Law controls our everyday. It regulates our lives. It tells us what is and is not acceptable behaviour, it confers and protects our rights, and it punishes us for our indiscretions. But law does much more than this. It creates normative standards which shape the way people are treated and the way that we relate to each other and to society generally. The law defines people. It constructs identity. And it creates the other. This is a legacy of positivisms insistence on identifying that which is inside law, and so accorded legitimacy, and that which is not. That which does not conform to laws constructed standards and values is identified as other and marginalised and silenced. In this thesis, I demonstrate the way that the law constructs other, in particular, the Aboriginal other. I consider the way that Aborigines have been defined by the law to show the consequences that this has had for Aboriginal people beyond the purely legal. I argue that laws construction of Aboriginality has contributed to the marginalisation of Aboriginal people and their exclusion from many aspects of the legal and the social, and that it has silenced them within the dominant domain, denying them the ability to challenge the wrongs perpetrated against them. I examine these issues through the medium of literature. I argue that literatures contribution to exposing, critiquing and challenging laws construction of other is invaluable. It informs the reader about the way that the law has treated Aboriginal people and, more generally, about the structures and limitations of our positivist legal system. It thereby contributes to the communitys perception and understanding of the way the law works, and the impact that it has on the lives of its subjects. Perhaps most importantly, it also educates towards social change and reform.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/222239 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | N.Sidebotham@murdoch.edu.au, Naomi Sidebotham |
| Publisher | Murdoch University |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.murdoch.edu.au/goto/CopyrightNotice, Copyright Naomi Sidebotham |
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