Tabula Rasa australis

The philosophical concept of “tabula rasa”, or blank slate, has been attributed to Aristotle, later developed in the 11th century by Avicenna, and brought into the modern context through John Locke’s empirical theories.

The term is specifically applied to the construction of our consciousness. According to classical notions of tabula rasa, at birth we are a blank slate, and that through our own sensory experiences, data is added and the rules for processing are formed. It is significantly supportive of the notion of free will, but also supports an idea of nurture over nature.

According to this fascinating blog, tabula rasa theories manifest also in certain modernist aesthetics, like that of Le Corbousier:

https://www.toddhaimanlandscapedesign.com/blog/2011/12/tabula-rasa.html

I wonder if one can apply (or if someone has applied) the notion of tabula rasa to particular societies and their aesthetic or philosophical identity, how they construct and reveal themselves. Going back to the original Latin meaning, a tabula rasa is not an untouched tablet, but rather one whose writing has been erased … scraped off. In this sense, it corresponds to our colloquialism, “a clean slate”, which has had particular resonance in the migratory patterns in Australia since colonial times.

Many have asked it is that guides or forms an overarching Australian identity, and whether this manifests through our aesthetic portrayals. In my bleaker moments, I believe that the guiding aesthetic in Australia is an imperative to forget … an erasure of history, of stain, of taint, a desire to keep silent about a shameful past. This fits neatly into the way in which we deny, cover up and disregard the cultures of our First Nations.

It’s also interesting to note that the “clean slate” is, in fact, a trompe l’oeil, an optical illusion of something that never existed. It allows the adopter to reconstruct a ‘new’ identity, without having to come to terms with past heritage, history, baggage, issues and problems.