AustLit logo

AustLit

Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Ethical Resonance in a Postcolonial Register : Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In presenting Andrew McGahan with the Miles Franklin Award in 2005 for his novel The White Earth, the judges note that the author “subjects postcolonial Australia to a searing analysis”. As they go on to say the work “draws on the full resources of the novel as an imaginative form to explore some of the most urgent social and political issues haunting Australians today”. In the short paragraph published on the Award’s website, they mention the two main characters—nine year old William and his patron, his great uncle John McIvor. Throughout the novel the boy carries a festering, almost numbing wound in his ear. “William’s disease”, the judges observe, “is literally the burden of the past”. This essay traces an ethical register in McGahan’s novel, and argues that the historical index entwined in the novel relates not so much to “the burden of the past”, but rather to the burden of a present.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL vol. 13 no. 3 2013 7219068 2013 periodical issue 2013
Last amended 19 Jan 2017 09:21:23
http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-63067-20150114-1144-www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/3067/3899.html Ethical Resonance in a Postcolonial Register : Andrew McGahan’s The White Earthsmall AustLit logo JASAL
X