Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-txr5j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-15T00:59:59.420Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sovereignty as a State of Craziness: Empowering Female Indigenous Psychologies in Australian “Reconciliatory Literature”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Adelle Sefton‐Rowston
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reading and writing must be more than passive processes of mimetic display; rather, they should offer a platform for psychological transformations across race and gender. Thus literary sovereignty vis‐à‐vis ownership of creative expression and representations of self can be reclaimed. This essay offers close analysis of contemporary Australian Indigenous literature to explore the sovereignty of feminist psychologies. Does creative writing reflect a strengthening of female Indigenous psychologies, and how might this implicate race relations and the decolonization of textual worlds? These questions are inspired by Alexis Wright's most recent novel The Swan Book where she writes about “the quest to regain sovereignty over [her] own brain.” This article will explore the term craziness in a metaphorical sense: looking at whether rejecting dominant white culture equates to psychological sovereignty, improved mental well‐being, and better race relations in imaginary realms. Indigenous characters in Wright's The Swan Book and Marie Munkara's Every Secret Thing may appear “crazy” for living in a state of indifference, but paradoxically, it is this state of “craziness” or indifference that empowers them to find psychological peace and resist assimilation. Seeking psychological sovereignty means assuming a position so averse to patriarchy and colonization that it renders transformation in imaginary worlds, and urges transformation in the psyches of white readers too.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 32 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Contested Terrains: Women of Color and Third World Women, Feminisms, and Geopolitics , Summer 2017 , pp. 644 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ashcroft, Bill. 2003. Resistance and transformation. In Resistance and reconciliation: Writing in the Commonwealth, ed. Bennett, Bruce. Canberra: ACLALS.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. K. 1994. Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse. In The location of culture. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Carten, Alma. 2015. How the legacy of slavery affects the mental health of black Americans today. The Conversation, July 27. http://theconversation.com/how-the-legacy-of-slavery-affects-the-mental-health-of-black-americans-today-44642 (accessed February 28, 2017).Google Scholar
Dudgeon, Patricia, Collard, Sandra, and Pickett, Harry. 1997. Reconciliation and psychology: Indigenous Australian perspectives. Curtin Indigenous Research Centre CIRC 5. Perth: Curtin Indigenous Research Centre.Google Scholar
Fowler, H. W., and Fowler, F. G., eds. 1964. The concise Oxford dictionary of current English (5th edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1956. The philosophy of history. New York: Dover Edition.Google Scholar
Heiss, Anita, and Minter, Peter, eds. 2008. Macquarie Pen anthology of Aboriginal literature. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. Practical philosophy. Edited and translated by Gregor, M. J.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Revolution in poetic language. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Langton, Marcia. 1993. “Well, I heard it on the radio and saw it on the television …”: An essay for the Australian Film Commission on the politics and aesthetics of film‐making by and about Indigenous people and things. North Sydney: Australian Film Commission.Google Scholar
Munkara, Marie. 2009. Every secret thing. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Ngũgĩ, wa Thiong'o. 1986. Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London: James Currey Ltd.Google Scholar
Pederson, Anne, Walker, Iain, and Pickett, Harry. 1997. Group and personal self concept of urban Aboriginal children. Murdoch, Western Australia: Department of Psychology, Murdoch University.Google Scholar
Russo, Katherine E. 2005. Oodgerooo's “polluting memories”: Technologies of the intersubjective contact zone. New Literatures Review 43 (April): 99–113.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Adam. 1989. Black words, white page: Aboriginal literature 1929–1988. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. 1983. Illness as metaphor. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Tatz, Colin. 2005. Aboriginal suicide is different: A portrait of life and self‐destruction. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Margaret Kemarre. 2010. Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What it means to be an Aboriginal person. Alice Springs: IAD Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric. 1964. A history of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. London: n.p.Google Scholar
Wright, Alexis. 2013. The swan book. Sydney: Giramondo.Google Scholar