McDermott, Tenille (2026) Settler-colonialism in the Metaverse: Virtual Place in Grace Chan’s Every Version of You and Rhett Davis’s Hovering. In: [Association for the Study of Australian Literature]. p. 66. From: ASAL 2026 Conference: Australian Literature in the Digital Age, 29th June - 3rd July 2026, Brisbane, Australia.

PDF (Abstract Only) - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only

Abstract

Though virtual reality implies a realm outside of the physical, virtual spaces are unavoidably tethered to the physical world. No matter how abstract, computational creations are expressions of code that must be physically stored somewhere. Any virtual world exists materially as a series of switches and circuits in servers and data centres. As N. Katherine Hayles has noted, “computers must be instantiated in some form to exist at all” (636). Virtual place, then, inevitably relates to physical place. Similarly, virtual worlds reflect the preoccupations and prejudices of the physical worlds they inhabit. In both Grace Chan’s Every Version of You (2022) and Rhett Davis’s Hovering (2022), virtual realities provide not only key aspects of the plot, but spaces to examine the Australian relationship with place and the legacy of settler-colonialism upon the landscape. Every Version of You, set in the late twenty-first century, portrays a future in which almost all aspects of life have moved online. As dust chokes Australian cities, those who can afford to spend most of their time in the utopian digital city of Gaia, their physical bodies suspended in pods. Hovering, set in a nearer future, likewise features an immersive digital world, a video game in which one of the protagonists loses hours a day playing a botanist. Meanwhile, the very landscape beneath her city is shifting beneath her feet. Both novels highlight the link between virtual and material realities, and the impact of each upon the other. This paper will demonstrate the ways that expressions of both virtual and physical place in Every Version of You and Hovering reflect the complicated relationship between settler-colonials and place in Australia, while situating it within the context of the material reality of computation, arguing that the materiality of computation is itself a site of colonisation.

Item ID:	92582
Item Type:	Conference Item (Abstract / Summary)
Copyright Information:	© 2026 Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2026 04:21
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 100%
	More Statistics