ABSTRACT

The main argument presented here is that in cultural contact zones, such as the Australian settler state, there can emerge violent tendencies in dominant patterns of thought, as both epistemic habits and systems of value. The logic of coloniality is one of war, destruction and inequality, and this is expressed through attempted erasure and actual ambivalence towards Indigenous peoples, their lands, waters, Laws and cultures. This is supported by habits of epistemic violence and axiological retreat. This paper examines such habits, through an ethnographically informed and localised case study of the destruction of an ancestral Dreaming site on Yanyuwa country in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. In this instance the body of Yulungurri, the ancestral Tiger Shark, manifest in a large cycad palm, was cut down. Read through the lens of axiological retreat, and coloniality’s ambivalence towards Indigenous presence, the discussion considers the dispositions which lead to and support violence in such forms and how these might become naturalised or concealed in everyday life.

摘要

这里提出的主要论点是，在文化接触区，例如澳大利亚定居者国家，在主流思维模式中可能会出现暴力倾向，包括认知习惯和价值体系。殖民逻辑是一种战争、破坏和不平等的逻辑，这通过对土著人民、他们的土地、水域、法律和文化的企图抹杀和实际矛盾来表达。这得到了认知暴力和价值论退却的习惯的支持。本文通过对澳大利亚北部卡奔塔利亚湾的 Yanyuwa 国家的一个祖先梦想遗址的破坏进行人种学信息和本地化案例研究，研究了这些习惯。在这种情况下，以巨大的苏铁棕榈呈现的虎鲨祖传虎鲨的身体被砍掉了。