Theory and practice, by Michelle de Krester, Text
Since the publication of her first novel The Rose Grower twenty five years ago, Michelle de Kretser has practiced a special craft. She takes moments of history and shows how they ripple for years through their host cultures and into the personal lives of those involved. Until she was fourteen, de Kretser lived in Sri Lanka and the impact of colonialism and racial disharmony is a recurring theme in her work, always viewed through the experience of flesh and blood characters. The subtlety of her writing has brought her many accolades, not least, on two occasions, the Miles Franklin Award.
Her exquisite new book, Theory and Practice (Text, $32.99), is the same but different. It is a creative combination of fiction and essay. The main character also grew up in Sri Lanka and, like de Kretser, lived in France. In 1986, aged 24, she lands in Melbourne and finds lacklustre accommodation in St Kilda. She undertakes post graduate studies in literature at the University of Melbourne.
This is where the book hits one of those historical icebergs of which de Kretser is always aware. In this case, it is the moment in which the encounter with literature, a connection with another human imagination, is replaced by something called Theory. De Krester uses an upper-case T to underline the significance of this new deity.
‘Theory announced that the future was now. To mark its arrival, Theory had taken book, essay, story, poem and play and replaced them all with text,’ she writes.
Those who came across this form of intellectual absolutism will not soon forget it. When I have a chance to speak with de Krester on her recent visit to Melbourne, the topic soon comes up. We are both veterans of the humanities in the self-important eighties when the reader and, even more, the critic, were immensely superior to the unfortunate writer. Their job was to put the creative person in their place.
Theory was even less able to tolerate contrary views. This was heavily ironic because Theory was always celebrating anything that overturned traditional authorities, yet it was itself authoritarian.
In my opinion, humanities in Australia have never quite recovered. They relinquished one of the main resources for understanding any kind of tradition, which is humility. When Scott Morrison drastically increased the cost of Arts Degrees, he could hardly have found a better way to injure his country.