Cirrus@Austlit

Postcolonial ecocriticism has emerged gradually over the last couple of decades as the differences between postcolonialism and environmentalism have been overcome. Those differences have centred on an assumed conflict in the way the two discourses see the world. However, the colonial roots of environmental degradation and the growing postcolonial critique of the effects of imperialism have seen a growing alliance focused in the discipline of postcolonial ecocriticism. Postcolonial critique and environmentalism have found common interest in the role of imperialism and capitalism in the rapidly degrading anthropocene. However critique has not often led to a clear vision of a possible world. This paper suggests a new alliance – between postcolonial critique, environmentalism and utopianism – one that emerges from the postcolonial realisation the no transformation can occur without the hope inspired by a vision of the future. The paper asks what literature can do in an environmental struggle in which colonized peoples environmental struggle in which colonized peoples are among the worst affected. The role of postcolonial literature provides a model for the transformative function of the creative spirit in political resistance. No true resistance can succeed without a vision of change and literature provides the most powerful location of that vision – no transformation can occur unless it is first imagined.

'Archie Weller’s Land of the Golden Clouds (1998) might have become a landmark novel. Van Ikin wrote in his early review of the work that it “could go ballistic. Not just in Australia, either: there are elements of Land of the Golden Clouds that have the potential to strike a chord of excitement right across the globe” (“Feet into fantasy” 10), because Weller’s novel adds a contemporary spin to the conventions laid down by Tolkien and his successors. Katharine England ended her review of the novel with the sentiment that it was “another Archie Weller landmark in Australian and Aboriginal writing” (42). However, instead of becoming a landmark work, the novel was soon forgotten. However, instead of becoming a landmark work, the novel was soon forgotten. Chapter 1 discusses how the “spectres” started “haunting” Australia, and how extratextual phenomena provided answers as to whether or not some works should be considered Aboriginal. This phenomenon went into overdrive in 1990s Australia when a series of writers entered the limelight for their culturally incorrect appropriation of Aboriginal identity, which they used to create works of art, most notably Aboriginal writing. The publicly exposed authors who abused Aboriginal and other ethnic identities were initially put in the same box of frauds, and Australian media and academia ostracised them without paying much attention to their differences. Indeed, the number of literary-cultural hoaxes in 1990s Australia was staggering, and it is no wonder they all received the same negative response. No other western-style democracy with indigenous peoples recorded such a situation in the late twentieth century. The idea that Aboriginal oral narratives, Aboriginal art in general and Aboriginal noms de plume could still be appropriated so easily in a multicultural country that wanted to put its colonial past behind it just added to the already historically and politically charged relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. However, the subsequent careers of the “cultural hoaxers” reveal that the reasons behind their appropriations and the socio-historical context from which they appeared were quite different.'  (Introduction)