Forced Belonging: The Indictment of Colonization in Australia in the Poetry of Romaine Moreton and Alf Taylor

Abstract

Drawing on George Levine and Hillis Miller among other contemporary theorists discussing the changed conception of ＂what constitutes the literary＂ and the ＂assimilation of literature to ideology,＂ Letitia Guran notes that works of art are able to produce critical disruptions and help to create a desirable community. In light of these views, this article aims to show that the verse of Romaine Moreton and Alf Taylor, in its overt objection to exclusion, dispossession, and subordination of Australian indigenous peoples, mobilizes various strategies to encourage national self-reflection and destabilize the assumptions about the authority and entitlement of the white colonizers.