AustLit

'This article examines how the concept of the archive may operate as a generative rather than purely repressive space for a young Eurasian woman, Ruth, who is dying of breast cancer in Simone Lazaroo’s novel, Lost River: Four Albums. I build on the concept of hypomnesis which first appeared in Plato’s Phaedrus to distinguish between the oral and written forms of remembering, but has come to signify the wider act of turning memory into something concrete, a product emerging from the process of remembering and memorialising. The preamble announces the marginalised Eurasian woman’s decision to use four discarded photograph albums as ‘Somewhere to store all those memories’ for her child, Dewi, to have after the mother’s passing.  The narrative then follows a nonlinear structure where each of the four albums investigates the origins and meaning of Dewi’s life from her conception until her mother’s final moments. I argue that this act of domiciling lives in these albums operates as a form of counter history, comprising moments that tell an alternative story about belonging for the disenfranchised. That is, operating from the bottom, as a mother intimately familiar with the precarity of home, Ruth designs her archive to demonstrate how dwelling, if you get it ‘right,’ may lead to a sense of binding love, happiness, and home. To conclude, the essay explores how Derrida’s ideas about ‘archival desire’ help to illustrate the kind of ‘taking care’ Heidegger privileges in his writing on dwelling.' (Publication abstract)

Olga Roncoroni’s essay in Henry Handel Richardson: Some Personal Impressions is the only first-hand account of how she and Henry Handel Richardson became ‘entangled.’ However, it does little to explain why Richardson sacrificed so much of her own life, including the writing of The Way Home between 1919-24, for her new and younger friend. Gaps in Roncoroni’s memoir and the destruction of private papers have enabled speculation about Richardson’s motivations in assisting Roncoroni and the nature of Roncoroni’s character. This essay considers previously unexamined materials from the Medico-Psychological Clinic, the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and Queenswood School to paint a broader picture of Roncoroni and her activities during this period and the years immediately following. In addition to Richardson’s correspondence and Roncoroni’s memoir, this analysis exposes the extent of Roncoroni’s mental health issues, Richardson’s burden of care, and the circumstances that allowed Richardson to resume her writing life while continuing to support Roncoroni. Consequently, the prevailing characterisations of Richardson as self-serving and dominant and Roncoroni as entirely dependent on and preoccupied with Richardson is reconsidered. In this way, Dorothy Green’s largely overlooked or misconstrued understanding of the two women and their relationship is also reaffirmed and developed. The conclusions of this study pave the way for a re-evaluation of subsequent aspects of Richardson’s biography, including her relationships and disturbances to her writing patterns.' (Publication abstract)

'Non-human animals feature prominently in Alexis Wright's novel, The Swan Book. In addition to the avian creatures of the novel's title, The Swan Book includes representations of fish, owls, mynas, brolgas, rats, cats, dogs, and snakes. Building on previous scholarship into the novel's focus on non-human species, this article explores the centrality of multi-species being and interconnectedness within an Indigenous cosmological framework. The Swan Book demonstrates the pivotal role of non-human animals in communicating the ancestral stories and historical knowledge of Aboriginal nations. As a result, an Indigenous worldview centred on the notion of Country is presented as a potential solution to current environmental challenges in our world. The article also draws attention to the muteness of Oblivia, the central character of Wright's novel. Employing concepts from disability studies and critical animal studies, the article finds that Oblivia's muteness demonstrates the interlocking discourses of racism, ableism, and anthropocentrism at work in Western colonialism. As a result, the character's muteness indicates how the category of ‘animal’ has been discursively employed to justify the dual exclusion of Indigenous and disabled people from the category of the human. Oblivia’s embrace of the black swans and her subsequent refusal to communicate in ways that are normatively acceptable to hearing people is an important reminder for readers to orient themselves ethically to others whose embodiments, minds, and ways of life may be (radically) different from their own.'(Publication abstract)

'Kenneth Cook’s literary oeuvre has hitherto received relatively little critical attention. Recently, almost thirty years after his death, an unknown novel by Cook was discovered and, in 2016, published under the title Fear Is the Rider. While it echoes his best known novel Wake in Fright in many ways, it is yet more than simply a Gothic narrative about the Australian outback. In fact, one of its main interests is settler colonialism. In this article, drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, I argue that Fear Is the Rider constructs Australian settler colonialism as an abject structure by envisioning it as something that, despite efforts to do so, cannot be banished and instead haunts the nation uncomfortably. Through the figure of the monster chasing the protagonists relentlessly, which becomes an embodiment of settler colonialism, the narrative pictures the violence of colonialist structures and thereby provokes readers to question them.'(Publication abstract)

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