Stars and Shadows: Magic and Identity in Contemporary Australian Middle-Grade Fantasy Fiction

Stars and Shadows: Magic and Identity in Contemporary Australian Middle-Grade Fantasy Fiction

Australian fantasy literature for eight-to-twelve-year-olds is deeply rooted in cultural discourse and, I argue, uses the trope of magic to explore the nuances of contemporary subjectivity. This dissertation provides a textual and thematic analysis of 17 works of contemporary fantasy fiction written by Australian authors. In doing so, the thesis interrogates how magic is used to question patriarchal norms and social conventions governing identity, critiquing binary expectations of selfhood and ways of being. The feminist philosophy of Hélène Cixous is the primary theory through which possibilities of selfhood are explored, supported by Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic linguistics. Close reading and comparative literary analysis are the main research methods, allowing for rich subjective interpretation that explores a multiplicity of meanings. Each chapter centres a theme that influences subjectivity and explores its intersection with magic: witches and gender, belonging in sentient spaces, visibility and embodiment, fate, and radical Otherness. Subjectivity is revealed to be complex, with the potential for multiple and even conflicting selves in liminal spaces, held loosely and with conviction by protagonists. Cixous’s position of unknowing and undecidability is revealed to be particularly pertinent for expressions of contemporary ways of being. This dissertation contributes knowledge about expansive subjectivity in an age of identity politics. The discussion of the creation of liminal spaces through which to explore selfhood is particularly relevant for cultural and literary discourse, able to be applied to a multitude of contemporary situations, literature, and classrooms.

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