ABSTRACT
Building on the argument thus far, Chapter 7 looks at embodied expressions of Australian Indigenous sovereignty in the performance work of artist, SJ Norman, and the on-field dancing of footballer, Adam Goodes. It draws on Nicolacopoulos and Vassilacopoulos’ writings on Indigenous sovereignty and the being of the colonizer to theorize the vulnerability of white spectatorship to assertions of sovereignty. SJ Norman’s live installations can be seen in such a light, as challenging the colonizing force of white spectatorship. Deleuze’s notion of subtraction within political theatre can be brought to bear upon Norman’s recalibration of colonial culture. It also informs Adam Goodes’ historic war dance, staged in the middle of the Sydney Cricket Ground. It will be argued that Goodes’ action produced a new body, a political formation of thought, composed of contestatory impulses – colonial investments, Indigenous counter-narratives and embodied innovations – which were selected and taken up in the ensuing debate. It is testimony to the destabilizing power of Goodes’ actions that the whole nation from the Prime Minister down felt compelled to respond. As a whole, the Australian nation has not shown itself willing to acknowledge Indigenous sovereign being, condemning itself to the compulsive repetition of colonizing rhetoric. SJ Norman and Adam Goodes staged their own rituals of embodied sovereignty in the real-time theatre of intercultural aboriginality. Their reterritorialization of colonial history, bodily, cultural and aesthetic factors pulled a thread from the fabric of Australia’s colonial culture.
