Cirrus@Austlit

'There can seem very little, on the surface to link India and Australia. This essay argues that it is the reaction to, and transformations of history that unite these two former colonies. History is one of the primary tools of imperial domination because by instituting a record of the past as European it confirms the dominance of Eurocentrism established by the invention of the world map. When colonial societies are historicized they are brought into history, brought into the discourse of modernity as a function of imperial control—mapped, named, organized, legislated, inscribed. But at the same time they are kept at History’s margins, implanting the joint sense of loss and desire. This essay demonstrates the role of literature in transforming the record of the past. Excluded from world history, colonies relied on the role of writers to narrate the story of cultures that had been subsumed into empire. They do this by allegorizing the movement of history in place. The Great Indian Novel and Oscar and Lucinda offer very different re-conceptions of history based on the culturally disparate functions of myth and chance. Though very different, they are united in their project to reconceive imperial history and thus establish a story outside that history for colonial societies.' (Publication abstract)