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

Authors

  • Eva Rask Knudsen

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The article reviews the controversial Mudrooroo Affair' with reference to unpublished work by Mudrooroo in which he comments on the public debate about his rights to define himself as Aboriginal and, by extension, have his work credited as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.

Author Biography

Eva Rask Knudsen

EVA RASK KNUDSEN is an Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Globalisation Studies at Copenhagen University. She has published widely on Aboriginal issues, including Mudrooroo's work, and is the author of the monograph The Circle and the Spiral—A Study of Australian Aboriginal and New ZeolandMoori Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2004).

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Published

2016-01-17