AustLit

'In The Swan Book (2013), Alexis Wright facilitates productive communication while maintaining the ethical and political importance of irreducible difference. While there are readings of this text that I can and do produce, what is equally important are the moments when my reading cannot proceed, when my reading is stalled by irreducible difference and untranslatability. Close reading and the application of familiar critical frameworks such as postcolonial Gothic or magical realism produce valid political analysis and are an important aspect of my engagement with this text. However, always, The Swan Book pushes back, disrupting any attempt to produce uncomplicated or stable meaning, denying any delusion of knowability or transparency. Its complicated narrative form and opaque poetics create irreducible difference that encourages recognition of the limits of my own reading position. This recognition forms the foundation of an ethical reading practice that allows for communication and exchange but avoids reduction or appropriation of difference. '