الفهرس 
Cultural Resistance: Domination and StruggleOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Although the Australian Aborigines have lived in Australia for 70,000 years, the image imposed on them by the white settlers condemns them to endless savagery. History, standing in the position of the whites recognizes the settlers’ contribution to the development of Australia, but overlooks the negative aspects which the Aborigines were forced to endure. The settlers ignored the concepts of land ownership and set policies to assimilate the Aborigines and integrate them into the white culture. Consequently, the contact between the whites and the Aborigines entails conflict and resistance.
Against this background, Australian Aboriginal drama has attempted to establish and immortalize the legacy of traditional indigenous culture. Although Australian Aboriginal drama has been of much interest in the last decade, its critical analysis is still limited especially in relation to the concept of resistance in a settler colonial society. Critics, more or less, have focused on the thematic approach to drama. In addition to this, violence as a counter hegemonic strategy practiced by the colonized has not been highlighted; only the colonizer’s violence has been the object of focus. Despite being central to the discourse of post colonialism, the concept of resistance has received limited theatrical examinations in Australian Aboriginal drama.
Resistance in a settler colonial society is a continuous and prolonged process of self-recognition. Resistance has several forms and ways of expression in a text, one of which is the cultural. It reflects the manipulation of theatrical devices like storytelling, music, dances, dream visions and myth. The Aborigines were geographically assimilated and dispossessed of their families, lands, and languages. Their integration into the white society was expected to bring a new civilized code of living. However, it has brought a feeling of alienation and degradation which necessitates the revival of their fading culture. Another significant resistance force is the Aborigines’ strong connection to the land which was stolen by force. In this case, the land has been presented in the dramatic performance either by direct reference or indexically signified through symbols. The stage thus becomes a free and debatable ground for self-expression with no boundaries or geographical limits. This lends the characters dominance over a seized territory.
Of particular reference to the land comes the concept of language. Under the suppression of the colonizers, the Aborigines were forbidden to speak their native language. Therefore, the new stolen generation had little chances to learn their ancestral language. The loss of language thus leads to the loss of names, oral history and of connection to the land. Since the colonizers’ language has assumed a position of dominance, a decolonizing strategy thus entails its dismantling through the centralizing of the Aboriginal language as part of the culture. The employment of storytelling and memory has also led to a remapping of the colonial space into places that can be inhabited.
Resistance could also be triggered through violence. As a form of ‘othering’ within society, the hegemonic practices of the white settlers have caused severe violence to the natives. Far more damaging was the separation of the Stolen Generations from their families to be raised in British adopting institutions. Adding insult to injury, the institutions have de-authorized the Aboriginal language leading to the eradication of the Aboriginal spiritual values and beliefs. Thus, violence does not only require the use of physical force but also indicates social and psychological degradation. This is dramatized through theatricalising poverty, alcoholism, criminal injustice, insecurity and gender inequality. Therefore, the natives’ reaction to violence could also be defined both verbally and non-verbally. More explicitly, the signification of words coupled with the force of the body language forms a counter hegemonic attack that supersedes actual violence.
To avoid the phase of prolonged conflict in a settler colonial society, reconciliation is a negotiable aspect in the text. Literally, the term means the coming together of both sides of the binary division, but practically it entails the process of overcoming racism and granting the Aborigines their basic rights. The term reconciliation was first used in Australia in the 1990s and followed by the establishment of The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation which becomes known since 2000 as Reconciliation Australia. The analysis is expected to examine the nature of reconciliation in the plays as a futuristic necessity.
This study brings into focus the efforts made by two Australian Aboriginal dramatists, Jack Davis and Jane Harrison, in dramatizing the Aboriginal experience. It also highlights their attempts in portraying resistance as a fundamental feature in a settler colonial society. To the contention of the research, an insightful exploration of the chosen Aboriginal plays highlights the elements of resistance, which the subjugated Aboriginal community manipulated as a counter hegemonic strategy. This attempt has not been given due consideration in the critical literary analysis.
The scope of the research is limited to six plays: Jack Davis’ No Sugar (1986), The Dreamers (1983), Honey Spot (1985), Moorli and the Leprechaun (1994) as well as Jane Harrison’s Stolen (1998) and Rainbow’s End (2005). The two playwrights belong to two generations of the Aboriginal dramatists: whereas Jack Davis represents the first wave, Jane Harrison belongs to the second wave. Their plays have been selected to pinpoint the theatrical representation of the subjugated Aborigines in a postcolonial Australian community. The plays examined in each chapter of this study show the gradual transformation from extreme resistance into the premises of reconciliation.
The methodological framework of this study integrates postcolonial literary criticism with Jungian psychology and postcolonial ecocriticism. The synthesis of past and present has lent the characters and the landscape insightful layers of analysis which have elevated the primitive past from a mere rendering of history into a platform for cultural resistance. The thorough analysis of theatrical techniques like storytelling, dances as well as verbal and nonverbal means of communication has supplemented profound connotations regarding the Aborigines’ connection to the land and its impact on their psychological make up. In this process, resistance has also led to a remapping of the colonial space which, in relation to postcolonial criticism and ecocriticism, is necessary for healing. The value of Jungian psycho- analysis is the revival of the Aboriginal Dreaming by providing the symbolic references of the Dreaming stories as well as the landscape. Having confirmed that the Aboriginal psyche possesses a numinous quality along with an endopsychic perception, the spirituality of the native culture provides the antithesis for the western ideology. Such spirituality permeating the Aboriginal primitive knowledge is no less important to ecological awareness than the modern western approach. The function of ecocriticism in relation to the Aboriginal primitive culture suffices the instinctiveness between man and nature, dismantling with this the supremacy of the individual. In this connection, the Aboriginal primitive experience is intrinsic, not only in its cultural manifestations, but in the conceptual and spiritual ramifications it provides for a better Australian future.
This thesis is divided into an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The introduction introduces the two dramatists, the literature review, the hypothesis of the thesis and the methodological framework as well as a brief summary of the ideas explored in each chapter. Chapter one examines the concept of resistance in relation to the Aboriginal culture in two plays: Davis’ The Dreamers, and Harrison’s Rainbow’s End. There are two histories in the plays; one before the settlers’ arrival and the other when they landed and attempted to centralize their culture and marginalize the others. As a result, the past being integrated into the present becomes the material for resistance to subvert the decline of the Aboriginal language and civilization. This is technically and structurally analyzed through the dramatic manipulation of setting, dialogue, language and characters as well as devices like storytelling, dreams, and myth. Chapter two explores the nature of violence as a counter hegemonic attack in the plays under examination: Jack Davis’s No Sugar and Jane Harrison’s Stolen, with a particular focus on the dilemma of the stolen generation. Violence does not only entail the use of physical force but also the indications of social and psychological degradation dramatized through poverty, alcoholism, criminal injustice, insecurity and gender inequality. The natives’ reaction to violence could be defined in the text both verbally and non-verbally. In a settler colonial society where both groups are expected to survive together, reconciliation becomes crucial. The analysis of the plays in this chapter, Davis’ Honey Spot and Moorli and The Leprechaun as well as Harrison’s Rainbow’s End, brings into focus a futuristic vision where racism could be transcended. The conclusion sums up the findings of this research and recommends further researches.
The study of the Aboriginal theatrical representation, as exemplified in the selected plays, has highlighted its metonymic value which extends the limitations of the discourse to alter the real Australian community. Since the institutionalization of reconciliation through political organizations and symbolic acts of apology questions the validity of these attempts to foster healing, the prospect of transformation lies in translating the artistic aesthetic into real life. Therefore, the value of Jack Davis and Jane Harrison’s Aboriginal plays is manifested in the touring of the live performances throughout Australia along with several international performances in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. This national and international recognition for their plays has illustrated the strength of Aboriginal identity along with its revival of the Aboriginal culture.