Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context

6. Quoting from the Past, or Dealing with Temporality

Quoting from the Past or Dealing with Temporality1 Britta Duelke In her famous essay on Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt summarized his theoretical reflections on history, tradition and authority in the following formula: “Insofar as the past has been transmitted as tradition, it possesses authority; insofar as authority presents itself historically, it becomes tradition.”2 We will never know whether Benjamin himself would have endorsed these lines, which clearly show the hand of Arendt. Yet the formula does have the appearance of something that comes close to Benjamin’s very own style of thinking and writing, to such an extent that one could easily take it for a quotation of the “real” Benjamin.3 Arendt’s programmatic reading of Benjamin made reference to his own life experiences, to the breaks in tradition and the loss of authority which occurred in his actual lifetime —and also to his discovery that the transmissibility of the past relates to its capacity to be cited in the present: that is, its citability.4 Benjamin was well aware that the original context of a quotation from tradition or history was far less important than the new context it helped to create. An isolated quotation does not necessarily make sense. The citability and meaning of a quotation—even if it is only a fragment of the original text—are determined by the frame in which it is used and from which it gains its meaning and potential authority.5 I use Arendt’s “Benjaminian formula” as a starting point here for two reasons. It addresses some interesting questions with regard to quotations, not only in written traditions—of the sort Benjamin might be thought to be addressing—but also in relation to oral traditions of the sort that are central to my Australian case study. Moreover , it blurs in a very peculiar way the conceptual distinction between tradition and history by emphasizing their difference.6 Miller 3 :Whats minta 1 9/3/08 4:48 PM Page 105 Variations Australian Aboriginal societies have traditionally been seen as unchanging and ahistorical—the very prototypes of a classic “traditional society.” More recently, questions regarding the stability and historicity of traditions in Aboriginal Australia, or more precisely questions regarding the representations of the past in relation to present conditions and the interpretations offered of the “now,” have attracted considerable interest, and not only among academic circles. In the context of Australian land rights and native-title legislations, the ideas of tradition and history, and the meanings attached to them, have acquired a wide-ranging political and social significance and have also exercised a material effect on people’s lives.7 The area I focus on is in the northern, tropical region of the Northern Territory. Until now, people in this part of Australia have had little experience of the Native Title Act, but have been substantially affected by the Northern Territory Land Rights Act.8 In 1976, land rights legislation was introduced in the Northern Territory (where Aborigines now represent over 28 percent of the population). This entitled Aboriginal people to claim ownership of traditional land, provided that the land in question was unalienated Crown land, and provided that claimants could prove that they belonged to a “local descent group” representing the “traditional owners.”9 Claimants were required to prove traditional descent and foraging rights as well as to present traditional knowledge and ceremonies demonstrating “primary spiritual responsibility” for the land in question. Now that the majority of land claims in the Northern Territory have been settled and the scheduled areas (the so-called Schedule 1 Land, that is, mainly ex-reserve land) have been transferred more or less automatically to Aboriginal ownership, nearly half of the land in the Northern Territory has become Aboriginal Land under the Act. Religious, ritual and land-related traditions have always been central to Australian Aboriginal anthropology.10 The constitutive basis for the anthropological examination of these traditions has been the exploration and analysis of traditional knowledge and practice which have long been accepted as significant for identity and Weltanschauung. Both the theoretical considerations and the conventional understanding of tradition have relied heavily on notions of stability, continuity and duration.11 Consequently, the Land Rights 106 Britta Duelke Miller 3 :Whats minta 1 9/3/08 4:48 PM Page 106 Act was underpinned by anthropological, legal and political notions of unchanging tradition that reflected not only the apparently dominant Aboriginal ideology...