Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

On Being Woken Up: The Dreamtime in Anthropology and in Australian Settler Culture
Author(s): Patrick Wolfe
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 197-224
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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On Being Woken Up:
The Dreamtime in Anthropology
and in Australian Settler Culture
PATRICK WOLFE

University of Melbourne

In the wake of decolonisation, an increasing numberof analyses turnedthe

ethnographicgaze onto anthropologyitself. Humblerpostcolonial strategies
emerged, designed to democratise anthropology's interculturalstaging by
means of an exchange of dialogue (Crapanzano1977, 1980; Dwyer 1977,
1982). Though sensitive to the backdropof neocolonialism, however, these
strategieslargely ignored anthropology'sown culturalgenealogy in favourof
a more particularisticfocus on the scene of ethnographicinteraction.
Steppingback from the frontline of ethnography,JamesClifford, in partic-
ular, has sought to situate anthropologyin a richer intraculturalsetting-or
"predicament"-which highlights the interplaybetween ethnographictrends
and developments in artistic, literary,dramatic(but, interestingly,not musi-
cal) modes of expression. Nonetheless, his analyses are simultaneouslyinter-
cultural (1988). Despite establishing an impressive range of connections,
however, Cliffordtends to depict anthropologypassively, as simply congruent
with, ratherthan dialectically productiveof, otherculturalpractices. Accord-
ingly, for all their thickness, his descriptionsare ultimately apolitical. They
neitheranalyse anthropology'srole in sustainingand reproducingcolonialism
nor in delimiting indigenous responses to it.
Though Talal Asad's (1986, cf. 1973) critique of anthropologyis overtly
political, he fails to accountfor his own abilityto frameit. Thus the inequality
whereby "strong" imperial codes can subordinatethird-worldlanguages is
depicted as a one-way process. There is no evaluationof the possibilities for
native subjects to appropriatethe code to their own ends. In particular,al-
though Asad's selection of languageas a synecdochefor the ubiquitouseffects
of colonial dominationis effective, he does not go on to analysewhat it means
when the colonised subject speaks the language of nationalism. Thus he
cannot analyse that language's dialectical confinementwithin terms imposed
by the very code which it strives to resist.

Fortheir advice and criticism, I would like to thankMauriceBloch, Dipesh Chakrabarty,Michael

Muetzelfeldt, and Linda Williams. For their editorialresponses, I would like to thankProfessors
Raymond Grew and Aram Yengoyan.
0010-4175/91/2191-1100 $5.00 ? 1991 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History

197

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I98 PATRICK WOLFE

To acquirea hegemonic languageis to submitto a frameworkin which local

meanings can take on unpredictablesignificance in relationto oppositions or
associations whose determinationis independentof local factors. In such a
language, nationalismdoes notjust speak. It also bespeaksan unequalhistory,
which preemptsand delimits the scope of what can be said. Thus learning a
strong language is not enough to give strengthto a colonised subject. Like-
wise, simply letting both parties speak cannot redress an all-encompassing
machineryof inequality.In both cases, the consequencesof speakingcannot
be assumed but should be located within the overall machinery.
In what follows, I attempt to trace an item of anthropologicallanguage
through a context of unequal power. In keeping with Asad, the analysis is
political. It also stresses language'srole in sustainingand reproducinga larger
machinery of power relations, to which end it is appropriateto develop
Clifford's contextual lead.
Anthropologyis analysedhere, in a manneradaptedfrom Mauss, as a total
cultural practice: in this case, one which both expresses and sustains the
hegemonic process of colonial settlement.' In other words, my tribe is the
anthropologists.Anthropologicaldebates are my primarydata, ratherthan a
means to a sharedend. Thus I am neitherattemptingto answerthe questions
which anthropologistshave asked themselves, nor am I arbitratingtheir dis-
putes, since to do so would be to analyse indigenous, as opposed to an-
thropological, discourse. Indigenousdiscourseonly intrudesinto the analysis
when it submits to anthropologicallanguage, at which point it acquires sig-
nificance in relation to oppositions and associations which have developed
within the colonising culture. The object of the following analysis is, there-
fore, an anthropologicalconstruct called the Dreamtime, and not any pre-
sumptive Koori precedent.2
1 "In these total social phenomena,as we propose to call them, all kinds of institutionsfind
simultaneousexpression:religious, legal, moral, andeconomic. In addition,the phenomenahave
their aesthetic aspect and they reveal morphologicaltypes" (Mauss 1925 [1970]:1). Apartfrom
the obvious differences of application, I have supplementedMauss' formula with a Marxist
emphasis on sustaining (i.e., contributingto the reproductionof) social processes.
2 The object of analysis is anthropologicaldiscourse. Accordingly,aborigines,savages, black-
fellows, and so forth, are figures of discourse, reproducedhere as they appearin the primary
textualdata, spelled and capitalisedaccordingto the usages of texts underdiscussion. Indigenous
people in Australiano longer generally name themselves accordingto the single category avail-
able in settler nomenclature,so they do not have a collective name. Accordingly, when it is
necessary to distinguish the generality of indigenous people in Australia from the figures of
discourse, I use the name Koori, since that is the appropriatename in Melbourne,which is the
place of writing. In other words, I am awarethat Kooriis the name of the people from the south-
east, but I use it because it is a name which is sanctionedby indigenous people in Australia.
Similarly, the term "settler" suffers from its suggestion of a homogeneous uniformity. "Settler
culture" is shorthandfor a dominant, distinctive or generalisable set of Australianpopular
discourses with which anthropologicalconcepts are here held to be continuous.Nevertheless,the
following discussion exemplifies both anthropologicalopposition to the prevailingdisciplinary
consensus (the Strehlows)and antagonismwithin settlersociety at large (Gillen versus Willshire).
Such controversies do not, however, detract from the manifest generality of the Dreaming
complex as here analysed.

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 199

In Australia, the Dreamtimeand its variantssignify everythingthat was or

remains aboriginal. Its currency encompasses scholarly and popular dis-
course. Though introducedinto the Australiansettler vocabularythroughthe
writings of white anthropologists, the Dreamtime has become the central
symbol of Koori culturalrevivalism. In the context of the Australiancultural
field as a whole, however, the Dreamtimeconcept encodes and sustains the
subjugationand expropriationof the Koori population.This culturalirony is
the object of the following analysis.
This paper traces the origin and historical developmentof the Dreamtime
concept and shows how its affinity with the theoreticalenvironmentof late
nineteenth-centuryanthropologyfollowed from an ideological legacy linking
the concept to themes that were fundamentalto Europeancolonial expansion.
These themes penetrateculturalreaches which would otherwise appearto be
historically and geographicallydistinct. Thus, from situatingthe Dreamtime
in relation to broad post-Enlightenmentgeneralities, the paper more specifi-
cally traces the concept's genealogy throughanthropologicaltheorisingto the
local ideologies of a frontier culture, where it provides a rationale for the
seizure of territoryoccupied by nomads. The local ideology is not simply a
reflection of macrohistoricaldeterminationsbut a culturallyspecific formula-
tion which undergoes transformationsas settler society develops.
The discussion thereforecovers a numberof historical and culturalregis-
ters, between which there is some terminologicalvariation, but in which a
referenceto dreamingis constant. To express this continuity,the termDream-
ing complex will be adopted. This term has the furthersignificancethat, as a
focus of intersection, a complex reflects the paper's holistic approach.The
Dreamingcomplex is, in short, a total culturalpractice,the special termbeing
necessitated by the variety of names which its referenthas borne.

That the Dreaming complex was an invention of the anthropologists'own

culture3can be seen from the extraordinarysuccess which it enjoyed once it
had been coined in the ethnographyof FrankGillen. Indeed, before Gillen's
phrase was even introduced, it had been advertised in advance by an En-
glishman, Baldwin Spencer, who spoke no Koori language, as "aptly" and
"appropriately"renderedfrom the aboriginal(Spencer 1896b:50, 111). The
phrase subsequentlyacquiredsuch a peerless hegemony over Australianab-
original anthropology that the discipline's foremost practitionersmutually
misrepresentedthe phrase's history in order to associate themselves with its
discovery. The sequence of events was as follows.
Spencer, professor of biology at the University of Melbourne,met Gillen,
postmasterat Alice Springs, in 1894, while Spencer was on the Horn Scien-
tific Expedition to central Australia.4The ensuing partnershipbetween the
3 Cf. Urry 1979:15.
4 Mulvaney and Calaby 1985: ch. 9.

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200 PATRICK WOLFE

biologist and the local man harnessed scientific credentialsto an otherwise

incompatiblefamiliaritywith savagery.
"The dream-times"was one of the first fruits of this partnership.Spencer
(1896a) edited the reportof the Horn Expedition. At his instigation, Gillen
(1896) contributeda memoir on some mannersand customs of the Arunta.
This memoirwas appendedto the fourthvolume of the report,an arrangement
which enabled Gillen's phrase to have been explicitly corroboratedon two
occasions by Spencer,in his sections of the report,before the readerhad even
encounteredit.
In the first volume of the report, Spencer condemned the Hermannsburg
Mission, near Alice Springs, emphasisingthe wretchedconditionof the rem-
nants of its aboriginalpopulationand maintainingthat there was no evidence
thatthe mission had ever done them any good. He contendedthatthe mission-
aries should give up the attemptto improve the moral order of the Arunta,
which, though it could not compare with white morality,was unequivocally
preferableto the degeneracywhich followed acculturation.This undisturbed
order was the Dream times:
Themoralityof theblackis notthatof thewhiteman,buthislife so longas he remains
uncontaminated by contactwiththelatter,is governedby rulesof conductwhichhave
beenrecognisedamongsthis tribefromwhattheyspeakof as the "alcheringa", which
Mr.Gillenhas aptlycalledthe "Dreamtimes"(Spencer1896b:111).
From the outset, therefore, the Dream times were fatally susceptible to
contact. According to Spencer's Social Darwinistrationale, aboriginescon-
fronted their far-distantfuture in the form of the whites, a strain whose
superiorityexemplifiedthe cumulativeoperationof selection in a whole range
of ways, from cranialenlargementto the attainmentof abstractthought.Thus
the ensuing doom of the aborigineswas a result inscribedin the naturalorder
of things and bound to accrue once others had reached a level of progress
which enabled the crossing of barrierswhich were at once both geographic
and phylogenetic.5
Gillen's actual translation,which followed in the fourthpartof the report,
was a nondescriptdebut. It occurredduringan expositionof Aruntaexplana-
tions for the origin of fire, which ancestorswere held to have acquired"in the
distant past (ulchurringa), which really means in the dream-times"(Gillen
1896:185). Yet the anticlimaxis immaterial,since what mattersis not Gillen's
coinage of the term but the culturallogic whereby Spencer, who gave "Al-
cheringa"its new spelling, should have found Gillen's renderingso apt.6This
was the moment when a mere aside-one of many, which could otherwise
only have been regardedas equally randomand inconsequential7-was first
5 He maintainedthis outlook until the end of his career: "The greaterthe differencebetween
the culturallevels of two associatedraces, the more rapidlydoes the lower one succumb;thereis
no such thing as grafting the higher upon the lower" (Spencer 1921:29).
6 Cf. Mountford 1976:53, n. 12.
7 Forinstance, in the same Memorandum,Gillen hadreferredon variousoccasions (1896:177,
181, 185) to "the long, long ago."

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 201

appropriatedinto discourse. Spencer'sselection was not unmotivated.Nor did

it cause the term's success. Rather,it was but the first in a cognate series of
such selections whose aggregationconsolidated the Dreamingcomplex.
Once coined, Gillen's phrasetook off immediately.By 1900, it had found
its way into the writings of European theorists who had not been to the
ethnographicfield but who had encounteredit in a numberof articles pub-
lished jointly by Spencer and Gillen after 1896:
I dislikeofferinga theoryaboutwhatoccurredin the "Dream-time"
(Alcheringa)
behindourhistoricalknowledgeof mankind(Lang1900:9).
Though the Alcheringafeaturedprominentlyin SpencerandGillen's classic
1899 book on the Arunta, the term dream-timesdid not appearin it. But, in
her book The Euahlayi Tribe, which went to press around the time that
Spencer and Gillen's 1904 book (in which the phrase did appear)was pub-
lished, Langloh Parker(1905:2) was alreadyreferringto "the Aruntamyth of
the Dream Time, the age of pristine evolution" without furtherexplanation.
The phrase would seem to have travelledby way of Oxford, since Andrew
Lang, who wrote the introductionto Langloh Parker's book, had corre-
sponded with her over its preliminarydrafts. In any event, the Euahlayiwere
not from centralAustraliabut from the east coast, so the equivalenceasserted
between their ideology and thatof Spencerand Gillen's Aruntaconstitutedan
enormousgeographicaldiffusionof the dream-times-one which was soon to
extend to all aborigines.8
Yet one needs to go no furtherthan the initial move from the Aruntato the
Euahlayifor clear evidence thatthe extensionof the termDreamTime was not
ethnographicallymotivated. Not only was there no suggestion that the Eu-
ahlayi equivalenthad anythingto do with dreaming,but the doctrineto which
the term was reapplieddifferedfundamentallyfrom its original Aruntarefer-
ent. For, although, as will be seen, Spencer and Gillen went to considerable
lengths to refute Strehlow's claim that the Aranda(as he called them) had a
monotheistic All-Father,insisting instead that the Alcheringa referredto an
age of mythical but non-theistic ancestors, Langloh Parker'sEuahlayihad a
monotheistic supremebeing in Byamee. Yet it was this Byamee who "in the
first place, is to the Euahlayiwhat the 'Alcheringa'or 'DreamTime' is to the
Arunta" (Langloh Parker 1905:6) Thus no claim about Koori discourse is
necessary to invalidate the extension of the Dreaming complex from the
Aruntato the Euahlayi.
The diffusion of the Dreaming complex through anthropologicalwriting
will be considered in greaterdetail below. For the moment, the point is that
this diffusion was not prompted by ethnographicobservation. The Dream
Time was appropriateto the Euahlayi because they were aborigines, rather
than because of any particularbeliefs which they may have espoused. The
8
Exceptionssuch as "The Law," "History"or "Stories,"thoughused locally by Kooris, have
not affected the Dreaming complex's monopoly in settler discourse.

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 202 PATRICK WOLFE

meaningof the termresidednot in the doctrinalcontentof Alcheringabut in a

thematic affinity between the two signs "dream" and "aborigine," which
affinity obtainedwithin the anthropologists'cultureratherthan within that-
or those-of their subjects. Thus the success of Gillen's translationdid not
simply result from Spencer's having approved it in advance. Rather, that
approvalwas itself culturallyprefigured.
To set the subsequentdemonstrationof the Dreamingcomplex's prefigura-
tion into context, it should first be noted thatthe concept'svery opportuneness
encourageda mystificationof its origins. This was because its success gave it
high value in anthropologicaldiscourse: the Dreaming complex was some-
thing to be associated with. Thus two of the three most eminent figures in
Australianaboriginalanthropologymisrepresentedits origins in orderto ap-
propriateit to their own respective names, whilst the third(Radcliffe-Brown)
left the field to the first two by ignoring the concept altogether.9It is, there-
fore, little wonder that its true origins should have become obscured. This
explains the otherwise puzzling fact that, even though the occurrenceof the
Horn Expedition was well-known-and an afternoonin a reasonablepublic
librarywould have been more thanenough to tracethe origin of the Dreaming
complex-none of the major figures in Australianaboriginalanthropology
could correctly locate the concept's introduction.10
The obscurity surroundingthe origins of the Dreamingcomplex enhanced
its ethnographic credibility by virtue of its marginalisingthe role of an-
thropologists. Indeed, it was appropriatethat the aboriginal category par
excellence should have no beginning, since aborigineswere a people without
a history. Even if its original authorshiphad been recognised, therefore, the
concept's universal distributionwithin aboriginal culture would mean that
Gillen's happeningto be the first to place it on record could hardly be ac-
counted a discovery, much less an invention. Thus a circle is closed: The very
culturalappeal which first commendedthe concept to anthropologistssubse-
quently effaces itself, in the process reinforcingthe hold of the concept.
The two who muddied the water were Spencer himself and, later, Elkin.
Although Gillen's memoir was published in 1896, the Horn Expeditionhad
actually taken place in 1894. Writingin 1926, however, Spencerwas to trace
the term back to fieldworkamong the Aruntawhich he and Gillen had under-
taken togethertwo years afterthe HornExpeditionand which had formedthe
basis for their first major work, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, which
had appearedin 1899:
9 Radcliffe-Brown(1913:169) referredearly to "the times long ago," a formulaconsistent
with Gillen's initial (1896:177) "the long long ago." Later, when the Dreamingcomplex was
firmly established, Radcliffe-Brownclaimed (1952 [1945]:166) for his term "WorldDawn" the
preposterousethnographicwarrantthat it "correspondsto certainideas thatI have found amongst
the aborigines of some tribes."
10 See Appendix (a).

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 203

It was duringour work amongstthe Aruntain 1896, when we were able to watch and
study in its entirety the long and great Engwura ceremony that we first became
acquaintedwith the termsAlchera andAlcheringa. ... As indicatinga past periodof
a very vague and, it seemed to us, "Dreamy"nature,we adopted,to express as nearly
as possible the meaning of the word alcheringa (alchera, a dream, and ringa, a suffix
meaning "of" or "belonging to") the term "dreamtimes" (Spencerand Gillen 1927:
592).
Though this account leaves no room for doubt as to the year 1896, Elkin
was later to use it to claim that Spencer had not discerned the dreaming
connotation of Alcheringa until 1926. This then enabled Elkin to suggest that
he had discovered the term at around the same time as Spencer but over a
much wider ethnographic range:
The concept "Dream-time"arose out of Spencerand Gillen's use of the Arandaword
Alcheringa (Altjiranga)in their classic The Native Tribes of CentralAustralia (1899)
to denote the mythic times of the ancestors of the totemic groups. However, when
revising thatbook in Alice Springsin 1926, ProfessorSpencerfound that "pastmythic
time" was only part of the meaning of Altjira;it also meant dream and, moreover,
those Aborigines who were becoming familiar with English referredto the ancestral
heroes, their past times and to everything associated with them as their Dreaming.
And, in my own field-workfrom 1927 onwardsin southern,central,north-westernand
northernregions of Australia,whateverthe term, it was the "dreaming".Altjira in the
Arandatribe, Djugur in the vast western region of South Australiaand neighbouring
areasof Westernand CentralAustralia,Bugari aroundLa Grangeand Broome, Ungud
on the north of the King Leopold Range, Northern Kimberley, Wongar in North-
EasternArhem Land, and so on (Elkin 1964:210).
Three points anticipated in this version of events will figure prominently
below. First, the fact of a single English word being interchangeable for all
these different words derived from separate cultural regions has the effect of
smothering multiplicity under a single undifferentiated category-"aborig-
inal"-defined in contradistinction to settler society. Second, Elkin represents
Aborigines as proffering the English word dreaming as if they had been the
authors of its translation. The third point is the terminological shift from
dream-times to Dreaming, especially in so far as a reference (or lack of it) to
time is concerned.
Before developing these points, however, the cultural background to the
Dreaming complex needs to be sketched in. Since I do not intend to account
for Eurohistorical watersheds, socially contexted analysis will be restricted to
the local level, where it is possible to show the cultural selection and specifi-
cation of a general post-Enlightenment theme.

II

Dreaming has long signified the subordinate aspect of a lop-sided am-

bivalence between scientific empiricism and various forms of subjective or
romantic idealism in European discourse. Needless to say, this ambivalence

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204 PATRICK WOLFE

also extends to dichotomousrepresentationsof natureand of the female, as

well as to the enduringalternationof base and noble savagery.This double-
edgedness endows the romanticaspect with a contrarysubtext, so that when,
say, Andrew Lang (1898:xviii) places aborigines amongst the "most dis-
tinguished" of the world's dreamers,the distinction is bestowed to satirical
ends. This ambivalence continues to the present day in the common settler
quip equating the Dreamtimewith alcoholic stupor. As will be shown, this
ambivalence, which is an aspect of the culturalirony to which this paper is
addressed,has substantialimplicationsfor settlerideologies concerningrights
to land.
Being both subjective and impervious to logic, dreaming was bound to
invite scientific antipathy(which was indeed expressed at least as early as
Descartes' first Meditation11). In particular,dreaming'snotorious disregard
for sequentialregularityran counterto the whole discourseof time, discipline
and order which Foucault (1967, 1977) has famously analysed. A century
after Descartes, Buffon, one of the greatest of the Enlightenmentsystem-
atisers, made the capacity to distinguishbetween dreamsand reality a thresh-
old which separatedhumans from animals. For Buffon, the reason that ani-
mals were incapable of distinguishingbetween dreams and reality was that
they lacked a sense of time:
We rememberdreams for the same reason that we rememberformer sensations:the
only differencebetween us and the brutesis, thatwe can distinguishdreamsfrom ideas
or real sensations; and this capacity of distinguishingis a result of comparison, an
operation of memory, which includes the idea of time. But the brutes, who are
deprived of memory and of the faculty of comparingpast and present time, cannot
distinguish their dreams from their actual sensations (Buffon 1812 [1749]: 530-1).

By the second half of the nineteenthcentury,withinthe emergentdiscipline

of anthropology,aspirationsto scientific status ruled out any romanticrever-
ence for dreaming'screative freedom. Rather,the abasementand promiscuity
which characteriseddreamingin the privaterealmwere transferredto a scien-
tifically constructedrealm of savagery.From within the heartlandof roman-
ticism, for instance, the GermananthropologistAdolf Bastian, whose interna-
tional standingwas yet to be rivalled by that of the EnglishmanTylor, could
hardly have expressed the constructionmore clearly:
Tribes in the state of naturesurrenderpassively to the all too overwhelmingimpres-
sions of the external world. For them, hallucinationsand illusions maintaina half-
conscious oscillation between dreaming and waking as a normal condition. Their
entire mental condition enables them to create supernaturalagencies or to believe in
these unconditionally,with an intensityand to an extent, to the directunderstandingof
which luckily our logical thinkinghas long ago destroyedthe bridge, or at least should
have done so (Bastian 1868:118).12
11 Descartes 1954 [1642]:61-3.
12 F. Goodman, translator.

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 205

The differencebetween this statementand Buffon's is that, whereasBuffon

had distinguishedbetween people and animals, Bastian, throughciting essen-
tially the same criteria, was distinguishing between types of people. The
theoretical watershed separatingthe two approacheswas Darwinism, which
both relativised Buffon's hiatus and enabled the opening up of comparable
divisions within genus homo. Indeed, a quarterof a centurybefore the emer-
gence of the dream-times, Darwin himself, who had been to Australia, had
comparedthe consciousness of Australianaborigines, who had "hardlyany
abstractwords" and could not count above four, to the twitchingof a sleeping
dog reliving the chase in its dreams (Darwin 1871:i, 62).
Aborigines' unquestionedproximityto the animal state entailed in advance
that they, like animals, should be held to confuse dreaming with everyday
experience. An anthropologicalpreoccupationwith ritual encouragedsuch a
conclusion, since ritual added to the input of the irrational.In this regard,
scientific rationalism sustained discursive continuities which encompassed
centuries.Thus, by way of Spencerand Gillen's accountof totemic announce-
ments among the Arunta, Frazerattributedprecisely the same role to aborig-
inal ritual as, over a hundredand fifty years earlier, Buffon had attributedto
animals' lack of a sense of time:
Theseannouncements perhapssometimesoriginatein dreams,forwhata savagesees
in a dreamis just as realto himas whathe sees in his wakinghours.Thethoughtsof
the nativesareat timesso muchtakenup withtheperformance of sacredceremonies
thatit is quitenaturalthattheyshoulddreamof themandtakethevisionaryimagesof
sleepfor revelationsof thosespiritswithwhomtheirown spirithasbeencommuning
duringthe lethargyof the body(Frazer1910:i,212).
To turnmore specifically to anthropology,Frazer'sestimate of dreaming's
importance in savage life did not simply reflect European rationalism in
general. Within that overall tradition,13his estimate was specifically predi-
cated upon Tylor'stheoryof Animism, whose key premisewas dreaming,and
which dominatedlate nineteenth-centuryanthropologicalthought. According
to this theory, whose paradigm enunciation was Tylor's landmark(1871)
Primitive Culture, the first abstractconception was the notion of a soul, or of
a spiritualdouble detachablefrom the body, which occurredto savages as an
explanationfor the sensation of moving about in their dreams. Animism had
both cognitive and religious significance since, once spirit doubles had been
conceptualised, they could be attributedto a whole range of objects-hence
fetishism, totemism and other forms of idolatry.
In keeping with the conventionalevolutionaryconflationof individualand
species development,Tylor(1871:i,431) deemed animisma childish doctrine,
13 For a classical
precedent opposing dreams and science in a mannerclosely anticipating
Tylor's theory of Animism, see Lucretius (1886:iv, 29-39). Voltaire(1967 [1770]:425) antici-
pated the theory by a century,whilst Hobbes (1909 [1651]:17, 83) had anticipatedit a century
before Voltaire.

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206 PATRICK WOLFE

"the infant philosophy of mankind,"which was no differentto the nursery

belief that sticks or toys were alive. It was not that the conclusions which
savages drew from their experiences were invalid. Rather,an incapacity to
distinguishbetween dreamsand veridical sense data14renderedtheir reliance
upon experience a mockery of the sensory foundations of scientific
empiricism:
Everyonewho has seen visionswhilelight-headed in fever,everyonewho has ever
dreamta dream,hasseenthephantoms of objectsas well as of persons.Howthencan
we chargethe savagewith far-fetchedabsurdityfor takinginto his philosophyand
religionan opinionwhichrestson theveryevidenceof his senses(Tylor1871:i,431)?
In sum, then, savages' impartialcrediting of all sensation made them the
hapless dupes of somatic caprice. It is in this connection that the singular
value of dreaming for evolutionaryanthropologycan be most clearly seen,
for, emanating from within the private constitution of the sleeper, dreams
afforded a nexus which linked the physical and the mental. Thus they pro-
vided a bridge between the animal and the human, the concrete and the
abstract,craniology and culture. Aboriginesthoughtwith their bodies: Their
brutesenses were geared to trackinggame; they countedon their fingers;and
so on. Thus their sign language testified to their lingering failureto abandon
directtactile referencein favourof the relativeabstractionof vocal representa-
tion (hence they needed to stay within the light of their campfiresin orderto
converse at night'5). This combinationof the somatic and the semiotic had
made aborigines into dreamerslong before the Dreamtime.
The contentionthatthe Dreamingcomplex constitutedthe culminationof a
historical discourse which subordinateddreaming savages to the level of
animal natureshares some groundwith Ortner's(1974) claim that the female
category is universally subordinatedin an analogous manner.Thus it is no
accident that the dream-timesshould have emerged at the same time as psy-
choanalysis, which broughttogethera similar assemblageof themes-wom-
en, savagery,childhood, irrationality,instinct, ritual, and so forth-within a
scientific discourse on dreaming.16
A furtherconsequence of the theory of animism was theological, for the
idea of a world populatedby a multitudeof vitalised objects did not entail
their being worshipped. The issue was of some moment, as religious senti-
14 This was a common theme. HerbertSpencer (1871:150), for instance, claimed that savage
languageswere incapableof distinguishingbetween "I saw" and "I dreamedthat I saw." Thus it
was conventionalthat Howitt (1884:187, 1904:411) shouldattributeaboriginalbeliefs to a failure
to distinguish between dreamingand reality. Spencer and Gillen's (1904:451) version repeated
Tylor and HerbertSpencer word for word.
15 Fora model statementof the whole formulafrom a follower of Tylor,see Clodd (1885:223-
4; cf. H. Spencer 1871:142-97).
16 The first, Germanedition of Freud'sThe Interpretationof Dreams was publishedin 1899,
though its title page was postdatedto 1900 (Freud 1976:34).

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 207

ment had also been proposed as a feature distinguishingpeople from ani-

mals.17 In contrast, Tylor's theory eliminated moral and theological criteria
from a scientific definition of humanity.Though not jeopardisingthe human
status of its practitioners,however, the lowest, dream-relatedform of ani-
mism was categorically pretheisticin Tylor's scheme, merely furnishingthe
ground upon which gods would later develop (Tylor 1871:i, 1)
This clear distinction between animism and theism illuminatesone of the
transformationsof the Dreamingcomplex. Although the Dreamingwas later
to be adducedby Stanner(1965:213-21) as evidence of aboriginalreligiosity,
Spencerand Gillen not only avoidedthe termreligion in relationto the dream-
times but actually resisted its use. Following Turgotand Comte, Frazerhad
rankedreligion as an evolutionaryadvance from magic, with science subse-
quently developing out of religion. On this basis, Spencer (1904:404) ex-
plicitly proscribedthe use of the word religious in relationto the Arunta,for
whom the term magical was appropriate.
This exclusion of the dream-timesfrom religion underlaythe long-running
dispute between Spencer and the LutheranmissionaryCarl Strehlow, whose
HermannsburgMission had been the subject of Spencer's disparaging re-
marks. Though they were in total opposition over the question of aboriginal
religiosity, neitherdoubtedthatthe dream-timesand religion were incompati-
ble. Thus the dispute was over whetheror not blacks had a dream-time,rather
than over what it would have meant if they had.
Strehlow repudiatedGillen's translation,contendingthat "a 'dream-time'
is unknown to the blacks."18 Whilst Strehlow's rare proficiency in Aranda
might seem to have made him a more credible authoritythan Spencer and
Gillen, the concept of the dream-timesbroughtthe protagonists'professional
interests into direct conflict. Spencer's interest in the primitiveness of his
ethnographicdiscovery encourageda denial of the very faculty-a religious
sentiment-which was prerequisiteto the success of Strehlow's evangelical
enterprise. Thus Strehlow alleged that the word Altjira (the alchera in Al-
cheringa) referredto an Arandagood god, to which Spencer respondedwith
the claim that, in translatingthe Lutherancanon into Arunta,the Hermanns-
burgmissionarieshad renderedGott as Altjiraand had inculcatedthe usage in
daily prayers, which accountedfor Strehlow now finding that the word had a
monotheistic import.19
Beyond the particularissue of theology, however, a more generaltransfor-
mationtook place between Spencer'sand Stanner'sapproaches.ThoughStan-
ner is not to blame for the New Age caricaturewhich enveloped aboriginesin
17 In Australia,and with referenceto aborigines, by J. Dunmore
Lang 1861:374. Cf. Schmidt,
1931:58.
18 Strehlow in Thomas 1905:430. For a fuller context, see
Appendix (b).
19 See Appendix (b).

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208 PATRICK WOLFE

the wake of the 1960s, his celebrated 1956 article, "The Dreaming," which
remains the definitive expression of the concept, represents a distinct shift
towards the romantic pole:
The truth of it [The Dreaming] seems to be that man, society, and natureand past,
present, and futureare at one together within a unitarysystem of such a kind that its
ontology cannot illumine minds too much under the influence of humanism, ra-
tionalism, and science (Stanner 1956:54).

Though cautioning against a European tendency to view all aboriginal thought

as ruled by mysticism, Stanner depicts his blackfellow as a stock transcenden-
tal other in contrast to the order and efficiency of settlement:
What defeats the blackfellow in the modernworld, fundamentally,is his transcenden-
talism (Stanner 1956:61).

Defeat, here, has serious implications, since it is equated-in a manner at

first sight reminiscent of Spencer's Social Darwinism-with "extinction"
(Stanner 1956:61). Yet Stanner's rhetoric is very different to Spencer's evolu-
tionist resignation. When Spencer asserted (1896b: 111) that "in contact with
the white man the aborigine is doomed to disappear," he meant that the people
would die out. For Stanner, on the other hand, extinction has the quality of a
literary event:
A good analogy is with the process in Chinese poetry by which, accordingto Arthur
Waley, its talent for classical allusion became a vice which finally destroyed it al-
together (Stanner 1956:61).
The apparent offensiveness of Stanner's own allusion is inexplicable until one
decodes what he means by extinction. In the overall context, this judgement
does not refer to the lives of the erstwhile inhabitants of the Dreaming (by
1956, their physical extinction was no longer a feasible prospect) but to their
transcendental mentality.
The difference between Spencer and Stanner is symptomatic of a much
more general process. On the ideational level, this process can be charac-
terised as the extension of the scientific realm. On the local level, it has a
material correlate in the extension of colonial settlement. The two are cog-
nate. Moreover, in addition to thematic continuity through the shared imper-
atives of order, regularity and control, they have a common developmental
structure.
To deal with this common structure first: when Tylor coined his theory of
animism, he was, as observed, engaged in establishing anthropology's cre-
dentials as a science.20 In the process, he not only had to carve out a space
between established sciences (archaeology, philology and so forth), but he
also took it upon himself to discredit the dissenting "pseudo-sciences" of
spiritualism, astrology, divination and the like, which he stigmatised as anom-
20 Burrow 1968:234-41. Cf. (regardingTylor) Marett 1941:308; Stocking 1987:267.

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 209

alous modem survivalsof the savage germ of animism.21Animism's associa-

tion with dreamingwas partof the stigma. There was nothing unusualabout
Tylor's attitude, which Frazerand Spencer shared. It simply representeda
continuation of the long-standing scientific opprobriumwhich attached to
dreamingas a signifier for subjectivityand disorder.As Freudobserved(1976
[1900]:212), "The phrase 'Dreams are froth' seems intendedto supportthe
scientific estimate of dreams." This estimate is the contemporarycontext in
which Spencer's selection of Gillen's phrase should be understood.By con-
trast, when Stannerwas writing, over half a centurylater, anthropologywas
well established and no longer had groundsfor anxiety over its possible lack
of disciplinarystatus.22Stannerhad no need to prove that he was on the side
of science.
This academicconsolidationechoed the consolidationof settlementin Aus-
tralia. In the 1890s, when Spencer was amongst the Arunta, the frontier
remained a reality to the north and to the west.23 Hostile natives were still
being "dispersed," as the official euphemismput it, to make way for settle-
ment.24By the time of Stanner'sarticle, however, settlementhad been effec-
tively completed. On both academic and political counts, therefore, savages
and their dreaminghad become detoxified by the 1950s.
Besides the common developmental structure,there are certain thematic
continuities. So far, we have only considered ideas and theories in isolation
from the social forces which bore them. We have also remainedwithin the
realm of learned discourse. When we move from the level of metropolitan
theoriesto considertheir appropriationinto local culture,however, it becomes
possible to suggest the diversity of the discourses which the Dreamingcom-
plex combined. In the section that follows, ideologies which are distinctiveof
a particularfrontier culture will be shown to be adaptationsof the general
post-Enlightenmentthemes outlined above, which are furthermodified as the
local situation develops. Thus, though the imperativeof order is an obvious
common denominatorbetween science and colonisation, it takes on idiosyn-
cratic forms in the Australiancontext.
The addition of a local dimension allows the concept of total cultural
practice to be clarified. As will be seen, the Dreamingcomplex tied different
levels of discourse (epistemic, local, political, poetic, and so forth) into a
culturally distinctive knot. Similarly, though expressed in language, it was
language which operated synecdochically, both encapsulatingand contribut-
ing to the historicaldevelopmentof settlersociety. Thus the culturalappropri-
21
Tylor 1867:91.
22 See Markus 1990:144-5.
23 In
practice,there was, obviously, no simple demarcationbetween two monolithic societies
but a spectrum of articulationrunning from first encounter to incorporation.Thus the term
frontieris used here to signify a settler constructfor the continuingexistence of unincorporated
aboriginal social units. It is, therefore, equivalent to the term bush black.
24
Mulvaney 1989:100.

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210 PATRICK WOLFE

ation of the Dreamingcomplex was not a passive process. Rather,the concept

was takeninto use as an active representationwithinAustraliansettlerculture,
where it took on new contextual meanings which shifted its original
significance.
As opposed to the situation in, say, most Asian or African colonies for
example the people who invaded Australiadid not seek simply to dominate
indigenous society in orderto extracta surplusfrom it. They soughtto replace
indigenous society. Pastoralsettlementwas seen as a zero-sumconflict: as the
folk aphorism had it, "niggers and cattle don't mix."25 For this culture of
settlement, dreaminghad a particularideological salience on account of its
conformity with the idea that colonial intrusionwas a form of awakenment.
Though the idea of awakenmentwas a commonplaceof the doctrineof prog-
ress, legitimatingconquestright across the colonised world, the settlementof
land belonging to nomads gave it a special twist. For what was to be aroused
there was not the people but the land itself, which, having never felt the
improving iron of cultivation, had yet to become property.26In reducingthe
land to order, then, settlementwas rescuing it from natureas reason rescues
consciousness from the chaos of dreaming. Whereasthe colonisation of sur-
plus-generatingcivilisations which had had golden ages was depicted as ren-
aissance, dreaming aborigines had merely occupied the land, so settlement
was not occupation. Like the mist, therefore (or like Freud's "froth"), the
dream-timesevaporatedwith the dawning of settlement, leaving behind only
land as the otherpartyto the colonial encounter.In otherwords, the Dreaming
complex constituted an ideological elaborationof the doctrine of terra nul-
lius,27 emptying the land so that settler and landscapeformed a dual interac-
tion with the characteristicproportionsof mind over matter.This ideological
bracketing-off-whereby aborigines were either effaced from the land or
assimilatedto it, leaving "a blank page on which the white man could write
his will and his hopes"28-is of such culturaldepth that journalists, popu-
larisers, schoolbooks and children's stories have repeatedit tirelessly:
Theuniqueaspectof theAustralian colonialexperiencewasthatthereweretwogreat
protagonists,the settlersandthe verylanditself (Harris1967:1-2).
The theme of precolonial somnambulance,a blend of dreaming and the
aimless Walkabout,suffuses Australianliberal culture, as evidenced by its
25 Reynolds 1982:129.
26 The reference is to Vattel's doctrine of naturallaw, whereby rights to land accrued from
tillage or pasturage. It was expressed in a passage from HerbertSpencer's Social Statics re-
published as a pamphlet in Melbourne in 1870 by the Land Reform League: "Cultivationis
commonly consideredto give a legitimate title. He who has reclaimeda tractof groundfrom its
primitive wildness, is supposed to have therebymade it his own" (H. Spencer 1870:7). See also
Bridges 1970; Reynolds 1989: ch. 3.
27 Spencer himself entitled the third book of his popular Wanderingsin Wild Australia
(Spencer 1928) "Australia'sGreat Lone Land."
28 The quotationcomes from the jacket notes to Fisher 1968, a widely used school text book.
Examples of this point could be multiplied indefinitely.

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 211

coffee-table literature (Time Before Morning, The Dawn of Time, and so on).
Walkaboutcould only be aimless, as there was nowhere to go in a signless
void unorganisedby pioneeringpurpose.For settlers, the wildernesswas void
because its contents had no use-a randomassemblageof proteanforms, they
were to be replacedratherthan domesticatedor employed. Thus land was but
a spatialcondition, ratherthanone of the forces, of production.Hence aborig-
ines' assimilationto the landscapeamountedto the same thing as their efface-
ment from it. Accordingto this ideology, they were partof its useless original
contents ratherthan acknowledged sources of labour, as witnessed by their
legendary unsuitabilityfor work.29In what might be called its hard version,
this formula implied that aborigines needed clearing along with everything
else on the land. Whilst it is relatively rare to find moder examples of this
version, it was predicated upon a narrativestructurewhich remains abun-
dantly alive in the softer trappingsof liberal romanticism:
Whata fascinatingplaceAustraliais! Whenone thinksof thecenturiesof civilisation
thathavepassedoverChina,India,andEuropeandhereyouhavea situation-still-
in 1982thatmostAustralians areentirelyignorantof somepartsof thecontinent,be it
structure,wildlife,or the heartandsoul of thisbeautifulold bronzeraftthatsevered
itself fromthe rest of the world,andslumberedin a "dreamtime"withits bizarre
marsupials andits gentleAboriginalpeoplewhobelievedthatthelandscapeitselfwas
the creation of their known world . . . (Olsen et al. 1984:12).
This theme is not dependentupon Gillen's particularverbalformula,having
been recognisably, albeit unromantically,expressedbefore the appearanceof
the dream-times:
the weirdsavages,birdswithoutwings,mysteriousanimalsof landandwaterin this
weirdand "StrangeLandof Dawning"(Purcell1894:289).
Even on a strictly local level, the general theme was clearly present to the
minds of settlers who were responsible for dealing with the Arunta. Thus
Gillen's superior,a mountedpolicemannamedW. H. Willshirewho was local
Protectorof Aborigines, wrote a numberof books recountinghis homicidal
exploits in the outback, one of which-published in the same year as the
report of the Horn Expedition-was entitled The Land of the Dawning
(Willshire 1896).
Despite its thematiccompatibility,however, TheLand of the Dawning does
not mention the dream-times.30For the purposes of cultural selection, the
verbaldifferenceis crucial. As the earlieroutline of the significanceof dream-
ing in Europeanthoughtshould suggest, it was simply not open to the Dawn-
29
Aboriginal resistance to the discipline of labourimposed by the settlers is encapsulatedin
anotherEnglish-languagesignifier for aborigines:Walkabout.By 1925, the dyarchyof the two
signifiers had become such that Strehlow'santhropologistfriendBasedow (1925:279) asserted,in
relation to the Aranda, that "Altjerringais the 'walk-about'of the spirit ancestors."
30 Nor does Willshire's (1888) vocabularyof the Alice Springsnatives, publishedeight years
earlier. The first ever exhibition of aboriginalart (as "art"),held in the late 1880's in Adelaide,
was entitled "Dawn of Art" (Jones 1988:165).

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212 PATRICK WOLFE

ing, or to other local analogues, to acquire the same purchase upon an-
thropological theory. The different levels of discourse conjoined by the
Dreaming complex gave it a wide range of possible meanings, so that no
synonym could substitute for it through all its uses. A further consequence of
this versatility, to which discussion now turns, is that it enabled the Dreaming
complex to become transformed in use.
Ignored thus far has been the fact that the phrase dream-times seems to
consist in a paradox, the sense of time being conventionally excluded from
dreams.31 Indeed, controversy over whether or not the concept had a time
reference accompanied the formulation of alternative nomenclatures such as
the Dreaming, the eternal dream-time, and so forth. In its infancy, however,
as Spencer and Gillen's 1904 Glossary illustrates, the dream times unequivo-
cally referred to the past:
Alcheringa. Name appliedby the Arunta,Kaitishand Unmatjeratribesto the far past,
or dream times, in which their mythic ancestors lived. The word "alcheri" means
dream (Spencer and Gillen 1904:745).
Yet this temporality contrasts with later characterisations of the Dreaming
complex:
We realise that Spencer and Gillen's translationof Alcheringaand similar words as
Dreamtime and Radcliffe-Brown'sreference to World-Dawn,both meaning a past
time, are not wrong, but are inadequate.The Aboriginal word includes the idea of
"belongingto the dream"and my early translationof djuguras "eternaldreamtime",
with which Roheim agreed, at least suggests that the Dreaming is an ever-present
condition of existence (Elkin 1961:203).
The reason why Elkin deemed it not wrong, but merely inadequate, to
represent the concept as applying to a past time is that it did refer to such a
time. It was inadequate, however, so to limit it, since the concept also ex-
pressed a continuing or eternal reality, persisting, as Stanner (1956:52) put it,
"everywhen." The discursive structure is, therefore, twofold, juxtaposing
past origin and continuing present. For the argument to come, the fact that the
two are juxtaposed (and thus coexistent), rather than amalgamated or col-
lapsed, is central. Though ultimately encompassed, the two aspects are cate-
gorically distinct. A beginning did actually take place, whilst the ever-present
evades placement in time-or, as Berdt (1974:8) expressed it:
Generally,the concept of the Dreamingrefers to a mythological period which had a
beginningbut has no foreseeableend . . . these beings are believed to be just as much
alive today as they ever were and as they will continue to be. They are eternal.
The juxtaposition of origin and presence is echoed in Australian nationalist
ideology, in which the two are divided by a notional moment of settlement.
31 Hence Sydney Hartlandobjected (1909:238) that alcheringawas "not very happily ren-
dered by 'Dream-time,'seeing that the Arandabelieve the events to have actuallyoccurredin an
indefinite but far past period."

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 213

Here the retrospectiveaspect, which is the counterpartof origin--"back in

the Dreamtime"-refers to the inscrutable(but occasionally glimpsed) era
before CaptainCook, the First Fleet, or whatevermight serve to summarise
the establishmentof the nation.32Lackinga history,precontactAustraliawas
unimaginableand, accordingly,unreal. Though it may seem to be labouring
the obvious to state thatthe Dreamtimemaps on to nationalistconstructionsof
Australian prehistory, it is in its second aspect, that of the timeless ever-
present, that the ideological consequence of the juxtaposition can best be
appreciated.For the corollary of this unreal past became an unreal present
which was the outcome of anthropologicalrepresentationsin which aborig-
ines figured as ritually constitutedentities.
The pervasivenessof ritualin anthropologicalrepresentationsof aborigines
has alreadybeen noted with referenceto Frazer,who saw habituationto ritual
as encouragingsavages' credulityin regardto their dreams. There are further
reasons for the attractivenessof ritual, quite apartfrom a certain prurience
discerniblein the literature.Ritualpresentedcondensedexpressionsof aspects
of social structure,especially details of kinship systems, which might other-
wise have escaped notice. In the case of small nomadic groups traversing
large expanses of territory,even the people themselves, let alone the details of
their social organisation,were liable to escape notice-a problem alleviated
by the relative conspicuousnessof large-scaleritualgatherings(which, given
appropriateinducement, could usually be arranged).33Furthermore,ritual,
with its exotica, together with the alien collectivism of classificatorykinship
systems, constitutedwell-defined social-anthropological subject matterat a
time when the discipline was in its institutionalinfancy.
In addition to these considerations,however, there was an overwhelming
economic reason for the preponderance of ritual and kinship in an-
thropologicaldiscourse, which was that the great majorityof anthropological
data was collected from people who were dependentupon the settler econo-
my. This does not mean that they were necessarily residents of missions,
stations, prisons or other settler institutions,althoughmost were. Pastoralism
had such far-reachingecological effects upon water, vegetationand game that
people could lose control over the reproductionof their traditionalmode of
productioneven though they might be at a considerabledistance from settle-
ment, hence the cumulative patternof nomadic groups coming in off their
land.34Thus anthropologicalphotographswhich depictedfunctioningprecon-
tact social systems were usually misleading-as, of course, were representa-
tions of kinshipas a conceptualdiagramwhich systematisedreproductionas if

32
Scholarly examples include Flood's (1983) Archaeologyof the Dreamtimeand Fitzgerald's
(1982) From the Dreaming to 1915-A History of Queensland.
33 SeeT. G. H. Strehlow 1947:190, 1969:48-9, 1978:7. Cf. Howitt 1904:517-8, 624; Stirling
1896:28.
34 See Reynolds 1982: ch. 6; Rowley 1972:206-11.

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214 PATRICK WOLFE

it requiredno terrestrialsupport.Similarly,althoughritualpracticescould be
adaptedto meet changed conditions, anthropologicalanalyses which present-
ed ritual data as if they were embeddedwithin viably functioningtraditional
societies had the effect of obscuringthe expropriationof those societies.
In its second, ever-presentaspect, the Dreamingcomplex was quintessen-
tially a ritualconcept. Thus it is significantthat Spencer'smisrepresentation
of the historyof the first, originaryversionof the concept shouldhave derived
it from the Engwuraceremony.In immortalisingthis three-month-longseries
of ritualsas a kind of precontactswansong, Spencerand Gillen's 1899 book
reenacted evolutionary taxonomy through its freezing of the Arunta in a
present poised at the parting of the ways, when their empirical substrates
passed on to acculturationor beyond. Moreover, the ritual aborigine which
transpiredconduced to the ideological bracketing-offwhereby aborigines
were excluded from the dual encounterbetween settlersandthe land. To make
this last observationclear, it is necessary to develop the twofold structureof
the Dreaming complex more fully.

III
The twin aspects, origin and presence, have in common the featureof being
discontinuouswith the economic realities of settlement.Thus the Dreamtime
as precontactidyll is lost, whilst, in the potentiallymore controversialrealm
of the present, dreaming aborigines hover in a mystically supportedritual
space which does not conflict with the practicalexigencies of settlement.The
two coexist without meeting. Thus the timelessness of the ever-present
Dreaming is actually a spacelessness.35
The primaryideological significance of the Dreamingcomplex was that it
established ideal versions of settlers and aborigines which excluded shared
features. Since the feature most crucially shared between the two was an
economic interest in the same land,36 it is consistent that the aspects of
aboriginal life most stressed by the Dreaming complex should be precisely
those with the least connection to economic existence. In other words, the
scheme was the simplest of binaryoppositions, substitutingan ideal horizon-
tal relationship-"encounter"-for the vertical reality of incorporation.
Hence ambiguity was rendered repugnant. This feature received its most
public expression where "miscegenation"was concerned, to the extent that
"mongrel"remainsone of the most potentinsultsin the settlerrepertoire.In a
35 Swain (1988:454) makes a similar point, only in relation to Warlpiri,ratherthan settler,
ideology: "What links the Dreaming 'past' and the present is, therefore, not time but place."
Also perhapsrelatedly-though with more romantic("postrational"?)intentions-the German
anthropologistHans Peter Duerrhas intoned (1985:121) that "The 'dreamplace' is everywhere
and nowhere,just like the 'dream-time'is always and never. You might say thatthe term 'dream
place' does not refer to any particularplace and the way to get to it is to get nowhere."
36 My reason for assertingthatthis was more crucialthanthe men's sexual interestin the same
women is that the initial motivation for settlement was land ratherthan women.

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 215

more general sense, however, mediationof the pureoppositionwas not adap-

tation but aberration.The culturalhybrid, even though "full-blooded,"could
be ridiculous, grotesque or nefarious. Thus the incorporationof blacks into
white society split into two the ambivalentpost-Enlightenmentimage of sav-
agery, attachingits negative side to the acculturated,leaving the good savage
(or "bush black") as a completely good residue but always somewhereelse.
The ideal was a formulafor imposing liability upon its empiricalcounterparts.
Thus the romanticideal and the repugnanthybridrepresentopposite sides of
the single message thatbad savages do not deserve the land and good savages
do not use it.
The two modes of the Dreamingcomplex emergedat separatestages in the
history of Australian settlement. The originary,dream-timesversion was a
frontier concept: to cross the frontier was to go back into the deep time
precedinghistory. The emergence of the ever-presentDreaming, on the other
hand, did not commence until over a quarterof a century later, in the late
1920s. Thus it coincided both with the statisticalturning-pointat which ab-
original numbers began to rise from their lowest level, recorded in 1921
(LancasterJones 1970:3-6) and with the effective disappearanceof a frontier.
These two developments coincided in placing aborigineswithin settler soci-
ety. It is, therefore, consistent that Bates, who devoted a whole book (Bates
1938) to the contentionthat aborigineswere "passing," should have referred
in it to the Dreamtime, whilst Elkin, who opposed the claim that aborigines
were dying out (Elkin 1952:244), shouldhave been closely associatedwith the
ever-presentmode of the Dreaming complex.
With the emergenceof the ever-presentDreaming,then, aboriginescame in
from behind the frontier and were finally assimilated into the nation state,
only on terms of their economic invisibility. So far as this second mode is
concerned, therefore, Elkin's "eternal dream-times"might perhaps be en-
titled to the prioritywhich he claimed for it (Elkin 1932:128-9, 1933:11-12).
As already observed, however, the classic statementof the ever-presentver-
sion was to be Stanner's(1956) article, "The Dreaming,"which exemplifies
many of the preceding observations.
Forpresentpurposes, however, the significantfeatureof Stanner'sarticleis
the way in which he refers to blackfellows as a unity, ratherthan to distinct
groups. Thus the diffusion of the Dreamingcomplex has become complete.37
Stanner'sarticleis suggestive in this regard,since, aftercreditingSpencerand
Gillen with immortalisingthe term, he goes on to make the strikingobserva-
tion that it is not, after all, a translationof correspondingblackfellow words:
In their own dialects they use terms like Alcheringa, mipuramibirina,boaradja-
ormeaningliterallysomethinglike "menof old"(Stanner
oftenalmostuntranslatable,
1956:51).
37 Though not as complete as in Micha's (1970:291) turnabout:"Thanksto Carl Strehlow,we
have numerousexamples of migrationsof 'dream-time'groups in CentralAustralia."

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216 PATRICK WOLFE

A little lower, however, we find Stannerwondering:

as the nearestequivalentin Englishis a

Whythe blackfellowthinksof "Dreaming"
puzzle(Stanner1956:52).

Expressed thus, Stanner's puzzlement may seem curiously naive. It be-

comes understandableonce it is set against the paradoxof a precontactan-
thropology.For,just as the Dreamingcomplex had no place for the economics
of incorporation,so, by the same token, did it precludethe consequencesof a
colonial lingua franca. Operating within the working assumptions of his
discipline, Stanner did not have access to a range of possible reasons why
blackfellows should so mistranslate.

IV
Reportsof aboriginesreferringto their Dreamingraise a questionnot thus far
considered. The culturalaffinities commendingthe term to a predominantly
Europeanimaginationcould hardlyhave appealedto such Koorisas had come
to appreciatethem.
Kooris' submission to anthropologicallanguage was the result of invasion
ratherthan of cultural selection. With the spread of settlement, settler and
Koori discourses merged. It follows that the isolation of anthropologyfor
discreteanalysis can only be a heuristicdevice. For, as partof the discourseof
colonial power, anthropologybecomes an object of contestationfor the colo-
nised, who seek to appropriateit to their own advantageby turningit back
upon their expropriators.In the process, however, the colonised acquiesce in
the terms encoded within that discourse, whereby their collective self-asser-
tion finds expression as a species of nationalism,which, in turn, encodes the
progress-basedrationalefor colonisation. Thus the collective unity underlying
Koori (or "pan-Aboriginal")identity is itself the product of colonial con-
quest, which installedthe prerequisiteof a generalisedother.More specifical-
ly, however, in adopting the twofold discursive structureof the Dreaming
complex, Koori ideology recapitulatesthe familiar mythology of the nation
state, which has an origin but is eternal. The irony of Kooris'adoptionof the
Dreamingcomplex is, accordingly,a symptomof the containment,or relative
powerlessness, of their discourse.
Tracingthe diffusionof the Dreamingcomplex does not, therefore,explain
why Kooris came to submit to anthropologicallanguage. It merely accounts
for the particularform which that languagetook. In this regard,as the earlier
example of Byamee suggests, the term's disseminationwas a text-effect of
anthropology.
After their initial fieldwork, Spencer and Gillen mounted an expedition
from Aruntacountryup to the shoresof the Gulf of Carpentaria.This resulted
in their second (1904) major book, which contained the above-mentioned
Glossary.Though the actualterm dream-timesonly appearedonce in the text

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 217

of that book, they liberally allocated synonyms for Alcheringa, which thus
entailed that the words concerned meant dream-times. Hence they opened
their account of Urabunnacosmology with the brief statementthat:
the Urabunna belief is as follows:-inthe Alcheringa(the Urabunna
termfor this is
Ularaka) . . (Spencer and Gillen 1904:145)
and then dispensed with Ularaka.Thus transmittedwithin the Alcheringa,the
dream-timescan be followed across huge tractsof countrywithin the space of
a sentence:
ThustheAruntatermforthefarpast,duringwhichtheirancestorslived,is alcheringa,
so also is that of the Kaitishand Unmatjera.In the Warramunga, Walpari,and
Wulmara it is wingara;in theTjingilliit is mungai;andin theUmbaiaandGnanjiit is
poaradju(SpencerandGillen1904:12).
It would seem, therefore,thatthe well-knownoverture"Whatis yourDream-
ing?" (Elkin 1933:11-12) was not, after all, a Kooriinventionbut an English
lesson. Thus established, the concept could travelfull circle, even back to the
Aruntathemselves. Hence Spencer achieved a poker-facedreversal, whereby
the dream times became prior to the Alcheringa:
Accordingto theAruntaideas,theirancestorswholivedin thedreamtimes,or,as they
call it, the Alcheringa ... (Spencer 1904:392)
The fact that Alcheringa was synonymouswith the dreamtimes enabled a
syllogistic contagion whereby any number of other aboriginalwords could
become dreamtimes by virtue of their being equatedwith Alcheringawithin
the mystifying confines of aboriginal language. The singular is significant
here, since linguistic diversity-along with aboriginalheterogeneityin gener-
al-was minimised, notably by the use of the term dialect ratherthan lan-
guage. Thus Alcheringabecame a linguistic double-agent:a conduitwhereby
an equivalence established within anthropologicaldiscourse could be pro-
jected back on to aboriginalcosmologies.38
Anthropologists'reluctance to concede the extent of their reliance upon
the pidgin linguafranca produceda linguistic levelling. On the one hand, the
differencesbetween Koori languages are minimised, whilst, on the other, the
general use of English is largely ignored. Yet a measureof the consequences
of the settler elaboratedcode can be gauged from the conspicuousdecline of
aboriginalsign language in the literatureafterthe generationof Howitt, Roth,
and Spencer. Once translatedinto the overarchingidiom of English, terms
38 Thus Howitt (1904:482, 658) equated the Dieri mura muras with the
Alcheringa (cf.
Langloh Parker 1905:6). By 1908, "Alcheringa"had secured a heading to itself in Hastings'
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1908). Under this heading, which was translatedas
"DreamTimes," Urabunnaand Warramungabeliefs were classified togetherdespite their being
acknowledgedto be "widely different"(Thomas 1908). In Oxford, then, Alcheringaand Dream
Times had become interchangeableterms for aboriginalbeliefs, without reference to doctrinal
content. Across the Channel, van Gennep (1906:XLVII) reversed Spencer and Gillen's pro-
cedure, assimilating Alcheringa to Ularaka.

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218 PATRICK WOLFE

could be exchangedoutside the contexts of their customaryuse without local

differences becoming apparent.39Referentialheterogeneityis reinforced in
the case of secret-sacred knowledge, with access to a range of different
meanings varying according to ritual status. Since an externally imposed
universalcode was necessarilythe least esoteric medium, interlocutorsusing
it to exchange terms such as Dreaming(or totem, clan, family, and the like)
could successfully conduct parallelconversationswithoutthe code occasion-
ing their mutual interruption.40
The hegemony of an English-languageformulationfor an aboriginalcon-
structionof the sacredis multiplyironic. Althoughethnographerswere gener-
ally loth to confess their reliance upon pidgin, they regularlyfurnishedevi-
dence in other contexts of a thoroughgoingexclusion from sacred affairs of
anything associated with settlers.41 Thus the claim that the Dreaming ex-
pressed the sacred was a contradictionin terms:Ratherthan a way of talking
about the sacred, the Dreaming provided a way of not talking about it.42
Whetheror not a particularterm which a speakerintendedto renderby the
word Dreaming had any coincidentalconnection with ordinarydreamingin
that speaker's local language is, therefore, quite irrelevant,since Dreaming
was a word in English, whose semanticroot system was a historicalproduct
of that fact.43As a single alien word, introducedthroughconquest, it bore no
such roots. Thus there is no puzzle attaching to Kooris' use of the word
Dreaming. They were simply speaking English.
APPENDIX

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTS OF THE TEXTUAL ORIGINS OF THE

DREAMTIME AND THE ALCHERINGA

(a) The DreamtimelTheDreaming

For Spencer'sand Elkin's versions, see above. Stanner(1956:51) statedmere-
ly that Spencerand Gillen "immortalized"the concept, withoutfurtherrefer-
39 Cf. Urry 1980:71.
40 Thus for example, Howitt's (1904:513) report of the last intertribalKuringal initiation
ceremony: "It was, in fact, the great intermarryinggroup which met at this ceremony, and the
component parts of it differed so much in language, that the most distantcould not understand
each other without making use of the broken English which passes currentall over Australiain
those native tribes which have been broughtunder the white man's influence."
41 Hence a reportedalleviationof the rigorsof initiation,since white food was not a scheduled
proscribedcategory (Howitt 1904:637). Similarly, "medicine men" were reportedto lose their
power afterdrinkingwhite man's tea (Spencerand Gillen 1904:481), a consequenceextendingto
alcohol and to hot liquids generally (Langloh Parker1898:14).
42 Elkin himself acknowledged(1951:170) the occurrenceof code-switchingbetween indige-
nous and settler spheres.
43 With the exception of the Berdts (and, of course, of the Strehlows and of Spencer), the
question of the term's relationshipto ordinarydreaming was scarcely ever addresseddirectly
(Berdt and Berndt1946:68;cf. Elkin 1933:11, 1937:51-2). Morerecently,Sutton(1988:15) has
distinguishedthe Dreamingfrom ordinarydreaming:"The use of the English word Dreaming is
more a matterof analogy than of translation."

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 THE DREAMTIME IN AUSTRALIAN CULTURE 219

ence. Ronald Berdt (1974:7) found that the moment of its introductionwas
"not clear from the literature",but later (Bemdt 1987:480) settled on the
probabilityof a Glossary of Native Termsappendedto Spencer and Gillen's
(1904:745) The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, the source cited pre-
viously by Ralph Piddington (1932:374) and Carl Strehlow (1907:2). The
dream-timeshad actually been mentionedin the text of the 1904 book, only
in a passing reference to the Walpariratherthan to the three groups (Arunta,
Kaitish, Unmatjera) mentioned in the Glossary (Spencer and Gillen
1904:576). More recently, Mulvaney (1989:116, cf. Mulvaney and Calaby
1985:124) alluded to Spencer's earliest reference to the term (Spencer
1896b:50) as "the first published general applicationof the concept of the
'Dreamtime', althoughprecedencein its use belongs to a Germanmissionary
at Hermannsburg."It is not clear either what Mulvaney meant by "general"
or which Germanmissionaryhe had in mind. In any event, there had been no
preceding reference to the Dreamtime; only to altjira and the like (in
Krichauff 1890 [1887]:77, "altgiva").

(b) The AlcheringalAltjiranga

In a published letter to the Oxford anthropologistN. W. Thomas, as in his
(Strehlow 1907:2) magnum opus, Carl Strehlow referred to Spencer and
Gillen's 1904 Glossary,maintainingthatits claim that "alcheri means dream,
and Alcheringa the dream-times"was a mistake: "Dream is altjirerinja, a
dreamer,altjirerana." Strehlow also contendedthat the word altjira (that is,
the "alchera" in Alcheringa) "has in itself no meaning; but a verb derived
from it, altjirerama,means primarilyto become God; it is used in the sense of
to dream; for the blacks think that in dreams are revealed the will of Alt-
jira. . ." (Strehlow in Thomas 1905:430). Altjira was described (Strehlow
1907:1) as a God residing in Heaven (cf. von Leonhardi 1907:286-7). In a
letter to Frazer, which Frazer published in his Totemism and Exogamy
(1910:i,186, n. 2), Spencer chargedthat the Hermannsburgmissionarieshad
translatedGott as altjira for Lutheranprayers, contending that "Flour and
tobacco, etc., are only given to natives who attendchurchand school." Later,
Spencer quoted Strehlow's fellow HermannsburgmissionaryKempe as writ-
ing to him that Altjira did not mean God in the sense of a person but in the
sense of something existent (Spencer and Gillen 1927:596). This, however,
was in the course of an incomplete and significantly incorrect history of
accounts of the terms altjiraand altjirangaas published by Strehlow's mis-
sionary predecessorsat Hermannsburg,which Spencerproducedin 1927 as a
continuationof his dispute with CarlStrehlow,who had by then died (Spencer
and Gillen 1927:590-6). In the course of this history, Spencer cited Schulze
(1891:239) as the first occasion on which the word Altjirawas used (Spencer
and Gillen 1927:591). In fact, Schulze's first use of the wordhad occurredone
page earlier than this. In any event, twelve years before Schulze, Kempe
(1883:53) had reportedthe central AustralianBlacks as saying that Altjira

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220 PATRICK WOLFE

(whom he glossed as God) gives children ("Die Kinder, sagen sie, schenkt
Altjira (Gott)"). Spencer's history would seem to have been the source used
by Dixon et al. (1990:150) and by Swain (1985:53; cf. 1989:346, n. 8) who
repeats the erroneous attribution of the word's origin to Schulze's (1891)
paper, adding the further error that the word to which Schulze referred was
alcheringa, rather than the less controversial altjira. Carl Strehlow's son later
returned to the dispute between his father and Spencer, conceding that Altjira
did not mean God, but still maintaining that Alcheringa had been "mistrans-
lated" as "dream time" on the basis of a confusion between altjiranga (al-
cheringa) and altjira rama (the altjirerama above) (T. G. H. Strehlow
1971:614-5; cf. Durkheim 1912:84, n. 2).

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