Resistance and Sovereignty in Some Recent Australian Indigenous Women’s Novels

Autores

  • Carole Ferrier The University of Queensland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2016v69n2p17

Resumo

In Australia, powerful stories expressing resistance to a white, postcolonising hegemony continue to be articulated in Indigenous women’s fictional texts, including those from the 1990s onwards that are discussed in this paper. Their particular historically-distinctive mode of satire or irony challenges postcolonising regimes and institutions, the legacy of colonialism, and the persisting dominance of whiteness. These more recent texts continue a central preoccupation of the earlier fiction by Indigenous women with the achievement of agency in contexts of unequal social and economic  power; marginalised characters engage with current questions and conditions. The paper considers how these fictions represent some aspects of Aboriginal separation from land and place; separation from families; outsider and outcast identities, and how far these continue to mean disempowerment; Indigenous people’s epistemological relationships with their land and bodies of water, and the question of sovereignty in relation to Country and environment.

Biografia do Autor

Carole Ferrier, The University of Queensland

Carole Ferrier is a Professor of Literature and Women's Studies. Her research interests include women's and gender studies, especially Black women writers; Australian women writers; feminist and Marxist theory; and theorising of race and ethnicity. Professor Ferrier holds a BA Honours (London) and a PhD (Auckland) and teaches in the School of Communication and Arts, where she has been since 1973.

Publicado

2016-06-07

Edição

Seção

Artigos