Saturday Night Fever

Good evening.
Some of you may be aware of the Saturday Night Fever that hits me occasionally. There have been emails. I hope there haven't been tears... Fortunately there is yet to be an AVO.

Anyway, this evening I am being more sensible than that. I have, however, been struck with some incorriguble mental knots which have made me occasionally unable to get much wordage done at all, and that shits me. I resolved, to write.

This next paragraph is what happens when four years of uni resolve to 'just write'. I will decide in the morning whether it is too ranty to be marked.

Aboriginal perspectives can also be viewed within an ['idealist'] tradition. The emphasis on accuracy which we have discussed – irrespective of its source – needs to be considered in the same way. Clinging to the superior accuracy of an Aboriginal perspective is not a form of resistance against White political authority. Perspectives like Phillips', or Mycak's (in []) need to be viewed not as a reversal of power, but as an appropriation of the position of authority which reinforces the system of power upon which inequality is dependent. Fanon's [] provides a powerfully lucid perspective on the dangers of appropriating the methods and structures of power which have been enforced by a colonial authority. He argues that an appropriation that retains the same power structures – even if they are exercised by previously unpriveleged social groups - is a recreation of oppression, and that the necessary paths of resistance need to involve a reconstruction of social relations which is not dependent upon systems of oppression. Arguments for the superiority of Aboriginal perspectives which are grounded in a basis of truth and authority reinforce the distinction between Aboriginal and White interests which is the basis upon which White authority is enforced. It will, moreover, only ever be possible to re-organise authority within small pockets of resistance []; power is hegemonic [], and a retension of the structures of White authority will retain the power attendent with the “knitted togetherness” [said] of White discourse. Opposition is a war, in other words, that Aboriginal writers cannot win.