Discursive Belonging: Surviving Narrative in Migrant Oral History

Bryoni Trezise

doi:10.5130/csr.v17i2.1732

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Published: Mar 30, 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v17i2.1732

Keywords:

Migrant, cultural memory, oral history, performative writing, survival narrative, Australia

Bryoni Trezise

University of New South Wales

Abstract

This article examines the performativity of textual remnants and oral histories in constituting the cultural identity of migrants in Australia, specifically the “non-British” New Australian migrant, circa 1950. It specifically analyses the rhetorical construction of New Australians in one oral history collection held within the State Library of New South Wales, to argue that migrants to Australia become caught within an impossible politics of discursive belonging. In this, the migrant must rely upon culturally acceptable narratives of survival in order to access representational visibility, at the same time as they attempt the survival of these normative narratives themselves. I use a performative writing methodology to restage the contingency of what can be understood as a national history of migrant identity in Australia.

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 2 (2011): Disciplining Innovation: New Pedagogies in Cultural Studies

Section

Articles (Peer Reviewed)

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Author Biography

Bryoni Trezise, University of New South Wales

Bryoni Trezise lectures in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of NSW. Her research investigates how contemporary memory operates discursively around and affectively though bodies, and is published in Australian Feminist Law Review, Performance Research and a co-edited Performance Paradigm double issue titled ‘After Effects: Performing the Ends of Memory’.

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Article Details

Bryoni Trezise, University of New South Wales