AustLit

'The idea of unbalanced power relations between (post)colonial centres and peripheries lies at the heart of postcolonial studies. In this pattern, Europe, through colonial discourses, has constructed itself as the centre, whereas former colonized spaces – or what is nowadays frequently referred to as the Global South – are conceived as geographical, economic, and cultural peripheries. The centre/periphery binary, as Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (2007) put it in Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, “has been one of the most contentious ideas” in the field (2007, 32). Not only does it attempt to define the pattern, but those asserting the independence of the periphery run the risk of perpetuating the binary and continue to subscribe to the very idea of the centre instead of destabilizing it. The centre/periphery model has mostly been associated with world-systems analysis as theorized by scholars such as Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s. This theory “locates the center of gravity of historical agency in north-western Europe” (Kaps and Komlosy 2013, 238), and, with its allusions to notions such as development and backwardness, the model echoes colonial discourses (240–241).' (Introduction)

'This article investigates imaginings of Europe in contemporary Australian fiction in order to explore whether (traveling to) Europe provides alternative points of reference to discourses on nation, belonging, and identity beyond the (settler) postcolonial. The article sets out to compare recent works by Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas and Gail Jones who narrate Europe against a wide range of backgrounds, covering diverse diasporic, migratory and expatriate experiences, in order to explore the role of Europe as an alternative space, and of European modernities in particular, in the Australian literary imagination. Concentrating on Jack Maggs (1997), Dead Europe (2005) and A Guide to Berlin (2015), the article has a threefold focus: Firstly, it analyses the representation of European spaces and explores how the three novels draw attention to multiple modernities within and beyond Europe. Secondly, it demonstrates how all three novels, in their own way, reveal European modernities to be haunted by its other, i.e. death, superstition, ghosts, or the occult. Thirdly, these previous findings will be synthesized in order to determine how the three novels relate Europe to Australia. Do they challenge or perpetuate the protagonists’ desire for Europe as an ‘imaginary homeland’? Do references to Europe support the construction of national identity in the works under review, or do these references rather point to the emergence of multiple or transnational identities?'

Source: Abstract.