AustLit

'Mudrooroo`s reputation as the first and most influential Aboriginal writer has been open to doubt since his `inauthentic` Aboriginal identity became a headline news in Australia. But this essay relocates Mudrooroo as an Aboriginal writer from what Homi Bhabha has called `the postcolonial perspective.` Assuming that authenticity has much to do with positioning and performance rather than bloodline and that cultural hybridity can be a legitimate ground of resistance, the essay argues against the nativist or nationalist logic that `the real Aborigines` alone can talk about Aboriginal problems of their own. Taking Doctor Wooreddy as an instance of his postcolonial remaking of Aboriginality, the essay examines how Mudrooroo `performs` as an Aboriginal writer to engage with the dominant discourse of white Australia that has silenced Aboriginal voices. The novel deserves a postcolonial rereading not only because it rewrites the history of colonial encounter from an Aboriginal standpoint but because it debunks the myths of white supremacy by appropriating white language and literary apparatuses. As a result of Mudrooroo`s writing into history in the mode of `learning to curse,` both Australian literature and Aboriginal literature become a site of intercultural and postcolonial dialogue rather than a province of possessive exclusivism. Aboriginality, hence, can take on a more viable signification beyond the rubric of biological essentialism in order not to serve a fixed, universal trope of otherness to the demand of the hegemonic culture.' (Publication abstract)