مهدی جاویدشاد

The present research explores the reasons why contemporary theoreticians of adaptation studies spurn “fidelity criticism.” With an increase in the production of adaptation with the advent of the cinema, there appeared a critical approach known as “fidelity criticism” in which the extent of the fidelity of the adapter to the adapted was investigated. Since this approach considers the adapted as a touchstone to evaluate the adapter and since it implicitly acknowledges the superiority of the former over the latter, postmodern critics, who frequently advocate alternative views and readings, struggle to release the adapter from being overshadowed by the adapted in order to let them express their unique message in the modern era. By referring to contemporary theories, the present research explores the whyness of the necessity for avoiding “fidelity criticism” as a touchstone for the evaluation of adaptation. To this end, the question of adaptation is expounded in the light of canon, logocentrism, and minor literature in order to study the likelihood of the ideological working of “fidelity criticism” as an apparatus in the hands of power. While the fact that “fidelity criticism” cannot be an appropriate criterion for the evaluation of adaptation has been frequently pointed out, the howness of its contribution to power discourse is an issue that has not been investigated in a coherent research, an attempt that can lead to a better understanding of the whyness of the rejection of “fidelity criticism.”

The aim of this article is to study selected poems of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the national poet of the Australian Aborigines, in the light of Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theories. Using a descriptive research methodology, the present study examines the way Noonuccal’s poetry fashions resisting discourse in contemporary Australia. First of all, introductory notes on postcolonial movement, colonial history of Australia and Noonuccal are presented and then postcolonial key terms such as hybridity, third space and otherization are applied to selected poems with the purpose of highlighting the anticolonial inclinations in them. Throughout the study, third space which comes as a result of hybrid cultures is emphasized as a background for reflecting and reinforcing Aboriginal tendency in Australia. Finally, issues such as expounding a view of history from the perspective of the colonized, pointing to the disappearance of Aboriginal culture and tradition and their revival, protesting against the states’ unjust policies regarding the Aborigines, putting an end to otherization and issuing a call for a just integration of blacks and whites are all considered as valiant attempts waging the anticolonial struggles in Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry.