AustLit

Author's abstract: Mudrooroo and Alexis Wright seem to have little in common. Mudrooroo belongs to the first generation of Australian Aboriginal writers and wrote many novels and critical studies as well as poetry. As for Alexis Wright, she wrote her first novel in 1997. Yet the landscapes they describe are charaterized by the same tension between a homogeneous surface and sub-layers that criss-cross, overlap and surface, thus posing a threat to the apparent unity of colonial space. This essay addresses the issue of palimpsestic landscapes and characters as clues to pinpoint the specificities of Aboriginal aesthetics. It also focuses on the use of intertextual references as a means to subvert colonial discourse.

Author's abstract : In the autobiographical text, the madwoman articulates a space from which to speak. The writing of madness is neither about introspection nor about escapism but is much more concerned with translating inner states. Autobiography functions like a mirror in which we see a Gestalt, a global image of our selves.

Author's abstract : In The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Keneally rewrites the story of the Jimmy Governor murders and manhunt, a significant episode in white/Aboriginal race relations in Australia that took place at the turn of the twentieth century. In his narrative Keneally attempts to eliminate the colonial discourse which underlay contemporary press accounts of the story and to retell it 'objectively', from the enlightened perspective of the 1970s, when white attitudes to Aborigines began to change radically. This article examines and attempts to explain his successes and failures in this under taking.

Author's abstract : In presenting an autobiographical account of her own and her family's life experience, Sally Morgan exposes the Aborigines' post-contact history - hitherto obliterated, 'overwritten', as all colonised peoples' histories are, by the official, historical accounts of the colonial culture. The quest for her Aboriginal identity further enables Morgan both to un- and re-cover a cultural heritage that had been deliberately obscured by the white 'script' superimposed upon it.