Space and its Dialectics in Peter Carey’s Illywhacker: A Postmodern Reading

Abstract

The notion of “space” has acquired a central position in postmodern geography. Its re-emergence in postmodern geography aptly demonstrates the crucial importance of the physical places in moulding human experiences, identity, culture, actions, and existence as well. Space in postmodern geography incorporates into the seminal aspects of the inseparable connection of place with human experiences, existence, and identity as well. These issues of space and place have great importance in the context of the nation of Australia due to the appropriation/misappropriation of the land and the consequent unsettling. All these have become areas of investigation in Australian literature, and here in this context the name of Peter Carey, an eminent Australian novelist in English, poses significance. Carey in his novels has dexterously portrayed the spatial issues in Australia and the continued contestations over the land between the British Whites and the Aboriginals. This article intends to critically appropriate the notion of space and its dialectics in the Australian contexts from a postmodern perspective based on a reading of Carey’s one of the widely read novels namely Illywhacker. The article digs into the continuing spatial dilemma, politics, and contestations in the nation of Australia through illustrations from Illywhacker and eventually demystifies its ramifications and wide impacts.