Irreducible Difference and Ethical Reading in Alexis Wright's The Swan Book

129 Pages·2017·0.72 MB·English

“Other Horizons Exist”: Irreducible Difference and Ethical Reading in
Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book
Jean Hilary Jasper Skeat
Bachelor of Arts, Honours Class I

A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at
The University of Queensland in 2017
School of Communication and Arts
Abstract

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.
Alison Ravenscroft’s work in The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and
the Visual Field of Race (2012) provides the foundations for my argument for the
necessity of recognising the limitations of my position as a white Australian reader of an
Indigenous text. However, I find Helen Hoy’s How Should I Read These: Native Women
Writers in Canada (2001) to be a necessary counterpoint that allows me to extend
Ravenscroft’s explanation of how I should not read this text into a more productive
theorisation of how I might.
I begin by presenting both feminist and postcolonial readings of the Gothic
elements of this text, arguing that Wright uses Gothic tropes to assist in the production
of meaning, adapting and manipulating them to create narrative and political critique.
However, Wright also continually complicates and disrupts the application of this
framework, undermining my attempts to convert the difference of this text into a
knowable form.
Wright’s use of multiple systems of knowledge and ambiguous poetic language
creates a positive undecidability. While it is tempting to ascribe this undecidability the
label of magical realism, ultimately it proves to be a limiting method through which to
read The Swan Book’s ambiguous narrative mode.
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Translation from the language of the text to the more familiar language of a
critical framework is shown to be possible but always limited and limiting. I chart the
effect these translations have on the text, and more importantly, the effect The Swan
Book’s untranslatability has on my reading practice. By producing instances of
communication that do not depend on stable and universal meaning, or that deny the
existence of irreducible difference, The Swan Book inspires, and enables, non-
appropriative and ethical dialogue.

Skeat Other Horizons Exist ii
Declaration by author

This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously
published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in
the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I
have included in my thesis.

I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including
statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures,
professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in
my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the
commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a
substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other
degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated
which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award.

I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University
Library and, subject to the policy and procedures of The University of Queensland, the
thesis be made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act
1968 unless a period of embargo has been approved by the Dean of the Graduate
School.

I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the
copyright holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright
permission from the copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis.

Skeat Other Horizons Exist iii
Publications during candidature

Skeat, Jean. “Political Poetics and the Power of Things: Nonhuman Agency and Climate
Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book.” Transformations: Journal of Media and
Culture, vol. 27, 2016.

Publications included in this thesis

No publications included.

Skeat Other Horizons Exist iv
Contributions by others to the thesis

No contributions by others.

Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another
degree

None.

Skeat Other Horizons Exist v
Acknowledgements

Dr Judith Seaboyer for her unwavering support and confidence.

Dr Nathan Garvey for getting me started and Professor Gillian Whitlock for her
invaluable guidance and wisdom in the final stretch.

The School of Communication and Arts and the Graduate School International Travel
Award for helping me get to Cornell.

Professor Soulemayne Bachir Diagne for introducing me to the depths of translation and
for six gratifying weeks of thinking.

Robert for making me pasta.

Most of all, my parents for their ongoing support.
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Keywords

Alexis Wright, The Swan Book, whiteness, Gothic, postcolonial theory, magical realism,
undecidability, ethical reading, translation theory

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC)

ANZSRC code: 200502, Australian Literature, 70%
ANZSRC code: 200525, Literary Theory, 30%

Fields of Research (FoR) Classification

FoR code: 2005, Literary Studies, 100%

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Table of Contents

Abstract i
Declaration by author iii
Publications during candidature iv
Publications included in this thesis iv
Contributions by others to the thesis v
Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree v
Acknowledgements vi
Keywords vii
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC) vii
Fields of Research (FoR) Classification vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 “music made from old bones”: Manipulating the Gothic Mode 11
Reading a Familiar Gothic 13
Complicating a Gothic Reading 24
Reading Spectrality 35
Re-Reading Spectrality 41
Chapter 2 “when the truth itself was mad”: Challenging Knowledges and
Maintaining Difference 50
Multiple Narratives 53
Ambiguity and Undecidability 61
Questioning Magical Realism 69
Chapter 3 “a sensation of straining to hear”: Whiteness and
Untranslatability 79
Visible Whiteness 81
Theorising Whiteness and Questioning Difference 88
Translating Untranslatability 95
Bibliography 105
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Introduction

I do not think it is right for me to ignore stories that have other ways of
looking at the world.
Alexis Wright, “On Writing Carpentaria” (87)

Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) is a complicated and demanding text, at once
both intriguing and alienating. Its forthright political nature and obvious contemporary
relevance invite me to work with the text and engage in discussions of
environmentalism, feminism, land rights and Aboriginal self-governance. However, in
The Swan Book there are narratives, passages, and even sentences, so opaque they
disrupt, if not prevent, a construction of meaning. It is this tension—this pull and
push—between invitation and alienation that drives my reading of this text. When
presented with a ghost that does not haunt, or a crow that sings ABBA, or a virus that
sits on a couch in a doll’s house on the “beautiful sunburnt plains” (1)1 of a woman’s
mind, I cannot help but wonder: how do I read this text? And specifically, what, if any,
are my responsibilities as a white Australian reader with regard to this text? And how
might I fulfil them? Is it possible for me as a cultural outsider to interpret and analyse
without reducing or appropriating Aboriginal knowledge systems and experiences? And
yet, even as these questions remain at the forefront of my mind, I am drawn in by
Wright’s lyrical style and overt politics, and begin searching for connections and
meaning, tracing themes or examining the influence of literary traditions. By

1 To avoid complicating in-text citations, all quotations credited to Wright are taken from The
Swan Book unless otherwise specified.
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