From Oodgeroo Noonuccal to Alexis Wright: Postcolonial reading of Australian Indigenous literature in China, 1988–2018

ABSTRACT

This article examines the scholarly analysis of Australian Indigenous literature in China from 1988 to 2018, a period that saw increasing academic interest in this genre among Chinese scholars. These analyses mostly (but not exclusively) draw on postcolonial theories. Postcolonial criticism in China first manifested through Third World theory but has recently been replaced by multicultural theory. The article will discuss how Third World theory and multicultural theory facilitate a positioning that aims to subvert western dominance and yet unwittingly inscribes uncontested binaries between east and west, black and white, colonized and colonizer. By focusing on the “postcolonial” readings of writers like Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Alexis Wright in the Chinese context, the article suggests the dichotomized paradigm, which emerges from applications of these theories, precludes a critical and nuanced analysis of Indigenous literature and the complex postcolonial or settler colonial exigencies confronting Indigenous people. It argues that a more critical, non-essentialist approach is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian Indigenous literature
• postcolonial studies
• Chinese literary criticism
• Third World theory
• multicultural theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise specified, “China” in this article refers to Mainland China, excluding Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan because postcolonial studies in these three areas deal with disparate colonial histories and legacies.

2. These are Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013) and Tracker (2017), Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip (2018), Tara June Winch’s The Yield (2019), Tony Birch’s The White Girl (2020), and Adam Thompson’s Born into This (2021). In addition, Marie Munkara’s Every Secret Thing (2009) is being translated from English to Mongolian.

3. Indigenous authors such as Sally Morgan, Kim Scott, Doris Pilkington, and Bronwyn Bancroft (illustrator), are also widely known by Chinese critics and readers.

4. The search results from a Chinese online database, Zhongguo Zhiwang (CNKI), show that as of December 2020 there are 10 journal articles, 4 master’s theses, and 2 PhDs referencing Oodgeroo and her works, and 19 journal articles and 9 master’s theses on Alexis Wright and her novels. References in scholarly books, however, are not included in the CNKI.

5. Throughout this article the quotes originally in Chinese are translated by the author.

6. In review of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, Liu mentions the emergence of postcolonial criticism in Europe and the USA, with a brief reference to Said’s Orientalism (1978).

7. Criticism of Jameson’s (1986) “Third-World” essay may not have been widely known among Chinese scholars at a time when access to literature beyond China was limited. The Chinese translation of Ahmad’s influential critique appeared much later in Postcolonial Cultural Theory (1999) edited by Luo Gang and Liu Xiangyu.

8. The Fourth World refers to indigenous communities around the globe. This concept gained currency in 1975 at the inaugural meeting of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daozhi Xu

Dr Daozhi Xu is currently a research fellow in the Department of Media, Communication, Creative Arts, Literature, and Language at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She graduated from Minzu University of China (formerly known as the Central University for Nationalities) and Renmin University of China. She completed her PhD at the University of Hong Kong where she is now an adjunct assistant professor. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, cultural theory, Indigenous literature, Asian Australian literature, children’s literature, race and ethnicity, and settler colonialism. Her Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children’s Literature (2018) won the Australia–China Council’s Biennial Australian Studies in China Book Prize. She has published in Journal of Australian Studies, Australian Aboriginal Studies, JASAL: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, and Antipodes. She is secretary of the International Australian Studies Association.