UNSETTLING WHITENESS: Hulme, Ondaatje, Malouf and Carey. bY Anrje M. Rauwerda A thesis submitted to the Departmenî of English in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada June, 2001 copyright O Antje M, Rauwerda, 2001 National Libraty Bibliothéque nationale IM .,na& du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services setvices bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Onawa ON K1A ON4 ûtîawa ûN K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence aîlowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelfilm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d' auteur qui protege cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni Ia thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othenivise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract Recent representations make whiteness liminal. White male characters in fiction from former settler colonies like Australia, Canada and New Zealand ernbody the legacy of colonialism as well as the class and cultural privileges associated with whiteness. Injurêd whiteness implies a critique of outrnoded stereotypes and suggests how contemporary whiteness can rupture the boundaries of its own privilege. Chapter One uses the mute and abused Simon in Keri Hulme's The Bon2 People to examine how colonial whiteness can be the object of critique in a postcolonial allegory. Chapter Two focuses on the burnt Hungarian "English" patient in Michael Ondaatjeis The English Patient to demonstrote how (and with what effect) colonial whiteness is constructed. Chapter Three considers the "black white" Gemrny in David Malouf's Rmembering Babylon to show how anomalous foms of whiteness hidden within the stereotype of the British colonist are exposed. Chapter Four focuses on Tristan in Peter Carey's The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith to argue that stereotypes of colonial whiteness converge with those of class and cultural privilege so that Tristan's deformity represents racial, cultural and economic marqinalisation. This project uses American and British whiteness theory alonqside postcolonial theory to reveal both the persistently Manichean vocabulary of postcolonialism and the relevance of different oocobularies and categories of analysis. My dissertation examines the as yet unstudied influence of colonial discourse on constructions of postcolonial whiteness and shows that whiteness in former settler colonies is a product of the conjunction of contemporary privilege and colonial marginalisâtion. Acknowledqments My CO-supervisors, Asha Varadharajan and Tracy Ware, were of immense help in the conceptual development and practical execution of this project. 1 am grateful for Dr. Varadharajan's perspicacious comments and moral support, particularly as the job search converged with the closing stages of preparing the dissertation. 1 am also indebted to Dr. Ware for his willingness to be involved in an enterprise so different from his own research preferences. His advice has been tharough, professional, and often extremely detailed. His encouragement, particularly during more embattled periods, has been indispensable. Mary Carpenter has also offered much advice and support during my time at Queen's. Sneja Gunew has been and continues to be an important influence. Her suggestions over tea, sushi or ernail have shaped my academic decisions more than she may know . The challenges of the Ph.D. would have been insurnountable withcut support on a more personal level. Ella Ophir has seen me at my most elated and most despondent; 1 can only hope to reciprocate the generosity of her friendship. Andrew Loman has been an ally and iii confidant; his unrernitting good humor has turned many tired days into unexpected pleasures. The community of students with which 1 have been able to lunch (pretty much daily) over the last five years has also been invaluable. "The lunch bus" ensured routine, solace, and hilarity, particularly in the over-caffeinated and pun- filled days when Alice Petersen, Lori Pollock and Stephen Ross were regularly in sttendance. My parents have provided love and support throughout this and each of my previous endeavours. 1 am especially pleased that they will see this project corne to fruition. Ontario Graduate Scholarships and a doctoral award £rom The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided material support for this degree. Table of Contents Abstract i Ac knowledgments iii Introduction: Whiteness Unsettled 1 Chaptsr One: White Whipping Boy 4 8 Chapter Two: The "English" Patient Chapter Three: Muddy Margins Chapter Four: Whiteness in Disguise Conclusion: Postcolonial Whiteness Works Cited Vita Introduction Whi teness Unsst tled In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, whiteness is already unsettled. Although it enjoys the lingering privileges of its colonial authority, its preeminence is disrupted by critiques and by its own guilty recognition of colonialism's wrongdoings. Two issües obtain in representations of whiteness from former settler colonies: the Legacy of Manichean colonial discourse and the implications of contemporary whiteness (and of the "white" body in particular) .' These two issues coincide in fictions £rom Australia, Canada and New Zealand which represmt characters who are hyperbolically white (and so reiterate the vocabulary of colonial stereoty-pes) but whose injuries belie the privileges associated with whiteness. Ambivalent postcolonial representations give whiteness an uneasy liminal status that can be recidivist (covertly reaffirming white colonial preeminence), punitive (inflicting punishment on the white coloniser) or progressive (turning within "whiteness" to suggest its diversity and potential for evolution) - 2 This project uses contemporary whiteness theories (mainly Arnerican) in the reading of contemporary fiction from Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Bringing whiteness theory to bear upon postcolonial settler fiction allows me to demonstrate that whiteness is not simply postcolonial; somatically, it is richly suggestive of colonial history, but it also connotes disparate histories, classes and kinds of whiteness. This project suqgests that "colonial whiteness" is strategically used in postcolonial allegory; that there is a surprisingly consistent understanding of what "English" colonial whiteness, in particular, connoted; that whiteness adapts and reveals itself as frauqht with class and reqional fissures to become unsettled settler whiteness; and that ne@-colonial "whiteness," thouqh a product of cultural and economic distinctions, can return us to an eerily familiar discourse of racialised difference. Critical theory has recently taken contemporary whiteness as its bête blanche, insisting on the need to interrogate white privilege. For instance, Homi Bhabha writes that [tlhe subversive move is to reveal within the very integuments of "whiteness" the agonistic elements that make it the unsettled, disturbed form of authority that it is-the incommensurable "differ~nces"that it must surmount; the histories of trauma and terror that it must perpetuate and from which it must protect itself; the amnesia it imposes on itself; the violence it inflicts in the process of becoming a transparent and transcendent force of authority. ("The White Stuff" 21) Bhabha suggests that the critical move of the moment is to investigate what lies under the skin of whiteness. One may expect to discover colonial histories of "trauma and terror" as well as covert efforts to maintain whiteness's privilege and authority. Gu'hiteness's ambivalence persists in the disjunction between its relinquishinq of its superiority and its continued enjoyment of a "transcendent force of authority." Bhabha's comment usefully introduces my dissertation's four Key questions: Can postcolonial whiteness sumount its "histories of trauma and terror"? What are whiteness's "integurnents"? How does postcolonial fiction eviscerate whiteness to reveal its "agonistic elements"? What, in addition to skin colour, has enabled whiteness's transparency and transcendency? Contemporary whiteness's authority has been transcendent because unchallenged. Whiteness has been so normative that it has not been acknowledged as a racial category and so has been perceived as "transparent." However, colonial whitenessls power resided in its construction of its own "whiteness." While colonists stereotyped indigenous populations in excruciating detail, reducing them to lists of physical and moral failings, they were notoriously vague in explicating precisely whüt they thought constituted their own whiteness.' For instance, Keith Sinclair writes of nineteenth-century New Zealand, "[iln the discussions about the national type, on one topic there was unanimity: it was to be whitet1 (90) . And yet what was whiteness? It was more than skin. It was al1 that allowed New Zealander Alan Mulgan to write of England's "shining heroes" with their "irnperfectly understood but fascinating ritual," "romance" and "world-ernbracing