Dismantling of the Dominant European Discourse in the Poetry of Jeanine Leane

Danica Cerce

doi:10.17576/gema-2020-2003-04

Abstract

Until very recently a marginalised voice in Australian literary studies, Australian Indigenous literature has obtained an important role in the articulation of Indigenous peoples’ political thought, constituting an indictment of white Australian racism, a recuperation of neglected Aboriginal history, and a call for change. Based on the premise that literature can play an important role in both maintaining and disrupting the exercise of power, and written against the backdrop of post-colonial theory, the article deals with the collection of poems Dark Secrets: After Dreaming A.D. 1987-1961 (2010) by the contemporary Australian Indigenous author Jeanine Leane. Taking Leane’s poetry as exemplary of post-colonial textual resistance to colonialist representations, the article shows how the poet, relying on the “transgenerational blood memory” intervenes in the presupposed irreducible division between subjugating and subjugated cultures, that is, the assumptions about whiteness as a static privilege-granting category and a system of dominance upon which the logic of coloniality often stands. I argue that, by mobilising various techniques and strategies to challenge the reproduction of whiteness and affirm Indigenous Australians’ authentic, rather than an imposed cultural personality, Leane’s verse performs both personal and collective empowerment of Indigenous Australians, and represents an important site for the renegotiation of inter-racial relationships.

Highlights

Critics tend to concur with Brisbane’s assertion that one of the most consistent preoccupations of contemporary Australian literature has been “the past bearing down upon the present” (1996, p. xv)
Of the two main traumas that are in the centre of Australian consciousness – Australia as a British penal colony, as it was its first function, and the devastating impact of invasion and settlement of whites on the country’s Indigenous population1 – only the former has been explored extensively, while the latter has not received much penetrating and thoughtful treatment in the mainstream Australian literature
This is hardly surprising given that the history of white Australian domination of Indigenous Australians, marked by sustained brutality, oppression and genocidal horror, does not conform to the country’s highly esteemed view of itself

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Critics tend to concur with Brisbane’s assertion that one of the most consistent preoccupations of contemporary Australian literature has been “the past bearing down upon the present” (1996, p. xv). Of the two main traumas that are in the centre of Australian consciousness – Australia as a British penal colony, as it was its first function, and the devastating impact of invasion and settlement of whites on the country’s Indigenous population1 – only the former has been explored extensively, while the latter has not received much penetrating and thoughtful treatment in the mainstream Australian literature. At the turn of the new millennium, the progressive part of Australian politics interrupted a long-standing tradition of denial and silence by publishing reports with alarming data about the Indigenous Australians’ struggle for their cultural and biological survival It was not until February 2008 that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, opened a new chapter in Australia’s relations with its Indigenous peoples by making a comprehensive apology for the past policies

THE CONTOURS OF THE CURRENT SOCIAL SITUATION IN AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS LITERATURE AS A SITE OF RESISTANCE

CONCLUSION

Findings

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