Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Shifting Timescapes and the Significance of the Mine in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article proposes a reading of Alexis Wright’s epic novel Carpentaria that focuses on the mine and its impacts as central to any understanding of the novel. Carpentaria offers a stark portrayal of how resource extraction is intimately linked with both colonisation and capitalism and is sustained through state-sanctioned violence and nationalist ideologies. This article explores the dichotomy between Normal Phantom, who views mining as just another phenomenon in the vast expanse of time, and his son Will, who fights the mine on the understanding that it is an unprecedented threat to the survival of the Waanyi people and their Country. Although I suggest that this wider debate, and the forms of agency it represents, remains unresolved in the novel, I conclude with a meditation on the critically neglected character of Kevin who complicates the novel’s uneasy resolution. In the light of ongoing debates about the Adani mine, Carpentaria is more relevant than ever.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Literary Studies vol. 35 no. 2 29 October 2020 20738432 2020 periodical issue 'For our second issue of 2020 we bring you a wide range of approaches to thinking about literature in Australia: these are essays that test the relationship between writing, politics, and history, undertake detailed consideration of language and imagery, and work at the intersection between literary and media history, and literary studies and pedagogy.' (Introduction)
     
    2020
Last amended 11 Nov 2020 07:23:32
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