Resisting and Transgressing White Patriarchal Constructions of Race and Gender

• Main Author: Čerče, Danica
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: Australian Indigenous women’s poetry; postcolonialism; racialized and gendered violence; representation and resistance; transgenerational blood memory
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss42/6; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2067/viewcontent/KK_2042_2C_202023_206_20Regular_20section_20__20_C4_8Cer_C4_8De.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Until recently a marginalized voice in Australian literary studies, Australian Indigenous literature has gained an important role in the articulation of Indigenous peoples’ political thought. As one of the most frequent media of Indigenous Australians’ artistic expression, poetry presents a commanding exposé of the logic and hypocrisy of whiteness and a potent denunciation of the ongoing racialized and gendered violence in Australia. This essay is focused on the works of Romaine Moreton and Lisa Bellear, which is particularly powerful in addressing violence against Aboriginal women and girls. Framed by an interest in the radical potential of postcolonial literature to dismantle and reconstruct the Western historical accounts of modernity with its politics of knowledge production, the essay examines how the two poets intervene in the continuum of Indigenous Australians’ colonial subjectivity, while also drawing transnational connections.