1994/12/01 by Alan Rumsey · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Media, Communication, and Education #Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights #Australian Indigenous Culture and History #Orality #Sociality #Consciousness #Mythology #Agency (philosophy) #Aesthetics #Sociology #Natural (archaeology) #Epistemology #History #Anthropology #Literacy #Environmental ethics #Social science #Philosophy #Ecology
paper · doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.1994.tb02494.x
openalex publication_date 1994/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/05
ABSTRACT The myth/history and orality/literacy oppositions are interrelated ones, through which Aboriginal culture has been stereotyped as the simple inverse of European. The Dreaming has been seen as antithetical to historical consciousness, as it assimilates contingent events to a pre‐existing order which is objectified in natural features of the landscape. I argue that The Dreaming is one instance of a more general mode of orientation through which a good deal of what we call history — the purposeful acts of living persons and their known forebears — is also memorialised in the landscape. What is specific to Aboriginal sociality is not orality or a mythic mentality, but a particular economy of inscriptive and interpretive practices through which ‘country’ becomes ‘story’.