Archives of the Third Space: An Indigenous Exploration of Noongar Titling in Kim Scott’s Autofictions

Abstract

This study explores the paratextual significance of titling in Kim Scott’s autofictions True Country (1993), Benang: From the Heart (1999), That Deadman Dance (2010), and Taboo (2017), treating each title as a potent micro-archive of Indigenous memory, trauma, and resistance. The primary aim of this research is to investigate how Scott’s titles function as compressed archival narratives that articulate Noongar worldviews, bear witness to historical trauma, and enact decolonial agency. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s notion of the ‘paratext’ as a threshold, the study uses Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’ to frame titling as cultural negotiation, where Indigenous and settler narratives meet and change. The analysis is further grounded in Indigenous methodologies proposed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, centring Noongar perspectives and protocols of knowledge transmission. Through close paratextual reading and thematic analysis, the research demonstrates that Scott’s titles are not merely framing devices but performative sites of narrative sovereignty mediating between settler and Indigenous epistemologies. These titles serve as dialogic thresholds, encoding cultural memory, ethical accountability, and resistance within the smallest textual unit. Ultimately, the study advances Indigenous literary scholarship by repositioning titling as a foundational decolonial strategy and a critical site for activating cultural memory and narrative agency in postcolonial critique.