Position doubtful: mapping landscapes and memories

摘要

'In the gap between two ways of seeing, the risk is that you see nothing clearly' (p. 216) In Position Doubtful Kim Mahood, a Canberra-based visual artist and teacher, describes how since 2004 she has travelled each year to spend time in Mulan, a Walmajarri community in Western Australia, close to the Mongrel Downs station where she spent her childhood, and which has since been returned to the traditional owners. An intensely personal memoir, she describes how she grew up between two cultures. Her interest lies in exploring 'what happens when the unconscious mind experiences a fundamental displacement... when the body feels an almost cellular affinity to a place that has been constructed by a different cultural imagination (p. 296). The result is a book that is fascinating on many levels, but is particularly valuable for the insights it brings to themes relevant to those working in archives and memory institutions -issues such as identity, memory, the meaning and interpretation of records (maps in particular), the importance of place, and cross-cultural relations.