RACIAL MIXTURES AND DISLOCATION: RECONFIGURING FRAGMENTATION IN KIM SCOTT’S BENANG

Abstract

Settler colonies within postcolonial spaces continue to expose a wide range of
thematic preoccupations that re-interrogate the colonial experience as an unbalanced
one. This paper aims to present how Aboriginal literature is visualised in the fiction
of Scott, serving as a medium to expose the extent to which racial mixtures lead to
the dislocation of the indigenes from their long-held culture and traditional beliefs.
This could be depicted in the ways in which the presentation of Australia as a “Terra
Nullius” endangered pre-colonial harmony that extends to a more refined
postcolonial discourse. Guided by Postcolonial theory and new historicism, this
study therefore probes into the confines of hybridity and cultural ambivalence as
significant facets in locating Aboriginal literature in Kim Scott’s Benang.