Inside and Outside the Body Politic: Fortress Australia, Europe, and Spain

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indigenous Australian artist Tracey Moffatt’s 3-minute short Vigil, part of her My Horizon show at the 2017 Art Biennale in Venice, captures the increasing fear, hysteria and obsession regarding the borders of Australian national identity in the new millennium. Moffatt’s interest in Asian asylum seekers and refugees ties her critique of immigrant control into Indigenous exclusion, both of which define what is known as Fortress Australia. Taking the Australian particulars as its lead, this paper looks at the xenophobic rhetoric and practice that characterize so-called Fortress Europe, which rejects immigration and clamps down on its native minorities’ claims for sovereignty. It narrows the analysis down to Fortress Spain, whose policies of exclusion affect immigrants as well as Peninsular ethnic minorities, such as Catalonia. In using Moffatt’s video as a lead, this paper calls on art and literature as powerful means to unpack and rewrite identity from the margins of the nation.