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Postcolonial bildungsroman: indigenous subjects and identity-formation Bradford, Clare 2007, Postcolonial bildungsroman: indigenous subjects and identity-formation, Waiguo wenxue yanjiu, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 10-18. Title Postcolonial bildungsroman: indigenous subjects and identity-formation Author(s) Bradford, Clare Journal name Waiguo wenxue yanjiu Volume number 29 Issue number 6 Start page 10 End page 18 Publisher Huazhong Shifan Daxue Place of publication China Publication date 2007-12 ISSN 1003-7519 Summary In the bildungsroman as it has conventionally been defined, individuals attain self-actualisation through a series of experiences whereby they accommodate their individuality to a social order.  Protagonists negotiate their transition from childhood to young-adulthood by way of educative experiences, trials of various kinds, and a search for identity, which is generally formulated as a fixed or stable essence which they must discover or accept.  In this paper I focus on two examples of bildungsroman by Indigenous Canadian and Australian authors: Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash (1985),and Richard J. Frankland’s Digger J. Jones (2007).  Both novels feature male protagonists whose stories play out against the background of Indigenous activism in the 1960s.  As they track the identity-formation of their protagonists, the two novels deconstruct simple or fixed ideas of national identity by pointing to the complex cross-cultural relationships which have characterised settler societies.  At the same time,these novels dramatise the power of socialising practices which promote white superiority and position Indigenous peoples as supplicants or victims.  Both novels draw on what Paul Havemann terms the "new politics of identity and cultural recognition" which characterise contemporary Indigenous activism, re-reading events and settings of the 1960s in the light of discourses of cultural recognition and self-determination. Language chi Field of Research 200599 Literary Studies not elsewhere classified Socio Economic Objective 970120 Expanding Knowledge in Language, Communication and Culture HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30007861 Document type: Journal Article Collection: School of Communication and Creative Arts Related Links Link Description Connect to published version (restricted access) Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Mon, 02 Feb 2009, 14:39:19 EST Tue, 23 Jun 2009, 16:16:27 EST Fri, 04 Jun 2010, 15:43:48 EST Wed, 04 Aug 2010, 13:55:51 EST Fri, 06 Aug 2010, 07:55:24 EST Fri, 04 Nov 2011, 10:26:49 EST Fri, 04 Nov 2011, 10:28:46 EST Mon, 29 Apr 2013, 14:26:59 EST Filtered Full Access Statistics: 914 Abstract Views  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Mon, 29 Sep 2008, 08:56:55 EST

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