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Lunch lecture: Jan Alber, AIAS

Indigenous Australian Identities in Contemporary Aboriginal Narratives. Representational strategies of negotiating different types of Australian indigeneity in fiction and autobiography

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 13 April 2016,  at 12:15 - 13:00

Location

Nobelparken, building 1481, room 366

This paper analyzes representations of indigenous Australian identities in contemporary Aboriginal narratives such as the life history My Place (1987) by Sally Morgan (a descendant of the Bailgu from the Pilbara region); the novel Benang: From the Heart (1999) by Kim Scott (who is related to the Western Australian Nyungar);and the dance performance Zorba the Greek Yolgnu Style (2007) by the Chooky Dancers (from Elcho Island). I focus on the ideological ramifications of the representational strategies that these narratives use to negotiate different types of Australian indigeneity. I see the deployed techniques, which involve the dialectical relationship between form and content, as modes that are highly semanticized and engaged in the process of cultural construction, and I try to find out why the narratives of my corpus represent Aboriginal identities by deploying the specific strategies that they use (rather than different ones).

 

Bring your own brown bag and beverage!