The Warlpiri alphabet and other colonial fantasies

Abstract

This article is a critical interrogation of the alphabet as it has been used to write a so-called ‘pre-literate’ or ‘oral’ language, Warlpiri, an Aboriginal language of the Central Desert of Australia. The author compares a literacy-teaching chart called Warlpiri Letters with traditional Warlpiri inscriptive practices, and finds that both employ a culturally specific form of writing - a writing understood in terms of material ‘imprints’ or ‘traces’. In developing this notion of writing as material ‘trace’, the author argues that it is not the case that Warlpiri Aborigines are without writing. On the contrary, the fact that Warlpiri do indeed possess writing has been simultaneously acknowledged and yet disavowed by a colonial context where only one form of writing is allowed. This analysis shows that an effacement of Warlpiri writing, of Warlpiri culture - including the radical challenge(s) they pose - has occurred in the creation of alphabetically written Warlpiri.