AustLit
Empowering and Disempowering Indigenes : Staging Australian Aboriginal Experience
multi chapter work
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This study offers an exploration of the drama informing the Indigenous experiences, which contains Aboriginal people's effort to attain a visible reality based on cultural and political rights. It is also a deeper understanding of the empowering and disempowering Indigenes in the discursive domain as well as in the existential reality.
'Though the study considers a large number of playtexts written by the Indigenous playwrights from 1970s to the present, it explores playtexts written by non- Indigenous playwrights as well. Here, the chief concern is to explore the discursive features of the texts, the items both linguistic and dramatic that tend to place or exclude Aboriginal people from discourses.
'The Aboriginal theatre movement started in the 1970s serves as the complete reconceptualisation of Aboriginality in terms of centering Aboriginal Identity and culture in the dominant discursive domain. Such an intervention may involve the recovery of Aboriginal history from the dominant history of Australia and infusing positive attributes to Indigenes' identity.' (Back cover.)
Notes
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Dedication: For my Father (Shamsul Haque Chowdhury) and for my Mother (Syeda Nurun Nahar Begum). For Silma, Rica & Fareesa (not without Shahela).
Contents
- Kullark: Empowering through Counter-Rationalisation, single work criticism (p. 48-63)
- Process of Dispossession and Struggle for Survival : History and Identity in No Sugar, single work criticism (p. 64-81)
- The Tasmanian Bone in Bill Reed's Truganinni, single work criticism (p. 82-92)
- White Masculine Violence and Exploitation of Faith : Sexuality and the Violence of Colonisation in Holy Day, single work criticism (p. 93-109)
- Ray Mooney's Black Rabbit : Explorig the Aboriginal Question, single work criticism (p. 110-120)
- History, Adversity, and The 7 Stages of Grieving, single work criticism (p. 121-126)
- Barungin : Death in Custody and Exposure, single work criticism (p. 130-140)
- The Custodians : Exposing Sinister Acts, single work criticism (p. 141-149)
- The Unfathomable Rupture : Richard J Frankland's Conversations with the Dead, single work criticism (p. 150-161)
- Legitimate Inscriptions : Writing the Politics and Making Aboriginal Identity in Stolen, single work criticism (p. 165-171)
- Brutality and Sexuality in I Don't Wanna Play House, single work criticism (p. 172-179)
- John Harding's Enuff : Genocidal Terror and the Unthinkable, single work criticism (p. 185-201)
- Spirituality, Faith and Cultural Identity in Jadah Milroy's Crow Fire, single work criticism (p. 202-209)
- Jimmy Chi and Kuckles' Bran Nue Dae and the Construction of Aboriginality, single work criticism (p. 210-220)
- The Colour of Complex : Culture of Violence, Women and Colour Factor in Louis Nowra's Capricornia, single work criticism (p. 221-235)
- The Problem of Identity in Martin Buzacott's Kingaroy, single work criticism (p. 235-244)
- Victim's Portrayal in Image in the Clay, single work criticism (p. 250-259)
- Brutalising the Aboriginal Body : Exposition of White Masculinity in Brumby Innes?, single work criticism (p. 260-269)
- Marginalising the Aboriginal : The White System and the Undoing of the Aboriginal in Fountains Beyond and State of Shock, single work criticism (p. 269-278)
- Boxing with the Oppressors : Scott Rankin and Leah Purcell's Performative Exploration of the Resisting Self of Aboriginal Women in Social Reality, single work criticism (p. 279-289)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Related Works
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y
Empowering and Disempowering Indigenes : Staging Aboriginal Experience
2008
Z1838221
2008
single work
thesis
'This study offers an exploration of the drama which contains Aboriginal people's effort to attain a visible reality based on cultural and political rights. It is also a deeper understanding of the empowering and disempowering Indigenes in the discursive domain as well as in the existential reality.
'Though the study considers a large number of playtexts written by the Indigenous playwrights from 1970s to the present, it explores playtexts written by non-Indigenous playwrights as well. Here, the chief concern is to explore the discursive features of the texts, the items both linguistic and dramatic that tend to place or exclude Aboriginal people from discourses. Such a consideration may very well go beyond the periodic consideration of the plays.
'The Aboriginal theatre movement started in the 1970s serves as the complete reconceptualisation of Aboriginality in terms of centering Aboriginal Identity and culture in the dominant discursive domain. Such an intervention may involve the recovery of Aboriginal history from the dominant history of Australia and infusing positive attributes to Indigenes' identity. It also provides force in their existential reality. Freed from submission to the dominant's prescription, the drama appears as an alternative formula, but a rigorously vibrant medium of contestation in which history, identity, culture, politics and reality are endlessly expressive and persuasive.
'Keeping with the need to expose the complexity of the process of empowering and disempowering Indigenes, I read the discursive strategies employed in a selection of playtexts. The empowering drama adds dignity to Aboriginal people's gesture of friendship and goodwill and contrasts with the representation of aggressive colonial one. The drama exposes the encounter between negative and positive features in the representation of Aboriginality, thereby suggesting fighting against the authoritative design involves the representation of Indigenes in their terms.
'The most significant element the empowering drama contributes is its ability to capture the experience of the struggle of Indigenes to survive since colonisation. Aboriginal drama focuses more on the strategies to unsettle the dominant system than on the social order and the context.
'The final paradox is the act of inclusion and exclusion of Indigenes to/from the dominant theatrical discourses that indicate a fine line between empowerment and disempowerment.'
