School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe Late Islamic Republic: Cinema and Space in Contemporary Iran( 2024-04)In this thesis, I argue for a major shift in the ideological dimension of state-backed cultural production in Iran in the recent decades, a shift that I predominantly attribute to the global domination of capital and the subsequent emergence of commodity as an ideology in its own right. I propose the term “late Islamic Republic” not just as a historical indicator to specify the general timeframe of this study but to also situate national cultural politics in the context of what Fredric Jameson has called late capitalism as our global totality. By arguing for the seams that connect culture, politics and economy, this thesis aims to demonstrate how a new dominant class has emerged in Iran, one that is less committed to the earlier ideals of the revolution on a discursive level but is semi-bourgeois in character and ideology. In emphasizing this capitalist dimension, the intention is not to relegate the Islamic Republic to simply a bourgeois state nor to dismiss the political role of Islam. It is rather to insist that the two logics—Islam and capitalism—never coincide with each other but, in their uneasy coexistence as two co-present moments or elements at the heart of late Islamic Republic, come to form an inescapable contradiction. In essence, the capitalist logic tends to “desacralize” the world and “disenchant” religion (Weber) while the Islamic edifice remains stubbornly committed to subject all aspects of social life to the imperatives of a “divine” rule. They thus form an inescapable contradiction, leaving gaps that constantly need to be filled. By adopting a spatial perspective in which the relationship between public and private spheres in Iran is interrogated in terms of a certain incompatibility, I emphasize the role of ideology in this process as precisely a formal operation within cultural texts for the imaginary resolution of historical dilemmas or incommensurabilities. This forms the basis of my argument that the new ideology of the state demonstrates a shift from a predominantly rhetorical justification of the revolution towards a more properly aesthetic form of propaganda, it being understood that the aesthetic itself is a bourgeois discourse. This aesthetic ideology is then to be seen as the result of an encounter between authoritarian rule and consumer culture in Iran, a mixture of propaganda and culture industry. To demonstrate this aesthetic turn, I seek examples from late Iranian cinema, while asserting the primacy of spatial and architectural realm as an index of the historical moment itself, the real historical background against which narrative attempts at the imaginary reconstruction of the society.
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ItemEntrepreneurial Labour: Chinese Housewife Influencer in TikTok Social Commerce( 2023)As social media marketing continues to expand, scholars (e.g., Kubler, 2023) have emphasised the significant role of social media influencers in effectively attracting attention, engaging in self-branding, and interacting with follower-consumers. In China, the rapid growth of e-commerce on social media platforms has led to the widespread popularity of social commerce influencers, especially on TikTok (Wang & Feng, 2022). Chinese TikTok housewife influencers represent a distinct group of female vloggers and social commerce influencers who have extended their private domestic chores into the digital sphere. How they conduct self-branding by leveraging their identities and to what extent this gendered practice impacts follower engagement and consumption are issues that remain to be explored. Therefore, the study employs semi-structured interviews as a qualitative approach to investigate follower-consumer narratives and consumption patterns related to housewife influencers. The study develops a self-branding model for TikTok housewife influencers and identifies three key motivations driving follower engagement and consumption: emotional attachment, perceived information value, and self-improvement. While housewife influencers seem empowered to manage and monetise their digital practices, they are still constrained by the platform economy and gendered social norms. Their digital entrepreneurship and follower consumption reflect the reinforcement of patriarchal values, neoliberal feminist ideals, and ongoing capitalist exploitation in China. These findings contribute to the fields of social commerce influencer strategies in marketing communication and gendered digital practices in media communication.
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ItemEntrepreneurial Labour: Chinese Housewife Influencer in TikTok Social Commerce( 2023)As social media marketing continues to expand, scholars (e.g., Kubler, 2023) have emphasised the significant role of social media influencers in effectively attracting attention, engaging in self-branding, and interacting with follower-consumers. In China, the rapid growth of e-commerce on social media platforms has led to the widespread popularity of social commerce influencers, especially on TikTok (Wang & Feng, 2022). Chinese TikTok housewife influencers represent a distinct group of female vloggers and social commerce influencers who have extended their private domestic chores into the digital sphere. How they conduct self-branding by leveraging their identities and to what extent this gendered practice impacts follower engagement and consumption are issues that remain to be explored. Therefore, the study employs semi-structured interviews as a qualitative approach to investigate follower-consumer narratives and consumption patterns related to housewife influencers. The study develops a self-branding model for TikTok housewife influencers and identifies three key motivations driving follower engagement and consumption: emotional attachment, perceived information value, and self-improvement. While housewife influencers seem empowered to manage and monetise their digital practices, they are still constrained by the platform economy and gendered social norms. Their digital entrepreneurship and follower consumption reflect the reinforcement of patriarchal values, neoliberal feminist ideals, and ongoing capitalist exploitation in China. These findings contribute to the fields of social commerce influencer strategies in marketing communication and gendered digital practices in media communication.
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ItemDestiny Disrupted: Contemporary Islamic Art and the Neo-Orientalist turn( 2023-11)Since the late 1700’s, Islamic material culture and visual art has been categorised within a traditional frame in Western art history as ‘Islamic art’. This frame has been replete with colonial boundaries and a matrix of Eurocentric categories which have all but relegated Islamic art to a collection of objects situated within a fixed geography and temporality. However, in more recent years the hyper-globalisation of the contemporary art world and the increased visibility of “Muslimness” post 9/11 has prompted the rupture of the past geographical and colonial confines, accompanied with a movement of art that is emerging from contemporary Muslim communities in the West. By establishing a contemporary historiography of Islamic art in Australia, along with a critical examination of a selection of artists who identify with their Islamic heritage, my thesis aims to elucidate this contemporary movement of art as both a revelation and disruption of Islamic art history. Furthermore, by examining the thread between contemporary Islamic art and the reclamation, renovation, and subversion of tradition by local Muslim artists, an alternative frame of reference is apparent in the practice of contemporary Muslim artists. This encompasses a deliberate shift in focus from the ‘Orientalist object’ to instead foreground the artist and their practice in a postcolonial frame. This thesis reveals a recent development in Islamic art, specifically in Australia, arguing that recognising this shift is vital for both the future history of Islamic art and the discourse of Australia art history.
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ItemMale Idols in Women’s Cosmetics: The Chinese Fangirl consumer gaze, data labour, data wars and pseudo-feminist consumerism( 2022)Within the increasing marketing trend of young male idols endorsing beauty products that target women in China, Chinese fangirls have been demonstrating an impregnable purchasing power in consuming idol-endorsed products. Research by Tian Peng (2020) and Xiaomeng Li (2020) argue that this endorsement marketing phenomenon implies a certain level of women’s empowerment with the transition of power from the male gaze to the female gaze, however this argument fails to consider of the complexity and digital emergence of the Chinese fandom culture and the deeply engrained patriarchal social norms of China. Therefore, using feminist in-depth semi-structured interviews with six Chinese fangirls, this qualitative study analyses the relationship between the fangirls' consumption of idol-endorsed products and their commitment to the para-social relationship with their idol. It also seeks to understand whether women’s equality and empowerment is advanced by the consumption of idol-endorsed products. In contrast to existing research into women’s consumption of idol-endorsed products (Li, 2020; Peng, 2020) the findings of this study indicate that Chinese fangirls’ consumption of male idol- endorsed beauty products does not signify women’s equality and empowerment. Rather, it falls into “consumerist pseudo-feminism”, a phenomenon which superficially mimics some of the notions of feminism while remaining rooted in capitalist patriarchy. Notably, the study finds that fangirls’ consumption may contain exploitative capitalist features and that the gender power balance remains unchanged in this patriarchal setting. The study will give sociologists and marketers new insight into the nature of the fangirl to idol relationships in the male-endorsed beauty industry, which is deeply consumerist in nature, inherently tied to fandom culture, and does not contain feminist or empowering elements, as some scholars have claimed.
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ItemCharlotte Posenenske's Off-Avant-Garde( 2023-11)The subject of this thesis is the work of German artist Charlotte Posenenske (1930-1985). Despite the current interest in Posenenske’s art, there have been very few in-depth studies of her practice. This thesis, which conducts an extensive analysis of Posenenske’s artistic output, is the first scholarly account of her work. Posenenske’s work was produced against the backdrop of Cold War West Germany, a country significantly shaped by its rapid post-WWII reconstruction and prosperity resulting from the so-called Economic Miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). Rather than offering a comprehensive study of Posenenske’s entire oeuvre, I focus on a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures produced between 1956 and 1967. I have chosen to concentrate on works that demonstrate Posenenske’s exploration of themes that were pertinent in the post-WWII reconstruction—namely a new German subjectivity, mass production, seriality, and the relationship between the body and the object. The contention of this thesis is that Posenenske’s practice embodies what I describe as an off-avant-garde. Through this framework it will be shown that Posenenske imbued her works with the formal characteristics of historical-avant-gardism only to undo them. In so doing she neither accepted nor disavowed the historical-avant-gardes. Rather, Posenenske’s off-avant-garde was the result of her testing the utopian potential of avant-gardism in post-WWII West Germany. In characterising Posenenske’s work through this framework, and relying upon archival research, I argue against the common accounts of her work as collectivist and utopian. Although many commentators have described Posenenske’s work as displaying a wholehearted enthusiasm for the post-WWII reconstruction of West Germany, I argue that her practice followed an arc that started with enthusiasm and ended in 1967 with disappointment about the state of West Germany’s reconstruction. This finding offers a nuanced understanding of how Posenenske—and other West German artists—made sense of their environment. Rather than placing Posenenske’s short career on either side of a binary, I demonstrate that it operated in a flux that was proportionate to the rapid changes occurring around her.
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ItemHow to do things with sadness : from ontology to ethics in Derrida(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemWays of listening : dramaturgy as deep mapping in intercultural-Indigenous performance(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemOnline Media Strategies of Egypt’s Al-Azhar to Counter Extremist Rhetoric( 2023-08)The current study explored the ideological identity of a prominent Egyptian religious institution, Al-Azhar, and its capacity to counter extremism. I argued that Al-Azhar’s complex history and its paradoxical relationship with the state have impacted its ideology, leading the Islamic establishment to take a position on the political Islam spectrum. I provided evidence by combining a mixed approach of qualitative methods, using historiography, in-depth interviews and critical discourse analysis. This hybrid approach is used to (1) understand the ideology of Al-Azhar, (2) explore its online strategies/framework to counter extremism, and (3) discuss the reasons behind Al-Azhar’s incapability to renew its ideology and reform its traditional approach of teachings and interpretations of Islamic scriptures.
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ItemTranssystematic Scale: Media Philosophy Beyond Collapse and Difference( 2023-09)Scale and scaling techniques have become crucial to handling the constitutive limits of systematicity – that is, scale involves a revision of the systematic itself, within, through, and beyond its own limits. While recent media-theoretical work has made great strides in thinking the functions and nature of scale, its precise philosophical status and situation within larger ontological and epistemological debates still requires clarification. Taking scale as a core question for media philosophy, this thesis argues that scale must be read in the register of what I call the ‘transsystematic’: the multifarious attempts to think and work through the constitutive partiality, contingency, and plurality of systematicity itself. The transsystematic indexes various contexts, legible across mathematics, engineering, the sciences, politics, literature, and philosophy, where systematicity runs up against its own limits, but functions through and across those limits nevertheless. Scale becomes a key way such problems are situationally navigated: as such, it functions as a deep and nonarbitrary feature of any conceivable systematicity and their interrelation. To demonstrate how scale emerges as problem and solution in this way, I trace the antinomic functions of scale across contemporary theorisations of climate, capital, and – centrally – computation, observing how scale continually emerges as a crucial means for handling the impasses between collapse and difference, completeness and contingency, determination and the indeterminable that irrupt in these contexts. Scale functions here as both more and less than an ontological or epistemological concept, neither inhering in objects, nor being adequately understood as an arbitrary cognitive artifice. To account for its antinomic functions, I argue that scale is transcendental to systematicity, a necessary condition of any possible individuation and mediation. Understood via this transsystematic revision of the transcendental, scale is the fundamental conceptual term for the structures of localisation and generalisation that mediate between the poles of totalising collapse and irreducible difference. Ultimately, I suggest that thinking scale in this way lets us better address the transsystematic dimensions of contemporary media.