AustLit

'Commonwealth literary studies functioned for some time as comparative work across discrete national literary cultures. Using the curious instance of an Indian novelist finding publication with an Australian publisher, this article shows how similar and different colonial dynamics of literary production both kept national contexts meaningful and undid them through transnational connections.' (Publication abstract)

'That Deadman Dance (2010) is Kim Scott’s third novel and his second to win the premier literary prize in Australia, the Miles Franklin Award. Scott’s novel is set in the period of contact between European settlers and the Indigenous Noongar people on the south coast of Western Australia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Scott’s father was Noongar and his writing is positioned in the interplay between cultures and histories. In this article, I argue that contact fiction is conditioned by the psychoanalytic principle of deferred action and use Scott’s novel to exemplify this argument.' (Publication abstract)