AustLit

'The theoretical debate about place opposing, on the one hand, the existential necessity for a degree of permanence and continuity between person and place, and on the other, the definition of place as the chance convergence of trajectories proves useful when dealing with the way place and placelessness are imagined in contemporary Aboriginal literature. The article examines how, in Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven negotiates between a “typically Aboriginal” way of relating to place and her own generation’s worldview.' (Publication abstract)

'In the last two decades, several notable anthologies and important critical studies of Aboriginal literature have been published. Yet A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature, the collection of essays edited by Belinda Wheeler, is the first book to offer a comprehensive study of what Wheeler's introduction presents as a still emerging canon. A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature acknowledges that accessibility to material produced by Aboriginal authors remains, for historical reasons of social and cultural marginalisation, limited. It is important to note that "literature" in the context of the collection's title must not be understood conventionally, in the sense of written works of art, but in a broader sense that includes a whole range of oral, visual, musical, and performative forms of expression. As writer and scholar Nicolas Jose puts it in the foreword to the volume, "Aboriginal literature has its own traditions, modes, and rhetoric," and as such should be "respected and valued on its own terms" (viii). At the same time, he insists that Aboriginal literature's capacity to "cross boundaries" and "share its making communally" (viii) enables it to reach out to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences around the world and encourage a more generous form of cultural dialogue. Jose and Wheeler both highlight the political commitment that is almost always involved in the production of Aboriginal literature. As the collection's essays show, Aboriginal art bears witness to the violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Australia since the beginning of colonisation (unlawful killings, land-theft, economic and sexual abuse, the forced removal of children, discrimination and neglect), but it also expresses Aboriginal resilience, creativity, and the refusal to conform to stereotypical definitions of "black" indigeneity.' (Introduction)

The Thylacine or 'Tasmanian Tiger' today is a well-known and well-loved icon of the Australian world. Although it is probable that the species had already disappeared from mainland Australia by 1788, it was still present in Tasmania when settlement of the island began in 1803. As the colony expanded, this largest surviving carnivorous marsupial came to be seen as such a formidable threat to the pastoral economy that bounty schemes were introduced to eradicate it. Since the last captive thylacine died in 1936, however, it has become a symbol of Australian and more specifically Tasmanian identity. The heraldic crests of several towns in Tasmania feature at least one thylacine as supporter and the State Tasmania has two. It also appears on licence plates and until quite recently graced the labels of the state's best-selling beer.' Nor are all Australians reconciled with the official view that the 'Tassie tiger' should now be considered irreversibly lost. Every year, there are several claimed sightings throughout Australia and thousands of dollars have been put towards the quest for the thylacine, either to try to catch it alive or to clone it back to life using DNA material extracted from museum specimens. Tourist shops cater to thylacine nostalgia by selling T-shirts, magnets, and key-rings adorned with tigers and the caption 'I want to believe' as well as mugs and caps that simply read: 'I'm alive'. Such a reversal in the perceptions of the thylacine, from colonist's bane to national icon and naturalist's grail constitutes a striking example of the complex and contradictory uses mythical constructions of otherness have been put to in settler communities.' (Introduction)
 

‘In March 2011, an action was brought against the journalist Andrew Bolt by nine prominent members of the Aboriginal community for offences under the Racial Discrimination Act. In a series of articles published in 2009, Bolt, a controversial columnist for the Herald Sun, had accused light-skinned Aboriginal academics and artists of winning grants and prizes set aside for "real," that Is underprivileged and therefore more deserving "Blacks.", For instance, in an article entitled "It's so hip to be black," he criticised Kim Scott, author of Benang the heart, for being "hailed as the first Aborigine to win the Miles Franklin Award and calling himself a Noongar, despite conceding that the Aborigines who did not know him called him wadjila - a white. Although be claimed in court he never cast aspersions on the racial heritage of fair-skinned Aborigines, he did question, in his much-read column, why they insisted on identifying themselves according to an ethnicity belied by their features and their privileged (because un-discriminated against) background, thus he wrote, ‘spurni[ng] the chance of being people of our better future. While paying lip service to Aborigines’ right to self-identification Bolt was actually falling back on what colonial power has traditionally considered markers of  "whiteness" (colour, but also education, social standing) to deny these high profile individuals any entitlement to a "difference," Which racially people like him persist in confusing with the fantasized "Otherness" of stereotypical Aboriginality. Such symptoms of what Scott refers to as a national ‘neurosis’ highlight just how necessary a novel like " Benang' is, in contemporary Australia, as this chapter will attempt to show. By replacing the self-styled 'humane' eugenicist policies of the first decades of the twentieth century-styled the context of two centuries of colonial violence, the novel succeeds in establishing a clear distinction between the concepts of integration and assimilation.’ (Introduction)

When a couple of years before Australia's Bicentenary celebrations, David Malouf accepted the commission from Opera Australia, the Sydney Opera company, to adapt Patrick White's novel Voss for the operatic stage, he was certainly aware that this meant participating in the Establishment's efforts to promote a culturally exalted Australian identity on the European model. When the opera was premiered in 1986, the libretto was praised both by the critics and the public for its success in making use of the dramatic potential of the novel and, beyond that, in bringing out the musical possibilities of a style which had often been described as difficult and obscure. This article first undertakes to analyse a few aspects of Malouf's generic rewriting of the source text, which suggest that insofar as the opera was designed as a monumental celebration to Australian achievement, the libretto does seem to betray, to a certain extent, the novel's criticism of heroic posturing and complacent patriotism, and to collaborate in the institutional recuperation of what remains a controversial work. However, a closer study of the way in which Malouf writes his own homoerotic poetry into White's narrative reveals that it subtly contributes to maintaining a truly 'post-colonial' ambivalence within the apparent conventionality of the national celebration. -- Author's abstract