School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemRadical platforms: autonomism, globalisation and networks( 2016)This thesis engages in the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri as well as others in the post-autonomist Italian Marxist tradition to critique the concept of Empire and to identify serious flaws in cryptolibertarian approaches to replacing the state with computational apparatuses. Hardt and Negri’s work proposes the existence of an international, multi-layered political structure called Empire, with a corresponding international working class called the ‘multitude’ which has been subsumed within this new global political system. The main thrust of the thesis identifies that media is underanalysed in Hardt and Negri’s work, yet there is great scope for networked media to be included as not just a component to Empire, but as constitutive of Empire’s existence. Thus the argument is that Empire is reliant on media, and would not survive without it. From this perspective, the acts of loose groups and fraternities, such as IP pirates, cryptolibertarians and cryptofascists, and anti-state groups of other sorts, to engineer software solutions to replace the state are problematic. Examples such as 3D printing, bitcoin, Wikileaks, and State-In-A-Box suggest that cryptolibertarian and related ideologies of technological solutions not only tend to be misguided, they reproduce the nature of Empire in an intensified manner. The argument of this thesis is thus that technological solutions that seek to replace the state with mediated software protocols will likely tend to simply reproduce structures of governance that are more rigid, and have less capacity for social intervention than the current structures of governance. This argument does not preclude technological methods as integral to political solutions in the future, but certainly questions those approaches that conceive of society as a set of problems to be solved.
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ItemGlobal SF in the twenty-first century: modernity and the other in Chinese and Anglophone SF( 2019)The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid rise of non-Anglo-American science fiction. In this comparative study, I examine the ways Chinese science fiction is transforming the global field. I read Chen Qiufan alongside Paolo Bacigalupi, Xia Jia alongside Dan Simmons, and Liu Cixin alongside Arthur C. Clarke. By focusing on global science fiction’s generic innovations and thematic concerns, I show that this new generation of writers captures the new developments and problems of contemporary modernity, such as the rise of transnational corporations, the forming of a centerless “Empire,” ecological devastation and the cycles of e-waste, Islamophobia and xenophobia, among others. In taking up these thematic concerns, these writers not only reconfigure science fiction’s relation to modernity, but they also emphasize a dimension of the rhetoric of modernity that had previously remained implicit: these texts stage, in different ways, the encounter with the Other. I argue that new generic transformations in contemporary global SF serve to reveal the hidden faces of modernity, to think about modernity in relation to tradition and the past, to dismantle old myths surrounding the discourse of modernity.
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ItemDisplays of union: Scottish art and British cultural identity in Australia, 1860-1945( 2015)Scottish art was consistently collected and displayed in Australia from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and continues to be included in the nation’s historic art museums to the present day. Public art institutions, such as the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, were established in the second half of the nineteenth century to serve as destinations of recreation and moral instruction in the British colonies. Consequently, works of Scottish art – together with displays of Scottish visual culture in the public and private spheres of society, more broadly – have contributed to the development of Australia’s cultural mores as they exist today. Yet the demarcation of Scottish art from ‘British’ art has only recently been undertaken in Australia, and remains to be fully explored. This thesis aims to offer an account of how and why Scottish art has been displayed in Australia. With a focus on the public collections of Victoria, this thesis will examine several important examples of Scottish art acquired up until the close of World War Two. The value of this undertaking is twofold: firstly, it ensures that the contributions of Scottish art and visual culture in this context are not sidelined in favour of English contributions and, secondly, it illustrates the interdependence of Scottish art and Britishness within the context of the Empire. This project thereby assists in the delineation of Scottish influences and characteristics from within the larger narrative of British cultural identity in Australia. The examples presented in this thesis encompass paintings, interior decoration and public statuary. By drawing on recent scholarship in the fields of art history, Scottish studies, empire studies and cultural geography, this project aims to reappraise these works of art and visual culture and, in turn, reveal the historic significance of Scottish art in Australia. By positioning this investigation as a new voice in contemporary dialogues concerning the role of the Scottish nation within the British state, this thesis will argue that Scottish art was a vital component in the establishment of British cultural identity in Australia across the period of at least a century. It will also be shown that Scottish art continues to have a prominent place in the cultural collections of this settler nation.