Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Dissecting the Lies of Terra Nullius : The Nightmare of Aboriginal History
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Most of Peter Carey’s fiction is highly political. His writings are explorations of key issues in Australian politics, ranging from cultural issues to the intricacies of foreign affairs. It is not least because of their strong political appeal that all of his novels can be read as postcolonial fictions. In interviews and in his actual political engagement, the author has made it very clear that he wants to use his position as one of the spokespersons of the liberal left to encourage a redefinition of accepted notions of Australianness, past and present.' (p 107)

Notes

  • Epigraph: In Australia, where the past has been the subject of denial and memory loss, it’s essential, it seems to me, to go back to the past and try and untangle all the lies we’ve been told. –Peter Carey

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Rewriting History : Peter Carey's Fictional Biography of Australia Andreas Gaile , Amsterdam : Rodopi , 2010 Z1711490 2010 single work criticism

    'Peter Carey is one of the most richly awarded and critically acclaimed novelists of the present day. Most of his fictions relate to questions of Australian history and identity. Rewriting History argues that taken together Carey's novels make up a fictional biography of Australia. The reading proposed here considers both key events in the life of the subject of Carey's biography (such as the exploration of the interior of the continent, the dispossession of the Aborigines, the convict experience, the process of Australia's coming of age as a postcolonial country) as well as its identity.

    Rewriting History demonstrates how Carey exposes the lies and deceptions that make up the traditional representations of Australian history and supplants them with a new national story - one that because of its fictional status is not bound to the rigidities of traditional historical discourse. At a time of momentous cultural change, when Australia is being transformed from a "New Britannia in another world" to a nation not merely in, but actually of the Asia-Pacific region, Carey's fiction, this book argues, calls for the construction of a postcolonial national identity that acknowledges the wrongs of the past and gives Australians a sense of cultural orientation between their British past and their multicultural present. Source: www.rodopi.nl/ (Sighted 27/07/2010).

    Amsterdam : Rodopi , 2010
    pg. 107-140
Last amended 30 Nov 2010 12:01:41
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