Issue Details: First known date: 2003... 2003 Getting a Head : Dismembering and Remembering in Robert Drewe's The Savage Crows
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

The article examines the use of bodily metaphors of dismemberment and beheading in Drewe's novel about the fate of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, The Savage Crows, in the light of the Western historic notion of the 'social body' and the body of the state. It concludes that 'In a critique of the ways in which contemporary Australian society rests on but denies the fragmentation and dismemberment of Aboriginal communities in the past, this novel dismembers and fragments a contemporary Aboriginal community, and in the process, repeats the theft of William Lanney's head for white purposes, in order to produce a coherent (white social) body ... at the close of the narrative' (65).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 23 May 2003 16:33:49
54-66 Getting a Head : Dismembering and Remembering in Robert Drewe's The Savage Crowssmall AustLit logo Australian Literary Studies
X