Abstract
This paper draws on research with Aboriginal women of the Central Australian desert who are living in the metropolitan centre of Adelaide 2000 km south of their homelands. It explores the complex conjunction of trauma and pleasure in situations of exile and hones in on the vital role of digital visual mediation in the creative work of making oneself at home in foreign circumstances. In exile, memory and digitisation of images, sounds and interactions enable distinctive socialities and ways of relating to places to be stretched across space. Yet other images are encountered as sites of contested identification and coercive governance. Separation from kin and country is intensely felt but also made bearable when their images are held in close company. In exploring these unsettling circumstances the paper reflects upon the uneven terrain of visual culture and the evolving place of the digital visual in research concerned with transformations in what it is to be human.
References
Altman, J., and M. Hinkson (eds.). 2007. Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia. Melbourne: Arena Publications.
Altman, J., and M. Hinkson (eds.). 2010. Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Altman, J., and M. Hinkson. 2012. Hope-Less Futures? Arena Magazine (118): 1–2.
Berger, J. 2005. Berger on Drawing, ed. Jim Savage, Cork: Occasional Press.
Berger, J., and J. Mohr. 1975. A Seventh Man. London: Verso.
Carter, P. 1996. The Lie of the Land. London: Faber and Faber.
Casey, E. 2009. Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hinkson, M. 2007. In the Name of the Child. In Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia, ed. J. Altman, and M. Hinkson, 1–14. Melbourne: Arena Publications.
Hinkson, M. 2010. Media Images and the Politics of Hope. In Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia, ed. J. Altman, and M. Hinkson, 229–247. Sydney: UNSW Press.
McGregor, K., and T. Dougherty. 2011. Yuendumu ‘Refugees’ now Facing Eviction from Adelaide Parklands’ News.com.au, March 10 2011. Available http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/yuendumu-refugees-now-facing-eviction-from-adelaide-parklands/news-story/77addfe181807aace50bd17c3a2cf705?sv=51c445a6f1c530da67be5b2c6abe7c99. Accessed 11 Apr 2017.
Mirzoeff, N. 2011. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Mitchell, W.J.T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Naficy, H. 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Papastergiadis, N. 1993. Modernity as Exile: The Stranger in John Berger’s Writing. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sullivan, P. 2016. New Map, Old Roads. Inside Story, September 2, available at: http://insidestory.org.au/new-map-old-roads. Accessed 7 Nov 2016.
Vigh, H. 2009. Motion Squared: A Second Look at the Concept of Social Navigation. Anthropological Theory 9 (4): 419–438.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hinkson, M. (2017). At the Edges of the Visual Culture of Exile: A Glimpse from South Australia. In: Gómez Cruz, E., Sumartojo, S., Pink, S. (eds) Refiguring Techniques in Digital Visual Research. Digital Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61222-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61222-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61221-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61222-5
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)