Everywhen is finished!

Just posting my short paper on everywhen. I hope the few footnotes display properly as I've just cut and pasted this from a .doc document.

What ideas was Stanner attempting to explain by using the term 'everywhen' in reference to the Dreaming?

The Dreaming is a complex array of themes and perspectives relating to the universe and humanities role within it. It is simultaneously a cosmogony and a cosmology from which life as we know it derived. In attempting to explain the complexity of The Dreaming, Stanner said “one cannot ‘fix’ The Dreaming in time: it was, and is, everywhen (Stanner 1990 pp.225, 228; Edwards 1990 p.12).

In using the term ‘everywhen’, Stanner was effectively describing the temporal location of The Dreaming in language that can appeal to a ‘western’ weltanschauung focusing on, as Edwards (1990) asserts, “beginnings, dates, eras and endings”. The indigenous inhabitants of Australia temporally placed The Dreaming simultaneously in the past, present, and the future which people in every generation can relive through involvement in everyday and ceremonial existence (Edwards 1990 pp.12-13). This has been described as being an example of a circular concept of time; however Edwards, while agreeing that the concepts present in The Dreaming share more similarities with a circular model as opposed to a linear model maintains that The Dreaming is too delicate a concept to be associated with either of these concepts (Edwards 1990, pp. 12-13).

Both the linear and circular concepts of time are too discriminatory to account for many of the subtle, and at times overt, concepts present in The Dreaming. In the article composed by Stanner[1] where he first used the term ‘everywhen’, he grapples with the ideological differences present in ‘western’ systems of thought as opposed to the thought processes of the Indigenous Australians; the concept of time becomes a major issue. Stanner describes that in a modern ‘western’ weltanschauung ideologies such as alterity arise by identifying contrasts within the world such as ‘body’ vs. ‘spirit’. In relation to The Dreaming Stanner (1990 p.227) notes that “man, society and nature, and past, present and future, are at one together…” and Edwards (1990 p.13) states that “places and people today are conceived of as embodying the beings of that era [The Dreaming]” indicating that the ontology is not just a contrast of accepted logic and rationalism but exists within a completely different paradigm altogether.

The Dreaming is often described as the beginning or formation of the world; while this is undoubtedly true the concept is entirely different from a creatio ex nihilo understanding as there was a pre existing fabric upon which The Dreaming occurred (Edwards 1990, p.13). Stanner (1976, p.21), in reference to Professor Strehlow, describes that at the time[2] of The Dreaming a single family existed[3] (father, wife and children) who were self-existent and eternal. There were also other ‘sky beings’ whose presence was felt through the stars. These beings had no interest in, or power over, the earth. It is fair to say that the existence of the ‘sky beings’ is fair evidence that much of substance existed at the time of The Dreaming activity. In the activity of The Dreaming[4] many ‘sometime sleepers’, eternal beings similar to humans of today but described as ‘superhuman’, simultaneously awoke and proceeded to mould primordial masses of barely human substance into distinct human individuals and taught them the way of life. These sometime sleepers, before returning to their sub terrestrial slumber, proceeded to shape the physical landscape that we experience today; some even became the landscape. The immanence of the sometime sleepers and their legacy is what Edwards (1990, p.13) was referring to when he said that people have a direct link to The Dreaming.

Indigenous Australians identify themselves and their world as part of The Dreaming. Certain landmarks represent not only the ancestors in the form of the sometime sleepers but family members and people still living today. Even birthmarks, marks left by ritual, and hunting injuries may be identified with an Ancestral being (Edwards 1990, p.17). Edwards (1990, p.17) describes the events of The Dreaming as a stage where People today re-enact The Dreaming “according to the pattern laid down by the ancestors”.

The Indigenous Australian concept of time, especially in relation to space, present in The Dreaming has rightly bewildered commentators trying to describe it with language more at home in western discourse. It was not only right but also essential for Professor Stanner to introduce a new word free of inherent ideological meaning into the discourse surrounding the study and understanding of Indigenous Australian religion.

Bibliography

Edwards, WH 1990, An Introduction to Aboriginal Societies, Social Science Press, Wentworth Falls.

Stanner, WEH 1976, Some Aspects of Aboriginal Religion, The Charles Strong Memorial Trust Inaugural Lecture, in Australian and New Zealand Society for Theological Studies 1976, Colloquium, pp.19-35.

Stanner, WEH 1990, ‘The Dreaming’, in Edwards, WH (ed), Traditional Aboriginal Society: A Reader, Macmillan, South Melbourne, pp.225-236.

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[1] See bibliography under Stanner, WEH 1990, ‘The Dreaming’.

[2] I use this word loosely by attempting to refer to the temporal location of these events.

[3] While existed is in the past tense I am not asserting that these beings no longer exist.

[4] For a more detailed description see Stanner, WEH 1976, Some Aspects of Aboriginal Religion, The Charles Strong Memorial Trust Inaugural Lecture, in Australian and New Zealand Society for Theological Studies 1976, Colloquium, pp.19-35.