Starting with the central significance of autobiography for constructions of national identity, this essay examines the potential inherent in autobiography as a form of cultural agency capable of offering models of social existence based upon tolerance and pluralism. The issue of a possible nomadic poetics as manifest in autobiography is addressed through a reading of a recent autobiographical text by one of the most important contemporary Australian writers, David Malouf, 12 Edmondstone Street (1986). Malouf's autobiography depicts a childhood in Brisbane under the sign of exile and marginality. The aporias created by the apparent tension between roots and nomadism form the mainspring of Malouf's writing enterprise, and in turn work to evoke a decentered, fragmented version of Antipodean identities, one which accurately corresponds to the multiple realities of Australian destinies. © 2001 Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2001.

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