Darkness Subverted

The discourse of "self" and "other" on which the classic horror novel was based was quickly applied to the circumstances of the colonial situation and projected onto the relationship between the colonial master and the colonial subject. Contemporary black Australian artists take on this colonial shower discourse, tear it to pieces through their sharp perspective and finally transform it into a discourse of "Aboriginal Gothic". The present study develops the theoretical foundations of "Aboriginal Gothic" and uses the term thus concretized, to analyze novels by Vivienne Cleven, Mudrooroo, Kim Scott, Sam Watson and Alexis Wright as well as films by Beck Cole and Tracey Moffatt. The focus of the study is the extent to which the traditional European shower discourse is interspersed with elements of indigenous Australian culture in order to portray the current situation of Australian Aborigines and to describe a recovered cultural identity.