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Ties that Bind: Photographs, Personhood, and Image Relations in Northeastern Australia

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949460802156375

1545-5920

Benjamin R. Smith,

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Abstract Photographs are a ubiquitous feature of Aboriginal life in Northeastern Australia, with images of relatives being prominently displayed in most Aboriginal houses. This display of photographs is tied to a form of distributed personhood that draws on photographs to create a sense of social immediacy in the absence of close kin. This sense of immediacy also occurs in relation to photographs of the dead, giving these images a particular force for Aboriginal viewers. But further consideration of this force of photographic images suggests that they should be treated neither as things nor as aspects of persons, despite their seeming ability to manifest agency in Aboriginal life-worlds. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the Aboriginal people of Central Cape York Peninsula for their continuing support of my research. In particular, this article has benefited from conversations with David Claudie, Vera Claudie, Waampo Kepple (dec.), Phillip Port, and Rosie Sellars. This article also draws on conversations with Jennifer Deger, Deirdre McKay, Tony Redmond, Bruce Rigsby, and Richard Vokes, who have been profoundly influential on my approach to this topic. Any errors remain my responsibility. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Australian National University, the Australian Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the University of London, all of whom have provided financial support for the research on which this article is based. Notes See Anderson [1995 Anderson , Christopher 1995 Politics of the Secret . In Politics of the Secret . Christopher Anderson and Michael Jackson , eds. Pp. 1 – 14 . (Oceania Monograph No. 45.) Sydney : University of Sydney . [Google Scholar]: 9–13] on “returning,” “reparation,” and “de-collection” of objects of cultural relevance to Aboriginal Australians from museums and other institutions. On the return of photographs by anthropologists and other private individuals, see Smith [2003 Smith , Benjamin R. 2003 Images, Selves, and the Visual Record: Photography and Ethnographic Complexity in Central Cape York Peninsula . In En-Visioning Ethnography . Gerry Bloustein , ed. Special issue of Social Analysis, 47(3) : 8 – 26 . [Google Scholar]]. My use of the idea of intersubjectivity follows the sense of the term noted by Merlan [2005 Merlan , Francesca 2005 Explorations Toward Intercultural Accounts of Socio-Cultural Reproduction and Change . In Figuring the Intercultural in Aboriginal Australia . Melinda Hinkson and Benjamin R. Smith , eds. Special issue of Oceania, 75(3) : 167 – 182 . [Google Scholar]: 169], who notes that influential models of subjectivity “do not begin with a notion of a pre-existing ‘subject’ and then try to specify how that subject comes to relate to others. They begin from a notion of interrelationship and its specific moments of interaction as crucial to the on-going formation of subjectivity. Subjectivity is always fundamentally under construction, and always fundamentally relational.” Among anthropologists, Jackson [1996 Jackson , Michael 1996 Introduction: Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism, and Anthropological Critique . In Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology . Michael Jackson , ed. Pp. 1 – 50 . Bloomington : Indiana University Press . [Google Scholar], 1998 1998 Minima Moralia: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project . Chicago : University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]] offers perhaps the most sustained and insightful account of intersubjectivity. Elsewhere, I explore intersubjectivity and its relation to dividual and distributed forms of personhood more fully [Smith, in preparation]. See also Weiner's [1999 1999 Psychoanalysis and Anthropology: On the Temporality of Analysis . In Anthropological Theory Today . Henrietta Moore , ed. Pp. 234 – 261 . Cambridge : Polity Press . [Google Scholar]: 241] insightful linking of Munn's [1970 Munn , Nancy 1970 The Transformation of Subjects into Objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjara Myth and Ritual . In Australian Aboriginal Anthropology . Ronald M. Berndt , ed. Pp. 141 – 163 . Perth : University of Western Australia Press . [Google Scholar]] account of the leaving of parts/images of the self by mythological forebears, which are then introjected by Aboriginal people who come into being in those places subject to that prior mythical action. Obviously projective identification in Western contexts is no less culturally inflected. I should note that other psychoanalytically oriented anthropological accounts of personhood are less ready to use the notion of introjection (and presumably projective identification) cross-culturally. Writing on the Yaka of Southwestern Congo, Devisch [1998 Devisch , René. 1998 Treating the Affect by Remodelling the Body in a Yaka Healing Cult . In Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia . Michael Lambek and Andrew Strathern , eds. Pp. 127 – 157 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . [Google Scholar]] uses the term “incorporate” to denote the social constitution of “individual identity,” but “avoid[s] the terms intemalisation and introjection, mainly out of respect for the Yaka genius.” In contrast, I find the terms useful for an etic analysis of Aboriginal personhood, while noting both the cultural particularities of Aboriginal introjection and projective identification and the comparative critique that Aboriginal personhood offers in relation to the ethnocentric assumptions inherent in much psychoanalytic theory. Compare Strathern [1992 1992 Parts and Wholes: Re-Figuring Relationships in a Post-Plural World . In Conceptualizing Society . Adam Kuper , ed. Pp. 75 – 104 . London : Routledge . [Google Scholar]: 82] on dividual “perspectivality”: “relations appear as significant extensions of a person's motivations: others exist in being thought upon.” Similarly, it is possible to see links to psychoanalytic theories of introjection in the accompanying description of the Melanesian dividual: “the singularity of the…person is conceptualized as a (dividual) figure that encompasses plurality” [Strathern 1992 1992 Parts and Wholes: Re-Figuring Relationships in a Post-Plural World . In Conceptualizing Society . Adam Kuper , ed. Pp. 75 – 104 . London : Routledge . [Google Scholar]: 82]. In this article I extend the analysis of the dividual from its conceptual or social enactment to encompass its experiential aspects. Perceptions of over-dependence among Aborigines are often problematized in discussions about socioeconomic development. For example, professionals in government agencies and NGOs discussing Aboriginal students' tendency to drop out of boarding schools often suggest that poor retention rates can be understood partly as the result of the difficulties Aboriginal people experience in being away from their family. This risk is also dealt with by the continuing return of love and projected parts of the self in the form of gifts elicited from consociates. This recalls Klein's account of the projection of good parts of the self into the external world, and the self's reintrojection of projected love and its ability to “take in goodness from other sources” [Klein 1975 Klein , Melanie 1975 Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963 . New York : Free Press . [Google Scholar]: 144–45]. Like the anxiety that results from the absence of kin, the anxiety produced by a refusal of such requests points to the distributed and dividual character of Aboriginal personhood discussed here. In this article I have focused on photographic portraits of kin. However, it would be possible to extend this argument to include “portraits of place” [Smith 2003 Smith , Benjamin R. 2003 Images, Selves, and the Visual Record: Photography and Ethnographic Complexity in Central Cape York Peninsula . In En-Visioning Ethnography . Gerry Bloustein , ed. Special issue of Social Analysis, 47(3) : 8 – 26 . [Google Scholar]], which focus on places whose inherent ancestral substances are held to be shared with particular Aboriginal people. It should also be added that these essences tend to be humanized and associated primarily with the figures of “old people”—remembered or forgotten human forebears with particular ties to areas of “country” in Coen's hinterland. See also Smith [in preparation]; cf. Peterson [2007 Peterson , Nicolas 2007 Animism in Australia? A Walpiri Perspective on Metaphor . Paper presented at the Combined Anthropology Seminar Series , Australian National University , May 30 . [Google Scholar]]. The personal names used in this article, with the exception of long-dead forebears, are pseudonyms. This heritage center, established by Coen's non-Aboriginal population in response to the development of the town's Aboriginal “Culture Centre,” is rarely visited by local Aboriginal people. The young man in question was the son-in-law of Maisie's mother's younger brother. The young man's father-in-law later “warmed” the house to “settle” the young man's spirit. Compare Strathern [1992 1992 Parts and Wholes: Re-Figuring Relationships in a Post-Plural World . In Conceptualizing Society . Adam Kuper , ed. Pp. 75 – 104 . London : Routledge . [Google Scholar]: 84] on the need to adjust fields of dividual personhood following the death of a consociate: “at death what is extinguished are the relationships embodied by the deceased.” I am indebted to Deirdre McKay in my use of this phrase. See also McKay [this collection]. Aboriginal people in the Central Peninsula say that a person's shadow persists after death and can be seen alongside the kin he or she associated with during life. But over time this shadow fades away and finally disappears. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBenjamin R. SmithBENJAMIN R. SMITHis a social and cultural anthropologist whose fieldwork has mostly been conducted with Aboriginal Australians in Northern Queensland. He has written on topics including customary land claims, local manifestations of the state, the social life of photographs, and sorcery. Currently he is working on a book manuscript, Between People Between Places: The Grounds of Sociality in Northeast Australia.