Of conceptual deserts: a Deleuzian approach to Aboriginal art

© 2013 Dr. Astarte RoweThis thesis departs from the belief that Australian Aboriginal art can be understood on the basis of Western epistemology. Yet since traditional forms of knowledge are denied to the non-initiated individual, how can one approach this art? We argue that it is the very synapses and gaps in our knowledge of Aboriginal art that need to be marshalled towards the creation of a non-representational ‘thought without image.’ In this sense, Aboriginal art is conceived at the limits of what can be known, yet it constitutes a threshold for ushering forth a secular form of knowledge in which the ‘unthought’ forms a basis for the ‘thought.’ The task of this thesis is to dismantle a discursive hermeneutics that would propose to conceptualise this art. It detects a non-dialogical current that draws us into a highly solipsistic (non)relation with the art. Solipsism is the precondition for an encounter with an art and socius that is always-already ‘missed,’ or ‘eclipsed.’ Using Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophies, we forge uncharted ways of ‘disarticulating’ our knowledge of Aboriginal art. This is not done through a direct encounter with Aboriginal art, but rather through the works of two artists, Albert Namatjira and contemporary artist Rod Moss – both of whom register the epiphenomenal conditions of an indigeneity that has undergone a becoming-Aboriginal. This becoming is triggered once an imperceptible difference-in-itself is exerted in Namatjira’s oeuvre – where the very inability to establish a visual ‘difference’ between his art and the pastoral genre is precisely how the indigenous character of his work is elicited. In Moss’s case, the pure repetition of the Aboriginal stereotype in his art is not couched within social critique. Rather, his faithful repetition of the stereotype eclipses our ability to recognise hereafter what lies before us in a Moss painting. The repetition of the stereotype for itself cloaks and withdraws it from our episteme. In the application of Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophies to these two artists’ work, we are far removed from any means of accessing Aboriginal art through the paradigm of the known. Yet the sense of its power is intensely magnified