“Nation Loses Its Voice” ran the obituary headline in The Australian newspaper after Janet Frame died on 29 January 2004. This depth of national bereavement seems extraordinary for an intensely reserved writer of opaque novels who once described herself, to Geoffrey Moorhouse, as “just a refugee”. Yet it was Frame’s commitment to marginality that eventually led to national and international celebration of her creative integrity. Frame’s life story and aesthetic practice attest to the view that those who are displaced within social systems see their operations and exclusions most clearly, an insight that Frame extends to normative accounts of language and consciousness itself.
Frame’s…
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