Schieffelin, Edward L.

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book and media rev iews 521Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative,and Knowledge in Aboriginal Austra-lia and Papua New Guinea, edited byAlan Rumsey and James F Weiner.Honolulu: University of Hawai‘iPress, 2001. i s b n 0–8248–2389–3;vii + 281 pages, maps, tables, figures,photographs, bibliography, index.u s$27.95.The papers in this collection (and aforthcoming companion volume) wereoriginally presented at an AustralianNational University conference on theeffects of industrial mining on the cul-tures of indigenous peoples. This, thefirst volume, specifically concerns theconfrontation between traditionalindigenous cosmologies of self andplace and the forces of change, histori-f i c a t i o n , and modernity. The papersare focused particularly around issuesof cosmological geography, especiallythose landscapes commonly found inAustralia and New Guinea that werebelieved to be created by wanderingmythological beings or ancestorswhose movements and deeds createdor gave form to the countryside. Thepairing of Australia and New Guineain relation to these founder-j o u rn e y i n gmyths is intended to reveal the two-way relationship between knowledgeof places and emplacement of knowl-edge in ways that allow comparisonbetween the two regions. While thepapers follow this format in a generalway they have widely divergent agen-das. Among these, we may discernfour main ones. The first is the scholarly use ofethnographic material to contest orreconfigure some theoretical issue ofimportance in anthropology. Rumsey,for example, draws on Aboriginal andMelanesian modes of constructinglandscape to critique Deleuze andG u a t a r i ’s contrast between arbore s c e n tand rhizomatic models for thought. Wagner, in a highly speculativepaper, argues for the existence of pri-mal myths. Instead of considering theprocess of knowledge whereby “thew o r l d ’s g e o g r a p hy is f o l d e d i n to m y t h ”and the process of diffusion whereby“myth is moved across the world,” hetakes the perspective that the world is diffused across the myth. Thus ifmythic content is grafted onto feature sof the terrain and defines the terrain,as myths diffuse across the world theresulting cosmological landscape canbe seen as shaping itself to the primalmyth and diffusing through it.Redmond critiques the widespreadview that Aboriginal people inhabit anunchanging cosmological landscape.Arguing that space and place havemeaning only in relation to the posi-tioned, mobile, intentional humanbody, he pictures Aboriginal relationsto landscape as a constant product ofimaginative encounter wherein peoplework out central cultural issues andconcerns through landscape in a waythat slowly alters both over time.Lattas applies a loosely Marxistapproach to a New Britain cargo cultin which the members run a moder-ately successful copra productioncompany by making capitalism into a kind of religion. Another set of papers in the col-lection focuses on the issue of secretknowledge. Weiner argues that whatis kept secret is less interesting thanthe fact that something is kept secret.Thus, to understand what secretknowledge is really about, the focus ofinvestigation must fall not so much on522 the contemporary pacific • fall 2002its content as on the social construc-tion of the regime of communicativepractice.Wassman does this for Iatmulknowledge of secret names linked to myths that govern access to socialand political entitlements. To assert ordefend these entitlements, senior menare compelled to reveal some of theirknowledge of the names, thus dissi-pating their power over them. Wass-man contends that this process willnever result in the final dissipation of all secret knowledge because it isbound up with a practice of formaldebating so complex that new secretnames may be invented and intro-duced into the system by any debatersufficiently skilled in convincingothers of their validity.Two papers are strongly compara-tive in focus. Stewart and Strathernargue for a distinction between mythsconcerned with “origins” (seen asoriginal events that lay down once-for-all a permanent state of affairs)and stories that deal with “creations”(events considered to initiate a newstate of affairs in an existing [mytho]-historical context). They broadly iden-tify Aboriginal cosmological land-scapes with “origin” schemes andthose of Melanesia (Highlands PapuaNew Guinea) with “creation” ones.After a carefully considered compara-tive analysis of Australian and Mela-nesian examples, however, they con-clude that even origin schemes changehistorically and creation schemes havee n o u g h elements of “ o n c e - f o r- a l l - t i m e ”to conclude that at the highest level ofgenerality the two are much the same. Rose examines the relation betweenself and landscape among VictoriaRiver Aboriginals and the MelanesianKaulong. Renouncing Cartesian dis-tinctions such as culture vs natureor concept vs reality, she pictures therelations between people and cosmo-logical landscape in terms of a mutualontological /ecological embeddedness.From this perspective, Aboriginal peo-ple and their natural (cosmological)environment exist in a moral relation-ship of mutual care and nurturancewith their environment. By contrast,the Melanesian Kaulong see them-selves as inhabiting a world wherethey must carve out a human space in which to live. These different formsof embeddedness have quite differentimplications for moral relationsbetween the human and nonhumanworld. Identity politics is a final issue run-ning through many papers in this vol-ume. Silverman and Bolton each takeit as a central focus. Silverman exam-ines the debate about whether com-modification of Aboriginal art negatesAboriginal identity or, on the contrary,lends voice to Aboriginal concerns and values in the larger discourse ofmodernity. He argues for the latterposition, rather than seeing both asrepresenting different processes thatwork dialectically to engender anincorporation of Aboriginal identityinto modernity and vice versa.Bolton carries forward the discus-sion by examining Aboriginal andMelanesian practices of museumpresentations of their own cultures.Aboriginal people use museums as a forum for asserting identity rightsagainst white Australian society.Melanesians, for the most part politi-cally self-governing, are more inter-ested in furthering their living culturein ways that are best celebrated in art sbook and media rev iews 523festivals. Museums play their part inthis arena by actively supporting whatmight be called “heritage” (exhibitinghistorical photographs more than arti-facts and collecting tape recordings of stories and oral history). They alsobecome involved in campaigns to pre-s e rve local sacred sites and ritual prac-tices dispersed across ethnic groups.Weiner, in a concluding afterword,summarizes the basic themes of thebook and reflects on the difficultiesindigenous people have in nurturingand retaining the creative vitality oftheir traditions without having themappear contrived on the one hand orkeeping traditions so inflexible thatthey become ossified and requireartificial support on the other.The comparative intent of t h i s b o o kis present through most of the papers,and this, together with the wide rangeof Aboriginal and Melanesian groupsdiscussed and the multiple concerns ofthe authors with issues of change andhistoricity, provides a rich mixture ofmaterial to provoke vigorous seminardiscussions both of traditional ethno-graphic issues, and the problems ofencounter with modernity.e dwa r d l schieffelinUniversity College, London* * *Love 3 Times. Play written by VilsoniHereniko. Directed by Megan Evans.Kumu Kahua Theater, Honolulu,Hawai‘i, 17 May to 17 June 2001.Playwright Vilsoni Hereniko generallyallows himself more aesthetic distancethan he does in Love 3 Times, per-formed in May–June 2001 at KumuKahua Theater in Honolulu under the capable direction of Megan Evans.Like Hereniko, the play’s central char-acter is a forty-something Rotumanplaywright-professor in Honoluluwho is increasingly drawn towardcinema (a trajectory with multipleimplications). The trials of TomasiAmanako therefore feel like a“counter-life” through whom, withforthrightness and wry self-conscious-ness, Hereniko dramatizes a range ofissues. These center around the com-plexities of inhabiting western institu-tions without betraying Pacific roots,and the obstacles to intimacy withthose who do not share those roots.Such concerns inform the play’sopening scene, where Tomasi’s wifeCindy videotapes him, his sister La,and his fourteen-year-old son from aprevious marriage, Duncan, as theypay respects to his departed father,Hapati. The camera records Tomasiinstructing his son Duncan in com-memorative customs, and carrying theheavy tombstone for his father’s grave.(As with many works that begin withfunerals, such as Witi Ihimaera’sTangi, the burying of an elder relativesuggests the passing away of some-thing larger.) The delayed return toRotuma for the ceremony, twentyyears after Hapati’s death, provides anoccasion for Tomasi to come to termswith the three central “loves” in hislife. These loves are both personal andrepresentative of values and temporal-ities: Hapati, who in a sense re p re s e n t sRotuman tradition; Cindy, a film pro-ducer who suggests at one level thebustling presentism of the film world;and the child Duncan, whose upbring-ing in materialistic London sets him ina situation common to the next gener-ation of diasporic Islanders of mixed

Review of Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea, edited by Alan Rumsey and James F Weiner

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Review of Emplaced Myth: Space, Narrative, and Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea, edited by Alan Rumsey and James F Weiner

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