Entangled Subjects : Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures Of Talk, Text, And Modernity
Netherlands
:
Rodopi
,
2013
Z1938856
2013
single work
criticism
'Indigenous Australian cultures were long known to the world mainly from the writing of anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, missionaries, and others. Indigenous Australians themselves have worked across a range of genres to challenge and reconfigure this textual legacy, so that they are now strongly represented through their own life-narratives of identity, history, politics, and culture. Even as Indigenous-authored texts have opened up new horizons of engagement with Aboriginal knowledge and representation, however, the textual politics of some of these narratives - particularly when cross-culturally produced or edited - can remain haunted by colonially grounded assumptions about orality and literacy.
Through an examination of key moments in the theorizing of orality and literacy and key texts in cross-culturally produced Indigenous life-writing, Entangled Subjects explores how some of these works can sustain, rather than trouble, the frontier zone established by modernity in relation to 'talk' and 'text'. Yet contemporary Indigenous vernaculars offer radical new approaches to how we might move beyond the orality-literacy 'frontier', and how modernity and the a-modern are productively entangled in the process. ' (Source: Angus & Robertson website www.angusrobertson.com.au)
Cross Talk : Collaborative Indigenous Life Writing in Australia and Canada
2004
Z1351079
2004
single work
thesis
This thesis provides a comparative analysis of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts produced in Australia and Canada. Drawing on the large body of Indigenous life writing texts produced in both countries, the critical and theoretical literature surrounding these texts, and twenty-nine interviews conducted during the course of research with participants in Aboriginal and First Nations collaborative life writing, the author argues that literary criticism needs to take into account the co-operative basis of textual production as well as the constraining factors that shape the outcome of collaborative texts. Further, he argues for the importance of non-Indigenous critics acknowledging the centrality of Indigenous protocols in both the production and reception of collaborative Indigenous life writing. The thesis is based upon the premise that readers and producers of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts can and should talk to each other and that each group can benefit from such cross talk.
Scholars have recently paid more attention to narratives of colonial contact in Australia, as elsewhere (cf. Hill 1988). Western elements and characters (such as Captain Cook) have been widely documented in Australian Aboriginal narratives which nevertheless are clearly not close accounts of past events. This has promoted reconsideration of the distinction between 'myth' and 'history'. If we follow Turner's (1988) suggestion that myth is the formulation of 'essential' properties of social experience in terms of 'generic events', while 'history' is concerned with the level of 'particular relations among particular events', we need not restrict ourselves to seeing myth as chattel for a social order distinct from western influence. In the paper I examine two stories of cultural and physical survival from the Katherine area, Northern Territory, and seek to identify in them fundamental themes and enduring narrative precipitates of social experience lived in intense awareness of colonial and post-colonial relationships between Aborigines and whites.' (Publication abstract)
Cross Talk : Collaborative Indigenous Life Writing in Australia and Canada
2004
Z1351079
2004
single work
thesis
This thesis provides a comparative analysis of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts produced in Australia and Canada. Drawing on the large body of Indigenous life writing texts produced in both countries, the critical and theoretical literature surrounding these texts, and twenty-nine interviews conducted during the course of research with participants in Aboriginal and First Nations collaborative life writing, the author argues that literary criticism needs to take into account the co-operative basis of textual production as well as the constraining factors that shape the outcome of collaborative texts. Further, he argues for the importance of non-Indigenous critics acknowledging the centrality of Indigenous protocols in both the production and reception of collaborative Indigenous life writing. The thesis is based upon the premise that readers and producers of collaborative Indigenous life writing texts can and should talk to each other and that each group can benefit from such cross talk.
Entangled Subjects : Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures Of Talk, Text, And Modernity
Netherlands
:
Rodopi
,
2013
Z1938856
2013
single work
criticism
'Indigenous Australian cultures were long known to the world mainly from the writing of anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, missionaries, and others. Indigenous Australians themselves have worked across a range of genres to challenge and reconfigure this textual legacy, so that they are now strongly represented through their own life-narratives of identity, history, politics, and culture. Even as Indigenous-authored texts have opened up new horizons of engagement with Aboriginal knowledge and representation, however, the textual politics of some of these narratives - particularly when cross-culturally produced or edited - can remain haunted by colonially grounded assumptions about orality and literacy.
Through an examination of key moments in the theorizing of orality and literacy and key texts in cross-culturally produced Indigenous life-writing, Entangled Subjects explores how some of these works can sustain, rather than trouble, the frontier zone established by modernity in relation to 'talk' and 'text'. Yet contemporary Indigenous vernaculars offer radical new approaches to how we might move beyond the orality-literacy 'frontier', and how modernity and the a-modern are productively entangled in the process. ' (Source: Angus & Robertson website www.angusrobertson.com.au)
Scholars have recently paid more attention to narratives of colonial contact in Australia, as elsewhere (cf. Hill 1988). Western elements and characters (such as Captain Cook) have been widely documented in Australian Aboriginal narratives which nevertheless are clearly not close accounts of past events. This has promoted reconsideration of the distinction between 'myth' and 'history'. If we follow Turner's (1988) suggestion that myth is the formulation of 'essential' properties of social experience in terms of 'generic events', while 'history' is concerned with the level of 'particular relations among particular events', we need not restrict ourselves to seeing myth as chattel for a social order distinct from western influence. In the paper I examine two stories of cultural and physical survival from the Katherine area, Northern Territory, and seek to identify in them fundamental themes and enduring narrative precipitates of social experience lived in intense awareness of colonial and post-colonial relationships between Aborigines and whites.' (Publication abstract)
