Making and unmaking: The project of the colonial nation-state and the counter-discursive strategy of ethnonation in Kim Scott’s Benang

Abstract

Kim Scott’s 1999 novel Benang has often been read in terms of the anxieties raised by Australia’s Stolen Generation Report. However, this article argues that the novel is not a direct attempt to lay bare white Australia’s neurosis. Rather, the novel aims to interrogate the colonial discourse that formed the basis of the exploitative, white, monologic, modern nation. Benang also deals with the strategic cultural resistance and negotiating manoeuvrings of the Nyoongars seeking to establish their distinct identity and envision an “ethnonation” within a modern nation. Benang thus examines how simultaneous and contrary discourses of nation formation, one modern and the other ethnic, one hegemonic and the other performative, simultaneously make and unmake Australia. The representation of these two contesting nations in Benang is assessed here with reference to modern theories of nation and nationalism.