At the Limits: Postcolonial and Hyperreal Translations of Australian Poetry By Bridie McCarthy (BA Hons) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University August, 2006 DEAKIN UNIVERSITY CANDIDATE DECLARATION I certify that the thesis entitled At the Limits: Postcolonial & Hyperreal Translations of Australian Poetry submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy is the result of my own work and that where reference is made to the work of others, due acknowledgment is given. I also certify that any material in the thesis which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by any university or institution is identified in the text. Full Name.......................Bridie McCarthy..........................……….………. (Please Print) Signed ..................................................................................………………… Date......................................................................................…………………. AT THE LIMITS Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements iii Translator’s Note v Epigraph vii Introduction: (Un)mapping the Poetics of Postcoloniality & Hyperreality. Foreword: The Limits of Australia as Text. ix i. The Limits of Postcolonial Studies xiv i.i Historical Materialism versus Discursive Deconstruction xv i.ii Postcolonial Futures & the “Ethics of Becoming”. xviii ii. The Limits of Hyperreal Studies xx ii.i The Hyperreal at the Limits of the “Real” xxi ii.ii Baudrillardian Discourse as a Limit to Postcolonial Studies xxiv iii. Los limites de los estudios latinoamericanos xxv [The Limits of Latin American Studies] iii.i América Latina como frontera al poscolonialismo xxvii [Latin America as Border to Postcolonialism] iii.ii Del discurso latinoamericano xxx [On Latin American Discourse] iv. At the Limits of Transnationalism xxxi Afterword: Theoretical Interrogations xxxv Part One: Australia: The Postcolonial at the Limits of the Hyperreal. 1. Articulating Australia. Foreword: At the Limits 3 1.1. At the Limits of the Postcolonial 5 1.1.1 Lionel Fogarty & “the madly stretched endurance”. 5 1.1.2 Robert Adamson: Australia & Island Consciousness. 15 1.2 At the Limits of the Hyperreal. 21 CONTENTS 1.2.1 John Forbes: The Stunned Mullet & the Hyperreal Politik. 22 1.2.2 Kevin Hart: Incarceration & the Australian Asylum. 30 Afterword 39 2. Hyperreal Translations of Postcoloniality. Foreword: Case Studies in the “Postcolonial Hyperreal”: Michael 41 Dransfield & Samuel Wagan Watson. 2.1 “Psyched Out”: Australia’s Postcolonial Ghost Subject and 42 the Hyperreal Allegory of Death. 2.1.1 The Figure of the (Ghost) Subject/The Diasporic Condition. 50 2.1.2 Suicidal Subject, Suicidal Nation. 53 2.1.3 The Traps of Language: Translating Postcoloniality. 56 2.2 Travelling Poetics: Samuel Wagan Watson’s Hyper-Indigeneity 61 & the Haunted Postcolonial Landscape. 2.2.1 Wagan Watson’s Virtual Australia. 63 2.2.2 Australia as Psychic Territory. 68 2.2.3 Hyper-Indigeneity at the Limits of “Australia”. 71 2.2.4 (Un)Mapping Australia. 75 Afterword 81 3. Australian Postcolonial Politics at the Limits of the Hyperreal. Foreword 83 3.1 Approaching the Postcolonial Hyperreal. 85 3.1.1 At “Degree Zero”: Bobbi Sykes & Tony Birch 87 Beyond History. 3.2 When Poets Take up Arms: Combating (Hyper)Real Wars under 98 the Abstractions of the New Empire. 3.2.1 John Forbes: Seduced by the Simulacrum. 100 3.2.2 Robert Adamson: Poets on the (Front) Line as the 106 World Burns. 3.2.3 Jennifer Maiden: Recovering Ethics and Exposing the 111 Abstractions of the New Empire. 3.2.4 Disrupting Deterrence Machines in the Age of the Virtual 117 Spectacle. Afterword 118 AT THE LIMITS Part Two: Constructing a Dialogue: The Australian, lo latinoamericano, the Postcolonial & the Hyperreal. 4. Theory, theory, teoría: Postcolonial, Hyperreal, latinoamericana. Foreword 121 4.1 Hyperreality or transmodernidad? Reading the “New World Order” 125 According to Baudrillard and Dussel. 4.1.1 Theory / teoría 126 4.1.2 Applied Theory / teoría aplicada. 134 4.2 Hybridity / hibridez: In-between Bhabha and García Canclini; 140 or, a (Hyperreal) Utopia in the Borderlands. 4.2.1 Cultural Diagnosis or Discursive Utopia?: Approaching the 146 Limits of the Material, the Discursive & the Hyperreal. 4.2.2 Hybridity in the Simulacrum 154 Afterword 160 5. Post-Colonial, Post-Occidental & Post-Dictatorial Poetry in Australia & Latin America. Foreword: Towards Comparative Analyses 163 5.1 Gazing into the “Eurocentric Mirror”: Australian & Latin American 165 Postcolonial Distortions. 5.1.1 Legacies of Coloniality, Legacies of Modernity. 169 5.1.2 Postcoloniality; or the Impossibility of Unified Subjectivity. 178 5.1.3 Narcissism & the Postcolonial Ghost Subject. 180 5.1.4 “Simultaneity & Sequence”. 183 5.2 Poetry at the Limits of Postcolonial Critique: Remembering Chile 185 Under Pinochet, Remembering Indigenous Australia. 5.2.1 The Limits of the Archive as a Memorial Device. 188 5.2.2 Australia & Chile as “Genocidal Societies”. 191 5.2.3 The Representational Politics of “Subaltern Pasts”. 193 5.2.4 Registering Loss at the Junction of the National & 200 the Personal. 5.2.5 Testimonies of Disappearance & Dispossession. 203 Afterword 208 CONTENTS Coda: At the Limits of the Dissertation. Bibliography 213 DEAKIN UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT OF THESIS FOR EXAMINATION Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Thesis Title: At the Limits: Postcolonial and Hyperreal Translations of Australian Poetry. This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal. Full Name..........................................Bridie McCarthy………………………. (Please Print) Signed ........................................................ Date........................................... AT THE LIMITS iii AT THE LIMITS Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people, without whose help this dissertation could never have been accomplished. Most importantly, my principal supervisor Associate Professor Lyn McCredden for her unparalleled enthusiasm for this work; for the intellectual generosity and open-mindedness that she sparkles with; for imagining the end product with such excitement; and for waiting patiently for the cogs to turn in my head along the way. Grateful thanks also to Associate Professor Frances Devlin-Glass, for reading at the speed of light, and for her honesty, sagacity and erudition. I have been privileged to be guided by such professional and respectful supervisors, who have challenged me earnestly and supported me compassionately. Sincere thanks to my family for their support and to my friends for their understanding. I am especially grateful to Janine Watson for wishing this into being years ago; to Michael McCarthy for reading every word with such care and to Ryan McCarthy for listening; and to my housemates Katie & Amy Freeman, Will Symons & Amy Piesse for their good humour and constant encouragement. Many thanks to my close postgraduate community: Kate McInally, Naarah Sawers, Karolina Kurzak, Emma Renowden, Tod Jones, Jane McGennisken, Carlos Morreo and Gayle Impey for nurturing alliances woven strangely with individual obsessions. To my Spanish teacher and translation aide Carlos Morreo, tantas gracias por ser “la biblioteca humana”, por tus preguntas maravillosas y apoyo constante, y por entender lo que quería crear aquí, aunque tengo las limitaciones de una novicia. I appreciatively acknowledge the institutional and financial support facilitated by Deakin University, which has enabled me to complete this project. In addition, I am grateful to editors who have published my work, for helping me to imagine its reception.1 Finally, my lasting thanks to Caroline Pearson—in the place of the dissertation you never wrote, here is the one you inspired. B.M. 1 All publications ensuing from this dissertation and its drafts are acknowledged fully in the Bibliography. AT THE LIMITS v AT THE LIMITS Translator’s Note Unless otherwise acknowledged, all translations of Latin American poetry and theory in Spanish are the author’s. B.M AT THE LIMITS vii What kind of tropology could today replace the master tropology of the hermeneutic circle, with its corollary, which is