TY - JOUR
T1 - Captain Cook meets general Macarthur in the Northern Kimberley
T2 - Humour and ritual in an indigenous Australian life-world
AU - Redmond, Anthony
PY - 2008/11
Y1 - 2008/11
N2 - Freud argued that what is common to all comic techniques is 'the fact that in each of them something familiar is rediscovered, where we might instead have expected something new. This rediscovery of what is familiar is pleasurable' (1960 [1923], 120). In the analysis offered in his 1905 work, Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious (1963a), the further apart the two conceptual entities that are brought together in an innovative use of words or gestures, the greater is the pleasure in the short-circuit created between them. The joke, then, can be understood as instance of the more general category of the innovative metaphor, that is to say, the transfer of meaning across domains, which, while holding onto the original referent of a symbol, simultaneously creates a new relation that extends the original meaning. The strength of this innovative spark across conceptual poles is correlative to the tension that marks their difference. This short-circuit may produce a revelatory and/or comic effect. In this paper I explore an Australian Aboriginal corroboree of the Ngarinyin people from north-western Australia, in which this kind of innovatory spark is used to make new sense of racial power and violence.
AB - Freud argued that what is common to all comic techniques is 'the fact that in each of them something familiar is rediscovered, where we might instead have expected something new. This rediscovery of what is familiar is pleasurable' (1960 [1923], 120). In the analysis offered in his 1905 work, Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious (1963a), the further apart the two conceptual entities that are brought together in an innovative use of words or gestures, the greater is the pleasure in the short-circuit created between them. The joke, then, can be understood as instance of the more general category of the innovative metaphor, that is to say, the transfer of meaning across domains, which, while holding onto the original referent of a symbol, simultaneously creates a new relation that extends the original meaning. The strength of this innovative spark across conceptual poles is correlative to the tension that marks their difference. This short-circuit may produce a revelatory and/or comic effect. In this paper I explore an Australian Aboriginal corroboree of the Ngarinyin people from north-western Australia, in which this kind of innovatory spark is used to make new sense of racial power and violence.
KW - Caricature
KW - Dreams
KW - Freud
KW - Jurnba
KW - Northern Kimberley
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=55449090642&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00664670802429370
DO - 10.1080/00664670802429370
M3 - Article
SN - 0066-4677
VL - 18
SP - 255
EP - 270
JO - Anthropological Forum
JF - Anthropological Forum
IS - 3
ER -