Place and People

Abstract

‘Australia’, ‘literature’ and ‘Australian literature’ exist as subjects in discourse by virtue of substantial agreement about certain conventions. In order to talk at all we have to begin with some assumptions: assumptions about the general or rough-and-ready meaning of key terms and assumptions about what is worth discussing. While it is obvious that the value judgments of someone who has never heard of Australia will differ from those of someone who is either proud or ashamed of living in Australia, and equally obvious that the value judgments of a dispossessed Aborigine will differ from those of a large white mining or pastoral company, discourse can nevertheless proceed through agreement about the signi-ficance (if not the exact meaning or implication) of certain concepts. Geographical concepts such as the land, its features and contents may be referred to; historical concepts such as convictism, colonialism, pastoralism, or the gold rushes; sociological concepts such as urbanisation, racism, ethnic origin or multiculturalism; psychological concepts such as exile, loneliness, renewal and self-discovery; moral concepts such as mateship, endurance and fair play; socio-legal concepts such as equality and democracy; or linguistic and literary concepts such as laconicism, scepticism, the dismantling of expectations and hyperbole or the tall story. Qualities or demands (or, perhaps, inventions) such as these go to make up what is said to be Australian culture, and this culture is assumed to be overt or latent in writing in and about Australia.