Law and sacrifice in Australian extra-territorial nation spaces: The residue of empire

Abstract

This chapter explores how nation, law and territory may be mediated by the intercession of bodily sacrifice, and how in the recording and aesthetic commemoration of death, the body becomes part of a national archival performance. The chapter weaves together two narratives of the origins of the Australian nation – the recognition of native title in Mabo [No 2] and the ANZAC legend. It gives contemporary valence to the conflicts between these two accounts by drawing on Australian government efforts to resituate the ANZAC myth of national sacrifice from Gallipoli to the Villers-Bretonneux region in France, another site of intense Australian losses during the Great War. The extra-territorial pro..