AustLit

'I joined the public service in the mid 1960s. The purpose of this essay is to review and reflect upon the changes that have taken place since in the way we are governed, and to hazard some thoughts about whether the way we are governed now is fit to meet the challenges we face.' (Introduction)

'This paper considers Carol Adams' notion of the absent referent in Engel's Bear and Coetzee's The Lives of Animals. I argue that both texts call for altered notions of reading and criticism that attempt to write the evasive presence of animals within textuality. Engel and Coetzee use different techniques to at once point to the impossibility of textual presence, in Adams' sense, while also stressing the necessity of striving for a form of presence that represents animals beyond the logic of the absent referent.' (Publication abstract)