Besides being historical fiction set in 19th century colonial Australia, why is Remembering Babylon considered such a compelling postcolonial work? In this article, we will examine how David Malouf delivers a potent challenge to colonial ideas, constructs and knowledge, beyond a superficial problematisation of colonial racism.
Albert Namatjira - Untitled (Central Australian Landscape), 1955-1959
Introduction
In many ways, David Malouf's Remembering Babylon can be seen as the perfect emblem of Australia's socio-political climate in the early 1990s. The Overton window of Australian social discourse had shifted towards a more socially progressive side, particularly in regards to issues affecting Indigenous Australians. The general public had developed an interest in re-evaluating the legacy of British colonialism, and in highlighting previously overlooked perspectives from Indigenous peoples. Questions related to Australian identity were also at the forefront of many peoples' minds. These national debates echoed a rising global interest in Postcolonialism, a field of study concerning the ideology and ramifications of colonialism. Even in our new Literature in English syllabus in Singapore (9539), while there is a marked turn towards canonical titles, but also an embrace of texts beyond the canon (evident in the new Paper 3 topic, Postcolonialism!)
Remembering Babylon responds to these discourses, seeking to reconcile lingering tensions in Australia's colonial past. Malouf has spoken about his goal of reckoning with history through writing:
"[As Australians] our only way of grasping our history — and by history I really mean what has happened to us, and what determines what we are now and where we are now — the only way of really coming to terms with that is by people entering it into their imagination, not by the world of facts, but by being there [through fiction]. [...] and I keep wanting to say societies can only become whole, can only know fully what they are when they have relived history in that kind of way." (From Interview with David Malouf by Helen Daniel, for the Australian Humanities Review)
Remembering Babylon's approach to "grasping" this history has a particularly postcolonial angle, but it goes deeper than just recounting colonial history. In crafting the plot of Remembering Babylon, Malouf reimagines events and ideas that often, in conventional colonial history, have been represented as justifiable or legitimate. In drawing from a variety of literary ideas associated with postcolonial writing, he thus presents an alternative narrative that aims to dismantle the authority of hegemonic colonial ideology, while spotlighting previously overlooked perspectives. Let's unpack his methods below.
Deconstructing Literary and Cultural Tropes in Remembering Babylon: The “Lost Child”
Malouf draws from various colonial stereotypes of Indigenous peoples embedded in the Australian consciousness to construct his characters and plot. But he does not simply replicate them. As Malouf explains regarding his broader concern with challenging stereotypes:
"I like very much, for example, to begin with characters who look like stereotypes, and then slowly, as the novel goes on, complicate those characters or make them so contradictory that not only do they escape from the stereotype they appear to be in but they question altogether whether the notion of stereotype has any existence except in the way in which we read or misread or lazily misread what's there." (My emphasis)
One such stereotype Malouf explores is that of the "lost child", a trope not uncommon in the Australian literary canon. It tells the story of a child that disappears from the safety of the colonial settlement and becomes lost to the perilous Australian wilderness (sometimes taken in by Indigenous tribes), never to be seen or heard from again by the colonial community. But that is only the surface of this literary trope; examining it in the colonial context in which it gained cultural relevance reveals deep-seated fears at the heart of colonial Australia.
In its original context, this trope reflected colonial anxieties of losing one's sense of identity as a white European (and by extension, one's entire sense of self) to a dangerous, alien environment. Not only does it express insecurities over the stability of white colonial identity, it also reveals a fear of Indigenous cultures as threats to colonial identity. The promulgation of this trope through Australian colonial literature can be said to have fuelled existing fears of Indigenous Australians, even of the influence of the Australian landscape itself — and on an initial reading, it may seem like Malouf too perpetuates this trope, in the form of the main character, Gemmy.
On a basic plot level, Gemmy appears to embody this trope beat for beat. He becomes separated from English colonial society through a shipwreck that leaves him stranded on an Australian coast, and is later taken in by an Indigenous Australian community. Where his story diverges from the original trope is in his return to colonial society, being brought to the Queensland settlement at the start of the novel. However, this seems to only confirm fears of the Australian wilderness' debasing influence on one's identity. Gemmy's physical appearance is described with language of deformity, being referred to as "an odd, unsettled fellow", "a pathetic, muddy-eyed misshapen fellow" (pg 7) that had emerged from a world "that was the abode of everything savage and fearsome" (pg 3), his disfigured physicality seemingly reflecting a similar change in his psyche. His presence in the colonial community provokes unease in the settlers, particularly regarding his identity as a white man:
"He had started out white. No question. When he fell in with the blacks [...] he had been like any other child, one of their own for instance. [...] But had he remained white?" (pg 40)
In fact, his loss of fluency in the English language (a distinct marker of one's affiliation with British colonial identity) stemming from his decades long separation from colonial society is what prompts the settlers to "put to [themselves] the harder question. Could you lose it? Not just language, but it. It." (pg 40) The repetition of the vague referent "it" conveys the settlers’ visceral fixation on a kind of innate, essential quality that eludes accurate expression via the colonial tongue; specifically in this context, one’s whiteness as the foundation of their identity. They begin to fear the possibility of losing the fundamental basis of their identity — their connection to white European culture, which has seemingly manifested in Gemmy himself. As an ethnically white man that since has adopted many customs and sensibilities of the Indigenous world, Gemmy embodies the hybrid figure, a synthesis of two disparate cultural domains that nonetheless does not belong wholly to one or the other. His liminal identity poses a fundamental challenge to the stability of white cultural purity (and thus, the very foundations of human identity under colonial hegemony) which the settlers recognise (whether consciously or subconsciously).
However, Malouf complicates the "lost child" trope and the underlying fears behind it by showcasing Gemmy's first-hand perspective, allowing him to express his personal insights and lived experience regarding the influence of Indigenous Australia. For one, in the second chapter, we read Gemmy's direct account of his experiences, where he notes that the Indigenous society he integrated into is a "world which, though he was alarmed at first by its wildness, proved no different in essence from his previous one" in Britain (pg 26). Having tangibly experienced two completely separate societies for himself, Gemmy confirms that beyond external differences in culture or climate, one society is no more intrinsically dangerous to one's sense of self than another.
He goes on to articulate the awareness he gains of the interconnected nature of all living beings, man or animal, in the Australian land, something attained through his integration into the Indigenous Australian tribe:
"When [the creature] kicked its feet and gushed blood it did not go out of the world but had its life now in you, and could go in and out of your mouth forever, breath on breath, and was not lost" (pg 26).
Such an awareness allows him to both appreciate his place in the land, and to behold the true vitality of the Australian wilderness, which he views as "a world that was alive for him and dazzling; some of it even in the deepest shade throwing off luminous flares, [...] and all of it crackling and creaking and swelling and bursting with growth" (pg 67-68). The imagery of light (in "dazzling" and "luminous"), evoking a sense of energetic liveliness conjured by the kinaesthetic images of “swelling and bursting with growth”. Combined with the polysyndeton, additive and accretive in rich sensory detail, altogether lending a sense of wonder and vitality to the Australian landscape — qualities Gemmy is now able to recognise and indulge in. This sets him apart from the settlers, who mostly view Australian nature as antagonistic to their attempts to establish colonial settlement (though more on that in the second part), or who, like Mr Frazer, are downright oblivious to such life-affirming qualities of the land, instead "[seeing] nothing at all." (pg 68). This absolute statement invoking the language of blindness underlines the limitations of colonial perspectives (articulated here by Frazer), hindering the settlers’ ability to grasp, and indeed see both literally and symbolically, the full potential and wonder of their new homeland, which stands in stark contrast to Gemmy, who has embraced the alterity of his environment. By presenting Gemmy as having gained substantial insights through his integration into Indigenous Australian society (which allow him to better navigate his new surroundings), Malouf subverts the original framing of the "lost child" trope. Instead of a harrowing experience that erases one's identity, the trope becomes a productive experience that provides one with alternative understandings of the world and their place in it, allowing them to better reconcile their sense of dislocation in a new environment.
Furthermore, this framing recontextualises initial descriptions of Gemmy's changed self after returning to colonial society. It suggests that the underlying anxieties behind the 'lost child' trope are only real in the minds of the colonial settlers. Their fears of losing their sense of identity stem from their limited perspectives, which are predicated on the assumption of white Europeanness as the default basis for identity construction (evident in their preoccupations over whether Gemmy "remained white"). Such perspectives limit them from recognising any potentially valuable insight Gemmy gains from integrating into a different culture. Instead, the settlers are led to regard his hybridised existence as frighteningly uncanny and inhuman, a "mixture of monstrous strangeness and unwelcome likeness" (pg 43), the paradox conveying the contradictions of Gemmy’s identity they fail to fathom, and "unwelcome" implicitly rejecting him as a member of the colonial community, in spite of their shared ethnic identity. Malouf's characterization of Gemmy, especially when contrasted with the settlers' impressions of him, thus deconstructs literary tropes such as the "lost child", exposing them as being ultimately grounded in a limited, rigid Eurocentric perspective, rather than in reality.
Stay Tuned with A Way With Literature!
Stay tuned for the second part of this essay, where we explore how David Malouf disputes foundational Australian myths, as well as conventional colonial narratives surrounding colonial violence!
Comments