School of Culture and Communication - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Burrowing on the beach: satire in the poetry of A.D. Hope, John Forbes, and J.S. Harry
    Eales, Simon ( 2014)
    This thesis proposes a new method of reading satire in the work of three white postcolonial Australian poets. Making detailed use of French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, the thesis argues that the satire of A.D. Hope, John Forbes, and J.S. Harry can be read as a dually deconstructive and generative machine. Such a view questions the existent, structural models of satire proposed by theorists in the field, as well as the stylistic designations made regarding each of these poets’ work. The thesis begins with a nominal definition of the genre of satire which is thereafter deployed in the three chapters of close-readings: it is crucial to the method that such a definition must itself be questioned by the poets themselves. Such a method, in its dual movement of proposition and self-critique, performs what this thesis regards as the very process of satire, thereby embodying the kind of reading for which the thesis argues. Chapter One examines the theme of self-sacrifice in A.D. Hope’s work and argues that it constitutes his satirical will to criticism; Chapter Two places the 1988 bicentenary of European settlement as the satiric object of John Forbes’ collection, The Stunned Mullet; and Chapter Three tracks the nomadic, satirical movement of J.S. Harry’s rabbit character, Peter Henry Lepus, and his interactions with the figure and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The thesis therefore tries to think about the intersection of genre, poetics, and nation. In doing so, it demonstrates a model for interpreting such discourses as ecopoetics and decolonising poetics, and for revisiting texts not commonly associated with these contemporary movements.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Participation and performance: human-technology relations in the art of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
    MCRAE, EMMA ( 2014)
    This thesis investigates the participatory media artworks of Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer as a means of exploring the human-technology relations that produce and are produced by the works. Situating Lozano-Hemmer’s work within a history of participatory art and action-based theories of technology, the enquiry adapts the artist’s own terminology – platforms for participation, relationship-specific art, alien memories, and reverse puppetry – to create a structure through which to analyse specific artwork case studies. These phrases provide a conceptual basis through which to explore notions of materiality, autopoiesis, control, and agency within human-technology relations. The enquiry uses the work of Bruno Latour and N. Katherine Hayles, with reference to the work of other key theorists including Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze, to challenge a humanist perspective of technology and argue for a posthumanist framework in which technology comes to be understood as a performance of techno-social agency.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    From codex to kindle: exploring the technological mediation of words in the digital era
    HARNETT, MATTHEW ( 2014)
    This thesis argues that like the emergence of the technology of writing in antiquity, digital literacy is also a technology with tremendous cultural, economic, political and cognitive repercussions, and that these technologies partially inform the ways by which contemporary Western society is ordered. The thesis begins by offering a broad definition of ‘literacy’ that takes into account literacy’s potential as a technology to help shape individual understanding of the external world. The first chapter is concerned with exploring the implications of this definition of literacy by investigating how print literacy alters human cognitive function, which in turn affects society more broadly, with particular reference to the work of Ong and Dehaene. It suggests literacy’s influence on the human cognitive system affects the structure of narratives, and that literacy privileges certain modes of cultural consumption over others by reifying cultural artefacts as private property. The thesis goes on to investigate whether emerging digital technologies affect human cognition to the same degree as print literacy, and how this affect may be moderated by cultural forces in the form of digital literature conventions, as well as how digital literacy is taught. An interview was conducted with two University of Melbourne Library staff, who spoke about emerging digital pedagogic practices, as well as the difficulties faced by staff and students in successfully navigating digital systems. It emerged that digital literacy is not yet formally taught, and I suggest that this is one of the largest reasons for the negative conceptions of digital literature as a force of cultural degredation that this chapter explores. Finally, the thesis suggests that – with certain caveats – digital lierature is capable of deepening the conceptual abstration of thought enabled by print literature. It goes on to analyse the implications of this on narrative modes, as well as the economic and political ramifications of digital literature’s lack of physicality.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Byronic fandom: mutual consumption and the ambiguous politics of readerly desire
    Kavanagh, Francesca Kate ( 2014)
    This thesis examines the relationships between Byronic heroes, fandom, and consumer culture through a detailed critical analysis of three female-authored Byronic texts. Taking Lady Caroline Lamb’s fictionalised account of her affair with Lord Byron as my starting point, I ask how desire for the Byronic hero has influenced our cultural understanding of fandom and gender. By reading the fan as an active authorial agent in Lamb’s 'Glenarvon' (1816), Emily Brontë’s 'Wuthering Heights' (1847), and Stephenie Meyer’s 'The Twilight Saga' (2008), I argue that Byronic heroes and their fans exist in a relationship of mutual consumption in which desire for the Byronic hero facilitates the literary productivity of fans. Lamb, Brontë, and Meyer provide sites of departure from Byron’s poetry through their focus on the emotional lives of their heroines. Such a focus uncovers the patriarchal systems which are at work in Byron’s representation of his heroes and works to create a female space in which authors, characters and fans can return the Byronic hero’s famously fascinating gaze. This relationship is what I term mutual consumption. The thesis moves chronologically from a selection of Lord Byron’s poetry and Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel 'Glenarvon', through the Victorian Gothic of Emily Brontë’s 'Wuthering Heights', to Stephenie Meyer’s 'The Twilight Saga'. These three texts form a trajectory of textual inheritance linking the Byronic hero to female desire and celebrity culture. In examining the relationships between the Byronic hero, fandom, and consumer culture, I seek to add to the critical literature working to rectify cultural assumptions of frivolity and worthlessness attached to women’s literature, the romance genre, and fan culture by demonstrating the cultural significance of these devalued forms.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    John Marston: from sharp fang'd satirist to stoic philosopher
    Montague, Tee ( 2014)
    The principal objective of this thesis is put forth evidence of John Marston's unique satirical aesthetic, through conflating interests in Horace and Juvenal, as latent content in his dramatic works. Though once held in high regard by his contemporaries, Marston's satiric intentions in drama are typically under- appreciated in current scholarship, leading to critical misconceptions of his work as amoral and sensationalist. Against such a trend, this thesis argues that Marston's satire is not only moral, but coincides with developing philosophical interests throughout his dramatic career, most commonly realised in proto-feminism and Stoicism.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    The ever present past: the tension of the ‘authentically inauthentic antique’ found within the Late Renaissance Villeggiatura with a focus on the Villa Farnese
    Steinfort, Emma Moloney ( 2014)
    Tradition is a powerful force. Yet it is the conditions and taste of the present that define how art of the past is understood and, in turn, what art is created in the present. This complex relationship between the past and present can be seen in the Late Renaissance, Pope Paul III reintroduced the villeggiatura tradition into the Roman social calendar. The villeggiatura, or country holiday, was not as simple an experience as one might imagine. The ‘recreated’ practice may have been influenced by its antique origins; however, it reflected the tastes and values of the Late Renaissance. The Villa Farnese in Caprarola exemplifies this. Designed primarily by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, the transformation of this antique tradition which took place in the Villa Farnese resulted in innovative artistic and architectural developments. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the Scala Regia. Architecturally and artistically this staircase was revolutionary as is reimagines the concept of space and narrative. Instead of a relic of the past, the villeggiatura the villeggiatura of the Late Renaissance is based firmly in the period it was recreated in. Recognising this, allows for the Late Renaissance villeggiatura’s place in the canon of art history to be understood and appreciated.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    'Parafeminism' and parody in contemporary art
    Castagnini, Laura ( 2014)
    Humour is a pleasurable and productive strategy for feminist artists; however, its role within feminist practice has received limited scholarly attention in the last two decades. The most recent study on the role of humour in feminist art is Jo Anna Isaak’s book Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter (1996, Routledge), which frames feminist subversive laughter through the carnivalesque. Arguing that Isaak’s theory does not account for subsequent paradigm shifts in practice and ideology, this thesis aims to develop a conceptual framework that can explicate the forms and effects of humour currently emerging in contemporary feminist art. To develop this conceptual framework I draw upon art theorist Amelia Jones’ concept of ‘parafeminism,’ which suggests that contemporary feminist art is engaging in a revision of second wave methodologies: assessing and building upon earlier strategies by rejecting coalitional identity politics and reworking feminist visual politics of ‘the gaze.’ I interpret Jones’ theory by returning to Linda Hutcheon’s notion of parody, in order to frame three significant shifts in feminist practice: intimate corporeal preoccupations, phallocentric modes of spectatorship, and historical re-appropriation. To give focus to the influence of these changes in artists’ practice over the last three decades, I apply my framework of parafeminist parody to two major Euro-American case studies: an early Pipilotti Rist video, entitled Pickelporno (1992), and a more recent example, Mika Rottenberg’s video installation Mary’s Cherries (2004), as well as to a selection of works that traverse both video and performative modes of practice by three Australian artists (and collectives): Brown Council, Catherine Bell and the Hotham Street Ladies. Drawing upon writings from Freud, affect theory and corporeal semiotics, I extend Jones’ theory to this wider range of artworks thereby identifying ‘parafeminism’ as a greater phenomenon than previously proposed. To summarise, I aim to identify and develop a theoretical approach that will enable deeper understanding of humorous elements in contemporary feminist art.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Racialisation in Singapore today: from the governance of migration policy to contemporary online media
    Chandra, Chang Xiao Jing Sophie ( 2014)
    In modern society, and one with clearly defined policies of multiracialism, the word ‘racism’ remains a largely unspoken word in official discourses in Singapore. However, the dominance of the government over the country’s nationalistic ideologies and ethnic consensus opens up a new window into the dimension of racism. I seek to better understand the increasing issues of race and racism in Singaporean society by exploring how the process of racialisation at the macro level contributes to the reproduction of racial norms, values and attitudes that govern everyday lives in Singapore. I draw on Foucault’s (1980) theory of “biopolitics” and Essed’s (1991) “everyday racism” to illustrate the ways in which Singapore is imagined by the government, and how these economic and political ideals are internalised in the racialised minds of Singaporean citizens and played out in practice at the micro-level. In doing so, I aim to conceptualise a bridge between the macro system of race-based policies and state ideologies and the micro inequalities that perpetuate the system, and thus, uncover the complex racist effects that the politicisation of race has had on Singaporean society.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Politicizing the personal: reading gender-based violence in rape survivor discourse
    Macreadie, Rachel Sarah Jo ( 2014)
    Rape is about power. Women writing about their experiences of rape often find that the disempowering effects of rape continues into the aftermath when they face a hostile environment that frequently denies and silences their experience. Even where rape circumstances fit within the definitions of the ‘standard rape narrative’, survivors must still compete against victim-blaming attitudes, rape myths and cultural silencing. In order to find an audience to bear witness to the trauma, women often have to perform according to social expectations, modify their emotions to be accepted and dilute any politically disruptive messages. To cultivate an awareness of the complex and multifaceted influences and power dynamics shaping the rape story, I examine the development and production of survivor discourse. I argue for the value in conceptualizing three primary ‘gatekeepers’ of the rape story (cultural, literary and judicial) that force a particular kind of story to emerge, which can lead to survivor narratives paradoxically perpetuating rape myths and recuperating dominant discourses. In the last few decades, disciplines of criminology, social psychology, linguistics, and legal studies have used a variety of social research methodologies to enhance understandings of rape myths and the context within which survivors make sense of their experience. Nonetheless, published autobiographical texts remain an underutilized resource that can offer further insight into the influence of readers and the literary market in shaping the rape story. My methodological approach engages a feminist critical analysis of Alice Sebold’s Lucky (2002 [1999]), Frances Driscoll’s The Rape Poems (1997) and Jamie Kalven’s Working with Available Light (1999) positioned within a socio-legal conceptual framework and informed by an understanding of trauma. These texts diverge from conventional ways of representing the rape story, compelling their audience to understand rape as prevalent and everyday gender-based violence. They resist the redemptive narrative arc, thereby politicizing their individual stories and challenging the complicity of the community. Driscoll also rejects narratives of ‘personal growth’ that position rape as a difficult personal experience which one can overcome by adopting a survivor mentality. I include Kalven’s memoir of his wife’s rape to examine the nuances of power, privilege and the competition over the meaning of rape for survivors. I argue that while Kalven makes a case for rape to be considered torture, his account is troubling as he takes ownership of his wife’s story and enacts discursive violence by producing a text that disempowers the survivor. This constrains the political potential of his memoir. Far from individualizing the rape story, a critical analysis of these diverse texts illustrates how survivor narratives can challenge rape myths, victim culpability and dominant discourses. Throughout this thesis I argue for the value of reading autobiographical texts alongside rape scholarship to facilitate an engaged understanding of the way discourses on rape are mutually reinforcing and are produced and reproduced across a range of discursive sites.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Elsewheres and difference: a heterotopic perspective of motherhood
    RITCHIE, ERIN ( 2014)
    This thesis presents a heterotopic perspective of motherhood. It focuses on textual intersections of selfhood, writing and motherhood. Reading Marion May Campbell’s essay, “Spectacular Motherhood”, as a case study and presenting a novella, “A Mute Scream, that goes (like so)”, as an alternative case study, this thesis creatively and critically explores motherhood as a space of juxtapositions, contestation, paradox and difference. A heterotopic perspective of motherhood requires a synthesis of Foucault’s The Order of Things and “Different Spaces” as well as twentieth century, postmodern and contemporary feminist theorists. These include but are not limited to: Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Teresa de Lauretis, Gillian Rose, Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz. This theoretical synthesis aims to offer an original perspective of motherhood as a space of difference beyond institutionalisation and representations.