Reconstruction Of A Spiritual Home In Mobility

Peter Carey(1943-),a well-renowned Australian-American writer who has won prestigious Booker Prize twice,is a paradoxical writer who moves into the centers of cultural life in Europe and America from a peripheral location of Australia and then writes back to the periphery from the center of the western world.It is both intriguing and confusing that he insists on writing for Australia despite the fact that he has settled in New York for over 30 years since 1989.The in-between cultural amphibian allows him to think beyond the limitation of locality and nationality and marks his Australian writings with sober and insightful observations.In his new century novels,especially,he has turned from construction of Australian myth in early and middle-stage fictions to global symptoms and influences of transnational capitalism,empire politics,technological media and consumer culture,etc.,aiming to reconstruct the national character of Australia in the international context.Moreover,he infuses the fictions with his own transnational experiences and self-consciousness of hybrid identity,projecting a real and imagined “map” of identity relationship between himself and the motherland Australia.Under the global context,Carey mixes history and reality,self and the other,locality and the world in the postmodern space and reconstructs a new and more inclusive spiritual home for Australians.Therefore,the study on postmodern spatial writing of new century novels is essential to a cognitive understanding of the literary value of Carey’s works,dynamic development of Australian literature in the new century as well as spiritual disorientation in the global era.Critics have always shown an earnest interest in Carey’s novels but unfortunately they stress much on his early and middle-stage works rather than on the new century fiction,especially the novels after 2005.Besides,they narrowly focus on the local features and history representation of the novels while paying less attention to Carey’s transnational tendency and contemporaneity.In general,the criticisms can be basically divided into two groups,namely,one suggesting Carey as an Australian national writer or a cultural traitor who abandons his birth country and works as cultural broker on the borderlines of Australia and international market,the other arguing whether Carey’s works are postcolonial or postmodern in nature.The first one is tinged with strong nationalistic spirits and the latter is concerned with interaction between political writings of resistance from the margin against the center and the experimental innovations of literary forms.Aside from the two,some reviewers go further to take an embracing attitude by suggesting that post-colonialism in Carey’s novels echoes postmodernism and vice versa.It is clear that these criticisms reveal the textures of Carey’s novels from different levels and greatly enhance the zeal of Carey studies in Australia and abroad.But it is also necessary to point out that the existing criticisms have some limitations in that multi-dimensional readings of Carey’s works are needed and global contexts should be put into consideration in discussions of Australian national identity as suggested in Carey’s new century fiction.It is true that Carey’s new century fiction are still characterized by prominent postmodern features like ambivalence,hybridity and indefiniteness.But the novels are more than formal renovation and experimentation by stressing the interaction between the locality and the world,tradition and modernity,human nature and technological power.To understand the labyrinth-like postmodern life in the global era,we need to turn to postmodern space theory which provides us with a proper perspective to look into the spatially embedded postmodern culture and explore the dislocated experiences of the local and individuals.Compared with the traditional critical paradigms,postmodern spatial reading is cross-disciplinary and multi-modal critical practice,involving diverse research territories like Australian culture,history,society and politics and including various ways of textual analysis like cultural studies,memory studies,mobility narrative and mapping narrative.Under the postmodern space perspective,the new century fiction could be seen as a reflection of both the outside world and the inner textual world,or an imagined and real third space.Based on postmodern space theory,the doctoral dissertation penetrates into the representations of Australian identity dislocation in the global era in Carey’s six novels,namely My Life as a Fake,Theft: A Love Story,The Chemistry of Tears,His Illegal Self,Amnesia,A Long Way from Home,positioning Carey’s disguised identification of himself with Australia in new century literary production and elaborating on Carey’s reconstruction of a postmodern spiritual home through“cognitive mapping”.The doctoral dissertation consists of 6 chapters covering discussions of cultural space,historical space,technological and political space,and narrative space on Australian national identity construction in the new era.Chapter 1 is an introduction which outlines previous discussions on Carey’s works and rationalizes the present work.It then surveys the relationships between postmodern space writing and national identity anxiety in the global context.Finally it introduces the major characteristics of new century fiction and the structure of the dissertation.The literature review suggests that Carey studies have so far made fruitful achievements in which post-colonialism,post-modernism and new historicism are the frequently used research perspectives and the major focus of researches are national myths,identity and history.But pitifully,the transnational features of Carey’s new century fiction has not been widely noticed and fully discussed yet.Similar to the characteristics of the new century,Carey’s new century novels are indefinite,hybridized and plural in content and form.Therefore,a new research methodology is needed.Postmodern space theory focuses on the simultaneity and juxtaposition of the past and present,local and transnational,offering readers a proper perspective to look into the fragmented experiences of postmodern life.Chapter 2 focuses on the dilemma of contemporary Australian national identity and construction of heterogeneous but co-existing culture spaces.In Australian traditional national imagination,the relationship between self and other is complicated.Australia is a European country but is close to Asia geographically.The paradox is a major problem to be solved in national identity construction.Besides,the concept of“real Australians” remains obscure throughout Australian history.Should marginalized indigenous people be seen as the legitimized original owners of Australia? Should multicultural ethnic groups be welcomed and considered as an inseparable part of new Australia? To be inclusive or exclusive is a core issue in the national identity construction.Lastly,the national identity construction is also affected by the infiltration of American culture and its related capitalism.Since the end of the Second World War,Australia has turned away from the declining British empire to America for protection and alliance.The rise and fall of “American Dream” plays a big part in formation of Australian national ideology and the consequent dislocations.By showcasing these different cultural forces in a single space,Carey expects the readers to see the dialogues between the tradition and modernity,old empire and new empire,singularity and plurality.Chapter 3 expounds on the spatialized writing of Australian historical memory.Showing an incredulous attitude towards official history narratives,Carey deconstructs the seriousness and solemnness of history through postmodern games and reexamines historical events in present life.He is not obsessed with a grand and complete representation of historical events and casts doubts over the truthfulness of the “historical facts”.Instead,he endeavors to build up a historical simulacra and topple the old historical discourse by obscuring the boundaries between the real and the imagined.He also breaks away from the traditional linearity of history representation by scrambling the time sequence and piercing different sorts of historical materials together in a single space to suggest new meanings of historical events.Different from the unity and cohesion of traditional history narratives,Carey’s postmodern spatial writing of history is open-ended and labyrinth-like,offering a new vision into the concepts of history and history representation.Chapter 4 looks into “Australianness” in the global context by examining Carey’s spatialized writing of postmodern technology and politics in new century fiction.Firstly,advancement of technologies has brought forth the shortening of distances in traveling and communications and eventually leads to compressed spaces.On the other hand,the ubiquitous technology brings about the disorientation of people in the postmodern society.By obscuring the boundaries,Carey suggests that technology itself is neither right or wrong and what matters is to see into the paradoxical natures of technology in the same space.Secondly,Carey invites readers to observe the mobility in the globalized era,which means the merging of different races,identity and cultures.Lastly,Carey not only pays attention to the homogeneity of globalization but also keenly observes the heterogeneity caused by the globalized movement.In new century novels,there are two forms of hybridization noting the conflicts between homogeneity and heterogeneity: one is between radical politics and reconciliation tendency;the other is between center and margin.Through diverse forms of conflicts,Carey makes it clear that national identity construction in globalized era is different from that in nationalistic period,which is involved with various concentric and centrifugal forces and therefore calls for an inclusive vision into the relations between locality and world.Chapter 5 concentrates on “cognitive mapping” of Australian national identity through diverse narrative spaces.Although Carey depicts much about the disorder of the new century and the weakening sense of history as well as displacement in hyperspace,he does not intend to highlight the postmodern powerlessness only.Instead,he hopes to regain a sense of totality out of broken pieces and fragments.Since globalization and the widespread use of technologies are inevitable and inescapable,a total understanding of postmodern conditions appears to be all the more important.In this respect,Carey’s writing idea coincides with Fredrick Jameson’s“cognitive mapping” which stresses a recognition of one’s predicament in the postmodern life and the mapping efforts to relocate oneself.In this chapter,Carey not only employs paradoxical narrative space and labyrinth-like narrative space to create reflection upon reflection,constructing a both real and imagined world,but also livens up the writings with his own transnational experiences,giving an overt or covert cartographic exploration of his sense of place with Australia.Chapter 6 is a conclusion.By employing a compound perspective of insiders and outsiders to examine Australian national history,culture and identity in new century fiction,Carey succeeds in reconstructing an open and inclusive Australian spiritual home in postmodern era.The duality allows for both nationalistic and international literary expressions,and also speaks for Carey’s own transnational identity,indicating a sign of maturity in Carey’s artistic creation.With the juxtaposed perspectives,Carey offers readers a spatialized and interwoven writing of postmodern cultures,histories,technological politics and narratives and connects them with a total,“cognitive mapping” of Australian national identity.From the above,it can be concluded that to reconstruct an Australian spiritual home in the global context,one has to break the old boundaries and limitations and seek for a unity in differences,a balance in mobility and harmony in conflicts.