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Notes
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Originally presented as an address at Message Sticks, Sydney Opera House, May 2001.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Poetics of (Re)Mapping Archives : Memory in the Blood
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;'This paper explores stories of re-mapping the archives through art and poetic-prose, using ideas of haunting through ‘memory in the blood.’ Our family archives are like maps that haunt and guide us toward paths past-travelled and directions unknown. We travel through these archives that offer up new stories and collections of data, and a brutal surveillance is exposed at the hands of the State. We gain insight into intimate conversations, letters, behaviours and movements, juxtaposed with categorisations of people, places, landscapes and objects. These records are our memories and lives; material, visceral, flesh and blood. The State wounds and our records bleed. I travel through my own Nanna’s records and recognise that we have never lived outside the State, and this very act of recognition continues the wounding. State acts of surveillance, recording and archiving had the power to place our
family stories in the public domain, or obliterate stories within a broader history of erasure; filed away, silent and hidden until bidden. But our bodies too are archives where memories, stories, and lived experiences are stored, etched and anchored in our bloodlines deep. They ground our creativity in what become personal and political acts of remembering, identity making and speaking back to the State. Detective-like methods allow us to creatively re-map events and landscapes, piece together lives fragmented and heal our wounds.' ((Re) Mapping the Archive, 4)
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Teaching Indigenous Literature : An Ethics of Voice
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 70-94) 'My first class in teaching Indigenous literature was beset with a challenge: 'Why are you quoting that songline on overhead?! An Aboriginal student asked me, deeply offended, when I introduced a pre-scripted lecture on Aboriginal 'text'. 'It is not to be taken away from its context. It is sung, not written; it is performed with dancing and has a meaning that you would not understand!' My bravado failed and I gave her the stage. She was right. I had unwittingly performed a 'colonial' act of misappropriation. The pressures of early career academic life were my rather feeble excuse - at the last minute I had been asked to take over the unit from a retiring colleague on top of my normal teaching load, was finishing, at night, my PhD on Australian novel to film adaptation, and was processing all sorts of new realities. I'd been instructed by this colleague to show an 'example' of a songline as an introduction to a unit called 'Australian Society, Aboriginal Voices'.' (Author's introduction, 70)
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Negotiating Subjectivity : Indigenous Feminist Praxis and the Politics of Aboriginality in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise and Melissa Lucashenko’s Steam Pigs
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 185-202)
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Negotiating Subjectivity : Indigenous Feminist Praxis and the Politics of Aboriginality in Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise and Melissa Lucashenko’s Steam Pigs
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 185-202) -
Teaching Indigenous Literature : An Ethics of Voice
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 70-94) 'My first class in teaching Indigenous literature was beset with a challenge: 'Why are you quoting that songline on overhead?! An Aboriginal student asked me, deeply offended, when I introduced a pre-scripted lecture on Aboriginal 'text'. 'It is not to be taken away from its context. It is sung, not written; it is performed with dancing and has a meaning that you would not understand!' My bravado failed and I gave her the stage. She was right. I had unwittingly performed a 'colonial' act of misappropriation. The pressures of early career academic life were my rather feeble excuse - at the last minute I had been asked to take over the unit from a retiring colleague on top of my normal teaching load, was finishing, at night, my PhD on Australian novel to film adaptation, and was processing all sorts of new realities. I'd been instructed by this colleague to show an 'example' of a songline as an introduction to a unit called 'Australian Society, Aboriginal Voices'.' (Author's introduction, 70)
-
The Poetics of (Re)Mapping Archives : Memory in the Blood
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;'This paper explores stories of re-mapping the archives through art and poetic-prose, using ideas of haunting through ‘memory in the blood.’ Our family archives are like maps that haunt and guide us toward paths past-travelled and directions unknown. We travel through these archives that offer up new stories and collections of data, and a brutal surveillance is exposed at the hands of the State. We gain insight into intimate conversations, letters, behaviours and movements, juxtaposed with categorisations of people, places, landscapes and objects. These records are our memories and lives; material, visceral, flesh and blood. The State wounds and our records bleed. I travel through my own Nanna’s records and recognise that we have never lived outside the State, and this very act of recognition continues the wounding. State acts of surveillance, recording and archiving had the power to place our
family stories in the public domain, or obliterate stories within a broader history of erasure; filed away, silent and hidden until bidden. But our bodies too are archives where memories, stories, and lived experiences are stored, etched and anchored in our bloodlines deep. They ground our creativity in what become personal and political acts of remembering, identity making and speaking back to the State. Detective-like methods allow us to creatively re-map events and landscapes, piece together lives fragmented and heal our wounds.' ((Re) Mapping the Archive, 4)
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