Authors
Abraham Bradfield
Publication date
2018
Institution
UNSW Sydney
Description
Throughout this thesis, I make a case for decolonising consciousness as a reflexive orientation that reforms the ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous life-worlds are navigated and mutually apprehended in a settler colonial context. By engaging Indigenous artworks as my trigger for a dialogic encounter between Indigenous and non-Indigenous presences, I propose that Indigenous epistemologies and accounts of lived experiences present opportunities for non-Indigenous populations to enter new habits of thought that are instrumental to attaining a decolonising consciousness. This consciousness is a vitally important mode of being as it exposes the conditions that contribute to power imbalances that arise from privileging Eurocentric epistemologies in colonial contexts and encourages new approaches to understanding socio-cultural difference. In the context of this study, art is both a method and methodology, which allows me, as the researcher, to mediate across the different epistemologies, ontologies, and axiologies of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. The West Darling region of New South Wales is a place, like many in Australia, where Aboriginal identities are negotiated, challenged, and affirmed in relation and opposition to the prevailing settler colonial presence, manifest in different cultures and epistemologies. In this study I consider how Eurocentric and Indigenous epistemologies clash and compete with one another, creating contested spaces where the conditions of a continuing coloniality are exposed. I assert that from the exposure, contextualisation, and reflexive analysis of contested ontologies an agonistic …
Total citations
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