Thats the thing the bits left behind theyll come out they must Black Diggers Using these quotations as a starting point for a comparison between Black Diggers and The Longest Memory ID: 704762
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Slide1
“Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself.” (The Longest Memory) “That’s the thing, the bits left behind, they’ll come out, they must.” (Black Diggers) Using these quotations as a starting point for a comparison between Black Diggers and The Longest Memory, analyse how, in the texts, memory is simultaneously inescapable and unbearable. Slide2
Purpose of texts:Both focus on the ways in which race - and especially skin colour – have for so long predetermined both social interactions as well as the opportunities and choices afforded to individuals. Both deal with slavery – America = overt, Australia = de factoBoth texts contest the (historical) underlying assumption that blacks are some how inferior, less civilised, less intellectually able or even a sub-species. Both contest this ‘less than’ ideology through demonstrating that the
labour
of the oppressed was economically essential to the whites who sought to dictate the terms for all and to
rationalise
such unjust treatment. Slide3
The Longest MemoryPURPOSE: To explore the dilemma of trying to forget slavery and the impossibility of doing so. Highlights the time that change takes, emphasised by Whitechapel’s great age -> exceedingly long time which had to elapse for change in attitudes to occur. (CHAPEL + LYDIA = the next generation, the future.)
Black Diggers
PURPOSE:
Recognise
the Indigenous Australians who fought in WW1 as part of the mainstream historical narrative -> ensuring that they are not forgotten.
Wright’s ending is more ambivalent. He is suggesting that he, that we, do not know what will happen in the future. However, his creation of the play reminds us of the indigenous soldiers in such a meaningful and emotive way that the audience is unable to forget. Slide4
Reasons for wanting to forget: GUILT Historic guilt of anti-black racism which continues to resonate down the years and to underpin ongoing white/black relations. Through the younger generation, enslavement of mind, if not of body, will not continue forever.