This thesis is a multi-faceted engagement with the many events and people that came to be known as 'The Bluff Rock Massacre'. Employing a number of textual techniques it seeks to articulate the ways in which 'historical' events and particular places come to be lived out in subjects who are both past and present and in a constant state of becoming. The work employs official historical records, family histories, tourist leaflets, gossip, field notes and other texts to show the multiple ways in which an event both becomes and exceeds its invention. The thesis is concerned with the ways in which the non-Aboriginal can write Australian history after the many Aboriginal interventions into hegemonic history and the ongoing re-appraisal of 'What happened?' Simultaneously the writing is written on the terrain of post-identity politics and is both queered and performative. The work attempts a textual exposition of the questions - How does one write the past when it is also the present?; What is a postcolonial autobiography?; what is a postcolonial sexuality/textuality? - rather than answer them
Date of Award | 1998 |
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Original language | English |
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- Bluff Rock Massacre(Australia)
- aboriginal history
- massacre
An Autobiography of the Bluff Rock Massacre
Schlunke, K. (Author). 1998
Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis