Work · Indigenous Philosophies
Talkin’ Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism
Analyses how Australian feminism, in its theory and its practice, took the experience of white middle-class women as the norm, and “talks up” to it from the standpoint of Indigenous women, using their life histories.
Introduction
The book grew out of Moreton-Robinson’s doctoral thesis at Griffith University (1998) and appeared in 2000 with the University of Queensland Press; a twentieth-anniversary edition followed in 2020. It examines Australian feminism, its theories, writings and institutions, and shows that its subject was, without saying so, the white middle-class woman. Indigenous women’s life writings are read as a counter-archive in which white women appear less as sisters than as employers, missionaries and agents of the state. From the standpoint of Indigenous women, whiteness becomes visible as a position of privilege and power that feminism had treated as neutral. The title takes up the expression “talking up”, speaking back to those in authority. The book was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and became a founding text of critical whiteness studies in Australia.
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