On Commitment: Brian Castro’s engagement as a writer

International audienceCommitment is a challenging notion that cannot be overlooked in Australian literature. Nevertheless, the case of Brian Castro seems to resist any easy categorization. Are Brian Castro’s novels a reflection of his commitment, and if they are, to what cause? His works do not elude political questions – for instance, they tackle the question of identity and its plurality –, although such concerns seem to concentrate more than anything else on aesthetic research. His literary experiments are mainly inscribed in the Modernist tradition, and as such, they tend to resist actual editorial markets and literary practices. Is Castro’s rejection of literary categories – or more generally of any form of labeling – a form of commitment, or is it rather a way of denouncing the political engagement – with national identities for instance – of postcolonialism?This paper aims at questioning the commitment of Brian Castro’s novels in the light of contemporary issues – and more specifically when confronting issues postcolonial writers attempt to address. Can we say that Castro’s commitment mainly operates at the level of the relationship between language and reality? If so, is Castro offering a different way of being committed which would be both indirect and more direct, that is to say apolitical in appearance, but perhaps more efficient than a politically engaged novel