The power of the personal: situating Aboriginal memoir in the Indigenous public sphere and as a mode of public intellectual intervention

Abstract

Memoir is not routinely considered a part of media practice. However, as a literary form produced for reading publics that express cultural identities, it can be considered a part of the Indigenous public sphere, which has been theorised as a counter-public of resistance and a site of cultural renegotiation of ideas about Indigeneity. Through an analysis of a selection of Indigenous memoir published during the 1980s, it is argued that these texts operated as a version of Edward Said’s public intellectualism by exposing the oppression of the inherited and unexamined binaries and regimes of truth that produce and perpetuate the conditions of inequality and injustice. As the authors recalled lives of suffering, their memories provided alternative narratives that challenged the silences of Australia’s official history, which sustained racist attitudes and identities and cast the Indigenous Public Sphere as a site of contested historiography.