The imagined border : humans, animals and biopolitics in contemporary Australian fiction

Abstract

This thesis examines the representation of animality in Australian literature by a close analysis of Eva Hornung's Dog Boy (2009) and Evie Wyld's All the Birds, Singing (2013). In these novels, the protagonists are exposed to violence because of their age, gender and circumstances, yet experience moments of connection with animals and the natural world that ameliorate their suffering and enable them to gain insight into animals' worlds. Giorgio Agamben's conception of 'bare life' and his monographs Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and The Open: Man and Animal provide a frame for thinking about the biopolitical lives of contemporary citizens. I also read moments during which humans feel embodied empathy for the creatures under their care. I argue that the act of empathy presents a form of resistance to 'biopower'. The Flood is the Flawless Mirror for the Sky: A Novel: The novel takes up questions of animal-human relations in the narrative of a mother and daughter, Sarah and Bethany Francis, whose relationship is shaped by the ways in which they care for domestic and native animals. In the opening pages of the novel, Sarah's life changes course because she diverges from the expectations of her religious family, and because she falls pregnant. Questions about sovereign authority and legal abandonment are treated obliquely; the plot moves from America to Australia and back again. Sarah nurses injured Australian wildlife at the expense of her bond with her daughter Bethany, whom she abandons for several months in an attempt to repair the relationship with her own mother. In the second half of the novel, Beth, a newlygraduated veterinarian, deals with news of her mother's mysterious death and discovers that birds, animals and the natural world ameliorate her grief and her unresolved relationship with her grandmother. While Sarah's care of animals is instinctive and builds on knowledge she has obtained from experience, Beth's is influenced by her professional training. This contrast forms the centre of a plot based on complicated intimacies.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English