Australian Football as a Construct of the Frontier Contact Zone (Gerardo Papalia; Robert Pascoe)

This essay examines the Aboriginal influences on Australian Rules Football by drawing on the post-structuralist theories of Deleuze and Guattari, particularly those relating to the 'nomad war machine', smooth and striated space, territorialization and deterritorialization, 'becomings-animal/spiritual'. The essay uses these conceptualisations to establish a meta-narrative which illuminates the relationship between settler culture and post-Invasion Indigenous culture. Australian Rules Football emerges as a product of the Aboriginal/settler frontier.