School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRococo Film Aesthetics( 2021)This thesis conceives of film design as an art of surface that is rococo in nature. I analyse the films of Sofia Coppola as decorative rococo spaces that present emotional topographies. I then further argue that the surface of film design sparks the imagination, and its moving forms activate perceptual journeys.
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ItemA ‘standard’ Topic?: Theatre, Young People and the Everyday Postdigital( 2021)This thesis investigates how theatre examines and interrogates the integration of young people’s everyday experience of digital technologies into theatrical performance. Using a multimodal approach, I examine what I describe as everyday postdigital theatre across four contemporary Australian theatre productions involving young people aged 13-22 in different ways. These case studies engage with everyday postdigital theatre across five mechanisms: networks, replication and simulation, real and virtual, time and space and glitches and mess. These mechanisms are traced across an examination of changed approaches to storytelling, aesthetic innovations and theatre’s technical reconfiguration within larger networks of information and image production. The central contribution of this thesis is that theatre involving young people highlights fundamental shifts that are currently underway in the relationship between digital culture and theatre. These shifts point to the ways in which the digital is an increasingly everyday aspect of the way we perceive and realise theatre, rather than a spectacular feature in its own right. This study is significant because it recognises that theatre ‘post’ the digital does not negate digitality, but rather acknowledges that theatre is now made with reference to, and by often seamlessly integrating, the everyday digital environment surrounding it. By focusing on young people, the thesis provides concrete examples of successes in navigating contemporary digital manifestations. It is a close reading of the subtle pervasiveness of the digital beyond overt mediation and argues for the realness of the everyday digital in theatre.
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ItemReassembling Digital Placemaking: Participation and Politics( 2021)Digital placemaking is an emerging phenomenon generally understood as the intersection of placemaking practices with digital media technologies. This thesis explores how citizens participate in digital placemaking and how digital placemaking can inform urban politics. Viewing digital placemaking through an assemblage lens, I use a single-site case study and ANT-informed ethnography to demonstrate digital placemaking as a relational site of contentions and collaborations among activists, professionals and governments without observance of strict boundaries. This thesis interrogates the participatory practices of digital placemaking, challenges existing hierarchical participatory models and conceptualises the politics of digital placemaking. Overall, I argue that digital placemaking provides a new testing ground for urban democracy.
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ItemTrainable Tongues: Performing English Speech Pedagogies in the Philippines from the American Colonial Classroom to Online Tutorial Platforms( 2021)Since the American colonial period, Filipinos have been performing English speech pedagogies to generate socioeconomic capital. Remarkably, despite how much Filipinos take pride in the sheer number of Anglophone speakers among their ranks, there have been no previous in-depth studies explaining how Filipinos teach, study, and perform English speech. How do they hone their proficiencies in speaking? What discursive mechanisms construct their ideas and ideals about public speakers or oral communicators? And what embodied practices do they take up in order to attain a degree of communicative competence? This thesis fills this scholarly gap by assembling a myriad of archival materials from the 20th to the 21st centuries that demonstrates how Filipinos have occupied five main sites—namely, colonial classrooms, modern universities, academic departments, privately-owned training centers, and online tutorial platforms—in which they engender various types of English speech pedagogies that determine what kinds of speakers deserve attention and reproduction. Furthermore, in these locations, Filipinos mount numerous performances through which they fulfill an array of communicative roles and emphasize the centrality of the spoken word in their lives. Employing historiographical, performance, and discourse analyses, this thesis illustrates that the study and practice of speech in the Philippines have manifested as a colonial apparatus, a form of social capital, a disciplinary knowledge and practice, a commodity, and a kind of digital labor. Collectively considered, these manifestations point to how speech, especially in the English language, has served as a vital mode of social reproducibility among Filipinos and an important marker of their modernity. This is to say that how they speak, how they represent themselves as speaking subjects, and how they participate in speech-related activities or events become the primary means for them to be remarkable to and remarked upon by other people in and beyond their country. Another key finding of this thesis relates to how more than a century’s worth of speech pedagogies and performances in the Philippines rests upon ideologies such as civility, rationality, efficiency, marketability, and progress. These ideologies give importance to fluent speeches and competent speakers, while at the same time marginalizing or, even worse, excluding those that are classified as otherwise. Hence, this thesis calls for accounts that not only bring to the fore these biases and blind spots of speech study and practice, but also work toward critically interrogating, if not imaginatively reworking, the enduring epistemologies and methodologies that comprise educational systems in charge of training Filipinos how to use a language, take control of a stage, and communicate with or before varied publics.
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ItemWriting the Postscript in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello & “The Return of the Language Gene” (novel extract)( 2021)The theoretical component of this thesis in Creative Writing investigates the form and function of the Postscript in J. M. Coetzee's 2003 novel, Elizabeth Costello. In Tarrying with the Negative, Slavoj Zizek explains that, for Lacan, 'sexuality is the effect on the living being of the impasses which emerge when it gets entangled in the symbolic order, i.e., the effect on the living body of the deadlock or inconsistency that pertains to the symbolic order qua order of universality' (56). I argue that the ways in which Coetzee deals with the problem of the novel's conclusion demonstrates two different relations to what Sigi Jottkandt, in her account of Alain Badiou's conception of love, has called 'the philosophical dilemma of unity and difference' (78). In Chapter One, therefore, I provide an account of Hegel's early fragment on Love and the manner in which it is reclaimed by the self-described antiphilosopher Jacques Lacan as the point at which the philosopher's 'pretty little dream' of sublation is interrupted. As Bartlett and Clemens have argued, Lacan locates a split in Hegel's account of courtly love: 'The implication is that what was split there, Hegel never 'sublated' and thus in the great Hegelian discourse of love there is an immanent excess, a point from which to interrupt the Hegelian 'absolute' and to begin again the analysis of the place of love.' Elizabeth Costello tracks the eponymous novelist's attendance at a series of prize-givings, lectures and conferences. The novel, chaptered into eight "Lessons", concludes abruptly with the intervention of a Postscript, itself taking the form of an intervention. "The Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos" acts to supplement Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Letter of Lord Chandos to Lord Bacon", dated 1603 but written and published as a piece of fiction in 1902. In Chapter Two I conduct a reading of the Postscript that draws on accounts by Graham Bradshaw, Lucy Graham, Derek Attridge, and Teresa Dovey. As Attwell writes, Dovey's location of intimations of a Lacanian subject in Coetzee's novels initiated the very possibility of a critical debate surrounding his work. Badiou is, as Reinhard indicates in his introduction to the philosopher's year-long seminar on Lacan (2018), one of Lacan's most insistent interlocutors, at once critical and genuflectory. I argue for an understanding of the Postscript as an opportunity for the reader to, following Badiou, traverse 'the realm of equivocation' in order to 'heed a commandment to symbolize or, as [Lacan] put it, to fashion an "exact formalization," without a trace of equivocation' (2001, 81). I draw on Jacques Derrida's reading of Franz Kafka's "Before the Law" to demonstrate the structural implications of the impasse at which Elizabeth Costello has arrived and propose that 'passing through' could entail following Coetzee for whom 'No intensity of reading that I can imagine would succeed in guiding me through Kafka's word-labyrinth: to do that I would once again have to take up the pen and, step by step, write my way after him' (1992, 199; cf Attridge, Singularity 92). In Chapter Three, I propose a further reading of the Postscript, one that draws on Badiou's alteration of Lacan's formulate of sexuation. In "What is Love?" Badiou presents this alteration in the form of a postscript, a figure that preserves the supplementary character of Lacan's conception of feminine jouissance even as it alters it to offer a 'secularisation of the infinite' which proposes that sexuated 'woman and man only ever exist in the field of love' (196). In doing this, I provide an extension of Dovey's reading of a Lacanian subject in Coetzee's previous novels to include a reading of Badiou's reconfiguration of the feminine at work in Elizabeth Costello. Like Dovey, however, I find that '[i]n making this claim, it is at the same time necessary to point out that what is involved is not a 'simple' appropriation of the ... paradigm' (12). The theoretical component of this thesis is accompanied by an extract from my novel, The Return of the Language Gene, which proposes a different kind of investigation into the problem of unity and difference. The Return of the Language Gene depicts a scenario in which the genetic modification of language is deployed to end human unhappiness. The story draws on the real-life isolation by British geneticists in 2001 of FOXP2, the first of a number of genes that would be shown to be crucial for the development of speech and language. In the extract from my novel, the discovery of the remaining genes soon follows, along with an announcement from The World Languages Database that it has developed the ability to genetically modify the structure of language. As the language gene extractions are implemented, Mish Edgerton, a Melbourne-based writer, is commissioned to write the world's last novel. He and his wife Eva are granted immunity from the extractions until the work is completed. When Eva, after a series of miscarriages, finally becomes pregnant with their first child, she encourages Mish's writer's block, in the hope of giving birth to a child who will have eluded the effects of the extractions.
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ItemArt, Faith and Place Re-contextualising Devotion in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence( 2021)This thesis examines the museological and exhibitionary history of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence. Founded in 1891, the Museum displays art objects of sacral and artistic significance to Florence’s cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. It has undergone multiple redevelopments since its foundation. Each successive re-curation of the collection sought to increasingly connect the artworks to their original locations in the Cathedral’s sites. This culminated in a major renovation in 2015, which expanded the exhibition spaces and introduced a devotional themed layout. This new layout mirrored a journey through the Cathedral complex, re-contextualising the collection as religiously significant and functioning objects inextricably tied to the centre of Florentine devotional culture at Santa Maria del Fiore. The thesis studies the museum’s evolving exhibitionary contexts, from the 1891 opening to the 2015 redevelopment through three key exhibits: the cantorie by Luca della Robbia and Donatello; the sculptures from the Cathedral facade in the Piazza del Paradiso; and Michelangelo’s Pieta. By using artworks and spaces as internal studies of the Museum, this thesis focuses on the museological methods and history of museum practice in addressing the Opera del Duomo’s collection. These internal studies examine the original or intended locations of the artworks at the Cathedral sites, their transition into the Museum, and the evolving museological treatment applied to them. This thesis underscores the museum’s progressively refined methodology that has resulted in a unique and innovative approach to contextualising and communicating the civic and devotional meaning encoded in its collection. It suggests that the contextualisation of the artefacts in the Museum has allowed for greater understanding of historical and devotional concepts unique to the Florentine faith and the Cathedral. This thesis concludes that the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo demonstrates the ability of contemporary museums to re-contextualise devotion and connect past and present in the mind of the viewer.
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ItemArt Forms in Nature: Writing Stones, Dancing Tigers, & Other Depictions of More-than-Human Artfulness in the Twentieth Century( 2021)In the eye of the beholder, there are many forms emerging out of nature that have the appearance of art, including the elaborate performances of avian courtship display, the delicate deceptions of insect mimicry and camouflage, and the whimsical impressions of figures and landscapes that are observed within clouds or mineral formations. Furthermore, such perceptions of nature’s artfulness are reflected within artworks produced by humans, across many cultures. These comprise a cross-cultural archive of texts that depict, incorporate or otherwise gesture towards an artfulness beyond the human. Within western cultures, there is a tradition of considering the forms of nature as illustrations of the Creator’s wisdom: part of the Book of Nature. But the idea that nature is God’s creative handiwork has also been widely challenged, particularly since the beginning of the twentieth century. During this time, the physical and biological sciences have developed an understanding of the material universe and living nature (including the human species) as emergent, self-creating and self-organising. Concurrently, the arts have opened up to encompass the abstract, the accidental, the found, and the natural, encouraging the idea that art could derive, at least partly, from the eye of the beholder. Taking these scientific and artistic developments as its rationale, this study examines literary and visual depictions of more-than-human artfulness in the twentieth century, including works by Vladimir Nabokov, Roger Caillois, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Angela Carter, as well as the continued legacy of two nineteenth-century figures, Ernst Haeckel and Anna Atkins. In a series of readings, this study surveys the concepts of the human, concepts of nature, and concepts of art that are mobilised when nature is depicted as artistic, and explores the worlds and universes, the cosmologies, that are generated by these concepts. These readings are largely informed by Elizabeth Grosz’s theory of more-than-human artfulness in synthesis with a broad theoretical framework drawn from biosemiotics, evolutionary biology, phenomenology and reader response theory. Through building this framework of ideas and reading this selection of texts, this study presents a conception of the human species as both connected to the rest of nature and also somewhat distinct from it, a conception of nature as suffused with the interplay of emergence and entropy, creation and destruction, and a conception of art as the interweaving of creativity and attentiveness, within both the artist and the observer. In developing these concepts, this study builds on discussions within the environmental humanities around ideas of ecocentrism, entanglement and agency. This study recognises that the human species is not special or separate, that living and non-living forms of matter are entangled and co-constitutive, and that many different entities are imbued with agency. But instead of reinforcing arguments that have already been developed, this study attempts to build on these arguments by shifting attention to the ways that humans are somewhat unique, the ways that life does diverge from non-life, and the ways that entities do not exert agency but accept, accommodate and attend to the agencies around them.
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ItemCulture crisis: an assessment of government arts funding in Australia during COVID-19( 2021)Decades of underfunding and poor policy design have worn down the vitality of the cultural industries in Australia. The majority of public funds have been directed to the largest organisations, while the small-to-medium sector is reduced to reliance on short-term grants. This funding environment has meant that the sector was vulnerable as it was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic forced the closure of nearly the entire arts and cultural sector, and it continues to be one of the worst - affected industries alongside hospitality and tourism. This thesis considers the perspective of six professional performing arts organisations of different sizes and organisational structures, using semi-structured qualitative interviews. Analysis of these interviews allows for an understanding of how performing arts companies responded to a national crisis, and how government support played a role in this response. The objective of the research is to provide an insight into the ways in which the pandemic has brought to light issues affecting the sector, and how this could inform permanent policy reform to better support Australia’s performing arts ecology.
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ItemBlockbuster Franchising: Transtextual Poetics in Early Twenty-First Century Hollywood Entertainment( 2021)Blockbuster franchising dominates Hollywood of the early twenty-first century, such that the production of expansive, serial, and multiplatform storyworlds has increasingly characterized mainstream entertainment since the millennial turn. This prevalence of blockbuster franchising is led by examples such as ‘Bond,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Wizarding World,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe,’ ‘Worlds of DC,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘Star Trek,’ and ‘Fast and the Furious,’ which are among the kinds of franchise properties that have contributed to the emergence of the ‘franchise era’ in Hollywood history. This thesis argues that blockbuster franchising represents the creative-industrial modulation of Hollywood cinema across its history and works to fulfil the industry’s ongoing pursuit of creative and commercial longevity. Blockbuster franchising involves the intensification and multiplication of authorship, narration, and aesthetics managed by the legal procedures of intellectual property and licensing. In this context, this thesis argues that blockbuster franchising is a mode of production that involves the interplay of creative and industrial dimensions and is driven by a dialectic of poetic utility between legal-industrial imperatives and creative development. Through the concept of poetic utility, this thesis examines blockbuster franchising as a synergistic model whereby creative expression is shaped by law and economics, and industrial longevity is enabled by creative development. This research aims to understand how blockbuster franchising works as a mode of practice in early twenty-first century Hollywood, and is facilitated by the economic, creative, and technological possibilities of media convergence and industrial synergy. This thesis employs transtextual poetics as an analytical framework through which to identify the key principles, conventions, and norms that constitute the franchise mode of production as an articulation of cinema in a total entertainment ecology. As an articulation of blockbuster entertainment in the franchise era, blockbuster franchising represents the creative-industrial modulation of Hollywood cinema across its history and thus works to fulfil its ongoing pursuit of creative and commercial longevity.
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ItemInterstitial spaces of belonging: Refugee and migrant inclusion, and digitally networked communication( 2021)This project considers how digitally networked communication technologies are opening up interstitial spaces of belonging for people of refugee and migrant backgrounds after resettlement. The project draws on 35 interviews with 26 people from refugee and migrant backgrounds living in Melbourne, supplemented by photographs generated through a photo elicitation task. I contextualise the findings arising from this data by first considering the history of migrant inclusion in Australia, and the historical practice of migrant communication through letters. I argue that while digital platforms and global connections play an important role in supporting their social inclusion and sense of belonging, interaction in the physical, local world remains crucial nonetheless. I build this argument by drawing attention to the interstitiality of the three principal dyadic relationships underpinning the thesis: inclusion–exclusion, digital–physical, and local–global. I argue that digitally networked communication technologies are highly valued tools for connection which have greatest value in their capacity to include those who may otherwise be on the outer, to produce physical encounters through digital networks, and to localise the global regardless of physical location. But it must be acknowledged that this is only half the picture. By often prioritising the global and the digital, networked communications also have the potential to make people effectively absent from the local and the physical, and thereby lead to exclusion rather than inclusion. The notion of interstitial spaces of belonging opens up these opposing accounts to the reality of their interconnection, and in doing so allows a more authentic representation of the experiences of those people at the heart of this research. The significance of this research lies in foregrounding the nuances of situated lives and personal stories, and in advocating for a relational understanding of concepts such as social inclusion, social exclusion, and belonging; digital and physical sociality; and a local and global sense of place.
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