"Opportunistic Transpositions and Elisions": Roger McDonald's The Ballad of Desmond Kale; or, The Fiction Question: Who Owns Stories?

Using the relationship between history and fiction as a starting point, the essay first looks at constructions of nationhood and national identity, a 'fantasy of Australia as the site of a privileged and realised good'. 'In accepting and supporting the fantasy of Australia as quintessentially free and equal, such constructions of national identity camouflage, at the same time as they enable, the aggression to and rejection of the Other that underlies white Australian society, historically and today'. Focussing on McDonald's Ballad of Desmond Kale, the essay explores the 'dark underbelly' of such constructions of nationhood in stories.