The Vernacularized Home

The basic conception of home is the fixed place for the gathering of kinship.With the vicissitude of times,the clashes of cultures and the acceleration of mobility,fixation is not the only configuration of home,into which multiple modalities have been infused.In the development of Australian drama,the conception of home threads through the play works at various stages,ranging from the nostalgia for mother land in the import of British and European plays in the colonial period,the attachment to the bushes in the image of bushman after the founding of the Federation to the mature urban drama since The New Wave in the 1960’s.The request for belonging in contemporary Australian drama is suffused with the exploration on the conception of home.Home could be fixed physical space,the mental maintenance of ethnic groups or the location of the individual in the expansive universe.Home could be the departure of observation in feminism,the follow up of the ethnic issues and the node in the interconnectivity between individual and the world.In this sense,all the meanings induced by the conception of home is the highlighted representation of identity construction in Australian drama.Since 1980 s,Australia witnessed unprecedented reconfiguration in terms of nation conception,social ethnic formation and policies,international alliances and globalization.The impact of the shock as well as the chaotic aftermath of September 11 intensifies the new cultural transformation in western countries at the beginning of 21 st century.The effect of all the transformations renders the feature of vernacularization in the exploration of home in Australian plays.Homi Bhabha proposed a vernacular cosmopolitanism in his observation on the marginal culture in post-colonialism.This marginality is full of vernacularization and embedded a spiritual autonomy of a revered ideal.Sneja Gunew further points out a vernacular cosmopolitanism in Australian post-multicultural writing which foregrounds the marginal groups.Thus the observation is based on the inter-relation and fusion of cultures around the globe is a significant representational form of the embodiment of cosmopolitanism.The conception of vernacularization is the sublimation of the universality in terms of times and space.In the context of Australian culture during the time under consideration,the weakening of European effect and the paradox of the American democracy in the name of the war on terrorism rendered an adjustment to Australian identity construction which is transformed to a critical and multimodal vernacularized formation.In the examination on the trajectory of the forms of home represented in Australian drama since the 1980 s,this dissertation intends to propose that this vernacularization is related to the uneven space of Australia,the dynamic fusion of multi-ethnics and the cultural fracture on humanity and the world.This vernacularization also helps the construction of Australian cultural identity.As the basic start point,the unsettlement in space includes geographical,physical as well as psychological space.It is represented in the effect of the empty center on national psyche and culture.In this representational space arises the variety of the multicultural fusion in which the focus is expanded to the Aboriginality and Asianization in the time from the end of 20 th century to the beginning of 21 st century.The continuous negotiation and reformation in the meaning of belonging brought by the clashes and paradox in multicultural fusion have been imbedded in Australian culture.The charisma of cultural openness as well as the rebellious and independent spirit in Australian culture rendered their criticism full of political orientation.The cultural reconfiguration in western countries after 9/11 is reflected in Australia the opposition to the following of the United States.This opposition is not only in the denial to the war on terrorism led by the United States,but more in the aspect of the concern for the world,in which process there are anxiety,confusion and fear.However,all the concerns are finally naturalized into the concern for humanity.The image of vernacularized home in Australian drama features distinctive cosmopolitan characteristics,which concerns the dynamic interrelationship between the subjectivity,culture and border-crossing.In the dynamics of vernaculization,human beings,as independent subjects,host their own spatiality.The permeation of the subject and spatiality is not only the basis of border-crossing,but also for the representation of subjectivity,self-consciousness and the conception of nations.Cosmopolitanism advocates the incessant choosing,modification and reconfiguration in the formation of culture.As a structure of thought,cosmopolitanism recognizes the otherness as opportunity rather than problems.To recognize the other as equal and different rather than absolutized entity is embedded in contemporary identity construction,which makes the transgression of borders possible.In terms of the border-crossing,borders and process of bordering are understood more than fixed or ridged lines,but critical investigation of the quantification of space and calculative mechanism in the commanding of territory.Space defines the border in its own right,as being spaces of negotiation where the border extends well beyond the location of any physical or visible dividing line.The construction of border is closely related to transition and mobility.Immobility slowness,stillness,waiting,and pauses are always viewed as undesirable and negative,however,they are all part of a wider geography of movement,affect,and dwelling.Associated with the politics of mobility and immobility is the power relations.The motivation of departure resonates to a cosmopolitan border-crossing which raises the questions of belonging and connectivity.Although passing across a border normally involves only a small physical distance it is a movement from one watershed to another;in terms of culture,of political regime,of language and so on,which act as magnifiers of difference.The features of the border that come to the fore are not the intensity of transit or the symbolic significance of the small step into the unknown,but the ways in which the border can act as a portal offering access to a new connectivity.No matter in the forced exile or the self-inflicted vagabond,the representation of national place and character is dependent on the perception of the traveler,which is predicated on mobility,transience and difference.The freedom of cosmopolitanism is represented in the spatialized fragmentation in the topology of identity.As for culture,the cosmopolitan subject dos not linger between different cultures,but actively perform within.The condition of actively inhabiting distinct cultures and translating them into each other without reducing them to an undifferentiated amalgam renders prosperous border-crossing and mobility in the becoming of the subjectivity.This dissertation attends to examine the representation of the image of vernacularized home in the selected plays since 1980 s and advocates that this representation is a cosmopolitan elaboration,which experienced border-crossing,mobility and openness,covering the collective memory and pointing to the outlook for a world community.The selected plays include Alma De Groen’s The Rivers of China(1987),Jenny Kemp’s Still Angela(2002),Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age(1985),Jane Harrison’s Stolen(1993),John Romeril’s Miss Tanaka(2001)and Stephen Sewell’s Myth Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America: A Drama in 30 Scenes(2003).Alma De Groen is a migrant playwright whose plays feature in distinctive dramatic forms.The protagonists in her plays are usually female who strive for equality and freedom.Jenny Kemp is both director and playwright,good at fusing the psychic space and the reality,from which provoked the presentational space transcending the boundaries of nation and state.Louis Nowra is a humanness observer.His plays usually start from the exquisite character depiction to the pursuit of the national culture.Their plays are distinctive in the discussion on nation in the time under consideration.Stephen Sewell is a political playwright.His plays are usually set in an overseas background.World is the focus in his plays.Jane Harrison’s exploration on Aboriginal issues is direct and precise.Most of the characters in her plays are directly from reality.Her examination on aboriginality is not just limited in the past,but more in the observation on Aboriginal identity formation in the future,all of which distinguished her from peers.As an outstanding playwright in The New Wave,John Romeril’s plays in 1990 s to 2000 s are focused on the theme of Asianization in Australian culture.His observation and exploration on the new problems and reconfiguration are based on the independent perspective.The analysis of the representative plays of these playwrights can provide a comprehensive panorama on the development of Australian drama in the time under consideration.Based on the theoretical framing and a general survey of Australian drama development in the first two chapters,this dissertation,from chapter three,starts with the examination of the home-bounded exile in Alma De Groen’s The Rivers of China(1987).Embodied in the split of body and consciousness and spontaneity and multiplicity,the play works presents a nomadic cosmopolitan philosophy which enlists affectivity,memory and the imagination in the constant border-crossing in the inventing new figurations and new ways of representing the complex subjects.In Jenny Kemp’s Still Angela(2002),the mobility is embedded in domestic,national and psychic spaces.In this play,the national culture and identity are interlinked with individual’s quest for a larger self.The adoption of the visual projection adds to the spatial dynamics in the scope and depth of the exploration and is elevated to the quest for a cosmopolitan self.Memory and forgetting are investigated in Jane Harrison’s Stolen.Anxiety on the “culture of forgetting” induces the troubled sense of belonging in the stolen generation.By presenting the unforgettable rights abuse in history,Stolen highlights the interrelationship between memory and identity.By foregrounding the negotiated reconciliation and non-negotiation in the Aboriginal quest for rights,the Australian characteristic Aboriginality provides a futile field for the observation of cosmopolitics in Australian culture.The heterogeneity in cultural fusion in John Romeril’s Miss Tanaka(2001)suggests a cosmopolitan reorientation in the dealing of Asian themes in contemporary Australian drama.It is an energetic commitment to cultural diversity and a simultaneous tendency to incorporate cultural difference into realignments of national identity.Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age(1985)explored the diasporic experience to foreground the cultural ambidexterity in cosmopolitanism the doomed consequence brought by the cultural seclusion and questioned the transplanted feature of Australian culture.By highlighting the normalized violence in an absurd and mystique dramaturge,Sewell depicts a predicament situation of uprootedness and seclusion in the globalized era in Myth,Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America: A Drama in 30 Scenes.In the inheritance of insecurity in Australian national consciousness,Sewell’s elevated philosophical observation on the predicaments foregrounds the quest for reason in contemporary times,within which is suffused a proposition for a world community.