Paper short abstract:

Migrant cultures are rendered (un)intelligible through the framing imposed on them by the hegemonic subjectivity, which they hence start to reflect. Can the moulding gaze of the dominant voice ever be done away with?

Paper long abstract:

Following the speculation of Derrida, Butler, Clifford, Rabinow, Pratt and Žižek, and making reference to the work I have been carrying out amongst the Italian women who moved to Australia in the 1950s, my paper aims at addressing the theoretical in-superability of the ruses implied in the epistemological framing of (migrant) subjectivities.

I will set off by analyzing the street parades that on January 26th celebrate Australia Day, which relegate most "ethnic" (as opposed to "Anglo"?) cultural manifestations to the domain of institutionally crafted carnivals: how does such type of performance contribute to rendering (un)intelligible (to "old" Australians) the cultural and gendered identity of the (NESB women) migrants?

Subsequently, with the purpose of discussing (circumstantial?) solutions to the seemingly impossible matter of giving the subjugated cultures (their own) voice, and in view of the need of unearthing the power relations involved in ethnography, I will illustrate the importance of disentangling (the specifically informed gaze implied in) my position of "insider anthropologist". I will then continue by trying to describe how the (im)possibilities of expression entailed in ethnographic framing mirror the constraining of migrant subjectivities within the (implicitly partial) matrix of the multicultural projects set up by the Nation State.

I will conclude by giving a feminist theoretical account of the risks inherent to the attempts of getting the dominated subject to speak: can the moulding gaze of the hegemonic voice ever be done away with?