AustLit

Representations of Indigenous Australians are to be found within a broad range of texts produced by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The texts give us access to the shifting conceptualisations about both the nature of Aboriginality, and the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Examination and comparison of dominant as well as self-representations of Indigenous Australians in a variety of texts and films will enable students to deconstruct the cultural processes through which their own identities are produced. Texts and their readings; textual deconstruction; Saussure's basic semiotic analysis; signification and the production of cultural meaning; Barthes' myth and second level significations; function of the metaphor; genre and intertextuality; narrative form the 'realism' effect; grand narratives and ideology; narrator function and audience positioning.