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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Enlightement and its shadows « Previous | |Next »
July 21, 2007

I want to return to this review by Ken Gelder of Stephen Muecke's Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture, and Indigenous Philosophy in the Australian Humanities Review in the context of this work:

BedfordPuntitled 2003.jpg
Paddy Bedford, Untitled , 2003, gouache on board

On Gelder's interpretation Muecke suggests that Aboriginal people inhabit an 'alternative modernity' to non-Aboriginal Australians. This alternative modernity is linked to the 'ancient' which Muecke mobilises as a powerful force in Aboriginal philosophical expression and which underwrites his sense of Aboriginal vitalism. It is tied to ritual and magic, that is, it is cultural. The modern West, for Muecke, values rationality and objectivity, while Aboriginal people 'are connected singularly to feeling, intuition' . Muecke interprets the indigenous side of this duality in terms of flux and change and Deleuzean 'rhizomes' and 'becoming'.

My response is that Muecke is opening the door onto the possibility of an indigenous philosophy in an experimental Deleuzean sense based on being in the world, rather than working in terms of a rigid duality as Gelder states. Stephen Muecke argues for non-Indigenous Australia to recognise Aboriginal philosophy, making the point that for too long Indigenous Australians have been lumbered with their antiquity while white Australia has identified itself with modernity and notions of 'progress'.

Muecke says he iss concerned with the Aboriginal legacy for Australians as that legacy will increasingly define our culture in the future.

And that indeed redefines the relations between whitefellas and blackfellas, in cultural terms. Blackfellas should not be seen, I argue, as representatives of an ancient heritage, either intact or museumified, while whitefellas remain in control of modernity. All forms of culture are made from ancient and modern bits, and their vitality consists in creative hybridizations. So in the book I describe modern Aboriginal culture from the early twentieth century as well as ancient, yet contemporary, European rituals in Australia .

This is placed in the context of the dominant analytic philosophical tradition in Australia. This sets up enigmas confident that sooner or later a proof or solution will be found, and these proofs accumulate, rather like in mathematics.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:46 PM |