The commons as a product of a history of Empire (original) (raw)

2006, Australasian Legal Information Institute

Stephen Kinnane infers, Aboriginal persons were and are arguably the most studied and, in a Foucauldian sense, governed, of all citizens. With 'discovery' and the invasions, their culture, communities, families and personal histories have been recorded, archived and circulated on a grand scale by innumerable academic experts and other officials. Indigenous peoples have had little, if any, control over their processing as the original objects of academic inquiry and governance. Our experiences working in law and government, and working in, and for, Aboriginal organisations and Aboriginal rights advocacy, leave us uneasy with the stated motivations and goals of accessing knowledge-the unease manifesting around questions of power relations, presumptions of freedom, the space provided for subjectivity, and for citizenry. It is with respect to these, that the paper argues the A2K needs to make proper consideration to history and politics. We are not against A2K, however consider that citizens, lawyers and academics have a personal responsibility to address past injustices. Though we have no clear solution as yet offer as to how to correct the rapidly advancing A2K global politics in regard to the subjugation of Indigenous persons, we do believe the failure to think more carefully about the nature and subjectivity of this new humanitarian cause will only result in perpetuating the injustices of the past, and reinvigorate them. [ ] We believe that many involved in A2K would agree that this is unacceptable. The Commons as a Product of a History of Empire The notion that the natural world was given to all humanity, and that knowledge is placeless and belongs to no "one" in particular, is common to many philosophical traditions-Greek, Christian and empiricist portrayals of scientific knowledge most obviously spring to mind. Here "the place of knowledge is nowhere in particular and anywhere at all" and "the significance of place is dissolved." [2] Yet the politics of knowledge creation, accumulation, classification, interpretation, dissemination and application has been much debated by natural philosophers, historians and philosophers of science, anthropologists, human geographers, sociologists, critical race theorists, feminist theorists, globalisation theorists. Some of this literature specifically links the teleology and humanity of the commons with imperialism, Empire, colonialism, and post colonial relations. The legal output of A2K at present shows little appreciation of the significance of this discourse. The presumption is that there are no significant links remaining 2/2/24, 4:44 PM The commons as a product of a history of Empire-[2006] AIPLRes 13