AustLit

'This paper analyses how 'the road' is used in Eva Sallis' novel Hiam (1998) to mobilise Islamic spirituality in the Australian outback and challenge traditional concepts of Australian nationhood based upon colonial ideologies of self and place. Sallis' novel uses the road as a political site of contestation and ideological decolonization wherein these concepts are dissembled and reconstructed. An alternative vision of Australian national identity is proposed through the protagonist's, Hiam's, journey - one requiring self-immolation and rebirth, free of colonialism's ideological legacies which are challenged in the distorting landscape of the desert and the undulating road that disintegrates as quickly as it unfurls. Islamic spirituality acts as a framework for this new identity model, represented as a force capable of embracing infinite subjectivities and ideologies without privilege - allowing Hiam to experience a way of being (and being in place) that is open, inclusive and in an endless, perpetual state of flux. The road is central to this de- and re- construction, acting both as a political site of agency and power, and as a site upon which various histories converge to be acknowledged, contested, challenged and empowered.' (Publication abstract)