The lie of the land

by Paul Carter

"In The Lie of the Land Paul Carter argues that post-colonial politics must be grounded poetically, that 'we will need to have a different conception of the land and our relationship to it' - a philosophy that takes account of the lie of the land." "Just as the lie of the land is folded, uneven, locally different, so Carter develops his argument through an examination of three figures - the Venetian painter Giorgione, Australian anthropologist T. G. H. Strehlow and the first Surveyor General of South Australia, William Light - whose historical relationship to one another is not at first sight obvious but who, it emerges, share common interests. Reading their lives and works against the grain of a patriarchal history intent on representing them as founding heroes or dreamy genuises, Carter reveals another side to them - a historical subjectivity which, he argues, embodies a critical and creative resistance to the West's long-running assumption of its right to invade and to occupy." "Re-