Ancient and Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy

by Stephen Muecke

How might we think and talk about indigenous philosophy? Why has Aboriginal knowledge not been given the status of philosophical knowledge, but treated by whites rather as culture or history? There is a quarrel about whose antiquity is at the foundation of Australian culture, and why contemporary forms of Aboriginality are marginal to Australia’s modernity. These are the starting points for the essays contained in Stephen Muecke's original and challenging book.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Religion

208 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Stephen Muecke is Jury Chair of English language and literature in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is a writer specialising in cross-generic work, cultural theory and Indigenous studies. His publications include The Mother’s Day Protest and Other Fictocritical Essays (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). He has recently translated two books, Another Science is Possible (John Wiley) by Isabelle Stengers, and Doctors and Healers (Wiley) by Isabelle Stengers and Tobie Nathan, both published in 2018.

Reviews

[Peter N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a playful collage of many criss-crossing paths in speculative thought. Muecke squeezes himself into every cramped space between the various intellectual currents that make up modern Australia and tries to establish connections, without setting up any boundaries about what is or is not "modern", "intellectual" or "Australian". The ancient/modern dichotomy in the title is in this way intentionally self-defeating; it's used to argue that the two were already mutually implicated from the start, and that a modern Australia requires taking seriously the intellectual worth of indigenous thought - the very people usually taken as the paradigmatic case of all that is not modern. But the book never becomes so serious as to affect the posture of the knowing colonial Subject, nor does it overstate the separateness of indigenous culture, but presents it as an always-evolving creative project articulated in the context of Australian modernity. People, concepts, and movements appear and disappear, transform and multiply in unpredictable ways. Sometimes Muecke's musings are off the mark, even a little embarrassing, but they're often extremely insightful and novel. Engaging with indigenous thought in non-indigenous contexts does not mean to simply copy it, as though we could presume to be able to think and know "aboriginally", but to respond creatively, generating new concepts and new "ways of being". As Muecke describes it, this would be an aboriginal philosophy.

This book should be read by anyone living in Australia with a taste for theory, history, or philosophy.

[D. Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book both thoroughly thought provoking, and also positively challenging the cultural assumptions of Australian historic mainstream relegation of Australian Indigenous nations. Muecke assesses what might be traditionally seen as race-based assumptions from a philosophical viewpoint. His perspective adds value to the discussion on assumptions and race, as well as culture.