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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
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Epigraph:
...a work conceived radically is a movement of the same onto the other which never returns to the same. - Emmanuel Levinas
We must therefore begin to think of cultural politics in terms of space and the struggle for space. Then we are no longer thinking in old categories of critical distance but in some new way where the disinherited and essentially modernist language of subversion and negation is conceived differently. - Fredric Jameson
Contents
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Available Discourses on Aborigines,
single work
criticism
(p. 19-35)'This chapter will argue that Aboriginality is constructed in discourse. It will argue that whatever 'Aboriginality' is, it has never always been the same thing from one tribal group to another, from ancient times to the present, or even - according to some legal definitions - the same thing from one State of Australia to another.' (19)
- Body, Inscription, Epistemology : Knowing Aboriginal Texts, single work criticism (p. 36-59)
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History as Texts : Pigeon the 'Bushranger',
single work
criticism
(p. 60-75)'One of the main problems for Aboriginal history, as I see it, is to authenticate the appropriate discourse for its transmission, and this issue has been hotly debated. At one point the 'authentic' accounts of Aboriginal history were firmly locked in academic standard English. But going back to 1981 we find an Aboriginal working party for the Bicentennial History Project challenging the assumptions of historians that history and the language in which history is presented are somehow independent of each other: 'When the cues, the repetitions, the language, the distinctively Aboriginal evocations of our experience are removed from the recitals of our people, the truth is lost to us. (Langton, 1981)) (60)
- From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism - Reading Oral Narrative, single work criticism (p. 76-118)
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Literature and Politics - The Repressive Hypothesis,
single work
criticism
(p. 119-138)'This chapter will have two interconnected themes. The first will deal with the theoretical problem of 'expression', as part of a literary aesthetic. The main question here will be posed in terms of Aboriginal literature. How can we determine to what extent it is the expression of political activity as has so often been claimed? What can we learn from the case of Aboriginal literature which may in some way contribute to ongoing literature/politics debates?
The second theme will examine on particular genre, autobiography, and two specific books. Out of what historical and social context did My Place and Wandering Girl emerge? What sort of political valency can be attached to them in their conditions of production and consumption?' (119) -
Aboriginal English and Aboriginal Law,
single work
criticism
(p. 139-162)'This chapter takes as a case study some translation work I did for the Law Reform Commission in 1981. The task was to phrase into spoken language - understandable by Aborigines in remote communities - a legal proposal for the incorporation of aspects of Aboriginal customary law into general Australian law. It was, thus, a translation from formal written English into spoken Aboriginal English.' (139)
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Appropriation or Post-Colonial Renaissance,
single work
criticism
(p. 163-178)'In this chapter I am going to advance the thesis that spatial movements, including landscape, everyday 'city spaces', writing and travel, are all closely interrelated, and that the extraordinary mobility of recent creative work by Aboriginal artists constitutes a strong movement towards post-colonisation as it carries a series of implications for the practice of perceiving the land.' (164)
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Margin or Mainstream?,
single work
criticism
(p. 179-196)'Mandawuy Ynupingu has led the Aboriginal rock band Yothu Yindi, from north-eastern Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia, to a position where, in 1991, their Treaty single hit the top ten. This section will examine the rhetoric of a video-clip of their earlier single, In the Mainstream. (179)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Writing into or Drawing from? Self-manifestation through Movement in Contemporary Writing of Space
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 41 2017;'Contemporary Australian cultural studies has seen a move towards a multimodal awareness of space and place in writing – a speculative turn in both critical and creative work confronting the subject/object dichotomy as a limitation in place-making. Theorists such as Ross Gibson, Stephen Muecke and Michael Farrell offer beautiful conceptualisations of written spaces, drawing from several philosophical traditions, which might give context to contemporary creative practices. This writing regularly draws from movement as an integral feature of the practice discussed, with walking emerging in several approaches to re-envision the poet wanderer. But it is also possible to trace in this writing an act of selfmanifestation, a desire for the ‘doing-making’ of self to be inscribed within the multimodal spaces created. This paper will argue that this layering of self and space in the act of writing is both akin to and actively opposing the tradition of Romantic thought. While several features of the practices invoked might seem to draw from similar acts of immersion in landscape, the underlying trope of the Romantic poet’s divine communion is inverted in the speculative drive towards multimodal relation.
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The Itinerant Text : Walking between the Lines with Stephen Muecke and Mark Minchinton
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journeying and Journalling : Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing 2010; (p. 78-90)
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The Itinerant Text : Walking between the Lines with Stephen Muecke and Mark Minchinton
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journeying and Journalling : Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing 2010; (p. 78-90) -
Writing into or Drawing from? Self-manifestation through Movement in Contemporary Writing of Space
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 41 2017;'Contemporary Australian cultural studies has seen a move towards a multimodal awareness of space and place in writing – a speculative turn in both critical and creative work confronting the subject/object dichotomy as a limitation in place-making. Theorists such as Ross Gibson, Stephen Muecke and Michael Farrell offer beautiful conceptualisations of written spaces, drawing from several philosophical traditions, which might give context to contemporary creative practices. This writing regularly draws from movement as an integral feature of the practice discussed, with walking emerging in several approaches to re-envision the poet wanderer. But it is also possible to trace in this writing an act of selfmanifestation, a desire for the ‘doing-making’ of self to be inscribed within the multimodal spaces created. This paper will argue that this layering of self and space in the act of writing is both akin to and actively opposing the tradition of Romantic thought. While several features of the practices invoked might seem to draw from similar acts of immersion in landscape, the underlying trope of the Romantic poet’s divine communion is inverted in the speculative drive towards multimodal relation.
