'This thesis examines the different ways in which representations of A. O. Neville—Chief Protector of Aborigines / Commissioner of Native Affairs in Western Australia from 1915 to 1940—operate in a select group of texts. I argue that Neville is a highly charged synecdochic figure who stands in, discursively, for all white, bureaucratic administrators, in order to distil changing anxieties about Australia and its past. I examine key texts from Neville’s own writing to a range of more recent, fictional texts. I utilise a postcolonial approach in my analysis of the figure of Neville, through a reading of his continuing incarnations in Australian literature and culture. This project seeks to do with A.O. Neville what Kay Schaffer’s In the Wake of First Contact: The Eliza Fraser Stories did with Eliza Fraser.' (Publication abstract)
Thesis. Includes bibliographical references. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts University of Tasmania October 2007.
Contents:Introduction. An anxious repetition: A.O. Neville's manifestations -- Ch. 1. Bureaucratic expressions: A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines -- Ch. 2. Assimilating A.O. Neville: Benang's Unsettling representation -- Ch. 3. Popular iterations: A.O. Neville in Rabbit-proof fence -- Conclusion. Too many A.O. Nevilles.
