Literature and Politics

This paper explores the representation of persecuted cultural minorities living within multicultural societies in two recent texts for children and young adults, Anne Provoost’s Falling and John Boyne’s Holocaust novel, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas.  Disempowered Arab immigrants in Falling and Jews in The Boy in Striped Pyjamas are stigmatised on account of their perceived differences from the cultural norm.  Since both texts are focalised by characters who belong to the ruling elite, these minority figures occupy a position of marginalisation, both politically and ideologically.  I term this marginalised space ‘blind space’, which refers to the tendency of the elite to ‘turn a blind eye’ to the rights and suffering of these minority groups, and to the narrative positioning of the marginalised individuals, with the spaces they inhabit being limited and limiting and their stories often remaining un-verbalised, their voices unheard.  However, since both texts are focalised by young boys who are naïve, ignorant, indiscriminate and apolitical, the radical exaggeration of cultural difference jars against our focalisers’ natural inclination towards assimilation, with the effect that these apathetic figures become unwitting victims of their own culture’s racism.  Thus, through an examination of spatial, ideological and narrative ‘blind space’ in Anne Provoost’s and John Boyne’s novels, this paper explores the literary inscription of cultural identity formation, political stratification and exclusion as an attempt to eliminate cultural difference and the dangers of re-writing history for the purposes of hegemonic enculturation.

Alice Curry gained her BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and her MA in Children’s Literature from Macquarie University.  She is currently undertaking a PhD at Macquarie University in the narrative function of ‘blind space’ in children’s fiction.  Her interests are in film, cross-cultural studies and heterotopias.