My dissertation employed intellectual historian Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics—which can be most broadly parsed as the political organization of life—to examine the way the lives of Aboriginal people were regulated and surveilled in relation to settler European norms. The study is a focused investigation into a topic with global ramifications: the governance of race and sexuality and the effect of such governance on the production of apparently inclusive cultural productions within the public spheres. I argue that the way in which subaltern peoples have been governed in the past and the way their cultures have been appropriated continue to be in the present is not extraneous to but rather formative of what is often misleadingly called “the” public sphere of dominant societies. In the second part, I analyze the legacies of this biopolitical moment and emphasize, particularly, the cultural politics of affect and trauma in relation to this (not quite) past. Authors addressed include: Xavier Herbert, P. R. Stephensen, Rex Ingamells, Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, and others. I also examine Australian Aboriginal policy texts througout the twentieth century up to the "Bringing Them Home" Report (1997).

This thesis analyzes how Afro-Caribbean poets writing in English appropriate language and use memory as a thematic tool to articulate postcolonial identities. The present study is organized in three parts: the first part provides the necessary theoretical background regarding postcolonial theory, the politics of hybridity and resistance / the second part examines poets&rsquo / struggles over language and social forms of poetry / the third part deals with the site of memory as a revisionary tool in rewriting history poetically, binding pre-colonial and colonial identities, and healing the fractured psyches of postcolonial societies. The struggle over language and the use of memory enable the Afro-Caribbean poet to reconfigure individual and collective identities. For these purposes, Grace Nichols&rsquo / i is a long memoried woman (1983), Edward Kamau Brathwaite&rsquo / s X/Self (1987) and Linton Kwesi Johnson&rsquo / s Tings&rsquo / an Times (1991) will be analyzed.

Black Mourning: Readings of Loss, Desire and Racial Identification explores a diverse archive of African American literary and cultural texts in order to reveal loss as a necessary condition of racial identification. To support this assertion, this study broaches a theoretical gap that persists between black literary and cultural studies and revisionist approaches to psychoanalytic theory. Using the lens of trauma theory, Black Mourning reframes cultural memory and black subjectivity in ways that supplant performances of racial authenticity with an affective politics. Black expressive culture and performance aesthetics undergird this critical model. Chapter One "Jean Toomer's Cane and the Erotics of Mourning" configures cultural memory in relation to the formation of modern blackness. Chapter Two "'Nobody Knows My Name': Ann Petry's The Street and Black Women’s Blues Protest" uses a blues aesthetic to access hidden texts of black female sexual trauma. Chapter Three "The Queerness of Blackness: Marlon Riggs's Black Is … Black Ain't" looks at embodied trauma as an a foundation for reimagining black collectivity. The fourth chapter "Archiving Blackness: Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Post-Soul Aesthetics" moves beyond fixed narratives of race to conceptualize innovative ways of archiving blackness. / text

This dissertation discusses Italy’s bestselling author Andrea Camilleri’s series of Montalbano crime novels. It poses the question of what makes Camilleri’s series so successful in the contemporary literary marketplace and if his success is a representation of Italian culture (and by extension, the postmodern or post-postmodern Italian literary scene). This dissertation deals with Camilleri and his success from a narrative literary point of view. It examines Camilleri’s work from several different perspectives, placing it within the vaster context of Italian literature while also taking a meticulous look at Camilleri as the author who has managed to free a literary genre from its previous confines and opened new boundaries for Italian literature. The dissertation demonstrates how Andrea Camilleri provides a "security blanket" for his readers: by including many elements of a common cultural memory, he keeps his readers safely anchored. These elements include a long list of recurring characters that function almost like the chorus in a Greek play. Certain thematic elements, such as Montalbano’s perpetual search for Justice, and his struggle to combine the written law with the law of men are a topoi of Western literature, as are the antonyms eros/thanatos as well as food and death, which Camilleri heavily employs. The Sicilian author manages to root his work deeply within a literary tradition through direct citations, and explicit and implicit references to the canon, but also breaks new ground and manages to move Italian literature a step forward. In front of this apparently nostalgic background, the Sicilian author plays with and invents many new components in his works, satisfying thus the Italian need for the "known" with the pleasure of a discovery of the "unknown" or the "new", which is a major reason for his success. Camilleri participates in a (post)modern shift of horizons, but does not radically challenge his reader’s "expectations". His series of Montalbano mysteries presents literature of a high level that almost by chance becomes part of an "immediate" literary canon, but does not set out with the ambition to become part of "the canon". / Romance Languages and Literatures

The migration of thousands of Guatemalan-Maya due to political violence and poverty since the 1970s led to the establishment of various diasporic communities throughout the United States. A frequent destination for the Maya is Los Angeles, California, where they are confronted with pressure to adapt within an environment that is predominately Latino/Hispanic. Maya identity expressed through the use of traje (Maya clothing), language, literature and spirituality is challenged by Euro-American culture such as western style of dress and the practice of English which discriminates against these customs. These conditions are more severe for Maya children who face the difficulties in preserving their heritage as a result of institutions such as public education which socializes them into US culture and history. Despite the presence of many indigenous communities in Los Angeles, such as the Maya, Mixtecos and Zapotecs, indigenous identity is almost non-existent in many public spaces and institutions. Discrimination against the Maya by their compatriots and other Latinos coupled with high rates of undocumented immigration statuses have contributed to this invisibility. Some Maya parents view the lack of a strong indigenous identity among their children as problematic and the source of negative cultural qualities such as disrespect towards elders, violence, individualism and misbehavior. In this study, I seek to examine Maya identity and culture in Los Angeles. What does it mean to identify as Maya in Los Angeles? What are the consequences of doing so? How do Maya immigrants respond to discrimination and what implications does discrimination have for the ethnic identity formation of their children? Why has Maya identity survived in some children of Maya and not in others? I found that while some Maya immigrants have assimilated into the Latino community in response to racism and fear of deportation, others have adopted strategies such as the use of marimba to preserve Maya identity which also serve to deal with a life of displacement and exile. Maya identity among children is highly influenced by factors such as the educational system, class and their parent’s willingness and ability to transmit Maya culture. Thus, while some children of Maya have been able to preserve and express their identity through various channels such as music and language, others may be unaware of, ashamed by or apathetic toward their indigenous roots and history. / text

Residents of the region just north of the U.S.-Mexico border experience migration and smuggling activities through constantly changing found objects on the desert landscape--a pair of shoes neatly arranged on a trail; a cross hung in a tree; a can of food balanced on a rock. Consideration of some found objects as placed objects, set down with apparent care by travelers unseen and unmet, demonstrates how the objects uniquely inform the perceptions and practices of residents who find them. Such finders speculate about the lives and movements of others by utilizing the objects as metaphoric figures of practice, tools that uniquely but only partially help them bridge knowledge gaps among multiple constantly changing variables in their everyday lives. The finding-speculating dynamic confounds a direct and easy association of found items with trash, of migrants with threat, and of a border wall with hopelessness. Residents instead craft a sophisticated and practical cultural memory of place in a region that is inhabited differently by day than by night, where tragedy, grace, danger, and hope fuse in unexpected ways. The objects and events that erupt into rural border life inspire a poetics that matches the territory. In a landscape of uncertainty, placed objects secure and extend situational understandings beyond common conceptual frames of epidemic, normalized patterns of violence and collateral damage that are often considered necessary conditions of life in the region.

The Argentine landscape is marked by countless sites of remembrance of the 1976-1983 dictatorship drawn by human rights groups in Argentina, producing a seemingly infinite command to remember the violence of this period and the 30,000 who were disappeared. Though this landscape can seem chaotic, this impression discounts the context of loss on which it is constructed as well as the deeply affective and contested political issues that motivate its construction. This study thus maps the ways demands for human rights mobilized through public remembrance of the dictatorship articulate a continual learning to live with loss. Investigating the specificities of loss in Argentina, I explore how human rights claims are made in the name of the disappeared who, neither dead nor alive, are at once everywhere and nowhere. I draw largely from my conversations with members of human rights groups to illuminate how the demand for derechos humanos is articulated in particular ways to address present-day social injustices and to affirm the living’s relationship with the disappeared. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of public remembrance as a continual process of teaching and learning about the past that is intended to motivate the formation of a public committed to constructing a better present and future.

The Argentine landscape is marked by countless sites of remembrance of the 1976-1983 dictatorship drawn by human rights groups in Argentina, producing a seemingly infinite command to remember the violence of this period and the 30,000 who were disappeared. Though this landscape can seem chaotic, this impression discounts the context of loss on which it is constructed as well as the deeply affective and contested political issues that motivate its construction. This study thus maps the ways demands for human rights mobilized through public remembrance of the dictatorship articulate a continual learning to live with loss. Investigating the specificities of loss in Argentina, I explore how human rights claims are made in the name of the disappeared who, neither dead nor alive, are at once everywhere and nowhere. I draw largely from my conversations with members of human rights groups to illuminate how the demand for derechos humanos is articulated in particular ways to address present-day social injustices and to affirm the living’s relationship with the disappeared. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of public remembrance as a continual process of teaching and learning about the past that is intended to motivate the formation of a public committed to constructing a better present and future.

This thesis details the maintenance of Polish identities through acts of memory: the (re)production, transmission and reception of Polish cultural practices. The (re)productions and transmissions of Polish identity formations, and the acts of remembrance, are multifarious by nature, and I have examined them in two distinctly different settings ?? in public spheres in Poland, and in the private realms of Australian Polish diaspora. In this thesis, these research settings have been conceptualised as the conduits through which Polish identities are maintained. Polish identity is theorised using a constructivist approach; Polish identities are therefore positioned historically and geographically. Their performances are fluid: they move through time and across spaces. The active maintenance of Polish identity developed as a result of foreign occupations. The partitioning of Poland by the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and Russian Empires lasted 123 years. From 1795 to 1918 the Polish nation was expunged. Following a brief period of independence between World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII), Poland was again occupied by Nazi and Soviet regimes during WWII (1939-1945). The Soviet occupation continued after WWII with the Soviet-supported Polish government that lasted until 1989. Under occupation ?? particularly during WWII ?? Poland suffered events that have been indelibly imprinted within Polish cultural memory. The macabre nature of this era included the incursion of hegemonic regimes on political and everyday social life, as well as the atrocities for which it is well known. An important outcome of these occupations has been the division of discourses of Polishness, and their remembrances, into distinctly public and private spheres. These periods of foreign occupation brought various attempts to suppress and eliminate Polishness: the cultures and identifications of Polish people. Suppression particularly occurred in public spheres through the prohibition of the Polish language, and by investing the public memory landscape with ideologies that represented the new regimes. By repressing public commemorations of Polish cultural narratives, a new history was written at the expense of the Polish experience. There have been two primary responses to these repressions of Polishness. These responses initially developed during the partitioned period to ensure that Polish language and cultural practices were maintained. First, a narrative and tradition of resistance emerged in reaction to the Russian, Prussian and Austrian partitions. It was enacted through military participation in insurrections and through the production of patriotic Romantic Era cultural artefacts, both of which strengthened linkages to the Polish Catholic faith. Second, Polish cultural practices and language were safeguarded in the private spheres of home. It was in private settings, in Poland and within the diaspora in Australia, that memories and experiences of occupation were passed on and through generations. In Poland, such narratives were often maintained in resistance to those imposed by foreign occupiers and because of the inability to commemorate events of Poland??s macabre past in public. In Australia, identity maintenance has occurred to resist the dissolution of Polishness in a diasporic and multicultural environment. This thesis demonstrates the utility of studying cultural memories as a means of understanding how identity maintenance can occur in the face of adversities, such as the multiple foreign occupations that occurred in Poland, and in diaspora. Moreover, it exemplifies the diverse paths of identity maintenance in different contexts. This thesis shows that despite the distinctive character of both Polish public and private spheres, Polish identities have been informed, shaped and maintained through culturally-enacted memory (re)production. This process is exhibited in the present ?? in Poland and through the diaspora ?? and it occurred despite the repressive aims of various foreign occupiers.

This thesis details the maintenance of Polish identities through acts of memory: the (re)production, transmission and reception of Polish cultural practices. The (re)productions and transmissions of Polish identity formations, and the acts of remembrance, are multifarious by nature, and I have examined them in two distinctly different settings ?? in public spheres in Poland, and in the private realms of Australian Polish diaspora. In this thesis, these research settings have been conceptualised as the conduits through which Polish identities are maintained. Polish identity is theorised using a constructivist approach; Polish identities are therefore positioned historically and geographically. Their performances are fluid: they move through time and across spaces. The active maintenance of Polish identity developed as a result of foreign occupations. The partitioning of Poland by the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and Russian Empires lasted 123 years. From 1795 to 1918 the Polish nation was expunged. Following a brief period of independence between World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII), Poland was again occupied by Nazi and Soviet regimes during WWII (1939-1945). The Soviet occupation continued after WWII with the Soviet-supported Polish government that lasted until 1989. Under occupation ?? particularly during WWII ?? Poland suffered events that have been indelibly imprinted within Polish cultural memory. The macabre nature of this era included the incursion of hegemonic regimes on political and everyday social life, as well as the atrocities for which it is well known. An important outcome of these occupations has been the division of discourses of Polishness, and their remembrances, into distinctly public and private spheres. These periods of foreign occupation brought various attempts to suppress and eliminate Polishness: the cultures and identifications of Polish people. Suppression particularly occurred in public spheres through the prohibition of the Polish language, and by investing the public memory landscape with ideologies that represented the new regimes. By repressing public commemorations of Polish cultural narratives, a new history was written at the expense of the Polish experience. There have been two primary responses to these repressions of Polishness. These responses initially developed during the partitioned period to ensure that Polish language and cultural practices were maintained. First, a narrative and tradition of resistance emerged in reaction to the Russian, Prussian and Austrian partitions. It was enacted through military participation in insurrections and through the production of patriotic Romantic Era cultural artefacts, both of which strengthened linkages to the Polish Catholic faith. Second, Polish cultural practices and language were safeguarded in the private spheres of home. It was in private settings, in Poland and within the diaspora in Australia, that memories and experiences of occupation were passed on and through generations. In Poland, such narratives were often maintained in resistance to those imposed by foreign occupiers and because of the inability to commemorate events of Poland??s macabre past in public. In Australia, identity maintenance has occurred to resist the dissolution of Polishness in a diasporic and multicultural environment. This thesis demonstrates the utility of studying cultural memories as a means of understanding how identity maintenance can occur in the face of adversities, such as the multiple foreign occupations that occurred in Poland, and in diaspora. Moreover, it exemplifies the diverse paths of identity maintenance in different contexts. This thesis shows that despite the distinctive character of both Polish public and private spheres, Polish identities have been informed, shaped and maintained through culturally-enacted memory (re)production. This process is exhibited in the present ?? in Poland and through the diaspora ?? and it occurred despite the repressive aims of various foreign occupiers.