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Example research essay topic: Royal Society Eighty Years - 3,387 words

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Can? la Analucinda Jaramillo " Truganinny" [] begins with an epigraph dated 1972, from Paul Coe, Australian Aboriginal Activist, stating that Truganinny " had seen the stuffed and mounted body of her husband and it was her dying wish that she be buried in the outback or at sea for she did not wish her body to be subjected to the same indignities. Upon her death, she was nevertheless stuffed and mounted and put on display for over eighty years" []. Roses persona poem finds Truganinny slowly dying, enjoining the reader " to come closer/ for little is left/ of this tongue/ and what I am saying/ is important. " As in the epigraph, she pleads, " Please/ take my body/ to the source of night/ to the great black desert/ where Dreaming was born. /... put me where/ they will not/ find me" [].

The historical silence in the accounts of indigenous women lends a special importance to these re-visions, where hegemony is destabilized by the interruptions of the dead, inscribing themselves for the first time. from " Reading Hurt: Persona Literature and the Voices of Trauma. " Standards: The International Journal of Multicultural Studies. 6. 1. < web Copyright? 1997 by Can? la Analucinda Jaramillo. Anonymous In " Truganinny, " as she does in her other chronicles, Rose begins the piece with an expository gloss based on reportage... Having established the " factual" context, Rose proceeds with the " fiction, " the poetic rendering of the truth. Truganinny invites us to her liminal edge not casually, but imperatively...

We are drawn from the cold block of fact into an intimate proximity with mortality. Truganinny's dying breath calls with urgency through her diction (" need" and " important" ). The abrupt line breaks suggest her words may only be uttered in short bursts of primarily monosyllabic words. These are the final exhalations of thought, and Truganinny is not speaking exclusively from either realm of life or death, but from both her spiritual and corporeal essences. This is punctuated by an isolated couplet announcing her extinction: I am the last one. [ [T]he stanza immediately following Truganinny's impending annihilation introduces an opposite force, a counterweight to death. A glimmer of life appears as Truganinny speaks of lactating with the milk which feeds newborns: " I whose nipples / wept white mist. " Yet the excitement of birth and nursing is appropriately short lived.

The life-giving mist is spoken of in the past tense, alienating it from the present and from future tenses of continuance. " Wept" from her breasts like tears, this mist is Truganinny's liquid concoction of sorrow for the " many dead daughters / their mouths empty and rounded / their breathing stopped / their eyes gone gray. " Overtones of infanticide conclude this stanza, this circle of events encompassing birth and death. Yet Truganinny's compelling saga continues despite the absence of progeny to perpetuate her race. After the painful recitation of her story of loss, Truganinny leaves the physical world and " melts" into the abstract imagery of dreams: Take my hand black into black as yellow clay is a slow melt to grass gold of earth and I am melting back to the Dream. Though she is reiterating images associated with death (the entry into blackness, the melting of clay into soil), she imbues these observations with a sense of cyclical regeneration, with a return to the fecundity of earth.

It is as if her milk, spilled from the mouths of dead children, rediscovers its life giving qualities in the " grass" nurtured by the " gold of earth. " Having momentarily slipped away from the immediate dialogue with her listener, Truganinny returns from her dreamscape and implores us to stay and listen: Do not leave for I would speak, I would sing another song. Your song. We are reminded of her function as a persona, as a reflective entity whose tribulations speak for a common rather than specific experience. Much as Wendy Rose constructs a fictive world to stimulate the readers self-reflection, Truganinny successfully entrances the audience with her inward vision in order to pass the perspicacity on to others, in order to assist a collective " us" in the quest for our spirits, our songs. After this transition, which enjoins the dual entities of listener and persona, the poem may proceed from Truganinny's point of view, with the understanding that her situation is applicable to a conglomeration of liminal beings: They will take me.

Already they come; Even as I breathe they are waiting for me to finish my dying. We old ones take such a long time. Again we see the movement towards balance operating conjunctively with the interplay of dual forces. From the individual speaker, Truganinny, who speaks of her plight as a dying curio (They will take me... / breathe... my dying" [my italics]), to the collective " We, " extinction and survival are pervasive concerns. This alliance between the reader and Truganinny plays itself out in the final stanza of the poem.

For Truganinny to find peace in death, the involvement of another is necessary. Alienated and displaced, she cannot escape the torments of the world on her own and hopes the kinship tentatively established with the listener in the previous stanza will yield some assistance: Please take my body to the source of night, to the great black desert where Dreaming was born. Put me under the bulk of a mountain or in the distant sea, put me where they will not find me. Left without any of her racial familiars to lay her to rest, Truganinny seeks integration into the world of the imagination, the only place her extinct race still peacefully exists, The other ghastly alternative would subject her to the curious ogling of outsiders, an indignity in death comparable only to her tragic life. Despite the utter hopelessness and desperation in Truganinny's last words, Rose offers the reader a morsel of promise. The connection established between Truganinny and her audience grants her a poetic integration into a group that she was denied in her historical, alien life. 2 Rose also rescues Truganinny from the enclosure of her glass tomb and offers her a means of transcendence through the imagination.

As a poet, she resuscitates Truganinny and grants her access to the spiritual plane of dreaming. Yet this reconciliation is not entirely without its tragic consequences. The looming presence of the opening prose paragraph is a reminder of Truganinny's catastrophic fate. from " Songs of the Halfbreed: Survival and Rebirth in the Poetry of Wendy Rose. " In Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers: Chapter 1 Sample Essays from Students. Copyright? 1999 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. A Pearson Company.

Online Source: web Reviving Tasmania and the textual reconstruction of history by Benjamin Branham " Truganinny, the last of the Tasmanians, had seen the stuffed and mounted body of her husband and it was her dying wish that she be buried in the outback or at sea for she did not wish he body to be subjected to the same indignities. Upon her death she was nevertheless stuffed and mounted and put on display for over eighty years. " Paul Coe, Australian Aborigine Activist, 1972 -from Wendy Rose, " Truganinny" Wendy Roses appeal to historical documentation evokes the dynamic relationship between history and text that permeates the poetry of many American Indians. Rose positions her work in symbiosis with history, both extracting life from and injecting life into a narrative of desolation, agony, and genocide that spans hundreds of years. " Truganinny" provides an ideal starting point for an analysis of this relationship. The poems outgrowth from a quoted source firmly anchors it to history, but at the same time declares its relative autonomy by assuming the voice of a long-deceased individual.

In this sense, the poem is unique. For whereas many poems invoke historical events, names, and places, most avoid an unconcealed reliance upon a specific text. This is not to say that " Truganinny" depends on the words of Paul Coe for its poetic identity, but rather that it directly illustrates the intermingling of elements comprising it. Furthermore, Rose addresses not her own history of Hopi and Me-was ancestry, but rather that of the Australian Aborigines, the two groups joined by their common heritage as indigenous and oppressed.

We might consider this a deviation from the efforts of other American Indian poets who often focus on topics and issues extending from their own roots. Yet the possible inaccuracy of Coe's statement, implied in numerous sources, demands further historical scrutiny. Although there is a dearth of scholarship on the island of Tasmania and its former inhabitants, the lands fated encounter with a colonial rule that would lead to the " extinction" of an entire race has nonetheless generated a number of historical accounts. Most sources (indeed, all of the ones I came across) acknowledge the woman Trucanini (spelling varies, but Ellis makes a claim that " Trucanini" reflects the correct pronunciation) as the last surviving Tasmanian before her death in 1876 (Bonwick, Ellis, Davies, Robson & Roe). The death of her third husband, William Lane, considered the last male Aborigine, in 1869 provoked a dispute that saw the mutilation of his body in an attempt to obtain his skeleton (Robson 35). No source other than the quote attributed to Paul Coe makes any reference to the stuffing or mounting of Lannes body, or even that Trucanini ever saw the corpse of her dead husband.

Her sense of devastation and her wish to avoid the desecration of her own remains is well documented, but again Coe's account clashes with those that report Trucanini was indeed buried at the time of her death and later disinterred by the Royal Society of Tasmania. Early in the century, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery displayed Trucanini's skeleton, not her stuffed corpse, in the Aboriginal exhibition room, where it remained until 1947 (Ellis 156). In response to a wide controversy surrounding the issue in the 1960 s and 70 s, the Tasmanian Museum transferred possession of Trucanini's remains to the Tasmanian government in 1975. In May of 1976, 100 years after her death, Trucanini was cremated and finally granted her wish when her ashes were scattered over DEntrecasteaux Channel near the place of her birth. With this information apparently refuting the scenario presented in the epigraph to " Truganinny, " what significance does the discrepancy between these competing representations of history contribute to our reading of the poem? To indict or discredit Rose for such an " error" would be preposterous.

It is unlikely that she knows Coe's account might be in error. And yet, the conflict encourages an examination of the profound complexity of representing an unfixed history. Roses poem opens with the speaker conceding the fragility of her own voice. The dying Truganinny, an old woman, addresses the frailty of age yet proclaims a strong vocal insistence: You will need to come closer for little is left of this tongue and what I am saying is important In drawing attention to the deterioration of her vocal apparatus, the speaker summons a " closer" attention and proximity from her listener. By entreating such nearness with urgency and " need, " the textual Truganinny seeks to narrow the gap between speaker and listener, mimicking that between poet and reader, text and history. Rose crafts an intriguing matrix of these binaries, deconstructing them by illustrating both their mutual reliance upon one another and their multiple permutations.

The voice extends outward from the historicity of Truganinny's timeout within the poets perception Rose herself functioning as a reader of Coe's text, and he a reader of a larger text still. In the poem, she synthesizes her own voice with that of the individual she portrays, thus merging historical perception with historical representation, art with history, present with past. Simultaneously, we as the audience remain spectators to the " actual" history as well not to claim that any history is authoritative perpetuating the cycle that the poem initiates. The speakers voice, however, presents problems. How does such a vocal assimilation affect the agency Rose intends to ascribe Truganinny?

Does the impersonation of voice risk additional objectification by usurping it from its owner and fixing it upon the page? And do we, as readers, contribute to this objectification by virtue of our subsequent gaze upon the narrative? The answer to these questions resides in the acknowledgment that all narratives necessarily contain some element of objectification; otherwise, they would fail to function. And a relatively little amount of narrative objectification does not quite impose the same intense oppression as does the objectifying weight of history.

Rose makes the recovery of Truganinny's voice her imperative. Whether the real Trucanini can speak for herself at all is a matter justifiably complicated by Gayatri Spivaks influential essay, " Can the Subaltern Speak? , " in which she suggests the impossibility of recovering an authentically autonomous voice. In addressing Spivaks theories, Ania Loomba observes a number of critical issues: Do we necessarily position colonized people as victims, incapable of answering back? On the other hand, if we suggest that the colonial subjects can 'speak and question colonial authority, are we romanticizing such resistant subjects and underplaying colonial violence? In what voices do the colonized speak their own, or in accents borrowed from their masters? Is the project of recovering the subaltern best served by locating her separateness from dominant culture, or by highlighting the extent to which she moulded even those processes and cultures which subjugated her?

And finally, can the voice of the subaltern be represented by the intellectual? (Loomba 231) These crucial questions pertain to our reading of Trucanini the person and " Truganinny" the poem. However, part of the poems success lies in its deviation from history, even if unintentional. Through these differences, or innovations, Rose uses history to engender a new narrative, transforming silence into an empowered voice. To fully appreciate the intricate dynamic of history and its representations, we must look more comprehensively at the events surrounding the death, burial, and display of Trucanini. In the poem, the speakers self-reflexive concern for a part of her body, her tongue, directs attention to the colonial commodification of the body that the poem addresses. Even prior to the death of William Lane, the colonizing worlds obsession with Tasmanian physiognomy culminated in a mad dash for bones: As it became obvious that the end of the race was near, scientists all over the world became anxious to obtain skeletons before it was too late.

Years before, in 1856, J. B. Davis had realised the importance of preserving skeletal material. He had written to artist Alfred Bock pressing him to find some medical gentleman connected with public hospitals who would be willing to help him acquire Tasmanian skulls. " Were I myself in the colony I could with very little trouble abstract skulls from dead bodies without defacing them at all, and could instruct any medical gentleman to do this, " he wrote. He also suggested raiding the old cemetery at Flinders Island to get skeletons. " Difficulties always stand in the way and may always be overcome, " he stressed. Judging by his results, he overcame his difficulties with the greatest success. (Ellis 133) This ruthless quest exemplifies the colonialist gaze, exoticizing the body of the Tasmanian as other.

Davis expresses a concern for " preserving skeletal material" and extracting skulls without damaging them, but makes no mention of keeping the skin and body of the dead in a respectable condition suitable for a funeral. Although the practice of raiding graves for the study of medicine occurred across the globe at this time, the particular fetish for Tasmanian bones embodies something more: the colonial regimes suffocating surveillance. Davis description of " difficulties" blocking the path to skeletal possession characterizes his brutality as a contest, one offering various obstacles to make the challenge more exciting. Such a narrative of mystery and conniving accompanies Lannes death in 1869. The body was initially entrusted to Dr. G Stokell, Resident Medical Officer of the General Hospital, for him to look after, as the Colonial Secretary realized the potential value of the skeleton.

The general consensus among the public held that after a proper burial and appropriate passage of time the Royal Society would exhume the body for its collection. Dr. W. L. Crowther, however, intended to ship the skeleton to colleagues at the Royal College of Surgeons in London and executed a plan that saw him extract Lannes skull in the middle of the night " by the light of a candle illuminating the macabre interior of the dead-house" (Ellis 136). After replacing the skull, inside the skin, with one that had been similarly extracted from a white man, Crowther and accomplices made their escape.

Upon discovery of this deceit, Stokell grew irate and, determined to stop Crowther from obtaining the rest of the skeleton, cut of the hands and feet of the corpse to secure them, an effort sanctioned by the Royal Society. Following the funeral, which made the body appear unmolested to dismiss developing rumors, Stokell arranged to have the remainder of the skeleton stolen from its fresh grave that evening. A public uproar arose over these events, and the government appointed a Board of Enquiry to investigate the case, the details of which were published in The Mercury, a newspaper for the town of Hobart (Ellis 138 - 140). Crowther lost his position with the hospital, and Stokell was cleared of all charges. Because of an abrupt end to the enquiry, the Board never required Stokell to provide a full account of what happened to the body after its removal from the grave. The whereabouts of the remains of William Lane, including his skull, have never been traced.

Years later, without certainty, speculation arose that Lane was not, in actuality, of pure Tasmanian descent, casting a much deserved air of futility on the competitive grave robbing by Crowther and Stokell. The physical and cultural usurpation at work in this account grants even more salience to the poems eerie forecast: " They will take me" (29). Truganinny speaks with the knowledge that a colonizing force plans to incorporate her body into its own consuming discourse: Already they come; even as I breathe they are waiting for me to finish my dying. (30 - 33) The speakers sense that the people who will ultimately make her a spectacle " already" envelop her stems from the remorseless progress of an encroaching gaze. Her status as " the last one" (8) a status conferred by the very colonialists who administered her peoples genocide attracts the eyes that wish to put her on display as evidence of a culture long since extinct. As they wait, like vultures, for her to " finish" dying if completing a task demanded of here agents of hegemony move ever closer, infringing, as they always have, with a claustrophobia that asphyxiates. The desire to accumulate artifacts supersedes the value of human life, and the eager " waiting" to redeem the corpse at the nearest pawn shop only precipitates death.

Wendy Roses re appropriation of history that she accomplishes by generating a new voice succeeds in shifting savagery from the colonized to the colonizer. She crafts " Truganinny" with a delicacy and insistence that forces readers to challenge the representations of history we take for granted and presents an example of how to recover lost voices. REFERENCES Bonwick, James, The Last of the Tasmanians (London: Sampson, Low, Son, & Marston: 1869). Davies, David, The Last of the Tasmanians (London: Frederick Muller, 1973).

Ellis, Vivienne Rae, Trucanini: Queen or Traitor? (Canberra City, Australia: Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies, 1981). Loomba, Ania, Colonialism/Post colonialism (New York: Routledge, 1998). McGuire, Randall H. , " Why Have Archeologists Thought the Real Indians Were Dead and What Can We Do About It? " in Indians and Anthropologists, ed. Thomas Bills and Larry Zimmerman (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). Robson, Michael, A Short History of Tasmania (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Spivak, Gayatri, " Can the Subaltern Speak? " In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Gross berg, eds.

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). Copyright? 2001 by Benjamin Branham


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