Interview with David Tacey: Resacralising

David Tacey will present  for Eremos ‘The Aboriginal Gift – Spirituality for a Nation’ as an online presentation on 3 March.  William Holbrook, co-editor of Sugarcane, an online humanities journal of the University of Queensland, spoke with David about the Aboriginal concept of dadirri which David  describes as  ‘quite possibly the world’s oldest meditative and contemplative practice’.

The full interview can be accessed here https://www.sugarcanejournal.com/post/interview-with-david-tacey  and includes a range of topics such as:

• How might the study of the humanities be involved in the “resacralisation” of the secular world?
• What influence did growing up in Alice Springs, alongside Aboriginal communities, have on your ideas of the sacred, and of re-sacralisation?
• In which direction do you think Australian society has moved since you wrote the book, Edge of the Sacred: have we moved towards more openness or more closure, more change or more stability?
• How do you think sacralising the world might encourage a respect for our natural environment? And what has non-Aboriginal Australia to learn from Aboriginal cultures is this regard?

The interview was conducted by William Holbrook over email between July and September 2018. Published online 2020: www.sugarcanejournal.com

David Tacey is a distinguished public intellectual and Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University who has written widely on mental health, spirituality and gender..

William Holbrook co-edits sugarcane, a humanities journal of the University of Queensland.