Present Memories: Indigenous Memory Construct and Cross-Generational Knowledge Exchange in Northern Australia

Abstract

In this chapter I explore time and temporality through the lens of present memories and memory projects. I build on the very premise of this volume; that time is not always rushing into the future and can involve new configurations of the relations between the tenses. Present memories and memory projects represent slippages in time and space, an alternative temporality in which all that exists is ‘present’ and ‘now’, and all that precedes and proceeds this is at once brought to bear in this presence. I frame an understanding of memory as something more than an enlivened past or a present connection to what has come before. Instead I position memory as immediate, here and now: transcending time, instructing us in how to ‘go on’ as cultural beings who are situated and positioned relative to individual and collective biographies.