Why should Aboriginal peoples learn to write?

Cultures and worldviews are inscribed by means of ‘writing’, or whatDerrida calls ‘the perdurable inscription of a sign’ (Of Grammatology). A sign is theunion between signifier and signified. The signifier may be natural (clouds indicate thatit is going to rain) or artificial. All cultures are made up of relations that stay at the levelof signs, that is, everything that belongs to culture is empirical and conventional. In thisregard, both Aboriginal and Western culture remain at the same level. Moreover, bothcultures produce objectivity by means of contrast and experimentation, in the design ofa sharp object, for example an arrow or a knife. In Ancient Greece, Havelock contendsthat the invention of writing dramatically increased the possibilities of objective thought(The Muse Learns To Write), but it also created a logic of binaries that transcended theobjectivity of science and transpired into the ideology behind colonialism. In thiscontext, the role of writing is analyzed in David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon. Howdoes writing affect Gemmy all throughout the book? Already in the first Chapter, theteacher and the minister of the colony analyze Gemmy ‘in writing’. Gemmy knowswhat writing is but hasn’t learnt its ‘trick’: he does not know how to read or write. Allhe can see is that what he tells about his life, all his pain and suffering, is translated intomarks and magic squiggles on the paper: only the spirit of the story he tells is captured.But little by little, the cognitive effects of writing get hold of Gemmy, until he starts tounderstand his life within the framework of the logic of binaries and identity uponwhich all reflective thought and science rest. All in all, this deconstructive reading canbe seen as a critique of Europe’s modern idea of the autonomy of reason, in the name ofa heteronymous rationality in the form of writing.