The Literary Mirroring of Aboriginal Australia and the Carib

The Literary Mirroring of Aboriginal Australia and the Caribbean challenges the structural opposition of indigeneity and creolisation through a historical and literary analysis of the connections between the ’First and Last of the New Worlds’: Australia and the Caribbean.

Dashiell Moore explores the continuities between indigenous and creole lifeworlds in the work of renowned Caribbean writers such as Édouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Sylvia Wynter, and Kamau Brathwaite, and prominent Aboriginal Australian writers including Alexis Wright, Ali Cobby Eckermann, and Lionel Fogarty. Common to these authors is their reimagining of the inter-colonial other as a mirror image. This image, achieved through opacity and projection, visualises in creative ways both the movement to indigenisation in post-independence Caribbean literature and the inter-indigenous encounters of Aboriginal Australian literature. By upending the antipodean relationship of the Caribbean and Australia, this groundbreaking study offers radically new perspectives on the world generated by literary relation.

Dashiell Moore, Sessional Lecturer, New York University and the University of Sydney

Dashiell Moore is an early career researcher specializing in world literature, postcolonial theory, and indigenous studies, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary Caribbean, Australian, and Pacific writing in English. He has published several scholarly articles in leading journals, such as Textual Practice and The Journal of West Indian Literature. He currently works as a Sessional Lecturer at New York University and the University of Sydney.