Deep Historicities

• Published in: Interventions
• Main Authors: Rademaker, Laura, Silverstein, Ben
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Deep history; historicities; Indigenous knowledges; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/313317; https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2021.1972824; https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/313317/3/Deep%20Historicities.pdf.jpg

In seeking to understand the deep past, the knowledges of First Nations peoples and of the various academic disciplines can seem incommensurable. In this essay, we argue the concept of "historicities", that is, the encultured ways of narrating and conceiving of the past offers to enrich the study of deep history. Sensitivity to the various ways the past is remembered and understood, as well as the ways in which these historicities are dialogically and relationally constructed, offers ways of bringing distinct accounts of the deep past into conversation. Through closely reading various narrations of deep histories of the Tiwi Islands, we suggest ways in which historicities might be understood as coexisting and in relation, without reducing their accounts to a single universalizable story of the past or hierarchy of knowledges. This special issue further explores decolonizing challenges to ways of knowing the deep past from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The Deep Historicities: Indigenous Knowledges and the Science of Deep Time symposium was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian National University Global Research Partnerships Scheme, and the Harvard Committee on Australian Studies, and was made possible by the participation of the Weatherhead Center, Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, Harvard University Department of History and Center for African Studies. Research for this essay was supported by the ARC Laureate Programme Rediscovering the Deep Human Past [grant number FL170100121].