Abstract
The major thrust in this research has been in the area of postcolonial studies. As one their primary missions, post-colonial works of art relate stories as seen by the oppressed and the colonized. Beginning with Edward Said’s Orientalism, postcolonial figures as diverse as Franz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha emerged and each targeted an aspect of postcolonial conditions. The present article was undertaken to trace postcolonial elements of “colonial negotiations,” and “hybridity” in an Aboriginal play by Robert Merritt entitled The Cake Man. The central argument of this article is that in its anticolonial stance, this play discusses issues of Aboriginal race and identity. To realize this argument, the play is studies with the background of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha’s theories. While these two figures are the leading theoreticians of the research, Aboriginal anticolonial strategies, like Aboriginal humor and figurative emasculation, are also pointed out. In fact, the novelty of the study is in its amalgamation of Western theories and Aboiginal strategies. All through the play, history as seen by the oppressed becomes the focal point, making it eligible to be called postcolonial works. Merritt’s The Cake Man, which is a well-known example of forced conversion, contains a very prominent manifestation of Said and Bhabha’s colonial negotiations. In addition, by creating an anticolonial character in the play, Merritt highlights and criticizes colonial Christianity, colonial otherization, and figurative emasculation of Aboriginal men in Australian society. All these issues, as the play leads the audience to believe, contribute to the realization that colonial discourse has the policy of obliterating Aboriginal traditions.
Highlights
The major thrust in this research has been in the area of postcolonial studies
Beginning with Edward Said’s Orientalism, postcolonial figures as diverse as Franz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha emerged and each targeted an aspect of postcolonial conditions
Merritt’s The Cake Man, which is a well-known example of forced conversion, contains a very prominent manifestation of Said and Bhabha’s colonial negotiations
Summary
Like other genres in Black Australian literature, Aboriginal plays explore such features of Aboriginality as endurance, pride, protest, poetry, sorrow, anger and humour in their dramatized stories. As Wheeler points out, they argue that “The imposition of a foreign religious system on Indigenous people is meant to destabilize their cultural bonds and shake the trust in their identity and culture” [131] This idea was best encapsulated in a poem by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the national Aboriginal poet, entitled The Dispossessed: Peace was yours, Australian man, with tribal laws you made, Till white colonials stole your peace with rape and murder raid; They brought you Bibles and disease, the liquor and the gun: With Christian culture such as these the white command was won. [9] Priest’s assertion, “let me try again,” and the stage direction, “Wheedling” again indicate the priority of negotiation in the play This is supported by the fact that whenever a force (or unidirectional strategy) is to be applied by the soldier, its permission should be given by the priest as the symbol of negotiation, like this extract when the soldier says “Leave it to me, Father.”. “the Man opens his eyes and gets groggily on his feet”, symbolically signifying his anticolonial mission, as well as the endurance of the Aboriginal entity and culture
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