Anatomies of Relatedness: Considering Personhood in Aboriginal Australia

Abstract

Anthropologists have described Aboriginal Australian personhood in various ways. In 1986, Myers spoke about the tension between autonomy and relatedness that he identified as intrinsic aspects of Pintupi identity. More recently, Keen (2006) has identified the extension of Yolngu persons in time and space; others have described Aboriginal personhood as "dividual." Based on ethnography from the northwest Kimberley region of Western Australia, I argue that one way of characterizing personhood is as an ontology of embodied relatedness.In this, I draw inspiration from Ashforth's (2011) approach to relational realism, in which he extends the field of relations under consideration to entities beyond the human. I also consider Viveiros de Castro's (2009) synthesis of kinship, exchange, and magic to argue that the relationship between these can be understood through the embodied relationality that is at the core of cultural conceptions of the person. [personhood, Aboriginal Australia, relatedness, embodiment]

Other‐than‐humans and the remaking of the social

“…The final group comprises malevolent beings of various kinds. As I am going to suggest that some of these beings have either disappeared, are disappearing, or are becoming less differentiated, some detail about them is necessary (and further see Glaskin ; ; ).…”

“…Notwithstanding this, generational experiences of country differ, and as Austin‐Broos (: 266) says, such experiences can have a ‘cumulative effect’ in terms of how people view their country. Previously I have described how cultural conceptions of the person among Bardi are grounded in a cosmology in which people, places, species, and ancestral beings are all related, describing this as an ontology of embodied relatedness (Glaskin : 298) . Using the example of dreamt material which would formerly have been incorporated into ritual (following jural authentication of its ancestral provenance) but which, in the case discussed, emerged as the alienable property of an individual artist (Glaskin ), I have also suggested there is evidence of ontological transformation.…”

“…22This article (Glaskin ) specifically discusses the use of the term ‘dividual’, arguing it is problematic in the Australian context (cf. Smith who uses this term).…”

“…According to Worms, Galalung has more than one name: ‘his second name is Lulul or Lulur , “the Shark‐Man” ’ (: 545), an observation that appears to conflate Lululu the whale shark with Galalung the law‐giver. As I have noted elsewhere,

The unrestricted mythological story concerning Lululu, a blind man who, after a fight, became a shark (possibly a whale shark), created sea, and transformed into a rock, locates the creation of sea and the creatures in it (the latter following a fight that Lululu had with Margaliyn, who later became a hammerhead shark) with a specific place called Gadiman (Glaskin : 301).

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“…The unrestricted mythological story concerning Lululu, a blind man who, after a fight, became a shark (possibly a whale shark), created sea, and transformed into a rock, locates the creation of sea and the creatures in it (the latter following a fight that Lululu had with Margaliyn, who later became a hammerhead shark) with a specific place called Gadiman (Glaskin : 301).…”