AustLit logo

AustLit

Place, Placelessness and David Malouf’s Meditation on the Dual Meaning of Possession : Is Haunting or Being Haunted Only about Expiation of Colonial Sins? single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Place, Placelessness and David Malouf’s Meditation on the Dual Meaning of Possession : Is Haunting or Being Haunted Only about Expiation of Colonial Sins?
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article deals with the spectrality of the narrative voice in “Blacksoil Country,” a short story from David Malouf’s collection Dream Stuff (2000) in which a dead child artificially addresses the reader, as if from beyond the grave. The interrelated issues of settlement, place and placelessness are tackled through the analysis of Malouf’s choice to focus on the lost child trope commonly found in Australian settler literature, and the resulting haunted nature of the disembodied narrative voice speaking from an unplaceable source. The effects of this narrative strategy include ventriloquisation, conflation and destabilisation.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Commonwealth : Essays and Studies Place and Placelessness in Postcolonial Short Fiction vol. 42 no. 2 2020 20328056 2020 periodical issue

    'In postcolonial contexts marked by multiple forms of displacement and replacement, this issue examines the ambivalent value of placelessness. Another word for dislocation and dispossession, placelessness can also be approached as a force resisting the desire to lock things into place, leading to creative re-inscriptions and reinventions. Through its characteristic reticence, short fiction offers a privileged means to register fractures that take place and yet cannot necessarily be traced – events both impossible to negate and impossible to locate. Open and flexible, the short story also accommodates experiments that demonstrate the vital role of storytelling in the making of place.' (Publication abstract)

     

         2020
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()
Last amended 6 Oct 2020 09:35:11
Place, Placelessness and David Malouf’s Meditation on the Dual Meaning of Possession : Is Haunting or Being Haunted Only about Expiation of Colonial Sins?small AustLit logo Commonwealth : Essays and Studies
Informit * Subscription service. Check your library.
Subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X