Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 The Second World and Settler History : Settler Collectives, Land Fulfillment, and Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In the Cold War-era "three worlds" model, the Second World was the socialist world, particularly the Soviet Bloc, that stood opposed to the capitalist West but—unlike the postcolonial Third World—was largely white. However, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, postcolonial critics briefly redeployed the term Second World to denote peripheral settler colonies like Australia. This essay examines the juxtaposition of these two uses of the term "Second World" through a discussion of Katharine Susannah Prichard's 1929 novel Coonardoo and the history of its misrepresentation of Australian Indigenous people. Though Prichard sought to be sympathetic to the Indigenous woman at the center of the novel's plot, Coonardoo, the teleological perspective of her authorial attitude towards the land precludes this sympathy. This essay examines how Prichard's teleological view is connected to socialist-realist attitudes and settler collectives; how Prichard's novel both continues and inflects settler ideology now in the neoliberal era; and how teleological settler histories of the land can no longer presume the continued solidity of the land in the wake of the Anthropocene.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 15 Mar 2023 10:14:13
25-52 The Second World and Settler History : Settler Collectives, Land Fulfillment, and Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoosmall AustLit logo Ariel : A Review of International English Literature
X