Volume 18, No. 6, 2021
Exploring The Otherness Of The White Subject In David Malouf’s Novel Remembering Babylon: A Study Of The Antagonism Of The Estranged European Community In Colonial Australia
Babylona Bora
Abstract
The British colonisers had launched an invasion and established military bases in around 171 countries throughout the globe. Australia was no different. The founding of a prison colony on the Australian mainland in January 1788 is said to have sown the seeds of the first settlement on the continent. The British created other colonies on the continent in the following century, and European explorers explored its interiors. Indigenous Australians were severely harmed, and their numbers eventually dwindled. Remembering Babylon, a novel by David Malouf based on historical evidence explores the life of a young man adopted by Australian aborigines. The novel ponders the politics of identity and hybridity, cultural experiences, language, and xenophobia to bring into the fore the antagonism between the two communities – the oppressors and the oppressed. Keeping this in mind, the paper will attempt to investigate the worldview of an isolated European population in colonial Australia, as well as their position in relation to the protagonist, Gemma Fairley. A sequence of difficulties and contradictions emerge in the portrayal of Gemmy Fairley, the 'white black' man at the centre of the narrative, nearly to the point of exposing the actual insidious nature of the erstwhile colonisers. The paper will attempt to face the plethora of possibilities that result from the interplay of the two societies.
Pages: 3531-3535
Keywords: Other, Post colonialism, hybridity, identity, self