Elision and Engagement: Writing Indigeneity in Post-Bicentennial Historical Novels

Abstract

IN THE 1980S, NEW POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IDEAS of perceptions of Aboriginality and the postmodern novel start to ferment. These ideas would affect the ongoing development of novels in particular ways. Stephen Muecke critically identified shifts in the understanding of Aboriginality in Textual Spaces (1992, 2005), in which he asserted, in keeping with Langton, that Aboriginality is constructed in discourse and varies across tribal groups, from ancient times to the present, and is not - contrary to some legal definitions - the same thing from one federal state to another.1On grounds of scope, this study cannot offer detailed analysis of the relationship between the novel and the rise of Indigenous identity-politics in the 1970s and 1980s. It will, however, provide a broad-brush view of these decades before proceeding to analyse new approaches to novel-making.The Indigenous writer Jackie Huggins provides a beautifully salient summary of the reception of the 'black novel' during the 1980 s, drawing attention to problems associated with projections of cultural authenticity in fashioning their own representations of Indigenous subjects. Huggins, in a blistering critique of postcolonial academia in 1993, wrote at length on the unequal power-relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers as they had been historically perceived and represented by the colonizing culture.2We may also recall the hardline mandates of Mudrooroo3 from the 1980 s, warning Indigenous writers against literary practices that succumbed to white forms, Aboriginal content.4 He subsequently railed against what he saw as the evident romanticism of place that dogged Morgan's My Place.5 Mudrooroo's critical writings, though cautionary, revealed enormous ambition for the development of the black (historical) novel in the 1980s, yet in more recent years both black and critics have produced research alerting the reader and critic to the historical context of cultural disconnection, and the low levels of literacy which is the legacy of oppression for Indigenous communities.6 There has been no continuous flowering of the form as Mudrooroo may have hoped.The novelists Kim Scott and Alexis Wright are the notable exceptions; they have paved the way for other Indigenous writers by both receiving the prestigious Miles Franklin Award (Scott in 2000 for Benang, Wright in 2006 for Carpentaria). When he won that award, Scott hadn't overtly claimed his Nyoongar heritage. Publication of literary fiction by Indigenous writers since that time has not been a given. Yet the Wiradjuri critic Anita Heiss, surveying the publishing landscape for Indigenous authors from the vantage point of 2003, commends the rise of autonomous Aboriginal publishing units and houses such as Magabala Press (established 1987), the Aboriginal Studies Press (established 1964), and contemporary Aboriginal publishing arms associated with the University of Queensland Press and the University of Western Australia Press respectively. These presses and others have tackled a wide range of Indigenous subject-matter and experiences. Nonetheless, Heiss warned of the constraints that continue to be felt by black writers attempting to represent, produce, and publish any fiction, not least postcolonial fiction.7 Heiss's concern was articulated a decade earlier by Stephen Muecke in relation to the fallacious idea that contemporary Aboriginal literature was a site where Indigenous Australian writers could achieve freedom of expression. Muecke noted that Aboriginal literature, rather than being a place where the desire to speak is liberated, is a site of multiple hedgings-in - wherever Indigenous authors wish to speak on their own behalf, expressing their own stories and histories, they are nearly always constrained by the expectations and preconceptions of hegemonic culture.8Another way of thinking about 'identities', then, might be to ask: Under what constraints has each authorial identity suffered, and continues to suffer? …