Asian migrant writers in Australia and the negotiation of the third space

This thesis is a comparative study of three selected texts by Australian novelistsYasmine Gooneratne, A Change of Skies,(1991) Adib Khan, SeasonalAdjustments (1994) and Brian Castro, Birds of Passage ((1983). All three writersexplore the experiences and perceptions of their protagonists in relating to thelandscape, people and cultural traditions within the Australian context into whichthey have migrated from different Asian countries. Brian Castro’s centralcharacters, Lo Yun Shan and Seamus O’Young, are drawn from two contexts, theformer from the 19th century China while the latter is a contemporary Australianborn Chinese. Gooneratne’s and Khan’s protagonists hail from South-East Asiancontexts, which are again interestingly different, Gooneratne’s character beingfrom Sri Lanka and Khan’s from Bangladesh. From the multiplicity of culturesfrom which these texts emerge with their inevitable movements of theprotagonists between the originary and adoptive homes, there seems to be areaching towards a necessary ‘inter’ space, what Homi Bhabha calls the ‘ThirdSpace.’ In terms of perception of identity and belonging this borderline positionwould appear to be crucial to the diasporic condition. (1994, p. 53) While thisstudy explores the problematics, accommodations, resolutions and synergiesinvolved in the experience of negotiating this liminal space and living whatRushdie calls a ‘translated’ existence, (1991, p. 17) the focus is on particularprocesses crucial to that translation. My study will suggest that the arrival at the ‘Third Space’ is represented neitheras a benign experience of adaptation to a different sense of home nor a sense ofbeing relegated to a state of permanent loss and alienation. Rather it will beapparent that the migrant experience is more mosaic than formulaic resisting neatdefinitions of movement from an initial sense of estrangement from the hostnation to accommodation and assimilation within the new society. It seems thateach individual character is poised on different and differing configurations ofcultural allegiances and identities within the’ Third Space’. The representationand perception of the’ Third Space’ ‘in relation to the performance of identity as iteration and the recreation of self…[particularly in terms of] the desire forrecognition’ (Bhabha, 2004, p.12) appears more diverse than originally envisagedby Bhabha. There appears to be a plurality of articulations within thisformulation, suggesting it is not a single, homogenous in-between space but aconstellation of ‘Third Spaces’, fluid and changing, overriding the possibility of a‘happy hybridity’ which, in any case. most theorists in the field find an untenableconcept. The tracing of this highly complex . inter-related and entangled plethoraof experiences which constitute the fate of the migrant will be explored in depthand detail in this thesis. Finally, no arrival at certain certainties is promised at itsconclusion; only, possibly, a heightening of awareness, an expansion ofunderstanding.. This provides an opportunity to revisit, indeed to rethink thecomplexities of migrant experience as not only transcending dichotomies ofinsider/outsider, belonging/alterity which are encoded in the narrative of a nation,while simultaneously affirming the processes of hybridity as crucial to theformation of a ‘double selved’ identity.

Grantor dc:publisher

Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Highland, Jacqueline M.

• Diaspora
• migrant literature
• Asian contexts
• Australian writers
• Australian Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/156

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ro.ecu.edu.au:theses-1156