Camphor Laurel: A Re-vision of Desire
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2003vol13no2art1289Keywords:
Sarah Walker, Camphor Laurel, same-sex desire, identity politics, sexual orientation, feminine desireAbstract
Sarah Walker's 'Camphor Laurel' demonstrates that the text is one of a few Young Adult fictions which destabilise cultural assumptions concerning a normative heterosexuality, as it engages with male-centred discourses that have attempted to reconcile feminine desire with sexual orientation and categorisation. The novel's representation of same-sex desire by young female characters moves beyond the models of maturational development and identity politics, which inform most mainstream fiction.
Metrics
References
Colebrook, Claire (2002) Understanding Deleuze. Crows Nest, Australia, Allen & Unwin.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1988)
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. London, The Athlone Press.
Dollimore, Jonathon (1991) Sexual Dissidence, Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Foucault, Michel (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, Vintage.
Foucault, Michel [1978] (1990) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Volume 1. New York, Random House, Vintage edition.
Fuss, Dianna (ed) (1989) Essentially Speaking: Feminism Nature and Difference. New York, Routledge.
Goggin, Mark (1993) ‘Gay and lesbian adolescence’, in S. Moore and D. Rosenthal (eds) Sexuality in Adolescence. London, Routledge.
Halperin, David (1995) St Foucault. Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Knox, Sara (1995) ‘Heavenly games’, Meanjin 54: 4: 677-690.
Lacan, Jacques [1966] (1977) Ecrits. A Selection, Translated by Alan Sheridan. London, Routledge Edition.
McCallum, Robyn (1996) ‘Other selves: subjectivity and the doppelganger in Australian adolescent fiction’,in Clare Bradford (ed) Writing the Australian Child. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, pp. 17-36.
McCallum, Robyn. (1999) Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: the Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity. New York, Garland.
Rowley, Hazel and Grosz, Elizabeth (1990) ‘Psychoanalysis and feminism’, in Sneja Gunew (ed) Feminist Knowledge: Critique and Construct. London, Routledge, pp. 175-204.
Spargo, Tasmin (1999) Foucault and Queer Theory. London, Icon Books.
Walker, Sarah (1998) Camphor Laurel. Sydney, Pan Macmillan.