McLaren, John (1994) Boundaries or intersections: developing senses of nationalism in Australia. In: British Australian Studies Association Conference, 1994. (Unpublished)

Abstract

paper delivered at the BASA Conference: 1994: Changing Courses: Australia since the 1940s. Contains a paper on Australia, its history and exploration of its nationalism through critical analysis of Henry Lawson’s and other Australian writers’ works. 'An impartant chapter in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities shows the extent to which modern nation states are the product of the map-makers' art. They drew the boundaries and the state followed. By contrast, although Australia was also first produced on maps, it appeared on them not as a coherent entity but as Terra Australia Incognita, a place without a shape. Its existence was completed in the European imagination like a child's puzzle, a series of dots and lines produced by the first discoverers and explorers and waiting for further venturers to link them to reveal the true shape of the Unknown Southland they suggested.'

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