Publication Details
Turcotte, G. (2008). Spectrality in indigenous women’s cinema: Tracey Moffatt and Beck Cole. Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 43(1), 7–21. doi: 10.1177/0021989407087822
Abstract
This paper addresses two recent Aboriginal ghost stories produced by Aboriginal fi lm-makers Tracey Moffatt (beDevil) and Beck Cole (Plains Empty), in order to examine the relationship of these fi lms to a type of spectral rewriting of the Australian nation state. This paper examines the role of spectrality as a revisionist process that exorcizes, but also celebrates, the ghosts that underpin and/or undermine narratives of belonging and place and investigates the dynamic potential of Indigenous fi lm, not so much as a device that eradicates colonial encounters and their postcolonial legacy, but as texts that unsettle and contest, that empower and initiate debate by way of dismantling, or at least diminishing, dominant representations of Indigenous identities.
Keywords
Peer-reviewed, Aboriginal film-makers, Australia, Tracey Moffatt, Beck Cole, ghost stories, spectrality, rewriting majority narratives
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