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New world orders and the dystopian turn : transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction

Bradford, Clare, Mallan, Kerry and Stephens, John 2008, New world orders and the dystopian turn : transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction, Journal of Australian studies, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 349-359.

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Title New world orders and the dystopian turn : transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction
Author(s) Bradford, Clare
Mallan, Kerry
Stephens, John
Journal name Journal of Australian studies
Volume number 32
Issue number 3
Start page 349
End page 359
Publisher University of Queensland
Place of publication St. Lucia, Qld.
Publication date 2008-09
ISSN 1444-3058
1835-6419
Keyword(s) children's literature
Australian fiction
utopianism
national identity
colonialism
Summary Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, Australian children's literature responded to a conservative turn epitomised by the Howard government and to new world order imperatives of democracy, the market economy, globalisation, and the IT revolution. These responses are evidenced in the ways that children's fiction speaks to the problematics of representation and cultural identity and to possible outcomes of devastating historical and recent catastrophes. Consequently, Australian children's fiction in recent years has been marked by a dystopian turn. Through an examination of a selection of Australian children's fiction published between 1995 and 2003, this paper interrogates the ways in which hope and warning are reworked in narratives that address notions of memory and forgetting, place and belonging. We argue that these tales serve cautionary purposes, opening the way for social critique, and that they incorporate utopian traces of a transformed vision for a future Australia. The focus texts for this discussion are: Secrets of Walden Rising (Allan Baillie, 1996), Red Heart (Victor Kelleher, 2001), Deucalian (Brian Caswell, 1995), and Boys of Blood and BOlle (David Metzenthen, 2003).
Notes School of Communication and Creative Arts
Language eng
Field of Research 200599 Literary Studies not elsewhere classified
Socio Economic Objective 950199 Arts and Leisure not elsewhere classified
HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
HERDC collection year 2008
Copyright notice ©2008, Routledge
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30017932

Document type: Journal Article
Collection: School of Communication and Creative Arts
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