Indigenous cultures have an immanentist ontological basis, as opposed to the largely Western ontology of transcendence. We explore the implications for this assertion in the different ways that technological artifacts can be seen to articulate with human and non-human bodies in extended ecologies. Our method is one of an Indigenous critique of modernity, which aims iconoclastically to deflate the faith, hope and idealism often invested in technologies. Our (counter) examples emerge from the TV s…
Read moreIndigenous cultures have an immanentist ontological basis, as opposed to the largely Western ontology of transcendence. We explore the implications for this assertion in the different ways that technological artifacts can be seen to articulate with human and non-human bodies in extended ecologies. Our method is one of an Indigenous critique of modernity, which aims iconoclastically to deflate the faith, hope and idealism often invested in technologies. Our (counter) examples emerge from the TV series Bush Mechanics, where practical skills are articulated with blackfella magical powers. These illustrate how bush ecologies are vastly different from suburban car cultures, such that what really matters in people’s coarticulations with machines is now open to philosophical speculation via an Indigenous critique of Western modernity. (Indigenous) powers of immanence can be opposed to (Western) powers of transcendence, we argue, through disclosure of the operations of the ecologies that sustain them.
