Contested Histories In Australian Indigenous And Non-indigenous Novels

The views of Australian historians are greatly divided as to how to relate the colonial past.The leftist historians insist on revising the history of colonialism from an Aboriginal perspective,while the rightist deem this “black-armband” view an exaggeration of violence in the colonial contact.The contested views about Australian history have impacted the shaping of nation-state and the rooting of national culture,and been fully represented in Australian literature.This dissertation explores six representative Australian novels,focusing on the narrative strategies adopted by the authors to juxtapose contested histories in the contact between European settlers and Aboriginal peoples,and analyzing the tremendous impact of identity politics on Australian literary works within the theoretical framework of critical whiteness studies.In the Australian cultural context,critical whiteness studies do not take a postcolonial stance and discuss the intercultural merging,but aim to dismantle the white hegemony in the mainstream narrative discourse and reveal the unbalanced power relations between white and Aboriginal societies.By resorting to the theories of critical whiteness studies,the analysis highlights the tension between the official history and the reconstructed version of history from an Aboriginal perspective,reveals whiteness as an ideological construction in colonial discourse,and gives voice to Aboriginality expressed from multi-dimensional and multi-centered perspectives,discarding the essentialized stereotypes.By retelling historical events in the first contact between European settlers and Aboriginal peoples,three non-Indigenous novels,A Fringe of Leaves,Remembering Babylon and The Secret River reconfigure the hegemony of whiteness in official history,criticize the racialized perspectives of colonists and acknowledge the Aboriginal faith,Aboriginal perspectives and Aboriginal cosmology.Along with these,the three novels exhibit the distinctive features of Aboriginal cultures,recognize the indispensable role that Aboriginal people play in the construction of national identity,and express the wishes of white belonging and of reconciliation with Aboriginal society.On the other hand,three indigenous novels,Pemulwuy: the Rainbow Warrior,Benang: from the Heart and Carpentaria seek self-representation by resorting to oral traditions,Aboriginal perspectives and such concepts in Aboriginal cosmology as circular time,merging of space and time and land as the center of universe.The narrative strategies in the three indigenous novels are experimental and distinctive of marginalized peoples,interrogating the written narrative and linear structure of colonial discourse and attempting to construct a contested version of history from Aboriginal perspectives.The six novels juxtapose the official historical discourse and the oral traditions of Aboriginal peoples from both non-indigenous and indigenous perspectives,and this polyphonic narration validates the subject position of the Aborigine,rendering possible a dialogue between white and indigenous subjectivities.Aboriginality represented in Australian culture is not an essentialist concept,but an intersubjective space attained through the dialogue and negotiation between indigenous and non-indigenous societies.Despite the difference of perspectives,all of the six novels implicate that only by respecting the difference of Aboriginal cultures and acknowledging the validity of Aboriginal laws,can the white subjects construct an ethical dialogic space with the indigenous subjects,achieving a fusion of horizons.By analyzing and comparing the six novels within the framework of critical whiteness studies,this paper unfolds a panorama of the polyphonic contested histories,providing a new perspective for the studies of Australian novels.Meanwhile,the literary imaginary has created an important platform for contemporary Australia to promote multiculturalism,and an analysis of these “worldly” texts facilitates a deep understanding of Australian culture and national identity.