Aboriginal Affair(s): Reflections on Mudrooroo's Life and Work

Abstract

The article reviews the controversial Mudrooroo Affair' with reference to unpublished work by Mudrooroo in which he comments on the public debate about his rights to define himself as Aboriginal and, by extension, have his work credited as Aboriginal. Such work makes it pertinent to review Mudrooroo's creative output since 196 as literary experiments with life writing and to reconsider Mudrooroo's many literary performances' from this perspective. They are not only explorations of Aboriginal identity politics over the last five decades, but may also be seen as a far more personal investment in exploring Aboriginal identity through a progressively shifting but interrelated series of subjectivities that reflect the writer's own experience and inform his claim to Aboriginality.