Ross Gibson, South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia
One of the most profound ironies of contemporary writing on issues of postcolonialism has been that notions of difference and Otherness, once reviled and repressed, have become the locus from which so much of 'the politics of identity' is now being waged. So much so, in fact, that numerous writers have suggested that the very idea of difference has become a sort of 'new universal' that cannot be escaped. Instead, it must be lauded and paraded on all fronts.
Perhaps the most persistent localised version of this paradox has been a belated attempt to reinscribe white Australia's obsession with colonial provincialism and marginalisation. Once the victim of projections of territorial imperialism and neocolonialism, we are told, the old obsession with a negative distance comes to be reinscribed as a positive difference.
Almost to the letter, this is the point of departure for cultural critic Ross Gibson's new book, South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia. Quite simply, this book is an attempt to view a number of aspects, objects, images and icons of Australian culture within the wider context of an emergent notion of an Australian cultural identity. As such, this book represents a brave step into what is, still, a relatively undefined field.
Free-ranging across the entire cultural spectrum, the breadth of Gibson 's concerns is extraordinary. From Chris Marker's films to Edgar Allan Poe's South Sea Tales, from Thomas Walling's 'letters in exile' to the ever contentious art of Juan Davila, the book is essentially a collection of twelve disparate essays on film , photography, art, as well a$ readings of historical and literary texts. While each of the essays is