期刊名称：Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
印刷版ISSN：1447-8986
电子版ISSN：1833-6027
出版年度：2008
卷号：SP
页码：105-113
出版社：Association for the Study of Australian Literature
摘要：In their recent analysis of Silvan Tomkins¡¯s work on affect theory, Eve
Sedgwick and Adam Frank identify an impasse within contemporary theories
of subjectivity. Sedgwick and Frank argue that current critical models have
no way of accessing the conceptual space between two and infinity¡ªthat is,
the space between binary opposition and innumerable variation. Sedgwick
and Frank emphasise that access to this space is necessary for ¡°enabling a
political vision of difference that might resist both binary homogenisation
and infinitizing trivialisation¡± (Sedgwick 15). An engagement with biological
models such as Tomkins¡¯s is one way this impossible conceptual space
between two and infinity might be accessed. This essay contends that such a
possibility is also fleshed out in the queer, disturbing and sublime matter of
contemporary Australian and New Zealand literature. The work of Australian
writer Christos Tsiolkas and New Zealand writer Elizabeth Knox can be seen
to insist corporeally on contradictions at the heart of identity and desire, on
the irreducible particularity and impossibility of the speaking subject. This
essay will analyse in detail Tsiolkas¡¯s 2005 novel Dead Europe and Knox¡¯s
1999 novel The Vintner¡¯s Luck, in order to show via the rhetorical operations
of queerness how the dark matter of literature, by seeping into impossible
spaces, opens up new possibilities.
