The lie of the land1996

"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-examining poets and writers as diverse as Homer, Cavalcanti and Montaigne, he argues for a description of cultural forms that understands them dialogically, kinetically, as an evolving back and forth, echoic of the lie of the land. It is an argument that he illuminates not only historically but poetically: for running through The Lie of the Land is a fundamental image, that of the storm - which symbolizes our new relationship to the ground."--BOOK JACKET.