Claiming Space
Aboriginal (Re)mappings of Contemporary Australia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17824883 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justine Seran (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Angles (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2274-2042 • E-ISSN: 2274-2042 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition Journals (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/16307 |
| OpenAlex | W7154593498 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Contemporary Indigenous-authored texts are often read as counter-narratives seeking to redress erroneous and oppressive representations of themselves in white-authored texts. Similarly, Indigenous narratives concerned with place and reclaiming the land lost to colonisation can be read as counter-mapping exercises, insofar as they engage not only with representations of space and the territory itself, but also question the very legitimacy of colonial cartography and therefore settler presence and ways of constructing knowledge about place. This paper engages with the Australian Aboriginal notion of “country” and its relationship with language, particularly in Alexis Wright’s 2006 award-winning novel Carpentaria, set in the eponymous Gulf of Carpentaria in far-north Queensland. Carpentaria tells the story of the Aboriginal Pricklebush people and their relationship with Uptown, the white zone of the fictional town of Desperance, and the Gurrfurrit mine. I argue that Wright is concerned with the way language is used in contemporary Australia to (re)inscribe Aboriginal presence onto the land and overwrite colonial inscriptions through the renaming of colonised places, the articulation of spiritual spaces such as the Dreaming, as well as the remapping of Indigenous bodies and languages as textual spaces. Indeed, Aboriginal writing itself can be likened to a frontier zone along which lies, on one side of the border, literacy, theory, materiality, and history; and on the other side, orality, experience, performance, and myth. Beyond stereotypical binaries, Wright writes from this frontier zone that blurs the border between the margin and centre of postcolonial discourse and complicates the position of the white reader in relation to space(s). Drawing from postcolonial theories of language, territory, and embodiment, I examine how Wright addresses the tensions between local traditions and rampant globalisation to illustrate the ongoing struggle for Indigenous mapping systems to overwrite external and internal colonial cartography, from natural features such as rivers in the Gulf, to sacred spaces like the Dreaming, and even the inner landscape of the reader who attempts to situate themselves within the story and orientate themselves with Wright’s words. As a response to colonial cartography, I examine “unsettlement” as particularly apt to describe the contemporary thrust of Aboriginal writing in Australia, where the very legitimacy of the settler state is threatened by official acknowledgements of the illegality of colonisation, as well as previous and ongoing ownership of the land by Indigenous people
Aotearoa · Carpentaria · Colonialism · Indigenous · Legitimacy · Narrative · Naturalisation · Redress · Wright · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |