The Le Souëf box: Reflections on imperial nostalgia, material culture and exhibitionary practice in colonial Victoria
| Autor: | Penelope Edmonds |
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| Rok vydání: | 2006 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Australian Historical Studies. 37:117-139 |
| ISSN: | 1940-5049 1031-461X |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10314610608601207 |
| Popis: | The Le Souef box, a decorated chest containing a set of miniaturised Aboriginal weapons, was made by Albert and Caroline Le Souef a decade after the frontier period in the colonial state of Victoria, Australia. Invested with many key concerns of the nineteenth century's apprehension and representation of Australian Aboriginal peoples, this complex composite object of images, text and diminutive objects is animated by many cultural and scientific narratives of the era, including ethnography, typology, museology, miniaturisation and the fetishisation of indigenous weaponry. The Le Souef box is a transitional object, reflecting the shifting colonial ideologies of the 1860s and the gradual move from ethnology to the harder and more formalised racial sciences. Yet the box also reveals the personal and psychological desires of it makers, showing a genuine interest in Aboriginal people as well as an imperial nostalgia for an untainted past and an idealised pre‐contact Aboriginal life. This paper seeks to bring a... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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