Summary: | This paper is based on the 11th annual Doireann MacDermott public lecture presented at
the Universitat de Barcelona in November, 2010. It is a critique of discourses and
representations in Australian society, and indeed, embedded in all western societies (and
many non-western societies I suspect) which support and reinforce artificial binary
oppositions which make up social structures and institutions. Binary oppositions
reinforce oppositional power dynamics, making one term positive and the other
negative, not recognizing categories in-between. Linguistically, for example, the terms
‘Indigenous’ and ‘non-Indigenous’ articulate a false dichotomy between people who,
empirically, are not two discrete groups, but rather, multiple groups within each
category which interact within and between groups in complex and fluid engagements.
The discourses and representations I discuss in this paper articulate imaginary binary
oppositions out of social processes and identities which are, in fact, very similar.
However, because these discourses and representations are constructed by different
social groups with unequal power relationships they are treated as opposites, one with a
higher value than the other. In this paper I am primarily concerned with history and
myth, and in two related ‘stories’, the Lachlan Macquarie story, classified as history
because it is primarily written and ‘belongs’ to the dominant Australian society, and the
Maria Locke story, classified as myth because it is primarily oral, and explains the
emergence and characteristics of a group of Aboriginal people who claim traditional
Aboriginal ownership of a large part of what is today called Sydney.
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