Abstract
This essay considers a range of discourses on identity and the definition of culture. I have little doubt that, generally speaking, Indigenous people are quite capable of defining the meaning of ‘Indigenous person’ or ‘culture’ in a way that satisfies their specific immediate needs and interests. My concern here is with the definition of ‘Aboriginal or Indigenous person’ in Australian law and legislation and with the critical response, by members of the scientific community as well as cultural theorists, to references to a biological basis of identity.
Highlights
This essay considers a range of discourses on identity and the definition of culture
There is a considerable diff e rence, I shall argue, between biology or genetics and what we understand to be identity, but this does not mean that identity can be reduced to an interpersonal or cultural construct
While the suggestion that identities are articulated relationally can be accepted as a universal proposition, criticism of the allegedly essentialist tendencies of re p resentations of Indigenous cultures and cultural identities has led Andrew Lattas to argue that the critique of essentialism ‘has come to operate recently as a “truth effect” in Aboriginal Studies; it has become a common way by which white intellectuals can morally authorise themselves despite coming from varied political positions’
Summary
This essay considers a range of discourses on identity and the definition of culture. This form of naturalisation derives its authority from its assumption of objectivity, so that the genetic construction of cultural or racial identity is taken to be a description of certain ‘real’ characteristics and not a conceptualisation or representation.
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