personal to the broader world of the colony, an and mythologies. Janice Liedl (2015) asserts that environment that feels dissonant in its systematic when a history is presented speculatively, “the order and lack of chaos. It is not an entirely foreign differences it presents can be strong enough to world, however: the rhetoric becomes disturbingly ” suggestively reshape the audience’s understanding familiar with the Natives described by their colonists of the past” (p. 289). She suggests that the as “possessed of the intelligence they needed to very nature of science-fiction adds a “what if?” survive without us” (Coleman, 2017, p. 25) but not component to storytelling that forces the reader the intelligence to face the changes brought about to rethink what is already known and to wonder by the colonisers themselves. For that, the forced if, indeed, there are other ways to view the past. and assisted assimilation was “the only chance they Building on this assertion, it can be seen through have to survive and one day be useful to society”( engagement with these texts that the alien setting of p. 25). The words are eerily reminiscent of the speculative fiction makes it possible for the student 1937 Aboriginal Welfare policy (Commonwealth of of history to engage with historical thought in a new Australia, 1937) as it claims that the destiny of the way, extramural to the usual and culturally defined natives of aboriginal descent “lies in their ultimate notions of that history. absorption” (p. 2 & p. 21) into the white community (see The Assimilation Years, Johnston, 1991; Terra Mater: Reclaiming colonisation in Claire G. Australian Human Rights Commission, n.d.). When Coleman’s Terra Nullius, 2017 Sister Bagra wearily declares that “we educate Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius (2017) is a work them so they can have a place in society, a place of speculative fiction that interrogates the history as lowly as they deserve” (Coleman, 2017, p. 52), of colonial Australia in a futuristic context where it is the natural assumption of any reader with a an alien species—The Settlers, seeking moisture, knowledge of Australian modern history that this nun 28 | TEACH | v14 n2 v14 n2 | TEACH | 29 TEACH Journal 14-2.indd 29 24/5/21 4:37 pm Research & Scholarship is speaking of Indigenous Australians, post-British Terra Nullius does just this – decenters the colonisation. traditional historical record of Australia’s colonisation Each chapter of Terra Nullius begins with and forces its players into new roles and a re- an epigraph: a quote from a fictional text, an imagined understanding of those roles.