Valetudo: a cultural anti-venom approach

• In Event: COMPOSTING Feminisms and Environmental Humanities 1: Decolonising Naturecultures

Abstract

Known as the "citizenship seven" case, in 2017 the Australian High Court ruled many Australian MPs ineligible to sit in parliament, this unfolding citizenship crisis allowed for radical constructions of (Australian) subjectivities to emerge. Many more citizens now can more fully understand the nationhood as a precarious, contested state, which also presents fresh opportunities to develop a more critical transnational consciousness. With this in mind, this paper considers the particular Tasmanian predicament, drawing upon case studies of cultural manifestations that have attempted to address the hackneyed post-colonial scenario of the Island state (Tasmania). That is, Tasmanian Aboriginal politics - the ongoing dispute about who actually qualifies as and who determines (Palawa) aboriginality. Reaching beyond politics, this inquiry instead points to how a deeper engagement with such issues of nationality can occur through the examination of cultural practices. This analysis reflects on the problems and possibilities of the 'postcolonial archive' (Shetty and Bellamy 2000, after Spivak 1988), a concept that has yet to be widely taken up in STS in regard to twenty-first century artforms and culture. Case studies examine specific cultural instances that have either manifested and triggered debates, for instance; the Aunty Ida West Healing Garden at Wybalenna on Flinders Island in Bass Strait (2004), Aboriginal DNA Test performance installation (2014) at the Museum of New and Old Art, MangoGate (2017) among others. Drawing upon and adding to experimental ethnography, theory, and STS Methods suggested by Fisher (2018), this paper sheds an array of critical viewpoints allowing us to speculate future possibilities.

Author

• Nancy Mauro-Flude, RMIT