Identidade e dreamtime em Wild cat falling de Mudrooroo

Abstract

The current scenario of post-colonial literature is extremely diverse, with several examples of famous African, Canadian, Indian, Latin-American, Australian writers, all seeking to represent and often question their cultural identity. The list of authors who feature the negative or positive influences that their cultures suffered and suffer through the process of colonization to the present day is immeasurable, however, Australian literature is an exciting object for postcolonial studies due to its uniqueness. Australian Aboriginal writer Mudrooroo, for example, presents us with Wild cat falling (1965), a novel in which for the first time in the history of Australian literature the Aboriginal minority is represented as protagonist. The experiences selected by the author to represent the Aboriginal condition in contemporary Australia involve social exclusion and crime, but also the search for an identity. The objective of this study is to analyze the construction of Aboriginal identity in this novel, given largely by clashes between the protagonist, who recognizes himself as belonging to this ethnic group, and the whites with whom he lives in Australia today. Although these conflicting relationships are presented as an echo of the old colonial situation, some essentialisms are deconstructed in search of a transformed coexistence. The theme of the journey in search for ancestral values, especially through the Dreamtime phenomenon, around which the entire narrative is built, signals the fact that culture is “a source of identity,” raising “recent returns to it and to tradition” (SAID, 2011, p. 12). But Mudrooroo portrays this return by focusing on the processes of hybridity and cultural translation his protagonist goes through. The result is that the character feels more reinvigorated and reconciled with his cultural heritage at the end of the narrative, being ready to face what is going to happen to him next.