Cirrus@Austlit

In Lohrey's third novel Camille's Bread, Stephen is obsessed with Japanese forms of traditional medicine in the form of Zen shiatsu and macrobiotics. In The Project of the Self under Late Capitalism, an essay published in Overland in 2001, Lohrey argues that we would do better to see interests such as Stephen's as of an exercise in mindless narcissism and more about the individual's attempts to find a sphere of freedom and agency ... in response to experiences of powerlessness and worthlessness under regimes of economic rationalism:  Lohrey's novels reflect on what happens to people's utopian impulses in the face of increasing barriers to meaningful engagement in politics. They trace a shift from a 195os water-front in which communal identity is deeply entwined with politics to a disillusionment with public life and a commensurate turn of attention inwards, towards the self and the body, from the 198os onwards.' (Introduction)