Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Intimate Australia: Body/Landscape Journals & The Paradox Of Belonging, Lisa Slater

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Early in Body/Landscape Journals Margaret Somerville poses the question '[h]ow do I represent myself and the landscape?'. Throughout the heterogeneous textual topography that is Body/Landscape Journals she attempts to represent, indeed perform, her embodied relationship to place. As a historian, Somerville has collaborated with Aboriginal women to record their oral histories. These collaborative and intimate working processes have seemingly realigned Somerville's desires and writing practices toward Aboriginality. Body/Landscape Journals is an exploration and working through of her desire to write an embodied sense of belonging in Australia. Somerville suggests, citing Elizabeth Ferrier, that 'colonisation is primarily a spatial conquest and …