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Writing Australian UnsettlementOpen Secrets

Writing Australian Unsettlement: Open Secrets [The British were not the first travellers to learn the Aboriginal secret of the land that became Australia. The Dutch and the French had already been there (Dyer 2). Trade had also been going on between Aboriginal people and the Macassans (of what is now Indonesia) before the British arrived, and settlement began in earnest (Walsh 6). The country soon became, however, Britain’s dirty secret: of the disposal of its criminals (or poor, or Irish) and treatment of the original inhabitants. This secret is what we might call an “open secret,” a concept theorized by D. A. Miller in The Novel and the Police. In a chapter titled “Open Secrets, Open Subjects,” he asks “Can the game of secrecy ever be thrown in?” (220). This is a crucial question for unsettlement, leading to further questions: whose secrets are deemed the most important, for example? Barthes considers that all writing “holds the threat of a secret”: “Writing…is always rooted in something beyond language, it develops like a seed, not like a line, it… holds the threat of a secret, it is an anticommunication” (Writing 20).] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Writing Australian UnsettlementOpen Secrets

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2015
ISBN
978-1-349-58120-7
Pages
85 –106
DOI
10.1057/9781137465412_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The British were not the first travellers to learn the Aboriginal secret of the land that became Australia. The Dutch and the French had already been there (Dyer 2). Trade had also been going on between Aboriginal people and the Macassans (of what is now Indonesia) before the British arrived, and settlement began in earnest (Walsh 6). The country soon became, however, Britain’s dirty secret: of the disposal of its criminals (or poor, or Irish) and treatment of the original inhabitants. This secret is what we might call an “open secret,” a concept theorized by D. A. Miller in The Novel and the Police. In a chapter titled “Open Secrets, Open Subjects,” he asks “Can the game of secrecy ever be thrown in?” (220). This is a crucial question for unsettlement, leading to further questions: whose secrets are deemed the most important, for example? Barthes considers that all writing “holds the threat of a secret”: “Writing…is always rooted in something beyond language, it develops like a seed, not like a line, it… holds the threat of a secret, it is an anticommunication” (Writing 20).]

Published: Dec 22, 2015

Keywords: Indigenous People; Aboriginal People; Aboriginal Literature; Oppressive Regime; Australian Literature

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