Unbecoming-of-age : Australian grunge fiction, the Bildungsroman and the long labor decade

摘要

This thesis interprets and explains changes in aspects of the Australian literaryudand political fields that occurred during the period sociologist Peter Beilharz hasudnamed the long Labor decade: 1983 to 1996. During this period tropes of youth,udillness and mobility, and the Bildungsroman form were central to the textualudembedding, via the putative modernisation of Australian Labourism, ofudNeoliberalism in Australian political culture. This thesis's central argument isudthat at its best Grunge and post-Grunge literary fiction both register and attemptudto resist Neoliberal governmentality through the tropes of youth, illness andudmobility, and through the Bildungsroman form.udThe introduction surveys the critical reception of Grunge fiction and presents theudthesis' central literary-theoretical concepts which are taken from Franco Morettiudand Fredric Jameson's historical sociology of literary form. It argues that theudeffective application of these methods of literary history to Grunge fictionudrequires a locally and temporally specific historical sociology and that PeterudBeilharz's Transforming Labor is a productive text from which to further generateuda late twentieth-century Australia-centred historical sociology.udChapter one analyses the textuality of the non-fiction writing of the long Laboruddecade through Beilharz's hermeneutic historical sociology. After establishing itsudkey terms the chapter moves into three studies of central figures and texts of theudperiod: prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, and Paul Kelly's TheudEnd of Certainty.udChapter two reads the oeuvres of Frank Moorhouse and Amanda Lohrey againstudthe loss of Whitlam and Whitlamism and the emergence of Neoliberal forms ofudgovernment. It also interprets The Reading Group and Forty-Seventeen - two ofudtheir pre-Grunge novels - against the post-Whitlam sense of mourning and loss. Chapter three returns to Grunge fiction and reads Andrew McGahan's Praise andud1988 and Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded in affiliation with the Neoliberal textuality ofudthe stories told by and of Keating.udChapter four utilises the analysis of The End of Certainty to read three postGrungeudnovels. Elliot Penman's Three Dollars, Andrew McCann's Subtopia andudAnthony Macris' Capital, volume one are interpreted and explained as responsesudto the embedding of Neoliberalism in Australian and global political culture thatudKelly's master-work participates in through its use of the Bildungsroman form.udThe thesis concludes with a short survey of other fiction of the period and a briefudoutline of areas for future research suggested by the thesis.