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Writing, Space and Authority : Producing and Critiquing Settler Jurisdiction in Western Australia
single work
Issue Details:
First known date:
2017...
2017
Writing, Space and Authority : Producing and Critiquing Settler Jurisdiction in Western Australia
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'On the edge of Stirling Gardens in central Perth, Western Australia, five large, old-fashioned pen nibs stand in a curved line, their tips in the ground. Anne Neil’s sculpture, Memory Markers, commemorates the history of this site, which includes the Supreme Court. Taking this sculpture as an emblem of writing, which in the context of its setting highlights the relationship between literature and law, this article explores the image of the pen in the ground. As a symbol of literacy, it evokes the powerful network of discourses—particularly law, science and religion—that underwrote the imperial project. It signals, in Michele Grossman’s terms, “the event of literacy [that] radically interrupts and disrupts—but never eliminates—pre-existing Aboriginal epistemologies”. The article goes on to explore the sculpture as a symbol of the assertion of jurisdiction, the speaking of law in and over colonised space. It analyses a group of written texts associated with this site, from colonial legal assertions of jurisdiction over Aboriginal people in Edward Landor’s The Bushman (1847), through a proclamation under the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA), to Stephen Kinnane’s Indigenous family memoir of life under that act, Shadow Lines (2004).' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 25 Jan 2018 15:40:26
141-155
Writing, Space and Authority : Producing and Critiquing Settler Jurisdiction in Western Australia
Journal of Australian Studies
Subjects:
- The Bushman, or, Life in a New Country 1847 single work autobiography
- Shadow Lines 2003 single work biography
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