Post Colonial Discourse
One might be inclined to suggest that Aboriginal writing is the ‘new genre,’ offering its own syntax, appealing to those who would like to situate the ‘Aboriginal book’ as the representative of Aboriginality: the written and purely ‘factual’ notion that ‘this is what it means to be home-grown – the Indigenous Other.’ However to bracket-off Aboriginal writing as a socially progressive fact is, perhaps, illusory; with Aboriginal writers previously unheard of (and of course representing what was once unmentionable) will we see signs of a cultural, pluralistic buoyancy? The once silenced voices that can now be circulated and ‘understood’ seems to suggest that white Australia has relaxed its position, welcoming among its literary ranks those with something important to say. To suggest, however, that Aboriginality in print form can only be good is an innocent mistake. For all that is seen as a contemporary license to express one’s cultural and personal ‘take’ on what being Aboriginal means by way of the text, is merely confirmation of mainstream Australia’s white-refusal to meet Aboriginality on its own terms – that is, ‘understanding’ or cultural pluralism cannot be published. And certainly not when the Aboriginal text is an artifice t . . .
" 17’ However, Holland sees in the circus a particular space, a liberation that would not have been available in the context of the time. I never saw a member of that race, and nobody cared to talk about them; what was the point? After all, the Ainu have a place in history only – really existing as four letters. We might say, well let ‘us’ just get on as best ‘we’ can given that ‘what’s done is done. This is all that is left of the Ainu, along with a sticker written in Japanese that says ‘Chugoku sei’ – made in China. The Idea of perfection… in the Circus Space Benang is brilliant. The European elite set about making a native elite. , socio-economic structures, etc); and the Aboriginal text rests in the hands of literate (sic), urban and often university-educated Aboriginals (of Aboriginal heritage?); and this raises, as Kim Scott points out, particular problems – if not for the text, then certainly for individual authors and signs of a residual culture, the ‘simulacra. Can we see a parallel between the exploited Aboriginal circus performer in the 1800s and contemporary Aboriginal writers and ‘their’ ‘mature’ writing? And does writing Aboriginality and the circus, as the illusory act, demonstrate ‘The same rationale…’ that ‘…also fuelled the treatment of Aboriginal performers as objects and commodities so that their personal identities were subsumed and their lives destroyed19…’? I would suggest, most certainly. ’ The problem of causality… It is not always easy to determine what has caused a specific change… Why did this new concept appear? Where did this or that theory come from? 8 So far we have looked at the way in which we might view the ‘Aboriginal text’: as the sum total, that, as Kim Scott notes, reveals an ‘absence of Aboriginality’ perhaps. Prices range from $10 to several hundred dollars, and the pearl shells are the only items of these arts and crafts that are a long-standing local tradition. If Aboriginality has, as I suspect, been buried under the weight of colonialism, new modes of exchange (global specifically) will be the last nail in the coffin, so to speak.
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Acceptance Essays
