Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Into the Urban Labyrinth : Helen Garner and the Drug Narrative
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

"This chapter provides an analysis of the leaky representations of time, space and the body in the Australian drug text: Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip (1977). The drug narrative provides a platform where alternative corporeal possibilities can be played out, reflective of the way the body is inhabited by and inhabits space. In the literary sphere the drug trope reframes spatial and temporal regulatory notions of the body. The drug metaphor disrupts temporal linearity through the reconfiguration of junk time. Likewise, landscapes, cityscapes and a sense of place are re-imaged in fluid, drugged dreamscapes. For this examination of the narcoticisation of the city in Garner’s novel, this chapter utilises Walter Benjamin’s notions of the urban space as a ‘narcotic dream’ and Elizabeth Grosz’s anatomisation of ‘uncontainability’ and corporeal ‘leakiness.’ Garner’s novel uses the drug trope to reconceptualise the spatiotemporal boundaries that normally confine women, and then to create new meanings."

Source: Abstract.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature Jessica Gildersleeve (editor), London : Routledge , 2020 21550229 2020 anthology criticism

    'In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companionemerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.'

    Source : Publisher's blurb.

    London : Routledge , 2020
    pg. 262-273
Last amended 13 Sep 2024 11:53:13
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