Critical Animals Paper

“Weaving Fiction and Research”: Abstract for Critical Animals Conference
Newcastle 30/09/ – 01/10/20042004

My doctoral project consists of two components: a novel titled Loaded Hearts and a six-chapter dissertation of critical theory. The dissertation explores fiction writers of the 1970s, some of whom, it is argued, were undervalued. Using a dual method of interweaving creative and critical processes enables the fictional representations of women to be explored and the reception of the texts to be examined, uncovering a marginalisation of some voices. In particular, the work of Vicki Viidikas is analysed and Viidikas herself, in fictional format, is inserted into the novel.

In the novel, through the lives of the main protagonists, Maxine (Vietnam War protestor), and Tommo (soldier in the Vietnam War), the narrative explores the way women and men deal with their changing roles and identities over a period of thirty years. The characters in Loaded Hearts are composites of real life people. The reader meets Maxine and Tommo as a young couple living a counter-cultural lifestyle in Sydney in 1970. In writing Loaded Hearts, the task is to impart the flavour of post sixties Australian youth; to explore Maxine’s quest for ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’; to expose the horrors of war; to reconstruct Tommo’s life after his war experience; and to re-examine their lives in the twenty-first century. (207 words)