Abstract

In Australian postcolonial literature, representations of the nonhuman animal are often entangled with past, present, and potential future understandings of Australian settler-colonial belonging. Drawing from multispecies studies and scholarship on Australian postcolonial literature, this chapter discusses how the representation of the nonhuman animal in two works of what I define as “Australian speculative ecofiction” underscores the complexities and problematic nature of settler-colonial belonging in Australia. I contend that the human–nonhuman relations portrayed in Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country (2020) and Robbie Arnott’s Flames (2018) represent a shift in the way Australian settler-colonial authors are considering the nonhuman in their work. I also discuss how such works partly uphold problematic notions regarding the animal and settler-colonial belonging in Australia, particularly in their obscuration of Indigenous sovereignty.