AustLit

'J. M. Coetzee’s previous novels such as Waiting for the Barbarians, Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man, and Diary of a Bad Year have more or less dealt with ‘gating’ foreigner or refugee issues, but The Childhood of Jesus(2013) appears to exacerbate these issues. This essay will examine how Coetzee’s novel engages with the question of hospitality for the refugee by reading it alongside Jacque Derrida’s two seminars in Of Hospitality, "Foreigner Question" and "Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality." This essay will f ix this comparative reading in the text by relating it to Coetzee’s treatment of language and pedagogy in the novel. This essay suggests that Coetzee is subverting the Derridean distinction between unconditional hospitality and conditional hospitality by showing how the case examples always take the material conditions as given. Ultimately, this essay suggests that Coetzee’s novel reminds us of the need to hold on and return to the Platonic ideal of unconditional, unconditioned hospitality by presenting a bleak, dismal foreign country where what Derrida calls "the law of hospitality" is violated.'

Source: CAOD.

'Shanghai Dancing is the eighth novel written by Brian Castro. In this novel, Castro employs fictional autobiography to narrate Antonio Castro’s identity puzzlement and his seeking for self from a marginal position. Like other characters in the novel, Antonio Castro dances in and out of a series of broken and incoherent stories. By adopting postmodern techniques of interweaving broken stories and multiple narratives in a non-linear way, the author places his characters in an unsteady and fluid situation. After a careful reading, this paper attempts to explore the themes of disorientation, uncertainty and identity seeking in this novel.

'澳大利亚作家布莱恩·卡斯特罗以虚构自传的手法在《上海舞》中叙述了处于边缘地位的安东尼奥·卡斯特罗对于自我身份的困惑与追求。书中大量运用后现代主义的非线性手法以及形形色色的声音讲述破碎的、不连贯的故事,使得人物形象处于一种不稳定的、流动的状态。本文通过对文本的详细解读,试图探究主人公安东尼奥·卡斯特罗身上所体现的迷失、不确定性以及自我建构等身份特征'

Source: CAOD.