Abstracts
David Abkiewicz (david.abkiewicz@students.mq.edu.au)
Media, Macquarie Univerity
Narcocorridos: Social Banditry in Mexican Border Ballads
Narcocorrido is a modern genre of Mexican folk music that deals with the exploits of ‘narcotrafficantes’—Mexican drug traffickers. Immensely popular on both sides of the Mexican-American border, the genre’s roots in the traditional corrido give it a direct lineage to the ‘outlaw ballad’. This paper, which forms part of a broader Honours thesis examining the narcocorrido, locates the genre within the framework of ‘social banditry’ as proposed by Eric Hobsbawm in Bandits! (1969) and developed in subsequent scholarship by Hobsbawm and other authors. It is clear that the narcocorrido protagonist often fits into the classic mould of the social bandit. Usually forced into the life of an outlaw by external forces or commendable aspirations such as a desire to protect family honour, the narcotrafficante contributes to the wellbeing of the local community which in turn reveres and protects him to the point where he may only be defeated when betrayed by an ally. However, despite thematic similarities, the form and function of the modern narcocorrido represent several departures from the nature of the traditional ‘social bandit ballad’, largely due to the advent of recording technology. As a recorded genre, the narcocorrido has been influenced by the mechanisms of a commercial recording industry (largely based in Los Angeles) as well as ongoing censorship (mainly attempts to ban or at least discourage the playing of narcocorridos on Mexican radio stations). Additionally, the last few decades has seen the rise of many narcocorrido recording stars who, in stark contrast to anonymous minstrels of past eras, often boast biographies mirroring the social bandit archetype as much as the protagonists of the narcocorridos themselves.
This paper seeks to analyse these elements of the narcocorrido genre in order to assess its validity and strength as a continuation of the centuries-old tradition of social bandit balladry.
Phil Betts (pgbetts@gmail.com)
Media, Macquarie University
Earning the rent: Fox Searchlight’s Waitress and Hollywood’s Independents
May 31 st, 2005. U.S. cinemas are overwhelmed by the closing films of three titan franchise trilogies: Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Spider-Man throw about their respective brawn, girth and muscle in one almighty clash for the box office takings. Pirates, in a spectacular opening, plunders $173 million for the war chest. Shrek, his second week attempt at the crown, smashes his way to $77 million. Spidey, surfacing for his fourth week in the spotlight, looks a little bit worn but still manages to net over $21 million. Yet the number four earner hails from a different club. She has no superpowers. There are no dazzling fight sequences, stunts or spectacular effects. In fact, coming in at just under $5 million, the self-styled “cure for the common blockbuster” occupies a very different world. The late Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress, acquired and distributed by Fox Entertainment Group’s ‘Independent’ film company Fox Searchlight, is representative of a shift in Hollywood’s tactics that has come to prominence over the past decade. The rise of specialty divisions within the major media conglomerates charged with producing and distributing specialty or ‘independent’ films has challenged the way Hollywood does business on a number of fronts. Beyond the first point issue of ‘what IS an independent film’, these studios present alternative ways to distribute their products, find audiences, judge success, and ultimately, make a living. In this paper I explore the behind-the-scene and behind-the-screen story of Waitress to examine how these studios operate. What kinds of films get their attention? How are they marketed? Why do these studios exist? I track the box office charts from May to July, 2007, to comment on their place within contemporary US cinema.
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Paolo Bolanos ( Paolo.Bolanos@scmp.mq.edu.au )
Philosophy, Macquarie University
Nietzsche, Adorno, and the Normativity of the New
I will discuss the shared intellectual lineage of Nietzsche and Adorno. The profound influence of the early German Romantics (in particular the likes Hölderlin, Schelling, the Schlegels, and Novalis who in their own ways responded to Fichte’s reading of Kant’s Third Critique) is undeniable in the works of both thinkers. If a deeper discussion or comparison is to be made between these philosophers, it should begin with an inquiry into the role played by early German Romanticism in the development of their thoughts. Inasmuch as this move is seen to be setting the ground upon which a proper appraisal of the relation between Nietzsche and Adorno is to be made, it is crucial to question the Romantic tendency or temperament which runs through and animates their works. I deploy a contemporary appropriation of the Romantic disposition in what Nikolas Kompridis calls “philosophical romanticism,” a name which, as will be shown, would encapsulate the spirit of the Nietzsche-Adorno partnership; it is, moreover, a name which has consequences for critical theory.
Agnes Bosanquest (Agnes.Bosanquet@vc.mq.edu.au)
Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
Carnal Difference
In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Luce Irigaray suggests that “sexual difference … could be our ‘salvation’ if we thought it through.” Thinking through the issue of sexual difference, she continues, would signal the beginning of a newly fertile and creative era, “the production of a new age of thought, art, poetry, and language: the creation of a new poetics” (1993a, 5). Irigaray’s insistence on sexual difference has been justifiably problematic for many of her readers, particularly in relation to arguments for the cultural and historical performativity of gender and sexuality. Irigaray explicitly states, however, that she is “not advocating a return to a more repressive, moralising conception of sexuality. On the contrary, what we need is to work out an art of the sexual, a sexed culture” (1993, 3). This paper asks: is it possible to accept Irigaray’s call for a differently sexed culture without imposing a proper, real or natural gender or sexual identity? Might it be possible to speculate differently about sexual difference, utilising the ingredients that lie within Irigaray’s work? In answer, I propose carnal difference as a means for moving beyond sexual difference. Carnal difference formulates difference in erotic terms by emphasising the irreducibility of bodies, and the inability of one to entirely consume or incorporate the other in a carnal encounter or exchange. This paper not only explicates a theoretical model for carnal difference; it also attempts to put into practice a poetics of carnal difference. This is an exploratory, experimental and speculative philosophy that requires a poetic logic, not an analytical one, and so privileges a mode of writing that is subjective and playful. The intention is to demonstrate that the philosophical inconsistencies and ambiguities of carnal difference might be meaningful and productive.
Emily Bullock (max_at_101@hotmail.com)
Media, Macquarie University
Queenstown: Around the Bend
Queenstown’s bald hills have been a popular tourist drawcard since the turn of the century, sold in travel guides and brochures as a spectacular ‘moonscape’. In 1948, travel guidebook writer Stanley Brogden exclaimed, ‘These naked mountains, with their inconceivably varied colourings, occupy every view. No matter which way we turn – they seem to crowd into the very street we are in’ (80). In the hills, visitors can see the effects of more than a hundred years of ecological degradation. A combination of a severe bushfire in 1896 and the emission of sulphurous gases from the pyritic smelting process at the Mt Lyell Copper Mine have resulted in Queenstown’s weird denuded landscape. Ironically, the locals have grown attached to the hills and want to preserve their baldness. This paper traces a concern with excess and waste, landscape and identity in a town on the western periphery of Tasmania. Here, the impulse to preserve a grotesque landscape registers a culture surviving on desecration to stave off its own disappearance.
Wilson Cooper (Wilson.Cooper@scmp.mq.edu.au)
Philosophy, Macquarie University
So, You Want To Be A Non-Reductive Physicalist?
While physicalism is considered the orthodox position within philosophy of mind, it has by no means been established as irrefutable. One of the major difficulties confronting physicalism is its ability to fully explain the appearance of higher-level causation. The implication of this difficulty is that as long as we lack explanations for causal chains involving chemicals, organisms, social groups and other higher level phenomena in a purely physical language, there is always the possibility of another explanation trumping physicalism. Support for eliminative and reductive forms of physicalism has been in decline since the latter part of the twentieth century, only to be balanced by an increase in support for non-reductive physicalism. In this paper I will discuss the aspiration of non-reductive physicalism to remain a form of physicalism while endorsing the causal independence of non-physical properties. There are two core commitments that have been established as distinguishing physicalism from other metaphysical doctrines such as idealism or dualism. The first is the principle of physical causal closure. This can be taken to mean that any particulars, events, or properties that have causes, have only physical causes. A stronger version states that there is no causal interaction whatsoever between the physical and non-physical domains. A non-physical domain is any domain of phenomena not fully explainable in the terms of the physical sciences, although, mental phenomena are regarded as the most salient example. The second commitment is that everything non-physical supervenes on the physical domain, otherwise known as lack of independent variation. This commitment demands that any change occurring in a non-physical domain must be accompanied by a change in the physical domain. I will argue that if non-reductive physicalism is to sustain claims of independent higher-level causation, then a commitment to the principle of physical causal closure will have to be abandoned. Supervenience, on the other hand, must be retained if non-reductive physicalism is to remain a physicalist doctrine.
Jennifer Corkin (jennifer.corkin@students.mq.edu.au)
Media, Macquarie University
Centuries of Celebrity – An Historical Study of Fame and Celebrity
We live in a world dominated by celebrities. You cannot turn on the TV, browse through a newspaper or pass a magazine stand without being briefed on details of the Beckhams’ new mansion, Paris Hilton’s nightlife, Britney Spears’ latest rehab stint or Brad and Angelina’s recent family outing. So prevalent are celebrities in today’s society that a whole genre of academic literature has been created to analyse the various roles such personalities play in our everyday lives. But what was celebrity before the arrival of contemporary celebrity culture? How did aspiring individuals go achieve fame, and how did their audiences perceive them? Adopting the methodology of the longue durée, this paper thus seeks to address a gap in the current literature on celebrity, by approaching the seemingly modern concepts of fame and celebrity from a wider historical perspective. Throughout the centuries, from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, celebrity, in its various shapes and forms, has long played a fundamental role. By looking back and analysing the changes and continuities of how celebrities have been consumed and constructed by past cultural eras, this paper thereby proposes that it is not only possible to uncover valuable beliefs and circumstances which characterised these cultures, but also, in doing so, can become better equipped to evaluate such information about celebrities in our own time.
Virginia Falk (echidna26@hotmail.com)
Law, Macquarie University
The polarisation of Aboriginal customary values in water: The rise and rise of utilitarian water use in Australia
Australia, at the very foundation of community and economic development since colonisation has driven policy and law that exploits the natural resources of Aboriginal land and waters. Unlike other colonised nations of Canada, the United States and New Zealand, Aboriginal Australia was left with no historical legal framework in treaty agreement or contractual terms to protect Aboriginal cultural, community and economic values and from western economic domination. The current federal reform to water resources has raised recurring colonial issues of Aboriginal community domination by market forces, government and industry demands for the exploitation of water. This paper addresses the Australian approach to the evaluation and allocation of water resources to Aboriginal communities in light of the new property rights in water and the industry demand for economic certainty. The paper examines Aboriginal communal impact in view of the ‘demand for economic certainty’ to water resources by non-Aboriginal society and the cultural ‘trade-offs’ demanded from Aboriginal people in urban, rural, remote and discrete communities throughout Australia. Syme and Hatfield-Dodds (2007: 18) stated that:
[t]he expansion of water markets may have unintentionally framed the reform dialogue in terms of individual self-interest…a discourse which assesses outcomes in terms of economic criteria rather than the balance between social, environmental and economic considerations.
The core challenges analysed in this paper is the historic and contemporary Australian utility metaphor in economic advancement on a regional and national discussion on water resources and the systematic non-incorporation of Aboriginal community values in the apportionment of water use. The paper puts forward several water governance models, opposing the non-economic sustainability of remote and discrete Aboriginal communities put forward by the current Federal government, which instead would enshrine the significant meaning of Aboriginal culture to water in Australian society and incorporate more than a ‘warm and fuzzy’ linger of an Aboriginal cultural experience.
Vanessa Fredericks (vanessa.fredericks@hotmail.com)
Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
Death and Justice: an ethical response to massacre
This paper applies Derrida’s “politics of mourning” to a particular event in Polish history, namely the Katyn massacres of WWII. The word ‘Katyn’ has come to represent the massacre of somewhere between 14,000 to 22,000 Polish prisoners of war, taken by the Red Army or the NKVD in the spring of 1939. The prisoners were executed and buried in various undisclosed locations in the Soviet Union and the Ukraine as part of Stalin’s attempt to implement ‘class cleansing’ in Poland. The first of the mass graves was discovered by German soldiers in 1943 however, the Soviet government denied responsibility for the massacres and accused the German government of being guilty for the crime. During the 68years since the event no-one has been prosecuted for the crime or its cover up. Successive Soviet governments have continued to deny responsibility for the crime until Gorbachev’s admittance of Soviet guilt in 1990. For Derrida, mourning is an ongoing entrusted responsibility to the Other. It is an ongoing responsibility to memory of the Other and a responsibility in the face of a heritage. This work of mourning is not to be perceived as only a responsibility to our immediate friends, but is also to be seen as a political and collective responsibility, especially when the lives we are mourning were lost as a result of politics. With a focus on ethics, responsibility and justice, this paper is a way of thinking and responding to this particular massacre. It is an attempt to break the silence that existed after the event for so long and it is a call for justice. But what exactly is justice? Is justice a necessary part of mourning? What is the most ethical way to mourn? What is an ethical response to a massacre around which there has been so much silence? We can begin to answer these questions by using Derrida’s idea of mourning as a future-oriented memory which is dedicated to an ethical responsibility to the trace of the Other. To be silent, to be non-responsive, is an unethical response to this event.
Matthew Gear (twelvemilereef@yahoo.com)
Media, Macquarie University
‘Losted’ in New York: Experiential Realism in Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep
This paper explores the construction of an imagined urban landscape through the employment of subjective point of view in Henry Roth’s modernist novel Call It Sleep (1934). This involves an engagement with Robert Alter’s recent critical writings on 19th and 20th century European novels in terms of their ‘experiential realism’. Alter’s flexible approach to reading fiction goes beyond a consideration of mere urban representation and towards an understanding of the complex relationship between setting, subjectivity and language in the novel. Call It Sleep constructs an early 20th century version of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York City, through the perceptions of a Jewish immigrant child named Davis Schearl. Brownsville is always a subjective entity, and always in flux, dependent on David’s emotional state, his growing awareness, his troubled relationship with his parents and friends, and his frustrated attempts to independently navigate the neighbourhood streets. I discuss how Roth minutely renders the flux of the subjective city with language that draws on Yiddish words and syntax, as well as phonetically rendered slang. This paper also examines passages of the novel – particularly David’s ordeal as he loses his bearings in the grid of streets – in light of New York’s history of planning, technology, housing, and public transport. This approach to exploring the relationship of character to setting is an important development in the study of urban fiction.
Joyoti Grech (joyoti@mac.com)
Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
The said and the unsaid - metaphor in two texts by Devashish Roy
What is it that Devashish Roy is doing discursively that makes such a significant contribution to the social cultural political landscape of Bangladesh? As hereditary chief of the Chakma Circle of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and in active participation in the Indigenous Peoples Forum of Bangladesh, he is held in high esteem by his indigenous brothers and sisters, within the CHT and the wider national context. He holds an extraordinary position of high visibility and responsibility within both these indigenous contexts at the same time as fulfilling his role as special assistant to the Bangladesh Government’s Chief Adviser with portfolio for forestry and CHT affairs. He has regularly spoken on international platforms including the United Nations.The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh is home to between 9 and 11 distinct indigenous communities, collectively known as Jumma people due to their common practice of Jum or swidden agriculture. Successive Bangladesh government policies of militarisation, land dispossession and population transfer have changed the demographic of the CHT from 92% indigenous in x to 51% indigenous by 1992. In 1997 the signing of a “Peace Accord” between indigenous Shanti Bahini (Peace Force) guerrillas and Bangladesh government formally ended a 21-year war. The Accord remains largely unrealised, though there are signs of change. Not least of these was the accepted appointment in January 2008 of Devashish Roy as special assistant to the adviser with portfolio for forestries and CHT affairs.
Devashish Roy speaks three languages – Chakma, Bengali and English – fluently and uses all three in public spaces within his birthplace of the CHT in Bangladesh, nationally and internationally. Are there identifiable patterns of language within his (English language, in this case) communications from which we can learn? Can we use these learnings to develop more profoundly successful inter-cultural communication, at the same time upholding an exemplar of success from an indigenous cultural context ? How can we use the tools offered by SFL to appreciate the ways in which a successful communicator bridges linguistic contexts to reach his audience ? Are there common points of significance between SFL and Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) that can help us map these successful patterns ? This paper will consider these questions in relation to Devashish Roy’s “Cultural Rights of Adivasi People and the Indigenous Roots of Bengali Culture”, the text of a speech delivered to conference in Dhaka in 20001. It was published by the Bangladesh Indigenous Peoples Forum, Constitutional Recognition for the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity 2001, Dhaka and in Earth Touch, occasional English language magazine of the Society for Environment and human Development, Dhaka 2005.
Phyllis Sakinofsky (phyllsak@bigpond.com)
Media, Macquarie University
Shaping the Jewish South African migrant story: imprints of memories, shadows and silences
South Africa ’s Jewish community, a homogenous group of migrants from Lithuania, left Eastern Europe around the turn of the twentieth century to seek an alternative to growing antisemitism and poverty, only to find themselves enmeshed in another form of oppression – apartheid – but this time on the side of the oppressor.
It has been argued that the Jews who settled in South Africa never considered themselves as immigrants or as a group that held the promise of permanence. Indeed, one hundred years on, many descendants of the migrants (including myself) have migrated on to other countries.
My paper looks at the major influences on this community – the memories, shadows and silences – on the (un)settlement of this community, and how antisemitism, the holocaust and apartheid permeated the group, but with a range of vastly differing outcomes. The journey of these migrants and their contrasting responses is reflected in their stories.
Story-telling lies at the nexus between fiction, historical truthfulness and personal memory and can expose hidden memories and alternate realities that subsequently make meaning for the teller and her audiences.
I examine the relationship between theory, history and imagination and then consider its effect on my own writing and extrapolate the potential of its power for writers from other migrant or outsider communities.
Through examples from my own work I show how the creative writing process has combined with academic research for a PhD to help me achieve understanding and acceptance of the complexities of my Jewish South African childhood.
Wendy Howe (Wendy.Howe@law.mq.edu.au)
Law, Macquarie University
Climate Change Communication: What are they talking about?
In February 2005 the Kyoto Protocol entered into force and was a milestone event from many perspectives in recognising global climate change. However, despite this culmination of improved scientific knowledge and the resulting law and policy developments and economic responses, climate change has remained a complex and contentious issue commanding continued attention from a wide variety of interests. With increasing media attention and coverage debates are still being held at all levels of society about whether the climate is actually changing, or is part of a larger cyclic weather event; of the likelihood of human involvement in climate change; about the pace and likely impacts of climate change; and about what can or should be done, and at what cost, to mitigate or adapt to climate change. These debates are intense and have caused bitter public disagreement between many sectors over issues that would seem to some to be clearly a matter of accepting and acting on the scientific consensus of climate change. While for others, there is no agreement or consensus and for every scientific argument on the nature and seriousness of the problem, there have been sceptics declaring the opposite and disputing the science. Adding to this confusion and controversy is the use of figurative language and the influence of several distinctive linguistic repertoires to describe and evaluate climate change issues. These repertoires represent different versions of what some consider is a “common sense” approach to understanding climate change and form a base from which individuals, and disciplines, draw their perspectives on the issue. This paper discusses how these linguistic repertoires and the use of figurative language have influenced the interdisciplinary discourse between climate change science and climate change law in Australia.
Lana Leslie ( Lana.Leslie@scmp.mq.edu.au )
Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
The Exclusion and Exclusion of Aboriginal People to the
Moree Baths in the 1950s and 1960s
Recreational spaces in country towns form an integral part of the community. Moree, in north western NSW, is home of the Moree Baths that were developed from the discovery of Artesian water. Since their establishment in 1895, the baths have been used for many reasons, from therapy to a location for business meetings.The paper examines the importance of the Moree Baths as a special place in the social structure of the town but one to which Aboriginal people were refused entry or allowed entry under harsh conditions. Barriers to sport and recreation, in this context, are barriers to being part of a community. Previous knowledge surrounding the inclusion and exclusion of Aboriginal people to Moree Baths is limited. Knowledge to date focuses more on the freedom ride as the event that highlighted the local Council’s refusal to admit Aboriginal people to the baths. This paper uses both primary and secondary sources of data. An oral history account will be presented of a resident who was a child living in Moree who tells the story of his experience of the racist practices that surrounded the entry to the baths. Other sources include work focusing on the freedom ride (eg Perkins 1975, 1990; Curthoys 2002; documentary; historical documents including newspaper articles and Council records). Supporting sources include work on the health and recreational benefits of swimming pools for Aboriginal people (eg Lehmann et.al 2003; Audera 1999). This research contributes to a wider body of academic knowledge by providing a first hand account of the practices that surrounded the entry to the Moree baths, using an Indigenous decolonising research framework (eg Tuhiwai Smith 2005; Denzin & Lincoln & Tuhiwai Smith 2008).The paper, by an Indigenous researcher, is a work in progress, contributing towards a PhD by publication at Macquarie University in the topic of the ‘Physical Activity of Older Indigenous Australians’
Shan-Shan Li (sharishanshan@gmail.com)
University of Western Sydney
International Students, Media and Cultural Globalisation - Theoretical and Methodological Exploration
Media ethnography has been used to explore the cultural experiences of the displaced people, such as diasporians and immigrants (e.g. Gillespie 1995; Schein 2002; Naficy 1993), but less so the case of international students. The paper is based on a current PhD project investigating the cultural experiences of Chinese ( Beijing and Shanghai) international students who are studying in Australia ( Sydney), and their cultural integration into Australian mainstream. The media study part of the research investigates Chinese students' media consumption, in order to explore the particular cultural life they lead when they are studying in Australia, as well as how their border-crossing activities as international students may change the cultural values they hold and their cultural identity. Chinese students' cultural experiences are placed in a globalisation context. Appadurai's (1990; 1996) globalisation model is employed to frame the research, for it not only provides a connection between transnational ethno-movement in 'ethnoscapes' and 'image flows' in 'mediascapes', but also offers a perspective of understanding people's experiences of cultural globalisation in a more comprehensive way. Imported or downloaded 'home media', Australian local media, as well internet-based contents provide Chinese students with a 'metaphoric reality' (Appadurai 1990; 1996), in which 'foreign cultures' can be perceived, while the meanings of being Chinese is negotiated. Media elements, such as images and plots, as well as the use of media are encoded with new meanings in these international students' lives when they gain overseas experiences. Such shifts of meanings in the 'mediascapes' reflect the changes of these Chinese students in terms of the cultural life they lead, the cultural values they hold, as well as their cultural identity. The research also includes cases study of Chinese students' interpretations of two Australian soap operas - Neighbours, which focuses on the representation of Anglo-Australian lives, is used to explore to what extent these students understand Australian mainstream cultures and how they make sense of Australia through the programme; while Kick, which is based in Melbourne, but involves characters from a variety of cultural backgrounds, is used to investigate these students' feelings about living in Australia as NESB (None English Speaking Backgroud).
Duncan McLean (nacnud22@hotmail.com)
Media, Macquarie University
The Evolution of the Term 'New Hollywood'
After the collapse of the once dominant studio system in the 1950s, Hollywood executives were at a loss as to how to reassert the cinema atop the entertainment food chain. While ticket sales and box office takings were waning and the standard fare of epics and musicals failing to capture the imagination of the American public, the growing television industry was fast becoming Americas preferred source of entertainment. In their desperation to appeal to the youth market, the only market that seemed committed to going to the cinemas, the studios threw the doors open in the late 1960s to a new generation of filmmakers, mainly born in the 1930s, who had cut their teeth in television. This new group of filmmakers, influenced not only by their Hollywood predecessors but also by the experimental films being produced in Europe, revolutionised the American cinema with their gritty, often violent realism. They saw their films as legitimate forms of personal artistic expression, and a way of exploring issues surrounding American society. This quickly came to be known as the ‘New Hollywood’. Some scholars, however, prefer to see this late 1960s activity as a precursor to the ‘New Hollywood’ which, they argue, commenced in the early 1970s with the celebrated ‘movie brats’, the first generation of truly cineliterate directors who had studied at film schools.
In the late 1970s though the American film landscape would change again, with the unprecedented successes of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) ushering in a new era of blockbuster filmmaking. This led some scholars to redefine the meaning of the term ‘New Hollywood’ to align with this blockbuster movement, while others chose to use the term ‘New New Hollywood’. This paper explores the evolution of the term New Hollywood as film scholars, journalists and critics struggle to reach a consensus on what specifically was or is the ‘New Hollywood’.
Jeffry Ocay (jefjust24@yahoo.com)
Philosophy, Macquarie University
Culture, Technological Domination, and the Great Refusal
The main thrust of this paper is to evince the urgent need to de-culturalize contemporary Philippine society. This is premised on the claim that unprecedented advancement of modern technology has resulted in technical control of culture or, simply, technological domination. Such technical control has blocked individuals from attaining their highest ideal, that is, the full realization of their potentialities. From here, the paper proceeds to highlight the attempt to de-culturalize contemporary Philippine society through the employment of Herbert Marcuse’s notion of the Great Refusal. Marcuse understands the Great Refusal as a kind of “negativity,” i.e., “critical thinking” which enables individuals to transform their present needs, sensibility, consciousness, values, and behavior into a new radical sensibility, a sensibility that does not tolerate injustice and that which resists and opposes all forms of control and domination. De-culturalization, in this sense, means re-directing the course of technology so that it will serve the best interest of mankind. In other words, de-culturalization is an act of rescuing and freeing Philippine culture from technological control and domination in order to attain what Mathew Arnold calls “harmonious perfection.” This claim demands that Filipinos should be critical enough in dealing with technology so that they will be able to distinguish emancipatory technology from the manipulative and destructive kind.
Rosemary Parsons (Rosemary.Parsons@scmp.mq.edu.au)
Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
Devising The Autobiographical Space in Rehearsal and Performance
Autobiographical performance brings to the practice of autobiography a physicality and temporality befitting the embodied ephemerality of the “life story”. Unlike traditional literary autobiography, the body of the performer – not the written page – becomes the site of the autobiographical exchange between self and audience, mediated by an overlapping array of discursive practices from aesthetic style to the complex discursivity of the body itself. At the simplest level, the autobiographical performance opens up a physical space for the enactment of autobiography where the embodied self is presented as the signed “proper name” guaranteeing authenticity in the autobiographical pact (Lejeune in Grace, 2005:68). More complexly, however, the autobiographical performance opens up multiple spaces where the performer’s self is constantly unpacked and reconstructed, destabilising the very notion of “authenticity” that the autobiographical process traditionally claims as its hallmark. In this paper, I investigate creating and performing autobiography within a group devising situation, and how the many spaces opened up within this scenario – in devising practices, in rehearsal, in performance – may help us to rethink where the creation of autobiography is “located” and performed. Within my own devising practice, the conventional definition of autobiography as “[A] retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person … focusing on his individual life” (Lejeune in Anderson, 2001:2) is completely disrupted as autobiography becomes an intersubjective process that draws not upon retrospection but unpicking the discursive formations that comprise both contemporary subjectivity and non-traditional autobiographical practice. Starting with the performer’s body – as the “performer creates from her ‘being’ … The writing of texts by the performer are inscribed in the body and articulated through voice, gesture, movement and facial expression” (Oddey, 2006:39) – this paper will identify and examine the many overlapping spaces within and comprising autobiographical performance, and their relation to the destabilisation of the autobiographical subject as “authentic”.
Hilarie Roseman (yarrayarra@net-tech.com.au)
International Communications, Macquarie University
The Language of Peace: Intercultural Remediations: Truth, Reconciliation, and Forgiveness in Multi-Ethnic Abrahamic Religious Organizations
International Communication has been used for war propaganda (Matelart 1994), but today, carries the Peace Propaganda of the three Abrahamic religions. Jews, Christians and Muslims are engaged, at the local level, and at the highest authoritative level, in dialogue. Dialogue, ethical truthful communication, can ignite a creativity that underlies new thinking. Beyond the idea of a clash of civilizations between the Islamic and Western cultures ( Huntington 1993) rises cooperation. Encounter Groups from the Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities are meeting, all over the world, to learn about each other, to make friends. Human minds and memories imagine something beyond the present conflict. Human consciousness is what makes us human. And strangely, “there is no statement in the “natural laws” that there is an emergence of this strange nonmaterial entity, consciousness or mind “(Scrimecca 1900:.209). More strangely, a new joint consciousness, noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin), is an outcome of cooperative behavior, when people understand each other’s actions and come to a consensus. “The programs of the brain constitute a structure system written in a ‘language.’” Not only does this internal property of our brain permit us to communicate useful information through mutually understood abstract sounds; it also permits us to draw upon our vast memory stores to create imagined worlds – think about the future (Clark in Burton 1990:43). Identity, security, recognition, participation, dignity and justice, if not fulfilled, cause conflict. ”In the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the major obstacle to change is each side’s perception that the very existence of the other as a national entity constitutes a fundamental threat to its own identity and security. In order to break through such resistance in change, conflict resolution efforts must address the parties’ needs and fears.” (Kelman 1990:284) This is happening through dialogue, the language of peace.
Melanie Rosen (melanie.rosen@gmail.com)
Philosophy, Macquarie University
The Anti-Experience Thesis of Dreams
In this paper propose a view that supports Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett’s rejection of the received view of dreaming. In an attempt to discredit the received view which states that dreams are experiences we have during sleep, Norman Malcolm in his book Dreaming argues for a verificationist theory of dreams. Rather than assuming that dreams are experiences we have during sleep, we should instead accept that dream reports told upon waking are the sole criteria of dreams. Malcolm argues that dreams are logically dependent on such reports, and since sleep-experiences are unverifiable, we should remain agnostic as to whether one can experience anything during sleep. We can only verify that we have the tendency upon waking to tell tales as if we had such experiences. Dennett, in support of Malcolm, suggests a cassette theory of dreams, in which dreams are memories stored like cassettes which are replayed upon waking. Both Malcolm and Dennett’s arguments that dreams are logically dependant on waking impressions have been outmoded, but I will attempt to establish a more convincing thesis for this conclusion by moving away from verificationism. I will present what I call the anti-experience thesis of dreams. This thesis states that dreams are logically dependent on waking impressions because if we do have sleep-experiences, they require such a high level of interpretation and narrative formation that they are far removed from our waking impressions of them. Whatever experience occurs during sleep is most likely too incoherent to describe or remember without such interpretation. This thesis has three alternatives; a strong, moderate and weak thesis, of which I shall support the weak thesis.
Virginia Small (virginia.small@pict.mq.edu.au)
PICT, Macquarie University
Framing dead men: how the Australian print media has depicted the death penalties of the Bali Bombers and the Bali Nine
The death penalties are pending for the 2002 Bali Bombers, all Indonesians, while the death penalty appeals for the Bali Nine, arrested in 2005, have yet to be exhausted. The Australian media has made a clear distinction between the two groups, where the Indonesian bombers are worthy of death while the Australian drug traffickers deserve a reprieve. The Australian Government has also expressed a distinction of worthiness and unworthiness between the death sentences for the two categories of crime. The theory of framing is a timely method of media analysis in these cases. The choice of words, presentation and location of news stories in print newspapers has a profound impact in the public sphere. The impact is both overt and implicit. This paper will analyse both qualitatively and quantitatively the use of the literary, textual and framing devices in the representation of these two events and how the Australian public now has two different approaches to the ultimate punishment, in a society where the death penalty has been abolished for almost a quarter of a century.
Can Yalcinkaya (Can.Yalcinkaya@scmp.mq.edu.au )
Media, Macquarie University
Melodrama in Turkish Cinema and Modernisation
Genre films were central to the Turkish film industry during its heyday from approximately 1950s to 1980s. The most popular genres in Turkish cinema until its decline in the 1980s were adventure, comedy, romance, and historical films, with hundreds of them made each year. Melodrama, which is also very popular in Turkey, seemed to pervade all the above mentioned genres to varying degrees. As a genre which epitomizes a yearning for the conservative and ‘innocent’ facets of a pre-modern past, and traditional moral values, melodrama perfectly addressed the feelings of a society which has issues about coming to terms with the process of modernization and westernization it is going through. Having been subject to ridicule among the audiences in the 1980s and 1990s because of their formulaic structures, melodramas have recently been taken up by some of the new auteur filmmakers in Turkey such as Cagan Irmak, Fatih Akin and Yilmaz Erdogan, and have been quite successful in the box office. This paper analyses the history of melodramatic films in Turkey and their implications for the society, as well as the reasons for their recent revival.
HONOURS
Stephanie Betz (Stephanie.Betz@ozemail.com.au)
Anthropology, Macquarie University
Playful Practice in a New Age Community: Problematising the Causal Connection between Belief and Practice
Traditional understandings of belief and practice posit a unidirectional link between the two: it is generally understood that belief results, or finds expression, in practice. The New Age problematises this understanding by accommodating a large degree of inconsistency between the two. An ethnographic study that I have conducted in Violet Cottage (a loosely organised New Age community) has suggested that belief may be explored through practice that is encoded as “play”. This paper begins by briefly summarising the key characteristics of the New Age before describing how Violet Cottage is constructed and designated as a safe “play-space” through a gendered sensescape. I then turn to how members engage in playful ritual practice that allows them to explore and negotiate belief through performance that takes place “as if” the beliefs expressed were held. Finally, I will ground the theory through a case study of ritual in Violet Cottage, suggesting that playful practice is how uncertainty and inconsistency is accommodated within the New Age.
Simon Caldwell (simonmcaldwell@yahoo.com.au)
Media, Macquarie University
Burn The DJ
This paper forms part of a broader Honours thesis which will explore the practices of a largely neglected part of the Australian music industry – DJs. In an industry dominated by a small number of multinational companies, there has been a tendency to overlook the dance music/DJ sector in favour of corporate rock. There currently exists little to no academic research into the specific practices surrounding DJing as a highly specialized part of the wider music industry. This study is situated in the broader rights-based discourse surrounding the digital shift, what James Boyle refers to as “an intellectual land grab”. The very nature of digital media has caused significant tensions between producers and consumers, simultaneously blurred the demarcation between the two groups and brought into question the relationship between authorship and ownership. DJing as both a creative and consumer culture has not been spared the ambiguities of the digital age, and has actually been targeted by licensing stakeholders. The music industry as a whole is still attempting to realign itself to the digital age. In Australia there has been a move to specifically target DJs who “format shift” their digital music from laptop to CD and vice versa. Specifically, the industry body APRA now offers a “format shifting” license which targets DJs. By describing specific practices and attitudes of DJs, particularly regarding the use of digital music files, this research aims to provide a cultural counterpoint, and critique of current licensing regulations. Academic research in this area is currently non-existent. My research also supplements the continuing Australian fair use discourse following the Attorney General’s copyright law reforms of 2006. As arguments and accusations rage in the area of digital music copyright, it seems that an increased amount of real, researched knowledge of actual practices can only help in framing policy debates in practical terms.
Toby Collis (toby_collis@optusnet.com.au)
Media, Macquarie University
Mabo as the movement of the Derridian Aporia
This paper demonstrates that Derridian deconstruction has public significance by virtue of it enabling the Levinasian ethical moment. However, to provide not only an ethical but affirmative gesture, Derrida must account for deconstruction within the institutional constraints facing the ethical subject. Derrida’s essay ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’ provides such a gesture by illustrated the aporia between law and justice, as mediated by deconstruction. I reinforce this gesture by applying it to a set of concrete legal events, namely the Mabo decision and subsequent legal developments in native title. This demonstrates the relevance of deconstructive theory to critically understand of our received politico-legal orders.
Joel Gilberthorpe (joel.gilberthorpe@students.mq.edu.au)
Media, Macquarie University
WhatisaText?
A critical reading of a text can reveal much about the many meanings contained within the text. The different lenses of feminism, post-modernism, Marxism, Russian formalism, and many more, reveal the small nuances hidden in every text, which can drastically alter the way the text is received. What however, does this tell us about the text itself? Does the text exist in an objective sense, as Blanchot contends, where every reading is a subjective interpretation of an object which exists independently of the reader? In which case the text-in-itself would exist behind the reading, like the Kantian noumena, able to be apprehended in a reading, but never fully realised as an object. Or does the text exist entirely on a subjective level, as Bayard would have it, only as a result of the impressions and readings that people have of it? This, in turn, would mean the text is fluid in its nature; subject to the readings and opinions formed of it, its nature changing with each reading. This paper will consider these questions, which revolve around the content and meaning of a text, and go further to enquire into the nature of the text as a thing in itself. Looking at Derrida’s ideas on translation, is it possible to see a path to a reconciliation of these philosophies, or are we left asking further questions concerning the fundamental conundrum: What is a Text?
Regina Hammond (gina@hammond.net)
Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
The Curious Case of the Living Dead
When the Australian Museum was developing 180 years ago, the science of phrenology, judging intelligence from the measurement of skulls, was becoming entrenched colonial practice. In 1832 George Bennett, curator of the Australian Museum, explained the role of the museum thus:
Here, in a public museum, the remains of the arts, etc., as existing among them, may be preserved as lasting memorials of the former races inhabiting the lands, when they have ceased to exist.
Australia ’s first museum was a primary conduit through which colonial expansion was represented to the general public; this was occurring while the dispossession and destruction of Aboriginal life and land continued unabated. Museums were seen as mausoleums for Indigenous culture. Indigenous peoples themselves, needless to say, have historically been silenced in responding to these representations. After all, how can one speak when one is extinct? With the relatively recent recognition of the survival of Indigenous cultures in Australia, museums have needed to change their approach from representing the prehistoric remains of extinct peoples to representing the dynamic and vibrant existence of living Indigenous cultures. In 2005 Museums Australia launched a revised policy guideline titled Continuous Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities. Although well researched and well intentioned, this document may not have been as widely accepted as Museums Australia would have expected by Indigenous peoples or museums and galleries. I explore reasons for this in this paper.
Eloise Hummell (elle_hml@hotmail.com)
Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
Words don’t Come Easily
Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations called ‘us’ (Indigenous and non-Indigenous people: ‘the nation’) to reconcile, to join together and unite for the future. This paper will discuss how the rhetoric used by Rudd presented a particular view of race relations and group interactions in Australia. The national apology was not just a political act, it also involved and has been produced by cultural, social and historical discourses, situated in a dominant ‘white’ Australian culture. My research unravels some of the interwoven discourses manifested in the political rhetoric employed in this ‘sorry’ speech. The speech had many aims, one being to apologise to the Stolen Generations. Another was to establish Kevin Rudd as the new Prime Minister who would lead the nation forward. The aim discussed in this paper is Rudd’s stated goal of reconciling and healing the nation. A nation portrayed in Rudd’s speech as divided along one line of difference: Indigenous and non-Indigenous. In the speech race relations are constructed to serve the purpose of overcoming divisiveness, in order for the nation to work together to redress historical and ongoing injustice. This assumes by omission that there are no problems with other groups and peoples in Australia. The speech implies that the only groups with problematic relations that require political intervention are Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and there are no issues amongst people with other ethnicities, religions, and identities. Harmonious race relations were constructed as hindered and overshadowed by this one issue of acknowledging and accepting past injustices. Now that ‘we’ have ‘righted past wrongs’, division and fraught relations have been resolved and the nation can be brought together to ‘turn a new page’, to ‘remove this stain’, and start a ‘new chapter’ in the nation’s future. Interestingly, many subsequent discourses seem to support this claim. My paper considers the way in which many complex issues are presented as unproblematic in the Prime Minister’s speech and the ways in which political rhetoric can work to create new fictive identities and relationships.
Gareth James (philsian@bigpond.com)
Media, Macquarie University
J-horror? - A socio-cultural perspective on Japanese Horror
The early 2000s was a revolutionary time for the horror genre, marking an abandonment of post modern ideas in favor of the culturally imperialist practice of remaking Japanese films, often removing many of their more culture specific elements and Westernizing them for a more generic audience. The main attraction toward remaking Japanese horror films was that they had already garnered enormous underground fan bases in the West and where thus guaranteed cash cows. The best example is Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998), a classical Japanese kaidan 1 which attempted to mix the popular Japanese legend of the hannya with contemporary issues of technophobia in light of Japan’s rapid modernization, in particular the corruptive effects of video technology. The other major figure in Japanese horror is Takashi Miike. His first horror film, Audition (2000), became internationally infamous not only for Miike’s ability to psychologically attack his audience through genre manipulation and cinematic violence.
So what makes these films so universally appealing? The most logical theory is that, like Japan’s other great media export: the anime, the Japanese film industry has always used the horror genre to explore ideas of cultural philosophy, sociology and folklore. These films act as a window into a culture which is still largely unknown to much of the Western world, retaining such culturally specific themes as questions of identity/perception and the problems caused by the erosion of traditional values in light of Japan’s modernization. In addition, there is also an evident sense of mythology to Japanese horror. An ancient folk lineage of allegorical symbolism respected by writers and film makers which can be traced right back to the mid nineteenth century when these tales were first recorded in Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan (1907). The success of Japanese horror also stems from the fact that it can traverse both geographical and media boundaries. Not only do these tales transfer effortlessly from novels to films; Nakata’s Ring, Miike’s One Missed Call and Shimizu’s Ju-on have all successfully spawned manga series, sequels, merchandising promos and have all gone on to inspire the new wave of horror film maker, not only in Hollywood (Saw, Hostel, Lady in the Water) but also in neighboring South Korea.
Hayley, Melhuish (hmelhuish@yahoo.com.au)
Media, Macquarie University
Media Technologies and Surveillance
The recent explosion of new media technologies has led to increased surveillance in all areas of our public and private lives. The marrying of surveillance cameras with computers and databases which permanently capture and record the details of our lives from our medical records to our consumer preferences has meant that our personal information has become not only more easily accessible, but also more accountable to society. Perhaps the most significant example of this marriage between surveillance and computers can be seen in the pages of the World Wide Web – the largest database in the world today. There is little doubt that the removal of physical space provided by the internet, combined with its ability to transport us from the privacy of our own homes into an international network has succeeded in re-configuring pre-existing notions of public space and private space. Moreover, other media technologies such as closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV), webcams, mobile phone cameras, blogs and internet network sites have also contributed to a further blurring of the distinctions between these two spheres. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the impact of these new media technologies and how our understanding of privacy has changed as a result. Using Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as its starting point, this paper will argue that traditional approaches to surveillance studies which focus on a top-down approach to power relations are becoming outdated in a technologically advanced society where media and communication technologies are shifting these power relations and redistributing them more evenly. By examining two examples of ‘sous-veillance’ and counter-veillance techniques, this paper will show how practices of resistance are becoming far more viable due to the increasing proliferation of media technologies being made available to the general public. The implications of this shift in power relations will also be discussed, along with the idea that changes to conceptions of privacy are paralleling media technology innovations.
Stephen Murphy (freshjive.turkey@gmail.com)
Media. Macquarie University
Technologies and Higher Stages of Consciousness: Co-evolution of Technology and the Mind
Our attitudes towards and relationship with technology is increasingly becoming a ground for debate as to the positive or negative effects upon society. The development of newer forms of media communication technologies are continually redefining the ways in which we interact and participate in symbolic systems.This paper will form part of a broader Honours Thesis which examines the fields of philosophy, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive theory, semiotics and media theory to explore our human relationship with technology and provide an integrative approach for re-examining our attitudes towards technology. An investigation into various cultures’ relationships with technological tools as a means of seeking knowledge will reveal how various technological artefacts can be used to amplify cognition and leads us to internalise mental skills, expanding our consciousness. From the abacus to the written word we shall see a relationship emerge between human cognition and self-conception and the development of technology. We then examine High Stages of Consciousness (HSC) as achieved in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program illustrating that exposure to a post-language developmental technology may be fundamental in facilitating beyond language based conceptual levels of thought to post-conceptual higher stages of consciousness. An argument will emerge that through the interiorisation of the various skill sets required to use technology we alter our cognition and self-conception, suggesting the possibility of technology and intelligence being constitutive of human nature. A notion such as this blurs traditional lines between the mental and material, cognitive and non cognitive and biology and culture and provides an understanding for the re-examining our attitudes and interactions with technology.
Jon Seltin (John.Seltin@scmp.mq.edu.au)
Media, Macquarie University
A Critical-Political Economy of the Post-human
Over the past two decades the cyborg and the post-human have become increasingly common figures in both popular culture and the academy. For some, the post-human signifies the ultimate evolutionary telos of humanity; technological intervention leading to the transcendence of disease, senescence, and ultimately even embodiment. Others see this technological colonisation of the body as a corrupting force that threatens to erode a universal and intrinsic Human Nature. Both these approaches have in turn been troubled by critical theorists who deploy the post-human as a deconstructive metaphor for thinking through the limits of the Human. Through the figure of the post-human we are able to ask ‘what is human?’, ‘what informs and who draws the line separating animals, machines and the inhuman from the human?’ and ‘what are the ethical, political and economic implications of these limits?’ Although this deconstructive/critical post-humansim redresses the myopia and simplicity of previous post-humanist theory, it remains primarily concerned with the discursive figure of the post-human and rarely engages with situated bodies and the networks of power and economics in which they are instantiated. Recognising the inseparability of discursive and material bodies means that any critical theory interrogating the figure of the (post)human should be performed alongside an interrogation of the economic materiality in which it is instantiated. This paper seeks to redress this gap in the literature by calling for a critical political-economy of the post-human. It will focus on the ways in which the emancipatory and transcendental understandings of ‘post-human’ are contingent on the strict biopolitical control of bodies. The post-human, I will argue, functions as a derivative of labour that is rendered in-human in that it is denied access to the symbolic, judicial and economic spaces of ‘the Human’. This paper will focus specifically on the bodies of electronics assembly workers in Export Processing Zones, whose labour forms the basis for contemporary global information networks, but who are in turn alienated from the subject-positions and signifying spaces made possible by the products they manufacture.
Michael Virata ( mikevirata@gmail.com )
Media, Macquarie University
The Hidden Gamer – A Study on Female Video Gamers
In recent times, video games have risen in status popular culture and consciousness. It now rivals the budgets, success and sales of more established mediums like film and music. This popularity has translated into a more diverse player base, with recent studies by Bond University showing a 60:40 male to female ratio in Australia alone. Despite this, the female video gamer is largely unheard of in popular culture and media. Outside of isolated attempts to associate video games with females are largely tokenistic, if not explicitly sexist, and most of whom have never played a video game. But popular media aren't the only ones to blame, with other studies suggesting male gamers and their interaction with their female counterpart, also contributing to the phenomenon of female gamers hiding their gender or gender-swapping as male characters in a bid to hide their identities. This paper seeks to engage with this 'hidden' demographic of gamers as recognition of their growing contribution and participation to the video gaming industry. It also aims at shedding some light on their gaming habits, thoughts and experiences with popular media, the industry and their male counterpart in-game.
Paul Wighton (p_wighto@hotmail.com)
Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University
Mervyn Bishop: A Case Study
In the context of questions regarding the ‘authenticity’ of urban Indigenous art and culture, the social, cultural and political functions of urban Indigenous art take on increased significance. In the following paper I elucidate some of these functions of urban art through a case study of the work of Indigenous photographer Mervyn Bishop. Firstly I situate Bishop’s work in the context of a long history of non-Indigenous depictions of Aboriginal people and ‘Aboriginality’ through photography. Secondly I provide critical analysis and interpretation of a selection of Bishop’s photographs drawing on aspects of postcolonial theory including agency, ‘speaking back’ and double-voiced discourse. Lastly I briefly evaluate the work of Mervyn Bishop and highlight his importance in paving the way for other Indigenous photographers in the latter half of the twentieth century.
KatherineWright (katherine.wright@students.mq.edu.au)
Media, Macquarie University
Geography as Epistemology: The Australian Road Movie as Belonging
This paper investigates issues of colonisation, post-colonial identity, Aboriginality, and senses of alienation and belonging in cinematic representations of Australian geography. In a continent plagued by a long history of dispossession and oppression of its native people, Aboriginality informs much of our understanding of the land. Through an exploration of a diverse range of Australian films including Rolf de Heer's 2002 'The Tracker' and 2006 'Ten Canoes'; Ivan Sen's 1999 'Dust' and 2002 'Beneath Clouds'; Bill Bennett's 1986 'Backlash'; and Nicolas Roeg's 1971 'Walkabout'; this paper highlights the way Aboriginality is used as a metonym for natural Australian landscapes. In the Australian narrative Indigenous culture is mythologised to the point of becoming analogous to the continent itself. This paper investigates the effect this analogy has on contemporary national identity, landscape mythologies and senses of belonging. Culturally constructed understandings of Australian history and places embed the geography of the continent with national myth. This combination of nature and culture engenders the Australian landscape with meanings and values that appear authentic and intrinsic to the space in what Stuart Cunningham termed 'geography as epistemology'. If the landscape is represented as having intrinsic meaning that is analogous to Aboriginality, non-Aboriginal Australians ability to connect and belong in the landscape is severely problematised. As the road film draws us into Australian backcountry we come face-to-face with landscape mythologies that evoke a dark history and raise topical issues of land rights, reconciliation and racial equity. These issues and the way we represent them is central to the formation of contemporary national identity and the socio-political future of our continent.
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