ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how narratives of postcolonialism need to be supplemented by those of post-presentationalism. Postcolonialism as an idea has often been used to signify forward progress in today's world. An optimistic view of neoliberalism as removing all exceptions, all inefficiencies from the market, can be strangely in synch with the optimism of postcolonialism. Neoliberalism offers the illusion of the lifting of hierarchies, the dissolution of routines and bureaucracies in one Cathartic Leveraged spree. Alfred Stepan has referred to the Chilean and Argentine dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s as exemplifying bureaucratic authoritarianism. Most people's idea of Australian fiction contains within it some instantiation of often brutal and authoritarian governance. Australian literature is dominated by representations of the past in a way that evokes the residuality of colonial governmentality. With respect to colonial governmentality in Australian historical fiction, one should distinguish between the represented time of governmentality and its representing time.
