AustLit

'I have been delivered of my books.'

These words hang in the air as Gerald Murnane confirms his retirement during a rare address to around thirty academics, writers, publishers and fans at the Goroke Golf Club. The one-day symposium, 'Another World in This One : Gerald Murnane's Fiction, is part of the Western Sydney University's 'Other Worlds: Forms of World Literature' project. On first glance it is a curious connection: how can the life work of an author who has rarely left the small pockets of Victoria, suburban Melbourne and a few regional villages and towns that he has called home for eighty years inform us about a literature of the 'world'?' (Introduction)

'My shoulders lurch back and an involuntary murmur slips through my lips; almost primal, it’s the thrill evoked by animals on display. The small child next to me inches closer to his mother, words whistling out between the gap in his teeth: ‘what is he doing?’'  (Introduction)

Can women have some other way of writing? If so, what is it? Such questions have been asked in literary theory for a long time, and now, as a writer, I tried to gain my own understanding of the creative process. French theorists Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray answered with a resounding yes, but the écriture féminine they posited still seemed constrained by the binaries they fought so hard against. Even though I knew that feminine meant much more than anatomical sex or performed gender in this context, when Cixous spoke of a “universal woman subject to emerge and bring women to their senses” (880), I couldn’t imagine what this universal woman might look like. What colour would she be? What characteristics would she have? Would she be she at all? 'Informed by the corporeal philosophies of Elisabeth Grosz and Karina Quinn (Eades), and the creative texts of Marguerite Duras, Clarice Lispector and Lidia Yuknavitch, I began to explore the idea of a corporeal writing. Writing of and through bodies, writing that seeks to increase diversity by representing body in all its complexities. The association of masculine texts with universality and feminine texts with particularity has been well documented and critiqued. Corporeal writing provides a platform and a counterpoint to the conception of universal experience, not only for women, but for all. Presented here is not a roadmap. I am not advocating a set of rules to be followed. Instead, this body offers reflections — one writer’s experiences — the sensations related to being one of a multitude.' (Introduction)