Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Walking, Frontier and Nation : Re/tracing the Songlines in Central Australian Literature
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Central Australia is widely characterised as a frontier, a familiar trope in literary constructions of Australian identity that divides black from white, ancient from modern. However, recent anthropological and literary evidence from the Red Centre defies such a clear-cut representation, suggesting more nuanced ‘lifeworlds’ than a frontier binary can afford may better represent the region. Using walking narratives to mark a meeting point between Aboriginal and settler Australian practices of placemaking, this paper summarises and updates literary research by the author (2011–2015), which reads six recounted walks of the region for representations of frontier and home. Methods of textual analyses are described and results appraised for changes to the storied representation of Central Australia from the precolonial era onward. The research speaks to a ‘porosity’ of intercultural boundaries, explores literary instances of intercultural exchange; nuances settler Australian terms for place, including home, Nature and wilderness; and argues for new place metaphors to supersede ‘frontier’. Further, it suggests a recent surge in the recognition of Aboriginal songlines may be reshaping the nation’s key stories.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Intercultural Studies Knowledge Intersections : Exploring the Research of Central Australia vol. 40 no. 1 2018 15407399 2018 periodical issue

    'The papers in this issue emerged from the inaugural Knowledge Intersections Research Symposium held in May 2017 at the Desert Peoples Centre campus of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education located in Alice Springs, Australia. The theme ‘Knowledge Intersections’ was Adopted for the research symposium and has continued into this volume. The symposium was held in conjunction with the 2017 Northern Territory (NT) Writers’ Festival, which had the theme of ‘Crossings | Iwerre-Atherre’. The language in the title came from local Arrernte people who interpreted crossings as iwerre-atherre, meaning two roads meeting, neither blocking nor erasing the other; two-way learning or travelling together.' (Lisa Hal, John Guenther : Editor's introduction)

    2018
    pg. 118-140
Last amended 14 Jan 2019 10:18:39
118-140 Walking, Frontier and Nation : Re/tracing the Songlines in Central Australian Literaturesmall AustLit logo Journal of Intercultural Studies
Subjects:
  • Alice Springs, Southern Northern Territory, Northern Territory,
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