AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Editorial,
single work
column
(p. 3-4)In the editorial for this issue, Clare Bradford gives a critical reading of the picture used on the front cover which is reproduced from an anutobiographical work by Conni Nungulla McDonald (with Jill Finnane) entitled When You Grow Up. Discussing texts which cross the boundaries between adolescent readers and a more general readership, Bradford draws attention to ways in which photographs of Aboriginal subjects relate to the 'cultural and institutional settings in which they were taken' (3). Aboriginals were often depicted in photographs 'dressed entirly in European attire' and/or placed against bush landscapes or blank settings which represent Aboriginal people as noble savages or belonging to a 'dying race' (4). Bradford argues that the reworked picture of Connie Nungulla McDonald resists any unitary or straightforward interpretations and instead, implies a striking departure from traditional racist representations of Aboriginality by reiterating that 'the Aboriginal traditions which link identity with a particular country have survived the dispossession over the last two centuries' (4).
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Constructions of Female Selves in Adolescent Fiction: Makeovers as Metonym,
single work
criticism
(p. 5-13)
In this article, Stephens examines the makeover as a 'specialized form of feminine discourse' (5) by looking at how it is represented in adolescent fictions. Stephens' comparative approach discusses several novels by Australian authors of children's literature in conjunction with discourses from popular culture and explores the links between teenage magazines and adolescent fiction. He uses Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity to highlight the dialogic relationship between identity as 'performance' and identity as 'expression' (5) pointing out that the former is often equated with nihilism, while (neo)humanist conceptualisations of the subject usually privilege 'expression' in narratives of adolescent identity formation: 'By realizing the physical or exterior body...the makeover metonymically expresses a character's unfolding inferiority...But when the fictions represent a character whose subjectivity is 'merely' performative...that character is apt to be radically alienated and possibly tragic' (5). For Stephens, the implicit function of makeover narratives is either transformative or cautionary based upon the notion that the 'transformed body' acts semiotically as a 'metonym of growth' (6). Stephens conludes that makeover narratives in teenage adolescent fiction for girls generally adhere to the dominant humanist paradigm of subjectivity in which 'self identity is defined by how an individual is valued by others' (5) and as the 'expression of a substantial self' which acts as a stable and innate ground for choice and agency' (12)
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Fading to Black : Aboriginal Children in Colonial Texts,
single work
criticism
(p. 14-30)Bradford identifies the discursive and narrative strategies involved in the representations of Aboriginal children in nineteenth century children's texts and argues that, 'white child readers are interpellated by colonial texts' to view the mixing or hybridization of identities as an 'ambiguous and threatening possibility (14). Bradford critiques the inherently 'ideological work' that permeates white representations of Aboriginality and in particular, the representation of Aboriginal children as 'hybrid grotesques' which threaten 'racial purity' (15) and who 'wilfuly reject the advantages of civilisation' (20). For Bradford, the Aboriginal children in these colonial texts carry a 'range of significances', all of which 'offer the white child readers absolution from colonial guilt by naturalizing the deaths of individual Aboriginal children and Aborigines collectively' (29). She concludes that it is the obsessive and visible linking of death and Aboriginality that discloses racial anxieties about the legitamacy of Australian nationhood (29).
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'You're a Failure as a Parent, Joe Edwards!': Reconfiguring the Male Parent in Australian Realist Fictions for Children 1966-1986,
single work
criticism
(p. 31-40)Pennell argues that 'within the constraints of their historical contexts, both The Min-Min and All We Know allow us to trace that desired shift in focus of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity from insisting upon dichotomy and domination in gender relations to foregrounding a concern for the best interests and aspirations of girls and women' (40). She posits that in the context of the time in which they were written, they may be read as subversive and progressive in their problematization of 'hegemonic masculinity as privileged by Western patriarchy' (31), particularly in their reconfiguration of 'gendered social relations' in the domestic sphere' and the representation of male parents and parenting (31). This she considers as no easy task considering 'the traditional configuration of Australian masculinity is antithetical to all that is deemed 'feminine'' (31).
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Good Girls Don't: Gender Ideologies in 'Touching Earth Lightly' and 'Wolf',
single work
criticism
(p. 41-50)Through an examination of the main female characters in Touching Earth Lightly by Australian author Margo Lanagan and Wolf by the British author Gillian Cross, Harris discusses the ambiguity confronting young women as they negotiate the path from adolescence to adulthood in societies where the boundaries between adolescent and adult are increasingly blurred. She points out that in British and Australian coming-of-age, or rite-of-passage narratives, 'the positions of young female protagonists are often ambiguous' (42) while the use of realism functions as a powerful ideological tool that can influence readers to 'unknowingly accept a particular ideology' (49). Harris contends that Cross's Wolf involves the young reader in a process of deconstruction which allows them to challenge dominant perceptions of reality and learn the necessary skills to 'understand the workings of ideologies and the ability to assess the paradigms offered to them'. On the other hand, she views Lanagan's novel as reinforcing a conservative determinist philosophy which 'restricts success to a range of appopriate behaviours' and 'supports conformity by disempowering the protagonist' at the novels closure (49).
