Identities in Transition: The 1990 High Court Case and Unity Dow's The Heavens May Fall

Abstract

In both her life and fiction, Unity Dow's consuming engagement resides in exploring issues of female entrapment and related notions of identity (or subjectivity) predicated on the idea of the embodied, sexualised and racialised “other”, an identity that conforms to the phallogocentric format of the patriarchal imaginary. In her personal struggles (as exemplified by the 1990 High Court Case with her Government over citizen laws) as well as in her fiction, in this case The Heavens May Fall, Dow adopts and constructs subject-positions (for herself, her fellow women and children) that are not only creative but also, and more to the point, that present the idea of identity as a matter of becoming, and characterised by nomadic, syncretised and hybridised cultural forms. Drawing on the 1990 court case and the above novel, this article explores the extent to which Dow's life and her fiction embody the kind of subjectivity that allows for multiple modes of belonging and celebrates borderlands of cultures. The article argues that Dow not only challenges the phallogocentrism (and related misplaced forms of modernity) but also relocates the idea of culture in multiple locations, routes and movements.