Turning Subjects into Objects and Objects into Subjects: Collecting Human Remains on the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    He’s taking the bones now, taking the bones. He reaches into the hollow of a crevice; the rear of his trousers, protruding towards the camera, is stained with channels of sweat. Turning to face us, he unwraps a mandible from a blackened shred of rag. Bespectacled, and with lips pursed beneath a trim moustache, his officer’s deportment is upset by a slash of blue headband that gives him a piratical craziness. He adds the jaw to a wooden crate already full of arm and leg bones, butted up against a skull. The guts of this narrative—if ‘guts’ is quite the word when we are dealing with bodies so fleshless—hinge on this and other kindred events.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationCirculating Cultures: Exchanges of Australian Indigenous Music, Dance and Media
    EditorsAmanda Harris
    Place of PublicationCanberra
    PublisherANU E Press
    Pages129-169pp
    Volume1
    Edition1
    ISBN (Print)9781925022193
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

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