'Little difference between a carcass and a corpse': Ecological crises, the nonhuman and settler-colonial culpability in Australian crime fiction Fetherston, Rachel 2021, 'Little difference between a carcass and a corpse': Ecological crises, the nonhuman and settler-colonial culpability in Australian crime fiction, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 1-17. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title 'Little difference between a carcass and a corpse': Ecological crises, the nonhuman and settler-colonial culpability in Australian crime fiction Author(s) Fetherston, Rachel Journal name Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Volume number 21 Issue number 2 Start page 1 End page 17 Total pages 17 Publisher Association for the Study of Australian Literature Place of publication Toowomba, Qld. Publication date 2021-08-01 ISSN 1447-8986 Keyword(s) Australian literature Crime fiction Ecocriticism Nonhuman Postcolonial literature Summary In 1997, Stephen Knight described Australian crime fiction as a genre that is ‘thriving but unnoticed’ (Continent of Mystery 1). While in recent years Australian crime fiction has gained more attention amongst both academics and reviewers, it is still missing from an area of study in which I believe it demands more notice—that is, ecocritical discussions of Australian fiction. In this paper, I investigate the idea of Australian crime fiction as a largely underexplored representation of the modern environmental crisis, discussing how modern Australian crime fiction often portrays the troubling relationship between human violence and the settler-colonial decimation of Australia’s natural environments and nonhuman animals. Such a relationship indirectly alludes to the impact of a changing climate on Australian communities and ecosystems and suggests that popular genre fiction can contribute in profound ways to broader environmental considerations. With this ecocritical framework in mind, this paper analyses the representation of drought, bushfire and the nonhuman in Jane Harper’s The Dry (2016) and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands (2018), and what such texts reveal to readers about the criminal nature of anthropogenic climate change and the settler-colonial destruction of Australian habitats. Field of Research 2005 Literary Studies 2103 Historical Studies HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30158066 Document type: Journal Article Collections: Faculty of Arts and Education School of Communication and Creative Arts Related Links Link Description Connect to published version Go to link with your DU access privileges   Connect to Elements publication management system Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Fri, 29 Oct 2021, 12:28:24 EST Fri, 29 Oct 2021, 15:37:18 EST Fri, 14 Jan 2022, 14:54:54 EST Wed, 09 Feb 2022, 08:47:53 EST Wed, 09 Feb 2022, 14:58:54 EST Wed, 09 Feb 2022, 15:19:35 EST Filtered Full Citation counts:   Cited 0 times in TR Web of Science Cited 0 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 22 Abstract Views, 0 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Fri, 29 Oct 2021, 12:28:24 EST