Playful ambiguities: racial and literary hybridity in the novels of Brian CastroPosted in Asian Diaspora, Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Oceania on 2011-04-28 01:55Z by Steven |
Playful ambiguities: racial and literary hybridity in the novels of Brian Castro
University of Melbourne
Université Toulouse-le Mirail
2010
Marilyne Brun
PhD thesis, Arts – School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne and Université Toulouse-le Mirail.
This thesis studies eight of the nine novels of Brian Castro, a contemporary Australian writer born in Hong Kong in 1950, and focuses on the theme of hybridity in his work. Starting with the observation that many of Castro’s characters are mixed-race, the thesis reflects on his suggestion, in his critical essays, that hybridity is deployed at a literary level in his fiction. It seeks to answer three major questions: how is racial hybridity represented in the novels? Why does Castro use a form of literary hybridity in his fiction? And what connections can be established between racial and literary hybridity in his work? The present study argues that hybridity is a useful concept which can be productively applied to literary studies and is particularly appropriate to discuss Castro’s novels. It focuses on two aspects of his literary practice: his use of hybridity as a literary device and his ambiguous representation of the mixed-race body. It argues that racial and literary hybridity are uniquely complementary in the novels and that Castro’s playful resort to hybridity represents a form of resistance to literary canons, racial categorisation and national politics. In this sense, the thesis not only extends the study of Brian Castro’s novels, it also brings new insights to hybridity theory, thus contributing to postcolonial, literary and critical race studies.