McCredden poses a series of questions: 'Is Australian identity always and peculiarly constituted by dreams of elsewhere? In less romantic terms, are all forms of identity--individual, communal, national--riven, needing to be understood always in relation to what they are not?' Broadly answering 'yes' she asks further: 'what effects does this rivenness of subjectivity, in its multiple forms, produce in Australia and in particular in relation to that institution of "Aust. Lit."?'

In relation to Australia's colonial and post-colonial cultures, McCredden asks: 'what ghosting or scape-goating ... haunts and even tears apart Australian models of identity-making, in both the creative and critical wings of Aust. Lit. What can or should a national literature be in this haunted context? Finally, I want to ask how these hauntings, this rivenness might be negotiated for the future of any possible national literary cultures.'