School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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Item'Race portraits' and vernacular possibilities: heritage and culture(Cambridge University Press, 2001)'Heritage' is a term both broad and slippery. Beyond the literal meaning of property passed between generations, its contemporary evocations include 'inherited customs, beliefs and institutions held in common by a nation or community . . . [and] natural and "built" landscapes, buildings and environments held in trust for future generations' (Davison et. al. 1998, p. 308). Even this elemental definition strongly associates cultural institutions and heritage. Most cultural institutions articulate inherited customs and beliefs through a sense of heritage which, in turn, certifies their authenticity and legitimacy. Parliamentary conventions, halls of fame and honour boards, much judicial ritual, the use of uniforms, anniversary commemorations of all sorts and university degree conferring ceremonies are strong examples of such practices. At the same time the more material and codified notion of heritage as things held in trust explicitly organises the work of many cultural institutions.
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ItemChained to their signs: remembering breastplates(Pluto Press, 2001)At first glance, breastplates might seem to be just another device in the technology of colonial capture in Australia. Take the photograph of Bilin Bilin wearing a plate inscribed 'Jackey Jackey - King of the Logan and Pimpama'. The plate, the chain and the conventions of photography produce a Yugambeh elder as a shackled criminal on display - he is both a primitive in tableau and one of 'the usual suspects'. The image seems to both document captivity and evoke those 'frontier photographs' of Aboriginal prisoners in the desert bound together with heavy chains attached to manacles around their necks. This initial impression is right in that it recognizes some of the ways in which colonial captivity is not only about actual imprisonment but equally about how captivity is understood, represented, interpreted and made historical. Still, in this chapter I want to persuade you that breastplates and photographs of breastplates performed other roles: as cross-cultural objects and signs.
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ItemImperial legacy: the politics of display in Australia( 2004)Somewhere among the countless rows of objects currently on display in the British Museum’s Enlightenment exhibition there rests a flaking bark shield. This battered, utilitarian object stands somewhat apart from the splendidly exotic artefacts that surround it. Yet beneath its unprepossessing appearance there lies an extraordinary provenance. It was taken in 1770 from the Eastern Australian seaboard by Captain Cook’s landing party during its initial encounter with the first inhabitants of the land incorporating what is now known as Sydney. The shield has been placed in a display of non-Western artefacts acquired during the period of Enlightenment discovery “through gift, trade or purchase”. In truth, however, none of these words could be used to describe its acquisition. It was hardly given, since it came into the party’s possession as a result of their shooting at a group of Eora people who left the cover of trees, apparently shouting at them to leave. Neither was it traded, unless one views a bullet fired in anger as a fair offer of exchange. Nor could it be called a purchase, unless one counts as a purchase price the blood shed by its original owner as he was hit trying to flee the invaders.
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ItemIntercultural performance in the context of cultural pluralism(Circus Oz and Monash University, Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies, 2001)In this paper I will provisionally argue for the possibility of localised intercultural relationships in the live performing arts as an effective and pluralist site of resistance to totalising forces associated with globalisation. There will be four themes to my argument and I apologise in advance that I will only briefly touch on each of them. They are: i.Defining globalisation ii.Cultural pluralism iii.Australia and Japan (the two sites of performance culture that I have expertise in and have been asked to address) iv.Live performing arts: the Gekidan Kaitaisha-NYID project.
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ItemWhite-out: theatre as an agent of border patrol( 2003)In Australia in 2001, there was a marked escalation of debates about nation, national identity and national borders in tandem with a right-wing turn in national politics. Within the cultural context of debate about national identity, popular theatre became an unwitting ally of neo-conservative forces. Within popular theatre culture, the neo-conservative trend is naturalized as the view of the Anglo-Celtic-European mainstream or core culture that also embraces and depoliticizes feminist debates about home and family. Elizabeth Coleman’s 2001 play This Way Up assists in the production of an inward-looking turn in the national imaginary and a renewed emphasis on home and family. The performance dramatizes aspects of what we are to understand as ordinary Australian life which might be interpreted as that which Prime Minister John Howard defends in the name of the National Interest. The cultural imaginary that shapes the production of the popular play is that of the conservative white national imaginary.
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ItemKilling competition: restricting access to political communication in Australia( 2003)Access to communication channels is a key factor influencing election outcomes. Policy changes and other factors have contributed toward the increasing use of expensive forms of mass-communication. What are the implications for the competitive landscape of Australian politics?
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ItemSocial Class and Cultural Practice in Contemporary Australia(Cambridge University Press, 2001)
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ItemThe flapper in the heterosexual scene(Informa UK Limited, 2002-01)
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ItemGreat white noise(Melbourne University Publishing, 2004)The yawning gulf that everyone talks about isn’t between so-called elites and the mainstream, or even between the city and the bush. The big gap in Australian politics is between cleverly deployed political stereotypes and the realities of growing inequality and widespread dissatisfaction with economic ‘reform’. Elites, in other words, have been made targets of the same strategy of demonising the ‘other’ that has been used on asylum-seekers, Aboriginal land rights campaigners, ethnic youth gangs, ‘welfare mothers’, and so on. On the face of it, the current demonisation of elites is as irrational as it is clever. It is irrational because it shows contempt for the views of the thousands of Australians who wrote letters to newspapers, signed petitions and started community groups to show their outrage at the Howard government’s policies on reconciliation, on the Wik 10-point plan, on saying sorry to the stolen generations, on the treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers, and so on. Were all those who came from far and wide to march for reconciliation and plant seas of hands in capital cities, or who protested against the war in Iraq, really just part of an ‘elite’? The attack is clever because it helps to mask the fact that those who attack elites are themselves part of an elite. How many ‘ordinary people’ have a radio show or a newspaper column? How many ‘ordinary people’ have the opportunity to vet the appointment of a government minister, as radio talkback host Alan Jones did in late 2001 before the instalment of a new police minister in New South Wales?
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ItemBeauty contest for the British bulldogs? Negotiating (trans)national identities in suburban Melbourne(Melbourne University Press, 2003-11)‘Britfest’ is a local festival held in the Melbourne suburb of Frankston. Like the numerous festivals of ethnicity in Australia that simultaneously celebrate cultural distinction and national incorporation, Britfest offers a historically specific reaction to the re-imagining of the nation. This article examines this new expressive tendency within the context of recent debates about Britishness in Australia, and explores the ramifications for identity formation and cultural affiliation among British migrants. By locating this analysis in Frankston, we aim to provide a situated example of the ways in which British ethnic identities are being negotiated. Such localised and specific responses, however, are operating within and are influenced by the broader context of shifting representations of a diverse British diaspora. Like British-Australians, members of this diaspora also inhabit nations shaped by the legacies of British imperialism, colonisation and migration. Shifting meanings of Britishness also represent and inform a more general ‘crisis of whiteness’, indicating how culturally embedded the colonial equation of Britishness with whiteness has been for those who imagine themselves at the core of the contemporary Australian nation.