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'This is a narrative paper that tracks a story of Aboriginal representation and the concept of nation across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries through some important Australian texts. I read this assemblage of settler literature through the cultural metaphor of tracking, because tracking is as much about anticipation as it is following. Tracking is about reading: reading land and people before and after whitefellas. It is about entering into the consciousness of the person or people of interest. Tracking is not just about reading the physical signs; it is about reading the mind. It is not just about seeing and hearing what is there; it is as much about what is not there. Tony Morrisson [sic] wrote of mapping ‘the critical geography’ (3) of the white literary imagination in her work on Africanist presence in American Literature, Playing in the Dark. This paper tracks the settler imagination on Aboriginal presence in Australian literature in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. ' (Author's introduction)
Notes
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Epigraph: ‘Tracking for Blackfellas is like reading for whitefellas.’
(Aunty Lil Smart nee Croker 1887–1980)
Author's note: Aunty Lil was my Grandmother with whom I grew up.
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Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- The Secret River 2005 single work novel
- Searching for the Secret River 2006 single work criticism
- Remembering Babylon 1993 single work novel
- Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow 1928 single work novel
- Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel
- Poor Fellow My Country 1975 single work novel
- A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel