engleski

The Fantasy of Outer Suburbia and New Representations of Australianness

Abstract: The paper analyzes how Shaun Tan's 2008 collection of illustrated stories, Tales from Outer Suburbia, has reflected the changing landscape of Australian cultural studies. For decades, Australian cultural studies were focused on the representation of what was perceived and standardized as Australian national identity. This cultural representation was related to the concept of White Australia, thus exclusive of groups that do not conform to the established image of the Australian man, and spatially contextualized within either the bush or the city. By depicting suburbia as a fantastic space, particularly in terms of recent theoretical elaborations of the fantastic of space expounded by Patricia Garcia, Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia provide an effective re-evaluation of suburban spaces and offer resistance to the anti-suburbanism traditionally accepted in Australian culture. In addition, Tales also entail that a change of focus in spatial representation brings about an even more important re-evaluation of Australian national identity. The analysis of two stories from Tales - "No Other Country" and "Stick Figures" - shows a tendency towards a more fluid and inclusive concept not of identity, but rather identities, whereby those groups that have usually been excluded from cultural representation, primarily the immigrants and Australian Aborigines, are now placed in focus through the specific spatial context of suburbia.

suburbia, Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia, anti-suburbanism, Australian cultural studies, fantastic spaces, heterotopia

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