Avtonomne domorodske skupnosti v Avstraliji: kako naj napredujejo, če so oblegane s škandali in korupcijo

Discourses of Australian Aboriginal culture have all too often relied on the "noble savage" trope, in Australia as in Europe. There were practical outcomesof such views, most notably the creation of over a hundred self-governed indigenous communities in the 1980s, most of them in the Northern territories. The architect of the plan was Nuggett Coombs, a top Canberra administrator and advisor to Whitlam and Hawke. His idea was to allow Aborigines a "pre-contact" lifestyle and to shield them from all evil "white" influences. Neither worked. On the contrary, it has now emerged that the leftist, liberal consensus on how to "empower" Aboriginal culture has resulted in the exact opposite, in degradation, alcoholism, and sexual violence. This is not only due to passivity in indigenous communities but also to a decade-long denial of their dysfunctionality by the white courts, academics, and lawmakers.Podobno kot v Evropi so se tudi v Avstraliji avtonomne domorodske skupnosti pogosto omejevale s sintagmo o "plemenitem divjaku". Ena izmed praktičnih posledic takih diskurzov je bila ustanovitev samoupravnih domorodskih skupnosti v osemdesetih letih dvajsetega stoletja, večinoma na Severnem teritoriju. Arhitekt tega načrta je bil visok državni uradnik v administraciji avstralske vlade v Canberri, Nuggett Coombs, ki je bil svetovalec v Whitlamovi in Hawkovi vladi. Njegova ideja je bila, da se dovoli domorodcem takšen stil življenja, kot so ga imeli pred prihodom belcev, ki najbi jih ščitil pred "slabimi" vplivi. Toda izkazalo se je ravno nasprotno, tako da je levičarsko liberalno soglasje kako naj bi v Avstraliji dali moč domorodski kulturi, prešlo v svoje nasprotje: v degradacijo, alkoholizem in spolno nasilje. To ni samo posledica pasivnosti teh skupnosti, temveč tudi več desetletij trajajoča disfunkcionalnost "belih" sodišč, akademikov in zakonodajalcev

The “Lesser Traumatized”: Exile Narratives of Austrian Jews

Wimmer, Adi. (1999). The “Lesser Traumatized”: Exile Narratives of Austrian Jews. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/90613

Autonomous Aboriginal communities in Australia : besieged by scandal and corruption, how can they move forward?

Discourses of Australian Aboriginal culture have all too often relied on the "noble savage" trope, in Australia as in Europe. There were practical outcomesof such views, most notably the creation of over a hundred self-governed indigenous communities in the 1980s, most of them in the Northern territories. The architect of the plan was Nuggett Coombs, a top Canberra administrator and advisor to Whitlam and Hawke. His idea was to allow Aborigines a "pre-contact" lifestyle and to shield them from all evil "white" influences. Neither worked. On the contrary, it has now emerged that the leftist, liberal consensus on how to "empower" Aboriginal culture has resulted in the exact opposite, in degradation, alcoholism, and sexual violence. This is not only due to passivity in indigenous communities but also to a decade-long denial of their dysfunctionality by the white courts, academics, and lawmakers

"The Statue of Liberty Did Not Give Us the Hitler Salute": Autobiographies and Oral Histories of Exiled Austrian Jews

The author’s purpose is to explore the traditional stance of critical literature on the experience of exile, and to juxtapose it with an alternative critical approach, based on a theory of exile-and-expulsion literature as a literature of trauma. Beforehand, however, the term “exile” and its distinction from related concepts such as “emigration/émigré” are defined. Citations taken out of biographies and interviews of concerned Austrian Jews give us an image of the situation these exiles found themselves in: the obstacles encountered when trying to get out of Nazi-Austria and into another country, the difficulties in the relation with the host country, its language and culture, and later on, the consideration of a possible return to Austria. Finally the focus is on the problems faced by those who, trying to overcome their trauma, wrote down their stories

‘Objectifying’ the War. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a Secular Message Board.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. has become one of the most important cultural signifiers of the nation. Only what it signifies is far from clear. ‘A place of healing’ is a frequently applied epithet; in conjunction with partial memory loss; but ‘healing’ does not work without prior analysis of the wound. In postmodern fashion; anyone can read into it what they want. Evidence for its enduring popularity are the roughly 90 000 objects that have since its inception in 1982 been deposited at ‘the Wall’. These depositions represent an uncensored and hard to control alternative discourse on Vietnam; they are collected daily and stored at a huge warehouse. The ‘Wall’ is not only a sacred site; a locus of grief and contemplation; and a locus of re-uniting the nation; it has also become a prominent place where cultural battles are waged. Since 1995 there has been a permanent exhibition of a selected “Offerings at the Wall” at the Smithsonian Institute. They collectively represent a discourse refusing to be co-opted into a national strategy to re-interpret the Vietnam War as “in truth a noble cause” and an event in which American soldiers acted honourably