ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the writer ‘unpacking’ a book review, interested by its implications for history, and for the cultural paradigm of the aboriginal Australian ‘Dreaming’. The concept of progress is thoroughly dispensed with according to this apparently ahistorical and pre-modern culture. The chapter goes on to consider a society deprived of the apparently necessary and fundamental structuring elements of history and of stories. Benjamin’s playful ‘Theses’ are referred to once again as a means by which to deconstruct or suggest alternative forms of history. The chapter ends on a sceptical, self-reflexive note concerning the writer’s own tendency to habitually default to ‘progressive’ ideas.
