The Circle & the Spiral: A Study of Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand Māori LiteratureIn Aboriginal and Māori literature, the circle and the spiral are the symbolic metaphors for a never-ending journey of discovery and rediscovery. The journey itself, with its indigenous perspectives and sense of orientation, is the most significant act of cultural recuperation. The present study outlines the fields of indigenous writing in Australia and New Zealand in the crucial period between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s - particularly eventful years in which postcolonial theory attempted to 'centre the margins' and indigenous writers were keen to escape the particular centering offered in search of other positions more in tune with their creative sensibilities. Indigenous writing relinquished its narrative preference for social realism in favour of traversing old territory in new spiritual ways; roots converted into routes. Standard postcolonial readings of indigenous texts often overwrite the 'difference' they seek to locate because critical orthodoxy predetermines what 'difference' can be. Critical evaluations still tend to eclipse the ontological grounds of Aboriginal and Māori traditions and specific ways of moving through and behaving in cultural landscapes and social contexts. Hence the corrective applied in Circles and Spirals - to look for locally and culturally specific tracks and traces that lead in other directions than those catalogued by postcolonial convention. This agenda is pursued by means of searching enquiries into the historical, anthropological, political and cultural determinants of the present state of Aboriginal and Māori writing (principally fiction). Independent yet interrelated exemplary analyses of works by Keri Hulme and Patricia Grace and Mudrooroo and Sam Watson (Australia) provided the 'thick description' that illuminates the author's central theses, with comparative side-glances at Witi Ihimaera, Heretaunga Pat Baker and Alan Duff (New Zealand) and Archie Weller and Sally Morgan (Australia). |
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The Circle & the Spiral: A Study of Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand ... Eva Rask Knudsen No preview available - 2004 |
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Abori Aboriginal and Māori Aboriginal Australia Aboriginal Literature Aboriginal writing ancestors archetypal argues artist Auckland Australia become Biamee Birenbaum Bob Hodge Bone C.K. Stead carving centre ceremony characters circle colonial contemporary context creative critical discussion European fiction fringe fringe-dwellers Ghost Dreaming Hyland House identity indigenous cultures indigenous literature indigenous writers Jangamuttuk Joe's Kadaitcha Sung Kaumatua Kerewin Keri Hulme Keri Hulme's Kevin Gilbert land literary Long Live Sandawara magical realism Maori Māori culture Māori literature Māori mythology Māoritanga Master Maui meaning metaphor migloo Mudrooroo Muecke Myth and Mind mythic narrative novel Once Were Warriors oral Pakeha past Patricia Grace perspective political postcolonial postmodern Potiki reader Reading the Country realism reality refers ritual sacred sense Simon social spiral spiritual story storytelling Sydney symbolic Te Po textual Toko Tommy traditional Uluru voice void Watson's wharenui Wild Cat Falling Witi Ihimaera words Zealand
Popular passages
Page 47 - We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.
Page 140 - They were nothing more than people, by themselves. Even paired, any pairing, they would have been nothing more than people by themselves. But all together, they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new. something strange and growing and great. Together, all together, they are the instruments of change.
Page 61 - ... to add disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible, within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, an experience of what is not permitted.
Page 90 - ... a field of diverse yet interchangeable oppositions between white and black, good and evil, superiority and inferiority, civilization and savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality and sensuality, self and Other, subject and object.
Page 185 - We, Who Live in Darkness It had been a long long time of it wriggling and squirming in the swamp of night. And what was time, anyway? Black intensities of black on black on black feeding on itself? Something immense? Immeasureless? No more. There just had to be a beginning somehow. For on reaching the top of a slow rise suddenly eyes I never knew I possessed were stung by it forcing me to hide my face in the earth. It was light, my brothers. Light. A most beautiful sight infiltered past the armpit...
Page 127 - Where are your bones? My bones lie in the sea Where are your bones? They lie in forgotten land stolen ploughed and sealed Where are your bones? On south islands, sawed by discovering wind Where are your bones? Whisper Moeraki, Purakanui, Arahura Okarito, Murihiku, Rakiura . . . Where are your bones? Lying heavy on my heart Where are your bones? Dancing as songs and old words in my head Deep in the timelessness of mind Where are your bones? Here in my gut Strong in my legs walking Knotting my fists,...
Page 161 - In psychoanalytic terms, it is succinctly defined as the "psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides.
Page 69 - Tihei Mauriora I called Kupe Paikea Te Kooti Rewi and Te Rauparaha I saw them grim death and wooden ghosts carved on the meeting house wall. In the only Maori I knew I called Tihei Mauriora. Above me the tekoteko raged. He ripped his tongue from his mouth and threw it at my feet. Then I spoke. My name is Tu the freezing worker. Ngati DB is my tribe. The pub is my Marae. My fist is my Taiaha. Jail is my home. Tihei Mauriora I cried.
Page 51 - identity is such a concept operating "under erasure" in the interval between reversal and emergence; an idea which cannot be thought in the old way, but without which certain key questions cannot be thought at all
Page 51 - Of course, it is not a mere phantasm either. It is something - not a mere trick of the imagination. It has its histories - and histories have their real, material and symbolic effects. The past continues to speak to us. But it no longer addresses us as a simple, factual 'past', since our relation to it, like the child's relation to the mother, is always-already 'after the break'.