Leaks and Archives: Re-envisioning Australian history with once silenced voices and women’s knowledge

Research output: Other contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Australian nation building and identity formation, though the colonial historical tradition, celebrated white male achievement. This resulted in the silencing and erasure of Indigenous peoples, women, their knowledges, and their agency. Indigenous peoples and women have been absent from national history due to archival or source material being constructed by patriarchal culture. W.E.H. Stanner referred to this as the “great Australian silence”. This silence is most evident in the celebration and commemoration of colonial scientific exploration, where it was understood that ‘successful’ colonial scientific exploration required cross-cultural skills and knowledge. However, these skills and knowledge were only recognised and celebrated as the property of white men – a form of Australian masculinity – which was used to further legitimate white possession. The colonial historical tradition and the construction of an Australian masculinity informed the developing discipline of anthropology. Throughout Australian history, social knowledge produced through the discipline of Australian anthropology has been used to inform government policy and pedagogy. This research illustrates how the colonial historical tradition and knowledge produced through the discipline of anthropology created a divide between concepts of gender, ethnicity, and class, reinforcing the divide between the ‘natural’ and social sciences. A hybrid and situated methodology, that combines ‘Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy’ (Phillips, 2021) and a critical (auto)ethnographic approach which addresses my own positionality is applied to selected archival sources, oral histories, popular colonial historiography, and visual works.

Conference

ConferenceAULLA Conference
Abbreviated titleSecrets - heroes and strangers
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityDarwin
Period12/06/2216/06/22
OtherThe 2022 Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association’s triennial conference will be hosted by the College of Indigenous Futures, Education and the Arts at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory.

It may be that what draws many students and scholars to the study of literature, language and culture is to reflect on the historical, and ideological context of information, on how writing and its effects, produces a fascination with secrets. How do texts and mediums both work to withhold and disclose answers? Can anything really be completely uncovered? This conference promises to be both secretive and revealing.
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