ABSTRACT
Citizenship provides a valuable framework for rethinking the changing status of subordinated peoples in a post-colonial context. It is neither encumbered by the language of the victim nor, in the Australian context, by what has been pejoratively termed the 'black armband view of history' .2 Furthermore, the universality of citizenship within liberal theory assumes that there is an equal apportionment of rights and responsibilities between all citizens. Universal discourse has a negative side, however, for it enables the erasure of difference. In recent years, feminist, critical race and postmodern scholars, among others, have been increasingly inclined to challenge the classic concepts of modernity, including the assumed universality of' the citizen', to show that they are in fact partial. The result, as Margaret Somers puts it, is the recognition that' [c ]itizenship is a "contested truth" - its meaning politically and historically constructed'.3
