Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

decade saw the rise of the new international order marked by American neo-colonialism and the Green
Revolution, as well as by computerization and electronic information that replaced traditional forms of
communication. At the same time, the global community could not escape grappling with the 'internal
contradictions and external resistance', to quote Fredric Jameson, inherent in every social structure.
Out of the given agenda, Hewett took big visions that subsequently crumbled into nothingness, and
delusions that cost lives. Nowhere, however, is much more than a melodrama. It is an Australian story.
The play takes place on a long-forsaken showground at the edge of a country town in Western
Australia, Hewett's recurring location. The protagonists are two tramp-like figures from society's
margin who, it is clear, can be expected to have far more to offer than 'boring' (Hewett's own word)
middle-class suburbia. At an advanced age, she still claims that she 'married two rough boys and joined
the Communist Party to join the rough boys and girls'. In Nowhere, though, the author 'changes gender'
and ascribes some of her life experiences to a male hero. Josh, 'an eighty year old pensioner, once a
Communist', is portrayed as a former itinerant worker who 'jumped rattlers all over the country in the
depression'. He dwells in a shack that reeks of urine and soiled possessions hoarded over twenty years
in which his life was kept at a standstill. With Josh trying hard to pull on his battered boots and the line
'Get on y' bastards, get on' - an unequivocal reference to Godot - the historical framework of the play is
established with Hewett positioning herself as a writer at the cross-roads of the avant-garde and postmodernism,
where three generations of Australians meet. For Nowhere opens with another character's
dream and a clash of sentiments that bring forth the sense of failure and enduring pain. Snow, 'a
homeless forty eight-year-old Vietnam veteran' is haunted by the memory of atrocities he blindfoldedly
committed in somebody else's homeland against people who fought for their own vision of a
harmonious society. With just one word, 'democracy', on the swearing lips of Snow's commander, the
playwright conjures the full controversy and ethical dilemmas behind foreign interference into the
internal affairs of a sovereign country. She deconstructs and ridicules the hollow language of war
propaganda and exposes the strategies of fear and coercion. The dreaded possibility of Japanese
invasion is then juxtaposed with their portrayal as 'our best customers' today. Sarcasm, jokes and irony
are all Josh's; Snow feeds the lines to him and completely conforms with the expressionistic treatment
of a supporting character who is a function of the protagonist's central subjective standpoint. The
female hero, who completes the triad, does not enter the play before the closing lines of the first scene.
In Nowhere, the older man plays the role of an eye-opener to his younger and politically naïve mate.
This stereotyped concept of character relationships taken over from satirical comedy subverts the
whole notion of the dignity of war, without confusing an armed conflict driven by imperialistic
interests with an anti-fascist war. Thereby Hewett avoids shutting out dialogue with other currently
circulating discourses, and allows for the possibility of alternative ideological positions. The indictment
on the sacrifice of human lives, however, is immediate and enduring, since the social position of both
characters allows for no ambiguities as to the rewards awaiting the returned soldiers. It is clear that,
through constant revolutionary agitation and subversion, a particular form of epistemological and
ideological critique emerges, stemming from Hewett's allegiance to the avant-garde. It produces a form
of insight into alternative values and, consequently, into what Richard Murphy, in his 1999 text,
Theorizing the Avant-Garde, calls 'the discursive status of reality.' The desired result of this technique is
an informed opposition to any dogma or 'fixity' that might emerge and take the central position of a
new order. As in many avant-garde texts, Snow's nightmares are close to reality. They are dispersed,
and bickering sentiments between the two men appeased, only with the arrival of Vonnie, a young
woman and Aboriginal at that. Hewett ascribes a conciliatory role to the woman in the men's world, and
along with it introduces the theme of reconciliation between white and indigenous communities in
37