The Mapping of a World\u27:^ Discourses of Power in David Malouf s Fly Away Peter

In an historical analysis of language and the ideology underwriting it, Michel Pecheux argues that all struggles of perception and belief arise from a relationship of contradictions between and within discourses, since \u27thought exists only within a determination which imposes edges, separations and limits on it, in other words ... thought is determined in its forms and its contents by the unthought... [In discourse] the unasserted precedes and dominates the assertion\u27

Languages of War, Class and National History: David Malouf\u27s Fly A way Peter

In an historical analysis of language and the ideologies which underwrite it, Michel Pecheux argues that all perception and value arise from a relationship of contradictions between and within various discourses, since \u27thought exists only within a determination which imposes edges, separations and limits on it, in other words ... thought is determined in its forms and its contents by the unthought . . . [In any discourse] the unasserted precedes and dominates the assertion\u27.1 In other words, various discourses can be identified not only by what is said but also by what is unsaid within them, and so \u27culture\u27 itself becomes \u27a complex of competing narratives of which one or other is, for the time being, dominant\u27.

Bracelets, blankets and badges of distinction: Aboriginal subjects and Queen Victoria's gifts in Canada and Australia

The long period of Queen Victoria’s reign witnessed a range of transitions in conceptions of colonial diplomacy and imperial governance. Gifts exchanged between Aboriginal people and the sovereign or her representatives indicate a great deal about those transitions, as well as about Aboriginal people’s capacity to assert cultural autonomy even as they expressed loyalty to the Crown. This paper compares some of the different contexts in nineteenth-century Canada and Australia where Aboriginal people figured as recipients of the Queen’s gifts, particularly in commemorative moments that celebrated the ideals of Empire and British sovereignty. In considering how these gifts were received and how they circulated, it explores some of the different meanings these gifts might have held, and the potentially unsettled relationships they implied between Aboriginal people and the British Crown

Interracial intimacy, indigenous mobility and the limits of legal regulation in two late settler colonial societies

A large body of scholarship has explored how interracial marriages and informal sexual contracts alike became the target of state regulation in settler colonial societies, as categories ofracial identity and their classifications in law became increasingly fixed through the late nineteenth century. In late colonial western Canada and Western Australia, settler governments deployed different legal strategies to manage the shared perceived problems of Indigenous prostitution and interracial cohabitation. As part of a wider program of Aboriginal governance, these governmental interventions were tied not only to late colonial ideologies about racial purity but also to an objective to contain Indigenous people's mobility and their access to settler cities and towns. In both countries, however, authorities were confronted with the limits of the law in regulating interracial contact

Keep the magistrates straight': Magistrates and Aboriginal 'management' on Australia's north-west frontiers, 1883-1905

Amanda Nettelbec

From humanitarianisms to humane governance : Aboriginal slavery and white Australia

Humanitarianism and violence have traditionally been understood as polarised states, one serving as a mitigating response to the other. It is only recently that scholars have begun to align the two terms to consider how state-directed humanitarian interventions can be imbricated with conditions of violence. Similarly, recent work on humanitarianism’s imperial underpinnings has drawn out the ways that its appeals to values of universal humanity have been interwoven with the cultural, political or military violence of colonial state-building. This chapter builds on these themes to consider how humanitarian orientations in British imperial policy adapted to evolving expressions of colonial violence over the course of the nineteenth century as the key period of almost unbridled global expansion. Around the British world, the nineteenth century was notable for the range of humanitarian policy initiatives that were triggered by calls to protect those left most at risk of colonial violence or exploitation. But while the long-term objective of humanitarian policy was to check abuses and misuses of colonial power, the process of generating a culture of humane rule was often directly entangled with the enlistment and justification of violenc

Proximate strangers and familiar antagonists : Violence on an intimate frontier

A generation of scholarship on the experiences of the frontier—spanning models of violent conflict to various kinds of intimacy—has been highly influential in building a nuanced picture of Australia's colonial race relations. Regionally-focused histories provide a valuable avenue for bringing these models of frontier historiography together within the same frame, because it is at the localised level of social relations that the cross-hatched intersections between violence and intimacy can emerge into clearest view. This article traces the threads of cross-cultural encounter on one Australian frontier to assess how violent conflict could arise as much from conditions of inter-connectedness and familiarity as from conditions of strangeness and fear, and to ask, under such conditions, what kinds of frontier violence drew the intervention of the law

Colonial protection and the intimacies of Indigenous governance

Recent scholarship on colonial Protectors of Aborigines has examined the unclear line they walked between advocating for Indigenous rights and advancing the project of colonial state-building. Their task to bring Indigenous people within the fold of Christian civilisation and within the reach of settler law involved more than an attempt to implement colonial policy, however. It also brought Protectors into daily personal contact with Indigenous people in multiple settings. With reference to the overlooked colonial protectorate in South Australia, where the position of Protector of Aborigines was guaranteed as a condition of the colony’s foundation in 1836, this article draws out some of the ‘strategic intimacies’ that underpinned protection as an early mode of colonial governance. By examining more closely the varied ways in which Protectors and Indigenous people intersected in first-contact settings, it explores the fluid configurations of power in a colonial social order that was only just evolving

"We should take each other by the hand": Conciliation and diplomacy in colonial Australia and North West Canada

This chapter compares some examples of cross-cultural diplomatic exchange from nineteenth-century Canada and Australia and considers what they reveal about the formal establishment of colonial relationships. These two sites of British settlement are particularly worthy of comparison because, while they shared many similarities in ritualised diplomacy, they were underpinned by quite different terms of colonial rule. x The key difference was treaties: while the Canadian Dominion recognized Indigenous sovereignty to the degree that it negotiated treaties for the acquisition of territory, this process was not undertaken in Australia's colonies. The event held on 1 November 1838, mirrored the conciliating objective that had motivated Governor Macquarie twenty-four years earlier, and it shared many of the features of ceremonial diplomacy. In comparison, it might seem that Canada's First Nations held considerably more power in negotiating the land cession treaties that determined their relationship to the British Crown, but this would over-simplify the complexities and boundaries of indigenous agency in these colonial sites