School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemDigital dialectics: the paradox of cinema in a studio without walls( 1999)This essay presents a brief history of the impact of digital technology on cinema. Drawing on original interviews with leading Australian film makers, it firstly examines how changes in technology are affecting contemporary film production. It then extends this analysis to consider the implications of such changes for contemporary film theory.
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Item"Causa di stravaganze": order and anarchy in Domenico Gargiulo's Revolt of Masaniello( 1998)Three paintings by Domenico Gargiulo of the revolt of Masaniello in 1647 have been interpreted as an anti-Spanish commentary. Close analysis of the events depicted in Gargiulo's major painting of the revolt and of the political sympathies of his patrons, however, reveals the contrary to be the case. In this and other paintings, Gargiulo reinforces conventional stereotypes of the Neapolitan lower classes as fundamentally capricious and irrational. These negative visions of popular anarchy are to be contrasted with the propriety, unity, and stability displayed by the establishment in Gargiulo's other pictures of contemporary events.
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ItemThe uncanny home: television, transparency and overexposure( 1997)I recently read a description of the house which is currently being built for Microsoft cyber-baron Bill Gates. Gates conceived his new residence as a state of the art merging of computer technology with architecture. At an estimated cost of $50 million, the house will naturally boast all the standard automated functions such as climate control and electronic security systems, as well as a few extras like a hot tub which switches itself on as soon as the master's car enters the grounds.
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ItemDoing justice to Pauline: strategies of representation in television current affairs( 1999)While condemnation of Australia's One Nation Party president, Pauline Hanson, and the media coverage of her, have gone hand in hand, much of this criticism has failed to adequately address the complexity of Hanson's status as a celebrity politician. This has been compounded by a failure to provide an adequate explanation of the basis on which accusations of irresponsibility, targeted at both Hanson and the media, have been mounted. This paper examines the treatment Hanson has received in two current affairs programs in Australia in relation to both the criticisms of her and of media reportage of her It identifies, in both cases, a tendency in both the programs themselves and in criticisms of them to essentialise what constitutes legitimate media representation. Finally, the paper explores the possibilities of a radical democratic approach to issues of media representation.
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ItemInformation technology as cultural capital( 1998)In this paper we explore the relevance of the concept of cultural capital - understood here as an alternative to the more traditional measures of socio-economic disadvantage - in the context of a discussion of the significance of information technology in contemporary societies.
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ItemMulticulturalism: the politics of cultural diversity( 1998)This paper addresses the proposition that multiculturalism in Australia is not primarily a cultural phenomenon but should be understood, rather, as being framed by local demographico-political considerations, by a set of strategies of nation formation, and by the politics of Asian regionalism. By this I don’t mean that it has no cultural effects, both at the level of high culture and of everyday social interactions, but that it cannot be accounted for in terms of the discourse of cultural attitude with which it is officially described.
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ItemJoking in China( 1999)In the northern-hemisphere summer of 1998 I went to my first conference in China. Like most of the others attending I flew in to Beijing, but two friends came by way of the old silk road through Pakistan, Nepal and western China. The idea of that trip catches something of the mythical dimension of any journey to the Middle Kingdom: although the academic circuits have been open since the early 1980s, and the carpetbaggers have descended in droves on Shanghai, there's still a sense, pure orientalism as it may be, of entering a closed world. Nor was that sense untrue to my experience of talking and listening to Chinese academics and students. For a start, there's a feeling of risk: 'contact with foreigners' is a privilege and a danger, and tongues are guarded. But the greater closure is the more mundane matter of cultural difference. How do you tell a joke to a Chinese audience? It's hard enough doing it in your own culture. How do you tell a joke to an audience of Chinese, diasporic Chinese, European, North American and Australian intellectuals? The fact that it's not impossible, that people laugh and even seem to get it, is an encouraging sign. Cultures are permeable; human history has always been about negotiation across boundaries and languages and apparently incompatible frames of reference. In Beijing, nevertheless, it was hard work.
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ItemChen Xue's queer tactics( 1999)In recent years, "queer" (e.g., tongzhi, ku’er, guaitai, or xie) has become the focal point for discussions about sexuality in Taiwan, alongside the older terms lesbian and gay. Queer also appears in Taiwan in queer theory, a literary-political movement to draw on poststructuralist identity theory as a means of breaking down essentialized sexuality and gender categories, and advocating a sexual-identity politics on the basis of difference and multiplicity. Like any theory, queer theory emerged from a specific epistemological context, in this case the Anglo-American academy. Like other signs, queer can move from one conditioning context to another conditioning context, where inevitably it will take on different meanings. This article maps some of the different conditions queer is encountering in contemporary Taiwan, in order to illustrate how rewriting queer under new conditions shows up the earlier projects' very limits. My hope in discussing how queer is being reproduced in Taiwan is to make the limits more apparent and thereby to contribute to the project of queering globalized queer theory. The less globally circulated text I consider here is Taiwan lesbian writer Chen Xue's 1995 story "Searching for the Lost Wings of the Angel".
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ItemLittle Johnny's foaming lip: the culture wars, cultural studies and the ten-point plan( 1998)The late 1990s mark an interesting moment in both Australian and global, postcolonial history. In 1992, in a case brought by Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander, the doctrine of terra nullius, by which European occupation of Australia had ratified itself on the grounds that the land was empty and belonged to no-one before white settlement, was ruled invalid by the High Court. The Mabo case set an historical precedent in Australian postcolonial history, opening up non-freehold land claims by traditional Aboriginal owners. A subsequent High Court judgement on a case brought by the Wik people also allowed Aboriginal people to negotiate for dual occupancy of the huge pastoral leases that take up many traditional tribal lands. Both judgements have, however, been savagely resisted by the conservative government elected in 1996. This government has accused the High Court of meddling in race politics and of judicial activism. In early 1998 the government legislated a ‘ten-point plan’ on Wik which, among other things, denied Aborigines the right to negotiate native title under the Wik judgement. On the surface, these judgements and the controversy that surrounds them might seem like isolated instances of merely colonial race politics. The context is, however, explicitly global.
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ItemMetacapital: a response to Pierre Bourdieu( 1998)Let me begin with a general statement that I take to hold good within each of the diverse forms of the nation state in the advanced capitalist world. No form of cultural production or circulation within this sphere, I argue, lies beyond the reach of the regulatory activity of state; and any "oppositional" mode of cultural production and circulation, without exception, has as its condition of possibility the play between capital investment and state regulation.