Colonial Utopia, Indigenous Dystopia: Imagining Australia’s Future in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature
Dublin Core
Title
Colonial Utopia, Indigenous Dystopia: Imagining Australia’s Future in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature
Subject
utopian studies; Australian literature; Australian history; Indigenous history; colonialism
Description
Writing of colonisation in the Americas, utopian studies scholar Lyman Tower Sargent observed that the “colonies produce utopias for the colonists and dystopias for the colonized.” This certainly holds true in the Australian context, where the invasion of 1788 opened up opportunities for British colonists while initiating a process of dispossession and devastation on Australia’s Indigenous
peoples—the realisation of a very dystopian new reality. In the spirit of the false doctrine of terra nullius, colonists perceived Australia as a “blank slate” for speculating on the country’s opportunities and potential. Following European and American utopian traditions, white Australian authors of the nineteenth century proceeded to write distinctly white utopias that at best failed to acknowledge the
plight of Indigenous Australians and at worst envisaged “utopias” where Indigenous populations had been eradicated. In this paper, I contend that nineteenth-century Australian utopian literature was frequently founded on racist attitudes variably justified by reference to colonialism, religion, and (social) Darwinism. I follow these themes through some of the utopian visions born of Australia’s
Colonial era, from stories imagining independence from Britain, to those depicting religious or secular societies, to tales of socialist revolutions creating communist states. I conclude with some notes on a more recent literary encounter—between contemporary Australia and dystopian traditions. I consider how twenty-first-century works by Indigenous Australians, including Alexis Wright’s The
Swan Book (2013) and Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius (2017), have drawn on the resources of dystopian fiction to work through the loss and trauma experienced since invasion.
peoples—the realisation of a very dystopian new reality. In the spirit of the false doctrine of terra nullius, colonists perceived Australia as a “blank slate” for speculating on the country’s opportunities and potential. Following European and American utopian traditions, white Australian authors of the nineteenth century proceeded to write distinctly white utopias that at best failed to acknowledge the
plight of Indigenous Australians and at worst envisaged “utopias” where Indigenous populations had been eradicated. In this paper, I contend that nineteenth-century Australian utopian literature was frequently founded on racist attitudes variably justified by reference to colonialism, religion, and (social) Darwinism. I follow these themes through some of the utopian visions born of Australia’s
Colonial era, from stories imagining independence from Britain, to those depicting religious or secular societies, to tales of socialist revolutions creating communist states. I conclude with some notes on a more recent literary encounter—between contemporary Australia and dystopian traditions. I consider how twenty-first-century works by Indigenous Australians, including Alexis Wright’s The
Swan Book (2013) and Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius (2017), have drawn on the resources of dystopian fiction to work through the loss and trauma experienced since invasion.
Creator
Zachary Kendal
Source
Presented at the SHARP 2019 conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Date
18 July 2019
Rights
© 2019, Zachary Kendal
Format
PDF
Type
Conference presentation
Event Item Type Metadata
Event Type
Conference presentation
Duration
20 minutes
Collection
Citation
Zachary Kendal, “Colonial Utopia, Indigenous Dystopia: Imagining Australia’s Future in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature,” Zachary Kendal, accessed April 29, 2024, https://kendal.omeka.net/items/show/3.