Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:25:47.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

B-b-british Objects: Possession, Naming, and Translation in David Malouf's Remembering Babylon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Alice Brittan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Imported material forms were central to the settlement of Australia as a penal colony, beginning with the “discovery” of the continent by James Cook, who took possession of New South Wales in 1770 by naming Possession Island. The first part of this article traces the intersection in early journals and legal records between material instability and naming, arguing that as Aboriginal peoples and convicts challenged the social meaning of objects, the ability to refer to those objects became essential. The second part explores failed naming in David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon (1993), set on the early-nineteenth-century frontier, whose central character calls himself a “B-b-british object,” stuttered words that evoke the historical importance and the vulnerability of imported goods during colonization and settlement in Australia.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 117 , Issue 5 , October 2002 , pp. 1158 - 1171
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Blackstone, William. The Sovereignty of the Law: Selections from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Ed. Gareth Jones. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1973.Google Scholar
Byrne, Paula J. Criminal Law and Colonial Subject: New South Wales, 1810–1830. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.Google Scholar
Carter, Paul. The Sound In-Between: Voice, Space, Performance. Kensington, Austral.: New South Wales UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Chapman, Peter, ed. The Diaries and Letters of G. T. W. B. Boyes. Vol. 1 (1820–32). New York: Oxford UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Christie, M. F. Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835–86. Sydney: Sydney UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Collins, David. An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales. Vol. 1. Ed. Brian H. Fletcher. London: Reed, 1975.Google Scholar
Cook, James. The Voyages of Captain James Cook round the World. Vol. 1. London: John Tallis, 1852.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Des Tours de Babel.” Difference in Translation. Ed. and trans. Graham, J. F. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. 165–207.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “The Time of the King.” Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. 1–33.Google Scholar
Goodall, Heather. Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972. Saint Leonards: Allen, 1996.Google Scholar
Hazlehurst, Kayleen M. “Unyielding Domains in the Postcolonial Relationship.” Introduction. Legal Pluralism and the Colonial Legacy: Indigenous Experiences of Justice in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ed. Hazlehurst. Brookfield, Austral.: Avebury, 1995. ix–xxxv.Google Scholar
Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. New York: Knopf, 1987.Google Scholar
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Laslett, Peter. London: Cambridge UP, 1967.Google Scholar
Malouf, David. Remembering Babylon. New York: Vintage, 1994.Google Scholar
Isabel, McBryde. “Goods from Another Country: Exchange Networks and the People of the Lake Eyre Basin.” Australians to 1788. Ed. Mulvaney, D. J. and Peter White, J. Broadway, Austral.: Fairfax, 1987. 253–73.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F. D. “Aboriginal Australian Material Culture: Causative Factors in Its Composition.” Mankind: Official Journal of the Anthropological Societies of Australia 2 (1940): 241–73, 294–320.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F. D. “‘Trade’ in Aboriginal Australia.” Oceania 9 (1938): 405–38.Google Scholar
McCarthy, F. D. “‘Trade’ Relationships with Torres Strait, New Guinea and Malaya.” Oceania 10 (1939): 81–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anne, McClintock. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Neal, David. The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony: Law and Power in Early New South Wales. New York: Cambridge UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Pietz, William. “The Problem of the Fetish, I.” Res 9 (1985): 5–17.Google Scholar
Pietz, William.“The Problem of the Fetish, II.” Res 13 (1987): 23–45.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowse, Tim. After Mabo: Interpreting Indigenous Traditions. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Ryan, Lyndall. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 1981.Google Scholar
Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Sturma, Michael. Vice in a Vicious Society: Crime and Convicts in Mid-Nineteenth Century New South Wales. New York: U of Queensland P, 1983.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. “Crossing the Face.” Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. Ed. Spyer, Patricia. New York: Routledge, 1998. 224–44.Google Scholar
Tench, Watkin. A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. Essex, Eng.: Empire, 1986.Google Scholar
The Thompson Chain-Reference Bible. Ed. Thompson, Frank Charles. New Intl. Vers. Indianapolis: Kirkbride, 1983.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Perennial-Harper, 1992.Google Scholar
Vattel, Emmerich de. The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Sovereign Nations. Ed. Chitty, Joseph. Philadelphia: T. and J. W. Johnson, 1863.Google Scholar
Glyndwr, Williams. “Reactions on Cook's Voyage.” Seeing the First Australians. Ed. Donaldson, Ian and Donaldson, Tamsin. London: Allen, 1985. 35–50.Google Scholar
Zamora, Margarita. Reading Columbus. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar