Timeless Cultures

In Australia, dominant representations of indigenous culture portray it as attuned to a temporal awareness quite other than that practised by mainstream society. In the 19th century this supposed temporal `otherness' was often understood to be a timelessness, a total unawareness of time. This article suggests that, irrespective of any correspondence with actual indigenous beliefs, the construction of temporal difference was part of the 18th- and 19th-centuries colonial enterprise, and bore the marks of contemporary middle-class preoccupations. These preoccupations also shaped the reform of popular culture within England itself. An examination of attitudes to plebeian temporalities in England problematizes a purely transparent relationship between colonial terminology and indigenous culture. Use of the term `Dreamtime', for example, belongs to a long history of discussion about the nature of dreaming and its relationship to prophecy. Drawing connections between the marginalization of English popular belief and of Aboriginal culture lends support to recent analysis of the history of the word `Dreamtime' that has stressed its hegemonic role within a dominant language.