Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World

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Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World

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Annex B to Where There is No Time and Nothing Matters: Cognitive Challenges at the Edge of the World (2008) highlighting and giving focus to various themes in the light of metaphors arising from travels in Tasmania.

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Terra cognita vs Terra incognita
Interweaving Demonic and Daimonic Associations in Collective Memory (Annex A)
-- Demonic associations and demonisation
-- Unusual, unsayable, unsaid, untruth -- and denial
-- Prefiguration: Van Diemen's Land as strategic pioneer in the treatment of dissent and otherness
-- Daimonic associations: imaginative, aesthetic, inspirational or spiritual
-- Refiguration of "the other" through fantasy
Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World (Annex B)
-- Symbolic journey -- to the "Edge of the World"
-- Dubious associations -- with the "Centres of the World"Cradle moun
-- Amnesia at the "Edge of the World" -- a key to unrealistic optimism?
-- Mnemonic devices for collective remembrance
Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering (Annex C)
-- Varieties of nothingness and emptiness
-- Questionable understanding of emptiness and nothingness
-- "Mattering" and "Happening"
-- "Nothing" emerging through combinations of "mattering" and "happening"
-- Dynamic complexification: integration of "no time"
-- Emergence of "nothing": creating "cognitive shelters"
-- Emergence of "nothing": globalization as exemplar
-- Emergence of "nothing": "import" of significance
-- Polarization and the dynamics of nothingness
Transforming the Edge of the World through Voiding the Centre

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Memory Challenges at the Edge of the World
Dubious associations -- with the "Centres of the World"
Amnesia at the Edge of the World -- a key to unrealistic optimism?
Mnemonic devices for collective remembrance See Symb

The sections of Annex A highlighted the complexity of space, time and culture through which one may travel in encountering Tasmania. This is exemplified by the contrast between the wilderness areas of the west and the conventionalism of the historical dominance elsewhere of the values of "Little England", as noted by Anthony Gardner (Tasmania: Reflections of a parallel world, The Telgraph, 6 February 2001). As a symbolic journey, encountering Tasmania might be summarized in terms of the situations below.

As an explanatory device, such a journey may be framed like that of climbing a mountain, as exemplified by the classic account of the surrealist novelist René Daumal (Mount Analogue: a novel of symbolically authentic non-euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, 1959). In fact Rene Daumal's inaccessible Mount Analogue, though a creation of his imagination, was estimated by him (and others) to actually exist in the South Pacific, somewhere between Tasmania and New Zealand.

Rite of passage in the wilderness: Whilst Cradle Mountain may be experienced as hyper-commodified for quality (eco)tourism, the challenge of the 8-day Cradle Mountain Overland Trek to Lake St Clair has become a rite of passage for some 9,000 people each year, notably Australians. This celebrates a spectrum of values -- whether or not their engagement is limited to the physical challenge. ****

Ghost towns: As noted above, many fomerly busy places offer the curious eerie experience of ghost towns. As a former mining town, Queenstown in the west is indicative of what become of places elsewhere where the population is decimated -- whether after commercial exploitation has ceased to be viable or a major disaster. As the "Queen's town", the implication of the highest authority in such development is highlighted -- as well as in the heritage challenges of remaining pollution. The nature of the abandonment is emphasized by the quaint steam train service for upmarket tourism now running from there to Strahan on the coast -- a form of disaster tourism.

"Dismal Swamp": The world's only blackwood sinkhole forest offers a unique expeience for tourists who may choose to walk down to the underground geology or shoot down via a 110 metres luge-like chute in 17 seconds. "Dismal Swamp" is located on the route to the "Edge of the World". The name may be seen as exemplifying the challenge of distinguishing between primeval and prime-evil in an edenic environment that, in the case of Van Diemen's Land as a penal colony, indeed came to be perceived as a dismal swamp. This was the challenge of the first European visitors and remains one for those threatened by nature unadulterated by the hand of man.

The "chute" might fruitfully model the sudden change of status experienced by those convicted and sentenced to transportation to a penal "hell hole". Although the "walkway" down is more indicative of the time taken to adjust to the new reality -- in a journey of months to the opposite side of the world.

beyond dismal swamp ****

"Edge of the World": This is the point farthest west on the island of Tasmania. Nothing happens at that "Edge of the World". Appropriately it is only marked by a simple poem on a very modest plaque on a very small plinth. However -- being Australia -- it is backed up by an unusually well-appointed electrical barbecue facility for its appreciators -- perhaps reminiscent of the famed Restaurant at the End of the Universe, notably in that it was suitably occupied at the time by the likes of Walter Matthau and John Lennon (in the cult movie, Grumpy Old Men). Appropriately, there is also an adjoining eco-friendly toilet complex, common to tourist Australia.

On the plaque, the poem (Edge of the World by Brian Inder) reads as follows:

I cast my pebble onto the shore of Eternity. To be washed by the Ocean of time. It has shape, form, and substance. It is me. One day I will be no more. But my pebble will remain here. On the shore of eternity Mute witness from the aeons. That today I came and stood At the edge of the world.

To the extent that it exists in "reality", the "Edge of the World" can of course be fruitfully considered as being both nowhere and anywhere. The quest for it, as for the end of the rainbow, has been instructively and delightfully portrayed in the iconic movie The Gods Must be Crazy (1980) and its sequels. Set in Botswana and South Africa, it tells the story of Xi, a Bushman of the Kalahari Desert (played by Namibian bush farmer of the world beyond.

In its early years Tasmania could itself be understood as the Edge of the World. Australia itself had the dubious distinction of being described by its Prime Minister as the "arse end of the world". Ironically, as with the Bushman on a quest to dispose of the iconic Coca Cola bottle dumped on his people from a plane, it was sought as the place for the disposal of unwanted things. The Bushman framed it as returning the unwanted gift to the Gods. The British Empire saw Tasmania as a place to dispose of unwanted people. The eco-friendly toilet might be seen as exemplifying current understanding of the edge at which ultimate disposal of consumption (at the barbecue) could be ensured. Industrial society, especially the developed world, is now challenged by waste disposal and the need for an "edge" over which it could be deposited -- especially in the case of radioactive wate..

Tulampanga: A focal point of tourism in Australia is Uluru, named by European's as Ayer's Rock. Tulampan

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