ABSTRACT
Aboriginal people themselves often make a comparison between their art and various kinds of insignia. Aboriginal paintings are like heraldic devices in other respects: their identification with families, their association with land, their ontological structure, their functions, and their association with patterns of authority. The difference between the characterisation of subjectivity drawn from a person's constative utterances, and a person's effective identity is that one is personal to the individual, while the other is a social role that the individual acts out. Aboriginal art is usually discussed in terms of 'deep' concepts such as a design's religious meaning and the 'world view' of the subject. The ontological structure of Aboriginal art and the rules surrounding its use are frequently mentioned in discussions of Aboriginal art, and indeed might be considered general knowledge. The difference between the signature and the painting is not necessarily a difference between performative and constative acts.
