Seminar Series: Abstract

09:30
September 16 2009
Seminar Room A

Culture and the absurd: fashioning Indigeneity in contemporary Australia
Gillian Cowlishaw (UTS)

This paper proposes that a growing gestural politics in Australia fulfils the nation’s intention to recognise Indigeneity by gesturing at the domain known as cultural through such symbols as Welcomes to Country and Indigenous paintings on school walls. The freedom to deploy these symbols is contingent on an absence of any cultural authority or Aboriginality that is /other/. Rather than marking respect or deference towards a people with a different history and culture, these gestures operate to create a space for bogus activities and for community conflict. I employ the notion of the absurd to identify the meaninglessness evident in particular events in Western Sydney, where practices and symbols are being violently leached of meaning and the fundamental arbitrariness of social life becomes chillingly apparent. The same phenomena, I will suggest, are apparent in the north, and are relevant to recent discussions of policy.