AustLit

Post-Structuralist premises underlie Bill Ashcroft's and John Salter's projection of Australia as a 'rhizomic text'. This notion dimisses 'Australia' as a signified, i.e. as a text with determinate meaning, opting for identity as a free-floating signifier to which meaning may be attached but only by a mechanism of deferral. Post-Colonialism, like Postmodernity, infects everything with absence, it transforms everything into virtuality - but it does so in a liberatory way, weakening the hold of hegemonic nationalism. But where does that leave the originatory logic behind the High Court's Mabo decision which basso continuo in Ashcroft's and Salter's argument? -- Livio Dobrez - introduction (edited)