Journal articles: 'Reading. Discursive genres. Discursive ethos' – Grafiati (2024)

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The global spreading of neoliberalism requires discursive technologies capable of producing forms of subjectivity congruent with the extension of market rationality to all dimensions of social life. Since the millennium, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-driven implementation of governance reform in Indonesia has entailed the dissemination of electoral mission statements – a discursive genre aimed at consolidating a new morality of accountability, transparency and proactive entrepreneurialism. Drawing on audiovisual data recorded in a peripheral region of Indonesia, this article examines the circulation of this transnational genre and reveals how its uptake has not been fully successful. The analysis shows how, through a series of verbal and non-verbal cues, candidates would signal their disalignment from the genre’s metapragmatic structure. By performing their statements through the affectless prosody of written texts read aloud, candidates evaded the moral and discursive expectations of transparent accountability and neoliberal entrepreneurialism and reasserted the ethos of impersonal acquiescence underlying the local modes of political self-presentation.

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The publication of Edward Said's seminal investigation of Orientalism as a discursive construction of the Other has triggered an interrogative move towards a re-reading of Western representations of Eastern peoples and geographies. Almost forlorn now is the practice of reading literary productions within an exclusively aesthetic framework of poetic tradition. Anything one writes is already a production – a representation marked by what Derrida calls “violence of the letter.” It is a violence “of difference, of classification, and of the system of appellations” (1976, p. 110).

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Abstract The audio slideshow - or soundslide report - represents a new format for journalistic reporting on online news sites. It is not very widely used, but it has certain discursive and aesthetic potentials indicating that it could contribute substantially to the ecology of journalistic genres. The article offers an illustration and discussion of these potentials, asking how the format communicates and how it affects journalism in general. Starting out with a close reading of a sample text and a discussion of the format’s position in a network of genres, the article concludes that the soundslide report belongs to a new wave of ”aesthetic journalism”, where journalism and art intersect

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Resumo: O presente artigo tem como objetivo propor uma releitura das Memórias (1865) de Berlioz, desenvolvendo a hipótese de um ethos autoral rasurado. Será revisitado o conceito de ethos e sua funcionalidade na interpretação do discurso literário (MAINGUENEAU, 2004), desnaturalizado e visto como um constructo cultural. A interrogação voltada para a autobiografia de Berlioz demandou, para além da Análise do Discurso, o recurso a métodos de leitura provenientes de abordagens oferecidas pela história da edição e as teorias do campo literário (BOURDIEU, 1992). Nas Memórias de Berlioz combinam-se estratégias discursivas de projeção de um ethos de compositor, assim como da afirmação e rasura de um ethos de escritor, compondo uma persona de artista romântico.Palavras-chave: Berlioz; memórias; romantismo; ethos.Abstract: This article aims to propose a re-reading of Berlioz’s The Memoirs (1865), developing the hypothesis of an obliterated author ethos. It will revisit the concept of ethos and its functionality in the interpretation of literary discourse (MAINGUENEAU, 2004), denatured and seen as a cultural construct. In addition to analyzing the discourse, the question of Berlioz’s autobiography demanded the use of reading methods from approaches offered by the history of publishing and the theories of the literary field (BOURDIEU, 1992). Berlioz’s Memoirs combine discursive strategies of projection of a composer ethos, as well as the affirmation and erasure of an ethos of writer, composing a persona of romantic artist.Keywords: Berlioz; memoirs; romanticism; ethos.

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RESUMOAs transformações estruturais pelas quais a linguagem e a comunicação têm passado revelam o dinamismo e a plasticidade característicos de ambas. Ao mesmo tempo em que essas reestruturações são em parte decorrentes dos avanços tecnológicos, cada vez mais voláteis e promissores, elas os subsidiam, estabelecendo-se uma relação recíproca e produtora de novos gêneros discursivos. Estes, por sua vez, instauram circunstâncias enunciativas híbridas tanto em termos composicionais como semânticos, veiculando textos multimodais e reivindicando, em consequência, práticas multiletradas. Diante desse panorama, este estudo justifica sua importância pela atenção que dá às novas configurações de leitura que emergem em um contexto hipermidiático crescente. A partir disso, propõe-se como objetivo refletir sobre práticas de leitura e compreensão de sentidos em textos de gêneros multimodais realizadas pelo sujeito-leitor que exigem, além do letramento, um olhar multiletrado para o objeto, para o mundo. Neste estudo, utilizam-se as contribuições de Bakhtin (2011), Dionisio (2011), Lemke (2010) e Rojo e Barbosa (2015). Por meio de pesquisa qualitativa e bibliográfica, é feita análise de corpus representado por um trailer de uma série de entretenimento, revelando a importância da reflexão acerca das multissemioses e da percepção, nessas, das hibridizações entre os diferentes gêneros discursivos que, dialogicamente, são responsáveis pela construção do sentido de um texto. Finalmente, espera-se, com este trabalho, contribuir com as questões que se voltem às metodologias de ensino empregadas especialmente na educação básica, em que o ensino-aprendizagem, para não se tornar arbitrário, precisa reconhecer que a formação discursiva do aluno, hoje, é pautada no prefixo multi: redes multimídia, textos multimodais, percepções multiculturais, olhares multifocais.Palavras-chave: Ensino. Gêneros Discursivos. Gêneros Multimodais. Multiletramento. ABSTRACTThe structural transformations through which language and communication have passed reveal the dynamism and plasticity characteristic of both. At the same time that these restructurings are partly due to technological advances, which are increasingly volatile and promising, they subsidize them by establishing a reciprocal relationship and producing new discursive genres. These, in turn, establish hybrid enunciative circ*mstances in both compositional and semantic terms, conveying multimodal texts and claiming, as a consequence, practices of multiliteracy. In face of that, this study justifies its importance by its focus on the new reading forms, which emerge in a growing hypermedia context. The objective of this study is to reflect on reading practices and comprehension of meanings in texts of multimodal genres, what requires from the reader, besides literacy, multiliteracy to read the world. This research is based on contributions of Bakhtin (2011), Dionisio (2011), Lemke (2010) and Rojo and Barbosa (2015). Through a qualitative and bibliographical research, an analysis of a TV series trailer shows the importance of the reflection about the multisemiosis and the perception, in these, of hybridizations between different discursive genres that, dialogically, are responsible for construction of the meaning of a text. Finally, this research intends to contribute with the issues about teaching methodologies that are used especially in elementary and high school, in which the relation teaching-learning, in order not to become arbitrary, must recognize that the discursive formation of a student is based on the prefix multi nowadays: multimedia networks, multimodal texts, multicultural perceptions, multifocal perspectives.Keywords: Teaching. Discursive Genres. Multimodal Genres. Multiliteracy.

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How do the most popular video games in recent years contribute to the construction of the social imaginary of the Great Recession? The discursive struggles over the definition of crucial aspects of the recession such as austerity, the heroic ethos to face precariousness and being anti-establishment are being played not only in the political arena and ‘serious’ news genres but also in the narrations of popular culture and video games. Thus, critical analysis of the social resonances of video games on the Great Recession is a relevant exercise not only academically but also socially. To address this question, this article proposes an analysis of bestselling video games from 2009 to 2015, based on cultural studies and game studies. The analysis is organized in three case studies: (a) post-apocalyptic video games and their potential resonances regarding austerity and precariousness; (b) video games, neo-liberalism and counter neo-liberal views; and (c) video games and the representation of anti-establishment characters and rebel communities.

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RESUMO: A retórica é norteada por três dimensões: o logos, o pathos e o ethos. O logos trata do discurso em si; o pathos das paixões que o orador, por meio do logos, desperta em seu auditório; e o ethos é a imagem que o orador cria de si, também por meio do logos, frente a um auditório. Os gêneros retóricos são três: deliberativo (que impulsiona o auditório ou o juiz a pensarem sobre eventos futuros, caracterizando-os como convenientes ou prejudiciais), judiciário (o auditório pensará sobre eventos já ocorridos, para classificá-los como justos ou injustos) e epidítico (o auditório julgará algum fato ocorrido, ou mesmo o caráter de uma pessoa, como belo ou não). Na esteira de Figueiredo (2014) e alicerçados em Eggs (2005), propõe-se que o ethos não seja uma marca deixada pelo orador somente nos gêneros retóricos, mas sim em qualquer gênero textual, uma vez que, sendo fruto da produção humana, as mais singelas escolhas, na construção textual, são capazes de reproduzir algo que esteja intimamente ligado ao orador, demarcando assim o seu ethos. Para investigar tal proposição, selecionamos uma mostra de um vídeo do comediante Danilo Gentili, que será analisada à luz da Retórica e da Linguística Textual. Assim, nosso objetivo é encontrar, no gênero stand-up comedy, marcas deixadas pelo orador no discurso que caracterizam seu ethos. Os resultados da análise evidenciam que ethos, gênero discursivo e propósito comunicacional se amalgamam em um complexo indissociável em que o sucesso de um interdepende da forma como o outro se construiu.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: ethos; gêneros textuais; comédia de stand-up; retórica; intertextualidade. ABSTRACT: The rhetoric is guided by three dimensions: logos, pathos and ethos. Logos is the speech itself, pathos are the passions that the speaker, through logos, awakens in his audience, and ethos is the image that the speaker creates of himself, also through logos, in front of an audience. The rhetorical genres are three: deliberative (which drives the audience or the judge to think about future events, characterizing them as convenient or harmful), judiciary (the audience thinks about past events in order to classify them as fair or unfair) and epidictic (the audience will judge any fact occurred, or even the character of a person as beautiful or not). According to Figueiredo (2014) and based on Eggs (2005), we advocate that ethos is not a mark left by the speaker only in rhetorical genres, but in any textual genre, once the result of human production, the simplest choices in textual construction, are able to reproduce something that is closely linked to speaker, thus, demarcating hir/her ethos. To verify this assumption, we selected a display of a video of the comedian Danilo Gentili, which will be examined in the light of Rhetoric and Textual Linguistics. So, our objective is to find, in the stand-up comedy genre, marks left by the speaker in the speech that characterizes his/her ethos. The analysis results show that ethos, discursive genre and communicational purpose amalgamate in an indissoluble complex in which the success of one of them interdepends on how the other was built.KEYWORDS: ethos; textual genres; stand-up comedy; rhetoric; intertextuality.

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Critical reception of Marcel Duchamp since the 1970s has tended to elevate him into the very figure of the Artist he sought to attack. One aspect of this domestication has involved neglecting Duchamp’s fin de siècle ‘eroticism’ with its sexual innuendos and double-entendres. Yet this very readymade vulgarity allows us to recover a Duchamp still capable of disrupting the genres of Art and the gendered Artist, by revealing a theory embedded in his work which continually reverses and displaces phallocentrism in a game consisting of the confusion of genders and genres. We argue that Duchamp’s disruption of the discursive typologies of the genre of art can be profitably read through this apparently trivial sexualized wordplay, particularly in the transgender passage into Rrose Sélavy. Reading this aspect of Duchamp after, i.e. within and against, Lacan demonstrates how Duchamp’s singular regime of signs governed by equivocity and indetermination subverts the ‘phallic function’ of the signifier.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the discursive resources used to sustain and legitimize the reputation of the mining company Samarco Mineração regarding sustainability, before the environmental accident occurred in 2015. Design/methodology/approach The sustainability reports from 2005 to 2014 were accessed for the analysis of the presentation texts, and the discourse analysis method was applied to access the discursive resources employed. Findings From the classical concepts of rhetoric, ethos, pathos and logos, it was found that they reinforced the reputation and legitimacy of the company. The ethos is responsible for the company’s image, while pathos triggers the emotional reception of that image, provoking positive expectations. The logos relate the built image and its emotional reception to a rational discourse that values the company’s expertise. The analysis, in the light of the new rhetoric, exposes the strategies to lead the public to accept the image of solidity and confidence given by a reputation respected nationally and internationally. Research limitations/implications As a limitation, the quantitative data of the report were not analyzed, since the objective was to analyze the discourse construction, understanding that the research was adequate for the established purposes. For the future, it is suggested to analyze the discourse of the company after the environmental accident in order to verify the strategies used in the same theme; analyze the discourses in other reports published in the Global Reporting Initiative model; investigate how the logic of sustainability report construction based on a standard model can interfere in the formation of reputation and legitimacy of the companies; and analyze the impact of CSR on the strategy of the companies. Practical implications The knowledge about the functioning of the language and discourse as an indicative of subjectivity provides a more critical reading and reveals elements implicit in the discourse of the organization. It was verified that the sustainability reports in encapsulated formats allow some stability in the discourse, since companies tend to follow the same line of previous years, even with changes in the organizational structure. Originality/value Discourses built by the companies do not always reflect the true operational and engineering situation practiced by them, and that successful and reputed companies can surprise their stakeholders with events of great magnitude that cause significant losses, be they monetary or human lives.

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Abstract A reading-to-write task is a complex cognitive activity. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the difficulties that advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language for professional communication purposes experience when they have to perform a reading-to-write task. This insight will help to improve writing instruction and training for this particular type of students. In this study, 19 students of a one-year master’s programme in multilingual professional communication (level B2–C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Council of Europe, 2001) were asked to carry out a reading-to-write task in Dutch, their mother tongue, and in Spanish at the beginning of the academic year. This task was repeated at the end of the academic year. On both occasions, the task was writing an informative synthesis of approximately 200–250 words using three digital source texts in Dutch and in Spanish pertaining to different text genres (i.e., a report from the European Union, a website, a newspaper article). The three source texts varied in lexical and syntactical complexity, content, style and discursive characteristics. All written products were evaluated by two independent raters. We found no general improvement in the reading-to-write task between the two moments, neither in the L1 nor in the L2. We did not find an improvement at sentence, text, or discourse level either. We will explore several explanations for this lack of improvement, based on theoretical models of foreign language acquisition and recent empirical writing research.

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Resumo: O presente texto pretende dar forma a uma análise acerca das implicações, por assim dizer, teórico-literárias da noção de nobreza construída na Península Ibérica Alto Moderna. A partir da leitura de produções discursivas de meados do século XVII, como o tratado de nobreza, a crônica de guerra e a documentação administrativa, buscaremos traçar correspondências que refletem um cultivo de topoi classicistas e de lógicas discursivas maturadas na cultura política portuguesa do Seiscentos. Nossas reflexões a respeito das referidas fontes terão em mira as compreensões sobre mérito e linhagem – no horizonte de nosso corpus, categorias não necessariamente excludentes entre si. De maneira que este nosso escrito constitui um exercício pouco exaustivo de sobreposição de modalidades discursivas que traduziram o ethos nobiliárquico da Época Moderna ibérica em geral e da lusitana em particular.Abstract: This text intends to draw an analysis of the theoretical and literary implications, so to speak, of the working concept of “nobility” in modern-age Iberian Peninsula. Through the reading of discourse pieces from the early seventeenth century, such as treatises on nobility, war chronicles, and administrative documents, we attempt to trace correspondence that showcases the cultivation of classicist topoi and of discourse fomented in the Portuguese culture of the sixteenth century. Our reflections regarding the sources in question take aim at the understanding of merit and lineage - not mutually exclusive categories in sight of the corpus we are working with. As such, this work of ours is a non-exhaustive exercise of overlapping discursive modalities which relay the noble ethos of the Iberian modern age, particularly that of Portugal.

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Abstract One of the consequences of emphasizing plurality – so characteristic for current masculinity studies – is that the question of commonalities and similarities of masculinities has been neglected, and therefore the relationship between masculinity as a concept and its plural forms has to be rethought. One way of doing this involves conceiving of masculinity as having a largely discursive or narrative structure and focusing on the relationality and interdependency of masculinities by paying special attention to stories and genres as their paramount components. If one takes narrative to be an ontological condition of social life which exemplarily manifests itself in literature and the arts, it is precisely here that a plethora of narratives of masculinity becomes ‘visible’ in a reading process that can be conceptualized as an act of imagining and a process of transfer during which readers perpetually ‘stage’ themselves, while the performative function of narrative allows for a variety of new masculine gender identities that become available through their very conception in literature/art. Combining comparative masculinity studies with the concept of narrative paves the way for a new, more encompassing, relational and intersectional understanding, if not definition of masculinity.

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ABSTRACTThe pamphletKenya: Twendapi?(Kenya: Where are we heading?) is a text often referred to but rarely read or analysed. Abdilatif Abdalla wrote it as a twenty-two-year-old political activist of the KPU opposition as a critique of the dictatorial tendencies of Jomo Kenyatta and his KANU government in 1968, and consequently suffered three years of isolation in prison. Many (at least on the East African political and literary scene) know aboutKenya: Twendapi?but few seem to have read it – indeed, it seems almost unavailable to read. This contribution toAfrica's Local Intellectuals series provides a summary reconstruction of its main points and arguments, and a contextual discussion of the text. This is combined with the first published English translation (overseen by Abdalla himself) and a reprint of the original Swahili text, an important but almost inaccessible document. The article proceeds with a perspective first on the political context in Kenya at the time – an early turning point in postcolonial politics – and second on the work and life of its author, Abdilatif Abdalla who had been trained as a Swahili poet by elder family members who were poets. As most students of Swahili literature know, Abdalla's collection of poetrySauti ya Dhiki(1973) originated in the prison cell but they know little about the pamphletKenya: Twendapi?, nor the circ*mstances of its authorship. Part of my wider point for discussion is that Abdalla, as an engaged poet and political activist, can be usefully understood as a local intellectual who transcended the local from early on – topically and through global references and comparisons, but also through his experience in prison and exile. Concerns about Kenyan politics and Swahili literature have remained central to his life. This reflects Abdalla's continued and overarching connectedness to the Swahili-speaking region. Abdalla wrote in Swahili and was deeply familar with local Swahili genres and discursive conventions, language and verbal specifications (of critique, of emotions, of reflections) that use the whole range and depth of Kimvita, the Mombasan dialect of Kiswahili, as a reservoir of expression.

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The concept of genre has become fundamental, particularly for the purposes of teaching reading and written production. In Brazil, this line of research has presented a common focus: the perspective of intervention in education issues, either immediately or prospectively (MACHADO, 2005). This study focuses on the characterization of genres as teaching tools and aims to analyze the sequential organization of abstracts of scientific articles, as proposed in Machado (1996). The theoreticalphilosophical perspectives which guided the study are mainly Bakhtin’s Enunciation Theory (1992; 1997) and the Socio-Discursive Interactionism (BRONCKART, 2003). Based on Adam’s concept of sequence, Machado poses a hypothesis according to which the sequential organization of texts belonging to the critical review genre (which includes articles’ abstracts) would be organized by descriptive sequences, as subtypes of Adam’s Descriptive Sequence. Thus, a number of abstracts were here selected and analyzed in an attempt to identify, in their sequential organization, such subtypes of sequences suggested. The analysis showed that the characterization of these texts’ internal structure fundamentally depends on the acknowledgment of the genre to which they belong. This perception, which recognizes these language actions (texts) as abstracts of scientific articles – texts approximately 300 words-long, published in journals, immediately previous to their articles – generates expectations regarding their internal structure and, only then, it is possible to realize them as texts organized into the subtype: Text-Descriptive Sequence.

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When analyzing literary fiction, most cultural sociologists still accept the well-established boundaries between the literary and the sociological, thus leaving literature stripped of its aesthetic qualities. Instead, I propose a new approach that focuses on the process of meaning-making as it occurs within the interaction between the reader and the novel in a given socio-historical setting. This allows analysts to capture those aspects of understanding social experience which are usually ‘lost in translation’ between fictional and sociological genres. My major claims are that, first, when referring to social experience, both sociological and literary texts employ aesthetic devices to mediate understanding for the reader. Second, within the literary genre, the understanding of social experience relies much more on the emotional engagement of the reader through a reading process facilitated by these aesthetic devices. Third, to benefit methodologically and epistemologically from the lyrical understanding of social experience mediated by literature, cultural sociologists must be particularly sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings mediated by the aesthetic. The methodological advantage gained is the analysis of deeper cultural meanings grounded in, yet also going beyond, an emotionally and existentially experienced social reality, which is intersubjectively shared and filtered by various groups of readers and cultural intermediaries. The epistemological advantage gained by overcoming the assumed inferiority of literature is that cultural sociological research unlocks a whole new area for understanding the meanings of social life, especially its non-discursive dimensions. The research model I propose for a new sociology of literature adopts the landscape of meaning concept developed by Isaac Reed in combination with the aesthetic structuralism of Czech linguist Jan Mukařovský. This model will be demonstrated through an interpretive analysis of the Czech novel Sestra (published in English as City Sister Silver) by Jáchym Topol.

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<p>Neste artigo, tratar-se-á de discutir questões relacionadas à hibridização genérica como meio de aproximação à leitura em espanhol como língua estrangeira – E/LE. Darão suporte a esta proposta, os estudos de Vigotsky (2001), Marcuschi (2008), Genette (2010), Adam e Heideman (2011), Sánchez Miguel, García Pérez e Rosales Pardo (2012) e Lazarini (2013). Escolheram-se os gêneros textual-discursivos do universo de referência dos alunos que captassem outros gêneros, previamente apresentados ou não, mas de fácil reconhecimento, já que são facilmente encontrados e reconhecíveis em Língua Materna. A ideia foi a de expor os alunos a gêneros de fácil reconhecimento em um primeiro momento, os presentes no próprio manual, para depois expô-los a gêneros mais complexos ou elaborados. A atividade proposta refere-se à hibridização do tipo propaganda-carta-quadrinhos, a partir de um único texto. É importante esclarecer que, no caso da carta, há marcadores genéricos pertencentes a este gênero e, no caso dos quadrinhos, este aparece em sua totalidade, servindo de andaime para a propaganda, alvo principal, devido à manutenção de seu propósito comunicativo. No que concerne ao emprego das estratégias de leitura, verificou-se que o texto permitiu aos alunos ativarem uma ampla gama de estratégias, aquelas que atuaram para uma compreensão dos componentes locais, aquelas que atuaram para a compreensão de componentes globais, o uso de predição de inferências e uma alta capacidade de apreciação e réplica em relação ao texto. Percebeu-se que a abordagem proposta pode ser mais dinâmica e acarretar o desenvolvimento de níveis profundos e crítico-reflexivos. </p><p>In this article, issues related to genre hybridization as a means of approach to reading in Spanish as a Foreign Language (S/FL) will be discussed. The studies accomplished by Vigotsky (2001), Marcuschi (2008), Genette (2010), Adam and Heideman (2011), Sánchez Miguel, García Pérez and Rosales Pardo (2012) and Lazarini (2013) will support this proposal. The textual-discursive genres chosen were part of the students’ background knowledge, as well as other genres which were previously presented or not, but easily recognized, since they are easily found in their mother tongue. The idea was exposing students to genres of easy recognition in a first moment, the ones in the manual itself, and later exposing them to more complex or elaborated genres. The proposed activity refers to hybridization of the advertisem*nt-letter-comics type using a single text. It is important to clarify that, when it comes to the letter, there are their genre markers, and when it comes to comics, this one appears in its totality, serving as a support to the advertisem*nt, which is its main target due to the maintenance of its communicative purpose. Regarding the use of reading strategies, it was possible to verify that the text enabled students to activate a wide range of strategies, those which acted towards a comprehension of the local components, the ones that acted to the comprehension of global components, the use of prediction of inferences and a high capacity of appreciation and reply with relation to the text. It was possible to observe that the proposed approach can be more dynamic and entail the development of deep, critical and reflexive levels.</p>

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The main goal of this paper is to briefly discuss possible approaches between some concepts proposed by the Bakhtinian circle and some guidelines for language and reading teaching in official educational documents of Elementary School final grades. The choice of this school level is due to the fact that it is a moment of transition, between the listening of texts (common habit in the first school years), and the autonomous reading, which should be established already at this stage and make the reader proficient, understood as the one who reads, and establishes meaning for the various discursive genres that circulate in our society, especially the genres of the literary sphere, always more distant from the reality of most people. In the guidelines for the teaching of these practices in school, conceived as a concrete place of social and verbal interaction, it is necessary to re?ect on what place occupies the interlocution, before the ideal of provoking relations between readers and discursive genres in school environment and dialogism, in the process in which the text becomes discourse, the reader “leaves” the passive condition, and becomes also the author of speeches. The change from the state of listening to texts to the reading and production of texts is permeated by constraints that make this process of appropriation troublesome, re?ect the impasses between the studies about the act of reading and reading itself, and the appropriation of these by the professionals of the education.ResumoO objetivo deste trabalho é discutir brevemente sobre as aproximações possíveis entre alguns conceitos propostos pelo círculo bakhtiniano e algumas orientações para ensino de linguagem e leitura nos documentos oficiais de educação dos anos finais do ensino fundamental. A escolha desse nível escolar dá-se pelo fato de ser um momento de transição, entre a escuta de textos (hábito comum nos primeiros anos escolares) e a leitura autônoma, a qual deveria se estabelecer já nesta etapa e tornar o leitor proficiente, entendido como aquele que lê, e estabelece sentido para os diversos gêneros discursivos que circulam em nossa sociedade, especialmente os gêneros da esfera literária, sempre mais distantes da realidade da maioria das pessoas. Nas orientações para o ensino dessas práticas na escola, concebidas como lugar concreto de interação social, e verbal, convém re?etir sobre que lugar ocupa a interlocução, diante do ideal de suscitar relações entre leitores e gêneros discursivos em ambiente escolar e o dialogismo, no processo em que o texto se torna discurso, o leitor “sai” da condição passiva, e passa a ser também autor de discursos. A mudança do estado de escuta de textos para o de leitura e produção de textos é perpassada por condicionamentos que tornam este processo de apropriação conturbado, re?etem os impasses entre os estudos acerca do ato de ler e da leitura, e a apropriação destes pelos profissionais da educação.ResumenEl objetivo de este trabajo es discutir brevemente sobre las aproximaciones posibles entre algunos conceptos propuestos por el círculo bakhtiniano y algunas orientaciones para enseñanza de lenguaje y lectura en los documentos oficiales de educación de los años finales de la enseñanza fundamental. La elección de ese nivel escolar se dá por el hecho de ser un momento de transición, entre la escucha de textos (hábito común en los primeros años escolares), y la lectura autónoma, la cual debería establecerse ya en esta etapa y convertirse en el lector proficiente, entendido como aquel que lee, y establece sentido para los diversos géneros discursivos que circulan en nuestra sociedad, especialmente los géneros de la esfera literaria, siempre más distantes de la realidad de la mayoría de las personas. En las orientaciones para la enseñanza de estas prácticas en la escuela, concebidas como lugar concreto de interacción social, y verbal, conviene re?exionar sobre qué lugar ocupa la interlocución, ante el ideal de suscitar relaciones entre lectores y géneros discursivos en ambiente escolar y el dialogismo, en el proceso En el que el texto se convierte en discurso, el lector “sale” de la condición pasiva, y pasa a ser también autor de discursos. El cambio del estado de escucha de textos para el de lectura y producción de textos es atravesado por condicionamientos que hacen este proceso de apropiación conturbado, re?ejan los impasses entre los estudios acerca del acto de leer y de la lectura, y la apropiación de éstos por los profesionales de la comunicación Educación.Keywords: Language, Dialogism, Reading practices.Palavras-chave: Linguagem, Dialogismo, Práticas de leitura.Palabras claves: Lenguaje, Dialogismo, Prácticas de lectura.ReferencesAMORIN, M. O pesquisador e seu outro: Bakhtin nas ciências humanas. São Paulo: Musa Editora, 2004.BAKHTIN, M. M. Os gêneros do discurso. Organização, tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra. Notas a edição russa de Serguei Botcharov. 1.ed. – São Paulo: Editora 34, 2016, 176p. BAKHTIN, M. M. Para uma filosofia do ato responsável. Tradução aos cuidados de Valdemir Miotello & Carlos Alberto Faraco. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores, 2010. 160p.BAKHTIN, M. M. Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski. Tradução de Paulo Bezerra. 4.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2008.BAKHTIN, M. M./VOLOCHINOV, V. N. Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico da linguagem; tradução de Michel Lahud e Yara Frateschi Vieira, com a colaboração de Lúcia Teixeira Wisnik e Carlos Henrique D. Chagas Cruz. – 12.ed. – São Paulo: Hutitec, 2006, 203p.BAKHTIN, M. M./ VOLOCHINOV, V. N. Freudismo. Tradução Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2004.BITENCOURT, T. V. A leitura no contexto escolar. Revista Educação por Escrito – PUCRS, v.4, n.2, dez. 2013. p.140 – 161.BRASIL. Secretaria de Educação Fundamental. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do ensino fundamental: língua portuguesa. Secretaria de Educação Fundamental. Brasília: MEC/SEF, 1998.106 p.CHARTIER, A. M. Práticas de leitura e escrita – história e atualidade. Belo Horizonte: Ceale / Autêntica, 2007.FARACO, C. A. Linguagem & Diálogo – as ideias linguísticas do círculo de Bakhtin. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2009.INDURSKY, F. A ideologia em Bakhtin e em Pêcheux: um estudo em contraponto. In: ZANDWAIS, Ana (Org.). Mikhail Bakhtin: contribuições para a filosofia da linguagem e estudos discursivos. Porto Alegre: Sagra Luzzato, 2005.SÃO PAULO (Estado) Secretaria da Educação. Currículo do Estado de São Paulo: Linguagens, códigos e suas tecnologias/Secretaria da Educação; coordenação geral. Maria Inês Fini; coordenação de área, Alice Vieira. – 2 ed. – São Paulo: SE, 2012. 260p.SAVELI, E. L. Leitura na escola: crenças e práticas de professores. In: Leitura: Teoria e Prática. Campinas/SP. V. 21, n. 40, p. 52-59, 2003.SILVA, E. T. (org.). Leitura na escola. São Paulo: Global: ALB – Associação de Leitura do Brasil, 2008. p. 99-106.SOARES, M. A escolarização da literatura infantil e juvenil. In: MARTINS, A. A.; BRANDÃO, H. M. B.; MACHADO, M. Z. V. (Org.). A escolarização da leitura literária. O jogo do livro infantil e juvenil. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 1999.SOLÉ, I. Estratégias de leitura. Tradução de Cláudia Schilling. 6.ed. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 1998. 194p.

Abstract:

This article discusses three recent books that deal with the Croatian literary hi/story. In the first part of the work we discuss the issues of the contemporary post-structural and deconstructionist view of writing history. The argument is based on Alun Munslow’s thesis that it is not possible to write hi/story outside the narrative genre. The starting point of discussion is that hi/story (of literature) is only one of possible modal practices of narration/narrative. This means that history can only be read as one of many narratives while simultaneously it reflects the narrative that is produced by its nature/mode. That in many ways changes the way in which today, in poststructuralist and postmodern perspective, one can (and will) interpret the tradition of literary history as a “practical activity” (interpretation of meaning and/or philological discipline) but also as a story (construction). The tradition of Croatian literary history is very much dependent on the narrative(s) of the nation, the idea of its continuity in time (“diachronic development”) and on viewing literature as the narration of the nation, or as a major way of preserving national memory. In most books on the 19th and the 20th century national literary history this was the prevailing viewpoint of scholars who were constructing the Croatian cannon and national narrative as “agreed upon” hi/story “of the nation” (and its literary memory/canon). The three books discussed in this article, each in its particular way (methodologically and by its idea of how to interpret texts), change, or at least contribute to the change of this traditionalist storytelling that has become hi/story (of national literature). This article simultaneously challenges the tradition of (literary) history writing and interprets various aspects of reading hi/story anew in the works by three contemporary authors. It puts in perspective three different types of “politics of small differences” that form the basis of the original contributions. Brešić’s study into the Croatian 19th century literature shifted from writing the hi/story of writers and national narratives towards the modes of presentation and study of genres. Bagić’s study of contemporary literature for the first time treats traditional literary genres and new media, as well as popular culture, equally, thus allowing new insight into the possibilities of studying both fiction and its discursive frames. The third book discussed here introduces the discussion of the role that contemporary questioning of humanities as a discipline has in both post-structural environment and interpretative community of scholars. In conclusion, the article discusses the possibilities of reading (literary) history anew in the hegemonic environment of school system, academia and cultural paradigm of the “nation”.

Abstract:

Quais reflexões e aprendizados podemos levantar em uma experiência de estágio de Língua Inglesa no Ensino Fundamental? Tendo como ponto de partida este questionamento, neste artigo objetivamos realizar um estudo reflexivo de cunho qualitativo sobre o ensino e aprendizagem de Inglês mediado por gêneros discursivos e tecnologias de informação e comunicação. A partir de relatos de observações, descrevemos e interpretamos uma experiência de estágio orientada por uma proposta de ensino que associa o uso de sequência didática, webquest e tecnologia. A pesquisa parte de estudos de Gebhard (1999) e Ninin (2010), Bakhtin (1979), Marcuschi (2010), Dolz e Scheneuwly (2004), Dodge (1995) e March (2003). Na metodologia, o processo de investigação envolveu a observação e a coleta de dados de 12 aulas ministradas por professoras em formação inicial da UNIFESSPA, em uma turma de 8º ano, na disciplina de Língua Inglesa em Marabá (PA). Resultados apontam que: 1) as estagiárias implementaram uma proposta diferenciada que fomentou a produção e divulgação de capas de revistas e explorou capacidades mentais e linguísticas na aprendizagem de leitura, escrita e análise linguística do Inglês, mediado pelo uso de tecnologias; 2) o trabalho de observação conseguiu ultrapassar o intuito inicial de coleta de dados, servindo de suporte ao trabalho das estagiárias e de conscientização de metodologia de trabalho aos pesquisadores envolvidos no projeto e 3) a relevância desta experiência se centra no letramento de professores em formação inicial, aprimorando e desenvolvendo os estudos de gênero para fins educacionais, integrando o uso das tecnologias.Palavras-chave: Observações de práticas de ensino. Gênero discursivo. Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação. ABSTRACTWitch reflections and learning can we get in an English language internship experience in middle school? Having this question as a starting point, in this article we aim to do a reflexive study of qualitative nature about English teaching and learning mediated by discursive genres and information and communication technologies. From observation reports, we can describe and interpret an internship experience guided by a teaching proposal that links didactic sequence, webquest and technology. The research goes from studies of Gebhard (1999) and Ninin (2010) Bakhtin (1979), Marcuschi (2010), Dolz and Scheneuwly (2004), Dodge (1995) and March (2003). In methodology, the research process involved observation and data collection of 12 classes taught by teachers in early formation at UNIFESSPA, in an 8th year English class at Marabá (PA). Results show that: 1) trainees implemented a distinctive proposal that promoted magazine covers’ production and dissemination, also explored mental and linguistic capacities in reading, writing and English linguistic analysis learning, mediated by technologies; 2) the observation task could exceed its initial purpose of data collection, serving as a support to the trainees work and also to the work methodology awareness for the researchers involved in this project and 3) the relevance of this experience focuses on teachers in early formation’s literacy, improving and developing genrer studies for educational purposes, integrating it with technology use.Keywords: Teaching practice observations. Discursive genre. Information and Communication Technologies.

Abstract:

This work sought to analyze the orality concept that underlies the teacher education program "National Pact for Literacy in the Right Age". We investigate in three notebooks of the 3rd year of elementary school (old 2nd grade) how the theme is treated in the didactic sequences and projects shared in the documents. We use as theoretical presuppositions a discursive conception of language, derived from Sociodiscursive Interacionism (BRONCKART, 2006; SCHNEUWLY, DOLZ, 2004) in which the learning of the textual genres is necessary for human development. We use the perspectives of literacies, in which orality and writing are integrated and not dichotomous (MARCUSCHI, 2001; ROJO, 2001; SCHNEUWLY, 2006). By choosing documentary research, we have selected books 1, 2 and 8 because they are the who are most concerned with the topic of orality. The data reveal that the material argues that the literacy cycle must be anchored in literacy studies and in the perspective of textual genres; as a consequence, oral and written practices should be integrated into school activities into a social language bias. In the three notebooks, there is a focus for the axes of orality teaching (oral production, listening, linguistic analysis and speech/writing relations), which demonstrates that the training program highlights didactic issues in the orality axis. These analyzes allow us to infer that the projects and sequences of the section "Sharing" appropriates the assumptions of the document, which indicates a positive possibility of change for Portuguese language teaching in the first years of schooling.ResumoEste trabalho apresenta uma análise sobre a concepção de oralidade que embasa o programa de formação docente “Pacto Nacional Pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa” com base em três cadernos do 3º ano do ensino fundamental. Utilizamos como pressupostos teóricos uma concepção discursiva de linguagem, oriunda do Interacionismo Sociodiscursivo (BRONCKART, 2006; SCHNEUWLY; DOLZ, 2004) em que a aprendizagem dos gêneros textuais é necessária para o desenvolvimento humano; tal aprendizagem propicia a inserção dos alunos em práticas de linguagem, fator indispensável para a socialização e participação numa sociedade multiletrada. Utilizamos, também, as perspectivas relacionadas aos letramentos, em que oralidade e escrita estão integradas e não dicotômicas (MARCUSCHI, 2001; ROJO, 2001; ROJO; SCHNEUWLY, 2006). Por meio da pesquisa documental, selecionamos os cadernos 1, 2 e 8 por serem os que mais versam sobre o tema da oralidade. Os dados revelam que o material defende que o ciclo de alfabetização deve estar ancorado na perspectiva dos gêneros textuais; como consequência, práticas de oralidade e escrita devem estar integradas nas atividades escolares num viés social da língua. Nos três cadernos, há um enfoque nos eixos do ensino de oralidade em língua materna (produção oral, escuta, análise linguística e relações fala/escrita), o que demonstra que o programa evidencia questões didáticas importantes da oralidade. Tais análises nos permitem inferir que os projetos e sequências da seção “Compartilhando” se apropriam dos pressupostos do documento, o que nos indica uma positiva possibilidade de mudança para ensino de Língua Portuguesa nos primeiros anos de escolaridade.ResumenEn este trabajo presenta un análisis de la concepción de oralidad que fundamenta el programa de formación de profesores denominado "Pacto Nacional por la Alfabetización en la Edad Correcta", tomando como base los contenidos de tres cuadernos del tercer grado de primaria en Brasil. Utilizamos como presuposición teórica una concepción discursiva del lenguaje que proviene del Interaccionismo Sociodiscursivo (BRONCKART, 2006; SCHNEUWLY, DOLZ, 2004), en la que el aprendizaje de los géneros textuales es necesario para el desarrollo humano. Dicho aprendizaje propicia la inserción de los estudiantes en las prácticas de lenguaje, un factor indispensable para su socialización y participación en una sociedad multiletrada. Asimismo, utilizamos las perspectivas que nos brinda el letramento, en que la oralidad y la escritura se encuentran integradas y no son dicotómicas (MARCUSCHI, 2001; ROJO, 2001; SCHNEUWLY, 2006). A través de una investigación documental, seleccionamos los cuadernos 1, 2 y 8 basándonos en que son los que tratan de la oralidad con más profundidad. El análisis de los datos nos ha permitido constatar que el material se sustenta en que el ciclo de la alfabetización debe anclarse en la perspectiva de los géneros textuales y, por consiguiente, las prácticas de la oralidad y de la escritura deben integrarse en las actividades escolares como un sesgo social de la lengua. En los tres cuadernos se pudo observar un enfoque centrado en los ejes de la enseñanza de la oralidad en el idioma materno (producción oral, escucha, análisis lingüístico y relaciones entre el habla y la escritura), lo que demuestra que el programa de formación se vale de elementos didácticos importantes en el eje de la oralidad. Estos análisis nos permiten inferir que los proyectos y las secuencias de la sección "Compartiendo" se apropian de las presuposiciones del documento, lo que nos indica la posibilidad de un cambio positivo en la enseñanza de la Lengua Portuguesa en los primeros años de escolarización.Palavras-chave: PNAIC, Oralidade, Alfabetização.Keywords: Orality, Literacy.Palabras claves: Oralidad, Alfabetización.ReferencesALVIM, V. T.; MAGALHÃES, T. G. Oralidade na escola: a escuta ativa como procedimento didático no ensino de Língua Portuguesa nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. In: BARROS, Eliana Merlin de; STRIQUER, Marilucia dos Santos Domingos; STORTO, Letícia Jovelina. (Org.). Propostas didáticas para o ensino da língua portuguesa. Campinas: Editora Pontes, 2018, p. 113-134.BORTONI-RICARDO, S. M. Educação em língua materna: a sociolinguística na sala de aula. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, 2004. 112 p.BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: primeiro e segundo ciclos do Ensino Fundamental – Língua Portuguesa. Brasília: MEC/SEF, 1997.BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do Ensino Fundamental – Língua Portuguesa. Brasília: MEC/SEF, 1998.BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Secretaria de Educação Fundamental. Programa de Formação de Professores Alfabetizadores. Guia do Formador- Módulo 2. Brasília, 2001.BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Secretaria de Educação Básica. Secretaria de Educação a Distância. Pró-Letramento: Programa de formação continuada de professores das séries iniciais do Ensino Fundamental: guia geral. Brasília: MEC/SEF, 2007.BRASIL. Ministério da Educação. Pacto Nacional pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa. Ministro de estado da educação. Portaria nº 867, de 4 de julho de 2012. Brasília, 2012.BRONCKART, J. P. Atividade de linguagem, discurso e desenvolvimento humano. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2006. 260 p.BRONCKART, J. P. O agir nos discursos: das concepções teóricas às concepções dos trabalhadores. Tradução de Anna Rachel Machado e Maria de Lourdes Meirelles Matencio. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2008. 208 p.BUENO, L.; COSTA-HÜBES, T. C. (orgs). Gêneros orais no ensino. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2015. 376 p.BULEA, E. Linguagem e efeitos desenvolvimentais da interpretação da atividade. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras, 2010. 176 p.CORDEIRO, G. S. Ensinar gêneros textuais orais e formais no ciclo de Educação Infantil: uma possibilidade? In: ALBUQUERQUE, R.; MOTTA, V. A (Orgs). Linguagem e interação: o ensino em pauta. São Carlos: Pedro e João Editores, 2011.COSTA-MACIEL, D. A. G.; SANTOS, J. M. P. Impactos do discurso oficial sobre a seleção dos gêneros textuais orais presentes nos livros didáticos de língua portuguesa. In: COSTA-MACIEL, D. A. G.; LUNA, E.A.A.; RODRIGUES, S. G. C. (Orgs). Oralidade e leitura: olhares plurais sobre linguagem e ensino. Recife, EDUFPE, 2016. p. 54-73.DOLZ, J.; GAGNON, R. O gênero de texto, uma ferramenta didática para desenvolver a linguagem oral e escrita. In: BUENO, L.; COSTA-HÜBES, T. C. (orgs.) Gêneros orais no ensino. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2015. p. 23-56. DOLZ, J.; SCHNEUWLY, B.; HALLER, S. O oral como texto: como construir um objeto de ensino. In: SCHNEUWLY, Bernard; DOLZ, Joaquim. Gêneros orais e escritos na escola. Tradução e organização: Roxane Rojo e Glaís Sales Cordeiro. Campinas, SP: Mercado das Letras, 2004. P. 149-185.GALVÃO, A. M. O.; BATISTA, A. A. G. Oralidade e escrita: uma revisão. In: Cadernos de Pesquisa, v. 36, nº 128, p. 403-432. mai/ago. 2006. Disponível em http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cp/v36n128/v36n128a07.pdf. Acesso em maio de 2017.GARCIA-REIS, A. R.; MAGALHÃES, T. G. Análise do eixo da oralidade no programa nacional do livro didático de língua portuguesa de 1º ao 5º anos (anos 2007 a 2016). In: MAGALHÃES, T. G.; CRISTOVÃO, V. L. L. (Orgs). Oralidade e ensino de Língua Portuguesa. Campinas, SP: Editora Pontes, 2018, p. 239-262.LEAL, T. F.; BRANDÃO, A. C. P.; LIMA, J. M. A oralidade como objeto de ensino na escola: o que sugerem os livros didáticos? In: LEAL, T. F; GOIS, S. (orgs.). A oralidade na escola: a investigação do trabalho docente como foco de reflexão. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2012. p. 13-35LEAL, T. F.; GOIS, S. (org.). A oralidade na escola: a investigação do trabalho docente como foco de reflexão. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2012. 200 p.LEAL, T. F. et al. Currículo e alfabetização: implicações para a formação de professores. In: MORTATTI, M. R. L.; FRADE, I. C. A. S. (Orgs.). Alfabetização e seus sentidos: o que sabemos, fazemos e queremos? Marília: Oficina Universitária; São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2014. 352p.MACHADO, M. G. F. K. Um olhar sobre o cotidiano escolar: o eixo da oralidade nas práticas do(a) professor(a) alfabetizador(a) participante da formação do PNAIC em Santa Catarina. Revista Práticas de Linguagem, Juiz de Fora, vol. 7, n. 1, p. 103-116, junho de 2017. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/praticasdelinguagem/article/view/28535 Acesso em março de 2019. MAGALHÃES, T. G.; CRISTOVÃO, V.L.L. Análise do eixo da oralidade do Programa Nacional do Livro didático de Língua Portuguesa (anos 2005 a 2014). In: MAGALHÃES, T. G.; GARCIA-REIS, T. G.; FERREIRA, H. M. Concepção discursiva de linguagem: ensino e formação docente. Campinas: Editora Pontes, 2017. p. 61-84. MAGALHÃES, T. G.; CRISTOVÃO, V. L. L. (Orgs) Oralidade e ensino de Língua Portuguesa. Campinas: Editora Pontes, 2018. 270 p.MARCUSCHI, L. Da fala para a escrita: atividades de retextualização. São Paulo: Cortez, 2001. 136 p.MOREIRA, H.; CALEFFE, L. G. Metodologia da pesquisa para o professor pesquisador. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A, 2006. 248 p.RAIMO, L. C. F. D.; BURACH, C. A. M. Oralidade ou oralização da escrita? Uma análise do livro didático Letramento e alfabetização. Caderno Seminal Digital, Rio de Janeiro, v. 1, nº 26, p. 175-201. jul-dez de 2016. Disponível em http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/cadsem.2016.25032 Acesso em maio de 2018. ROJO, R. Letramento escolar, oralidade e escrita em sala de aula: diferentes modalidades ou gêneros do discurso? In: SIGNORINI, I. (Org.). Investigando a relação oral/escrito e as teorias do letramento. Campinas: Mercado de Letras, 2001. p. 51-76.ROJO, R.; SCHNEUWLY, B. As relações oral/escrita nos gêneros orais formais e públicos: o caso da conferência acadêmica. Linguagem em (Dis)curso, Tubarão, v. 6, n. 3, set./dez. 2006.p. 463-493. Disponível em: http://www.portaldeperiodicos.unisul.br/index.php/Linguagem_Discurso/article/view/346/367 Acesso em maio de 2018.SCHNEUWLY, B.; DOLZ, J. Gêneros orais e escritos na escola. Trad. org. Roxane Rojo; Glaís Sales Cordeiro. Campinas-SP, Mercado de Letras, 2004. 278 p. STREET, B. Letramentos sociais: abordagens críticas do letramento no desenvolvimento, na etnografia e na educação. Trad. Marcos Bagno. São Paulo: Parábola, 2014. 216 p.e3400102

Abstract:

RESUMO: Neste artigo, buscamos analisar por meio do viés do discurso na perspectiva enunciativa, a construção do ethos discursivo de um personagem que é parte constituinte da nação brasileira, isto é, os povos indígenas. Tomamos como corpora os textos literários produzidos no decorrer do processo de formação da nação brasileira e, assim, da literatura nacional. O corpus estudado são os textos literários que expressam o ethos do indígena, realizado por meio de análise da construção das imagens discursivas, conformadas por meio da representação literária em que a voz desse ator social é tomada pela representação que se faz dela em caráter de reconstrução da história por linhas literárias. A base teórica que sustenta as análises interpretativas insere-se na linha do discurso em que os processos de discursivização são utilizados para a compreensão de imagens discursivas que têm por objetivo criar um tipo de mentalidade social, nesse contexto, construída ideologicamente por meio dos gêneros literários. Palavras-chave: Ethos, Formação Discursiva, Literatura Indígena.ABSTRACT: This article aims to analyze, through the bias of discourse in the enunciative perspective, the construction of the discursive ethos of a people that is a constituent part of the Brazilian nation, that are, the indigenous peoples. We take as corpora the literary texts produced during the process of formation of the Brazilian nation and, thus, of the national literature. So, our corpus of study are the literary texts that express the ethos of the indigenous, this was done by the analysis of the construction of the discursive images conformed as the literary representation in which the voice of this social actor is taken by the representation that is made as the reconstruction of history by literary lines. The theoretical basis that supports the interpretative analyzes is inserted in the line of discourse in which the processes of transformation in discourse are used for the understanding of discursive images that aim to create a type of social mentality, in this context, constructed ideologically through the literary genres . Key-words: Ethos, Discursive Formation, Indigenous Literature.

Abstract:

By most accounts, “resilience” is a pretty resilient concept. Or policy instrument. Or heuristic tool. It’s this last that really concerns us here: resilience not as a politics, but rather as a descriptive device for attempts in the humanities—particularly in rhetoric and cultural studies—to adequately describe a discursive event. Or rather, to adequately describe a class of discursive events: those that involve rhetorical resistance by victimised subjects. I’ve argued elsewhere (Munro, Descriptive; Reading) that Peircean semiosis, inflected by a rhetorical postulate of genre, equips us well to closely describe a discursive event. Here, I want briefly to suggest that resilience—“discursive” resilience, to coin a term—might usefully supplement these hypotheses, at least from time to time. To support this suggestion, I’ll signal some uses of resilience before turning briefly to a case study: a sensational Argentine homicide case, which occurred in October 2002, and came to be known as the caso Belsunce. At the time, Argentina was wracked by economic crises and political instability. The imposition of severe restrictions on cash withdrawals from bank deposits had provoked major civil unrest. Between 21 December 2001 and 2 January 2002, Argentines witnessed a succession of five presidents. “Resilient” is a term that readily comes to mind to describe many of those who endured this catastrophic period. To describe the caso Belsunce, however—to describe its constitution and import as a discursive event—we might appeal to some more disciplinary-specific understandings of resilience. Glossing Peircean semiosis as a teleological process, Short notes that “one and the same thing […] may be many different signs at once” (106). Any given sign, in other words, admits of multiple interpretants or uptakes. And so it is with resilience, which is both a keyword in academic disciplines ranging from psychology to ecology and political science, and a buzzword in several corporate domains and spheres of governmental activity. It’s particularly prevalent in the discourses of highly networked post-9/11 Anglophone societies. So what, pray tell, is resilience? To the American Psychological Association, resilience comprises “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity.” To the Resilience Solutions Group at Arizona State University, resilience is “the capacity to recover fully from acute stressors, to carry on in the face of chronic difficulties: to regain one’s balance after losing it.” To the Stockholm Resilience Centre, resilience amounts to the “capacity of a system to continually change and adapt yet remain within critical thresholds,” while to the Resilience Alliance, resilience is similarly “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure” (Walker and Salt xiii). The adjective “resilient” is thus predicated of those entities, individuals or collectivities, which exhibit “resilience”. A “resilient Australia,” for example, is one “where all Australians are better able to adapt to change, where we have reduced exposure to risks, and where we are all better able to bounce back from disaster” (Australian Government). It’s tempting here to synthesise these statements with a sense of “ordinary language” usage to derive a definitional distillate: “resilience” is a capacity attributed to an entity which recovers intact from major injury. This capacity is evidenced in a reaction or uptake: a “resilient” entity is one which suffers some insult or disturbance, but whose integrity is held to have been maintained, or even enhanced, by its resistive or adaptive response. A conjecturally “resilient” entity is thus one which would presumably evince resilience if faced with an unrealised aversive event. However, such abstractions ignore how definitional claims do rhetorical work. On any given occasion, how “resilience” and its cognates are construed and what they connote are a function, at least in part, of the purposes of rhetorical agents and the protocols and objects of the disciplines or genres in which these agents put these terms to work. In disciplines operating within the same form of life or sphere of activity—disciplines sharing general conventions and broad objects of inquiry, such as the capacious ecological sciences or the contiguous fields of study within the ambit of applied psychology—resilience acts, at least at times, as a something of a “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer). Correlatively, across more diverse and distant fields of inquiry, resilience can work in more seemingly exclusive or contradictory ways (see Handmer and Dovers). Rhetorical aims and disciplinary objects similarly determine the originary tales we are inclined to tell. In the social sciences, the advent of resilience is often attributed to applied psychology, indebted, in turn, to epidemiology (see Seery, Holman and Cohen Silver). In environmental science, by contrast, resilience is typically taken to be a theory born in ecology (indebted to engineering and to the physical sciences, in particular to complex systems theory [see Janssen, Schoon, Ke and Börner]). Having no foundational claim to stake and, moreover, having different purposes and taking different objects, some more recent uptakes of resilience, in, for instance, securitisation studies, allow for its multidisciplinary roots (see Bourbeau; Kaufmann). But if resilience is many things to many people, a couple of commonalities in its range of translations should be drawn out. First, irrespective of its discipline or sphere of activity, talk of resilience typically entails construing an object of inquiry qua system, be that system an individual, a community of circ*mstance, a state, a socio-ecological unit or some differently delimited entity. This bounded system suffers some insult with no resulting loss of structural, relational, functional or other integrity. Second, resilience is usually marshalled to promote a politics. Resilience talk often consorts with discourses of meliorative action and of readily quantifiable practical effects. When the environmental sciences take the “Earth system” and the dynamics of global change as their objects of inquiry, a postulate of resilience is key to the elaboration and implementation of natural resource management policy. Proponents of socio-ecological resilience see the resilience hypothesis as enabling a demonstrably more enlightened stewardship of the biosphere (see Folke et al.; Holling; Walker and Salt). When applied psychology takes the anomalous situation of disadvantaged, at-risk individuals triumphing over trauma as its declared object of inquiry, a postulate of resilience is key to the positing and identification of personal and environmental resources or protective factors which would enable the overcoming of adversity. Proponents of psychosocial resilience see this concept as enabling the elaboration and implementation of interventions to foster individual and collective wellbeing (see Goldstein and Brooks; Ungar). Similarly, when policy think-tanks and government departments and agencies take the apprehension of particular threats to the social fabric as their object of inquiry, a postulate of resilience—or of a lack thereof—is critical to the elaboration and implementation of urban infrastructure, emergency planning and disaster management policies (see Drury et al.; Handmer and Dovers). However, despite its often positive connotations, resilience is well understood as a “normatively open” (Bourbeau 11) concept. This openness is apparent in some theories and practices of resilience. In limnological modelling, for example, eutrophication can result in a lake’s being in an undesirable, albeit resilient, turbid-water state (see Carpenter et al.; Walker and Meyers). But perhaps the negative connotations or indeed perverse effects of resilience are most apparent in some of its political uptakes. Certainly, governmental operationalisations of resilience are coming under increased scrutiny. Chief among the criticisms levelled at the “muddled politics” (Grove 147) of and around resilience is that its mobilisation works to constitute a particular neoliberal subjectivity (see Joseph; Neocleous). By enabling a conservative focus on individual responsibility, preparedness and adaptability, the topos of resilience contributes critically to the development of neoliberal governmentality (Joseph). In a practical sense, this deployment of resilience silences resistance: “building resilient subjects,” observe Evans and Reid (85), “involves the deliberate disabling of political habits. […] Resilient subjects are subjects that have accepted the imperative not to resist or secure themselves from the difficulties they are faced with but instead adapt to their enabling conditions.” It’s this prospect of practical acquiescence that sees resistance at times opposed to resilience (Neocleous). “Good intentions not withstanding,” notes Grove (146), “the effect of resilience initiatives is often to defend and strengthen the political economic status quo.” There’s much to commend in these analyses of how neoliberal uses of resilience constitute citizens as highly accommodating of capital and the state. But such critiques pertain to the governmental mobilisation of resilience in the contemporary “advanced liberal” settings of “various Anglo-Saxon countries” (Joseph 47). There are, of course, other instances—other events in other times and places—in which resilience indisputably sorts with resistance. Such an event is the caso Belsunce, in which a rhetorically resilient journalistic community pushed back, resisting some of the excesses of a corrupt neoliberal Argentine regime. I’ll turn briefly to this infamous case to suggest that a notion of “discursive resilience” might afford us some purchase when it comes to describing discursive events. To be clear: we’re considering resilience here not as an anticipatory politics, but rather as an analytic device to supplement the descriptive tools of Peircean semiosis and a rhetorical postulate of genre. As such, it’s more an instrument than an answer: a program, perhaps, for ongoing work. Although drawing on different disciplinary construals of the term, this use of resilience would be particularly indebted to the resilience thinking developed in ecology (see Carpenter el al.; Folke et al.; Holling; Walker et al.; Walker and Salt). Things would, of course, be lost in translation (see Adger; Gallopín): in taking a discursive event, rather than the dynamics of a socio-ecological system, as our object of inquiry, we’d retain some topological analogies while dispensing with, for example, Holling’s four-phase adaptive cycle (see Carpenter et al.; Folke; Gunderson; Gunderson and Holling; Walker et al.). For our purposes, it’s unlikely that descriptions of ecosystem succession need to be carried across. However, the general postulates of ecological resilience thinking—that a system is a complex series of dynamic relations and functions located at any given time within a basin of attraction (or stability domain or system regime) delimited by thresholds; that it is subject to multiple attractors and follows trajectories describable over varying scales of time and space; that these trajectories are inflected by exogenous and endogenous perturbations to which the system is subject; that the system either proves itself resilient to these perturbations in its adaptive or resistive response, or transforms, flipping from one domain (or basin) to another may well prove useful to some descriptive projects in the humanities. Resilience is fundamentally a question of uptake or response. Hence, when examining resilience in socio-ecological systems, Gallopín notes that it’s useful to consider “not only the resilience of the system (maintenance within a basin) but also coping with impacts produced and taking advantage of opportunities” (300). Argentine society in the early-to-mid 2000s was one such socio-political system, and the caso Belsunce was both one such impact and one such opportunity. Well-connected in the world of finance, 57-year-old former stockbroker Carlos Alberto Carrascosa lived with his 50-year-old sociologist turned charity worker wife, María Marta García Belsunce, close to their relatives in the exclusive gated community of Carmel Country Club, Pilar, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. At 7:07 pm on Sunday 27 October 2002, Carrascosa called ambulance emergencies, claiming that his wife had slipped and knocked her head while drawing a bath alone that rainy Sunday afternoon. At the time of his call, it transpired, Carrascosa was at home in the presence of intimates. Blood was pooled on the bathroom floor and smeared and spattered on its walls and adjoining areas. María Marta lay lifeless, brain matter oozing from several holes in her left parietal and temporal lobes. This was the moment when Carrascosa, calm and coherent, called emergency services, but didn’t advert the police. Someone, he told the operator, had slipped in the bath and bumped her head. Carrascosa described María Marta as breathing, with a faint pulse, but somehow failed to mention the holes in her head. “A knock with a tap,” a police source told journalist Horacio Cecchi, “really doesn’t compare with the five shots to the head, the spillage of brain matter and the loss of about half a litre of blood suffered by the victim” (Cecchi and Kollmann). Rather than a bathroom tap, María Marta’s head had met with five bullets discharged from a .32-calibre revolver. In effect, reported Cecchi, María Marta had died twice. “While perhaps a common conceit in fiction,” notes Cecchi, “in reality, dying twice is, by definition, impossible. María Marta’s two obscure endings seem to unsettle this certainty.” Her cadaver was eventually subjected to an autopsy, and what had been a tale of clumsiness and happenstance was rewritten, reinscribed under the Argentine Penal Code. The autopsy was conducted 36 days after the burial of María Marta; nine days later, she was mentioned for the second time in the mainstream Argentine press. Her reappearance, however, was marked by a shift in rubrics: from a short death notice in La Nación, María Marta was translated to the crime section of Argentina’s dailies. Until his wife’s mediatic reapparition, Carroscosa and other relatives had persisted with their “accident” hypothesis. Indeed, they’d taken a range of measures to preclude the sorts of uptakes that might ordinarily be expected to flow, under functioning liberal democratic regimes, from the discovery of a corpse with five projectiles lodged in its head. Subsequently recited as part of Carrascosa’s indictment, these measures were extensively reiterated in media coverage of the case. One of the more notorious actions involved the disposal of the sixth bullet, which was found lying under María Marta. In the course of moving the body of his half-sister, John Hurtig retrieved a small metallic object. This discovery was discussed by a number of family members, including Carrascosa, who had received ballistics training during his four years of naval instruction at the Escuela Nacional de Náutica de la Armada. They determined that the object was a lug or connector rod (“pituto”) used in library shelving: nothing, in any case, to indicate a homicide. With this determination made, the “pituto” was duly wrapped in lavatory paper and flushed down the toilet. This episode occasioned a range of outraged articles in Argentine dailies examining the topoi of privilege, power, corruption and impunity. “Distinguished persons,” notes Viau pointedly, “are so disposed […] that in the midst of all that chaos, they can locate a small, hard, steely object, wrap it in lavatory paper and flush it down the toilet, for that must be how they usually dispose of […] all that rubbish that no longer fits under the carpet.” Most often, though, critical comment was conducted by translating the reporting of the case to the genres of crime fiction. In an article entitled Someone Call Agatha Christie, Quick!, H.A.T. writes that “[s]omething smells rotten in the Carmel Country; a whole pile of rubbish seems to have been swept under its plush carpets.” An exemplary intervention in this vein was the work of journalist and novelist Vicente Battista, for whom the case (María Marta) “synthesizes the best of both traditions of crime fiction: the murder mystery and the hard-boiled novels.” “The crime,” Battista (¿Hubo Otra Mujer?) has Rodolfo observe in the first of his speculative dialogues on the case, “seems to be lifted from an Agatha Christie novel, but the criminal turns out to be a copy of the savage killers that Jim Thompson usually depicts.” Later, in an interview in which he correctly predicted the verdict, Battista expanded on these remarks: This familiar plot brings together the English murder mystery and the American hard-boiled novels. The murder mystery because it has all the elements: the crime takes place in a sealed room. In this instance, sealed not only because it occurred in a house, but also in a country, a sealed place of privilege. The victim was a society lady. Burglary is not the motive. In classic murder mystery novels, it was a bit unseemly that one should kill in order to rob. One killed either for a juicy sum of money, or for revenge, or out of passion. In those novels there were neither corrupt judges nor fugitive lawyers. Once Sherlock Holmes […] or Hercule Poirot […] said ‘this is the murderer’, that was that. That’s to say, once fingered in the climactic living room scene, with everyone gathered around the hearth, the perpetrator wouldn’t resist at all. And everyone would be happy because the judges were thought to be upright persons, at least in fiction. […] The violence of the crime of María Marta is part of the hard-boiled novel, and the sealed location in which it takes place, part of the murder mystery (Alarcón). I’ve argued elsewhere (Munro, Belsunce) that the translation of the case to the genres of crime fiction and their metaanalysis was a means by which a victimised Argentine public, represented by a disempowered and marginalised fourth estate, sought some rhetorical recompense. The postulate of resilience, however, might help further to describe and contextualise this notorious discursive event. A disaffected Argentine press finds itself in a stability domain with multiple attractors: on the one hand, an acquiescence to ever-increasing politico-juridical corruption, malfeasance and elitist impunity; on the other, an attractor of increasing contestation, democratisation, accountability and transparency. A discursive event like the caso Belsunce further perturbs Argentine society, threatening to displace it from its democratising trajectory. Unable to enforce due process, Argentina’s fourth estate adapts, doing what, in the circ*mstances, amounts to the next best thing: it denounces the proceedings by translating the case to the genres of crime fiction. In so doing, it engages a venerable reception history in which the co-constitution of true crime fiction and investigative journalism is exemplified by the figure of Rodolfo Walsh, whose denunciatory works mark a “politicisation of crime” (see Amar Sánchez Juegos; El sueño). Put otherwise, a section of Argentina’s fourth estate bounced back: by making poetics do rhetorical work, it resisted the pull towards what ecology calls an undesirable basin of attraction. Through a show of discursive resilience, these journalists worked to keep Argentine society on a democratising track. 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Abstract:

Introduction This paper explores some specific conjunctions that tie together two nations, Japan and the Philippines. Over the past 30 years both have become entwined as a transfer of people, cultures and societies have connected and formed some interesting developments. Relations between both countries have been highly influenced through the deployment of State intervention (historically colonial and post-colonial), as well as through actors’ initiatives, leading to the development of a complex network that links both countries. It is in these relations that I would like to locate a transition between two stages in Japan-Philippine relations. I argue, this is a transition, where marriages of one kind (international marriages), the bonding of social actors from two distinct cultural spheres, gives way to another form of marriage. This transition locates the term marriage as part of an ongoing process and a discursive realm in a larger ‘affective complex’ that has developed. In this paper, I focus on this term ‘affective complex’ as it offers some interesting avenues in order to understand the continuing development of relations between Japan and the Philippines. By ‘affective complex’ I refer to the ‘cultural responses’ that people use in reaction to situations in which they find themselves which are not mediated by language. I suggest that this complex is a product of a specific encounter that exists between two nations as understood and mediated by Japanese actors’ positionings vis-à-vis foreign resident Filipinos. In tracing a moment between Japan and the Philippines, I delineate emerging properties that currently allude to a transition in relations between both countries. I would like to show that the properties of this transition are creating an emergent phenomena, a complex? This is developing through interactions between human actors whose trajectories as transnational migrants and permanent foreign residents are coming under the scrutiny of Japanese State forces in a heavily contested discursive field. This paper focuses upon the nature of the complex that entwines both countries and examines Japan’s particular restructuring of parts of its workforce in an attempt to include foreign migrants. To do this I first offer an outline of my fieldwork and then delineate the complex that ties both countries within present theoretical boundaries. This paper is based on fieldwork which deals with the theme of International Marriages between Japanese and Filipino couples. In the field I have observed the different ways in which Filipinos or Japanese with a connection to the Philippines orientate themselves within Japanese society vis-à-vis the Philippines. For the purpose of this paper, I will focus exclusively on a particular moment in my field: a care-giver course run privately with approval and recognition from local government. This course was offered exclusively for Filipino nationals with permanent residency and a high level of Japanese. As part of a larger field, a number of overlapping themes and patterns were present within the attitudes of those participating in the course. These were cultural responses that social actors carry with them which constitute part of an ‘affective complex’, its gradual emergence and unfolding. To further locate this fieldwork and its theoretical boundaries, I also position this research within current understandings of complexity. Chesters and Welsh have referred to a complex system as being a non-linear, non-deterministic system. However, from my perspective, these parameters are insufficient if institutions, organisations and human actors exhibit linear and deterministic properties (properties that discursively capture, locate and define elements in a system). In my research, I am dealing with actors, in this case Filipinos who are seen first as recipients and then as providers of welfare services. Japanese actors act as suppliers of a service both to long-term residents and to the State. In this case the following question arises: whose ‘complexes’ may be defined by a mixture of both these parameters and how can it be possible to take into account relationships whose existence cuts across them? Could a complex not be any number of these terrains which have emerged through encounters between two countries? Marriage could be a starting point for complexes that can come under scrutiny at a higher level, that of the State forces. In addition, a study of complexity in the Social Sciences focuses on how structures form rather than by focusing on any prior structured existence. Any focus on a complex system is to analyze holistic multiple elements in order to descriptively locate structures, what they penetrate, and what they are penetrated by. Human actors’ actions, strategies and expectations merge under the influence of these structures, while simultaneously influencing them. As elements interact, emergent phenomena (properties that emerge at a higher level) show a system that is process dependent, organic, and always evolving (Arthur 109). Locating Affect Deleuze and Guattari refined the discursive realm to emphasise how spaces of creation, dialogue and the casting of influence are affective, institutional and State-influenced. Within these spaces I locate the existence of ‘affective complexes’ which are discursively constructed and deployed by local actors. I will to argue that international marriages have laid a groundwork in which ‘affect’ itself has become a catalyst, re-orientating perceptions of and toward Filipinos. Following Deleuze, we can understand ‘affect’ as an intensity which, to repeat, is an expression of human relationships not mediated directly through language (Rodriguez). However, I want to suggest ‘affect’ also comes under the scrutiny of, and is discursively appealed to by, State forces as ‘affective capital’. When I refer to ‘affective capital’ I mean the potential labour discursively constructed. This construction is then “projected and tapped” in response to the changing nature of Japan’s labour market – in particular, the shortage of care-givers. This construction itself exists as an ongoing management strategy that deals with certain foreign nationals in Japan. Here, in response to the transformations of service work, ‘affective capital’ is the commoditised value of care inherent the discourse. It is the kernel of ‘affective labour’. This was very clear in my fieldwork, wherein Filipinos were targeted exclusively as the recipients of training in the health-care sector based on an understanding of the form of ‘affect’ that they possess. In this context, ‘affect’ adds intensity to meaning and is used in a wide range of cultural contexts, yet its very essence eludes description, especially when that essence as used by ‘active agents’ may be misconstrued in its deployment or discursively captured. Returning to the Deleuzian interpretation of ‘affect’, it could be interpreted as the outcome of encounters between actors and as such, a ‘mode’ in which becoming can initiate possibilities. I refer to ‘affect’, the deployment of shared, performed, communicated non-verbal ‘content’, as a powerful tool and an essential component in everyday habituated practice. In other areas of my field (not included in this discussion), ‘affect’ deployed by both actors, husband and wife, within and beyond the family, manifests itself as a mode of being. This at times adds to the location of actors’ intentions, be they spoken or performative. In this sense, locating the ‘affect’ in my research has meant observing the way in which Filipinos negotiate the availability of life strategies and opportunities available to them. At the same time, ‘affect’ is also produced by Japanese actors realigning themselves vis-à-vis both foreign actors and social change, as well as by effectuating strategies to emergent situations in Japan such as care management. ‘Affective capital’ is an inherent long-term strategy which has its roots in the cultural resources at the disposal of non-Japanese partners who, over the years, in the short and long term put to use discursively produced ‘affect’. ‘Affect’, produced in reactions to situations, encounters and events, can work in favour of long-term residents who do not have access to the same conditions Japanese may find in the labour sector. From encounters in my fieldwork, the location of ‘affect’ is an asset not just within immediate relationships, but as a possible expression of strategies that have arisen in response to the recognition of reactionary elements in Japanese society. By reactionary elements I refer to the way in which a complex may realign itself when ‘interfered’ with at another level, that of the State. The Japanese State is facing labour shortages in certain sectors due to social change, therefore they must secure other potential sources of labour. Appropriation of human resources locally available has become one Japanese State solution for this labour shortage. As such, ‘affect’ is brought into the capitalist fold in response to labor shortages in the Health Sector. Background The Philippines is a prime example of a nomad nation, where an estimated eight million of the population currently work or live overseas while remitting home (Phillippines Overseas Employment Agency). Post-colonial global conditions in the Asia Pacific region have seen the Philippines cater to external national situations in order to participate in the global labour market. These have been in the form of flows of labour and capital outsourced to those economies which are entangled with the Philippines. In this context, marriage between both countries has come to be made up almost exclusively of Japanese men with Filipina women (Suzuki). These marriages have created nascent partnerships that have formed links within homes in both countries and supported the creation of a complex system tying together both nations. Yet, in the entanglement of what seems to be two economies of desire, some interesting observations can be drawn from what I consider to be the by-products of these marriages. Yet what does this have to do with a marriage? First, I would like to put forward that certain international marriages may have developed within the above discursive framework and, in the case of the Philippines and Japan, defined certain characteristics that I will explain in more detail. Over the past 20 years, Filipinos who came to Japan on entertainment visas or through encounters with Japanese partners in the Philippines have deployed discursively constructed ‘affective capital’ in strategies to secure relationships and a position in both societies. These strategies may be interpreted as being knowledgeable, creative and possessive of the language necessary for negotiating long-term dialogues, not only with partners and surrounding family, but also with Japanese society. These deployments also function as an attempt to secure additional long term benefits which include strengthening ties to the Philippines through increasing a Japanese spouse’s involvement and interest in the Philippines. It is here that Filipinos’ ‘affect’ may be traced back to a previous deployment of categories that influences local Japanese actors’ decisions in offering a course exclusively for Filipino residents. This offers the first hint as to why only Filipinos were targeted. In Japan, secure permanent work for resident Filipinos can be, at times, difficult even when married to a partner with a stable income. The reality of remitting home to support family members and raising a family in Japan is a double burden which cannot be met solely by the spouse’s salary. This is an issue which means actors (in this case, partners) recourse to their ‘affective capital’ in order to secure means towards a livelihood. In this context, marriages have acted as a primary medium entangling both countries. Yet changes in Japan are re-locating ‘possible’ resources that are rationalised as a surplus from these primary encounters. Shifts in Japan’s social landscape have over the past 10 years led to an increasing awareness of the high stakes involved in care for the ageing and invalid in Japanese society. With over 21% of the population now over 65, the care industry has seen a surge in demand for labour, of which there is currently a shortfall (Statistics Bureau Japan). With the Philippines having strategically relocated its economy to accommodate demands for the outsourcing of health care workers and nurses overseas, Japan, realigning its economy to domestic change, has shown a new type of interest (albeit reluctant) in the Philippines. In 2005, changes and reforms to Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act successfully curtailed the flow of Filipinos applying to Japan to work as entertainers. This was in part due to pressure from the interventionary power of the U.S: in 2006 the U.S. State department published the Trafficking in Persons Report, which stipulated that Japan had yet to comply in improving the situation of persons trafficked to Japan (U.S. State Department). This watershed reform has become a precursor to the Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement ratified by Japan and the Philippines to promote the ‘trans-border flow of goods, person, services and capital between Japan and the Philippines (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and has now temporarily realigned both economies into a new relationship. Under the terms ‘movement of natural persons’, Filipino candidates for qualified nurses and certified care workers would be allowed a stay of up to three years as nurses, or four for certified care workers (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Nonetheless, this lip service in showing openness to admit a new category of Filipino is the continuation of a mode of ‘servicing’ within the Japanese nation, albeit under the guise of ‘care work’, and rests upon the capitalist rationalisation of hired workers for Japan’s tertiary sectors. The Philippines, a nation which is positively export-orientated in terms of its human resources in response to care inequalities that exist between nations at a global level (Parreñas 12-30), is now responding to the problematic issue of care that has become a serious concern in Japan. Fieldwork To place these issues in context I want to locate the above issues within a part of my present fieldwork. In 2006, I participated in a privately funded non-profit venture set up for Filipino residents with the aim of training them to be care-givers. The course was validated and acknowledged by the local prefectural government and primarily limited to a group of 20 participants who paid approximately sixty thousand yen ($485) for the three month course including training and text books. One Filipina acquaintance enthusiastically introduced me to the retired bank manager who had set up a fund for the three month care-giver course for Filipina residents. Through interviews with the course providers, one underlying theme in the planning of the course was clear: the core idea that Filipinos have a predisposition to care for the elderly, reflecting Filipino social values no longer existent in Japan. In particular, two Japanese words employed to reflect these views – ‘omoiyari’ (思いやり), meaning “compassion” or “considerateness” and ‘yasashisa’ (優しさ) meaning “kindness toward others” – were reiterated throughout the course as a requisite for dealing with the elderly or those in need of care. One core presupposition underlining the course was that the Philippines still cherishes values which are on the decline in Japan, offering a care ethos based on Christian values ready for deployment in such work. I believe this marks a transition point in how both countries’ relations are moving away from ‘entertainment-based’ care to ‘care within an institutional setting’, such as private nursing homes or hospitals. In both cases, ‘care’ (as it is ironically known in both industries, the deployment of hospitality and attendance), operates as a dynamic of desire within a social field which orientates how residents (i.e. foreign female residents with permanent residency) are used. Yet, why would the Philippines be such an attractor? It is not difficult to see how ‘affect’ is discursively rationalised and deployed and projected onto Philippine society. This ‘affect’ acts as an attractor and belongs to an ‘imagined’ cultural repertoire that Japan has created in response to its turbulent marriage to the Philippines. In this sense, the care course promoted this ‘caring affective side’ of Filipinas here in Japan, and provided a dynamic engagement for potential negotiation, persuasion and tension between ‘local actors’ (course providers and participants) who come under the direct remit of the Japanese State (care institutions, hospitals and nursing homes). I say “tension”, as to date only a handful (three women out of a total of sixty) of those who participated in the course have taken up employment in the care industry. As one participant, a divorcee, commented, the reluctance to seek work as a qualified care worker resided in an economic framework, she says: this is a useful investment, but I don’t know if I can do this work full time to live off and support my families…but it is another arrow in my bow if the situation changes. Yet, for another woman, care work was an extension of something that they were familiar with. She jokingly added with a sigh of resignation: Oh well, this is something we are used to, after all we did nothing but care for our papa-san (husband)! When I discussed these comments with an N.G.O. worker connected to the course she pessimistically summed up what she thought by saying: The problem of care in Japan was until very recently an issue of unpaid work that women have had to bear. In a sense, looking after the aged living at home has been a traditional way to treat people with respect. Yet, here in Japan we have experienced an excessively long period whereby it was de facto that when a woman married into someone’s family, she would care for the husband and his family. Now, this isn’t an individual problem anymore, it’s a societal one. Care is now becoming an institutional practice which is increasing paid work, yet the State works on the assumption that this is low paid work for people who have finished raising their children; hard labour for low wages. All the women have graduated and are licensed to work, yet at 1000 yen (U.S. $8) an hour for psychologically demanding hard labour they will not work, or start and finish realising the demands. Travelling between locations also is also unpaid, so at the most in one day they will work 2-3 hours. It is the worst situation possible for those who choose to work. The above opinion highlights the ambiguities that exist in the constant re-alignment of offering work to foreign residents in the effort to help integrate people into Japan’s tertiary ‘care sector’ in response to the crisis of a lack of manpower. To date most women who trained on this course have not pursued positions within the health sector. This indicates a resistance to the social beliefs that continue to categorise female foreign residents for gendered care work. Through three successive batches of students (sixty women in total) the president, staff and companies who participated in this pilot scheme have been introduced to Filipino residents in Japanese society. In one respect, this has been an opportunity for the course providers to face those who have worked, or continue to work at night. Yet, even this exposure does not reduce the hyper-feminisation of care; rather, it emphasises positions. One male coordinator brazenly mentioned the phrase ashi wo aratte hoshii, meaning ‘we want to give them a clean break’. This expression is pregnant with the connotation that these women have been involved in night work have done or still participate in. These categorisations still do not shake themselves free from previous classifications of female others located in Japanese society; the ongoing legacy that locates Filipinos in a feminised discursive space. As Butler has elucidated, ‘cultural inscriptions’ and ‘political forces with strategic interests’ work to keep the ‘body bounded and constituted’ (Butler 175). It is possible to see that this care course resides within a continuously produced genealogy that tries to constitute bodies. This resides under the rubric of a dominant fantasy that locates the Philippines in Japan as a source of caring and hospitality. Now, those here are relocated under a restructuring industry outsourcing work to those located in the lower tiers of the labour sector. Why other nationals have not been allowed to participate in the course is, I stress, a testimony to this powerful discourse. Major national and international media coverage of both the course and company and those women who found employment has also raised interest in the curious complex that has arisen from this dynamic, including a series of specials aired on Japanese television by NHK (NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku). This is very reminiscent of a ‘citationary’ network where writings, news items and articles enter into a perpetuating relationship that foments and bolsters the building up of a body of work (Said) to portray Japan’s changing circ*mstances. As seen from a traced genealogy, initial entanglements between two nations, in conjunction with societal change in Japan, have created a specific moment in both countries’ trajectories. Here, we can see an emergent phenomena and the relocation of a discursive structure. An affective complex can be located that marks a shift in how foreign residents are perceived and on what terms they can participate or contribute to Japanese society. Within this structure, ‘care’ is relocated – or, rather, trapped – and extracted as labour surplus that resides in an antagonistic relationship of domination highlighting how a specific moment existing between two countries can be ‘structured’ by needs in the ‘engaging’ country, in this case Japan. Non-linear elements in a complex system that contest how discursive practices in Japanese society locate foreign residents, within the rubric of an ‘imagined’ ethos of compassion and kindness that emanates from outside of Japan, seem to display ‘affective’ qualities. Yet, are these not projected categories deployed to continue to locate migrant labour (be they permanent or temporary residents) within an ongoing matrix that defines what resources can be discursively produced? However, these categories do not take into account the diverse structures of experience that both Japanese nationals and Filipino nationals experience in Japan (Suzuki). Conclusion In this paper I have briefly delineated a moment which rests between specific trajectories that tie two nations. A complex of marriages brought about within a specific historic post-colonial encounter has contributed to feminising the Philippines: firstly, for women in marriages, and now secondly for ‘potential resources’ available to tackle societal problems in Japan. As I have argued a discursively produced ‘affective complex’ is an authorising source of otherness and could be part of a precursor complex which is now discursively relocating human resources within one country (Japan) as a ‘reluctant source’ of labour, while entering into a new discursive mode of production that shapes attitudes toward others. I also suggest that there is a very specific complex at work here which follows an as of yet faint trajectory that points to the re-organisation of a relationship between Japan and the Philippines. Yet, there are linear elements (macro-level forces rooted in the Japanese State’s approach to care vis-à-vis the Philippines) operating at the fundamental core of this care-giver course that are being constantly challenged and cut across by non-linear elements, that is, human actors and their ambivalence as the beneficiaries/practitioners of such practices. This is the continued feminisation of a highly gendered dynamic that locates labour as and when it sees fit, but through the willing coercion of local agents, with an interest in mediating services through and for the State, for the welfare of the Nation. The desiring-machine that brings together Japan and the Philippines is also one that continues to locate the potential in foreign actors located within Japan’s institutional interpellation for its care market. Within these newly emergent relationships, available political and social capital is being reshaped and imagined in reaction to social change in Japan. By exploring two entangled nations situated within global capitalist production in the twenty-first century, my research points towards new ways of looking at emerged complexes (international marriages) that precludes the reconfigurations of ongoing emerging complexes that discursively locate residents as caregivers, who fall under the jurisdiction and glare of political powers, government subjects and State forces. References Artur, W. Brian. “Complexity and the Economy.” Science 284.2 (1999): 107-109. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Chester, Graeme, and Ian Welsh. “Complexity and Social Movement(s): Process and Emergence in Planetary Action Systems.” Theory, Culture & Society 22.5 (2005): 187-211. Deleuze, Giles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement Press Statement. 29 Nov. 2004. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/philippine/joint0411.html>. NHK Kaigo no Jinzai ga Nigete iku. 介護の人材が逃げて行く (“Care Workers Are Fleeing.”) Televised 11 Mar. 2007. 29 Mar. 2007 http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/onair/070311.html>. Parreñas, Rachel Salazar. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Philippines Overseas Employment Agency. “Stock Estimates of Filipinos Overseas.” 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/html/statistics.html>. Rodriguez, Encarnación Gutiérrez. “Reading Affect – On the Heterotopian Spaces of Care and Domestic Work in Private Households.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 8 (2007). 2 May 2007 http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-07/07-2-11-e.pdf>. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 1995. Statistics Bureau and Statistical Research and Training Institute. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (Philippines). 2005. 2 May 2007 http://www.poea.gov.ph/docs/STOCK%20ESTIMATE%202004.xls>. Suzuki, Nobue. “Inside the Home: Power and Negotiation in Filipina-Japanese Marriages.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 33.4 (2004): 481-506. “Trafficking in Persons Report.” U.S. State Department. 2006. 29 Apr. 2007. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/66086.pdf>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Lopez, Mario. "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>. APA Style Lopez, M. (Jun. 2007) "From Bride to Care Worker?: On Complexes, Japan and the Philippines," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/04-lopez.php>.

Abstract:

Background. One of the main issues of linguistics of the XX – early XXI century is a comprehensive study of the concept of discourse, which reflects a variety of real manifestations of human language communication in certain social spheres of its communicative space. The actualization of this concept in various scientific fields, the representatives of which study the essence and mechanisms of interaction of constants of such linguistic and philosophical dichotomies as “language and society”, “language and man”, has led to the need for its clear definition and typology of discourses etc. Despite the fact that linguists use a number of methods of discursive analysis of linguistic units, there is currently no single approach to their study within the theory of discourse.The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the features of the literary text in terms of modern discourse. The main objectives of the article: to determine the typological and categorical features of artistic discourse, to establish and describe the most important aspects of the study of artistic texts of different genres within discourse.Methods. The paper uses general scientific methods of observation, analysis, synthesis, comparison; linguistic methods, including the descriptive method – to interpret the discursive status of the literary text; the method of integrative analysis, which is the basis of a comprehensive study of a set of different aspects used in the study of the literary text as the embodiment of individualauthorial communicative intentions; the contextual-interpretive method – to identify probable reading strategies of reception of the literary text and its components.Results. The concept of discourse in the broadest sense is associated with all manifestations of communication. Discourse is a consequence of modeling knowledge structures that provide strategic planning, flow and control of communication, the operation of mechanisms of communicative competence, regulation of interactivity processes and more. An important communicative-semantic segment of the holistic nature of the analyzed concept is its interaction with various factors that reflect the essence of communication, in particular with the concept of the text. The linguistic tradition still has a great influence on the development of theoretical principles of categorization and typology of the concept of discourse, because until recently the discourse was often identified with the text as a complex linguistic sign that arises as a result of the process of language formation. Currently, researchers outline the structural and semantic parameters of the text with a number of features that also appear relevant and objective for the discourse: completeness; coherence; integrity; lexical, grammatical, logical, stylistic, semantic coherence; compositional completeness; communicative and pragmatic orientation, etc. Differentiation of discourses is one of the most important issues of modern discourse, which is currently a problem that researchers, based on a wide range of different socio-linguistic manifestations of communication, solve differently. To establish a typology of discourses, as well as texts, it is necessary to develop common criteria for their classification and determine the main categories of text and discourse. Artistic discourse, in contrast to other discourses, involves indirect communication of the author (sender) with numerous readers (addressees). When creating a text, the writer predicts the expected reaction to its content from readers, instead of “translating” the literary text into the discourse, the recipients carry out in their own way, based on their own knowledge, experience, feelings and emotions. The interaction of the addressee author with numerous addressees is devoid of real communicative factors, in particular temporal and local fixation. Despite the lack of direct contact, the writer's communicative influence on readers is obviously effective: if the artist has a deep knowledge of the language, individualizes and emphasizes linguistic means, it evokes a certain attitude to his literary texts and their evaluation by readers.Discussion. At the present stage of development of texts of any styles and genres requires discursive analysis, because in the language of fiction recorded authorial intentions that should “decipher” speakers in the process of dynamic cognition of semantic and semantic depths of a text, involving their own practical experience and knowledge during its decoding. We see prospects for further research of this topical problem in the study of features of artistic discourses of classic writers and famous contemporary artists, whose language creation is organically connected with the development of the Ukrainian literary word as an important component of the linguistic and cultural universe.

Abstract:

Anyone contemplating the role of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in literary and cultural studies must concede that the phrase is rarely used—even by its most devout practitioners, who usually think of themselves engaged in something called “critique.” What, then, are the terminological differences between “critique” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion”? What intellectual worlds do these specific terms conjure up, and how do these worlds converge or diverge? And what is the rationale for preferring one term over the other?The “hermeneutics of suspicion” is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. In spite of their obvious differences, he argued, these thinkers jointly constitute a “school of suspicion.” That is to say, they share a commitment to unmasking “the lies and illusions of consciousness;” they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths (Ricoeur 356). Ricoeur’s term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields, yet it never really took hold in literary studies. Why has a field that has devoted so much of its intellectual energy to interrogating, subverting, and defamiliarising found so little use for Ricoeur’s phrase?In general, we can note that hermeneutics remains a path not taken in Anglo-American literary theory. The tradition of hermeneutical thinking is rarely acknowledged (how often do you see Gadamer or Ricoeur taught in a theory survey?), let alone addressed, assimilated, or argued over. Thanks to a lingering aura of teutonic stodginess, not to mention its long-standing links with a tradition of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics was never able to muster the intellectual edginess and high-wattage excitement generated by various forms of poststructuralism. Even the work of Gianni Vattimo, one of the most innovative and prolific of contemporary hermeneutical thinkers, has barely registered in the mainstream of literary and cultural studies. On occasion, to be sure, hermeneutics crops up as a synonym for a discredited model of “depth” interpretation—the dogged pursuit of a hidden true meaning—that has supposedly been superseded by more sophisticated forms of thinking. Thus the ascent of poststructuralism, it is sometimes claimed, signaled a turn away from hermeneutics to deconstruction and genealogy—leading to a focus on surface rather than depth, on structure rather than meaning, on analysis rather than interpretation. The idea of suspicion has fared little better. While Ricoeur’s account of a hermeneutics of suspicion is respectful, even admiring, critics are understandably leery of having their lines of argument reduced to their putative state of mind. The idea of a suspicious hermeneutics can look like an unwarranted personalisation of scholarly work, one that veers uncomfortably close to Harold Bloom’s tirades against the “School of Resentment” and other conservative complaints about literary studies as a hot-bed of paranoia, kill-joy puritanism, petty-minded pique, and defensive scorn. Moreover, the anti-humanist rhetoric of much literary theory—its resolute focus on transpersonal and usually linguistic structures of determination—proved inhospitable to any serious reflections on attitude, disposition, or affective stance.The concept of critique, by contrast, turns out to be marred by none of these disadvantages. An unusually powerful, flexible and charismatic idea, it has rendered itself ubiquitous and indispensable in literary and cultural studies. Critique is widely seen as synonymous with intellectual rigor, theoretical sophistication, and intransigent opposition to the status quo. Drawing a sense of intellectual weightiness from its connections to the canonical tradition of Kant and Marx, it has managed, nonetheless, to retain a cutting-edge sensibility, retooling itself to fit the needs of new fields ranging from postcolonial theory to disability studies. Critique is contagious and charismatic, drawing everything around it into its field of force, marking the boundaries of what counts as serious thought. For many scholars in the humanities, it is not just one good thing but the only conceivable thing. Who would want to be associated with the bad smell of the uncritical? There are five facets of critique (enumerated and briefly discussed below) that characterise its current role in literary and cultural studies and that have rendered critique an exceptionally successful rhetorical-cultural actor. Critique, that is to say, inspires intense attachments, serves as a mediator in numerous networks, permeates disciplines and institutional structures, spawns conferences, essays, courses, and book proposals, and triggers countless imitations, translations, reflections, revisions, and rebuttals (including the present essay). While nurturing a sense of its own marginality, iconoclasm, and outsiderdom, it is also exceptionally effective at attracting disciples, forging alliances, inspiring mimicry, and ensuring its own survival. In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” Bruno Latour remarks that critique has been so successful because it assures us that we are always right—unlike those naïve believers whose fetishes we strive to expose (225–48). At the same time, thanks to its self-reflexivity, the rhetoric of critique is more tormented and self-divided than such a description would suggest; it broods constantly over the shame of its own success, striving to detect signs of its own complicity and to root out all possible evidence of collusion with the status quo.Critique is negative. Critique retains the adversarial force of a suspicious hermeneutics, while purifying it of affective associations by treating negativity as an essentially philosophical or political matter. To engage in critique is to grapple with the oversights, omissions, contradictions, insufficiencies, or evasions in the object one is analysing. Robert Koch writes that “critical discourse, as critical discourse, must never formulate positive statements: it is always ‘negative’ in relation to its object” (531). Critique is characterised by its “againstness,” by its desire to take a hammer, as Latour would say, to the beliefs of others. Faith is to be countered with vigilant skepticism, illusion yields to a sobering disenchantment, the fetish must be defetishised, the dream world stripped of its befuddling powers. However, the negativity of critique is not just a matter of fault-finding, scolding, and censuring. The nay-saying critic all too easily calls to mind the Victorian patriarch, the thin-lipped schoolmarm, the glaring policeman. Negating is tangled up with a long history of legislation, prohibition and interdiction—it can come across as punitive, arrogant, authoritarian, or vitriolic. In consequence, defenders of critique often downplay its associations with outright condemnation. It is less a matter of refuting particular truths than of scrutinising the presumptions and procedures through which truths are established. A preferred idiom is that of “problematising,” of demonstrating the ungroundedness of beliefs rather than denouncing errors. The role of critique is not to castigate, but to complicate, not to engage in ideas’ destruction but to expose their cultural construction. Barbara Johnson, for example, contends that a critique of a theoretical system “is not an examination of its flaws and imperfections” (xv). Rather, “the critique reads backwards from what seems natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal in order to show that these things have their history” and to show that the “start point is not a (natural) given, but a (cultural) construct, usually blind to itself” (Johnson xv–xvi). Yet it seems a tad disingenuous to describe such critique as free of negative judgment and the examination of flaws. Isn’t an implicit criticism being transmitted in Johnson’s claim that a cultural construct is “usually blind to itself”? And the adjectival chain “natural, obvious, self-evident, or universal” strings together some of the most negatively weighted words in contemporary criticism. A posture of detachment, in other words, can readily convey a tacit or implicit judgment, especially when it is used to probe the deep-seated convictions, primordial passions, and heart-felt attachments of others. In this respect, the ongoing skirmishes between ideology critique and poststructuralist critique do not over-ride their commitment to a common ethos: a sharply honed suspicion that goes behind the backs of its interlocutors to retrieve counter-intuitive and uncomplimentary meanings. “You do not know that you are ideologically-driven, historically determined, or culturally constructed,” declares the subject of critique to the object of critique, “but I do!” As Marcelo Dascal points out, the supposedly non-evaluative stance of historical or genealogical argument nevertheless retains a negative or demystifying force in tracing ideas back to causes invisible to the actors themselves (39–62).Critique is secondary. A critique is always a critique of something, a commentary on another argument, idea, or object. Critique does not vaunt its self-sufficiency, independence, and autotelic splendor; it makes no pretense of standing alone. It could not function without something to critique, without another entity to which it reacts. Critique is symbiotic; it does its thinking by responding to the thinking of others. But while secondary, critique is far from subservient. It seeks to wrest from a text a different account than it gives of itself. In doing so, it assumes that it will meet with, and overcome, a resistance. If there were no resistance, if the truth were self-evident and available for all to see, the act of critique would be superfluous. Its goal is not the slavish reconstruction of an original or true meaning but a counter-reading that brings previously unfathomed insights to light. The secondariness of critique is not just a logical matter—critique presumes the existence of a prior object—but also a temporal one. Critique comes after another text; it follows or succeeds another piece of writing. Critique, then, looks backward and, in doing so, it presumes to understand the past better than the past understands itself. Hindsight becomes insight; from our later vantage point, we feel ourselves primed to see better, deeper, further. The belatedness of critique is transformed into a source of iconoclastic strength. Scholars of Greek tragedy or Romantic poetry may mourn their inability to inhabit a vanished world, yet this historical distance is also felt as a productive estrangement that allows critical knowledge to unfold. Whatever the limitations of our perspective, how can we not know more than those who have come before? We moderns leave behind us a trail of errors, finally corrected, like a cloud of ink from a squid, remarks Michel Serres (48). There is, in short, a quality of historical chauvinism built into critique, making it difficult to relinquish a sense of in-built advantage over those lost souls stranded in the past. Critique likes to have the last word. Critique is intellectual. Critique often insists on its difference from everyday practices of criticism and judgment. While criticism evaluates a specific object, according to one definition, “critique is concerned to identify the conditions of possibility under which a domain of objects appears” (Butler 109). Critique is interested in big pictures, cultural frameworks, underlying schema. It is a mode of thought well matched to the library and seminar room, to a rhythm of painstaking inquiry rather than short-term problem-solving. It “slows matters down, requires analysis and reflection, and often raises questions rather than providing answers” (Ruitenberg 348). Critique is thus irresistibly drawn toward self-reflexive thinking. Its domain is that of second-level observation, in which we reflect on the frames, paradigms, and perspectives that form and inform our understanding. Even if objectivity is an illusion, how can critical self-consciousness not trump the available alternatives? This questioning of common sense is also a questioning of common language: self-reflexivity is a matter of form as well as content, requiring the deployment of what Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb call “difficult language” that can undermine or “un-write” the discourses that make up our world (1–14). Along similar lines, Paul Bove allies himself with a “tradition that insists upon difficulty, slowness, complex, often dialectical and highly ironic styles,” as an essential antidote to the “prejudices of the current regime of truth: speed, slogans, transparency, and reproducibility” (167). Critique, in short, demands an arduous working over of language, a stoic refusal of the facile phrase and ready-made formula. Yet such programmatic divisions between critique and common sense have the effect of relegating ordinary language to a state of automatic servitude, while condescending to those unschooled in the patois of literary and critical theory. Perhaps it is time to reassess the dog-in-the-manger attitude of a certain style of academic argument—one that assigns to scholars the vantage point of the lucid and vigilant thinker, while refusing to extend this same capacity to those naïve and unreflecting souls of whom they speak.Critique comes from below. Politics and critique are often equated and conflated in literary studies and elsewhere. Critique is iconoclastic in spirit; it rails against authority; it seeks to lay bare the injustices of the law. It is, writes Foucault, the “art of voluntary insubordination, that of reflected intractability” (194). This vision of critique can be traced back to Marx and is cemented in the tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. Critique conceives of itself as coming from below, or being situated at the margins; it is the natural ally of excluded groups and subjugated knowledges; it is not just a form of knowledge but a call to action. But who gets to claim the mantle of opposition, and on what grounds? In a well-known essay, Nancy Fraser remarks that critical theory possesses a “partisan though not uncritical identification” with oppositional social movements (97). As underscored by Fraser’s judicious insertion of the phrase “not uncritical,” critique guards its independence and reserves the right to query the actions and attitudes of the oppressed as well as the oppressors. Thus the intellectual’s affiliation with a larger community may collide with a commitment to the ethos of critique, as the object of a more heartfelt attachment. A separation occurs, as Francois Cusset puts it, “between academics questioning the very methods of questioning” and the more immediate concerns of the minority groups with which they are allied (157). One possible strategy for negotiating this tension is to flag one’s solidarity with a general principle of otherness or alterity—often identified with the utopian or disruptive energies of the literary text. This strategy gives critique a shot in the arm, infusing it with a dose of positive energy and ethical substance, yet without being pinned down to the ordinariness of a real-world referent. This deliberate vagueness permits critique to nurture its mistrust of the routines and practices through which the everyday business of the world is conducted, while remaining open to the possibility of a radically different future. Critique in its positive aspects thus remains effectively without content, gesturing toward a horizon that must remain unspecified if it is not to lapse into the same fallen state as the modes of thought that surround it (Fish 446).Critique does not tolerate rivals. Declaring itself uniquely equipped to diagnose the perils and pitfalls of representation, critique often chafes at the presence of other forms of thought. Ruling out the possibility of peaceful co-existence or even mutual indifference, it insists that those who do not embrace its tenets must be denying or disavowing them. In this manner, whatever is different from critique is turned into the photographic negative of critique—evidence of an irrefutable lack or culpable absence. To refuse to be critical is to be uncritical; a judgment whose overtones of naiveté, apathy, complacency, submissiveness, and sheer stupidity seem impossible to shrug off. In short, critique thinks of itself as exceptional. It is not one path, but the only conceivable path. Drew Milne pulls no punches in his programmatic riff on Kant: “to be postcritical is to be uncritical: the critical path alone remains open” (18).The exceptionalist aura of critique often thwarts attempts to get outside its orbit. Sociologist Michael Billig, for example, notes that critique thinks of itself as battling orthodoxy, yet is now the reigning orthodoxy—no longer oppositional, but obligatory, not defamiliarising, but oppressively familiar: “For an increasing number of younger academics,” he remarks, “the critical paradigm is the major paradigm in their academic world” (Billig 292). And in a hard-hitting argument, Talal Asad points out that critique is now a quasi-automatic stance for Western intellectuals, promoting a smugness of tone that can be cruelly dismissive of the deeply felt beliefs and attachments of others. Yet both scholars conclude their arguments by calling for a critique of critique, reinstating the very concept they have so meticulously dismantled. Critique, it seems, is not to be abandoned but intensified; critique is to be replaced by critique squared. The problem with critique, it turns out, is that it is not yet critical enough. The objections to critique are still very much part and parcel of the critique-world; the value of the critical is questioned only to be emphatically reinstated.Why do these protestations against critique end up worshipping at the altar of critique? Why does it seem so exceptionally difficult to conceive of other ways of arguing, reading, and thinking? We may be reminded of Eve Sedgwick’s comments on the mimetic aspect of critical interpretation: its remarkable ability to encourage imitation, repetition, and mimicry, thereby ensuring its own reproduction. It is an efficiently running form of intellectual machinery, modeling a style of thought that is immediately recognisable, widely applicable, and easily teachable. Casting the work of the scholar as a never-ending labour of distancing, deflating, and diagnosing, it rules out the possibility of a different relationship to one’s object. It seems to grow, as Sedgwick puts it, “like a crystal in a hypersaturated solution, blotting out any sense of the possibility of alternative ways of understanding or things to understand” (131).In this context, a change in vocabulary—a redescription, if you will—may turn out to be therapeutic. It will come as no great surprise if I urge a second look at the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur’s phrase, I suggest, can help guide us through the interpretative tangle of contemporary literary studies. It seizes on two crucial parts of critical argument—its sensibility and its interpretative method—that deserve more careful scrutiny. At the same time, it offers a much-needed antidote to the charisma of critique: the aura of ethical and political exemplarity that burnishes its negativity with a normative glow. Thanks to this halo effect, I’ve suggested, we are encouraged to assume that the only alternative to critique is a full-scale surrender to complacency, quietism, and—in literary studies—the intellectual fluff of aesthetic appreciation. Critique, moreover, presents itself as an essentially disembodied intellectual exercise, an austere, even abstemious practice of unsettling, unmaking, and undermining. Yet contemporary styles of critical argument are affective as well as analytical, conjuring up distinctive dispositions and relations to their object. As Amanda Anderson has pointed out in The Way We Argue Now, literary and cultural theory is saturated with what rhetoricians call ethos—that is to say, imputations of motive, character, or attitude. We need only think of the insouciance associated with Rortyan pragmatism, the bad-boy iconoclasm embraced by some queer theorists, or the fastidious aestheticism that characterises a certain kind of deconstructive reading. Critical languages, in other words, are also orientations, encouraging readers to adopt an affectively tinged stance toward their object. Acknowledging the role of such orientations in critical debate does not invalidate its intellectual components, nor does it presume to peer into, or diagnose, an individual scholar’s state of mind.In a related essay, I scrutinise some of the qualities of a suspicious or critical reading practice: distance rather than closeness; guardedness rather than openness; aggression rather than submission; superiority rather than reverence; attentiveness rather than distraction; exposure rather than tact (215–34). Suspicion, in this sense, constitutes a muted affective state—a curiously non-emotional emotion of morally inflected mistrust—that overlaps with, and builds upon, the stance of detachment that characterises the stance of the professional or expert. That this style of reading proves so alluring has much to do with the gratifications and satisfactions that it offers. Beyond the usual political or philosophical justifications of critique, it also promises the engrossing pleasure of a game-like sparring with the text in which critics deploy inventive skills and innovative strategies to test their wits, best their opponents, and become sharper, shrewder, and more sophisticated players. In this context, the claim that contemporary criticism has moved “beyond” hermeneutics should be treated with a grain of salt, given that, as Stanley Fish points out, “interpretation is the only game in town” (446). To be sure, some critics have backed away from the model of what they call “depth interpretation” associated with Marx and Freud, in which reading is conceived as an act of digging and the critic, like a valiant archaeologist, excavates a resistant terrain in order to retrieve the treasure of hidden meaning. In this model, the text is envisaged as possessing qualities of interiority, concealment, penetrability, and depth; it is an object to be plundered, a puzzle to be solved, a secret message to be deciphered. Instead, poststructuralist critics are drawn to the language of defamiliarising rather than discovery. The text is no longer composed of strata and the critic does not burrow down but stands back. Instead of brushing past surface meanings in pursuit of hidden truth, she dwells in ironic wonder on these surface meanings, seeking to “denaturalise” them through the mercilessness of her gaze. Insight, we might say, is achieved by distancing rather than by digging. Recent surveys of criticism often highlight the rift between these camps, underscoring the differences between the diligent seeker after buried truth and the surface-dwelling ironist. From a Ricoeur-inflected point of view, however, it is their shared investment in a particular ethos—a stance of knowingness, guardedness, suspicion and vigilance—that turns out to be more salient and more striking. Moreover, these approaches are variously engaged in the dance of interpretation, seeking to go beyond the backs of texts or fellow-actors in order to articulate non-obvious and often counter-intuitive truths. In the case of poststructuralism, we can speak of a second-order hermeneutics that is less interested in probing the individual object than the larger frameworks and conditions in which it is embedded. What the critic interprets is no longer a self-contained poem or novel, but a broader logic of discursive structures, reading formations, or power relations. Ricoeur’s phrase, moreover, has the singular advantage of allowing us to by-pass the exceptionalist tendencies of critique: its presumption that whatever is not critique can only be assigned to the ignominious state of the uncritical. As a less prejudicial term, it opens up a larger history of suspicious reading, including traditions of religious questioning and self-scrutiny that bear on current forms of interpretation, but that are occluded by the aggressively secular connotations of critique (Hunter). In this context, Ricoeur’s own account needs to be supplemented and modified to acknowledge this larger cultural history; the hermeneutics of suspicion is not just the brain-child of a few exceptional thinkers, as his argument implies, but a widespread practice of interpretation embedded in more mundane, diffuse and variegated forms of life (Felski 220).Finally, the idea of a suspicious hermeneutics does not invalidate or rule out other interpretative possibilities—ranging from Ricoeur’s own notion of a hermeneutics of trust to more recent coinages such as Sedgwick’s “restorative reading,” Sharon Marcus’s “just reading” or Timothy Bewes’s “generous reading.” Literary studies in France, for example, is currently experiencing a new surge of interest in hermeneutics (redefined as a practice of reinvention rather than exhumation) as well as a reinvigorated phenomenology of reading that elucidates, in rich and fascinating detail, its immersive and affective dimensions (see Citton; Macé). This growing interest in the ethos, aesthetics, and ethics of reading is long overdue. Such an orientation by no means rules out attention to the sociopolitical resonances of texts and their interpretations. It is, however, no longer willing to subordinate such attention to the seductive but sterile dichotomy of the critical versus the uncritical.ReferencesAnderson, Amanda. The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.Asad, Talal. “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 20–63. Bewes, Timothy. “Reading with the Grain: A New World in Literary Studies.” Differences 21.3 (2010): 1–33.Billig, Michael. “Towards a Critique of the Critical.” Discourse and Society 11.3 (2000): 291–92. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.Bove, Paul. Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 1992. Butler, Judith. “The Sensibility of Critique: Response to Asad and Mahmood.” Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. Ed. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2009. 101–136.Citton, Yves. Lire, interpréter, actualiser: pourqoi les études littéraires? Paris: Editions Amsterdam, 2007. Culler, Jonathan and Kevin Lamb, “Introduction.” Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. Ed. Jonathan Culler and Kevin Lamb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 1–14. Cusset, Francois. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Trans. Jeff Fort. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008.Dascal, Marcelo. “Critique without Critics?” Science in Context 10.1 (1997): 39–62.Felski, Rita. “Suspicious Minds.” Poetics Today 32.2 (2011): 215–34.Fish, Stanley. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1989.Foucault, Michel. “What is Critique?” The Political. Ed. David Ingram. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 191–211. Fraser, Nancy. “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender.” New German Critique 35 (1985): 97–131. Hunter, Ian. Rethinking the School: Subjectivity, Bureaucracy, Criticism. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994.Johnson, Barbara. “Translator’s Introduction.” Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination. London: Continuum, 2004. vii–xxxv. Koch, Robert. “The Critical Gesture in Philosophy.” Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art. Ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Cambridge: MIT, 2002. 524–36. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–48.Macé, Marielle. Facons de lire, manières d’être. Paris: Gallimard, 2011. Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.Milne, Drew. “Introduction: Criticism and/or Critique.” Modern Critical Thought: An Anthology of Theorists Writing on Theorists. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. 1–22. Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. Ruitenberg, Claudia. “Don’t Fence Me In: The Liberation of Undomesticated Critique.” Journal of the Philosophy of Education 38.3 (2004): 314–50. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You.” Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 123–52. Serres, Michel and Bruno Latour. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Trans. Roxanne Lapidus. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.Vattimo, Gianni. Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy. Trans. David Webb. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Abstract:

This essay takes its point of departure from a well known excerpt found in the final pages of Michel Foucault’s text, The History of Sexuality: Volume One. It reads as follows: It is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim-through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality- to counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures and knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance. The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures. (157) Here for the first time in this text Foucault outlines a tactic for resisting the various mechanisms of sexuality. Yet, how are we to make sense of the potential sexual politics inherent to this claim? Not only does this passage mark a significant shift in the tone and style of Foucault’s writing but it is arguable that his tactic – our point of resistance should be aimed at bodies and pleasures as opposed to sex-desires – is problematic in light of his own conception of power and sexuality discussed earlier in the book. In re-reading the above passage we see that Foucault clearly acknowledges that “bodies, pleasures and knowledges” come to be in and through the exercising of power; so how is it that Foucault invokes the possibility for counterattacks on the level of bodies and pleasures yet not on the level of sex-desire? In plain language, what is Foucault trying to say here?Working with the understanding that power does indeed permeate and operate on the level of bodies, pleasures and knowledges through various deployments of sexuality, what possible contestations, or better yet rupturous moves (according to Foucault’s framework) are only possible within the field of bodies and pleasures and not at all possible within the field of sex-desire? What exactly is this demarcation Foucault presents between sex-desire and bodies and pleasures? And is it at all possible to imagine coalitional possibilities (of bodies, pleasures, and genders etc.) which break from what Foucault ambiguously refers to as “agencies of sex?”In order to properly address these concerns we require a revisiting of Foucault’s conceptualisation of power within the entire spectrum of sexuality, as well as an attempt to think what, why and how bodies and pleasures are a source of resistance for the future to come. If an essential part of Foucault’s project is to contest and move away from simple or inadequate understandings of power surely we cannot read this incitement to counterattacks on the level of bodies and pleasures as a naïve attempt to find an exit to the very networks of power and sex that he himself formulates. In reconsideration of the perplexity of what has become a landmark text in French Philosophy, this paper will advance under the impetus of two registers: one, in the process of retracing Foucault’s concerns with power and the agency of sex in The History of Sexuality: Volume One, and the other, equally cautious in our venture forward in the direction of new "rallying points" of unformed bodies and unknown pleasures. The one I imagine in full view, written with as little ambiguity as possible, the other an eclipse; offering little to words, seeking new coalitions at the limit of other bodies, other pleasures yet to be. First, in order to better understand the stakes of these concerns, let us look at how Foucault problematises power, and secondly how he describes the workings of power in relation to deployments of sexuality. In the opening chapter, Foucault begins by bringing into question the assumption that power operates within the domain of sexuality in a purely negative manner - what he terms the “repressive hypothesis” (Foucault 10). While Foucault admits that power can be restrictive and/or prohibitive it cannot be reduced nor simply understood as a negative force. Instead it is crucial that we examine power in terms of its positive and productive mechanisms. “The central issue,” Foucault writes is “not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions,” but rather to bring to light the productive forms of power that bring discourses and knowledges pertaining to sex into being. By moving towards an analysis of power which seeks to locate its positive techniques, power and sex come to be situated in a different light. The relationship between power and sex now becomes a generative concern. Further, a concern “to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behaviour, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it permeates and controls everyday pleasure.” Sex is to be understood as the “instrument-effect” (Foucault 48) of power; emerging, as it were in and though the various correlations and divergencies within discursive networks, generative fields of power and disseminations of knowledge. As much as Foucault makes it clear that the type of power brought to bear on sex-desire(s) and bodies and pleasures is of a generative nature and cannot be properly understood in the language of repression and restriction, his analysis of the relation between power and sex can be better understood in light of his discussion of peripheral sexualities in the nineteenth century. In Foucault’s discussion of “peripheral sexualities,” he notes that “the nineteenth century and our own have been rather the age of multiplication: a dispersion of sexualities, a strengthening of their disparate forms, a multiple implantation of ‘perversions’. Our epoch has initiated sexual heterogeneities” (Foucault 37). How are we to understand this claim? Foucault insists one should resist reading this change as a sign of social tolerance or a laxing of the legal code. Indeed there was so-called permissiveness, “if one bears in mind that the severity of the codes relating to sexual offenses diminished considerably in the nineteenth century and the law itself deferred to medicine” (Foucault 40). However, Foucault adds this is not to say that additional forms of power did not come into play, “if one thinks of all the agencies of control and all the mechanisms of surveillance that were put into operation by pedagogy and therapeutics” (Foucault 41). The rise of sexual heterogeneities and peripheral sexualities is not a result of power withdrawing from sex, but instead an “instrument-effect” of changes in strategies of power. Power becomes a productive, mobilising force for the emergence of various forms of knowledge on sex. A proliferation of discourses arise in, around and of sex, making it speak, writing its every move, describing, analysing, penetrating its darkest recesses. What were once illegible or ignored zones of desire are brought into an intelligible light. These new forms of power take hold of sex-desire, bodies and pleasures solidifying and penetrating modes of conduct, bringing into being new classifications of sexual types and normalising codes of sexual behaviour. Power and sex come to invest in each other. Not, as it were to restrict, set boundaries or avoid sex, but instead invest themselves in subjects, bodies and pleasures, “reinforce one another” and thus “provide places of maximum saturation” (Foucault 47). Before we turn back to our initial problem let us elaborate on Foucault’s notion of power “with respect to its nature, its form and its unity” (Foucault 47). For Foucault, it is no longer accurate to think of power in terms of hierarchy, (i.e. through the representation of a triangle, emanating from the top to the bottom) centrality (i.e. through the representation of a center moving towards the periphery) or rule by subjugation. Why? “In general terms,” Foucault argues, “interdictions, the refusal, the prohibition, far from being essential forms of power, are only its limits, power in its frustrated or extreme forms. The relations of power are, above all, productive” (Foucault 118). For Foucault these are negative, subtractive representations of power which nonetheless do exist but only in “terminal” (Foucault 92) forms. Power is not reducible to something that brings about the limit even though it is always in the process of circ*mscribing things. In fact power is not reducible at all; it is moreover inexhaustible and we should add, chameleon-like insofar as it is manifold. It cannot be thought to have a definitive form. Foucault describes it as a “moving substrate” (Foucault 93) that traverses, penetrates, networks, localises without being localisable and is everywhere in a state of tension. Power is everywhere there are relations of force. With respect to the question of resistance, for Foucault, it is not possible to dissociate power from resistance. Power and resistance are always co-present insofar as power operates with and against (with-against) force. “Where there is power,” Foucault writes, “there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (Foucault 95). It might be asked: Is all-encompassing (Absolute) power possible? Can everything be reduced to a question of power relations? Power has no central sourcing power, or unique Origin, it is everywhere, “not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Foucault 93). The possibility of all-encompassing power is the absolute limit to (of) power. For since we understand power as the instrument-effect of force relations, Absolute Power much the same as Absolute Resistance is the Impossible for power. Power operates with-against. With this said let us return to our initial concerns. Since we understand power and resistances as never absolute, this however does not rule out strategies for resistance. At the end of The History of Sexuality: Volume One, anticipating criticisms of his own work Foucault stages and addresses two questions that will be asked of his work in relation to bodies and sex. First, with respect to the question of bodies, he anticipates a claim that will assume that his analysis of sexuality fails to concede the biological givenness of bodies. In response Foucault makes it clear that “bodies” are not to be thought of as naturally or biologically given. Bodies are not constitutive or an outside, which is then subject to sexual analysis but instead bound, caught up and constituted by multiple strategies of power-sex-knowledge. His history of sexuality is not one of sex on one hand and bodies on the other. Instead it is “to show how deployments of power are directly connected to the body- to bodies, functions, physiological processes, sensations, and pleasures.” Foucault is not doing a history of the Idea(s) of the body “that would account for bodies only through the manner in which they have been perceived and given meaning and value,” but rather a history of how bodies come to be as such, “in which what is most material and most vital in them has been invested” (Foucault 152) with deployments of power.Second, Foucault anticipates that he will be read as presenting a history of sexuality that overlooks the givenness or the centrality of “sex” in human nature. This criticism rests on the belief that “sex” is separable to, but nonetheless the aim of deployments of sexuality; that pure, autonomous agency which is the internal mobilizing force for sexuality. For Foucault, this belief is part of the illusory ideal that is dispersed within our discourses on sexuality, that namely, sex is the truth of our interior, that unique something other, irreducible to bodies and pleasures, the mirror of self-truth. Resistances to sexuality cannot manifest themselves within this opposition between sex and sexuality. It is an illusory grounding. “Sex” emerges in and out of the various deployments of sexuality. It is not an outside. It is not a biological natural. It is the “instrument-effect” of discursive regimes of sexuality that bind sex-desire as bearing not only ones natural source of subjective uniqueness but also the disclosing force of truth. Much of the problems with contemporary sexual liberation movements are based on this illusory ideal. Resistance roots itself in sex-desire. In an interview discussing political resistance to deployments of sexuality, Foucault states: I believe that the movements labeled ‘sexual liberation’ ought to be understood as movements of affirmation “starting with” sexuality. Which means two things: they are movements that start with sexuality, with the apparatus of sexuality in the midst of which we’re caught, and which make it function to the limit; but at the same time, they are motion relative to it, disengaging themselves and surmounting it. (Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture 114-5)This anchoring of resistance within sex-desire conforms to the networks of power and control over sexuality that form these subjectivities as both given and in need of proper legitimation. The problem with resistance on the level of sex-desire is a result of its resistance “starting with” sexuality. Its own sexually determined subjectivities is only challenged in a certain manner which only contributes to a further networking and rooting of its sexuality within matrices of power and control. Even though what are called “sexual liberation movements” exercise strategies of resistance, the agency of sex and its various mechanisms of historical construction will never be overcome simply because its resistance starts and operates within social constructs of sexual nature.So we must ask, why and what are we to make of bodies and pleasures? Do bodies and pleasures offer different coalitional possibilities for resistance to the agency of sex? If we understand deployments of sexuality as both the instrument and effect of sex-desire/bodies and pleasures, our line of demarcation cannot be grounded in accessibility to power – for everything that we have come to experience as “sexual” is part of networks of power-sex-knowledge. However since both domains are gripped (Foucault’s term) by power, why should we assume that there is equality or even a sameness of power relations operating within these domains? Could we not assume channels and techniques of power operate different in each of these domains? And, therefore, if we want to consider the possibility of resistance(s), perhaps we will have to account for the accessible domains of sex-desire (without rooting ourselves within them, i.e. starting-with) but explore its excessible limits – that is, bodies and pleasures yet to be.Judith Butler brings forth concerns of this nature in her essay on the same passage of Foucault’s entitled “Revisiting Bodies and Pleasures”. Of Butler’s many concerns, one in particular is the question of agency. “These bodies, these pleasures,” she writes, “where do they come from, and in what does their agency consist, if they are the agency that counters the regime of sex-desire?” (Butler 14). For Butler, not only is agency a concern but also resources and collectivity. “And who are the ‘we,’” she continues, “who are said to exercise this agency against the agency of sex? What are the resources that counter the regulation of sexuality if they are not in some sense derived from the discursive resources of normative regulation?” (Butler 14). If such a break is possible, which Butler is hesitant to accept, what sort of relation would it take to the ‘overthrown’ agency of sex? How can we ensure against the establishing of new regulatory orders localised within bodies and pleasures? For Butler it makes no sense to divide and oppose bodies and pleasures and sex-desire, because “if the normativity of the latter continues to haunt and structure the lived modalities of the former,” then we might possibly “deprive ourselves of the critical tools we need in order to read the trace and phantom of heteronormativity in the midst of our imagined transcendence” (Butler 18). Thus I agree with her fear that the exuberance of a certain kind of utopianism “works in the service of maintaining a compulsory ignorance, and where the break between the past and present keeps us from being able to see the trace of the past as it re-emerges in the very contours of an imagined future” (Butler 18). Although Butler brings to light some pertinent concerns that complicate any utopian imagination for bodies and pleasures, surprisingly, she makes no mention of Foucault’s discussion of ars erotica made in the middle part of The History of Sexuality, which, I argue, might be the missing keystone we have been looking for in our attempt to understand Foucault incitement to bodies and pleasures. For Foucault ars erotica is one of two “great procedures for producing the truth on sex” (Foucault 97) which draws truth not from desire but the experience of pleasure itself. His definition of the practices of ars erotica distinguish an order of experience manifest in bodies and pleasures that differs from the agency of sex-desire insofar as the organising principle for truth is not sex but pleasure. Moreover it is the emergence of different incitements, other figures of truth that operate not independent of power relations but independent of regulatory, classifiable schemas “geared to a form of knowledge-power” that has its tradition in the West (Foucault 58). Pleasure “is understood as a practice and accumulated in experience” (Foucault 57) lacking recourse to a desiring subject. Both singular (without the necessary invoking of a subject) and multiple (effusive in its intensity). “It is experienced as pleasure,” Foucault writes, “evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul,” with effects that bring about “an absolute mastery of the body, a singular bliss, obliviousness to time and limits, the elixir of life, the exile of death and its threats” (Foucault 58). Here I think we have found the keystone to Foucault’s incitement towards bodies and pleasures. In his description of ars erotica there is no discussion of sexual subjects, couplings of truth and desire, only an untiring will to carry the experience of bodies and pleasures to their apex; movements of concentration and dispersion, challenging the possibilities of existence to the limit of life and death, engaging the limit by attempting to carry it into the abyss of the outside. Perhaps it is here that we can begin to see Foucault’s incitement to bodies and pleasures in a new light. Bodies and pleasures are resistive insofar as they are productive of deploying not subjects yet to be, but experiences yet to be. Ars Erotica is not to be championed as an apparatus for the replacement of agencies of sex. Foucault should not be seen as "rushing to embrace" (Butler 20) a lost paradise of ars erotica or worse bring it forth as a new regulatory order. Rather he incites the possibility of a singular ethos to rupture the limits of the present with experiences of bodies and pleasures that consummate themselves in the immediate while escaping, or better, remaining in excess to the grasp of that power which seeks to render them intelligible, and thus conferrable to regulation. Bodies and pleasures – whatever we are to make of them – are never entirely inside or outside power relations, but rather traversed at, on, as the limit. Foucault is after this continuous play of limits and new admixtures of experience that result from this liminal play. Yet, what if it is not the entire dismantling of sex-desire “in order to turn to pleasure,” that he imagines or even thinks possible, but rather movements “to experience and re-experience the pleasure of the break itself, the pleasure of continually breaking with that past, a pleasure that can only be sustained if the past does not vanish through the act by which it is renounced” (Butler 18)? Perhaps it is here that we catch a glimpse at a “rallying point” for the break with agencies of sex, however temporary, however micro such a rupture may yield.ReferencesButler, Judith. “Revisiting Bodies and Pleasures.” Theory, Culture & Society 16.2 (1999): 11-20.Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.———. Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984. Trans. Alan Sheridan and Others. Ed. with Intro: Lawrence D. Kritzman. Routledge: New York and London, 1988.

Abstract:

"verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice" (Barrett 1)IntroductionMany of us share in an obsessive collecting of cookbooks and recipes. Torn or cut from newspapers and magazines, recipes sit swelling scrapbooks with bloated, unfilled desire. They’re non-hybrid seeds, peas under the mattress, an endless cycle of reproduction. Desire and narrative are folded into each other in our drive, as humans, to create meaning. But what holds us to narrative is good writing. And what can also drive desire is image—literal as well as metaphorical—the visceral pleasure of the gaze, or looking and viewing the sensually aesthetic and the work of the imagination. Creative WritingCooking, winemaking, and food and wine writing can all be considered art. For example, James Halliday (31), the eminent Australian wine critic, posed the question “Is winemaking an art?,” answering: “Most would say so” (31). Cookbooks are stories within stories, narratives that are both factual and imagined, everyday and fantastic—created by both writer and reader from where, along with its historical, cultural and publishing context, a text gets its meaning. Creative writing, in broad terms of genre, is either fiction (imagined, made-up) or creative nonfiction (true, factual). Genre comes from the human taxonomic impulse to create order from chaos through cataloguing and classification. In what might seem overwhelming infinite variety, we establish categories and within them formulas and conventions. But genres are not necessarily stable or clear-cut, and variation in a genre can contribute to its de/trans/formation (Curti 33). Creative nonfiction includes life writing (auto/biography) and food writing among other subgenres (although these subgenres can also be part of fiction). Cookbooks sit within the creative nonfiction genre. More clearly, dietary or nutrition manuals are nonfiction, technical rather than creative. Recipe writing specifically is perhaps less an art and more a technical exercise; generally it’s nonfiction, or between that and creative nonfiction. (One guide to writing recipes is Ostmann and Baker.) Creative writing is built upon approximately five, more or less, fundamentals of practice: point of view or focalisation or who narrates, structure (plot or story, and theme), characterisation, heightened or descriptive language, setting, and dialogue (not in any order of importance). (There are many handbooks on creative writing, that will take a writer through these fundamentals.) Style or voice derives from what a writer writes about (their recurring themes), and how they write about it (their vocabulary choice, particular use of imagery, rhythm, syntax etc.). Traditionally, as a reader, and writer, you are either a plot person or character person, but you can also be interested primarily in ideas or language, and in the popular or literary.Cookbooks as Creative NonfictionCookbooks often have a sense of their author’s persona or subjectivity as a character—that is, their proclivities, lives and thus ideology, and historical, social and cultural place and time. Memoir, a slice of the author–chef/cook’s autobiography, is often explicitly part of the cookbook, or implicit in the nature of the recipes, and the para-textual material which includes the book’s presentation and publishing context, and the writer’s biographical note and acknowledgements. And in relation to the latter, here's Australian wine educator Colin Corney telling us, in his biographical note, about his nascent passion for wine: “I returned home […] stony broke. So the next day I took a job as a bottleshop assistant at Moore Park Cellars […] to tide me over—I stayed three years!” (xi). In this context, character and place, in the broadest sense, are inevitably evoked. So in conjunction with this para-textual material, recipe ingredients and instructions, visual images and the book’s production values combine to become the components for authoring a fictive narrative of self, space and time—fictive, because writing inevitably, in a broad or conceptual sense, fictionalises everything, since it can only re-present through language and only from a particular point of view.The CookbooksTo talk about the art of cookbooks, I make a judgmental (from a creative-writer's point of view) case study of four cookbooks: Lyndey Milan and Colin Corney’s Balance: Matching Food and Wine, Sean Moran’s Let It Simmer (this is the first edition; the second is titled Let It Simmer: From Bush to Beach and Onto Your Plate), Kate Lamont’s Wine and Food, and Greg Duncan Powell’s Rump and a Rough Red (this is the second edition; the first was The Pig, the Olive & the Squid: Food & Wine from Humble Beginnings) I discuss reading, writing, imaging, and designing, which, together, form the nexus for interpreting these cookbooks in particular. The choice of these books was only relatively random, influenced by my desire to see how Australia, a major wine-producing country, was faring with discussion of wine and food choices; by the presence of discursive text beyond technical presentation of recipes, and of photographs and purposefully artful design; and by familiarity with names, restaurants and/or publishers. Reading Moran's cookbook is a model of good writing in its use of selective and specific detail directed towards a particular theme. The theme is further created or reinforced in the mix of narrative, language use, images and design. His writing has authenticity: a sense of an original, distinct voice.Moran’s aphoristic title could imply many things, but, in reading the cookbook, you realise it resonates with a mindfulness that ripples throughout his writing. The aphorism, with its laidback casualness (legendary Australian), is affectively in sync with the chef’s approach. Jacques Derrida said of the aphorism that it produces “an echo of really curious, indelible power” (67).Moran’s aim for his recipes is that they be about “honest, home-style cooking” and bringing “out a little bit of the professional chef in the home cook”, and they are “guidelines” available for “sparkle” and seduction from interpretation (4). The book lives out this persona and personal proclivities. Moran’s storytellings are specifically and solely highlighted in the Contents section which structures the book via broad categories (for example, "Grains" featuring "The dance of the paella" and "Heaven" featuring "A trifle coming on" for example). In comparison, Powell uses "The Lemon", for example, as well as "The Sheep". The first level of Contents in Lamont’s book is done by broad wine styles: sparkling, light white, robust white and so on, and the second level is the recipe list in each of these sections. Lamont’s "For me, matching food and wine comes down to flavour" (xiii) is not as dramatic or expressive as Powell’s "Wine: the forgotten condiment." Although food is first in Milan and Corney’s book’s subtitle, their first content is wine, then matching food with colour and specific grape, from Sauvignon Blanc to Barbera and more. Powell claims that the third of his rules (the idea of rules is playful but not comedic) for choosing the best wine per se is to combine region with grape variety. He covers a more detailed and diversified range of grape varieties than Lamont, systematically discussing them first-up. Where Lamont names wine styles, Powell points out where wine styles are best represented in Australian states and regions in a longish list (titled “13 of the best Australian grape and region combos”). Lamont only occasionally does this. Powell discusses the minor alternative white, Arneis, and major alternative reds such as Barbera and Nebbiolo (Allen 81, 85). This engaging detail engenders a committed reader. Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo are as alternative as Lamont gets. In contrast to Moran's laidbackness, Lamont emphasises professionalism: "My greatest pleasure as a chef is knowing that guests have enjoyed the entire food and wine experience […] That means I have done my job" (xiii). Her reminders of the obvious are, nevertheless, noteworthy: "Thankfully we have moved on from white wine/white meat and red wine/red meat" (xiv). She then addresses the alterations in flavour caused by "method of cooking" and "combination of ingredients", with examples. One such is poached chicken and mango crying "out for a vibrant, zesty Riesling" (xiii): but where from, I ask? Roast chicken with herbs and garlic would favour "red wine with silky tannin" and "chocolatey flavours" (xiii): again, I ask, where from? Powell claims "a different evolution" for his book "to the average cookbook" (7). In recipes that have "a wine focus", there are no "pretty […] little salads, or lavish […] cakes" but "brown" albeit tasty food that will not require ingredients from "poncy inner-city providores", be easy to cook, and go with a cheap, budget-based wine (7). While this identity-setting is empathetic for a Powell clone, and I am envious of his skill with verbiage, he doesn’t deliver dreaming or desire. Milan and Corney do their best job in an eye-catching, informative exemplar list of food and wine matches: "Red duck curry and Barossa Valley Shiraz" for example (7), and in wine "At-a-glance" tables, telling us, for example, that the best Australian regions for Chardonnay are Margaret River and the Adelaide Hills (53). WritingThe "Introduction" to Moran’s cookbook is a slice of memoir, a portrait of a chef as a young man: the coming into being of passion, skill, and professionalism. And the introduction to the introduction is most memorable, being a loving description of his frugal Australian childhood dinners: creations of his mother’s use of manufactured, canned, and bottled substitutes-for-the-real, including Gravox and Dessert Whip (1). From his travel-based international culinary education in handmade, agrarian food, he describes "a head of buffalo mozzarella stuffed with ricotta and studded with white truffles" as "sheer beauty", "ambrosial flavour" and "edible white 'terrazzo'." The consonants b, s, t, d, and r are picked up and repeated, as are the vowels e, a, and o. Notice, too, the comparison of classic Italian food to an equally classic Italian artefact. Later, in an interactive text, questions are posed: "Who could now imagine life without this peppery salad green?" (23). Moran uses the expected action verbs of peel, mince, toss, etc.: "A bucket of tiny clams needs a good tumble under the running tap" (92). But he also uses the unexpected hug, nab, snuggle, waltz, "wave of garlic" and "raining rice." Milan and Corney display a metaphoric-language play too: the bubbles of a sparkling wine matching red meat become "the little red broom […] sweep[ing] away the […] cloying richness" (114). In contrast, Lamont’s cookbook can seem flat, lacking distinctiveness. But with a title like Wine and Food, perhaps you are not expecting much more than information, plain directness. Moran delivers recipes as reproducible with ease and care. An image of a restaurant blackboard menu with the word "chook" forestalls intimidation. Good quality, basic ingredients and knowledge of their source and season carry weight. The message is that food and drink are due respect, and that cooking is neither a stressful, grandiose nor competitive activity. While both Moran and Lamont have recipes for Duck Liver Pâté—with the exception that Lamont’s is (disturbingly, for this cook) "Parfait", Moran also has Lentil Patties, a granola, and a number of breads. Lamont has Brioche (but, granted, without the yeast, seeming much easier to make). Powell’s Plateless Pork is "mud pies for grown-ups", and you are asked to cook a "vat" of sauce. This communal meal is "a great way to spread communicable diseases", but "fun." But his passionately delivered historical information mixed with the laconic attitude of a larrikin (legendary Australian again) transform him into a sage, a step up from the monastery (Powell is photographed in dress-up friar’s habit). Again, the obvious is noteworthy in Milan and Corney’s statement that Rosé "possesses qualities of both red and white wines" (116). "On a hot summery afternoon, sitting in the sun overlooking the view … what could be better?" (116). The interactive questioning also feeds in useful information: "there is a huge range of styles" for Rosé so "[g]rape variety is usually a good guide", and "increasingly we are seeing […] even […] Chambourcin" (116). Rosé is set next to a Bouillabaisse recipe, and, empathetically, Milan and Corney acknowledge that the traditional fish soup "can be intimidating" (116). Succinctly incorporated into the recipes are simple greyscale graphs of grape "Flavour Profiles" delineating the strength on the front and back palate and tongue (103).Imaging and DesigningThe cover of Moran’s cookbook in its first edition reproduces the colours of 1930–1940's beach towels, umbrellas or sunshades in matt stripes of blue, yellow, red, and green (Australian beaches traditionally have a grass verge; and, I am told (Costello), these were the colours of his restaurant Panoroma’s original upholstery). A second edition has the same back cover but a generic front cover shifting from the location of his restaurant to the food in a new subtitle: "From Bush to Beach and onto Your Plate". The front endpapers are Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach where Panoroma restaurant is embedded on the lower wall of an old building of flats, ubiquitous in Bondi, like a halved avocado, or a small shallow elliptic cave in one of the sandstone cliff-faces. The cookbook’s back endpapers are his bush-shack country. Surfaces, cooking equipment, table linen, crockery, cutlery and glassware are not ostentatious, but simple and subdued, in the colours and textures of nature/culture: ivory, bone, ecru, and cream; and linen, wire, wood, and cardboard. The mundane, such as a colander, is highlighted: humbleness elevated, hands at work, cooking as an embodied activity. Moran is photographed throughout engaged in cooking, quietly fetching in his slim, clean-cut, short-haired, altar-boyish good-looks, dressed casually in plain bone apron, t-shirt (most often plain white), and jeans. While some recipes are traditionally constructed, with the headnote, the list of ingredients and the discursive instructions for cooking, on occasion this is done by a double-page spread of continuous prose, inviting you into the story-telling. The typeface of Simmer varies to include a hand-written lookalike. The book also has a varied layout. Notes and small images sit on selected pages, as often as not at an asymmetric angle, with faux tape, as if stuck there as an afterthought—but an excited and enthusiastic afterthought—and to signal that what is informally known is as valuable as professional knowledge/skill and the tried, tested, and formally presented.Lamont’s publishers have laid out recipe instructions on the right-hand side (traditional English-language Western reading is top down, left to right). But when the recipe requires more than one item to be cooked, there is no repeated title; the spacing and line-up are not necessarily clear; and some immediate, albeit temporary, confusion occurs. Her recipes, alongside images of classic fine dining, carry the implication of chefing rather than cooking. She is photographed as a professional, with a chef’s familiar striped apron, and if she is not wearing a chef’s jacket, tunic or shirt, her staff are. The food is beautiful to look at and imagine, but tackling it in the home kitchen becomes a secondary thought. The left-hand section divider pages are meant to signal the wines, with the appropriate colour, and repetitive pattern of circles; but I understood this belatedly, mistaking them for retro wallpaper bemusedly. On the other hand, Powell’s bog-in-don’t-wait everyday heartiness of a communal stewed dinner at a medieval inn (Peasy Lamb looks exactly like this) may be overcooked, and, without sensuousness, uninviting. Images in Lamont’s book tend toward the predictable and anonymous (broad sweep of grape-vined landscape; large groups of people with eating and drinking utensils). The Lamont family run a vineyard, and up-market restaurants, one photographed on Perth’s river dockside. But Sean's Panoroma has a specificity about it; it hasn’t lost its local flavour in the mix with the global. (Admittedly, Moran’s bush "shack", the origin of much Panoroma produce and the destination of Panoroma compost, looks architect-designed.) Powell’s book, given "rump" and "rough" in the title, stridently plays down glitz (large type size, minimum spacing, rustic surface imagery, full-page portraits of a chicken, rump, and cabbage etc). While not over-glam, the photography in Balance may at first appear unsubtle. Images fill whole pages. But their beautifully coloured and intriguing shapes—the yellow lime of a white-wine bottle base or a sparkling wine cork beneath its cage—shift them into hyperreality. White wine in a glass becomes the edge of a desert lake; an open fig, the jaws of an alien; the flesh of a lemon after squeezing, a sea anemone. The minimal number of images is a judicious choice. ConclusionReading can be immersive, but it can also hover critically at a meta level, especially if the writer foregrounds process. A conversation starts in this exchange, the reader imagining for themselves the worlds written about. Writers read as writers, to acquire a sense of what good writing is, who writing colleagues are, where writing is being published, and, comparably, to learn to judge their own writing. Writing is produced from a combination of passion and the discipline of everyday work. To be a writer in the world is to observe and remember/record, to be conscious of aiming to see the narrative potential in an array of experiences, events, and images, or, to put it another way, "to develop the habit of art" (Jolley 20). Photography makes significant whatever is photographed. The image is immobile in a literal sense but, because of its referential nature, evocative. Design, too, is about communication through aesthetics as a sensuous visual code for ideas or concepts. (There is a large amount of scholarship on the workings of image combined with text. Roland Barthes is a place to begin, particularly about photography. There are also textbooks dealing with visual literacy or culture, only one example being Shirato and Webb.) It is reasonable to think about why there is so much interest in food in this moment. Food has become folded into celebrity culture, but, naturally, obviously, food is about our security and survival, physically and emotionally. Given that our planet is under threat from global warming which is also driving climate change, and we are facing peak oil, and alternative forms of energy are still not taken seriously in a widespread manner, then food production is under threat. Food supply and production are also linked to the growing gap between poverty and wealth, and the movement of whole populations: food is about being at home. Creativity is associated with mastery of a discipline, openness to new experiences, and persistence and courage, among other things. We read, write, photograph, and design to argue and critique, to use the imagination, to shape and transform, to transmit ideas, to celebrate living and to live more fully.References Allen, Max. The Future Makers: Australian Wines for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2010. Barratt, Virginia. “verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice.” Assignment, ENG10022 Writing from the Edge. Lismore: Southern Cross U, 2009. [lower case in the title is the author's proclivity, and subsequently published in Carson and Dettori. Eds. Banquet: A Feast of New Writing and Arts by Queer Women]Costello, Patricia. Personal conversation. 31 May 2012. Curti, Lidia. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. UK: Macmillan, 1998.Derrida, Jacques. "Fifty-Two Aphorisms for a Foreword." Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume. Eds. Andreas Apadakis, Catherine Cook, and Andrew Benjamin. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.Halliday, James. “An Artist’s Spirit.” The Weekend Australian: The Weekend Australian Magazine 13-14 Feb. (2010): 31.Jolley, Elizabeth. Central Mischief. Ringwood: Viking/Penguin 1992. Lamont, Kate. Wine and Food. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Milan, Lyndey, and Corney, Colin. Balance: Matching Food and Wine: What Works and Why. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2005. Moran, Sean. Let It Simmer. Camberwell: Lantern/Penguin, 2006. Ostmann, Barbara Gibbs, and Jane L. Baker. The Recipe Writer's Handbook. Canada: John Wiley, 2001.Powell, Greg Duncan. Rump and a Rough Red. Millers Point: Murdoch, 2010. Shirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004.

Abstract:

RESUMO O artigo se volta para o estudo do processo de ensino e de aprendizagem da Língua Portuguesa nos Anos Iniciais, com o objetivo de observar como as principais discussões presentes nos estudos linguísticos, realizados nos últimos anos, perpassam os Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais e a nova Base Nacional Comum Curricular. Para tanto, foi traçado um percurso histórico dos estudos linguísticos sobre a língua e analisou-se como a Língua Portuguesa está contemplada nesses dois documentos oficiais. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de revisão bibliográfica e análise documental, de cunho descritivo e interpretativo. Os resultados evidenciaram que a passagem de uma abordagem estruturalista da língua para uma abordagem enunciativo-discursiva produziu reflexos nos documentos oficiais que orientam e normatizam a Educação Básica no país. Especialmente, no que se refere ao objeto de ensino de Língua Portuguesa que deixou de enfatizar o ensino tradicional da palavra e das sentenças e passou a estudar o texto e, mais recentemente, os gêneros textuais, considerando principalmente a língua em uso. Embora os documentos oficiais ainda apresentem limitações, pode-se considerar que eles oportunizaram um avanço significativo no ensino de Língua Portuguesa, tanto nos Anos Iniciais como nas demais etapas da Educação Básica. O maior desafio no momento está na implementação destes conceitos teóricos em práticas de ensino em sala de aula. Palavras-chave: Linguagem. Leitura. Escrita. Linguística textual. Linguística da enunciação. ABSTRACT This article focuses on the study of the teaching and learning process of the Portuguese language in the early years, with the aim of observing how the main discussions present in linguistic studies, carried out in recent years, pervade the National Curriculum Parameters and the new National Base Common Curricular. For this purpose, a historical path of linguistic studies on the language was traced and it is analyzed how the Portuguese language is included in these two official documents. It is a research of bibliographic review and documentary analysis, of a descriptive and interpretative nature. The results showed that the transition from a structuralist approach to language to an enunciative-discursive approach reflected in the official documents that guide and standardize Basic Education in the country. Especially, with regard to the object of teaching Portuguese language, which stopped emphasizing the traditional teaching of words and sentences and started to study the text and, more recently, the textual genres, considering mainly the language in use. Although the official documents still have limitations, it can be considered that they provided a significant advance in the teaching of Portuguese language both in the initial years and in the other stages of Basic Education. The biggest challenge now is to implement these theoretical concepts in teaching practices in the classroom. Keywords: Language. Reading. Writing. Textual Linguistics. Linguistics of Enunciation. RESUMEN Este artículo se centra en el estudio del proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje de la lengua portuguesa en los primeros años de la educación básica, con el objetivo de observar cómo las principales discusiones presentes en los estudios lingüísticos de los últimos años impregnan los Parámetros Curriculares Nacionales y la nueva Base Nacional Curricular Común. Para este propósito, se analizó el recorrido histórico de los estudios lingüísticos sobre el idioma y se estudió la forma como la enseñanza del portugués como lengua materna se incluye en estos dos documentos oficiales. Esta es una investigación de revisión bibliográfica y análisis documental, de carácter descriptivo e interpretativo. Los resultados mostraron que la transición del enfoque estructuralista de la lengua para el discursivo-enunciativo se refleja en los documentos oficiales que guían y normalizan la Educación Básica en el país. Especialmente en lo que se refiere al objeto de la enseñanza de la lengua, que dejó a un lado el trabajo tradicional centrado en las palabras y oraciones para el estudio del texto y, más recientemente, de los géneros textuales, considerando especialmente la lengua en uso. Aunque los documentos oficiales todavía tienen limitaciones, se puede considerar que permitieron un avance significativo en la enseñanza de la lengua portuguesa, tanto en los años iniciales como en las demás etapas de la Educación Básica. El mayor desafío en este momento es la implementación de estos conceptos teóricos en prácticas de enseñanza en el aula. Palabras-clave: Idioma. Lectura. Escritura. Lingüística textual. Lingüística de la enunciación.

Abstract:

This article is a comparison of two remarkably different takes on a single subject, namely the shifting meaning of the word ‘publishing’ brought about by the changes in literacy habits related to Web 2.0. One the one hand, we have Andrew Keen’s much lambasted 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur, which is essentially an attempt to defend traditional gatekeeper models of cultural production by denigrating online, user-generated content. The second is Spin journalist Andy Greenwald’s Nothing Feels Good, focusing on the Emo subculture of the early 2000s and its reliance on Web 2.0 as an integral medium for communication and the accumulation of subcultural capital. What I want to suggest in this article is that these two books, with their contrasting readings of Web 2.0, both tell us something specific about what the word “publishing” means and how it is currently undergoing a significant change brought about by a radical adaptation of literacy practices. What I think both books also do is give us an insight into how those changes are being interpreted, to be rejected on the one hand and applauded on the other. Both books have their faults. Keen’s work can fairly easily be passed off as a sort of cantankerous reminiscence for the legitimacy of an earlier era of publishing, and Greenwald’s Emos have, like all teen subcultures, changed somewhat. Yet what both books portray is an attempt to digest how Web 2.0 has altered perceptions of what constitutes legitimate speaking positions and how that is reflected in the literacy practices that shape the relationships among authors, readers, and the channels through which they interact. Their primary difference is a disparity in the value they place on Web 2.0’s amplification of the Internet’s use as a social and communicative medium. Greenwald embraces it as the facilitator of an open-access dialogue, whereas Keen sees it as a direct threat to other, more traditional, gatekeeper genres. Accordingly, Keen begins his book with a lament that Web 2.0’s “democratization” of media is “undermining truth, souring civic discourse and belittling expertise, experience, and talent … it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions” (15). He continues, Today’s editors, technicians, and cultural gatekeepers—the experts across an array of fields—are necessary to help us to sift through what’s important and what’s not, what is credible from what is unreliable, what is worth spending our time on as opposed to the white noise that can be safely ignored. (45) As examples of the “white noise,” he lists some of the core features of Web 2.0—blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. The notable similarity between all of these is that their content is user generated and, accordingly, comes from the position of the personal, rather than from a gatekeeper. In terms of their readership, this presents a fundamental shift in an understanding of authenticated speaking positions, one which Keen suggests underwrites reliability by removing the presence of certifiable expertise. He looks at Web 2.0 and sees a mass of low grade, personal content overwhelming traditional benchmarks of quality and accountability. His definition of “publishing” is essentially one in which a few, carefully groomed producers express work seen as relevant to the wider community. The relationship between reader and writer is primarily one sided, mediated by a gatekeeper and rests on the assumption by all involved that the producer has the legitimacy to speak to a large, and largely silent, readership. Greenwald, by contrast, looks at the same genres and comes to a remarkably different and far more positive conclusion. He focuses heavily on the lively message boards of the social networking site Makeoutclub, the shift to a long tail marketing style by key Emo record labels such as Vagrant and Drive-Thru Records and, in particular, the widespread use of LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com) by suburban, Emo fixated teenagers. Of this he writes: The language is inflated, coded as ‘adult’ and ‘poetic’, which often translates into affected, stilted and forced. But if one can accept that, there’s a sweet vulnerability to it. The world of LiveJournal is an enclosed circuit where everyone has agreed to check their cynicism at the sign on screen; it’s a pulsing, swoony realm of inflated emotions, expectations and dialogue. (287) He specifically notes that one cannot read mediums like LiveJournal in the same style as their more traditional counterparts. There is a necessity to adopt a reading style conducive to a dialogue devoid of conventional quality controls. It is also, he notes, a heavily interconnected, inherently social medium: LiveJournals represent the truest and easiest realization of the essential teenage (and artistic) tenet of the importance of a ‘room of one’s own’, and yet the framework of the website is enough to make each individual room interconnected into a mosaic of richly felt lives. (288) Where Keen sees Web 2.0 as a shift way from established cultural forums, Greenwald sees it as an interconnected conversation. His definition of publishing is more fluid, founded on a belief not in the authenticity of a single, validated voice but on the legitimacy of interaction and communication entirely devoid of any gatekeepers. Central to understanding the difference between Greenwald and Keen is the issue or whether or not we accept the legitimacy of personal voices and how we evaluate the kind of reading practices involved in interpreting them. In this respect, Greenwald’s reference to “a room of one’s own” is telling. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, Web 2.0 wasn’t even a consideration, but her work dealt with a similar subject matter, detailing the key role the novel genre played in legitimising women’s voices precisely because it was “young enough to be soft in [their] hands” (74). What would eventually emerge from Woolf’s work was the field of feminist literary criticism, which hit its stride in the mid-eighties. In terms of its understanding of the power relations inherent to cultural production, particularly as they relate to gatekeeping, it’s a rich academic tradition notably lacking in the writing on Web 2.0. For example, Celia Lury’s essay “Reading the Self,” written more than ten years before the popularisation of the internet, looks specifically at the way in which authoritative speaking positions gain their legitimacy not just through the words on the page but through the entire relationships among author, genre, channels of distribution, and readership. She argues that, “to write is to enter into a relationship with a community of readers, and various forms of writing are seen to involve and imply, at any particular time, various forms of relationship” (102). She continues, so far as text is clearly written/read within a particular genre, it can be seen to rest upon a more or less specific set of social relations. It also means that ‘textual relations’—that is, formal techniques, reading strategies and so on—are not held separate from ‘non-textual relations’—such as methods of cultural production and modes of distribution—and that the latter can be seen to help construct ‘literary value.’ (102) The implication is that an appropriation of legitimised speaking positions isn’t done purely by overthrowing or contesting an established system of ‘quality’ but by developing a unique relationship between author, genre, and readership. Textual and non-textual practices blur together to create literary environments and cultural space. The term “publishing” is at the heart of these relationships, describing the literacies required to interpret particular voices and forms of communication. Yet, as Lury writes, literacy habits can vary. Participation in dialogue-driven, user-generated mediums is utterly different from conventional, gatekeeper-driven ones, yet the two can easily co-exist. For instance, reading last year’s Man Booker prize-winner doesn’t stop one from reading, or even writing, blogs. One can enact numerous literacy practices, move between discourses and inhabit varied relationships between genre, reader, and writer. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 a whole range of literacies that used to be defined as “private sphere” or “everyday literacies,” everything from personal conversations and correspondence to book clubs and fanzines, have become far, far more public. In the past these dialogue-based channels of communication have never been in a position where they could be defined as “publishing.” Web 2.0 changes that, moving previously private sphere communication into online public space in a very obvious way. Keen dismisses this shift as a wall of white noise, but Greenwald does something equally interesting. To a large extent, his positive treatment of Web 2.0’s “affected, stilted and forced” user-generated content is validated by his focus on a “Youth” subculture, namely Emo. Indeed, he heavily links the impact of youthful subcultural practices with the internet, writing that Teenage life has always been about self-creation, and its inflated emotions and high stakes have always existed in a grossly accelerated bubble of hypertime. The internet is the most teenage of media because it too exists in this hypertime of limitless limited moments and constant reinvention. If emo is the soundtrack to hypertime, then the web is its greatest vehicle, the secret tunnel out of the locked bedroom and dead-eyed judgmental scenes of youth. (277) In this light, we accept the voices of his Emo subjects because, underneath their low-quality writing, they produce a “sweet vulnerability” and a “dialogue,” which provides them with a “secret tunnel” out of the loneliness of their bedrooms or unsupportive geographical communities. It’s a theme that hints at the degree to which discussions of Web 2.0 are often heavily connected to arguments about generationalism, framed by the field of youth studies and accordingly end up being mined for what Tara Brabazon calls “spectacular youth subcultures” (23). We see some core examples of this in some of the quasi-academic writing on the subject of “Youth.” For example, in his 2005 book XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare, Michael Grose declares Generation Y as “post-literate”: Like their baby boomer parents and generation X before them, generation Ys get their information from a range of sources that include the written and spoken word. Magazines and books are in, but visual communication is more important for this cohort than their parents. They live in a globalised, visual world where images rather than words are universal communication media. The Internet has heightened the use of symbols as a direct communicator. (95) Given the Internet is overwhelmingly a textual medium, it’s hard to tell exactly what Grose’s point is other than to express his confusion over new literacy practices. In a similar vein and in a similar style, Rebecca Huntley writes in her book The World According to Y, In the Y world, a mobile phone is not merely a phone. It is, as described by demographer Bernard Salt, “a personal accessory, a personal communications device and a personal entertainment centre.” It’s a device for work and play, flirtation and sex, friendship and family. For Yers, their phone symbolizes freedom and flexibility. More than that, your mobile phone symbolizes you. (16) Like Keen, Grose and Huntley are trying to understand a shift in publishing and media that has produced new literacy practices. Unlike Keen, Grose and Huntley pin the change on young people and, like Greenwald, they turn a series of new literacy practices into something akin to what Dick Hebdige called “conspicuous consumption” (103). It’s a term he linked to his definition of bricolage as the production of “implicitly coherent, though explicitly bewildering, systems of connection between things which perfectly equip their users to ‘think’ their own world” (103). Thus, young people are differentiated from the rest of the population by their supposedly unique consumption of “symbols” and mobile phones, into which they read their own cryptic meanings and develop their own generational language. Greenwald shows this methodology in action, with the Emo use of things like LiveJournal, Makeoutclub and other bastions of Web 2.0 joining their record collections, ubiquitous sweeping fringes and penchant for accessorised outfits as part of the conspicuous consumption inherent to understandings of youth subculture. The same theme is reflected in Michel de Certeau’s term “tactics” or, more common amongst those studying Web 2.0, Henry Jenkins’s notion of “poaching”. The idea is that people, specifically young people, appropriate particular forms of cultural literacy to redefine themselves and add a sense of value to their voices. De Certeau’s definition of tactics, as a method of resistance “which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (489), is a prime example of how Web 2.0 is being understood. Young people, Emo or not, engage in a consumption of the Internet, poaching the tools of production to redefine the value of their voices in a style completely acceptable to the neo-Marxist, Birmingham school understanding of youth and subculture as a combination producing a sense of resistance. It’s a narrative highly compatible within the fields of cultural and media studies, which, despite major shifts brought about by people like Ken Gelder, Sarah Thornton, Keith Kahn-Harris and the aforementioned Tara Brabazon, still look heavily for patterns of politicised consumption. The problem, as I think Keen inadvertently suggests, is that the Internet isn’t just about young people and their habits as consumers. It’s about what the word “publishing” actually means and how we think about the interaction among writers, readers, and the avenues through which they interact. The idea that we can pass off the redefinition of literacy practices brought about by Web 2.0 as a subcultural youth phenomena is an easy way of bypassing wider cultural shifts onto a token demographic. It presents Web 2.0 as an issue of “Youth” resisting the hegemony of traditional gatekeepers, which is effectively what Greenwald does. Yet such an approach has a very short shelf life. It’s a little like claiming the telephone or the television set were “youth genres.” The uptake of new technologies will inadvertently impact differently on those who grew up with them as compared to those who grew up without them. Yet ultimately changes in literacy habits are much larger than a generationalist framework can really express, particularly given the first generation of “digital natives” are now in their thirties. There’s a lot of things wrong with Andrew Keen’s book but one thing he does do well is ground the debate about Web 2.0 back to issues of legitimate speaking positions and publishing. That said, he also significantly simplifies those issues when he claims the problem is purely about the decline of traditional gatekeeper models. Responding to Keen’s criticism of him, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig writes, I think it is a great thing when amateurs create, even if the thing they create is not as great as what the professional creates. I want my kids to write. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop reading Hemingway and read only what they write. What Keen misses is the value to a culture that comes from developing the capacity to create—independent of the quality created. That doesn’t mean we should not criticize works created badly (such as, for example, Keen’s book…). But it does mean you’re missing the point if you simply compare the average blog to the NY times (Lessig). What Lessig expresses here is the different, but not mutually exclusive, literacy practices involved in the word “publishing.” Publishing a blog is very different to publishing a newspaper and the way readers react to both will change as they move in and out the differing discursive spaces each occupies. In a recent collaborative paper by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger, they describe this capacity to move across different reading and writing styles as “transliteracy.” They define the term as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” (Thomas et al.). It’s a term that perfectly describes the capacity to move fluidly across discursive environments. Here we return to Greenwald’s use of a framework of youth and subculture. While I have criticised the Birminghamesque fixation on a hom*ogeneous “Youth” demographic enacting resistance through conspicuous consumption, there is good reason to use existing subculture studies methodology as a means of understanding how transliteracies play out in everyday life. David Chaney remarks, the idea of subculture is redundant because the type of investment that the notion of subculture labelled is becoming more general, and therefore the varieties of modes of symbolization and involvement are more common in everyday life. (37) I think the increasing commonality of subcultural practices in everyday life actually makes the idea more relevant, not less. It does, however, make it much harder to pin things on “spectacular youth subcultures.” Yet the focus on “everyday life” is important here, shifting our understanding of “subculture” to the types of literacies played out within localised, personal networks and experiences. As de Certeau has argued, the practice of everyday life is an issue of “a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using” (Certeau 486). This is as true for our literacy practices as anything else. Whether we choose to label those practices subcultural or not, our ability to interpret, take part in and react to different communicative forums is clearly fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, regardless of our age. Sarah Thornton suggests a useful alternate definition of subculture when she talks about subcultural capital: Subcultural capital is the linchpin of an alternative hierarchy in which the aces of age, gender, sexuality and race are all employed in order to keep the determinations of class, income and occupation at bay (105). This is an understanding that avoids easy narratives of young people and their consumption of Web 2.0 by recognising the complexity with which people’s literacy habits, in the cultural sense, connect to their active participation in the production of meaning. Subcultural capital implies that the framework through which individuals read, interpret, and shift between discursive environments, personalising and building links across the strata of cultural production, is acted out at the local and personal level, rather than purely through the relationship between a producing gatekeeper and a passive, consuming readership. If we recognise the ability for readers to connect multiple mediums, to shift between reading and writing practices, and to seamlessly interpret and digest markedly different assumptions about legitimate speaking voices across genres, our understanding of what it means to “publish” ceases to be an issue of generationalism or conventional mediums being washed away by the digital era. The issue we see in both Keen and Greenwald is an attempt to digest the way Web 2.0 has forced the concept of “publishing” to take on a multiplicity of meanings, played out by individual readers, and imbued with their own unique and interwoven textual and cultural literacy habits. It’s not only Emos who publish livejournals, and it’s incredibly naive to assume gatekeepers have ever really held a monopoly on all aspects of cultural production. What the rise of Web 2.0 has done is simply to bring everyday, private sphere dialogue driven literacies into the public sphere in a very obvious way. The kind of discourses once passed off as resistant youth subcultures are now being shown as common place. Keen is right to suggest that this will continue to impact, sometimes negatively, on traditional gatekeepers. Yet the change is inevitable. As our reading and writing practices alter around new genres, our understandings of what constitutes legitimate fields of publishing will also change. References Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. de Certeau, Michel. “Practice of Every Day Life.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Ed. John Story. London: Prentice Hall, 1998. 483–94. Chaney, David. “Fragmented Culture and Subcultures.” After Subculture. Ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris. Houndsmill: Palgrave McMillian, 2004. 36–48. Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Grose, Michael. XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare. Sydney: Random House, 2005. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1979. Huntley, Rebecca. The World According to Y. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. “Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur’: BRILLIANT!” Lessig May 31, 2007. Aug. 19 2008 ‹http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html>. Lury, Celia. “Reading the Self: Autobiography, Gender and the Institution of the Literary.” Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Ed. Sarah. Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. Hammersmith: HarperCollinsAcademic, 1991. 97–108. Thomas, Sue, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger. “Transliteracy: Crossing Divides.” First Monday 12.12. (2007). Apr. 1 2008 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2060/1908>. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Frogmore: Triad/Panther Press, 1977.

Abstract:

On the morning of Thursday, 4 May 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing entitled “Terrorist Use of the Internet.” The Intelligence committee meeting was scheduled to take place in Room 1302 of the Longworth Office Building, a Depression-era structure with a neoclassical façade. Because of a dysfunctional elevator, some of the congressional representatives were late to the meeting. During the testimony about the newest political applications for cutting-edge digital technology, the microphones periodically malfunctioned, and witnesses complained of “technical problems” several times. By the end of the day it seemed that what was to be remembered about the hearing was the shocking revelation that terrorists were using videogames to recruit young jihadists. The Associated Press wrote a short, restrained article about the hearing that only mentioned “computer games and recruitment videos” in passing. Eager to have their version of the news item picked up, Reuters made videogames the focus of their coverage with a headline that announced, “Islamists Using US Videogames in Youth Appeal.” Like a game of telephone, as the Reuters videogame story was quickly re-run by several Internet news services, each iteration of the title seemed less true to the exact language of the original. One Internet news service changed the headline to “Islamic militants recruit using U.S. video games.” Fox News re-titled the story again to emphasise that this alert about technological manipulation was coming from recognised specialists in the anti-terrorism surveillance field: “Experts: Islamic Militants Customizing Violent Video Games.” As the story circulated, the body of the article remained largely unchanged, in which the Reuters reporter described the digital materials from Islamic extremists that were shown at the congressional hearing. During the segment that apparently most captured the attention of the wire service reporters, eerie music played as an English-speaking narrator condemned the “infidel” and declared that he had “put a jihad” on them, as aerial shots moved over 3D computer-generated images of flaming oil facilities and mosques covered with geometric designs. Suddenly, this menacing voice-over was interrupted by an explosion, as a virtual rocket was launched into a simulated military helicopter. The Reuters reporter shared this dystopian vision from cyberspace with Western audiences by quoting directly from the chilling commentary and describing a dissonant montage of images and remixed sound. “I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults. Then came a recording of President George W. Bush’s September 16, 2001, statement: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” It was edited to repeat the word “crusade,” which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity. According to the news reports, the key piece of evidence before Congress seemed to be a film by “SonicJihad” of recorded videogame play, which – according to the experts – was widely distributed online. Much of the clip takes place from the point of view of a first-person shooter, seen as if through the eyes of an armed insurgent, but the viewer also periodically sees third-person action in which the player appears as a running figure wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, who dashes toward the screen with a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. Significantly, another of the player’s hand-held weapons is a detonator that triggers remote blasts. As jaunty music plays, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles burst into smoke and flame. Finally, at the triumphant ending of the video, a green and white flag bearing a crescent is hoisted aloft into the sky to signify victory by Islamic forces. To explain the existence of this digital alternative history in which jihadists could be conquerors, the Reuters story described the deviousness of the country’s terrorist opponents, who were now apparently modifying popular videogames through their wizardry and inserting anti-American, pro-insurgency content into U.S.-made consumer technology. One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular “Battlefield 2” from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as “mods,” to video games. “Millions of people create mods on games around the world,” he said. “We have absolutely no control over them. It’s like drawing a mustache on a picture.” Although the Electronic Arts executive dismissed the activities of modders as a “mustache on a picture” that could only be considered little more than childish vandalism of their off-the-shelf corporate product, others saw a more serious form of criminality at work. Testifying experts and the legislators listening on the committee used the video to call for greater Internet surveillance efforts and electronic counter-measures. Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusem*nt – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source. Ironically, the moment in the movie from which the sound clip is excerpted is one about intelligence gathering. As an agent of Team America, a fictional elite U.S. commando squad, the hero of the film’s all-puppet cast, Gary Johnston, is impersonating a jihadist radical inside a hostile Egyptian tavern that is modelled on the cantina scene from Star Wars. Additional laughs come from the fact that agent Johnston is accepted by the menacing terrorist cell as “Hakmed,” despite the fact that he utters a series of improbable clichés made up of incoherent stereotypes about life in the Middle East while dressed up in a disguise made up of shoe polish and a turban from a bathroom towel. The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists. It wasn’t intended for the purpose what it was portrayed to be by the media. So no I don’t regret making a funny video . . . why should I? The only thing I regret is thinking that news from Reuters was objective and always right. The least they could do is some online research before publishing this. If they label me al-Qaeda just for making this silly video, that makes you think, what is this al-Qaeda? And is everything al-Qaeda? Although Sonic Jihad dismissed his own work as “silly” or “funny,” he expected considerably more from a credible news agency like Reuters: “objective” reporting, “online research,” and fact-checking before “publishing.” Within the week, almost all of the salient details in the Reuters story were revealed to be incorrect. SonicJihad’s film was not made by terrorists or for terrorists: it was not created by “Islamic militants” for “Muslim youths.” The videogame it depicted had not been modified by a “tech-savvy militant” with advanced programming skills. Of course, what is most extraordinary about this story isn’t just that Reuters merely got its facts wrong; it is that a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play. Based on their exchanges in the public record, elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal. This environment of cultural reaction can be used to explain why policy makers’ reaction to terrorists’ use of networked communication and digital media actually tells us more about our own American ideologies about technology and rhetoric in a contemporary information environment. When the experts come forward at the Sonic Jihad hearing to “walk us through the media and some of the products,” they present digital artefacts of an information economy that mirrors many of the features of our own consumption of objects of electronic discourse, which seem dangerously easy to copy and distribute and thus also create confusion about their intended meanings, audiences, and purposes. From this one hearing we can see how the reception of many new digital genres plays out in the public sphere of legislative discourse. Web pages, videogames, and Weblogs are mentioned specifically in the transcript. The main architecture of the witnesses’ presentation to the committee is organised according to the rhetorical conventions of a PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, the arguments made by expert witnesses about the relationship of orality to literacy or of public to private communications in new media are highly relevant to how we might understand other important digital genres, such as electronic mail or text messaging. The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property. To explain embarrassing leaks of infinitely replicable digital files, witness Ron Roughead says, “We’re not even sure that they don’t even hack into the kinds of spaces that hold photographs in order to get pictures that our forces have taken.” Another witness, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and International Affairs, Peter Rodman claims that “any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is released, they will modify it and change the game for their needs.” Thus, the implication of these witnesses’ testimony is that the release of code into the public domain can contribute to political subversion, much as covert intrusion into computer networks by stealthy hackers can. However, the witnesses from the Pentagon and from the government contractor SAIC often present a contradictory image of the supposed terrorists in the hearing transcripts. Sometimes the enemy is depicted as an organisation of technological masterminds, capable of manipulating the computer code of unwitting Americans and snatching their rightful intellectual property away; sometimes those from the opposing forces are depicted as pre-modern and even sub-literate political innocents. In contrast, the congressional representatives seem to focus on similarities when comparing the work of “terrorists” to the everyday digital practices of their constituents and even of themselves. According to the transcripts of this open hearing, legislators on both sides of the aisle express anxiety about domestic patterns of Internet reception. Even the legislators’ own Web pages are potentially disruptive electronic artefacts, particularly when the demands of digital labour interfere with their duties as lawmakers. Although the subject of the hearing is ostensibly terrorist Websites, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) bemoans the difficulty of maintaining her own official congressional site. As she observes, “So we are – as members, I think we’re very sensitive about what’s on our Website, and if I retained what I had on my Website three years ago, I’d be out of business. So we know that they have to be renewed. They go up, they go down, they’re rebuilt, they’re – you know, the message is targeted to the future.” In their questions, lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) compares the polluting power of insurgent bloggers to that of influential online muckrakers from the American political Right. Hastings complains of “garbage on our regular mainstream news that comes from blog sites.” Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) attempts to project a media-savvy persona by bringing up the “phenomenon of blogging” in conjunction with her questions about jihadist Websites in which she notes how Internet traffic can be magnified by cooperative ventures among groups of ideologically like-minded content-providers: “These Websites, and particularly the most active ones, are they cross-linked? And do they have kind of hot links to your other favorite sites on them?” At one point Representative Wilson asks witness Rodman if he knows “of your 100 hottest sites where the Webmasters are educated? What nationality they are? Where they’re getting their money from?” In her questions, Wilson implicitly acknowledges that Web work reflects influences from pedagogical communities, economic networks of the exchange of capital, and even potentially the specific ideologies of nation-states. It is perhaps indicative of the government contractors’ anachronistic worldview that the witness is unable to answer Wilson’s question. He explains that his agency focuses on the physical location of the server or ISP rather than the social backgrounds of the individuals who might be manufacturing objectionable digital texts. The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries. The residual subtexts in the witnesses’ conjectures about competing cultures of orality and literacy may tell us something about a reactionary rhetoric around videogames and digital culture more generally. According to the experts before Congress, the Middle Eastern audience for these videogames and Websites is limited by its membership in a pre-literate society that is only capable of abortive cultural production without access to knowledge that is archived in printed codices. Sometimes the witnesses before Congress seem to be unintentionally channelling the ideas of the late literacy theorist Walter Ong about the “secondary orality” associated with talky electronic media such as television, radio, audio recording, or telephone communication. Later followers of Ong extend this concept of secondary orality to hypertext, hypermedia, e-mail, and blogs, because they similarly share features of both speech and written discourse. Although Ong’s disciples celebrate this vibrant reconnection to a mythic, communal past of what Kathleen Welch calls “electric rhetoric,” the defence industry consultants express their profound state of alarm at the potentially dangerous and subversive character of this hybrid form of communication. The concept of an “oral tradition” is first introduced by the expert witnesses in the context of modern marketing and product distribution: “The Internet is used for a variety of things – command and control,” one witness states. “One of the things that’s missed frequently is how and – how effective the adversary is at using the Internet to distribute product. They’re using that distribution network as a modern form of oral tradition, if you will.” Thus, although the Internet can be deployed for hierarchical “command and control” activities, it also functions as a highly efficient peer-to-peer distributed network for disseminating the commodity of information. Throughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order. Witness Eric Michael describes the “oral tradition” and the conventions of communal life in the Middle East to emphasise the primacy of speech in the collective discursive practices of this alien population: “I’d like to point your attention to the media types and the fact that the oral tradition is listed as most important. The other media listed support that. And the significance of the oral tradition is more than just – it’s the medium by which, once it comes off the Internet, it is transferred.” The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era. The oral tradition now also has an aspect of rumor. A[n] event takes place. There is an explosion in a city. Rumor is that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb and is doing indiscriminate killing. This ends up being discussed on the street. It ends up showing up in a Friday sermon in a mosque or in another religious institution. It then gets recycled into written materials. Media picks up the story and broadcasts it, at which point it’s now a fact. In this particular case that we were telling you about, it showed up on a network television, and their propaganda continues to go back to this false initial report on network television and continue to reiterate that it’s a fact, even though the United States government has proven that it was not a fact, even though the network has since recanted the broadcast. In this example, many-to-many discussion on the “street” is formalised into a one-to many “sermon” and then further stylised using technology in a one-to-many broadcast on “network television” in which “propaganda” that is “false” can no longer be disputed. This “oral tradition” is like digital media, because elements of discourse can be infinitely copied or “recycled,” and it is designed to “reiterate” content. In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.” The film by SonicJihad is chosen as the final clip by the witnesses before Congress, because it allegedly combines many different types of emotional appeal, and thus it conveniently ties together all of the themes that the witnesses present to the legislators about unreliable oral or rhetorical sources in the Middle East: And there you see how all these products are linked together. And you can see where the games are set to psychologically condition you to go kill coalition forces. You can see how they use humor. You can see how the entire campaign is carefully crafted to first evoke an emotion and then to evoke a response and to direct that response in the direction that they want. Jihadist digital products, especially videogames, are effective means of manipulation, the witnesses argue, because they employ multiple channels of persuasion and carefully sequenced and integrated subliminal messages. To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses. This sharp criticism of the artful use of a presentation style that is “crafted” is ironic, given that the witnesses’ “compilation” of jihadist digital material is staged in the form of a carefully structured PowerPoint presentation, one that is paced to a well-rehearsed rhythm of “slide, please” or “next slide” in the transcript. The transcript also reveals that the members of the House Intelligence Committee were not the original audience for the witnesses’ PowerPoint presentation. Rather, when it was first created by SAIC, this “expert” presentation was designed for training purposes for the troops on the ground, who would be facing the challenges of deployment in hostile terrain. According to the witnesses, having the slide show showcased before Congress was something of an afterthought. Nonetheless, Congressman Tiahrt (R-KN) is so impressed with the rhetorical mastery of the consultants that he tries to appropriate it. As Tiarht puts it, “I’d like to get a copy of that slide sometime.” From the hearing we also learn that the terrorists’ Websites are threatening precisely because they manifest a polymorphously perverse geometry of expansion. For example, one SAIC witness before the House Committee compares the replication and elaboration of digital material online to a “spiderweb.” Like Representative Eshoo’s site, he also notes that the terrorists’ sites go “up” and “down,” but the consultant is left to speculate about whether or not there is any “central coordination” to serve as an organising principle and to explain the persistence and consistency of messages despite the apparent lack of a single authorial ethos to offer a stable, humanised, point of reference. In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.” Of course, to maintain their share of the government market, the Science Applications International Corporation also employs practices of publicity and promotion through the Internet and digital media. They use HTML Web pages for these purposes, as well as PowerPoint presentations and online video. The rhetoric of the Website of SAIC emphasises their motto “From Science to Solutions.” After a short Flash film about how SAIC scientists and engineers solve “complex technical problems,” the visitor is taken to the home page of the firm that re-emphasises their central message about expertise. The maps, uniforms, and specialised tools and equipment that are depicted in these opening Web pages reinforce an ethos of professional specialisation that is able to respond to multiple threats posed by the “global war on terror.” By 26 June 2006, the incident finally was being described as a “Pentagon Snafu” by ABC News. From the opening of reporter Jake Tapper’s investigative Webcast, established government institutions were put on the spot: “So, how much does the Pentagon know about videogames? Well, when it came to a recent appearance before Congress, apparently not enough.” Indeed, the very language about “experts” that was highlighted in the earlier coverage is repeated by Tapper in mockery, with the significant exception of “independent expert” Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. If the Pentagon and SAIC deride the legitimacy of rhetoric as a cultural practice, Bogost occupies himself with its defence. In his recent book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost draws upon the authority of the “2,500 year history of rhetoric” to argue that videogames represent a significant development in that cultural narrative. Given that Bogost and his Watercooler Games Weblog co-editor Gonzalo Frasca were actively involved in the detective work that exposed the depth of professional incompetence involved in the government’s line-up of witnesses, it is appropriate that Bogost is given the final words in the ABC exposé. As Bogost says, “We should be deeply bothered by this. We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting.” Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see. References ABC News. “Terrorist Videogame?” Nightline Online. 21 June 2006. 22 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2105341>. Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Game Politics. “Was Congress Misled by ‘Terrorist’ Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage.” 11 May 2006. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html#cutid1>. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. julieb. “David Morgan Is a Horrible Writer and Should Be Fired.” Online posting. 5 May 2006. Dvorak Uncensored Cage Match Forums. http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,130.0.html>. Mahmood. “Terrorists Don’t Recruit with Battlefield 2.” GGL Global Gaming. 16 May 2006 http://www.ggl.com/news.php?NewsId=3090>. Morgan, David. “Islamists Using U.S. Video Games in Youth Appeal.” Reuters online news service. 4 May 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=topNews &storyID=2006-05-04T215543Z_01_N04305973_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY- VIDEOGAMES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc= NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2>. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen, 1982. Parker, Trey. Online posting. 7 May 2006. 9 May 2006 http://www.treyparker.com>. Plato. “Gorgias.” Plato: Collected Dialogues. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Shrader, Katherine. “Pentagon Surfing Thousands of Jihad Sites.” Associated Press 4 May 2006. SonicJihad. “SonicJihad: A Day in the Life of a Resistance Fighter.” Online posting. 26 Dec. 2005. Planet Battlefield Forums. 9 May 2006 http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1>. Tapper, Jake, and Audery Taylor. “Terrorist Video Game or Pentagon Snafu?” ABC News Nightline 21 June 2006. 30 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Technology/story?id=2105128&page=1>. U.S. Congressional Record. Panel I of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Subject: “Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.” Federal News Service. 4 May 2006. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and the New Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Losh, Elizabeth. "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>. APA Style Losh, E. (Oct. 2007) "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>.

Abstract:

The word ‘remix’ marks venerable and longstanding creative practices and embeds them in a particular aesthetic, social and technological conjuncture. This is both the strength and the weakness of the term: in foreshortening the histories of that which it now names, it highlights the relationship between the participatory affordances of contemporary media technologies and the sense of contemporary media flows as recombinant; as involving the distributed reassembly, reconfiguration and circulation of pre-existing cultural and material elements. Remix situates this work as both artefact and practice, noun and verb. The risk is that in doing so, it is both dehistoricizing, and oddly anachronistic and ‘analogue’. One is always somehow waiting for the post-remix, or the premix (the ‘mix’ itself implies a slippage, an acknowledgement of multiplicity at the site of origin). Remix suggests some kind of authoriality and semiotic differentiability and sequence, pace Baudrillardian fantasies about the digital labour, prosumer, cognitive capitalist, copypasta meme factory. Remix is on a continuum on this trajectory, but at a point where we feel we can still see fairly confidently in both directions. This is one of the features of the term that gives it its ‘stickiness’: it is used, as our contributors show, to describe a wide range of practices. In turn, this attribute highlights some of the varying moral work that remix does as a predicate, in relation to ideas around originality, authorship and plagiarism; ownership, permission, and the commons; the autonomy or otherwise of culture from commerce; the cultural and social importance of the archive and the best means of engaging with it; the roles and functions of capital and the law with respect to contemporary ‘folk’ artistic practices; and the affective significance of the past and the passage of time. Remix suggests a certain kind of commemorative honouring of the past and of what we find meaningful in our common culture, inflected and sometimes problematized by the broader structures which mediate that culture to us. It implies also a technologization of how this honouring is conducted, a two-way mediatization, the widespread enculturation of particular communicative and distributive technological systems for getting the remix done. It implies a specific sociocultural and techno-aesthetic grammar. Like the various materials that are subject to remix, the word itself then is promiscuous. As such, both specificity and scope in understanding what remix ‘means’ entail investigations around and into the word as a kind of heuristic or analytic. Remixes are often local artefacts, exhibiting family resemblances in terms of the uses to which their intertextuality is put. These resemblances point towards the meaning-making practices present in those semantic, discursive, and social webs through which these artefacts become sensible. Much of the current literature promotes the idea (notable, for example, in the work of Lessig), that remix is some kind of intervention in the cultural economy, whereby audiences become liberated into participation in cultural production. This participation in cultural dialogue through remix is heralded as a new era of democratized consumer activism. The converse argument suggests that remix is wholly incorporated as ‘playbour’: users generate content for free, used by others for profit. Remix as ‘resistance’ seems to occur solely at the level of the sign, overlooking the extent to which vernacular creative work is rendered an integrative cultural commodity. The logical conclusion of this kind of argument is an emphasis (such as that found in Adorno) on the extent to which cultural commodities have colonized the lifeworld. Without recourse to the cultural resources given by neoliberal capitalism, nothing at all can be said, even by nonconformists. There is nothing outside the desiring machine. Indeed, the very fact that dissent is so often expressed exactly through the means given by dominant cultural systems shows just how insidious they are. But both of these accounts only get us so far. Effectively, they leave us in a remix-good/remix-bad binary. One account is not really ‘deeper’ than the other, because in a sense both are missing the larger point. The early fixation on the remix as itself a laudable cultural intervention tends to exacerbate the tendency towards these either-or readings. Dominant meanings are demonstrably contestable, and contested every day. Of course, the semiotic meaning of particular remixes and the means by which these remixes operate within the discursive or semiotic field require attention and interrogation. But these meanings and the practices that give rise to them are also read off, given, and sanctioned within specific social and cultural contexts and specific ethical, interpretive, and legal frameworks. These contexts and frameworks and their social logics require explication. Our argument here is not precisely that we need anthropological, sociological, legal, etc. accounts as well as textual analyses and deconstructions of particular remixes and remix forms and genres. It is that remix, as a hybrid cultural form and practice, is literally neither quite here nor there. An adequate grasp of remix and its implications entails empirical work, showing and unpacking what it is that makes remix important to the various and diverse communities who sustain it and are sustained by it. A good way in to this issue is to reflect on the permissibility or otherwise of the use of particular resources within a specific remix subculture; the moral limits of the remixable. In the feature article, fan fiction scholars Kristina Busse and Shannon Farley discuss the implications of an incident within a particular fan fiction community, where an as-yet-unarticulated norm regarding the limits of textual appropriation - specifically, the use without permission of the work of other fan fiction writers - came abruptly to collective attention. Drawing out the distinctions and nuances from this incident and contextualising it in relation to broader fan fiction community opinion, Busse and Farley carefully differentiate this infraction from plagiarism and from copyright infringement in emic terms, showing how fan-fiction writers themselves articulate, invoke and enact community with respect to such norms. Ruth Walker further elaborates on the concept of plagiarism by analysing academic quotation as a form of remix. Rather than ascribing to the stringent rules of referencing, Walker suggests that framing academic and student writing as a form of remix allows for a playful re-use of scholarly conventions and a more creative use of existing academic work. In ‘Locating Anti-Fandom in Extratextual Mash-ups’, Bertha Chin examines how the remix video Buffy vs Edward demonstrates anti-fandom responses to the Twilight series. By placing the ‘empowered’ role model of Buffy in the position of Bella, the romantic hero of Edward is suddenly re-framed as a self-obsessed stalker. Chin argues that rather than demonstrating fannish love for the texts, Buffy vs Edward is an anti-fandom critique of the troubling aspects of a popular series. In his article on slash manips, Joseph Brennan discusses a case study of visual slash - the combinatory digital manipulation of images of characters from popular media and gay p*rnography. Attending particularly to compositional strategy and the physical and bodily syntax of this often overlooked form of remix, Brennan’s argument inflects the dominant scholarly understandings of slash as a genre coded as ‘female’. In ‘Taking This from This and That from That’, Phillip Cunningham and Melinda Lewis make a case for considering the role remix, and pastiche specifically as a variant of intertextual poaching, plays in the directorial styles of RZA and Quentin Tarantino, and in the ‘self-fashioning’ particularly of RZA. Remix is here not a democratizing, niche strategy, but something central to creative practice within the core of the contemporary mass-market cultural industries. Cunningham and Lewis argue that the work of RZA highlights hybridity in multiple ways, particularly across both media form and the tropes of genre. Following this, Rob Cover proposes a new framework for the analysis of the remix as a text in ‘Reading the Remix’. Using the language of ‘layering’ drawn from digital manipulation terminology, the remix can be understood as a type of layered intermedia. Cover provides a concrete process for teaching remix analysis in an undergraduate classroom, drawing on a rich variety of theoretical models and methodologies. Attention in current debates about remix is frequently drawn to the institutional structures that go to make the practice more or less easy - or more or less easy to block. Olivia Conti’s paper uses the idea of the dialectical vernacular to describe YouTube and similar sites, as mediators between vernacular and institutional discourses (in this instance, political remix video-makers, and rights holders). Her account of the technico-legal mechanics of Youtube takedowns highlights the paradoxical status of political remix video, as something which both draws its political potential from its infringement of base material (in terms of the process itself, and the altered meanings of the content), and is rendered vulnerable to takedown by the same token. ‘Musical Chameleons’, Maarten Michielse’s piece drawing on extensive research on the online music remix community Indaba Music, returns attention to the perspectives of remixers themselves, considering in this instance what they hold to be valuable attributes for a remixer to have. Michielse develops work around the concepts of flexibility and fluency as aspects of creative practice, to describe what it is that competitive digital music remix producers strive for with respect to the musical materials they work with and on. Jonathon Hutchinson then explores the relationship between remix and the institution of public service media in his piece on textual reappropriation within the ABC. While public service broadcasters like the ABC have sought to encourage audience participation through user-generated content, the content of remixes is often controversial and opens the institution to public criticism or lawsuits. Using a case study of how the ABC responded to complaints of a particular remixer, Hutchinson examines the limits of creative remix in an institutional setting. The ethics and aesthetics of remix are further situated and explored by Patrick West and Cher Coad in their paper, ‘Drawing the line’, which explores disjunctive Chinese and Western ideas of the materialism of writing practice, namely calligraphy, particularly in relation to the charges of plagiarism laid against Kathy Acker’s novel Blood and Guts in High School. West and Coad use Deleuzian notions of the line and of repetition to expose and problematize received ideas of authoriality and textuality. Last but by no means least, Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye round off the issue with a discussion of the Classical Gas project, where canonical works in media and cultural theory are mashed fannishly up into album covers from the days when album covers meant something. Tofts and Gye reflect on their practice in the work that goes into these hilarious and oddly moving images, returning us to the haunting delight of the old made strange and the novelty of the unexpectedly familiar new that is part of the visceral appeal of remix culture. AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the contributing authors, the anonymous, thoughtful and diligent peer reviewers, Axel Bruns and the M/C team, and the remix artists and communities who drew us all variously to this endeavour.

Abstract:

Introduction There are increasing levels of concern around the health of citizens within Western neo-liberal democracies like Britain, the USA, and Australia. These governmental concerns are made manifest by discursive mechanisms that seek to both survey and regulate the lifestyles, eating habits and exercise regimes of citizens. Such governmental imperatives have historically targeted schools with school food ranking high in the priorities of public health policy, particularly in regards to the fears around childhood obesity and related health problems (Gard and Wright, Rich, Vander Schee and Gard). However, more recently such concerns have spilled into the wider public arena in Australia where fears of an “obesity epidemic”, the revision of the “food pyramid” and recent calls that make it mandatory for fast food companies to display calorie/kilojoule content on menu boards illustrate the increasing levels to which governments seek to intervene regarding the health of citizens. Not only does the attempt to produce a healthy citizen take place within policy imperatives but also within popular culture. Here, we see healthy eating and diet shows becoming international brands. For example The Biggest Loser, where obese contestants embark on a televised diet and exercise regime, competing to lose the most weight in the shortest time, and also Jamie Oliver’s attempt to change the eating habits of the British has crossed the Atlantic to the USA. There is a sense of urgency embedded in many such discursive practices and an implication that, as a society, we need a “lifestyle change” to make us healthier. Reflecting this urgency is an increase in cookbooks that not only provide recipe ideas but also seek to intervene into our day-to-day conduct. The content of such books moves beyond ways of putting a meal together and into the territory of self-surveillance and regulation. In this way, then, cookbooks can be read as pedagogical. This particular brand of pedagogy, moreover, feeds into wider socio-political discourses around the governance of the self within our late modern context. This chapter will argue that many contemporary cookbooks attempt to enact governmental imperatives around health and nutrition and that, by doing this, they become pedagogical devices that translate governmental devices into the homes of their readers. By using a post-Foucauldian analytical framework, we will illustrate the ways in which Jane Kennedy’s cookbook, Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah mobilises discourses of health, gender, risk, and food in a rich (but 99 per cent fat free) mix. Analytical Framework This paper draws upon Foucauldian governmentality studies and the ways in which discursive practices are enacted in order to position and offer an analysis of cookbooks as pedagogical devices that translate the work of government into readers’ homes. Foucault defined government as “the conduct of conduct” arguing that government relates to the “way in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick […] to govern in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action” (220–1). Foucault argued that attempts to shape conduct occur within socio-historical moments and contexts (Gordon) and they are, therefore, subject to change. Within this article, we seek to understand the ways in which governmental imperatives around food and lifestyle are taken up by cookbook authors and the implications of this in terms of public pedagogies within our late-modern context. Public health is located within a myriad of governmental sites that attempt to regulate people’s lives. In deciphering how government sites operate as mechanisms of regulation in modern times, Miller and Rose suggest that we require: An investigation not merely of grand political schemata, or economic ambitions, or even of general slogans such as ‘state control’, nationalization, the free market, and the like, but of apparently humble and mundane mechanisms which appear to make it possible to govern […] the list is heterogeneous and is, in principle unlimited (32). Such investigations can be grouped under the umbrella of “governmentality studies”. To grasp “governmentality” is complex and requires an analytics that can span history, and reach across macro and micro contours to trace various linkages and connections forged between governmental rationalities, techniques and practices (Leahy, Assembling). For the purposes of this paper we will be offering an analytic of the humble cookbook and its potential role in the governance of the self, a technique vital to contemporary neo-liberal modes of governance. Neo-liberalism produces particular versions of health, citizenship, and individualism. Within neo-liberal governmental assemblages, public health policy operates as a key site for enacting what Miller and Rose label “government at a distance” (32) by working to facilitate the shifting of responsibility for the health of citizens from the State to the individual. The individual, however, does not instinctively know how to incorporate governmental hopes for a healthy lifestyle into their lives—it is here that the cookbook, as pedagogical device, is vital because it translates macro governmental hopes to the micro level, that is, into the kitchens of citizens. Both risk and expertise also work alongside neo-liberalism in the assemblage to render the problems of government both thinkable and calculable, and in turn, practical. We will see in the next section how Jane Kennedy, the author of Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah deploys both popular notions of risk alongside her own experience and expertise (her lifelong “battle” with weight) in order to fold the (female) reader in to Kennedy’s particular approach to healthy eating. Pedagogy could be described as part of the “doing” of education, the means through which ideas are transmitted through and between learners and teachers. Like contemporary neo-liberal government, contemporary pedagogies can be understood as assemblages; that is, they are made up of competing, intersecting, contradictory and multiple elements. Pedagogy is a technical device through which these elements are translated and transmitted to its audience, be that school pupils, students, adult learners or citizens. Elizabeth Ellsworth argues that pedagogy is a “social relationship [that] is very close in. It gets right in there in your brain, your body, your heart, your sense of self, of the world, of others, and of possibilities and impossibilities in all those realms” (6). In other words, effective pedagogical devices are necessary contact points between ideas and the self; they inform relationships between the macro and the micro, thus shaping both the individual and the collective. The remainder of this paper will demonstrate how Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah deploys popular discursive trends regarding food, health, gender, and citizenship as pedagogic tools that aim to cultivate a healthier subject. Food That Makes Your Arse Huge? “Boombah: (adj). Word to describe food that makes your arse huge” (Kennedy 5). Lifestyle, diet, and health books can be seen to have saturated the market over recent years in an almost epidemic-like way. This phenomenon both mirrors and informs governmental imperatives around the health and lifestyle of citizens. A recent visit to our local bookshop revealed that there appears to be a polarisation of texts relating to food, health, and wellbeing. Books that explicitly relate to health and health issues can be found in one section, and cookbooks in another. However, there are an increasing number of texts that blend the two genres and offer diet, health, and lifestyle tips along with recipe ideas and cooking techniques. Within this blend there is also variation; there are texts that offer a scientific exposition of food, nutrition, and diet, such as Ricotti and Connelly’s The Healthy Family Cookbook, a text which offers a twelve-chapter overview of current theories and practices around health and nutrition before offering recipe ideas designed to help the reader achieve and maintain a “healthy weight” (page). In addition there are also texts that fold particular approaches to weight-loss, such as Jenny Craig or The Biggest Loser, together with cooking. The input of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to the mix has been well documented (see Pike; Leahy, Disgusting; Rawlins; Zimmet and James) and the influence of Oliver’s approachable style of writing can be found within many contemporary cookbooks, including Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah, a text within which Jane Kennedy blends together cooking, health, and lifestyle into a paste that is bound together with a Bridget Jones-style confessional commentary on her own, personal struggles with weight and dieting. For example: “I love food. Always have. Unfortunately I love it about one kilo per month more than I should. Perhaps I should put it another way: the food I love seems to have more calories than I need over a month and a year and a lifetime … it adds up! Yep, I get FAT” (xi). This style can be read as a way of “getting right in” (Ellsworth 6), to enfold the reader into Kennedy’s world. It also may provide readers, particularly, as we will discus below, middle-class Anglo-Australian females, with a sense of solidarity in a struggle against weight gain. Kennedy often deploys the spectre of designer jeans that no longer fit as a way to further entice the reader to embrace the healthy eating regime promoted by the book. Kennedy draws upon notions of horror and disgust at the fat body (her own but, implicitly, also the readers). Horror and disgust are potent pedagogical devices that are often put to work in educational and health promotion settings in an attempt to lure people and their bodies into action (Leahy, Disgusting; Lupton). In many ways Kennedy’s cookbook can be read as public pedagogy—its aim is to teach the reader how to cook food that is “packed full of flavour but minus the boombah” (xxvii), or minus that which causes bodily harm and/or disgusting transformation. In order to achieve this, Kennedy deploys “expert knowledge” as she takes the reader on a journey through her own struggles with weight, fad diets and failure to epiphany—which for Kennedy was a personal trainer and a new approach to cooking, eating and lifestyle and her book is peppered with self help-style narrative devices, for example: The key to successful weight loss with this style of eating is to be organised. Disorganisation is the open door though which every second excuse (and French fry) slips. “Oh no, the stores are closed. Oh well, better order takeaway”. Don’t do it. There. Is. No. Good. Takeaway. Food. (Kennedy xxii, emphasis original). Several mechanisms are being deployed here. Firstly, she is inadvertently constructing the perfect western neo-liberal subject: organised, self-contained, disciplined, and able to make informed rational decisions around food type and purchase. Secondly, by predicting and addressing the reader’s perceived resistance, Kennedy reveals her moralistic overtones. We see the judgment of a rational, ordered subject versus a messy, disorganised, immoral (and fat) subject in a piling up of connotations that lead to the same conclusion: this healthy way is the best healthy way. Kennedy’s personal narrative within the text follows a trajectory of “awareness, struggle and epiphany” (Plummer 131) that often characterise the confessional stories that we tell about ourselves: “I ended up […] back at square one: overweight, staring down a year of chicken consommé dinners […] I finally grew a brain and motivated myself to see a personal trainer” (Kennedy xiv). Kennedy’s narrative is a familiar one and a Foucauldian reading of confession enables us to take the position that confession is imperative to the contemporary construction of self. Modes of confession have become increasingly diverse and reified through the era of reality TV, social networking and the “personal trauma” sub-genre of autobiographical memoir (Brien). Kennedy’s book deploys confession as a narrative device that, like her moralising about the dangers of take away food, attempts to fold the reader into her world and, as a result, reifies her approach to healthy eating and lifestyle. We can do it because she has done it. Through the confessional she is not only able to tell of her love of food but also of her understanding of it as risky. This can be outlined by drawing upon an extract we looked at earlier: “the food I love seems to have more calories than I need and over a month and a year and lifetime it adds up! Yep, I get FAT” (xi). Risk and expertise work alongside neo-liberal individualism in the governmental assemblage to render the problems of government both thinkable and calculable, and in turn, practical. Kennedy deploys both risk and expert knowledge in order to successfully demonstrate her understanding of healthy eating as a battleground that see her appetite and tastes at war with her waistline. She guides us through the various fad diets she has tried, through gaining weight while being pregnant, and the anguish of seeing her image reflected back at her through her career in television, until her epiphany: the realisation that in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight a balance of healthy eating and exercise is required. These are convincing pedagogical strategies that encourage the reader to apply modes of self-governance that reflect wider, macro hopes for the healthy neo-liberal citizen and Kennedy’s status as TV celebrity within Australia. Her use of the colloquial term “boombah” makes hers a uniquely Australian endeavour. It is worth noting here that Kennedy’s brand of Australian humour and use of colloquialism is deeply entrenched with raced and classed assumptions about desirable body size and the economic and cultural capital of its readers. It is middle class white Anglo-Australian women who are being targeted by this book and, arguably, by this brand of public pedagogy. As with many contemporary cultural texts about cooking, Kennedy’s book promotes an: “upper-middle-class lifestyle enhanced by the appropriation of goods and commodities. All the while, real issues surrounding the life-sustaining reality of food are ignored” (Wright and Sandlin 406). The lifestyle promoted by Kennedy is classed in this way. She writes of Bettina Liano jeans, of working on the popular Australian television show A Current Affair, of drinking wine, and using goats cheese and kaffir lime leaves in her cooking. Her levels of economic and cultural capital are obvious, and this sets the scene well for the type of reader she is attempting to educate. Although she does not explicitly mention gender, her “Bridget Jones”-style confessions of dietary failure (though Kennedy succeeds where Bridget would inevitably continue to fail), the mention of cooking both children’s and adult’s dinners, and the illustrations throughout the book that feature children’s toys implicitly position her as a “typical modern woman” with a career and a family to boot. In terms of pedagogy, Kennedy’s book reflects contemporary governmental discourse around health, food and wellbeing. It is designed “to shape with some degree of deliberation aspects of our behaviour according to particular sets of norms and for a variety of ends” (Dean 18). It reflects government fears around obesity, portion size, calorific content, and body shape. Pike and Leahy argue that food pedagogies provide government, and in this case the individual, with opportunities to shape, sculpt, mobilise, and work through the food choices, desires and aspirations, needs, wants, and lifestyles of parents, families, and children. The explicit intention of food pedagogies is to enlist the public into a process of “governmental self formation”: that is, “the ways in which various authorities and agencies seek to shape the conduct, aspirations, needs, desires and capacities of specified political and social categories, to enlist them in particular strategies and to seek definite goals” (Dean 563). Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah then uses confession as a springboard to enlisting its readers into a healthier lifestyle and, more importantly, a healthier, risk aversive relationship with food. It individualises this struggle, and, like all good neo-liberal subjects, presents a healthy diet as an individual struggle: This way of cooking and eating works for me […] I feel much healthier and happier and I’ve got a lot more energy […] These recipes have to be better for you than chowing down a creepy bowl of 2 minute noodles and an entire pack of Tim Tams (yes, it’s time to let go). Be disciplined, even if you’ve struggled before. And if you really can’t live without your nightly routine of creamy pasta […] then bung this book back on the shelf. But stop whingeing about your huge arse (xix). This passage illustrates Kennedy’s pedagogy well, particularly the way in which her pedagogy is infused with neo-liberal discursive techniques. She positions herself as expert by stating that her way of cooking “works for me” as well as by deploying phrases like “I feel” and “I’ve got”. She then expertly shifts the reader’s focus from herself to the governance of the self by stating that it is up to the individual to be self-disciplined. Her pedagogy is littered with risk discourse as she informs us that you can continue to eat as you wish, but that there are consequences (a “huge arse”). This particular brand of risk discourse is gendered, as it is arguably mostly women who worry about the size of this part of their anatomy. One of the greatest contradictions of a neo-liberal approach to governance is that at the same time as promoting individual responsibility, there is also a strong emphasis on the collective. Kennedy reflects this throughout the book, as the above passage suggests. Her introductory section acts as a guide for the reader, who—once enfolded into Kennedy’s approach—she lets make their own way with encouragement. This is manifest in her final statements, “So let’s say goodbye to boombah. Go for it! And enjoy!” (xxvii). As pedagogy, then, Fabulous Food, Minus the Boombah attempts to cultivate and shape the reader’s choices around food by providing a practical means for transforming not only the reader’s food practices but also her image and self-esteem. This is achieved by the author’s supplement of supplying expert information, cooking skills, guidance, and incitement. Let’s Say Goodbye to Boombah? This paper has demonstrated how the contemporary cookbook can be read as pedagogy. In some ways the humble cookbook has always been pedagogical; seeking to teach the reader to make something that they previously did not, presumably, know how to, as well as providing cooking techniques and advice on the most suitable produce to use in particular recipes. However, in the contemporary moment, the cookbook arguably increasingly acts as a translation mechanism for governmental imperatives around food, health, and wellbeing. We have taken one cookbook amongst many as an illustration of our thesis. Jane Kennedy’s Fabulous Food Minus the Boombah is an Australian example of the neo-liberal project that lies at the heart of contemporary modes of governance of the population, but also, and more importantly, governance of the self. At the very heart of neo-liberalism is an imagined subject. That is, neo-liberalism needs and wants citizens to be autonomous, health seeking, enterprising, rational, choice-making individuals. The contemporary cookbook, it has been argued, can assist the individual in the production of a healthier-eating self. However, the more complex and intersecting aspects of selfhood—aspects such as socio-economic status, gender, location and ethnicity—are often absent from the construction of the healthy individual promoted by the contemporary cookbook. Above all, this paper has sought to problematise some of the dominant discourse around food, health, and wellbeing that can be found on the pages of the modern-day cookbook. References Brien, Donna Lee. “True Tales that Nurture: Defining Auto/Biographical Storytelling”. Australian Folklore 19 (2004): 84-95. Brien, Donna Lee, and Adele Wessel. “From ‘Training in Citizenship and Home-making’ to ‘Plating Pp’: Writing Australian Cookbooks for Younger Readers”. Ethical Imaginations: Writing Worlds: Refereed Papers of the 16th Annual Australasian Association of Writing Programs Conference. Canberra: AAWP, 2011. Dean, Mitchell. “Governing the Unemployed Self in an Active Society”. Economy and Society 24 (1995): 559–83. Dean, Mitchell. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (2nd ed.). London: Sage, 2010. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Myths of Critical Pedagogy.” Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. Ed. Luke, Carmen and Gore, Jennifer. New York: Routledge, 1992. 90–119. Foucault, Michel. “The Subject And Power.” Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Ed. Dreyfus, Hubert, and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. 208–26. Gard, Michael, and Jan Wright. The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology. London: Routledge, 2005. Gordon, Colin. “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction”. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Eds. Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, Foucault, Michel, and Miller, Peter. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. 1–52. Kennedy, Jane. Fabulous Food Minus the Boombah. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2009. Leahy, Deana. “Assembling a Health[y] Subject.” Unpublished PhD Thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2012. Leahy, Deana. “Disgusting Pedagogies.” Biopolitics and the Obesity Epidemic. Eds. Wright, Jan, and Harwood, Valerie. Routledge: New York, 2009. 172–83. Lupton, Deborah. Fat. New York: Routledge, 2012. Miller, Peter, and Rose, Nicholas. Governing the Present. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Pike, Jo. “Junk Food Mums: Class, Gender and the Battle of Rawmarsh.” Fat Studies and Health at Every Size. Conference: Durham U, 2010. Pike, Jo, and Leahy, Deana. “School Food and the Pedagogies of Parenting”. Australian Journal of Adult Learning 52.3 (2012): 434–59.Plummer, Ken. Telling Sexual Stories. London: Routledge, 1995. Rawlins, Emma. “Citizenship, Health Education and the Obesity Crisis”. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 7 (2006). 18 Apr. 2013. ‹http://www.acme-journal.org›. Rich, Emma. (2010b). “Obesity Assemblages and Surveillance in Schools” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 23 (2010): 803–21. Ricotti, Henry, and Connelly, Vincent. The Healthy Family Cookbook. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Vander Schee, Carol, and Michael Gard. “Editorial: Politics, Pedagogy and Practice in School Health Policy”. Policy Futures in Education 9 (2011): 307–14. Wright, Robin Redman, and Jennifer A. Sandlin. “You Are What You Eat!?: Television Cooking Shows, Consumption, and Lifestyle Practices as Adult Learning”. Honoring Our Past, Embracing Our Future: Proceedings of the 50th Annual Adult Education Research Conference. 2009: 402-407. 18 Apr. 2013. ‹http://digitalcommons.nl.edu/ace_aerc/1›. Zimmet, Paul Z., and James, Phillip W.T. “The Unstoppable Australian Obesity and Diabetes Juggernaut: What Should Politicians Do?”. Medical Journal of Australia 185 (2008): 187–8.

Abstract:

One of the greatest joys in watching Foxtel is to see all the crazy people who run talk shows. Judgement, ridicule and generalisations slip from their tongues like overcooked lamb off a bone. From Oprah to Rikki, from Jerry to Mother Love, the posterior of pop culture claims a world-wide audience. Recently, a new talk diva was added to the pay television stable. Dr Laura Schlessinger, the Mother of Morals, prowls the soundstage. attacking 'selfish acts' such as divorce, de facto relationships and voting Democrat. On April 11, 2001, a show aired in Australia that added a new demon to the decadence of the age. Dr Laura had been told that a disgusting video clip, called 'Rock DJ', had been televised at 2:30pm on MTV. Children could have been watching. The footage that so troubled our doyenne of daytime featured the British performer Robbie Williams not only stripping in front of disinterested women, but then removing skin, muscle and tissue in a desperate attempt to claim their gaze. This was too much for Dr Laura. She was horrified: her strident tone became piercing. She screeched, "this is si-ee-ck." . My paper is drawn to this sick masculinity, not to judge - but to laugh and theorise. Robbie Williams, the deity of levity, holds a pivotal role in theorising the contemporary 'crisis' of manhood. To paraphrase Austin Powers, Williams returned the ger to singer. But Williams also triumphed in a captivatingly original way. He is one of the few members of a boy band who created a successful solo career without regurgitating the middle of the road mantras of boys, girls, love, loss and whining about it. Williams' journey through post-war popular music, encompassing influences from both Sinatra and Sonique, forms a functional collage, rather than patchwork, of masculinity. He has been prepared to not only age in public, but to discuss the crevices and cracks in the facade. He strips, smokes, plays football, wears interesting underwear and drinks too much. My short paper trails behind this combustible masculinity, focussing on his sorties with both masculine modalities and the rock discourse. My words attack the gap between text and readership, beat and ear, music and men. The aim is to reveal how this 'sick masculinity' problematises the conservative rendering of men's crisis. Come follow me I'm an honorary Sean Connery, born '74 There's only one of me … Press be asking do I care for sodomy I don't know, yeah, probably I've been looking for serial monogamy Not some bird that looks like Billy Connolly But for now I'm down for ornithology Grab your binoculars, come follow me. 'Kids,' Robbie Williams Robbie Williams is a man for our age. Between dating supermodels and Geri 'Lost Spice' Halliwell [1], he has time to "love … his mum and a pint," (Ansen 85) but also subvert the Oasis co*ck(rock)tail by frocking up for a television appearance. Williams is important to theories of masculine representation. As a masculinity to think with, he creates popular culture with a history. In an era where Madonna practices yoga and wears cowboy boots, it is no surprise that by June 2000, Robbie Williams was voted the world's sexist man [2]. A few months later, in the October edition of Vogue, he posed in a British flag bikini. It is reassuring in an era where a 12 year old boy states that "You aren't a man until you shoot at something," (Issac in Mendel 19) that positive male role models exist who are prepared to both wear a frock and strip on national television. Reading Robbie Williams is like dipping into the most convincing but draining of intellectual texts. He is masculinity in motion, conveying foreignness, transgression and corruption, bartering in the polymorphous economies of sex, colonialism, race, gender and nation. His career has spanned the boy bands, try-hard rock, video star and hybrid pop performer. There are obvious resonances between the changes to Williams and alterations in masculinity. In 1988, Suzanne Moore described (the artist still known as) Prince as "the pimp of postmodernism." (165-166) Over a decade later, the simulacra has a new tour guide. Williams revels in the potency of representation. He rarely sings about love or romance, as was his sonic fodder in Take That. Instead, his performance is fixated on becoming a better man, glancing an analytical eye over other modes of masculinity. Notions of masculine crisis and sickness have punctuated this era. Men's studies is a boom area of cultural studies, dislodging the assumed structures of popular culture [3]. William Pollack's Real Boys has created a culture of changing expectations for men. The greater question arising from his concerns is why these problems, traumas and difficulties are emerging in our present. Pollack's argument is that boys and young men invest energy and time "disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings." (15) This masking is difficult to discern within dance and popular music. Through lyrics and dancing, videos and choreography, masculinity is revealed as convoluted, complex and fragmented. While rock music is legitimised by dominant ideologies, marginalised groups frequently use disempowered genres - like country, dance and rap genres - to present oppositional messages. These competing representations expose seamless interpretations of competent masculinity. Particular skills are necessary to rip the metaphoric pacifier out of the masculine mouth of popular culture. Patriarchal pop revels in the paradoxes of everyday life. Frequently these are nostalgic visions, which Kimmel described as a "retreat to a bygone era." (87) It is the recognition of a shared, simpler past that provides reinforcement to heteronormativity. Williams, as a gaffer tape masculinity, pulls apart the gaps and crevices in representation. Theorists must open the interpretative space encircling popular culture, disrupting normalising criteria. Multiple nodes of assessment allow a ranking of competent masculinity. From sport to business, drinking to sex, masculinity is transformed into a wired site of ranking, judgement and determination. Popular music swims in the spectacle of maleness. From David Lee Roth's skied splits to Eminem's beanie, young men are interpellated as subjects in patriarchy. Robbie Williams is a history lesson in post war masculinity. This nostalgia is conservative in nature. The ironic pastiche within his music videos features motor racing, heavy metal and Bond films. 'Rock DJ', the 'sick text' that vexed Doctor Laura, is Williams' most elaborate video. Set in a rollerdrome with female skaters encircling a central podium, the object of fascination and fetish is a male stripper. This strip is different though, as it disrupts the power held by men in phallocentralism. After being confronted by Williams' naked body, the observing women are both bored and disappointed at the lack-lustre deployment of masculine genitalia. After this display, Williams appears embarrassed, confused and humiliated. As Buchbinder realised, "No actual penis could every really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus." (49) To render this banal experience of male nudity ridiculous, Williams then proceeds to remove skin and muscle. He finally becomes an object of attraction for the female DJ only in skeletal form. By 'going all the way,' the strip confirms the predictability of masculinity and the ordinariness of the male body. For literate listeners though, a higher level of connotation is revealed. The song itself is based on Barry White's melody for 'It's ecstasy (when you lay down next to me).' Such intertextuality accesses the meta-racist excesses of a licentious black male sexuality. A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality. Williams' iconography and soundtrack is refreshing, emerging from an era of "men who cling … tightly to their illusions." (Faludi 14) When the ideological drapery is cut away, the male body is a major disappointment. Masculinity is an anxious performance. Fascinatingly, this deconstructive video has been demeaned through its labelling as p*rnography [4]. Oddly, a man who is prepared to - literally - shave the skin of masculinity is rendered offensive. Men's studies, like feminism, has been defrocking masculinity for some time. Robinson for example, expressed little sympathy for "whiny men jumping on the victimisation bandwagon or playing cowboys and Indians at warrior weekends and beating drums in sweat lodges." (6) By grating men's identity back to the body, the link between surface and depth - or identity and self - is forged. 'Rock DJ' attacks the new subjectivities of the male body by not only generating self-surveillance, but humour through the removal of clothes, skin and muscle. He continues this play with the symbols of masculine performance throughout the album Sing when you're winning. Featuring soccer photographs of players, coaches and fans, closer inspection of the images reveal that Robbie Williams is actually every character, in every role. His live show also enfolds diverse performances. Singing a version of 'My Way,' with cigarette in tow, he remixes Frank Sinatra into a replaying and recutting of masculine fabric. He follows one dominating masculinity with another: the Bond-inspired 'Millennium.' Some say that we are players Some say that we are pawns But we've been making money Since the day we were born Robbie Williams is comfortably located in a long history of post-Sinatra popular music. He mocks the rock ethos by combining guitars and drums with a gleaming brass section, hailing the lounge act of Dean Martin, while also using rap and dance samples. Although carrying fifty year's of crooner baggage, the spicy scent of hom*osexuality has also danced around Robbie Williams' career. Much of this ideology can be traced back to the Take That years. As Gary Barlow and Jason Orange commented at the time, Jason: So the rumour is we're all gay now are we? Gary: Am I gay? I am? Why? Oh good. Just as long as we know. Howard: Does anyone think I'm gay? Jason: No, you're the only one people think is straight. Howard: Why aren't I gay? What's wrong with me? Jason: It's because you're such a fine figure of macho manhood.(Kadis 17) For those not literate in the Take That discourse, it should come as no surprise that Howard was the TT equivalent of The Beatle's Ringo Starr or Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. Every boy band requires the ugly, shy member to make the others appear taller and more attractive. The inference of this dialogue is that the other members of the group are simply too handsome to be heterosexual. This ambiguous sexuality has followed Williams into his solo career, becoming fodder for those lads too unappealing to be hom*osexual: Oasis. Born to be mild I seem to spend my life Just waiting for the chorus 'Cause the verse is never nearly Good enough Robbie Williams "Singing for the lonely." Robbie Williams accesses a bigger, brighter and bolder future than Britpop. While the Gallagher brothers emulate and worship the icons of 1960s British music - from the Beatles' haircuts to the Stones' psychedelia - Williams' songs, videos and persona are chattering in a broader cultural field. From Noel Cowardesque allusions to the ordinariness of pub culture, Williams is much more than a pretty-boy singer. He has become an icon of English masculinity, enclosing all the complexity that these two terms convey. Williams' solo success from 1999-2001 occurred at the time of much parochial concern that British acts were not performing well in the American charts. It is bemusing to read Billboard over this period. The obvious quality of Britney Spears is seen to dwarf the mediocrity of British performers. The calibre of Fatboy Slim, carrying a smiley backpack stuffed with reflexive dance culture, is neither admitted nor discussed. It is becoming increasing strange to monitor the excessive fame of Williams in Britain, Europe, Asia and the Pacific when compared to his patchy career in the United States. Even some American magazines are trying to grasp the disparity. The swaggering king of Britpop sold a relatively measly 600,000 copies of his U.S. debut album, The ego has landed … Maybe Americans didn't appreciate his songs about being famous. (Ask Dr. Hip 72) In the first few years of the 2000s, it has been difficult to discuss a unified Anglo-American musical formation. Divergent discursive frameworks have emerged through this British evasion. There is no longer an agreed centre to the musical model. Throughout 1990s Britain, blackness jutted out of dance floor mixes, from reggae to dub, jazz and jungle. Plied with the coldness of techno was an almost too hot hip hop. Yet both were alternate trajectories to Cool Britannia. London once more became swinging, or as Vanity Fair declared, "the nerve centre of pop's most cohesive scene since the Pacific Northwest grunge explosion of 1991." (Kamp 102) Through Britpop, the clock turned back to the 1960s, a simpler time before race became 'a problem' for the nation. An affiliation was made between a New Labour, formed by the 1997 British election, and the rebirth of a Swinging London [5]. This style-driven empire supposedly - again - made London the centre of the world. Britpop was itself a misnaming. It was a strong sense of Englishness that permeated the lyrics, iconography and accent. Englishness requires a Britishness to invoke a sense of bigness and greatness. The contradictions and excesses of Blur, Oasis and Pulp resonate in the gap between centre and periphery, imperial core and colonised other. Slicing through the arrogance and anger of the Gallaghers is a yearning for colonial simplicity, when the pink portions of the map were the stable subjects of geography lessons, rather than the volatile embodiment of postcolonial theory. Simon Gikandi argues that "the central moments of English cultural identity were driven by doubts and disputes about the perimeters of the values that defined Englishness." (x) The reason that Britpop could not 'make it big' in the United States is because it was recycling an exhausted colonial dreaming. Two old Englands were duelling for ascendancy: the Oasis-inflected Manchester working class fought Blur-inspired London art school chic. This insular understanding of difference had serious social and cultural consequences. The only possible representation of white, British youth was a tabloidisation of Oasis's behaviour through swearing, drug excess and violence. Simon Reynolds realised that by returning to the three minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking parochial England with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly on the future. (members.aol.com/blissout/Britpop.html) Fortunately, another future had already happened. The beats per minute were pulsating with an urgent affirmation of change, hybridity and difference. Hip hop and techno mapped a careful cartography of race. While rock was colonialisation by other means, hip hop enacted a decolonial imperative. Electronic dance music provided a unique rendering of identity throughout the 1990s. It was a mode of musical communication that moved across national and linguistic boundaries, far beyond Britpop or Stateside rock music. While the Anglo American military alliance was matched and shadowed by postwar popular culture, Brit-pop signalled the end of this hegemonic formation. From this point, English pop and American rock would not sail as smoothly over the Atlantic. While 1995 was the year of Wonderwall, by 1996 the Britpop bubble corroded the faces of the Gallagher brothers. Oasis was unable to complete the American tour. Yet other cultural forces were already active. 1996 was also the year of Trainspotting, with "Born Slippy" being the soundtrack for a blissful journey under the radar. This was a cultural force that no longer required America as a reference point [6]. Robbie Williams was able to integrate the histories of Britpop and dance culture, instigating a complex dialogue between the two. Still, concern peppered music and entertainment journals that British performers were not accessing 'America.' As Sharon Swart stated Britpop acts, on the other hand, are finding it less easy to crack the U.S. market. The Spice Girls may have made some early headway, but fellow purveyors of pop, such as Robbie Williams, can't seem to get satisfaction from American fans. (35 British performers had numerous cultural forces working against them. Flat global sales, the strength of the sterling and the slow response to the new technological opportunities of DVD, all caused problems. While Britpop "cleaned house," (Boehm 89) it was uncertain which cultural formation would replace this colonising force. Because of the complex dialogues between the rock discourse and dance culture, time and space were unable to align into a unified market. American critics simply could not grasp Robbie Williams' history, motives or iconography. It's Robbie's world, we just buy tickets for it. Unless, of course you're American and you don't know jack about soccer. That's the first mistake Williams makes - if indeed one of his goals is to break big in the U.S. (and I can't believe someone so ambitious would settle for less.) … Americans, it seems, are most fascinated by British pop when it presents a mirror image of American pop. (Woods 98 There is little sense that an entirely different musical economy now circulates, where making it big in the United States is not the singular marker of credibility. Williams' demonstrates commitment to the international market, focussing on MTV Asia, MTV online, New Zealand and Australian audiences [7]. The Gallagher brothers spent much of the 1990s trying to be John Lennon. While Noel, at times, knocked at the door of rock legends through "Wonderwall," he snubbed Williams' penchant for pop glory, describing him as a "fat dancer." (Gallagher in Orecklin 101) Dancing should not be decried so summarily. It conveys subtle nodes of bodily knowledge about men, women, sex and desire. While men are validated for bodily movement through sport, women's dancing remains a performance of voyeuristic attention. Such a divide is highly repressive of men who dance, with gayness infiltrating the metaphoric masculine dancefloor [8]. Too often the binary of male and female is enmeshed into the divide of rock and dance. Actually, these categories slide elegantly over each other. The male pop singers are located in a significant semiotic space. Robbie Williams carries these contradictions and controversy. NO! Robbie didn't go on NME's cover in a 'desperate' attempt to seduce nine-year old knickerwetters … YES! He used to be teenybopper fodder. SO WHAT?! So did the Beatles the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc blah blah pseudohistoricalrockbollocks. NO! Making music that gurlz like is NOT a crime! (Wells 62) There remains an uncertainty in his performance of masculinity and at times, a deliberate ambivalence. He grafts subversiveness into a specific lineage of English pop music. The aim for critics of popular music is to find a way to create a rhythm of resistance, rather than melody of credible meanings. In summoning an archaeology of the archive, we begin to write a popular music history. Suzanne Moore asked why men should "be interested in a sexual politics based on the frightfully old-fashioned ideas of truth, identity and history?" (175) The reason is now obvious. Femininity is no longer alone on the simulacra. It is impossible to separate real men from the representations of masculinity that dress the corporeal form. Popular music is pivotal, not for collapsing the representation into the real, but for making the space between these states livable, and pleasurable. Like all semiotic sicknesses, the damaged, beaten and bandaged masculinity of contemporary music swaddles a healing pedagogic formation. Robbie Williams enables the writing of a critical history of post Anglo-American music [9]. Popular music captures such stories of place and identity. Significantly though, it also opens out spaces of knowing. There is an investment in rhythm that transgresses national histories of music. While Williams has produced albums, singles, video and endless newspaper copy, his most important revelations are volatile and ephemeral in their impact. He increases the popular cultural vocabulary of masculinity. [1] The fame of both Williams and Halliwell was at such a level that it was reported in the generally conservative, pages of Marketing. The piece was titled "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing, August 2000: 17. [2] For poll results, please refer to "Winners and Losers," Time International, Vol. 155, Issue 23, June 12, 2000, 9 [3] For a discussion of this growth in academic discourse on masculinity, please refer to Paul Smith's "Introduction," in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. [4] Steve Futterman described Rock DJ as the "least alluring p*rn video on MTV," in "The best and worst: honour roll," Entertainment Weekly 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. [5] Michael Bracewell stated that "pop provides an unofficial cartography of its host culture, charting the national mood, marking the crossroads between the major social trends and the tunnels of the zeitgeist," in "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman .(February 21 1997): 36. [6] It is important to make my point clear. The 'America' that I am summoning here is a popular cultural formation, which possesses little connection with the territory, institution or defence initiatives of the United States. Simon Frith made this distinction clear, when he stated that "the question becomes whether 'America' can continue to be the mythical locale of popular culture as it has been through most of this century. As I've suggested, there are reasons now to suppose that 'America' itself, as a pop cultural myth, no longer bears much resemblance to the USA as a real place even in the myth." This statement was made in "Anglo-America and its discontents," Cultural Studies 5 1991: 268. [7] To observe the scale of attention paid to the Asian and Pacific markets, please refer to http://robbiewilliams.com/july13scroll.html, http://robbiewilliams.com/july19scroll.html and http://robbiewilliams.com/july24scroll.html, accessed on March 3, 2001 [8] At its most naïve, J. Michael Bailey and Michael Oberschneider asked, "Why are gay men so motivated to dance? One hypothesis is that gay men dance in order to be feminine. In other words, gay men dance because women do. An alternative hypothesis is that gay men and women share a common factor in their emotional make-up that makes dancing especially enjoyable," from "Sexual orientation in professional dance," Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997). Such an interpretation is particularly ludicrous when considering the pre-rock and roll masculine dancing rituals in the jive, Charleston and jitterbug. Once more, the history of rock music is obscuring the history of dance both before the mid 1950s and after acid house. [9] Women, gay men and black communities through much of the twentieth century have used these popular spaces. For example, Lynne Segal, in Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990, stated that "through dancing, athletic and erotic performance, but most powerfully through music, Black men could express something about the body and its physicality, about emotions and their cosmic reach, rarely found in white culture - least of all in white male culture,": 191 References Ansen, D., Giles, J., Kroll, J., Gates, D. and Schoemer, K. "What's a handsome lad to do?" Newsweek 133.19 (May 10, 1999): 85. "Ask Dr. Hip." U.S. News and World Report 129.16 (October 23, 2000): 72. Bailey, J. Michael., and Oberschneider, Michael. "Sexual orientation in professional dance." Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997):expanded academic database [fulltext]. Boehm, E. "Pop will beat itself up." Variety 373.5 (December 14, 1998): 89. Bracewell, Michael. "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman.(February 21 1997): 36. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties .Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. Frith, Simon. "Anglo-America and its discontents." Cultural Studies. 5 1991. Futterman, Steve. "The best and worst: honour roll." Entertainment Weekly, 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. Gikandi, Simon. Maps of Englishness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Kadis, Alex. Take That: In private. London: Virgin Books, 1994. Kamp, D. "London Swings! Again!" Vanity Fair ( March 1997): 102. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Mendell, Adrienne. How men think. New York: Fawcett, 1996. Moore, Susan. "Getting a bit of the other - the pimps of postmodernism." In Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Male Order .London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. 165-175. Orecklin, Michele. "People." Time. 155.10 (March 13, 2000): 101. Pollack, William. Real boys. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1999. Reynolds, Simon. members.aol.com/blissout/britpop.html. Accessed on April 15, 2001. Robinson, David. No less a man. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1994. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990. Smith, Paul. "Introduction" in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Swart, S. "U.K. Showbiz" Variety.(December 11-17, 2000): 35. Sexton, Paul and Masson, Gordon. "Tips for Brits who want U.S. success" Billboard .(September 9 2000): 1. Wells, Steven. "Angst." NME.(November 21 1998): 62. "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing.(August 2000): 17. Woods, S. "Robbie Williams Sing when you're winning" The Village Voice. 45.52. (January 2, 2001): 98.

Abstract:

Obscured in contemporary climate change discourse is the fact that under even the most serious mitigation scenarios being envisaged it will be virtually impossible to avoid runaway ecosystem collapse; so great is the momentum of global greenhouse build-up (Anderson and Bows). And under even the best-case scenario, two-degree warming, the ecological, social, and economic costs are proving to be much deeper than first thought. The greenhouse genie is out of the bottle, but the best that appears to be on offer is a gradual transition to the pro-growth, pro-consumption discourse of “ecological modernisation” (EM); anything more seems politically unpalatable (Barry, Ecological Modernisation; Adger et al.). Here, I aim to account for how cheaply EM has managed to allay ecology. To do so, I detail the operations of the co-optive, definitional strategy which I call the “high-ground” strategy, waged by a historic bloc of actors, discourses, and institutions with a common interest in resisting radical social and ecological critique. This is not an argument about climate laggards like the United States and Australia where sceptic views remain near the centre of public debate. It is a critique of climate leaders such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands—nations at the forefront of the adoption of EM policies and discourses. With its antecedent in sustainable development discourse, by emphasising technological innovation, eco-efficiency, and markets, EM purports to transcend the familiar dichotomy between the economy and the environment (Hajer; Barry, ‘Towards’). It rebuts the 1970s “limits to growth” perspective and affirms that “the only possible way out of the ecological crisis is by going further into the process of modernisation” (Mol qtd. in York and Rosa 272, emphasis in original). Its narrative is one in which the “dirty and ugly industrial caterpillar transforms into an ecological butterfly” (Huber, qtd. in Spaargaren and Mol). How is it that a discourse notoriously quiet on endless growth, consumer culture, and the offshoring of dirty production could become the cutting edge of environmental policy? To answer this question we need to examine the discursive and ideological effects of EM discourse. In particular, we must analyse the strategies that work to continually naturalise dominant institutions and create the appearance that they are fit to respond to climate change. Co-opting Environmental Discourse Two features characterise state environmental discourse in EM nations: an almost universal recognition of the problem, and the reassurance that present institutions are capable of addressing it. The key organs of neoliberal capitalism—markets and states—have “gone green”. In boardrooms, in advertising and public relations, in governments, and in international fora, climate change is near the top of the agenda. While EM is the latest form of this discourse, early hints can be seen in President Nixon’s embrace of the environment and Margaret Thatcher’s late-1980s green rhetoric. More recently, David Cameron led a successful Conservative Party “detoxification” program with an ostentatious rhetorical strategy featuring the electoral slogan, “Vote blue, go green” (Carter). We can explain this transformation with reference to a key shift in the discursive history of environmental politics. The birth of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s brought a new symbolic field, a new discourse, into the public sphere. Yet by the 1990s the movement was no longer the sole proprietor of its discourse (Eder 203). It had lost control of its symbols. Politicians, corporations, and media outlets had assumed a dominant role in efforts to define “what climate change was and what it meant for the world” (Carvalho and Burgess 1464). I contend that the dramatic rise to prominence of environmental issues in party-political discourse is not purely due to short-term tactical vote-winning strategy. Nor is it the case that governments are finally, reluctantly waking up to the scientific reality of ecological degradation. Instead, they are engaged in a proactive attempt to redefine the contours of green critique so as to take the discourse onto territory in which established interests already control the high ground. The result is the defusing of the oppositional element of political ecology (Dryzek et al. 665–6), as well as social critique in general: what I term the gentrification of climate change. If we view environmentalism as, at least partially, a cultural politics in which contested definitions of problem is the key political battleground, we can trace how dominant interests have redefined the contours of climate change discourse. We can reveal the extent to which environmentalism, rather than being integrated into capitalism, has been co-opted. The key feature of this strategy is to present climate change as a mere aberration against a background of business-as-usual. The solutions that are presented are overwhelmingly extensions of existing institutions: bringing CO2 into the market, the optimistic development of new techno-scientific solutions to climate problems, extending regulatory regimes into hitherto overlooked domains. The agent of this co-optive strategy is not the state, industry, capital, or any other manifest actor, but a “historic bloc” cutting across divisions between society, politics, and economy (Laclau and Mouffe 42). The agent is an abstract coalition that is definable only to the extent that its strategic interests momentarily intersect at one point or another. The state acts as a locus, but the bloc is itself not reducible to the state. We might also think of the agent as an assemblage of conditions of social reproduction, in which dominant social, political, and economic interests have a stake. The bloc has learned the lesson that to be a player in a definitional battle one must recognise what is being fought over. Thus, exhortations to address climate change and build a green economy represent the first stage of the definitional battle for climate change: an attempt to enter the contest. In practical terms, this has manifest as the marking out of a self-serving division between action and inaction. Articulated through a binary modality climate change becomes something we either address/act on/tackle—or not. Under such a grammar even the most meagre efforts can be presented as “tackling climate change.” Thus Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007 on a platform of “action on climate change”, and he frequently implored that Australia would “do its bit” on climate change during his term. Tony Blair is able to declare that “tackling climate change… need not limit greater economic opportunity” and mean it in all sincerity (Barry, ‘Towards’ 112). So deployed, this binary logic minimises climate change to a level at which existing institutions are validated as capable of addressing the “problem,” and the government legitimised for its moral, green stand. The Hegemonic Articulation of Climate Change The historic bloc’s main task in the high-ground strategy is to re-articulate the threat in terms of its own hegemonic discourse: market economics. The widely publicised and highly influential Stern Review, commissioned by the British Government, is the standard-bearer of how to think about climate change from an economic perspective. It follows a supremely EM logic: economy and ecology have been reconciled. The Review presents climate change, famously, as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen” (Stern et al. viii). The structuring horizon of the Stern Review is the correction of this failure, the overcoming of what is perceived to be not a systemic problem requiring a reappraisal of social institutions, but an issue of carbon pricing, technology policy, and measures aimed at “reducing barriers to behavioural change”. Stern insists that “we can be ‘green’ and grow. Indeed, if we are not ‘green’, we will eventually undermine growth, however measured” (iv). He reassures us that “tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries” (viii). Yet Stern’s seemingly miraculous reconciliation of growth with climate change mitigation in fact implies a severe degree of warming. The Stern Review aims to stabilise carbon dioxide equivalent concentrations at 550ppm, which would correspond to an increase of global temperature of 3-4 degrees Celsius. As Foster et al. note, this scenario, from an orthodox economist who is perceived as being pro-environment, is ecologically unsustainable and is viewed as catastrophic by many scientists (Foster, Clark, and York 1087–88). The reason Stern gives for not attempting deeper cuts is that they “are unlikely to be economically viable” (Stern et al. 231). In other words, the economy-ecology articulation is not a meeting of equals. Central to the policy prescriptions of EM is the marketising of environmental “bads” like carbon emissions. Carbon trading schemes, held in high esteem by moderate environmentalists and market economists alike, are the favoured instruments for such a task. Yet, in practice, these schemes can do more harm than good. When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to legislate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as a way of addressing the “greatest moral challenge of our generation” it represented Australia’s “initial foray into ecological modernisation” (Curran 211). Denounced for its weak targets and massive polluter provisions, the Scheme was opposed by environmental groups, the CSIRO, and even the government’s own climate change advisor (Taylor; Wilkinson). While the Scheme’s defenders claimed it was as a step in the right direction, these opponents believed it would hurt more than help the environment. A key strategy in enshrining a particular hegemonic articulation is the repetition and reinforcement of key articulations in a way which is not overtly ideological. As Spash notes of the Stern Review, while it does connect to climate change such issues as distributive justice, value and ethical conflicts, intergenerational issues, this amounts to nothing but lip service given the analysis comes pre-formed in an orthodox economics mould. The complex of interconnected issues raised by climate change is reduced to the impact of carbon control on consumption growth (see also Swyngedouw and While, Jonas, and Gibbs). It is as if the system of relations we call global capitalism—relations between state and industry, science and technology, society and nature, labour and capital, North and South—are irrelevant to climate change, which is nothing but an unfortunate over-concentration of certain gases. In redrawing the discursive boundaries in this way it appears that climate change is a temporary blip on the path to a greener prosperity—as if markets and capitalism merely required minor tinkering to put them on the green-growth path. Markets are constituted as legitimate tools for managing climate change, in concert with regulation internalised within neoliberal state competition (While, Jonas, and Gibbs 81). The ecology-economy articulation both marketises “green,” and “greens” markets. Consonant with the capitalism-environment articulation is the prominence of the sovereign individual. Both the state and the media work to reproduce subjects largely as consumers (of products and politics) rather than citizens, framing environmental responsibility as the responsibility to consume “wisely” (Carvalho). Of course, what is obscured in this “self-greening” discourse is the culpability of consumption itself, and of a capitalist economy based on endless consumption growth, exploitation of resources, and the pursuit of new markets. Greening Technology EM also “greens” technology. Central to its pro-growth ethos is the tapering off of ecosystem impacts through green technologies like solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal. While green technologies are preferable to dependence upon resource-intensive technologies of oil and coal, that they may actually deliver on such promises has been shown to be contingent upon efficiency outstripping economic growth, a prospect that is dubious at best, especially considering the EM settlement is one in which any change to consumption practices is off the agenda. As Barry and Paterson put it, “all current experience suggests that, in most areas, efficiency gains per unit of consumption are usually outstripped by overall increases in consumption” (770). The characteristic ideological manoeuvre of foregrounding non-representative examples is evident here: green technologies comprise a tiny fraction of all large-scale deployed technologies, yet command the bulk of attention and work to cast technology generally in a green light. It is also false to assume that green technologies do not put their own demands on material resources. Deploying renewables on the scale that is required to address climate change demands enormous quantities of concrete, steel, glass and rare earth minerals, and vast programs of land-clearing to house solar and wind plants (Charlton 40). Further, claims that economic growth can become detached from ecological disturbance are premised on a limited basket of ecological indicators. Corporate marketing strategies are driving this green-technology articulation. While a single advertisem*nt represents an appeal to consume an individual commodity, taken collectively advertising institutes a culture of consumption. Individually, “greenwash” is the effort to spin one company’s environmental programs out of proportion while minimising the systemic degradation that production entails. But as a burgeoning social institution, greenwash constitutes an ideological apparatus constructing industry as fundamentally working in the interests of ecology. In turn, each corporate image of pristine blue skies, flourishing ecosystems, wind farms, and solar panels constitutes a harmonious fantasy of green industry. As David Mackay, chief scientific advisor to the UK Government has pointed out, the political rhetoric of green technology lulls people into a false sense of security (qtd. in Charlton 38). Again, a binary logic works to portray greener technologies—such as gas, “clean coal”, and biomass combustion—as green. Rescuing Legitimacy There are essentially two critical forces that are defused in the high-ground strategy’s definitional project. The first is the scientific discourse which maintains that the measures proposed by leading governments are well below what is required to reign in dangerous climate change. This seems to be invisible not so much because it is radical but because it is obscured by the uncertainties in which climate science is couched, and by EM’s noble-sounding rhetoric. The second is the radical critique which argues that climate change is a classic symptom of an internal contradiction of a capitalist economy seeking endless growth in a finite world. The historic bloc’s successful redefinition strategy appears to jam the frequency of serious, scientifically credible climate discourse, yet at the level of hegemonic struggle its effects range wider. In redefining climate change and other key signifiers of green critique – “environment”, “ecology”, “green”, “planet”—it expropriates key properties of its antagonist. Were it not that climate change is now defined on the cheery, reassuring ground of EM discourse, the gravity of the alarming—rather than alarmist (Risbey)—scientific discourse may just have offered radical critique the ammunition it needed to provoke society into serious deliberations over its socioeconomic path. Radical green critique is not in itself the chief enemy of the historic bloc. But it is a privileged element within antagonistic discourse and reinforces the critical element of the feminist, civil rights, and student movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In this way ecology has tended to act as a nodal point binding general social critique: all of the other demands began to be inscribed with the green critique, just as the green critique became a metaphor for all of the others (Laclau). The metaphorical value of the green critique not only relates to the size and vibrancy of the movement—the immediate visibility of ecological destruction stood as a powerful symbol of the kernel of antagonistic politics: a sense that society had fundamentally gone awry. While green critique demands that progress should be conditional upon ecology, EM professes that progress is already green (Eder 217n). Thus the great win achieved by the high-ground strategy is not over radical green critique per se but over the shifting coalition that threatens its legitimacy. As Stavrakakis observes, what is novel about green discourse is nothing essential to the signifiers it deploys, but the way that a common signifier comes to stand in and structure the field as a whole – to serve as a nodal point. It has a number of signifiers: environmental sustainability, social justice, grassroots democracy, and peace and non-violence, all of which are “quilted” around the master-signifiers of “ecology”, “green”, or “planet”. While these master-signifiers are not unique to green ideology, what is unique is that they stand at the centre. But the crucial point to note about the green signifier at the heart of political ecology is that its value is accorded, in large part, through its negation of the dominant ideology. That is to say, it is not that green ideology stands as merely another way of mapping the social; rather, the master-signifier "green" contains an implicit refutation of the dominant social order. That “green” is now almost wholly evacuated of its radical connotations speaks to the effectiveness of the redefinitional effort.The historic bloc is aided in its efforts by the complexity of climate change. Such opacity is characteristic of contemporary risks, whose threats are mostly “a type of virtual reality, real virtuality” (Beck 213). The political struggle then takes place at the level of meaning, and power is played out in a contest to fix the definitions of key risks such as climate change. When relations of (risk) definition replace relations of production as the site of the effects of power, a double mystification ensues and shifts in the ground on which the struggle takes place may go unnoticed. Conclusion By articulating ecology with markets and technology, EM transforms the threat of climate change into an opportunity, a new motor of neoliberal legitimacy. The historic bloc has co-opted environmentalist discourse to promote a gentrified climate change which present institutions are capable of managing: “We are at the fork in the road between order and catastrophe. Stick with us. We will get you through the crisis.” The sudden embrace of the environment by Nixon and by Thatcher, the greening of Cameron’s Conservatives, the Garnaut and Stern reports, and the Australian Government’s foray into carbon trading all have their more immediate policy and political aims. Yet they are all consistent with the high-ground definitional strategy, professing no contraction between sustainability and the present socioeconomic order. Undoubtedly, EM is vastly preferable to denial and inaction. It may yet open the doors to real ecological reform. But in its present form, its preoccupation is the legitimation crisis threatening dominant interests, rather than the ecological crisis facing us all. References Adger, W. Neil, Tor A. Benjaminsen, Katrina Brown, and Hanne Svarstad. ‘Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental Discourses.’ Development and Change 32.4 (2001): 681–715. Anderson, Kevin, and Alice Bows. “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change: Emission Scenarios for a New World.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369.1934 (2010): 20–44. Barry, John, and Matthew Paterson. “Globalisation, Ecological Modernisation and New Labour.”Political Studies 52.4 (2004): 767–84. Barry, John. “Ecological Modernisation.” Debating the Earth : the Environmental Politics Reader. Ed. John S. Dryzek & David Schlosberg. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ——-. “Towards a Model of Green Political Economy: From Ecological Modernisation to Economic Security.” Global Ecological Politics. Ed. John Barry and Liam Leonard. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2010. 109–28. Beck, Ulrich. “Risk Society Revisited.” The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory. Ed. Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck, & Joost Van Loon. London: SAGE, 2000. Carter, Neil. “Vote Blue, Go Green? Cameron’s Conservatives and the Environment.” The Political Quarterly 80.2 (2009): 233–42. Carvalho, Anabela. “Ideological Cultures and Media Discourses on Scientific Knowledge: Re-reading News on Climate Change.” Public Understanding of Science 16.2 (2007): 223–43. Carvalho, Anabela, and Jacquelin Burgess. “Cultural Circuits of Climate Change in UK Broadsheet Newspapers, 1985–2003.” Risk analysis 25.6 (2005): 1457–69. Charlton, Andrew. “Choosing Between Progress and Planet.” Quarterly Essay 44 (2011): 1. Curran, Giorel. “Ecological Modernisation and Climate Change in Australia.” Environmental Politics 18.2: 201-17. Dryzek, John. S., Christian Hunold, David Schlosberg, David Downes, and Hans-Kristian Hernes. “Environmental Transformation of the State: The USA, Norway, Germany and the UK.” Political studies 50.4 (2002): 659–82. Eder, Klaus. “The Institutionalisation of Environmentalism: Ecological Discourse and the Second Transformation of the Public Sphere.” Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. Ed. Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, & Brian Wynne. 1996. 203–23. Foster, John Bellamy, Brett Clark, and Richard York. “The Midas Effect: a Critique of Climate Change Economics.” Development and Change 40.6 (2009): 1085–97. Hajer, Maarten. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. London: Verso, 2005. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985. Risbey, J. S. “The New Climate Discourse: Alarmist or Alarming?” Global Environmental Change18.1 (2008): 26–37. Spaargaren, Gert, and Arthur P.J. Mol, “Sociology, Environment, and Modernity: Ecological Modernization as a Theory of Social Change.” Society and Natural Resources 5.4 (1992): 323-44. Spash, Clive. L. “Review of The Economics of Climate Change (The Stern Review).”Environmental Values 16.4 (2007): 532–35. Stavrakakis, Yannis. “Green Ideology: A Discursive Reading.” Journal of Political Ideologies 2.3 (1997): 259–79. Stern, Nicholas et al. Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change. Vol. 30. London: HM Treasury, 2006. Swyngedouw, Erik. “Apocalypse Forever? Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change.” Theory, Culture & Society 27.2-3 (2010): 213–32. Taylor, Lenore. “Try Again on Carbon: Garnaut.” The Australian 17 Apr. 2009: 1. While, Aidan, Andrew E.G. Jonas, and David Gibbs. “From Sustainable Development to Carbon Control: Eco-state Restructuring and the Politics of Urban and Regional Development.”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35.1 (2010): 76–93. Wilkinson, Marian. “Scientists on Attack over Rudd Emissions Plan.” Sydney Morning Herald Apr. 15 2009: 1. York, Richard, and Eugene Rosa. “Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization theory.”Organization & Environment 16.1 (2003): 273-88.

Abstract:

The loop is one of the primary means of structuration for electronic music from mainstream to avant-garde styles. Indeed, during forums at the recent 2002 AD Analogue 2 Digital event, organised as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, many practitioners of electronic music gathered together and, often, quizzed each other about the loop: why does everybody seem to be using it and just how useful is it? With very few exceptions, the loop was considered to be an important if not essential tool for electronic music, and it is perhaps easy to understand why if one considers the "one-man band" nature of the majority of purely electronic music. Moreover, the loop is a trope common in many forms of contemporary music such as disco, minimalism, funk and hip-hop, all of which, as David Toop writes, "explor[e] entrancing elaborations and variations on repetition" (92). While Western musical forms have, for many centuries, been characterised by recurring elements (pedal notes, refrains, choruses, variations and so on are all musical tropes that rely on the recurrence of repetitive elements), there is perhaps a difference in the kind of repetition that is deployed in many of these musical forms and that deployed in consumer-driven and much avant-garde electronic music. When looping elements return in many pre-electronic (or non-electronic) compositions they present an elaborated form of the original iteration of that element, whereas it can be argued that the break in hip-hop or the loop employed by electronic music forms a stable basis on which other changing, shifting, modulating and developing elements are laid. (It should not of course be surmised from this that all hip-hop uses breaks nor that all electronic music uses loops.) Rather than presenting an active repetitive element creating difference in itself, the kind of looping employed in much electronic music proposes a banal, Platonic form of repetition in which, as Deleuze states, "the model is supposed to enjoy an originary superior identity [...] whereas the copy is judged in terms of a derived internal resemblance" (126-127). In the terms of our discussion, then, the sampled fragment of music or break (the "original" which some take endless pleasure in trying to identify) constitutes an originary identity which is repeated or looped in a form identical to itself to create an absolute internal resemblance across a contiguous whole. This reading of looping in electronic music finds extension in Jean-Charles François's criticism that electronic music produces only trigger timbre. François argues that in electronic music, the "performer is reduced to a triggering device, and does not participate in any real physical production of the sound" as opposed to the dynamic timbre of "traditional" acoustic instruments which can be varied by the performer in an interpretation of a work ("Fixed Timbre" 113). Trigger timbre, then, signals the exact reproduction (or, rather, a copy with internal resemblance, for an exact reproduction is an impossibility for a number of reasons, some philosophical, some temporal, some physical) of a prior moment, an originary identity, a movement analogous to that created by the looped element in electronic music. The problem with this in regards to musical production as artistic creation is that such modes of structuration are, according to François and Deleuze, eminently un-artistic or un-musical. For François, trigger timbre "strikes our ears like a symbol and threatens the essence of pure music" ("Fixed Timbre" 116), whilst for Deleuze a model employing banal repetition such as the repetition of a decorative motif "is not how artists proceed in reality. They do not juxtapose instances of the figure, but rather each time combine an element of one instance with another element of a following instance" (19). It might then be argued that electronic music is doubly prone to a Platonic mode of production removed from artistry, devoid of the desire with which, for Deleuze, all artistic creation is necessarily injected. To do so, however, is to propose a technologically determinist argument which maintains that electronic music is shaped by the very technology available to the artist, and emphasises the role of the engineer over the artist (even when the engineer and the artist are one and the same person, as is often the case in such music). That such a technologically determinist view might be levelled against electronic music is, nonetheless, perhaps not surprising since whilst most composers of any genre using acoustic instruments essentially have a set of instruments to draw on that has been relatively stable for a number of years (how many years will depend on the genre), it might be suggested that many electronic artists remain within the bounds of their tools' immediate and obvious possibilities because they do not have time fully to master them because the technology behind electronic music is still developing at an exponential rate. Whilst this is in many respects a gross overgeneralisation that neglects composers from both acoustic genres such as Luigi Russolo and Harry Partch who invented new instruments to broaden their sonic palette as well as electronic artists such as Kraftwerk or Aphex Twin who built or radically modified / deconstructed their own instruments, I do not think it entirely unfair given the technophile nature of many electronic artists, eager to keep abreast of the latest developments and software or hardware releases, and believe that it goes some way towards explaining the rate at which "movements" arise and disappear in contemporary electronic music. None of this would be of the least concern, of course, if this did not imply that the music made by many electronic artists is created as much by the hands of the engineer (and by engineer I refer not simply to a recording engineer but anyone involved in the development or programming of the hardware or software used for electronic) as in those of the artist. Even for those artists who serve as their own engineer, then, it is sometimes the case that their productions' bounds of possibility are determined not only by the artist's imagination but also by the very hardware and software used. Electronic music can, then, fall prey to technological determinism, can function in a Platonic manner, relying on a priori principles encoded in its tools and deploying banal repetition, and can be negatively critiqued in the terms of François's argument. This does not imply by any means, however, that it must be so. Indeed, in both her workshop and performance at the 2002AD conference, Kaffe Matthews proposed ways in which this quandary might be broached. Matthews takes her samples not from pre-existing recordings or intricately programmed "timbre objects" ("Fixed Timbre" 114), but from the "live" environmental sounds of the venue in which she is playing or the surrounding area. In this way, Matthews does not merely produce an exact repetition of an historical or prior moment (the sentimental potential of recorded media and electronic music which, according to François, explains their seductive power and thus popularity (François 1990, 114)), rather ensuring that every performance will indeed be an interpretation, a live performance which has no originary identity to refer back to or repeat. To build a complete musical text from fragments such as this, Matthews does rely on the loop, but one of the primary means that she uses to create her loops does not rely on the pattern of banal repetition observed above. Rather, Matthews places microphones around the venue in which she is playing and into which, therefore, her work is being amplified, so that the work itself is looped back into itself, each successive iteration of the loop being altered by the shifting acoustics of the environment into which it is emitted. In this manner, the entire venue is used as the "resonant cavity", the "giant membrane", the "environment", the "atmosphere" that render possible a discursive structure and that, for François, are the preserve of true timbre which cannot be produced by electronic technology ("Writing" 16). This is not, of course, the first time that such loops have been used in experimental music: the notion of the loop is very frequent in the work from the 1960s and 1970s of Steve Reich, who lets series of loops fall into and out of phase with each other, Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros. Perhaps the most significant precursor to Kaffe Matthews's approach, however, is Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room (1969). For this piece, the performer chooses the room whose musical qualities are to be evoked, then reads a text in that room. The recording is played back through a loudspeaker in the room, the playback itself recorded and amplified again with the original recording, the process being repeated over a number of generations. Lucier's piece and, indeed, all of the pieces employing loops by the aforementioned composers, use analogue tape technology in order to create their loops, however, which is to say that a deliberate manipulation of the hardware that rips it from its normalised and intended use is required for that hardware to create loops. This is not to say that the misuse of technology at one's disposal is particularly revolutionary; indeed, one might claim that it is a very common feature among avant-garde or progressive artists of the past and present in all musical genres using both digital, analogue, electro-acoustic and acoustic instruments — should Oval do that to compact disks? isn't that the wrong direction for a record to spin? did anyone really intend Hendrix to play a guitar like that? did Cage actually know how a piano should be played? does Jim Denley actually know how to play the flute? What this does suggest, however, is that the use of loops in the work of these artists in the 60s and 70s was the result of a willed aesthetic decision and not a mode of construction dictated by the bounds of the immediately possible hardwired into the technology being used. If the loop used as one of the primary means of structuration in electronic music is to escape the technologically determinist arguments seen above, then, its coming into being must similarly be the result of a willed aesthetic decision and not merely a symptom of the technology used to produce it; it must, in other words, be infused with an artistic sensibility. Much electronic music being pumped out of bedrooms and studios at an alarming rate, however, is not infused with this kind of artistic sensibility, a situation which, although I oversimplify once more in saying so, would only appear to be aggravated the closer one moves to the mainstream (hence phenomena such as "the Balearic sound"). By its nature more prone to banal Platonic repetition (because of the primacy of the loop) and the a-dynamism (and, by inference, stultification) of trigger timbre, those sections of the electronic music scene who are content merely to remain within the obvious uses of the music-making technology, whether their démarche is born of a desire to pander to market forces or an inability or unwillingness fully to master the technology offered because of the speed at which it is moving, consequently produce songs which are themselves little more than banal copies of each other. Constructing music around loops within a technological domain that no longer requires hardware manipulation for the creation of loops since the loop is encoded within it, Matthews, however, by integrating into this realm the kind of compositional démarche noted in Lucier, liberates electronic music from these pitfalls. More than this, however, her approach also allows for an improvisational and dynamic aesthetic which is uncommon even in the avant-garde of electronic artists who do extend the possibilities of the technology they use. For the majority of artists who can be included in this group generally rely, when processing samples in real time, on a bank of pre-recorded samples, regardless of how these were created, through the use or misuse of technology. In using the very space in or around where she is performing as a live sample bank and processing those samples in real time as they are looped and transformed by the very setup she has defined, Matthews simultaneously surrenders and reclaims her creation, reinstating an authorial presence into the absence around which Cage's 4'33" is based (his "silent" piece in which the ambient sounds of the audience, venue and surrounding space constitute the only sound matter), seeming, like the performer of 4'33" who merely marks off time in three movements, not to be involved in the physical production of sound that François deems necessary for dynamic musical production ("Fixed Timbre" 113), only to reassert her presence in the text as a physical and dynamic entity. Acknowledgement With thanks to Kaffe Matthews and M/C's reviewers and editors. References Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. London: The Athlone Press, 1994. François, Jean-Charles. "Fixed Timbre, Dynamic Timbre." Perspectives of New Music 28.2 (1990): 112-118. François, Jean-Charles. "Writing without Representation." Perspectives of New Music 30.1 (1992): 6-20. Toop, David. "HIPHOP: Iron Needles of Death and a Piece of Wax." Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. Ed. Peter Shapiro. New York: Caipirinha Productions, 2000: 89-101. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hainge, Greg. "Platonic Relations" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php>. Chicago Style Hainge, Greg, "Platonic Relations" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Hainge, Greg. (2002) Platonic Relations. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Despite the now-traditional tendency of noir scholarship to call attention to the retrospective and constructed nature of this genre— James Naremore argues that film noir is best regarded as a “mythology”— one feature that has rarely come under question is its association with the city (2). Despite the existence of numerous rural noirs, the depiction of urban space is associated with this genre more consistently than any other element. Even in critical accounts that attempt to deconstruct the solidity of the noir genre, the city is left as an implicit inclusion, and the country, an implict exclusion. Naremore, for example, does not include the urban environment in a list of the central tenets of film noir that he calls into question: “nothing links together all the things described as noir—not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (10). Elizabeth Cowie identifies film noir a “fantasy,” whose “tenuous critical status” has been compensated for “by a tenacity of critical use” (121). As part of Cowie’s project, to revise the assumption that noirs are almost exclusively male-centered, she cites character types, visual style, and narrative tendencies, but never urban spaces, as familiar elements of noir that ought to be reconsidered. If the city is rarely tackled as an unnecessary or part-time element of film noir in discursive studies, it is often the first trait identified by critics in the kind of formative, characteristic-compiling studies that Cowie and Naremore work against.Andrew Dickos opens Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir with a list of noir’s key attributes. The first item is “an urban setting or at least an urban influence” (6). Nicholas Christopher maintains that “the city is the seedbed of film noir. […] However one tries to define or explain noir, the common denominator must always be the city. The two are inseparable” (37). Though the tendencies of noir scholars— both constructive and deconstructive— might lead readers to believe otherwise, rural locations figure prominently in a number of noir films. I will show that the noir genre is, indeed, flexible enough to encompass many films set predominantly or partly in rural locations. Steve Neale, who encourages scholars to work with genre terms familiar to original audiences, would point out that the rural noir is an academic discovery not an industry term, or one with much popular currency (166). Still, this does not lessen the critical usefulness of this subgenre, or its implications for noir scholarship.While structuralist and post-structuralist modes of criticism dominated film genre criticism in the 1970s and 80s, as Thomas Schatz has pointed out, these approaches often sacrifice close attention to film texts, for more abstract, high-stakes observations: “while there is certainly a degree to which virtually every mass-mediated cultural artifact can be examined from [a mythical or ideological] perspective, there appears to be a point at which we tend to lose sight of the initial object of inquiry” (100). Though my reading of these films sidesteps attention to social and political concerns, this article performs the no-less-important task of clarifying the textual features of this sub-genre. To this end, I will survey the tendencies of the rural noir more generally, mentioning more than ten films that fit this subgenre, before narrowing my analysis to a reading of Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948), Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949), They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1949) and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Robert Mitchum tries to escape his criminal life by settling in a small, mountain-side town in Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947). A foggy marsh provides a dramatic setting for the Bonnie and Clyde-like demise of lovers on the run in Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis, 1950). In The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), Sterling Hayden longs to return home after he is forced to abandon his childhood horse farm for a life of organised crime in the city. Rob Ryan plays a cop unable to control his violent impulses in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). He is re-assigned from New York City to a rural community up-state in hopes that a less chaotic environment will have a curative effect. The apple orchards of Thieves’ Highway are no refuge from networks of criminal corruption. In They Live By Night, a pair of young lovers, try to leave their criminal lives behind, hiding out in farmhouses, cabins, and other pastoral locations in the American South. Finally, the location of prisons explains a number of sequences set in spare, road-side locations such as those in The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956), The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953), and Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948). What are some common tendencies of the rural noir? First, they usually feature both rural and urban settings, which allows the portrayal of one to be measured against the other. What we see of the city structures the definition of the country, and vice versa. Second, the lead character moves between these two locations by driving. For criminals, the car is more essential for survival in the country than in the city, so nearly all rural noirs are also road movies. Third, nature often figures as a redemptive force for urbanites steeped in lives of crime. Fourth, the curative quality of the country is usually tied to a love interest in this location: the “nurturing woman” as defined by Janey Place, who encourages the protagonist to forsake his criminal life (60). Fifth, the country is never fully crime-free. In The Killer is Loose, for example, an escaped convict’s first victim is a farmer, whom he clubs before stealing his truck. The convict (Wendell Corey), then, easily slips through a motorcade with the farmer’s identification. Here, the sprawling countryside provides an effective cover for the killer. This farmland is not an innocent locale, but the criminal’s safety-net. In films where a well-intentioned lead attempts to put his criminal life behind him by moving to a remote location, urban associates have little trouble tracking him down. While the country often appears, to protagonists like Jeff in Out of the Past or Bowie in They Live By Night, as an ideal place to escape from crime, as these films unfold, violence reaches the countryside. If these are similar points, what are some differences among rural noirs? First, there are many differences by degree among the common elements listed above. For instance, some rural noirs present their location with unabashed romanticism, while others critique the idealisation of these locations; some “nurturing women” are complicit with criminal activity, while others are entirely innocent. Second, while noir films are commonly known for treating similar urban locations, Los Angeles in particular, these films feature a wide variety of locations: Out of the Past and Thieves’ Highway take place in California, the most common setting for rural noirs, but On Dangerous Ground is set in northern New England, They Live by Night takes place in the Depression-era South, Moonrise in Southern swampland, and the most dynamic scene of The Asphalt Jungle is in rural Kentucky. Third, these films also vary considerably in the balance of settings. If the three typical locations of the rural noir are the country, the city, and the road, the distribution of these three locations varies widely across these films. The location of The Asphalt Jungle matches the title until its dramatic conclusion. The Hitch-hiker, arguably a rural noir, is set in travelling cars, with just brief stops in the barren landscape outside. Two of the films I analyse, They Live By Night and Moonrise are set entirely in the country; a remarkable exception to the majority of films in this subgenre. There are only two other critical essays on the rural noir. In “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir,” Jonathan F. Bell contextualises the rural noir in terms of post-war transformations of the American landscape. He argues that these films express a forlorn faith in the agrarian myth while the U.S. was becoming increasingly developed and suburbanised. That is to say, the rural noir simultaneously reflects anxiety over the loss of rural land, but also the stubborn belief that the countryside will always exist, if the urbanite needs it as a refuge. Garry Morris suggests the following equation as the shortest way to state the thematic interest of this genre: “Noir = industrialisation + (thwarted) spirituality.” He attributes much of the malaise of noir protagonists to the inhospitable urban environment, “far from [society’s] pastoral and romantic and spiritual origins.” Where Bell focuses on nine films— Detour (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Out of the Past (1947), Key Largo (1948), Gun Crazy (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Split Second (1953), and Killer’s Kiss (1955)— Morris’s much shorter article includes just The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Gun Crazy. Of the four films I discuss, only On Dangerous Ground has previously been treated as part of this subgenre, though it has never been discussed alongside Nicholas Ray’s other rural noir. To further the development of the project that these authors have started— the formation of a rural noir corpus— I propose the inclusion of three additional films in this subgenre: Moonrise (1948), They Live by Night (1949), and Thieves’ Highway (1949). With both On Dangerous Ground and They Live by Night to his credit, Nicholas Ray has the distinction of being the most prolific director of rural noirs. In They Live by Night, two young lovers, Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), attempt to escape from their established criminal lives. Twenty-three year old Bowie has just been released from juvenile prison and finds rural Texas refreshing: “Out here, the air smells different,” he says. He meets Keechie through her father, a small time criminal organiser who would be happy to keep her secluded for life. When one of Bowie’s accomplices, Chicamaw (Howard DaSilva), shoots a policeman after a robbing a bank with Bowie, the young couple is forced to run. Foster Hirsch calls They Live by Night “a genre rarity, a sentimental noir” (34). The naïve blissfulness of their affection is associated with the primitive settings they navigate. Though Bowie and Keechie are the most sympathetic protagonists of any rural noir, this is no safeguard against an inevitable, characteristically noir demise. Janey Place writes, “the young lovers are doomed, but the possibility of their love transcends and redeems them both, and its failure criticises the urbanised world that will not let them live” (63). As indicated here, the country offers the young lovers refuge for some time, and their bond is depicted as wonderfully strong, but it is doomed by the stronger force of the law.Raymond Williams discusses how different characteristics are associated with urban and rural spaces:On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved center: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. (1) They Live By Night breaks down these dichotomies, showing the persistence of crime rooted in rural areas.Bowie desires to “get squared around” and live a more natural life with Keechie. Williams’ country adjectives— “peace, innocence, and simple virtue”— describe the nature of this relationship perfectly. Yet, criminal activity, usually associated with the city, has an overwhelmingly strong presence in this region and their lives. Bowie, following the doomed logic of many a crime film character, plans to launch a new, more honest life with cash raised in a heist. Keechie recognises the contradictions in this plan: “Fine way to get squared around, teaming with them. Stealing money and robbing banks. You’ll get in so deep trying to get squared, they’ll have enough to keep you in for two life times.” For Bowie, crime and the pursuit of love are inseparably bound, refuting the illusion of the pure and innocent countryside personified by characters like Mary Malden in On Dangerous Ground and Ann Miller in Out of the Past.In Ray’s other rural noir, On Dangerous Ground, a lonely, angry, and otherwise burned out cop, Wilson (Rob Ryan), finds both love and peace in his time away from the city. While on his up-state assignment, Wilson meets Mary Walden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who lives a secluded life miles away from this already desolate, rural community. Mary has a calming influence on Wilson, and fits well within Janey Place’s notion of the archetypal nurturing woman in film noir: “The redemptive woman often represents or is part of a primal connection with nature and/or with the past, which are safe, static states rather than active, exciting ones, but she can sometimes offer the only transcendence possible in film noir” (63).If, as Colin McArthur observes, Ray’s characters frequently seek redemption in rural locales— “[protagonists] may reject progress and modernity; they may choose to go or are sent into primitive areas. […] The journeys which bring them closer to nature may also offer them hope of salvation” (124) — the conclusions of On Dangerous Ground versus They Live By Night offer two markedly different resolutions to this narrative. Where Bowie and Keechie’s life on the lam cannot be sustained, On Dangerous Ground, against the wishes of its director, portrays a much more romanticised version of pastoral life. According to Andrew Dickos, “Ray wanted to end the film on the ambivalent image of Jim Wilson returning to the bleak city,” after he had restored order up-state (132). The actual ending is more sentimental. Jim rushes back north to be with Mary. They passionately kiss in close-up, cueing an exuberant orchestral score as The End appears over a slow tracking shot of the majestic, snow covered landscape. In this way, On Dangerous Ground overturns the usual temporal associations of rural versus urban spaces. As Raymond Williams identifies, “The common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future” (297). For Wilson, by contrast, city life was no longer sustainable and rurality offers his best means for a future. Leo Marx noted in a variety of American pop culture, from Mark Twain to TV westerns and magazine advertising, a “yearning for a simpler, more harmonious style of life, and existence ‘closer to nature,’ that is the psychic root of all pastoralism— genuine and spurious” (Marx 6). Where most rural noirs expose the agrarian myth as a fantasy and a sham, On Dangerous Ground, exceptionally, perpetuates it as actual and effectual. Here, a bad cop is made good with a few days spent in a sparsely populated area and with a woman shaped by her rural upbringing.As opposed to On Dangerous Ground, where the protagonist’s movement from city to country matches his split identity as a formerly corrupt man wishing to be pure, Frank Borzage’s B-film Moonrise (1948) is located entirely in rural or small-town locations. Set in the fictional Southern town of Woodville, which spans swamps, lushly wooded streets and aging Antebellum mansions, the lead character finds good and bad within the same rural location and himself. Dan (Dane Clark) struggles to escape his legacy as the son of a murderer. This conflict is irreparably heightened when Dan kills a man (who had repeatedly teased and bullied him) in self-defence. The instability of Dan’s moral compass is expressed in the way he treats innocent elements of the natural world: flies, dogs, and, recalling Out of the Past, a local deaf boy. He is alternately cruel and kind. Dan is finally redeemed after seeking the advice of a black hermit, Mose (Rex Ingram), who lives in a ramshackle cabin by the swamp. He counsels Dan with the advice that men turn evil from “being lonesome,” not for having “bad blood.” When Dan, eventually, decides to confess to his crime, the sheriff finds him tenderly holding a search hound against a bucolic, rural backdrop. His complete comfortability with the landscape and its creatures finally allows Dan to reconcile the film’s opening opposition. He is no longer torturously in between good and evil, but openly recognises his wrongs and commits to do good in the future. If I had to select just a single shot to illustrate that noirs are set in rural locations more often than most scholarship would have us believe, it would be the opening sequence of Moonrise. From the first shot, this film associates rural locations with criminal elements. The credit sequence juxtaposes pooling water with an ominous brass score. In this disorienting opening, the camera travels from an image of water, to a group of men framed from the knees down. The camera dollies out and pans left, showing that these men, trudging solemnly, are another’s legal executioners. The frame tilts upward and we see a man hung in silhouette. This dense shot is followed by an image of a baby in a crib, also shadowed, the water again, and finally the execution scene. If this sequence is a thematic montage, it can also be discussed, more simply, as a series of establishing shots: a series of images that, seemingly, could not be more opposed— a baby, a universal symbol of innocence, set against the ominous execution, cruel experience— are paired together by virtue of their common location. The montage continues, showing that the baby is the son of the condemned man. As Dan struggles with the legacy of his father throughout the film, this opening shot continues to inform our reading of this character, split between the potential for good or evil.What a baby is to Moonrise, or, to cite a more familiar reference, what the insurance business is to many a James M. Cain roman noir, produce distribution is to Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949). The apple, often a part of wholesome American myths, is at the centre of this story about corruption. Here, a distribution network that brings Americans this hearty, simple product is connected with criminal activity and violent abuses of power more commonly portrayed in connection with cinematic staples of organised crime such as bootlegging or robbery. This film portrays bad apples in the apple business, showing that no profit driven enterprise— no matter how traditional or rural— is beyond the reach of corruption.Fitting the nature of this subject, numerous scenes in the Dassin film take place in the daylight (in addition to darkness), and in the countryside (in addition to the city) as we move between wine and apple country to the market districts of San Francisco. But if the subject and setting of Thieves’ Highway are unusual for a noir, the behaviour of its characters is not. Spare, bright country landscapes form the backdrop for prototypical noir behaviour: predatory competition for money and power.As one would expect of a film noir, the subject of apple distribution is portrayed with dynamic violence. In the most exciting scene of the film, a truck careens off the road after a long pursuit from rival sellers. Apples scatter across a hillside as the truck bursts into flames. This scene is held in a long-shot, as unscrupulous thugs gather the produce for sale while the unfortunate driver burns to death. Here, the reputedly innocent American apple is subject to cold-blooded, profit-maximizing calculations as much as the more typical topics of noir such as blackmail, fraud, or murder. Passages on desolate roads and at apple orchards qualify Thieves’ Highway as a rural noir; the dark, cynical manner in which capitalist enterprise is treated is resonant with nearly all film noirs. Thieves’ Highway follows a common narrative pattern amongst rural noirs to gradually reveal rural spaces as connected to criminality in urban locations. Typically, this disillusioning fact is narrated from the perspective of a lead character who first has a greater sense of safety in rural settings but learns, over the course of the story, to be more wary in all locations. In Thieves’, Nick’s hope that apple-delivery might earn an honest dollar (he is the only driver to treat the orchard owners fairly) gradually gives way to an awareness of the inevitable corruption that has taken over this enterprise at all levels of production, from farmer, to trucker, to wholesaler, and thus, at all locations, the country, the road, and the city.Between this essay, and the previous work of Morris and Bell on the subject, we are developing a more complete survey of the rural noir. Where Bell’s and Morris’s essays focus more resolutely on rural noirs that relied on the contrast of the city versus the country— which, significantly, was the first tendency of this subgenre that I observed— Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate that this genre can work entirely apart from the city. From start to finish, these films take place in small towns and rural locations. As opposed to Out of the Past, On Dangerous Ground, or The Asphalt Jungle, characters are never pulled back to, nor flee from, an urban life of crime. Instead, vices that are commonly associated with the city have a free-standing life in the rural locations that are often thought of as a refuge from these harsh elements. If both Bell and Morris study the way that rural noirs draw differences between the city and country, two of the three films I add to the subgenre constitute more complete rural noirs, films that work wholly outside urban locations, not just in contrast with it. Bell, like me, notes considerable variety in rural noirs locations, “desert landscapes, farms, mountains, and forests all qualify as settings for consideration,” but he also notes that “Diverse as these landscapes are, this set of films uses them in surprisingly like-minded fashion to achieve a counterpoint to the ubiquitous noir city” (219). In Bell’s analysis, all nine films he studies, feature significant urban segments. He is, in fact, so inclusive as to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss as a rural noir even though it does not contain a single frame shot or set outside of New York City. Rurality is evoked only as a possibility, as alienated urbanite Davy (Jamie Smith) receives letters from his horse-farm-running relatives. Reading these letters offers Davy brief moments of respite from drudgerous city spaces such as the subway and his cramped apartment. In its emphasis on the centrality of rural locations, my project is more similar to David Bell’s work on the rural in horror films than to Jonathan F. Bell’s work on the rural noir. David Bell analyses the way that contemporary horror films work against a “long tradition” of the “idyllic rural” in many Western texts (95). As opposed to works “from Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman to contemporary television shows like Northern Exposure and films such as A River Runs Through It or Grand Canyon” in which the rural is positioned as “a restorative to urban anomie,” David Bell analyses films such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that depict “a series of anti-idyllic visions of the rural” (95). Moonrise and They Live By Night, like these horror films, portray the crime and the country as coexistent spheres at the same time that the majority of other popular culture, including noirs like Killer’s Kiss or On Dangerous Ground, portray them as mutually exclusive.To use a mode of generic analysis developed by Rick Altman, the rural noir, while preserving the dominant syntax of other noirs, presents a remarkably different semantic element (31). Consider the following description of the genre, from the introduction to Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide: “The darkness that fills the mirror of the past, which lurks in a dark corner or obscures a dark passage out of the oppressively dark city, is not merely the key adjective of so many film noir titles but the obvious metaphor for the condition of the protagonist’s mind” (Silver and Ward, 4). In this instance, the narrative elements, or syntax, of film noir outlined by Silver and Ward do not require revision, but the urban location, a semantic element, does. Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate the sustainability of the aforementioned syntactic elements— the dark, psychological experience of the leads and their inescapable criminal past— apart from the familiar semantic element of the city.The rural noir must also cause us to reconsider— beyond rural representations or film noir— more generally pitched genre theories. Consider the importance of place to film genre, the majority of which are defined by a typical setting: for melodramas, it is the family home, for Westerns, the American west, and for musicals, the stage. Thomas Schatz separates American genres according to their setting, between genres which deal with “determinate” versus “indeterminate” space:There is a vital distinction between kinds of generic settings and conflicts. Certain genres […] have conflicts that, indigenous to the environment, reflect the physical and ideological struggle for its control. […] Other genres have conflicts that are not indigenous to the locale but are the results of the conflict between the values, attitudes, and actions of its principal characters and the ‘civilised’ setting they inhabit. (26) Schatz discusses noirs, along with detective films, as films which trade in “determinate” settings, limited to the space of the city. The rural noir slips between Schatz’s dichotomy, moving past the space of the city, but not into the civilised, tame settings of the genres of “indeterminate spaces.” It is only fitting that a genre whose very definition lies in its disruption of Hollywood norms— trading high- for low-key lighting, effectual male protagonists for helpless ones, and a confident, coherent worldview for a more paranoid, unstable one would, finally, be able to accommodate a variation— the rural noir— that would seem to upset one of its central tenets, an urban locale. Considering the long list of Hollywood standards that film noirs violated, according to two of its original explicators, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton— “a logical action, an evident distinction between good and evil, well-defined characters with clear motives, scenes that are more spectacular than brutal, a heroine who is exquisitely feminine and a hero who is honest”— it should, perhaps, not be so surprising that the genre is flexible enough to accommodate the existence of the rural noir after all (14). AcknowledgmentsIn addition to M/C Journal's anonymous readers, the author would like to thank Corey Creekmur, Mike Slowik, Barbara Steinson, and Andrew Gorman-Murray for their helpful suggestions. ReferencesAltman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 27-41.The Asphalt Jungle. Dir. John Huston. MGM/UA, 1950.Bell, David. “Anti-Idyll: Rural Horror.” Contested Countryside Cultures. Eds. Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London, Routledge, 1997. 94-108.Bell, Jonathan F. “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir.” Architecture and Film. Ed. Mark Lamster. New York: Princeton Architectural P, 2000. 217-230.Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir. Ed. Joan Copjec. New York: Verso, 1993. 121-166.Dickos, Andrew. Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002.Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. London: BFI, 1972.Moonrise. Dir. Frank Borzage. Republic, 1948.Morris, Gary. “Noir Country: Alien Nation.” Bright Lights Film Journal Nov. 2006. 13. Jun. 2008 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/54/noircountry.htm Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1998.Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley, C.A.: U of California P, 2008.Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 160-184.On Dangerous Ground. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1951.Out of the Past. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. RKO, 1947.Place, Janey. “Women in Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 1999. 47-68.Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House, 1981.Schatz, Thomas. “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 92-102.Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 1980.They Live by Night. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1949.Thieves’ Highway. Dir. Jules Dassin. Fox, 1949.Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

Abstract:

This article proposes that the growing popularity of reality television in the southernmost state of India, Kerala – disseminated locally and throughout the Indian diaspora – is not the product of an innocuous nostalgia for a fast-disappearing regional identity but rather a spectacular example of an emergent ideology that displaces cultural memory, collective identity, and secular nationalism with new, globalised forms of public sentiment. Further, it is arguable that this g/local media culture also displaces hard-won secular feminist constructions of gender and the contemporary modern “Indian woman.” Shows like Idea Star Singer (hereafter ISS) (Malayalam [the language spoken in Kerala] television’s most popular reality television series), based closely on American Idol, is broadcast worldwide to dozens of nations including the US, the UK, China, Russia, Sri Lanka, and several nations in the Middle East and the discussion that follows attempts both to account for this g/local phenomenon and to problematise it. ISS concentrates on staging the diversity and talent of Malayalee youth and, in particular, their ability to sing ‘pitch-perfect’, by inviting them to perform the vast catalogue of traditional Malayalam songs. However, inasmuch as it is aimed at both a regional and diasporic audience, ISS also allows for a diversity of singing styles displayed through the inclusion of a variety of other songs: some sung in Tamil, some Hindi, and some even English. This leads us to ask a number of questions: in what ways are performers who subscribe to regional or global models of televisual style rewarded or punished? In what ways are performers who exemplify differences in terms of gender, sexuality, religion, class, or ability punished? Further, it is arguable that this show—packaged as the “must-see” spectacle for the Indian diaspora—re-imagines a traditional past and translates it (under the rubric of “reality” television) into a vulgar commodification of both “classical” and “folk” India: an India excised of radical reform, feminists, activists, and any voices of multiplicity clamouring for change. Indeed, it is my contention that, although such shows claim to promote women’s liberation by encouraging women to realise their talents and ambitions, the commodification of the “stars” as televisual celebrities points rather to an anti-feminist imperial agenda of control and domination. Normalising Art: Presenting the Juridical as Natural Following Foucault, we can, indeed, read ISS as an apparatus of “normalisation.” While ISS purports to be “about” music, celebration, and art—an encouragement of art for art’s sake—it nevertheless advocates the practice of teaching as critiqued by Foucault: “the acquisition and knowledge by the very practice of the pedagogical activity and a reciprocal, hierarchised observation” (176), so that self-surveillance is built into the process. What appears on the screen is, in effect, the presentation of a juridically governed body as natural: the capitalist production of art through intense practice, performance, and corrective measures that valorise discipline and, at the end, produce ‘good’ and ‘bad’ subjects. The Foucauldian isomorphism of punishment with obligation, exercise with repetition, and enactment of the law is magnified in the traditional practice of music, especially Carnatic, or the occasional Hindustani refrain that separates those who come out of years of training in the Gury–Shishya mode (teacher–student mode, primarily Hindu and privileged) from those who do not (Muslims, working-class, and perhaps disabled students). In the context of a reality television show sponsored by Idea Cellular Ltd (a phone company with global outposts), the systems of discipline are strictly in line with the capitalist economy. Since this show depends upon the vast back-catalogue of film songs sung by playback singers from the era of big studio film-making, it may be seen to advocate a mimetic rigidity that ossifies artistic production, rather than offering encouragement to a new generation of artists who might wish to take the songs and make them their own. ISS, indeed, compares and differentiates the participants’ talents through an “opaque” system of evaluations which the show presents as transparent, merit-based and “fair”: as Foucault observes, “the perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, hom*ogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes” (183). On ISS, this evaluation process (a panel of judges who are renowned singers and composers, along with a rotating guest star, such as an actor) may be seen as a scopophilic institution where training and knowledge are brought together, transforming “the economy of visibility into the exercise of power” (187). The contestants, largely insignificant as individuals but seen together, at times, upon the stage, dancing and singing and performing practised routines, represent a socius constituting the body politic. The judges, enthroned on prominent and lush seats above the young contestants, the studio audience and, in effect, the show’s televised transnational audience, deliver judgements that “normalise” these artists into submissive subjectivity. In fact, despite the incoherence of the average judgement, audiences are so engrossed in the narrative of “marks” (a clear vestige of the education and civilising mission of the colonial subject under British rule) that, even in the glamorous setting of vibrating music, artificial lights, and corporate capital, Indians can still be found disciplining themselves according to the values of the West. Enacting Keraleeyatham for Malayalee Diaspora Ritty Lukose’s study on youth and gender in Kerala frames identity formations under colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism as she teases out ideas of resistance and agency by addressing the complex mediations of consumption or consumptive practices. Lukose reads “consumer culture as a complex site of female participation and constraint, enjoyment and objectification” (917), and finds the young, westernised female as a particular site of consumer agency. According to this theory, the performers on ISS and the show’s MC, Renjini Haridas, embody this body politic. The young performers all dress in the garb of “authentic identity”, sporting saris, pawaadu-blouse, mundum-neertha, salwaar-kameez, lehenga-choli, skirts, pants, and so on. This sartorial diversity is deeply gendered and discursively rich; the men have one of two options: kurta-mundu or some such variation and the pant–shirt combination. The women, especially Renjini (educated at St Theresa’s College in Kochi and former winner of Ms Kerala beauty contest) evoke the MTV DJs of the mid-1990s and affect a pidgin-Malayalam spliced with English: Renjini’s cool “touching” of the contestants and airy gestures remove her from the regional masses; and yet, for Onam (festival of Kerala), she dresses in the traditional cream and gold sari; for Id (high holy day for Muslims), she dresses in some glittery salwaar-kameez with a wrap on her head; and for Christmas, she wears a long dress. This is clearly meant to show her ability to embody different socio-religious spheres simultaneously. Yet, both she and all the young female contestants speak proudly about their authentic Kerala identity. Ritty Lukose spells this out as “Keraleeyatham.” In the vein of beauty pageants, and the first-world practice of indoctrinating all bodies into one model of beauty, the youngsters engage in exuberant performances yet, once their act is over, revert back to the coy, submissive docility that is the face of the student in the traditional educational apparatus. Both left-wing feminists and BJP activists write their ballads on the surface of women’s bodies; however, in enacting the chethu or, to be more accurate, “ash-push” (colloquialism akin to “hip”) lifestyle advocated by the show (interrupted at least half a dozen times by lengthy sequences of commercials for jewellery, clothing, toilet cleaners, nutritious chocolate bars, hair oil, and home products), the participants in this show become the unwitting sites of a large number of competing ideologies. Lukose observes the remarkable development from the peasant labor-centered Kerala of the 1970s to today’s simulacrum: “Keraleeyatham.” When discussing the beauty contests staged in Kerala in the 1990s, she discovers (through analysis of the dress and Sanskrit-centred questions) that: “Miss Kerala must be a naden pennu [a girl of the native/rural land] in her dress, comportment, and knowledge. Written onto the female bodies of a proliferation of Miss Keralas, the nadu, locality itself, becomes transportable and transposable” (929). Lukose observes that these women have room to enact their passions and artistry only within the metadiegetic space of the “song and dance” spectacle; once they leave it, they return to a modest, Kerala-gendered space in which the young female performers are quiet to the point of inarticulate, stuttering silence (930). However, while Lukose’s term, Keraleeyatham, is useful as a sociological compass, I contend that it has even more complex connotations. Its ethos of “Nair-ism” (Nayar was the dominant caste identity in Kerala), which could have been a site of resistance and identity formation, instead becomes a site of nationalist, regional linguistic supremacy arising out of Hindu imaginary. Second, this ideology could not have been developed in the era of pre-globalised state-run television but now, in the wake of globalisation and satellite television, we see this spectacle of “discipline and punish” enacted on the world stage. Thus, although I do see a possibility for a more positive Keraleeyatham that is organic, inclusive, and radical, for the moment we have a hegemonic, exclusive, and hierarchical statist approach to regional identity that needs to be re-evaluated. Articulating the Authentic via the Simulacrum Welcome to the Malayalee matrix. Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum is our entry point into visualising the code of reality television. In a state noted for its distinctly left-leaning politics and Communist Party history which underwent radical reversal in the 1990s, the political front in Kerala is still dominated by the LDF (Left Democratic Front), and resistance to the state is an institutionalised and satirised daily event, as marked by the marchers who gather and stop traffic at Palayam in the capital city daily at noon. Issues of poverty and corporate disenfranchisem*nt plague the farming and fishing communities while people suffer transportation tragedies, failures of road development and ferry upkeep on a daily basis. Writers and activists rail against imminent aerial bombing of Maoists insurgent groups, reading in such statist violence repression of the Adivasi (indigenous) peoples scattered across many states of eastern and southern India. Alongside energy and ration supply issues, politics light up the average Keralaite, and yet the most popular “reality” television show reflects none of it. Other than paying faux multicultural tribute to all the festivals that come and go (such as Id, Diwaali, Christmas, and Kerala Piravi [Kerala Day on 1 November]), mainly through Renjini’s dress and chatter, ISS does all it can to remove itself from the turmoil of the everyday. Much in the same way that Bollywood cinema has allowed the masses to escape the oppressions of “the everyday,” reality television promises speculative pleasure produced on the backs of young performers who do not even have to be paid for their labour. Unlike Malayalam cinema’s penchant for hard-hitting politics and narratives of unaccounted for, everyday lives in neo-realist style, today’s reality television—with its excessive sound and light effects, glittering stages and bejewelled participants, repeat zooms, frontal shots, and artificial enhancements—exploits the paradox of hyper-authenticity (Rose and Wood 295). In her useful account of America’s top reality show, American Idol, Katherine Meizel investigates the fascination with the show’s winners and the losers, and the drama of an American “ideal” of diligence and ambition that is seen to be at the heart of the show. She writes, “It is about selling the Dream—regardless of whether it results in success or failure—and about the enactment of ideology that hovers at the edges of any discourse about American morality. It is the potential of great ambition, rather than of great talent, that drives these hopefuls and inspires their fans” (486). In enacting the global via the site of the local (Malayalam and Tamil songs primarily), ISS assumes the mantle of Americanism through the plain-spoken, direct commentaries of the singers who, like their US counterparts, routinely tell us how all of it has changed their lives. In other words, this retrospective meta-narrative becomes more important than the show itself. True to Baudrillard’s theory, ISS blurs the line between actual need and the “need” fabricated by the media and multinational corporations like Idea Cellular and Confident Group (which builds luxury homes, primarily for the new bourgeoisie and nostalgic “returnees” from the diaspora). The “New Kerala” is marked, for the locals, by extravagant (mostly unoccupied) constructions of photogenic homes in garish colours, located in the middle of chaos: the traditional nattumparathu (countryside) wooden homes, and traffic congestion. The homes, promised at the end of these shows, have a “value” based on the hyper-real economy of the show rather than an actual utility value. Yet those who move from the “old” world to the “new” do not always fare well. In local papers, the young artists are often criticised for their new-found haughtiness and disinclination to visit ill relatives in hospital: a veritable sin in a culture that places the nadu and kin above all narratives of progress. In other words, nothing quite adds up: the language and ideologies of the show, espoused most succinctly by its inarticulate host, is a language that obscures its distance from reality. ISS maps onto its audience the emblematic difference between “citizen” and “population”. Through the chaotic, state-sanctioned paralegal devices that allow the slum-dwellers and other property-less people to dwell in the cities, the voices of the labourers (such as the unions) have been silenced. It is a nation ever more geographically divided between the middle-classes which retreat into their gated neighbourhoods, and the shanty-town denizens who are represented by the rising class of religio-fundamentalist leaders. While the poor vote in the Hindu hegemony, the middle classes text in their votes to reality shows like ISS. Partha Chatterjee speaks of the “new segregated and exclusive spaces for the managerial and technocratic elite” (143) which is obsessed by media images, international travel, suburbanisation, and high technology. I wish to add to this list the artificially created community of ISS performers and stars; these are, indeed, the virtual and global extension of Chatterjee’s exclusive, elite communities, decrying the new bourgeois order of Indian urbanity, repackaged as Malayalee, moneyed, and Nayar. Meanwhile, the Hindu Right flexes its muscle under the show’s glittery surface: neither menacing nor fundamentalist, it is now “hip” to be Hindu. Thus while, on the surface, ISS operates according to the cliché, musicinu mathamilla (“music has no religion”), I would contend that it perpetuates a colonising space of Hindu-nationalist hegemony which standardises music appreciation, flattens music performance into an “art” developed solely to serve commercial cinema, and produces a dialectic of Keraleeyatham that erases the multiplicities of its “real.” This ideology, meanwhile, colonises from within. The public performance plays out in the private sphere where the show is consumed; at the same time, the private is inserted into the public with SMS calls that ultimately help seal the juridicality of the show and give the impression of “democracy.” Like the many networks that bring the sentiments of melody and melancholy to our dinner table, I would like to offer you this alternative account of ISS as part of a bid for a more vociferous, and critical, engagement with reality television and its modes of production. Somehow we need to find a way to savour, once again, the non-mimetic aspects of art and to salvage our darkness from the glitter of the “normalising” popular media. References Baudrillard, Jean. The Mirror of Production. Trans. Mark Poster. New York: Telos, 1975. ———. Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. California: Stanford UP, 1988. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Lukose, Ritty. “Consuming Globalization: Youth and Gender in Kerala, India.” Journal of Social History 38.4 (Summer 2005): 915-35. Meizel, Katherine. “Making the Dream a Reality (Show): The Celebration of Failure in American Idol.” Popular Music and Society 32.4 (Oct. 2009): 475-88. Rose, Randall L., and Stacy L. Wood. “Paradox and the Consumption of Authenticity through Reality Television.” Journal of Consumer Research 32 (Sep. 2005): 284-96.

Abstract:

IntroductionInteractive improvisational musical spaces (which is to say, nearly all musical spaces) involve affective relations among bodies: between the bodies of human performers, between performers and active listeners, between the sonic "bodies" that comprise the multiple overlapping events that constitute a musical performance’s unfolding. Music scholarship tends to focus on either music’s sonic materialities (the sensible; what can be heard) or the cultural resonances that locate in and through music (the political or hermeneutic; how meaning is inscribed in and for a listening subject).An embodied turn, however, has recently been manifesting, bringing music scholarship into communication with feminist theory, queer theory, and approaches that foreground subjectivity and embodiment. Exemplary in this area are works by Naomi Cumming (who asks a critical question, “does the self form the sound, or the sound the self?;” Cumming 7), Suzanne Cusick, Marion Guck, Fred Maus, and Susan McClary. All of these scholars, in various ways, thematise the performative—what it feels like to make or experience music, and what effect that making or experiencing has on subject-formation.All of these authors strive to foreground the role of the performer and performativity in the context of the extended Western art music tradition. While each makes persuasive, significant points, my contention in this paper is that improvised music is a more fruitful starting place for thinking about embodiment and the co-constitutive relationship between performer and sound. That is, while (nearly) all music is improvised to a greater or lesser degree, the more radical contexts, in which paths are being selected and large-scale shapes drawn in the “heat of the moment,” can bring these issues into stark relief and serve as more productive entry points for thinking through crucial questions of embodiment, perspective, identity, and emergent meaning.Music-Improvisational ContextsA musical improvisational space is a “context,” in Lawrence Grossberg’s sense of the term (26), where acts of territorialisation unfold an ongoing process of meaning-constitution. Territorialisation refers to an always-ongoing process of mapping out a space within which subjects and objects are constituted (Deleuze and Guattari 314). I posit that musical acts of territorialising are performed by two kinds of bodies in mutually constitutive relationships: interacting corporeal performing bodies, with individual pasts, tendencies, wills, and affective attunements (Massumi, Semblance), and what I term musical-objects-as-bodies. This second category represents a way of considering music’s sonic materiality from an affective perspective—relational, internally differentiating, temporal. On the one hand musical-objects-as-bodies refer to the materiality of the now-ongoing music itself: from the speeds and slownesses of air molecules that are received by the ear and interpreted as sound in the brain, to notes and rhythms and musical gestures; to the various ways in which abstract forms are actively shaped by performers and interpreted by listeners, with their own individuated constellations of histories, tendencies, wants, attunements, and corporeal perspectives. On the other hand, musical-objects-as-bodies can refer to the histories, genres, dislocations, and nomadic movements that partially condition how sonic materialities are produced and perceived. These last two concepts should be read both in terms of how histories and genres become dislocated from themselves through the actions of practitioners, and as a priori principles—that is, not as aberrations that disrupt a norm, but as norms themselves.This involves two levels of abstraction: ascribing body-status to sound-complexes, and then doing the same for historical trajectories, cultural conditionings, and dislocations. Elizabeth Grosz asks us to theorise the body as “the threshold or borderline concept that hovers perilously and undecidably at the pivotal joint of binary pairs” (Grosz, Volatile 23); one such binary that is problematised is that of production and perception, which within the context of an improvising music ensemble are really two perspectives on the same phenomenon. The producers are also the perceivers, in other words. This is true of listeners too: acts of perception are themselves productive in the sense that they create contexts in which meanings emerge.In Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s language (46–54), an emerging context represents a plurality of milieux that are brought together in acts of territorialisation (and deterritorialisation; see below). The term “milieu” refers to the notion that acts of territorialisation always take place in the middle—they are always already bound up in ongoing processes of context-building. Nothing ever emerges from whole cloth; everything modifies by differential degree the contexts upon which it draws. In musical contexts, we might consider four types of milieux. External milieux are articulated by such factors as syntactic norms (what makes a piece of music sound like it belongs within a genre) and cultural conditionings. Internal milieux refer to what gives the elements of a piece of music a sense of belonging together, including formal designs, motivic structures, and melodic or harmonic singularities. An intermediary milieu involves the way gestures acquire sign-status in a context, thereby becoming meaningful. Annexed milieux are locations where new materials are absorbed and incorporated from without.Bodies ImprovisingA small example should put these points into focus. Four jazz musicians are on stage, performing a version of the well-known (in that community) song “Stella by Starlight.” External milieux here include the conventions of the genre: syntactic expectations, prescribed roles for different instruments, certain perspectives on historical performance practices. Internal milieux include the defining features of this song: its melody, harmonic progression, formal design. The performers’ affective attunements to the history of the song’s complex life so far form an intermediary milieu; note that that history is in a process of modification by the very act of the now-ongoing performance. Annexed milieux might include flights into the unexpected, fracturings of stylistic norms, or incorporations of other contexts into this one. The act of territorialisation is how these (and more) milieux are drawn together as forces in this performance, this time. Each performer is an agent, articulating sounds that represent the now-emerging object, this “Stella by Starlight.” Those articulated sounds, as musical-objects-as-bodies, conjoin with each other, and with performers, in ongoing processes of subject-formation.A double movement is at play in this characterisation. The first is strategic: thinking of musical forces as bodies in order to consider how relationships unfold between them in embodied terms—in terms of affect. But simultaneous with this is a reverse move that begins with affective forces and from there constructs those very bodies—human performing bodies as well as musical-objects-as-bodies. In other words, in order to draw lines between bodies that suggest contextual co-determinations where each exists in a continual process of engendering the other, we can turn to a consideration of the encounters between, and impingements of, affective forces through which bodies are constructed and actions are mobilised. This double movement is a paradox that requires three presuppositions. First, that bodies are indeed constituted through encounters of affective forces—this is Deleuze’s Spinozist claim (Deleuze, Spinoza 49–50). Second, that identity is performative within the context of a discourse. This is Judith Butler’s position, which I modify slightly to consider the potential of non- (or pre-) linguistic discourse, such as what can stem from drastic (active, experiential) music-syntactic spaces (Abbate). And third, that concepts like agency and passivity involve force-relations between human actors (with embodied perspectives, agencies, histories, tendencies, and diverse ranges of affective attunements), and the musical utterances expressed by and between them. Therefore, there is value in considering both actor and utterance as unfolding along the same plane, each participating in the other’s constitution.What is at stake when we conceive of sonic materiality in bodily terms in this way? The sounds produced in interactive music-improvisational settings are products of human agency. But there is a passive element to human musical-sound production. There is a degree of passivity that owes to learned behaviors, habits, and the singularities of one’s own history—this is the passive nature of Deleuze’s first synthesis of time (Deleuze, Difference 71–79), where past experiences and activities are drawn into a now-present action, partially conditioning it. Even overtly active selection in the living present is founded on this passivity, since one can only draw upon one’s own history and experience, which provides a limiting force on technique, which in turn directs expressive possibilities. In music-improvisation pedagogy, this might be phrased as “you can only play what you can hear.” Another way to say this is that passive synthesis conditions active selection.One way to overcome the foreclosure of possibility that necessarily falls out of passive synthesis is through interaction and engagement with the affective forces at play in interactive encounters. Through encounters, conditions for new possibilities emerge. The limiting concept “you can only play what you hear” is mitigated by an encounter with newly received stimuli: a heard gesture that invites further excavation of a motivic idea or that sparks a “line of flight” into a thus-far unthought-of next action. The way a newly received stimulus inspires new action is an affective encounter, and it re-conditions—it deterritorialises—the ongoing process of subject-formation. The encounter is a direct line drawn between the two types of bodies—that is, between the situated body of a producing and perceiving subject and the sonic materiality of a musical-object-as-body. While there are other kinds of encounters that unfold in the course of interactive musical performance (visual cues, for example, or tactile nearnesses), the events of heard sounds are the primary locations where bodies are constituted or subjects are formed. This is made transparent in a recent study by Schober and Spiro, where jazz musicians improvised together with no visual or tactile connection, relying solely on sound for their points of interactive contact. This suggested that jazz musicians are able to communicate effectively with only sonic data exchanged. That many improvisers play with their eyes closed, or with their backs to one another, only reinforces this.There are three aspects of sound that I wish to offer as support for a reading of musical objects as bodies. First is that sounds are temporally articulated and perceived. The materiality of sound is bound up with its temporality in ways that are more directly perceivable than many other worldly materialities. The obviousness of its temporally bound nature is one reason that music is used so often as an entry point for thinking through the ontological nature of time and process; viz. Husserl’s utilisation of musical melodies to explicate his phenomenology of internal time-consciousness, and Deleuze and Guattari’s location of acts of territorialisation in the (musical) refrain. Of course the distinction between sonic and other materialities is only a matter of degree: all matter, including bodies, is “continually subjected to transformation, to becoming, to unfolding over time” (Grosz, Time 79), but music foregrounds temporality in ways that many philosophers have found vivid and constructive.Second, musical sounds acquire meaning through their relationships with other sounds in contexts, both in the immediate context of the now-ongoing performance and in extended contexts of genre, syntax, and so on. Those relationships are with histories of past sounds, now-ongoing sounds, and future sounds expressed as results of accumulations of meaning-complexes. A gesture is played, and it acquires meaning through the ways it is “picked up” by differently attuned performers and listeners.In this sense, third, the line is blurred between action and agent; the distinction between the gesture and the execution of the gesture is effectively erased. From the performer’s perspective, how a gesture is “picked up” is made somewhat evident by the sonic materiality of the next gesture. This next gesture is a sign that represents the singularity of the performer’s affective attunement, or an expression of a stage (or, better, some now-ongoing aspect) of what Whitehead would call her “eventful” subjectivity (166–167). What is expressed is the way the performer is (actively or passively) attuning to the constellations of meanings that resonate in the event of the encounter with the musical-object-as-body, as that musical-object-as-body in turn expresses the history of past encounters that (actively or passively) engendered it. The present action as most-contracted expression of the past is Deleuze’s second synthesis of time, while the eventful way an action cuts into the future marks the time of his third synthesis (Deleuze, Difference 80–91).What is at stake in a turn to corporeality in music analysis? Nietzsche admonishes us to turn from the “facts” that the senses take in, process, and evaluate and re-begin our inquiry by questioning the body (272). This means, for music analysis, turning away from certain quantifiable aspects of sonic materiality (pitches, chords, rhythms, formal designs), towards the ways in which sounds are articulated by bodies in interactive contexts. This has been attempted from various perspectives in recent music scholarship, but again the reading of musical bodies I am pursuing foregrounds affective forces, eventful subject-formation, and performativity as identity, on the ground of improvised interaction. Improvising bodies engage in spaces where “all kinds of affects play their game” (Nietzsche 264), and they exist in constant states of change as they are impinged on by events (and as they impinge on events), those events also forming conduits to other bodies. Subjects are not just impinged on by events; they are events, processes, accumulations, and distributions of affective forces. As Grosz puts it, “the body codes the meanings projected onto it” (Volatile 18). In musical improvisation, performers are always in the process of becoming a subject, conditioned by the ways in which they are impinged upon by affective forces and the creative ways those impingements are taken up.Musical-objects-as-bodies, likewise, unfold as ongoing processes, their identity emerging through accumulations and distributions of relationships with other musical-objects-as-bodies. A musical gesture acquires meaning through the emerging context in which it participates, just as a performer acquires a sense of identity through acts of production and perception in, and that help create, a context. Moreover, an affective consideration of performer (as corporeal body) and musical gesture (as sonic utterance) involves “the torsion of one into the other, the passage, vector, or uncontrollable drift of the inside into the outside and the outside into the inside” (Grosz, Volatile xii). Grosz is describing the essential irreducibility of body and mind, but her language is compelling for thinking through the relationships between bodies and musical-objects-as-bodies as an ongoing co-constitutive, boundary-dissolving process.Bodies and/as AffectAffect begins in the in-between, in the productive space of the event in which bodies encounter one another. This is not, however, a pure in-between. Bodies are constructed by the ways in which affective forces impinge on them, but affective forces also stem from bodies. Bodies affect and are affected by one another, as Deleuze is fond of repeating (Spinoza 49). No affect, no bodies, but also no bodies, no affect. What does this mean? The in-between does not subvert corporeality, perspective, intention, or subjectivity, nor is there a hierarchical relation between them (that is, bodies do not emerge because of affective relations, nor the reverse). If we think of bodies as emergent subjectivities—as processes of subject-formation irreducibly connected to the ecological conditions in which they are acting—then the ways in which their identities come to be constructed are intricately connected to the performative utterances they are making and the variable ways they are taking up those utterances and folding them into their emergent processes of becoming. Here, the utterer–utterance distinction begins to break down. Judith Butler (24-25) argues that the ways in which bodies are defined emerge from performative acts, and that every such act constitutes a political action that contributes to the constitution of identity. As Butler writes, “that the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (136). Gender is a status that emerges through one’s actions in contexts—we perform gender, and by performing it we undergo a process of inscribing it on ourselves. This is one of many key points where music scholarship can learn from feminist theory. Like gender, musical identity is performed—we inscribe upon ourselves an emergent musical subjectivity through acts of performance and perception (which is itself a performance too, as an interaction with a musical-object-as-body).Performative acts, therefore, are not simply enacted by bodies; if identity is performed, then the acts themselves are what define the very bodies performing them. Again, the hierarchy breaks down: rather than beginning with a body (a subject) that acts, actions comprise what a body is, as an emergent subject, as the product of its actions. For Deleuze and Guattari, performed acts involve masks; masks do not disguise expression or identity but rather are expressions through which identity is drawn. “The mask does not hide the face, it is the face” (115); “the mask assures the […] construction of the face, the facialization of the head and the body: the mask is now the face itself, the abstraction or operation of the face. […] Never does the face assume a prior signifier or subject” (Deleuze and Guattari 181). In Butler’s terms, the performance does not presuppose the performer; the performer is the performance.Affect corresponds, then, not only to the pre-linguistic (Deleuze’s “dark precursor;” Difference 119–121) but also to the super-discursive: to the multiple embedded meaning-trajectories implicit in any discursive utterance; to the creative ways in which those meaning-trajectories can be taken up variably within the performance space; to the micro-political implications of both utterance and taking-up. Bergson writes: “[m]y body is […] in the aggregate of the material world […] receiving and giving back movement, with, perhaps, this difference only, that my body appears to choose, within certain limits, the manner in which it shall restore what it receives” (Bergson 4–5; also cited in Grosz, The Nick 165). This is exactly Grossberg’s “context,” by the way. The “manner in which it shall restore what it receives” refers, in the case of musically performing (corporeal) bodies, to how a gesture is taken up in a next performed action. In the case of musical-objects-as-bodies, conversely, it refers to how a next gesture contributes to the ongoing sense of meaning-accumulation in response to the ongoing flux of musical-objects-as-bodies within which it locates.In music-improvisational spaces, not only does the utterer–utterance, agent–action, or performer–­performed gesture distinction break down, but the distinction between performed and received gesture likewise blurs, in two senses: because of the nature of eventful subject-formation (whereby a musical gesture’s meaning is being drawn within its emergent context), and because the events of individual musical gestures are subsumed into larger composite events. This problematises the utterer-utterance breakdown by blurring the threshold between individual performed events, inviting a consideration of a paradoxical, but productive, excluded middle where musical-objects-as-bodies are both expressions of corporeal performative acts (engendering contextual subject-formations) and constituent elements of an emergent musical subjectivity (“the performance.” See Massumi (Parables) for more on productive engagements with the excluded middle). While beyond the scope of this paper, we might consider the radical co-constitution of different kinds of bodies in this way as a system, following Gregory Seigworth’s description: “the transitive effect undergone by a body (human or otherwise) in a system—a mobile and open system—composed of the various, innumerable forces of existing and the relations between those forces” (161).Performing Bodies and the Emergent WorkThis, ultimately, is my thesis: how to think about musical performance beginning with performing bodies rather than with a reified notion of musical materiality. Performing bodies are situated within the emerging context of improvised, interactive music-making. Musical utterances are enacted by those bodies, which are also taking up the utterances made by other bodies—as musical-objects-as-bodies. The context that is being built through this process of affective exchange is the performance (the this performance, this time of the jazz example above). Christopher Hasty writes,to perform, from per-formare is to really, actually (fully) form or shape. The ‘-ance’ of performance connotes action and process. The thing performed apart from or outside the forming is problematic. Is it a fixed, ideal form above or beyond (transcending), or beneath or behind (founding) the actual doing, a thing that can be known quite apart from the situated knowing itself? (200)The work–performance dichotomy that animates Hasty’s question (as well as those of Abbate, Goehr, and others) is not my question, since I suggest that using improvised music as an entry point into musical inquiry makes a turn to performance axiomatic. The improvised work is necessarily an active, emergent process, its particularities, boundaries, and meanings being drawn through its performed actions. Perhaps the question that underlies my query is, instead, how do we think about the processes of subject-formation that unfold through interactive music-making; how are performing and performed bodies being inscribed through what kinds of relationships with musical materialities?Is there, in the end, simply a musical body that subsumes both utterer and utterance, both subjectively-forming body and material sonic gesture? I do not wish to go quite that far, but I do wish to continue to problematise where one body stops and the next begins. To paraphrase one of themes of this special issue, where do the boundaries, thresholds, and intersections of musical bodies lie? Deleuze, following Spinoza, tells us frequently that we do not yet know what a body is capable of. This must be at least in part because we know not what a body is at any given point—the body, like the subject which we might now think of as no more than a sign, is in a process of becoming; there is no is (ontology), there is only and (conjunction). And there is no body, there are only bodies, for a body only exists in a complex and emergent ecological relationship with other bodies (see Grosz, Volatile 19). To conceive of porous thresholds between performing bodies and musical-objects-as-bodies is to foreground the performative aspects of improvised music-making and to break down the hierarchy, and possibly even the distinction, between agent, action, and the content of that action. Bodies of all types inscribe one another in ongoing acts of meaning-constitution: this is the properly drastic starting place for inquiry into the nature of musical process.ReferencesAbbate, Carolyn. “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?” Critical Inquiry 30.3 (2004): 505–536.Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1919.Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.Cumming, Naomi. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2000.Cusick, Suzanne. “Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem.” Perspectives of New Music 32.1 (1994): 8–27.———. “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex.” Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and Music. Eds. Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley. Zurich: Carciofolo Verlagshaus, 1999. 25–48.Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. Robert Hurley. Eugene, OR: City Lights Books, 1988.———. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.Goehr, Lydia. The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Grossberg, Lawrence. Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994.———. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. Durham: Duke UP, 2004.———. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Durham: Duke UP, 2005.Guck, Marion. “A Woman’s (Theoretical) Work.” Perspectives of New Music 32.1 (1994): 28–43.Hasty, Christopher. “If Music Is Ongoing Experience, What Might Music Theory Be? A Suggestion from the Drastic.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (Sonderausgabe 2010): 197–216.Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2002.———. Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurent Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.Maus, Fred Everett. “Musical Performance as Analytic Communication.” Performance and Authenticity in the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 129–153.McClary, Susan. “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. Ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas. New York: Routledge, 2006. 205–234.Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and Reginald John Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.Schober, Michael, and Neta Spiro. “Jazz Improvisers’ Shared Understanding: A Case Study.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014). 10 Mar. 2016 <http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00808/abstract>.Seigworth, Gregory. “From Affection to Soul.” Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts. Ed. Charles J. Stivale. Montreal: McGill–Queens UP, 2005. 159–169.Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.

Abstract:

In his directorial debut, The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), RZA not only evokes the textual borrowing techniques he has utilised as a hip-hop producer, but also reflects the influence of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who has built a career upon acknowledging mainstream and cult film histories through mise-en-scene, editing, and deft characterisation. The Man with the Iron Fists was originally to coincide with Tarantino’s rebel slave narrative Django Unchained (2012), which Tarantino has discussed openly as commentary regarding race in contemporary America. In 2011, Variety reported that RZA had joined the cast of Tarantino’s anticipated Django Unchained, playing “Thaddeus, a violent slave working on a Mississippi plantation” (Sneider, “Rza Joins ‘Django Unchained’ Cast”). Django Unchained follows Tarantino’s pattern of generic and trope mixology, combining elements of the Western, blaxploitation, and buddy/road film. He famously stated: “[If] my work has anything it's that I'm taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together… I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don't do homages” (“The Directors of Our Lifetime: In Their Own Words”). He sutures iconography from multiple films in numerous genres to form new texts that stand alone, albeit as amalgamations of references. In considering meanings attached particularly to exploitation films, this article addresses the significance of combining influences within The Man with the Iron Fists and Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and the ideological threads that emerge in fusing exploitation film aesthetics. Ultimately, these films provide a convergence not only of texts, but also of the collective identities associated with and built upon those texts, feats made possible through the filmmakers’ use of pastiche. Pastiche in Identity Formation as Subversive A reflection of the postmodern tendency towards appropriation and borrowing, pastiche is often considered less meaningful than its counterpart, parody. Fredric Jameson suggests that though pastiche and parody share commonalities (most notably the mimicry of style and mannerisms), they do so to different effects. Jameson asserts that parody mimics in an effort to mock the idiosyncrasies within a text, whereas pastiche is “neutral parody” of “dead styles” (114). In short, as Susan Hayward writes, “In its uninventiveness, pastiche is but a shadow of its former thing” (302). For Jameson, the most ubiquitous form of pastiche is the nostalgia film, which attempts to recapture the essence of the past. As examples, he points to the George Lucas films American Graffiti (1973), which is staged in the United States of the 1950s, and Star Wars (1977), which reflects the serials of the 1930s-1950s (114-115). Though scholars such as Jameson and Hayward are contemptuous of pastiche, a growing number see its potential for the subversion and critique that the aforementioned suggest it lacks. For instance, Sarah Smith reminds us that pastiche films engage in “complicitous critique”: the films maintain the trappings of original texts, yet do so in order to advance critique (209). For Smith and other scholars, such as Judith Butler and Richard Dyer, Jameson’s criticism of pastiche is dismissive, for while these scholars largely agree that pastiche is a form of mimicry in which the distance between original and copy is minimal, they recognise that a space still exists for it to be critical. Smith writes: “[W]hile there may be greater distance between the parody and its target text than there is between the pastiche and the text it imitates, a prescribed degree of distance is not a prerequisite for critical engagement with the ur-text” (210). In this regard, fidelity to the original texts is not only required but to be revered, for these likenesses to the original “act as a guarantee of the critique of those origins and provide an opportunity for the filmmaker to position [himself or herself] in relation to them” (Smith 211). Essentially, pastiche is a useful technique in which to construct hybrid identities. Keri E. Iyall Smith suggests that hybrid identities emerge from “a reflexive relationship between local and global” (3). According to popular music scholar Brett Lashua, hybrid identities “make and re-make culture through appropriating the cultural ‘raw materials’ of life in order to construct meaning in their own specific cultural localities. In a sense, they are ‘sampling’ from broader popular culture and reworking what they can take into their own specific local cultures” (“The Arts of the Remix: Ethnography and Rap”). As will be evidenced here, Tarantino utilises pastiche as an unabashed genre poacher; similarly, as a self-avowed Tarantino student and hip-hop producer known for his sampling acumen, RZA invokes pastiche to reflect mastery of his craft and a hybridised identity his multifaceted persona. Plagiarism, Poaching, and Pastiche: Tarantino Blurs Boundaries As a filmmaker, Tarantino is known for indulging in excess: violence, language, and aesthetics. Edward Gallafent characterised the director’s work as having a preoccupation with settings and journeys, violence (both emotional and physical), complicated chronological structures, and dissatisfying conclusions (3-4). Additionally, pieces of Tarantino’s cinematic fandom are inserted into his own films. Academic and popular critics continually note Tarantino’s rise as an obsessive video store clerk turned respected and eccentric auteur. Tarantino’s authorship lies mostly in his ability to borrow (or in his words, steal) narrative arcs, characterisations, and camera work from other filmmakers, and use them in ways that feel innovative and different from those past works. It is not that he borrows generally from movements, films, and filmmakers, but that he conscientiously lifts segments from works to incorporate into his text. In Postmodern Hollywood: What’s New in Film and Why It Makes Us Feel So Strange, Keith M. Booker contends that Tarantino’s work often straddles lines between simplistic reference for reference’s sake and meditations upon the roles of cinema (90). Booker dismisses claims for the latter, citing Tarantino’s unwillingness to contextualise the references in Pulp Fiction, such that the film is best described not an act of citation so much as a break with the historical. Tarantino’s lack of reverence provides him freedom to intermingle texts and tropes to fit his goals as a filmmaker, rather than working within the confines of generic narratives. Each film feels both apart and distinct from genre categories. Jackie Brown, for example, has many of the traits attached to blaxploitation, from its focus on drug culture, the casting of Pam Grier who gained status playing female leads in blaxploitation films, and extreme violence. Tarantino’s use of humour throughout, particular in his treatment of character types, plot twists, and self-aware musical cues distances the film from easy characterisation. It is, but isn’t. What is gained is a remediated conception of cinematic reality. The fictions created in films of the past are noted in Tarantino’s play with tropes. His mixes produce an extreme form of mediated reality – one that is full of excess, highly exaggerated, and completely composed of stolen frameworks. Tarantino continues his generic play in Django Unchained. While much of it does borrow heavily from 1960s and 1970s Western filmmakers like Leone, Corbucci, and Peckinpah (the significance of desolate landscapes, long takes, extreme violence), it also incorporates strands of buddy cop (partners with different backgrounds working together to correct wrongs), early blaxploitation (Broomhilda’s last name is von Shaft suggesting that she is an ancestor of blaxploitation icon John Shaft, the characterisation of Django as black antihero enacting revenge on white racists in power), and kung fu (revenge narrative, in addition to the extensive training moments between Dr. Schultz and Django). The familiar elements highlight the transgressions of genre adherence. The comfort of the western genre and its tropes eases the audience, only for Tarantino to incorporate those elements from outside the genre to spark interest, to shock, to remind audiences of the mediated reality onscreen. Tarantino has been criticised for his lack of depth and understanding regarding women and people of colour, despite his attempts to provide various leading and supporting roles for both. Django Unchained was particularly criticised for Tarantino’s use of the term nigg*r - over 100 instances in the film. Tarantino defended his decision by claiming historical accuracy, poetic license, and his desire to confront audiences with various levels of racism. Many, including Spike Lee, disagreed, arguing Tarantino had no claim to making a film about slavery. Lee stated through Twitter: “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them” (“Spike Lee on Django Unchained: Filmmaker Calls Movie ‘Disrespectful’”). Not only does Lee evoke the tragedy of the American slave trade and the significance of race within contemporary filmmaking, but he uses genre to underscore what he perceives is Tarantino’s lack of reverence to the issue of slavery and its aftermath in American culture. Django Unchained is both physically and emotionally brutal. The world created by Tarantino is culturally messy, as Italian composers rub elbows with black hip-hop artists, actors from films’ referenced in Django Unchained interact with new types of heroes. The amounts of references, people, and spectacles in his films have created a brand that is both hyperaware, but often critiqued as ambivalent. This is due in part to the perception of Tarantino as a filmmaker with no filter. His brand as a filmmaker is action ordered, excessive, and injected with his own fandom. He is an ultimate poacher of texts and it is this aesthetic, which has also made him a fan favourite amongst young cinephiles. Not only does he embrace the amount of play film offers, but he takes the familiar and makes it strange. The worlds he creates are hazier, darker, and unstable. Creating such a world in Django Unchained provides a lot of potential for reading race in film and American culture. He and his defenders have discussed this film as an “honest” portrayal of the effects of slavery and racial tension in the United States. This is also the world which acts as context for RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists. Though a reference abandoned in Django Unchained, the connection between both films and both filmmakers pleasure in pastiche provide further insight to connections between film and race. Doing the Knowledge: RZA Pays Homage As a filmmaker, RZA utilises Tarantino’s filmmaking brand techniques to build his own homage and add to the body of kung-fu films. Doing so furnishes him the opportunity to rehash and reform narratives and tropes in ways that change familiar narrative structures and plot devices. In creating a film which relies on cinematic allusions to kung fu, RZA—as a fan, practitioner, and author—reconfigures kung fu from being an exploitative genre and reshapes its potential for representational empowerment. While Tarantino considers himself an unabashed thief of genre tropes, RZA envisions himself more as a student who pays homage to masters—among whom he includes Tarantino. Indeed, in an interview with MTV, RZA refers to Tarantino as his Sifu (a Chinese term for master or teacher) and credits him not only for teaching RZA about filmmaking, but also for providing him with his blessing to make his first feature length film (Downey, “RZA Recalls Learning from ‘The Master’ Quentin Tarantino”). RZA implies that mastery of one’s craft comes from incorporating influences while creating original work, not theft. For instance, he states that the Pink Blossom brothel—the locus for most of the action in the film—was inspired by the House of Blue Leaves restaurant, which functions in a similar capacity in Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (“RZA Talks Sampling of Kung Fu Films for Movie & The Difference Between Biting vs. Influence”). Hip-hop is an art form in which its practitioners “partake of a discursive universe where skill at appropriating the fragments of a rapidly-changing world with verbal grace and dexterity is constituted as knowledge” (Potter 21). This knowledge draws upon not only the contemporary moment but also the larger body of recorded music and sound, both of which it “re-reads and Signifies upon through a complex set of strategies, including samplin’, cuttin’ (pastiche), and freestylin’ (improvisation)” (Potter 22). As an artist who came of age in hip-hop’s formative years and whose formal recording career began at the latter half of hip-hop’s Golden Age (often considered 1986-1993), RZA is a particularly adept cutter and sampler – indeed, as a sampler, RZA is often considered a master. While RZA’s samples run the gamut of the musical spectrum, he is especially known for sampling obscure, often indeterminable jazz and soul tracks. Imani Perry suggests that this measure of fidelity to the past is borne out of hip-hop’s ideological respect for ancestors and its inherent sense of nostalgia (54). Hallmarks of RZA’s sampling repertoire include dialog and sound effects from equally obscure kung fu films. RZA attributes his sampling of kung fu to an affinity for these films established in his youth after viewing noteworthy examples such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) and Five Deadly Venoms (1978). These films have become a key aspect of his identity and everyday life (Gross, “RZA’s Edge: The RZA’s Guide to Kung Fu Films”). He speaks of his decision to make kung fu dialog an integral part of Wu-Tang Clan’s first album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers): “My fantasy was to make a one-hour movie that people were just going to listen to. They would hear my movie and see it in their minds. I’d read comic books like that, with sonic effects and kung fu voices in my head. That makes it more exciting so I try to create music in the same way” (Gross, ““RZA’s Edge: The RZA’s Guide to Kung Fu Films”). Much like Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and his other musical endeavours, The Man with the Iron Fists serves as further evidence of RZA’s hybrid identity., which sociologist Keri E. Iyall Smith suggests emerges from “a reflexive relationship between local and global” (3). According to popular music scholar Brett Lashua, hybrid identities “make and re-make culture through appropriating the cultural ‘raw materials’ of life in order to construct meaning in their own specific cultural localities. In a sense, they are ‘sampling’ from broader popular culture and reworking what they can take into their own specific local cultures” (“The Arts of the Remix: Ethnography and Rap”). The most overt instance of RZA’s hybridity is in regards to names, many of which are derived from the Gordon Liu film Shaolin and Wu-Tang (1983), in which the competing martial arts schools come together to fight a common foe. The film is the basis not only for the name of RZA’s group (Wu-Tang Clan) but also for the names of individual members (for instance, Master Killer—after the series to which the film belongs) and the group’s home base of Staten Island, New York, which they frequently refer to as “Shaolin.” The Man with the Iron Fists is another extension of this hybrid identity. Kung fu has long had meaning for African Americans particularly because these films frequently “focus narratively on either the triumph of the ‘little guy’ or ‘underdog’ or the nobility of the struggle to recognise humanity and virtue in all people, or some combination of both” (Ongiri 35). As evidence, Amy Obugo Ongiri points to films such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, a film about a peasant who learns martial arts at the Shaolin temple in order to avenge his family’s murder by the Manchu rulers (Ongiri 35). RZA reifies this notion in a GQ interview, where he speaks about The 36th Chamber of Shaolin specifically, noting its theme of rebellion against government oppression having relevance to his life as an African American (Pappademus, “This Movie Is Rated Wu”). RZA appropriates the humble origins of the peasant San Te (Gordon Liu), the protagonist of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, in Thaddeus (whom RZA plays in the film), whose journey to saviour of Jungle Village begins with his being a slave in America. Indeed, one might argue that RZA’s construction of and role as Thaddeus is the ultimate realisation of the hybrid identity he has developed since becoming a popular recording artist. Just as Tarantino’s acting in his own films often reflects his identity as genre splicer and convention breaker (particularly since they are often self-referential), RZA’s portrayal of Thaddeus—as an African American, as a martial artist, and as a “conscious” human being—reflects the narrative RZA has constructed about his own life. Conclusion The same amount of play Tarantino has with conventions, particularly in characterisations and notions of heroism, is present in RZA’s Man with the Iron Fists. Both filmmakers poach from their favourite films and genres in order to create interpretations that feel both familiar and new. RZA follows Tarantino’s aesthetic of borrowing scenes directly from other films. Both filmmakers poach from films for their own devices, but in those mash-ups open up avenues for genre critique and identity formation. Tarantino is right to say that they are not solely homages, as homages honour the films in which they borrow. Tarantino and RZA do more through their poaching to stretch the boundaries of genres and films’ abilities to communicate with audiences. References “The Directors of Our Lifetime: In Their Own Words.” Empire Online. N.d. 8 May 2013 ‹http://www.empireonline.com/magazine/250/directors-of-our-lifetime/5.asp›. Booker, Keith M. Postmodern Hollywood: What’s New in Film and Why It Makes Us Feel So Strange. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. Downey, Ryan J. “RZA Recalls Learning from ‘The Master’ Quentin Tarantino.” MTV. 30 August 2012. 14 July 2013 ‹http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1692872/rza-man-with-the-iron-fists-quentin-tarantino.jhtml›. Gallefent, Edward. Quentin Tarantino. London: Longman. 2005. Gross, Jason. “RZA’s Edge: The RZA’s Guide to Kung Fu Films.” Film Comment. N.d. 5 June 2013 ‹http://www.filmcomment.com/article/rzas-edge-the-rzas-guide-to-kung-fu-films›. Iyall Smith, Keri E. “Hybrid Identities: Theoretical Examinations.” Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations. Ed. Keri E. Iyall Smith and Patricia Leavy. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 3-12. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. London: Pluto, 1985. 111-125. Lashua, Brett. “The Arts of the Remix: Ethnography and Rap.” Anthropology Matters 8.2 (2006). 6 June 2013 ‹http://www.anthropologymatters.com›. “The Man with the Iron Fists – Who in the Cast Can F-U Up?” IronFistsMovie 21 Sep. 2012. YouTube. 8 May 2013 ‹http://youtu.be/bhJOQZFJfqA›. Pappademus, Alex. “This Movie Is Rated Wu.” GQ Nov. 2012. 6 June 2013 ‹http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201211/the-rza-man-with-the-iron-fists-wu-tang-clan›. Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2004. Potter, Russell. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 1995. “RZA Talks Sampling of Kung Fu Films for Movie & The Difference between Biting vs. Influence.” The Well Versed. 2 Nov. 2012. 5 June 2013 ‹http://thewellversed.com/2012/11/02/video-rza-talks-sampling-of-kung-fu-films-for-movie-the-difference-between-biting-vs-influence/›. Smith, Sarah. “Lip and Love: Subversive Repetition in the Pastiche Films of Tracey Moffat.” Screen 49.2 (Summer 2008): 209-215. Snedier, Jeff. “Rza Joins 'Django Unchained' Cast.” Variety 2 Nov. 2011. 14 June 2013 ‹http://variety.com/2011/film/news/rza-joins-django-unchained-cast-1118045503/›. “Spike Lee on Django Unchained: Filmmaker Calls Movie ‘Disrespectful.’” Huffington Post 24 Dec. 2012. 14 June 2013 ‹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/23/spike-lee-django-unchained-movie-disrespectful_n_2356729.html›. Wu-Tang Clan. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Loud, 1993. Filmography The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Dir. Chia-Liang Lui. Perf. Chia Hui Lui, Lieh Lo, Chia Yung Lui. Shaw Brothers, 1978. Django Unchained. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz. Miramax, 2012. Five Deadly Venoms. Dir. Cheh Chang. Perf. Sheng Chiang, Philip Kwok, Feng Lu. Shaw Brothers, 1978. Jackie Brown. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster. Miramax, 1997. Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Darryl Hannah. Miramax, 2003. The Man with the Iron Fists. Dir. RZA. Perf. RZA, Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu. Arcade Pictures, 2012. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson. Miramax, 1994. Shaolin and Wu-Tang. Dir. Chiu Hui Liu. Perf. Chiu Hui Liu, Adam Cheng, Li Ching.

Abstract:

This paper provides embedded, reflective practice-based insight arising from my experience collaborating to produce online and print-on-demand editions of a magazine showcasing the photography of members of haphazart! Contemporary Abstracts group (hereafter referred to as haphazart!). The group’s online visual, textual and activity-based practices via the photo sharing social networking site Flickr are portrayed as achieving cohesive visual identity. Stylistic analysis of pictures in support of this claim is not attempted. Rather negotiation, that Elliot has previously described in M/C Journal as innate in collaboration, is identified as the unifying factor. However, the collaborators’ adherence to Flickr’s communication platform proves problematic in the editorial context. Some technical incoherence with possible broader cultural implications is encountered during the process of repurposing images from screen to print. A Scan of Relevant Literature The photographic gaze perceives and captures objects which seem to ‘carry within them ready-made’ a work of art. But the reminiscences of the gaze are only made possible by knowing and associating with groups that define a tradition. The list of valorised subjects is not actually defined with reference to a culture, but rather by familiarity with a limited group. (Chamboredon 144) As part of the array of socio-cultural practices afforded by Web 2.0 interoperability, sites of produsage (Bruns) are foci for studies originating in many disciplines. Flickr provides a rich source of data that researchers interested in the interface between the technological and the social find useful to analyse. Access to the Flickr application programming interface enables quantitative researchers to observe a variety of means by which information is propagated, disseminated and shared. Some findings from this kind of research confirm the intuitive. For example, Negoecsu et al. find that “a large percentage of users engage in sharing with groups and that they do so significantly” ("Analyzing Flickr Groups" 425). They suggest that Flickr’s Groups feature appears to “naturally bring together two key aspects of social media: content and relations.” They also find evidence for what they call hyper-groups, which are “communities consisting of groups of Flickr groups” ("Flickr Hypergroups" 813). Two separate findings from another research team appear to contradict each other. On one hand, describing what they call “social cascades,” Cha et al. claim that “content in the form of ideas, products, and messages spreads across social networks like a virus” ("Characterising Social Cascades"). Yet in 2009 they claim that hom*ocity and reciprocity ensure that “popularity of pictures is localised” ("Measurement-Driven Analysis"). Mislove et al. reflect that the affordances of Flickr influence the growth patterns they observe. There is optimism shared by some empiricists that through collation and analysis of Flickr tag data, the matching of perceptual structures of images and image annotation techniques will yield ontology-based taxonomy useful in automatic image annotation and ultimately, the Semantic Web endeavour (Kennedy et al.; Su et al.; Xu et al.). Qualitative researchers using ethnographic interview techniques also find Flickr a valuable resource. In concluding that the photo sharing hobby is for many a “serious leisure” activity, Cox et al. propose that “Flickr is not just a neutral information system but also value laden and has a role within a wider cultural order.” They also suggest that “there is genuinely greater scope for individual creativity, releasing the individual to explore their own identity in a way not possible with a camera club.” Davies claims that “online spaces provide an arena where collaboration over meanings can be transformative, impacting on how individuals locate themselves within local and global contexts” (550). She says that through shared ways of describing and commenting on images, Flickrites develop a common criticality in their endeavour to understand images, each other and their world (554).From a psychologist’s perspective, Suler observes that “interpersonal relationships rarely form and develop by images alone” ("Image, Word, Action" 559). He says that Flickr participants communicate in three dimensions: textual (which he calls “verbal”), visual, and via the interpersonal actions that the site affords, such as Favourites. This latter observation can surely be supplemented by including the various games that groups configure within the constraints of the discussion forums. These often include submissions to a theme and voting to select a winning image. Suler describes the place in Flickr where one finds identity as one’s “cyberpsychological niche” (556). However, many participants subscribe to multiple groups—45.6% of Flickrites who share images share them with more than 20 groups (Negoescu et al., "Analyzing Flickr Groups" 420). Is this a reflection of the existence of the hyper-groups they describe (2009) or, of the ranging that people do in search of a niche? It is also probable that some people explore more than a singular identity or visual style. Harrison and Bartell suggest that there are more interesting questions than why users create media products or what motivates them to do so: the more interesting questions center on understanding what users will choose to do ultimately with [Web2.0] capabilities [...] in what terms to define the success of their efforts, and what impact the opportunity for individual and collaborative expression will have on the evolution of communicative forms and character. (167) This paper addresseses such questions. It arises from a participatory observational context which differs from that of the research described above. It is intended that a different perspective about online group-based participation within the Flickr social networking matrix will avail. However, it will be seen that the themes cited in this introductory review prove pertinent. Context As a university teacher of a range of subjects in the digital media field, from contemporary photomedia to social media to collaborative multimedia practice, it is entirely appropriate that I embed myself in projects that engage, challenge and provide me with relevant first-hand experience. As an academic I also undertake and publish research. As a practicing new media artist I exhibit publically on a regular basis and consider myself semi-professional with respect to this activity. While there are common elements to both approaches to research, this paper is written more from the point of view of ‘reflective practice’ (Holmes, "Reconciling Experimentum") rather than ‘embedded ethnography’ (Pink). It is necessarily and unapologetically reflexive. Abstract Photography Hyper-Group A search of all Flickr groups using the query “abstract” is currently likely to return around 14,700 results. However, only in around thirty of them does the group name, its stated rules and, the stream of images that flow through the pool arguably reflect a sense of collective concept and aesthetic that is coherently abstract. This loose complex of groups comprises a hyper-group. Members of these groups often have co-memberships, reciprocal contacts, and regularly post images to a range of groups and comment on others’ posts to be found throughout. Given that one of Flickr’s largest groups, Black and White, currently has around 131,150 members and hosts 2,093,241 items in its pool, these abstract special interest groups are relatively small. The largest, Abstract Photos, has 11,338 members and hosts 89,306 items in its pool. The group that is the focus of this paper, haphazart!, currently has 2,536 members who have submitted 53,309 items. The group pool is more like a constantly flowing river because the most recently added images are foremost. Older images become buried in an archive of pages which cannot be reverse accessed at a rate greater than the seven pages linked from a current view. A member’s presence is most immediate through images posted to a pool. This structural feature of Flickr promotes a desire for currency; a need to post regularly to maintain presence. Negotiating Coherence to the Abstract The self-managing social dynamics in groups has, as Suler proposes to be the case for individuals, three dimensions: visual, textual and action. A group integrates the diverse elements, relationships and values which cumulatively constitute its identity with contributions from members in these dimensions. First impressions of that identity are usually derived from the group home page which consists of principal features: the group name, a selection of twelve most recent posts to the pool, some kind of description, a selection of six of the most recent discussion topics, and a list of rules (if any). In some of these groups, what is considered to constitute an abstract photographic image is described on the group home page. In some it is left to be contested and becomes the topic of ongoing forum debates. In others the specific issue is not discussed—the images are left to speak for themselves. Administrators of some groups require that images are vetted for acceptance. In haphazart! particular administrators dutifully delete from the pool on a regular basis any images that they deem not to comply with the group ethic. Whether reasons are given or not is left to the individual prosecutor. Mostly offending images just disappear from the group pool without trace. These are some of the ways that the coherence of a group’s visual identity is established and maintained. Two groups out of the abstract photography hyper-group are noteworthy in that their discussion forums are particularly active. A discussion is just the start of a new thread and may have any number of posts under it. At time of writing Abstract Photos has 195 discussions and haphazart! — the most talkative by this measure—has 333. Haphazart! invites submissions of images to regularly changing themes. There is always lively and idiosyncratic banter in the forum over the selection of a theme. To be submitted an image needs to be identified by a specific theme tag as announced on the group home page. The tag can be added by the photographer themselves or by anyone else who deems the image appropriate to the theme. An exhibition process ensues. Participant curators search all Flickr items according to the theme tag and select from the outcome images they deem to most appropriately and abstractly address the theme. Copies of the images together with comments by the curators are posted to a dedicated discussion board. Other members may also provide responses. This activity forms an ongoing record that may serve as a public indicator of the aesthetic that underlies the group’s identity. In Abstract Photos there is an ongoing discussion forum where one can submit an image and request that the moderators rule as to whether or not the image is ‘abstract’. The same group has ongoing discussions labelled “Hall of Appropriate” where worthy images are reposted and celebrated and, “Hall of Inappropriate” where images posted to the group pool have been removed and relegated because abstraction has been “so far stretched from its definition that it now resides in a parallel universe” (Askin). Reasons are mostly courteously provided. In haphazart! a relatively small core of around twelve group members regularly contribute to the group discussion board. A curious aspect of this communication is that even though participants present visually with a ‘buddy icon’ and most with a screen name not their real name, it is usual practice to address each other in discussions by their real Christian names, even when this is not evident in a member’s profile. This seems to indicate a common desire for authenticity. The makeup of the core varies from time to time depending on other activities in a member’s life. Although one or two may be professionally or semi-professionally engaged as photographers or artists or academics, most of these people would likely consider themselves to be “serious amateurs” (Cox). They are internationally dispersed with bias to the US, UK, Europe and Australia. English is the common language though not the natural tongue of some. The age range is approximately 35 to 65 and the gender mix 50/50. The group is three years old. Where Do We Go to from Here? In early January 2009 the haphazart! core was sparked into a frenzy of discussion by a post from a member headed “Where do we go to from here?” A proposal was mooted to produce a ‘book’ featuring images and texts representative of the group. Within three days a new public group with invited membership dedicated to the idea had been established. A smaller working party then retreated to a private Flickr group. Four months later Issue One of haphazart! magazine was available in print-on-demand and online formats. Following however is a brief critically reflective review of some of the collaborative curatorial, editorial and production processes for Issue Two which commenced in early June 2009. Most of the team had also been involved with Issue One. I was the only newcomer and replaced the person who had undertaken the design for Issue One. I was not provided access to the prior private editorial ruminations but apparently the collaborative curatorial and editorial decision-making practices the group had previously established persisted, and these took place entirely within the discussion forums of a new dedicated private Flickr group. Over a five-month period there were 1066 posts in 54 discussions concerning matters such as: change of format from the previous; selection of themes, artists and images; conduct of and editing of interviews; authoring of texts; copyright and reproduction. The idiom of those communications can be described as: discursive, sporadic, idiosyncratic, resourceful, collegial, cooperative, emphatic, earnest and purposeful. The selection process could not be said to follow anything close to a shared manifesto, or articulation of style. It was established that there would be two primary themes: the square format and contributors’ use of colour. Selection progressed by way of visual presentation and counter presentation until some kind of consensus was reached often involving informal votes of preference. Stretching the Limits of the Flickr Social Tools The magazine editorial collaborators continue to use the facilities with which they are familiar from regular Flickr group participation. However, the strict vertically linear format of the Flickr discussion format is particularly unsuited to lengthy, complex, asynchronous, multithreaded discussion. For this purpose it causes unnecessary strain, fatigue and confusion. Where images are included, the forums have set and maximum display sizes and are not flexibly configured into matrixes. Images cannot readily be communally changed or moved about like texts in a wiki. Likewise, the Flickrmail facility is of limited use for specialist editorial processes. Attachments cannot be added. This opinion expressed by a collaborator in the initial, open discussion for Issue One prevailed among Issue Two participants: do we want the members to go to another site to observe what is going on with the magazine? if that’s ok, then using google groups or something like that might make sense; if we want others to observe (and learn from) the process - we may want to do it here [in Flickr]. (Valentine) The opinion appears socially constructive; but because the final editorial process and production processes took place in a separate private forum, ultimately the suggested learning between one issue and the next did not take place. During Issue Two development the reluctance to try other online collaboration tools for the selection processes requiring visual comparative evaluation of images and trials of sequencing adhered. A number of ingenious methods of working within Flickr were devised and deployed and, in my opinion, proved frustratingly impractical and inefficient. The digital layout, design, collation and formatting of images and texts, all took place on my personal computer using professional software tools. Difficulties arose in progressively sharing this work for the purposes of review, appraisal and proofing. Eventually I ignored protests and insisted the team review demonstrations I had converted for sharing in Google Documents. But, with only one exception, I could not tempt collaborators to try commenting or editing in that environment. For example, instead of moving the sequence of images dynamically themselves, or even typing suggestions directly into Google Documents, they would post responses in Flickr. To Share and to Hold From the first imaginings of Issue One the need to have as an outcome something in one’s hands was expressed and this objective is apparently shared by all in the haphazart! core as an ongoing imperative. Various printing options have been nominated, discussed and evaluated. In the end one print-on-demand provider was selected on the basis of recommendation. The ethos of haphazart! is clearly not profit-making and conflicts with that of the printing organisation. Presumably to maintain an incentive to purchase the print copy online preview is restricted to the first 15 pages. To satisfy the co-requisite to make available the full 120 pages for free online viewing a second host that specialises in online presentation of publications is also utilised. In this way haphazart! members satisfy their common desires for sharing selected visual content and ideas with an online special interest audience and, for a physical object of art to relish—with all the connotations of preciousness, fetish, talisman, trophy, and bookish notions of haptic pleasure and visual treasure. The irony of publishing a frozen chunk of the ever-flowing Flickriver, whose temporally changing nature is arguably one of its most interesting qualities, is not a consideration. Most of them profess to be simply satisfying their own desire for self expression and would eschew any critical judgement as to whether this anarchic and discursive mode of operation results in a coherent statement about contemporary photographic abstraction. However there remains a distinct possibility that a number of core haphazart!ists aspire to transcend: popular taste; the discernment encouraged in camera clubs; and, the rhetoric of those involved professionally (Bourdieu et al.); and seek to engage with the “awareness of illegitimacy and the difficulties implied by the constitution of photography as an artistic medium” (Chamboredon 130). Incoherence: A Technical Note My personal experience of photography ranges from the filmic to the digital (Holmes, "Bridging Adelaide"). For a number of years I specialised in facsimile graphic reproduction of artwork. In those days I became aware that films were ‘blind’ to the psychophysical affect of some few particular paint pigments. They just could not be reproduced. Even so, as I handled the dozens of images contributed to haphazart!2, converting them from the pixellated place where Flickr exists to the resolution and gamut of the ink based colour space of books, I was surprised at the number of hue values that exist in the former that do not translate into the latter. In some cases the affect is subtle so that judicious tweaking of colour levels or local colour adjustment will satisfy discerning comparison between the screenic original and the ‘soft proof’ that simulates the printed outcome. In other cases a conversion simply does not compute. I am moved to contemplate, along with Harrison and Bartell (op. cit.) just how much of the experience of media in the shared digital space is incomparably new? Acknowledgement Acting on the advice of researchers experienced in cyberethnography (Bruckman; Suler, "Ethics") I have obtained the consent of co-collaborators to comment freely on proceedings that took place in a private forum. They have been given the opportunity to review and suggest changes to the account. References Askin, Dean (aka: dnskct). “Hall of Inappropriate.” Abstract Photos/Discuss/Hall of Inappropriate, 2010. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.flickr.com/groups/abstractphotos/discuss/72157623148695254/>. Bourdieu, Pierre, Luc Boltanski, Robert Castel, Jean-Claude Chamboredeon, and Dominique Schnapper. Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. 1965. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Bruckman, Amy. Studying the Amateur Artist: A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on the Internet. 2002. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_bru_full.html>. Bruns, Axel. “Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production.” Proceedings: Cultural Attitudes towards Communication and Technology 2006. Perth: Murdoch U, 2006. 275–84. ———, and Mark Bahnisch. Social Media: Tools for User-Generated Content. Vol. 1 – “State of the Art.” Sydney: Smart Services CRC, 2009. Cha, Meeyoung, Alan Mislove, Ben Adams, and Krishna P. Gummadi. “Characterizing Social Cascades in Flickr.” Proceedings of the First Workshop on Online Social Networks. ACM, 2008. 13–18. ———, Alan Mislove, and Krishna P. Gummadi. “A Measurement-Driven Analysis of Information Propagation in the Flickr Social Network." WWW '09: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web. ACM, 2009. 721–730. Cox, A.M., P.D. Clough, and J. Marlow. “Flickr: A First Look at User Behaviour in the Context of Photography as Serious Leisure.” Information Research 13.1 (March 2008). 12 Dec. 2009 ‹http://informationr.net/ir/13-1/paper336.html>. Chamboredon, Jean-Claude. “Mechanical Art, Natural Art: Photographic Artists.” Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. Pierre Bourdieu. et al. 1965. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. 129–149. Davies, Julia. “Display, Identity and the Everyday: Self-Presentation through Online Image Sharing.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 28.4 (Dec. 2007): 549–564. Elliott, Mark. “Stigmergic Collaboration: The Evolution of Group Work.” M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/03-elliott.php>. Harrison, Teresa, M., and Brea Barthel. “Wielding New Media in Web 2.0: Exploring the History of Engagement with the Collaborative Construction of Media Products.” New Media & Society 11.1-2 (2009): 155–178. Holmes, Ashley. “‘Bridging Adelaide 2001’: Photography and Hyperimage, Spanning Paradigms.” VSMM 2000 Conference Proceedings. International Society for Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2000. 79–88. ———. “Reconciling Experimentum and Experientia: Reflective Practice Research Methodology for the Creative Industries”. Speculation & Innovation: Applying Practice-Led Research in the Creative Industries. Brisbane: QUT, 2006. Kennedy, Lyndon, Mor Naaman, Shane Ahern, Rahul Nair, and Tye Rattenbury. “How Flickr Helps Us Make Sense of the World: Context and Content in Community-Contributed Media Collections.” MM’07. ACM, 2007. Miller, Andrew D., and W. Keith Edwards. “Give and Take: A Study of Consumer Photo-Sharing Culture and Practice.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2007. 347–356. Mislove, Alan, Hema Swetha Koppula, Krishna P. Gummadi, Peter Druschel and Bobby Bhattacharjee. “Growth of the Flickr Social Network.” Proceedings of the First Workshop on Online Social Networks. ACM, 2008. 25–30. Negoescu, Radu-Andrei, and Daniel Gatica-Perez. “Analyzing Flickr Groups.” CIVR '08: Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Content-Based Image and Video Retrieval. ACM, 2008. 417–426. ———, Brett Adams, Dinh Phung, Svetha Venkatesh, and Daniel Gatica-Perez. “Flickr Hypergroups.” MM '09: Proceedings of the Seventeenth ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM, 2009. 813–816. Pink, Sarah. Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 2007. Su, Ja-Hwung, Bo-Wen Wang, Hsin-Ho Yeh, and Vincent S. Tseng. “Ontology–Based Semantic Web Image Retrieval by Utilizing Textual and Visual Annotations.” 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology – Workshops. 2009. Suler, John. “Ethics in Cyberspace Research: Consent, Privacy and Contribution.” The Psychology of Cyberspace. 1996. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html>. ———. “Image, Word, Action: Interpersonal Dynamics in a Photo-Sharing Community.” Cyberpsychology & Behavior 11.5 (2008): 555–560. Valentine, Mark. “HAPHAZART! Magazine/Discuss/image selections…” [discussion post]. 2009. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.flickr.com/groups/haphazartmagazin/discuss/72157613147017532/>. Xu, Hongtao, Xiangdong Zhou, Mei Wang, Yu Xiang, and Baile Shi. “Exploring Flickr’s Related Tags for Semantic Annotation of Web Images.” CIVR ’09. ACM, 2009.

Abstract:

Apocacidal Tendencies: Three Excerpts from the Heaven's Gate Website 1995 (A term which blends apocalypse with suicide, apocacides could be best described as those groups or individuals who understand salvation from an imagined approaching armageddon to involve, indeed depend upon, the voluntary sacrifice of one's own life on earth.) 1. '95 Statement by An E.T. Presently Incarnate: "... We brought to Earth with us a crew of students whom we had worked with (nurtured) on Earth in previous missions. They were in varying stages of metamorphic transition from membership in the human kingdom to membership in the physical Evolutionary Level Above Human (what your history refers to as the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven). It seems that we arrived in Earth's atmosphere between Earth's 1940s and early 1990s. We suspect that many of us arrived in staged spacecraft (UFO) crashes and many of our discarded bodies (genderless, not belonging to the human species), were retrieved by human authorities (government and military). Other crews from the Level Above Human preceded our arrival and 'tagged' -- placed a despite 'chip' -- in each of the vehicles (bodies) that we would individually incarnate into, when that instruction would be given. These 'chips' set aside those bodies for us ... In any given civilisation on a fertile planet such as Earth (and Earth has had many periodic/cyclical civilisations), the Level Above Human plants all the new life forms (including humans) for that civilisation in a neutral condition so that they have a chance to choose the direction of their growth. The Level Above Human -- or Next Level -- directly (hands on) relates significantly to the civilisation at its beginning stage, and subsequently (with few exceptions) at approximately 2000-year intervals (48-hour intervals from a Next Level perspective) until that civilisation's final 'Age.' ..." 2. Our Position Against Suicide: " ... We know that it is only while we are in these physical vehicles (bodies) that we can learn the lessons needed to complete our own individual transition, as well as to complete our task of offering the Kingdom of Heaven to this civilisation one last time. We take good care of our vehicles so they can function well for us in this task, and we try to protect them from any harm. We fully desire, expect, and look forward to boarding a spacecraft from the Next Level very soon (in our physical bodies). There is no doubt in our mind that our being 'picked up' is inevitable in the very near future. But what happens between now and then is the big question. We are keenly aware of several possibilities ... The true meaning of 'suicide' is to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered. In these last days, we are focused on ... entering the Kingdom of Heaven ..." 3. Last Chance to Evacuate Earth Before It's Recycled (Sept 29, 1996): "... I'm in a vehicle that is already falling apart on me, and I'm desperate to try to help you have a last chance to go ... I don't mean to make fun of this. I am desperate -- for your sakes. Within the past twenty-four hours I have been clearly informed by my Older Member of how short the remaining time is; how clearly we cannot concentrate on anything except the perspective that says: the end of this civilisation is very close. The end of a civilisation is accompanied by spading under, refurbishing the planet in preparation for another civilisation. And the only ones who can survive that experience have to be those who are taken into the keeping of the Evolutionary Level Above Human ..." Heaven's Gate -- http://www.trancenet.org/heavensgate/index.html Magnificat Meal Movement [Toowoomba, Australia] -- http://homepages.iol.ie/~magnific/ Apocaholic co*cktails: Mixing Visions of the End Armageddon Anonymous: Hidden Faces Plotting the End on Television The 1996 book release X-Files Confidential describes its subject matter as "'social-science fiction' ... fuelled by the realities -- and internal anxieties -- of [our] time: the era of diminished expectations", a television show which "concerns itself with the dark side of technology, competition, politics, ambition, and selfishness", warning against the "risks of abandoning an interior life or one's community" and reinforcing the notion that "our attempts to combat evil are usually an exercise in futility" though that "effort alone is significant". Unlike the participants within the apocaholic communities who intimate that the 'truth is with us', the X-Files, as an entertainment product of the secular industry, proclaims that the 'truth is out there'. This conceptual and narrative framework within the X-Files works on several levels: Frustrates resolution through contrived revelation; Frustrates revelation through contrived resolution; Identifies and resists externally imposed futures; Gives a narrative voice to marginalised hierarchies of genres, values and futures mythology, eg., those involving ufology, genetic mutations and the like; De-emphasises mainstream hierarchies of authority, genres, values and futures mythology; Suggests a regime of hidden truth, embedded within what initially appears as disconnected and unrelated phenomena; Implicates the mainstream future as conspiricist (i.e., the governments which control our futures do not have our interests at heart); Identifies the ritualistic reassurance set by the mainstream discursive strategy (e.g., "apology is policy"); Cultivates its own in-language, or futurespeak, where special terms refer to a future-oriented conspiracy of mammoth proportions. And, finally, it gives meaning to the millennium beyond a mere change in dates. All in all, the X-Files is popular and successful because it explores the possibilities of resolvable and unresolvable endings. It blurs the boundaries between the theological and the secular imaginings of the end. It borrows elements common to contemporary evangelicalism, endtime signs such as the mark of the beast, and gives them a plausible secular narrative. For example, whereas it might be difficult to suspend disbelief for a story that has a charismatic antichrist controlling the world through marking its population with 666, X-Files modernises the setting by creating a mysterious consortium of 12 elders who are in allegiance with some alien plan to initiate a scheduled holocaust. Such an organised drive towards armageddon involves genetic tagging of the populations through smallpox injections, little biochips which switch on and switch-off cancers, transportation of plague through bee stings and heavenly lights that harbour creatures with sinister purposes. In the X-Files, mainstream society is the cult whose future has been pre-organised by its real architects and whose adherents, the general populace, move through society blinded by ideas and doctrines of thought that Mulder sees as lies. His ultimate quest is find the truth, to reveal the future being secretly planned for the world. His quest involves reading the signs of the times in his encounters with the X-Files. Scully, whose initial introduction was to provide a sceptic balance to his quest, in fact provides a scientific rationale for Mulder's seemingly odd flights of fancy. In explaining Mulder's theories away in pseudo-scientific terms, Scully makes the unthinkable seem more plausible, and her character development from sceptic to believer provides the narrative added credibility for long-term viewers. If Scully can be convinced, then there must really be a hidden sinister future embedded beyond the mainstream outlook. Mainstream programmes such as these can in themselves throw wine of the proverbial armageddon fire. Both Star Trek and the X-Files were favourite pastimes for the Heaven's Gate Cult. Star Trek epitomised the ultimate open-ended humanist future, exploration of the unknown, while the X-Files epitomised the nature of this level, a conspiricist and closed future in which the world's only hope lay in the revealing of the sinister unknown before the great destructive end. Needless to say, X-Files-styled sites proliferate the Webscape in late 1999: Apocalypse Soon -- http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/english.html UFOs & Antichrist Millennium Bug Connection New World Order -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/nwoy2k.html UFOs, Aliens & Antichrist: The Angelic Conspiracy & End Times Deception -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/ "The Bible says that the b'nai Elohim, angels, sons of God, were ministers of creation, from before the worlds, Job 38:7. Contrary to popular secular theories, the b'nai Elohim are created beings distinct from ELOHIM the God of Israel. God created the b'nai Elohim to reflect His glory, and reflect His word which spoke all things into being. Before a third of the heavenly host rebelled, they were stewards of creation, building civilizations on the terrestrial planets of our solar system designed to glorify the Word of God. The Cydonia "face" is a monument constructed by these Sons of God, revealing their knowledge of the message in the stars. Both the Cydonia face and the Sphinx are cherubim, combining figures in the constellations Virgo and Leo, symbolic representations of the first and second advent of Christ on Earth." Satan's Plan to Escape Judgement -- http://www.mt.net/~watcher/hate.html "Previous pages explained how Satan was created to lead the angelic hierarchy, ruling over physical civilizations of angels on planets, such as the one still in evidence on Mars. After Satan rebelled, the center of his angelic civilization was destroyed "from among the stones of fire", yet the Bible tells us Satan is still waiting for the time of God's judgment. Satan is not in hell, he is still allowed audience before God, where he accuses the faithful (Rev.), and he still roams above and within the earth (Job). Since Satan is the most beautiful and powerful cherub, Prince of the Powers of the Air, intelligence behind UFO phenomena, the authority over all the aerial regions outward from earth..." The Millennium Group -- http://www.millenngroup.com/ Australia's Fair Dinkum Magazine -- http://unforgiven.iweb.net.au/~dinkum/ Eyes on the World -- http://eotw.orac.net.au/articles/index.html Antichrist / False Prophet -- http://members.tripod.com/jonastheprophet1/antipope.html "Antichrist will arise out of the British Monarchy within the context of the European Union/False prophet will arise out of the Vatican-whor* Church/Both will work together to build Satan's end time kingdom in these last and final days." 666 Sketch: The Mark of the Beast -- http://www.greaterthings.com/Essays/666mark.htm Conspiracy Books -- http://parascope.com/parastore/booksconspiracy.htm Corrupt Government, Conspiracy, New World Order, A Future? -- http://www.pushhamburger.com/ Dark Conspiracy -- http://www.blazing-trails.com/DarkConspiracies/welcome.html "Things have gotten really seriously convoluted. To try to follow some of the conspiracies requires a substantial amount of dedication. Any one thread can lead to so many other threads, eventually, maybe they will come together into a complete tapestry that could scare the bejabbers out of you." New World Order Conspiracy -- http://www.ufomind.com/para/conspire/nwo/ Silver Screen Endings: Blockbuster Profits in Apocalypse Gripped in a delirium of apocaholicism, contemporary secular society is exploring the conditions and consequence of endings. Mainstream presentations such as Independence Day, Event Horizon, Armageddon, End of Days, The Matrix and Deep Impact depict the notion of endings in elaborate and extravagant modes. Independence Day is a lesson in Orwellian doublethink -- it begins by destroying the very values it eschews at its closure. The statue of liberty, the White House, and the Empire State Building, all contemporary icons of western democratic and consumerist values, are brutally and spectacularly disintegrated. Yet the very core of the western meta-narrative, the maintenance of independence, which brought about the empowerment of these icons, is upheld throughout the film, leaving a critical viewer with the sense that what we are watching in this film is not the destruction of the world by some alien force -- certainly no other nation is depicted as so grossly devastated nor are any icons of other significantly known cultures destroyed -- but the annihilation of contemporary western icons: essentially, the death of icons. The values are constant, as emoted by the President of the United States towards the fiery conclusion of the movie, but the icons are unstable, susceptible to external disruption, unlike the proverbial humanist spirit. Hence, most audiences reacted gleefully to seeing famous landmarks blasted to smithereens -- this goes hand in hand I suspect with the prevailing social atmosphere cultivating change: do away with the current icons, they are no longer valid nor do they faithfully represent the social world around us, we require new ones to image our emerging spirit. Event Horizon is very different in content and style. It blends conventional theology with science fiction to create an incredible narrative about a starship so fast that it punches a hole through to hell and back. The concern throughout the film as the blood thickens is not with the collective end to society but rather with the very personal and private closure to individual life and the post-death experience. Other films, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, draw on the "worst bits" in the bible, to quote one trailer, and depict disturbing destructive images of the western metropolitan society, with dramatic wrangling over who will survive and how in order to establish a brave new world. What links these varying cinematic depictions of the end? Is it perhaps the imagined triumph of humanist spiritism, usually legitimised through the sacrificial offering of a main character in a film's final showdown? (Bruce Willis dies in Armageddon, Tea Leoni waits with her estranged father for the tidal wave in Deep Impact, and a half-drunk kamikaze pilot in an old biplane destroys the mothership at the close of Independence Day.) Being excessively popular, one needs to ask what role these films play within the collective social narrative of endism: do these films serve to quiet anxieties about the end by visualising human solutions to impossible destructive odds? Or do apocalyptic blockbusters market towards existing endtimes tension, reflecting the growing apocaholic nature of our societies as we near the close of the twentieth century and thereby, in true western capitalist fashion, profit from this cultural dysfunction? Or do films of this nature answer a more base, unacknowledged desire within our societies to see the end and survive? Event Horizon -- http://www.eventhorizonmovie.com/ End of Days -- http://www.end-of-days.com/ The Matrix -- http://www.whatisthematrix.com/ Deep Impact -- http://www.deepimpact.com/ Timeout: Clocking the Endtimes Christian End-Time Expectations -- Millennia Monitor -- http://www.fas.org/2000/endtime1.htm This resource provides links to a wide variety of Christian sources with a primary focus on millennial, apocalyptic, or other End Time expectations. Countdown 2000: Your Guide to the Millennium -- http://www.countdown2000.com/index.htm "As we approach the millennium, the world seems to be getting weirder. Countdown 2000 is packed with the latest news, hype, and hysteria. Where will the blow-out parties be? Will Y2K cause global havoc? How can I get involved in improving the world? Whatever the millennium and year 2000 mean to you, Countdown 2000 can help you learn what you want to know. Countdown 2000 is packed with over 150 pages, and 2500 links." Amazing Prophecy -- http://bibleprophecy.com/ Topics covered: Bible prophecy, rapture, tribulation, millennium, last days, end times, end of time, second coming, covenants, revelation, advent, antichrist, 666, parousia (appearing of Christ), preterist (fulfilled prophecy), eschatology (the study of last things), and many more. 888 Christ Come: Your Bible Prophecy Website -- http://www.888c.com/ Apocalists: The Tribulation Inbox Interesting things happen on discussion lists. Perhaps a more significant example of apocalyptic dissemination, capable of real-time feedback and iteration on endtime signs within every corner of the Web, millions on the bible highway speak of the premillennial tension that characterises contemporary cultural life and thousands more direct these lunges into apocalyptic extrapolation via discussion lists. Nowhere has the apocalyptic urge to image the end, to identify the sign of its approach, been more revitalised than on this electronic frontier: indeed, Apocalypse has an impressive online presence. Today, anyone can receive daily updates sent to their email inbox on the progress or nearness of the great endtimes tribulation, press releases of the latest armageddon publication list, prophecy ezines, the latest incarnation of the mark of the beast 666, new candidates for antichrist identification and revelation reports, to name but a few: Bible Prophecy Discussion List -- http://www.geocities.com/~dawn-/index.html Bible Prophecy-L was created as an open, moderated forum to discuss and share information related to end times Bible prophecy. Some of the topics you may find discussed are: Eschatology; Global Government; Global Religion and the New Age Movement; Rapture; Antichrist; Environmental Changes (earthquakes, tornados, volcanoes, freak storms, flooding etc.); Israel and the Middle East; Signs in the Heavens (UFOs, Comets, etc.); Pestilence (infectious diseases); Wars and Rumors of Wars; Prophecy Conference Updates ... etc. Bible Prophecy Report -- http://philologos.org/bpr Bible Codes News Update -- http://thebiblecodes.com/news/bcnu.htm Tribulation News -- http://www.tribnews.net/mir Conspiracy Journal -- http://www.members.tripod.com/uforeview/welcome.html Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jason Ensor. "Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php>. Chicago style: Jason Ensor, "Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jason Ensor. (1999) Apocacide, Apocaholics and Apocalists: A Selective Webography of Endism. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/apocacide.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

To listen to them talk, you'd think most Americans hate television. Everyday discourse about television abounds with condemnation of television content. Television is a wasteland, a stream of idiotic material insulting to the intelligence of the viewer. When people deem a particular program worth watching, they often articulate it in contradistinction to the vast majority of awful stuff out there. This almost universal discourse of condemnation does not mean Americans do not watch television, of course. They do, and they watch a great deal of it. Thus we have a conundrum. If it is so awful, why do people watch television? When Americans construct stories about themselves, they construct themselves as choice--making individuals (Polanyi). Sane, mature Americans are expected to be able to make intelligent choices and to live with the consequences of their choices. How, then, can Americans articulate themselves as television viewers, as individuals who choose to view what is clearly awful stuff? In this paper, I want to discuss 'veging out' as an American category of media viewing that resolves this conundrum. In framing their discourse about watching television in terms of 'veging out,' Americans are able to construct themselves as sensible, choice--making persons, and yet explain why they watch large amounts of television. I want to use this example to explore ways that media scholars might supplement explorations of the self as mediated by texts with attention to the ways the viewing self is articulated in everyday discourses about television by viewers. An American Folk Category of Pleasure I said I'm sorry this is late. I just couldn't work on it over the weekend. I just veged out in front of the TV the whole weekend. I realise that's not much of an excuse…but…I had my Arabic test Thursday and I was too burned out afterward to do anything. I had to let my brain recharge. [text one] Let's just veg out tonight. We both had a big lunch, let's just make some popcorn and watch whatever stupid stuff is on TV. Unless you want to get a video. [text two] God, we didn't do anything this weekend. We just sat in front of the TV. (laughs) It was a total veg out weekend, we ordered out every night. John was on the rig for two weeks and then he's had to work late every night since he's been back, and I've had this activity and that activity with the kids, and girl scouts and soccer... We really needed the break. [text three] In the interest of brevity, I offer only three texts here.1 Anyone who has listened to Americans talk about television can probably multiply these examples many times; most Americans of my generation or later have almost certainly been producers of such discourse at one time or another. Each of these examples is drawn from a different context: a student's explanation for handing in a late paper [text one], a wife's suggestion for evening plans [text two], a friend sharing information about her family [text three]. And each is part of the language of experience – the language people use to describe emotions, sensations, and thoughts and, in so doing, articulate a self. 'Veging out' -- the 'veg--' prefix is borrowed from the word 'vegetable' and pronounced with a soft g -- is a nice example of a local taxonomic category of pleasure and the way it is embedded in more complex discursive formations, which it both replicates and refracts. In American society, where sitting in front of the television when there are other things to do is condemned as a waste of time that makes one a 'couch potato,' 'veging out' allows actors to reconstitute 'being a vegetable' as an empowering choice, an intentional and temporary vegetative state one escapes into as a means to relax, reduce stress and 'get away' from one's troubles. Veging out involves escape but specifies that one is escaping to nowhere, that an avoidance of critical mental activity is precisely what is sought. The claim to be veging out thus accepts the general American public discourse of television as a wasteland – the 'waste' in particular involving waste of time -- and simultaneously challenges it by claiming, in essence, that one has a right to do nothing if one has been working 'too hard'. There is nothing fanciful or even insightful in this analysis; discourses in which Americans talk about their television viewing activity tend to be both straightforward and redundant. Americans who say they spent an evening veging out are likely to follow the statement with an explanation of why they are entitled to veg out -- a litany of stresses or labours -- and sometimes also assertions to confirm that the world they escaped to was indeed a place that involved minimal mental activity. For example, the student in Text One quoted above followed it up with the comment, 'There was absolutely nothing on worth watching'. The woman who produced Text Three commented a few lines later, 'It was practically all commercials, nothing could hold my interest because it was always being interrupted. I hardly ever watch TV, I hadn't realised how many commercials there are'. This latter comment also positions the activity as a rare one for this person, emphasising the strategic nature of veging out as a life choice and hence acceptable within American understandings of choice.2 People's own modes of articulation may thus even deny their motivations involve pleasure.3 Choosing to enter the wasteland of television certainly can be, and often is, constructed as a bad choice. As Beeman demonstrates in his analysis of the language of choice in American advertising, making a choice is often constituted as not enough -- one must make the 'right' choice. Discourse about 'veging out' partly forecloses the possibility of the instance described being a bad choice by embedding the choice in the matrix of suffering. Yet as Carbaugh discovers in his sociolinguistic appraisal of TV talk shows, doing something 'wrong' can nonetheless be valorised in America by its formulation as a deliberate exercise of one's right to choose. The moral wrongness of the particular choice is redeemed by the articulation of a self exercising its right to make its own choices, and taking responsibility for those choices. The power of 'veging out' as a representation of social action thus lies in its ability to simultaneously embrace the widespread discourse that 'television is a wasteland' while at the same time subsuming it under the important American discourse of choice. In so doing, it allows Americans to construct themselves as hard--working individuals who choose to waste time as a strategy for resolving the stresses and discomforts of hard work. One articulates a viewing self, that is, which is consonant with the fundamental values of American culture. The Viewing Self The 'viewing self' is that self, or that aspect of the self, constructed through experiences of viewing events and activities in which the person is not a participant. In the contemporary world, such viewing has increased as an activity, accommodated and mediated by film, television, video and other technologies. These technologies offer, among other things, the opportunity for virtual experiences, events and activities that we do not experience with our bodies but which nonetheless offer us comparable fodder for our cognitive processes (Drummond). Studies of the self as viewer have long been dominated in media studies by attention to these virtual experiences as internal. From the early argument that the self is 'interpellated' by the culture industry (Adorno), to the argument that the self is socially and politically positioned in dominated, negotiating or resistant ways (Hall), to the idea of the self as simultaneously occupying multiple (and shifting) spectator positions (Modleski, Williams, Clover, Caton), emphasis has long been on how the viewer experiences structured sets of symbols, appropriates them at various levels of cohesion, cognitively and affectively orders them with regard to pre--existing understandings of and feelings about the world, and uses them in the ongoing construction of the self. I am suggesting here the utility of turning our attention from internal to external articulations of self as viewer. I want to argue that in addition to engaging with the content of the viewing experience, people usually engage with the meaning of the viewing experience as an activity. The viewing experience is never just about engagement with content about what one watches. It is also about the activities of 'watching TV,' 'renting a video,' and 'going to the movies.' Each of these is an experience that must be internally evaluated with regard to one's pre--existing sense of self, and which may have to be verbally articulated in interaction with others. In the latter case, it provides yet more fodder for the construction of the self, as we see versions of ourselves mirrored in the responses of the other to our own self--performance. Given the plethora of media, genres, places and events in which visual media are watched, speaking with others about one's television viewing maps one onto a complex terrain of distinctions about one's taste. One's 'taste' is never innocent, because it ties in to a complex social code that relates it to class, gender, ethnicity, education, and other social categories (Bourdieu). To represent ourselves to others as viewers of any particular kind of media is to position ourselves as particular kinds of persons in relation to others. One can use this code to articulate oneself as a particular kind of person vis--à--vis those with whom one is interacting: an equal who shares common tastes, a superior who enjoys more refined discernment, a populist who revels in his or her common tastes. To speak of our viewing allows us to generate social contact on grounds of shared experience. It allows us to confirm our tastes with regard to the social others who serve as mirrors to our selves. Of course, persons are never omnicompetent in their self--presentations, and efforts to present the self in particular ways can backfire, so that instead of appearing as a woman of discernment one appears pompous; and instead of appearing as a common Joe, one comes across as vulgar. Talking about viewing, in other words, always involves risk. In examining how people manage this risk in their social interactions, as through framing their experience as 'veging out,' we can learn much about how people construct themselves as viewers. Conclusion 'Veging out' is not the only verbal strategy by means of which Americans solve the conundrum of the viewing self. Nor is there anything unique in this American conundrum. Ethnographic accounts clearly demonstrate that many societies offer public condemnatory discourses about television that are at odds with actual viewing practices. The content of television in Belize is 'destroying a whole generation' (Wilk), in Egypt it's a flood of 'moral pollution' (Armbrust), in the Netherlands it's 'an embarrassment' (Alasuutaari). People's ways of speaking about themselves as viewers are clearly often a result of an ambivalence born of their pleasure, on the one hand, and their understanding that one should not be getting pleasure from such stuff, on the other. The result is often discourse that expresses guilt, or embarrassment, as summed up by Alasuutari's informant who said 'I'm ashamed to admit it, but I watch Dallas.' Alasuutari's reliance on interviewing, though, captures the conundrum but not the cultural solutions. An interview with a sociologist is a very different kind of speech act from the quotidian contexts in which people construct themselves as television viewers in interaction with friends, family, the person sitting next to you at the bar, and so forth (Briggs). My objective in this brief exercise is to draw our attention away from interviewing toward ethnography, and away from attention to internal subjectivities to the interactive contexts in which the self is constructed in everyday life. Notes 1 These three examples were all collected among American expatriates while I was teaching at the American University in Cairo. 2 Individual performances of this discourse are always strategic, of course; their articulation shaped by the speakers understanding of the speech event in which they take place. 3 The American discomfort with spending one's leisure pleasurably has been long chronicled. As early as the 1920s the Lynds found the people of Middletown uncomfortable with talking about reading for pleasure rather than instruction and profit. People did not want to articulate themselves as persons who wasted time (Lynd and Lynd 1929: 225) References Adorno, Theodor. 'The Culture Industry Reconsidered.' The Adorno Reader. Ed. Brian O'Connor. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 230-38. Alasuutari, Pertti. ''I'm Ashamed to Admit it, but I have Watched Dallas:' The Moral Hierarchy of Television Programmes.' Media, Culture and Society 14 (1992): 561-582. Armbrust, Walter. Mass Culture and Modernisation in Egypt. Cambridge: University Press, 1996. Beeman, William O. 'Freedom to Choose: Symbolic Values in American Advertising.' The Symbolisation of America. Ed. Herve Varenne. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1984. Briggs, Charles. Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Carbaugh, Donal. Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989. Caton, Steven C. Lawrence of Arabia: a Film's Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Clover, Carol. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Drummond, Lee. American Dreamtime: A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity. Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams, 1995. Hall, Stuart. 'Culture, the Media and the 'Ideological Effect.' ' Mass Communication and Society. Ed. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woolacott. London: Edward Arnold, 1977. - - - . 'The Rediscovery of 'Ideology:' The Return of the Repressed in Media Studies. Culture, Society and the Media. Ed. Michael Gurevitch, T. Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woolacott. London: Methuen, 1982. Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchco*ck and Feminist Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1988 Polanyi, Livia. Telling the American Story. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989 Wilk, Richard. ''It's Destroying a Whole Generation:' Television and Moral Discourse in Belize.' Visual Anthropology 5 (1995): 229-44. Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Peterson, Mark Allen. "Choosing the Wasteland" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt. Chicago Style Peterson, Mark Allen, "Choosing the Wasteland" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Peterson, Mark Allen. (2002) Choosing the Wasteland. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

This essay originates out of our shared interest in genres and media forms used for identity practices that do not cohere into a narrative or a fixed representation of who someone is. It takes the current heightened visibility of drag as a mode of performance that explicitly engages with identity as a product materialized—but not completed—by the ongoing process of performance. We consider the new drag, which we define below, as a form of playing with identity that combines bodily practices (comportment and use of voice) and adornment (make-up, clothing, wigs, and accessories) with an array of media (photography, live performance, social media and television). Given the limited space available, we will not be engaging with the propositions made during earlier feminist and queer thinking that drag is not inherently subversive and may reinscribe gender and race norms through their hyperbolic recitation (Butler 230-37; hooks 145-56). While we think there is much to be gained from revisiting these critiques in light of the changes in conceptualisations of gender in queer subcultures, we are not interested in framing drag as subversive or resistant in relation to the norms of masculinity and femininity. Instead, we follow Eve Sedgwick’s interest in reparative practices adopted by queer-identified subjects who must learn to survive in a hostile culture (“Paranoid”) and trace two lines of analysis we identify in drag’s new found visibility that demonstrate the reparative potential of automedia.At time of writing, RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) has truly hit the big time. Pop icon Christina Aguilera was a guest judge for the first episode of its tenth season (Daw “Christina”), and the latest episode of RuPaul’s All-Stars season three spin-off show was the most-watched of any show in its network’s history (Crowley). RuPaul Charles, the producer and star of RPDR, has just been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, decades after he began his career as a drag performer (Daw “RuPaul”). Drag queens are finally becoming part of American mainstream media and drag as an art form and a cultural practice is on its way to becoming part of discourse about gender and identity around the world, via powerful systems of digital mediation and distribution. RPDR’s success is a good way to think about how drag, a long-standing performance art form, is having a “break out” moment in popular culture. We argue here that RPDR is doing this within an automedia framework.What does automedia mean in the context of drag on television and social media? We understand automedia to be about the mediation of identity when identity is both a product of representation and a process that is continually becoming, expressed in the double meaning of the word “life” as biography and as process (Poletti “Queer Collages” 362; Poletti and Rak 6-7). In this essay we build on our shared interest in developing a critical mode that can respond to forms of automedia that explore “the possibility of identity in the absence of narration” (Rak 172). What might artists who work with predominantly non-narrative forms such as drag performance show us about the ongoing interconnection between technologies and subjectivities as they represent and think through what “life” looks like, on stage and off?Automedia names life as a process and a product that has the potential to queer temporality and normative forms of identification, what Jack Halberstam has called “queer time” (1). We understand Halberstam’s evocation of queer time as suitable for being thought through automedia because of their characterisation of queer as “a form of self-description in the past decade or so … [that] has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space” (2). Queer time, Halberstam explains, comes from the collapse of the past and shaky relation to futurity gay men experienced during the height of the American AIDs crisis, but they also see queer time, significantly, as exceeding the terms of its arrival. Queer time could be about the “potentiality of a life unscripted by the conventions of family, inheritance, and child rearing” (2). Queer time, then, evokes the possibility of making a life narrative that does not have to follow a straight line or stay “on script,” and does not have to feature conventional milestones or touchstones in its unfolding. If queer time can be thought alongside automedia, within drag performances that are not about straight lives, narrative histories and straight time can come into view.Much has been written about drag as a performance that creates a public, for example, as part of a queer world-building project that shoots unpredictably through spaces beyond performance locations (Berlant and Warner 558). Halberstam’s shift to thinking of queer time as an opening of new life narratives and a different relation to time has similar potential when considering the work of RPDR as automedia, because the shift of drag performance away from clubs, parades and other queer spaces to television and the internet is accompanied by a concern, manifested in the work of RuPaul himself, with drag history and the management of drag memory. We argue that a concern with the relationship between time and identity in RPDR is an attempt to open up, through digital networked media, a queer understanding of time that is in relation to drag of the past, but not always in a linear way. The performances of season nine winner Sasha Velour, and Velour’s own preoccupation with drag history in her performances and art projects, is an indicator of the importance of connecting the twin senses of “life” as process and product found in automedia to performance and narration.The current visibility of drag in popular culture is characterised by a shifting relationship between drag and media: what was once a location-based, temporally specific form of performance which occurred in bars, has been radically changed through the increased contact between the media forms of performance, television and social media. While local drag queens are often the celebrities (or “superstars”) of their local subcultural scene, reality television (in the form of RPDR) and social media (particularly Instagram) have radically increased the visibility of some drag queens, turning them into international celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans. These queens now speak to audiences far beyond their local communities, and to audiences who may not have any knowledge of the queer subcultures that have nurtured generations of drag performers. Under the auspices of RPDR, drag queens have gained a level of cultural visibility that produces fascinating, and complex, encounters between subcultural identity practices and mainstream media tropes. Amongst her many tasks—being fierce, flawless, hilarious, and able to turn out a consummate lip sync performance—the newly visible drag queen is also a teacher. Enacting RuPaul’s theory of identity from his song title—“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”)—drag queens who in some way embody or make use of RuPaul’s ideas have the potential to advance a queer perspective on identity as a process in keeping with Judith Butler’s influential theory of identity performativity (Butler 7-16). In so doing they can provide fresh insights into the social function of media platforms and their genres in the context of queer lives. They are what we call “new” drag queens, because of their access to technology and digital forms of image distribution. They can refer to classic drag queen performance culture, and they make use of classic drag performance as a genre, but their transnational media presence and access to more recent forms of identification to describe themselves, such as trans, genderqueer or nonbinary, mark their identity presentations and performance presences as a departure from other forms of drag.While there is clearly a lot to be said about drag’s “break out,” in this essay we focus on two elements of the “new media” drag that we think speak directly, and productively, to the larger question of how cultural critics can understand the connection between identity and mediation as mutually emergent phenomena. As a particularly striking practitioner of automediality, the new drag queen draws our attention to the way that drag performance is an automedial practice that creates “queer time” (Halberstam), making use of the changing status of camp as a practice for constructing, and mediating identity. In what follows we examine the statements about drag and the autobiographical statements presented by RuPaul Charles and Sasha Velour (the winner of RPDR Season Nine) to demonstrate automediality as a powerful practice for queer world-making and living.No One Ever Wins Snatch Game: RuPaul and TimeAs we have observed at the opening of this essay, queer time is an oppositional practice, a refusal of those who belong to queer communities to fall into step with straight ideas about history, futurity, reproduction and the heteronormative idea of family, and a way to understand how communities mark occasions, conceptualize the history and traditions of subcultures. Queer time has the potential to rethink daily living and history differently and to tell accounts of lives in a different way, to “open up new life narratives,” as Halberstam says (2). RuPaul Charles’s own life story could be understood as a way to open up new life narratives literally by constructing what a queer life and career could mean in the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. His 1995 memoir, Lettin It All Hang Out, details RuPaul’s early career in 1980s Atlanta, Georgia and in New York as an often-difficult search for what would make him a star. RuPaul did not at first conceptualize himself as a drag star, but as a punk musician in Atlanta and then as part of the New York Club Kid community, which developed when New York clubs were in danger of closing because of fear of the AIDS epidemic (Flynn). RuPaul became adept at self-promotion and image-building while he was part of these rebellious punk and dance club subcultures that refused gender and lifestyle norms (Lettin 62-5). It might seem to be an unusual beginning for a drag star, but as RuPaul writes, “I always knew I was going to be star [but] I never thought it was going to be as a drag queen” (Lettin 64). There was no narrative of mainstream success that RuPaul—a gay, gender non-binary African-American man from the American Midwest—could follow.Since he was a drag performer too, RuPaul eventually “had an epiphany. Why couldn’t I [he] become a mainstream pop star in drag? Who said it couldn’t be done?” (Workin’ It 159). And he decided that rather than look for a model of success to follow, he would queer the mainstream model for success. As he observes, “I looked around at my favorite stars and realized that they were drag queens too. In fact every celebrity is a drag queen” (Lettin 129). Proceeding from the idea that all people are in fact drag artists—the source of RuPaul’s aformentioned catch-phrase and song title “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”), RuPaul moved the show business trajectory into queer time, making the “formula” for success the labour required of drag queens to create personae, entertain, promote themselves and make a successful living (and a life) in dangerous work environments—a process presented in his song “Supermodel” and its widely-cited lyric “You better work!” (“Supermodel”). The video for “Supermodel” shows RuPaul in his persona as Supermodel of the World, “working” as a performer and a member of the public in New York to underscore the different kinds of labour that is involved, and that this labour is necessary for anyone to become successful (“Supermodel” video).When RuPaul’s Drag Race began in 2010, RuPaul modelled the challenges in the show on his own career in an instance of automedia, where the non-narrative aspects of drag performance and contest challenges were connected to the performance of RuPaul’s own story. According to one of RuPaul’s friends who produces the show: “The first season, all the challenges were ‘Ru did this, so you did this.’ It was Ru’s philosophy” (Snetiker). As someone who was without models for success, RuPaul intends for RPDR to provide a model for others to follow. The goal of the show is the replication of RuPaul’s own career trajectory: the winners of RPDR are each crowned “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” because they have successfully learned from RuPaul’s own experiences so that they too can develop their careers as drag artists. This pattern has persisted on RPDR, where the contestants are often asked to participate in challenges that reflect RuPaul’s own struggles to become a star as a way to “train” them to develop their careers. Contestants have, like RuPaul himself, starred in low-budget films, played in a punk band, marketed their own perfume, commemorated the work of the New York Club Kids, and even planned the design and marketing of their own memoirs.RPDR contestants are also expected to know popular culture of the past and present, and they are judged on how well they understand their own “herstory” of the drag communities and queer culture. Snatch Game, a popular segment where contestants have to impersonate celebrities on a queer version of the Match Game series, is a double test. To succeed, contestants must understand how to impersonate celebrities past and present within a camp aesthetic. But the segment also tests how well drag queens understand the genre of game show television, a genre that no longer exists on television (except in the form of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy), and that many of the RPDR contestants are not old enough to have seen, performing witty taglines and off-the-cuff jokes they hope will land in a very tight time frame. Sasha Velour, the winner of season nine, won praise for her work in the Snatch Game segment in episode six because, acting on advice from RuPaul, she played Marlene Dietrich and not her first choice, queer theorist Judith Butler (RuPaul’s). Sasha Velour was able to make Dietrich, a queer icon known for her film work in the 1920-1940s, humorous in the game show context, showing that she understands queer history, and that she is a skilful impersonator who understands how to navigate a genre that is part of RuPaul’s own life story. The queer time of RuPaul’s narrative is transmitted to a skill set future drag stars need to use: a narrative of a life becomes part of performance. RPDR is, in this sense, automedia in action as queens make their personae “live,” perform part of RuPaul’s “life” story, and get to “live” on the show for another week if they are successful. The point of Snatch Game is how well a queen can perform, how good she is at entertaining and educating audiences, and how well she deals with an archaic genre, that of the television game show. No one ever “wins” Snatch Game because that is not the point of it. But those who win the Snatch Game challenge often go on to win RPDR, because they have demonstrated improvisational skill, comic timing, knowledge of RuPaul’s own life narrative touchstones and entertained the audience.Performative Agency: The Drag Performance as Resource for Queer LivingVelour’s embodied performance in the Snatch Game of the love and knowledge of popular culture associated with camp, and its importance to the art of drag, highlights the multifaceted use of media as a resource for identity practices that characterizes drag as a form of automedia. Crucially, it exemplifies the complex way that media forms are heavily cited and replayed in new combinations in order to say something real about the ways of living of a specific artist or person. Sasha Velour’s impersonation of Dietrich is not one in which Velour’s persona disappears: indeed, she is highly commended by RuPaul, and fans, because her embodiment of Dietrich in the anachronous media environment of the Snatch Game works to further Velour’s unique persona and skill as a drag artist. Velour queers time with her Dietrich in order to demonstrate her unique sensibility and identity. Thus, reality TV, silent film, cabaret, improvisation and visual presentation are brought together in an embodied performance that advances Velour’s specific form of drag and is taken as a strong marker of who Sasha Velour is.But what exactly is Sasha Velour doing when she clarifies her identity by dressing as Marlene Dietrich and improvises the diva’s answers to questions on a game show? This element of drag is clearly connected to the aesthetics of camp that have a long tradition in gay and queer culture. Original theories of camp theorized it as a practice of taste and interpretation (Sontag)—camp described a relationship to the objects of popular culture that was subversive because it celebrated the artificiality of aesthetic forms, and was therefore ironizing. However, this understanding of camp does not adequately describe its role in postmodern culture or how some queer subcultures cultivate the use media forms for identity practices (O’Neill 21). In her re-casting of camp, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues:we need to [think of camp] not in terms of parody or even wit, but with more of an eye of its visceral, operatic power: the startling outcrops of overinvested erudition; the prodigal production of alternative histories; the ‘over’-attachment to fragmentary, marginal, waste, lost, or leftover cultural products; the richness of affective variety; and the irrepressible, cathartic fascination with ventriloquist forms of relation. (Sedgwick The Weather 66)This reframing of camp emphasises affect, attachment and forms of relation as ongoing processes for the making of queer life (a process), rather than as elements of queer identity (a product). For Sedgwick camp is a practice or process that mediates queerness in the context of a hostile mainstream media culture that does not connect queer ways of living with flourishing or positive outcomes (Sedgwick “Paranoid Reading” 28). In O’Neill’s account, camp does not involve attachment to the diva as a fixed identity whose characteristics can be adopted in irony or impersonation in which the individual disappears (16). Rather, it is the diva’s labour—her way of marshalling her talent to produce compelling performances, which come to be the hallmark of her career and identity—that is the site of queer identification. What RuPaul wittily refers to as a drag queen’s “charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent” (the acronym is important), O’Neill refers to as the diva’s “performative agency”—the primary “power to perform” (16, emphasis in original). This is the positive power of camp as form of automediation for queer world making: media forms provide resources that queer subjects can draw on in assembling a performance of identity as modes of embodiment and ways of being that can be cited (the specific posture of Dietrich, for example, which Velour mimics) and in terms of the affect required to marshal the performance itself.When she was crowned the winner of season nine of RPDR, Sasha Velour emphasised the drag queen’s performative agency itself as a resource for queer identity practices. After being announced the winner, Velour said: “Let’s change sh*t up. Let’s get all inspired by all this beauty, all this beauty, and change the motherf*cking world” (Queentheban). This narrative of the world-changing power of the beauty of drag refers to the visibility of the new drag queens, who through television and social media now have thousands of fans across the world. Yet, this narrative of the collective potential of drag is accompanied by Velour presenting her own autobiographical narrative that posits drag as an automedial practice whose “richness of affective variety” has been central to her coming to terms with the death of her mother from cancer. In interviews and in her magazine about drag (Velour: The Drag Magazine) Velour narrates the evolution of her drag and her identity as a “bald queen” whose signature look includes a clean-shaven head which is often unadorned or revealed in her performances as directly linked to her mother’s baldness brought on by treatment for cancer (WBUR).In an autobiographical photo-essay titled “Gone” published in Velour, Velour poses in a series of eight photographs which are accompanied by handwritten text reflecting on the role of drag in Velour’s grieving for her mother. In the introduction, the viewer is told that the “books and clothes” used in the photos belonged to Velour’s mother, Jane. The penultimate image shows Velour lying on grass in drag without a wig, looking up at the camera and is accompanied by nineteen statements elucidating what drag is, all of which are in keeping with Sedgwick’s reframing of camp practices as reparative strategies for queer lives: “Drag is for danger / Drag is for safety / Drag is for remembering / Drag is for recovering.” Affect, catharsis, and operatic power are narrated and visually rendered in the photo-essay, presenting drag as a highly personal form of automediation for Velour. The twentieth line defining drag appears on the final page, accompanied by a photograph of Velour from behind, her arms thrown back and tensile: “Drag is for dressing up / And this is my mother’s dress.”Taken together, Velour’s generic and highly personal descriptions of drag as a process and product that empowers individual and collective queer lives define drag as a form of automedia in which identity and living are a constant process of creativity and invention “where ideas about the self and what it means to live are tested, played with, rejected, and embraced” (Rak 177).Velour’s public statements and autobiographical works foreground how the power, investment, richness and catharsis encapsulated in drag performance offers an important antidote to the hostility to queer ways of being embodied by an assimilationist gay politics. In a recent interview, Velour commented on the increased visibility of her drag beyond her localised performances in “dive bars” in New York:When Drag Race came on television I feel like the gay community in general was focussed on […] dare I say, a kind of assimilation politics, showing straight people and the world at large that we are just like everyone else and I think drag offered a radical different saying [sic] and reminded people that there’s been this grand tradition of queer people and gay people saying ‘actually we’re fabulously different and this is why.’ (PopBuzz)Velour suggests that in its newly visible forms outside localised queer cultures, drag as a media spectacle offers an important alternative to the pressure for queer people to assimilate to dominant forms of living, those practices, forms of attachment and relation Halberstam associates with straight time.ConclusionThe queer time and performative agency enacted in drag provides a compelling example of non-narrative forms of identity work in which identity is continuously emerging through labour, innovation, and creativity (or—in RuPaul’s formulation—charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent). This creativity draws on popular culture as a resource and site of history for queer identities, an evocation of queer time. The queer time of drag as a performance genre has an increasing presence in media forms such as television, social media and print media, bringing autobiographical performances and narratives by drag artists into new venues. This multiple remediation of drag recasts queer cultural practices beyond localised subcultural contexts into the broader media cultures in order to amplify and celebrate queerness as a form of difference, and differing, as automediality.ReferencesBerlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24.2 (Winter 1998): 547-566.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.Crowley, Patrick. “‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Sets New Franchise Ratings Records.” Billboard. 2 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8225839/rupauls-drag-race-sets-franchise-ratings-records>.Daw, Stephen. “Christina Aguilera Will Be First Guest Judge of ‘RuPaul's Drag Race’ Season 10.” Billboard. 1 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8223806/christina-aguilera-rupauls-drag-race-season-10>.———. “RuPaul to Receive a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” Billboard. 1 Mar. 2018 <https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/pride/8223677/rupaul-hollywood-walk-of-fame-star>.Flynn, Sheila. “Where Are New York’s Club Kids of the 80s and 90s Now?” Daily Mail. 4 Sep. 2017 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4851054/Where-New-York-s-Club-Kids-80s-90s-now.html>.Halberstam, J. Jack. “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies.” In a Queer Time and Place. New York: NYU P, 2005. 1-21.hooks, bell. “Is Paris Burning?” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End, 1992.O’Neill, Edward. “The M-m-mama of Us All: Divas and the Cultural Logic of Late Ca(m)pitalism.” Camera Obscura 65.22 (2007): 11–37. Poletti, Anna, and Julie Rak, eds. “Introduction: Digital Dialogues.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 1-25.Poletti, Anna. “Periperformative Life Narrative: Queer Collages.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22.3 (2016): 359-379.PopBuzz. “Sasha Velour Talks All Stars 3, Riverdale and Life after Winning RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 16 Feb. 2018 <https://youtu.be/xyl5PIRZ_Hw>.Queentheban. “Sasha Velour vs Peppermint | ‘It's Not Right But It's Okay’ & Winner Announcement.” 23 Jun. 2017 <https://youtu.be/8RqTzzcOLq4>.Rak, Julie. “Life Writing versus Automedia: The Sims 3 Game as a Life Lab.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2015): 155-180.RuPaul. “Born Naked.” Born Naked. RuCo, Inc., 2014.———. Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Supermodel of the World. Tommy Boy, 1993.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Dir. Randy Barbato. MTV, 1993. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9LOrHU8JI>.———. Workin’ It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.RuPaul’s Drag Race. RuPaul. World of Wonder Productions. Season 9, 2017.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Weather in Proust. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2011.———. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.” Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 1-37.Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991. 53-65.Snetiker, Mark. “The Oral History of RuPaul.” Entertainment Weekly (2016). <http://rupaul.ew.com/>.WBUR. “Sasha Velour on Why Drag Is a ‘Political and Historical Art Form’.” 24 July 2017. <http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/07/24/sasha-velour>.Velour, Sasha. “Gone (with Daphne Chan).” sashavelour.com. <http://sashavelour.com/work/#/daphnechan/>.

Abstract:

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marcus Clarke famously described the Australian outback as displaying a “Weird Melancholy” (qtd. in Gelder 116). The strange sights, sounds, and experiences of Australia’s rural locations made them ripe for the development of the European genre of the Gothic in a new location, a mutation which has continued over the past two centuries. But what does it mean for Australia’s Gothic landscapes to be associated with the affective qualities of the melancholy? And more particularly, how and why does this Gothic effect (and affect) appear in the most accessible Gothic media of the twenty-first century, the television series? Two recent Australian television adaptations, Wake in Fright (2017, dir. Kriv Stenders) and Mystery Road (2018, dir. Rachel Perkins) provoke us to ask the question: how does their pictorial representation of the Australian outback and its inhabitants overtly express rage and its close ties to melancholia, shame and violence? More particularly, I argue that in both series this rage is turned inwards rather than outwards; rage is turned into melancholy and thus to self-destruction – which constructs an allegory for the malaise of our contemporary nation. However, here the two series differ. While Wake in Fright posits this as a never-ending narrative, in a true Freudian model of melancholics who fail to resolve or attend to their trauma, Mystery Road is more positive in its positioning, allowing the themes of apology and recognition to appear, both necessary for reparation and forward movement.Steven Bruhm has argued that a psychoanalytic model of trauma has become the “best [way to] understand the contemporary Gothic and why we crave it” (268), because the repressions and repetitions of trauma offer a means of playing out the anxieties of our contemporary nation, its fraught histories, its conceptualisations of identity, and its fears for the future. Indeed, as Bruhm states, it is precisely because of the way in which “the Gothic continually confronts us with real, historical traumas that we in the west have created” that they “also continue to control how we think about ourselves as a nation” (271). Jerrold E. Hogle agrees, noting that “Gothic fiction has always begun with trauma” (72). But it is not only that Gothic narratives are best understood as traumatic narratives; rather, Hogle posits that the Gothic is uniquely situated as a genre for dealing with the trauma of our personal and national histories because it enables us to approach the contradictions and conflicts of traumatic experience:I find that the best of the post-9/11 uses of Gothic in fiction achieve that purpose for attentive readers by using the conflicted un-naturalness basic to the Gothic itself to help us concurrently grasp and conceal how profoundly conflicted we are about the most immediate and pervasive cultural “woundings” of our western world as it has come to be. (75)Hogle’s point is critical for its attention to the different ways trauma can be dealt with in texts and by readers, returning in part to Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia: where mourning is the ‘healthy’ process of working through or narrativising trauma. However, melancholia coalesces into a denial or repression of the traumatic event, and thus, as Freud suggests, its unresolved status reappears during nightmares and flashbacks, for example (Rall 171). Hogle’s praise for the Gothic, however, lies in its ability to move away from that binary, to “concurrently grasp and conceal” trauma: in other words, to respond simultaneously with mourning and with melancholy.Hogle adds to this classic perspective of melancholia through careful attention to the way in which rage inflects these affective responses. Under a psychoanalytic model, rage can be seen “as an infantile response to separation and loss” (Kahane 127). The emotional free-rein of rage, Claire Kahane points out, “disempowers us as subjects, making us subject to its regressive vicissitudes” (127; original emphasis). In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler explicates this in more detail, making clear that this disempowerment, this inability to clearly express oneself, is what leads to melancholia. Melancholia, then, can be seen as a loss or repression of the identifiable cause of the original rage: this overwhelming emotion has masked its original target. “Insofar as grief remains unspeakable”, Butler posits, “the rage over the loss can redouble by virtue of remaining unavowed. And if that very rage over loss is publicly proscribed, the melancholic effects of such a proscription can achieve suicidal proportions” (212). The only way to “survive” rage in this mutated form of melancholia is to create what Butler terms “collective institutions for grieving”; these enablethe reassembling of community, the reworking of kinship, the reweaving of sustaining relations. And insofar as they involve the publicisation and dramatisation of death, they call to be read as life-affirming rejoinders to the dire psychic consequences of a grieving process culturally thwarted and proscribed. (212-13)Butler’s reading thus aligns with Hogle’s, suggesting that it is in our careful attendance to the horrific experience of grief (however difficult) that we could navigate towards something like resolution – not a simplified narrative of working through, to be sure, but a more ethical recognition of the trauma which diverts it from its repressive impossibilities. To further the argument, it is only by transforming melancholic rage into outrage, to respond with an affect that puts shame to work, that rage will become politically effective. So, outrage is “a socialised and mediated form of rage … directed toward identifiable and bounded others in the external world” (Kahane 127-28). Melancholia and shame might then be seen to be directly opposed to one another: the former a failure of rage, the latter its socially productive incarnation.The Australian Gothic and its repetition of a “Weird Melancholy” exhibit this affective model. Ken Gelder has emphasised the historical coincidences: since Australia was colonised around the same time as the emergence of the Gothic as a genre (115), it has always been infused with what he terms a “colonial melancholia” (119). In contemporary Gothic narratives, this is presented through the repetition of the trauma of loss and injustice, so that the colonial “history of brutal violence and exploitation” (121) is played out, over and over again, desperate for resolution. Indeed, Gelder goes so far as to claim that this is the primary fuel for the Gothic as it manifests in Australian literature and film, arguing that since it is “built upon its dispossession and killings of Aboriginal people and its foundational systems of punishment and incarceration, the colonial scene … continues to shadow Australian cultural production and helps to keep the Australian Gothic very much alive” (121).That these two recent television series depict the ways in which rage and outrage appear in a primal ‘colonial scene’ which fixes the Australian Gothic within a political narrative. Both Wake in Fright and Mystery Road are television adaptations of earlier works. Wake in Fright is adapted from Kenneth Cook’s novel of the same name (1961), and its film adaptation (1971, dir. Ted Kotcheff). Mystery Road is a continuation of the film narrative of the same name (2013, dir. Ivan Sen), and its sequel, Goldstone (2016, dir. Ivan Sen). Both narratives illustrate the shift – where the films were first viewed by a high-culture audience attracted to arthouse cinema and modernist fiction – to the re-makes that are viewed in the domestic space of the television screen and/or other devices. Likewise, the television productions were not seen as single episodes, but also linked to each network’s online on-demand streaming viewers, significantly broadening the audience for both works. In this respect, these series both domesticate and democratise the Gothic. The televised series become situated publicly, recalling the broad scale popularity of the Gothic genre, what Helen Wheatley terms “the most domestic of genres on the most domestic of media” (25). In fact, Deborah Cartmell argues that “adaptation is, indeed, the art form of democracy … a ‘freeing’ of a text from the confined territory of its author and of its readers” (8; emphasis added). Likewise, André Bazin echoes this notion that the adaptation is a kind of “digest” of the original work, “a literature that has been made more accessible through cinematic adaptation” (26; emphasis added). In this way, adaptations serve to ‘democratise’ their concerns, focussing these narratives and their themes as more publically accessible, and thus provoking the potential for a broader cultural discussion. Wake in FrightWake in Fright describes the depraved long weekend of schoolteacher John Grant, who is stuck in the rural town of Bundinyabba (“The Yabba”) after he loses all of his money in an ill-advised game of “Two Up.” Modernising the concerns of the original film, in this adaptation John is further endangered by a debt to local loan sharks, and troubled by his frequent flashbacks to his lost lover. The narrative does display drug- and alcohol-induced rage in its infamous pig-shooting (originally roo-shooting) scene, as well as the cold and threatening rage of the loan shark who suspects she will not be paid, both of which are depicted as a specifically white aggression. Overall, its primary depiction of rage is directed inward, rather than outward, and in this way becomes narrowed down to emphasise a more individual, traumatic shame. That is, John’s petulant rage after his girlfriend’s rejection of his marriage proposal manifests in his determination to stolidly drink alone while she swims in the ocean. When she drowns while he is drunk and incapable to rescue her, his inaction becomes the primary source of his shame and exacerbates his self-focused, but repressed rage. The subsequent cycles of drinking (residents of The Yabba only drink beer, and plenty of it) and gambling (as he loses over and over at Two-Up) constitute a repetition of his original trauma over her drowning, and trigger the release of his repressed rage. While accompanying some locals during their drunken pig-shooting expedition, his rage finds an outlet, resulting in the death of his new acquaintance, Doc Tydon. Like John, Doc is the victim of a self-focused rage and shame at the death of his young child and the abdication of his responsibilities as the town’s doctor. Both John and Doc depict the collapse of authority and social order in the “Weird Melancholy” of the outback (Rayner 27), but this “subversion of the stereotype of capable, confident Australian masculinity” (37) and the decay of community and social structure remains static. However, the series does not push forward towards a moral outcome or a suggestion of better actions to inspire the viewer. Even his desperate suicide attempt, what he envisions as the only ‘ethical’ way out of his nightmare, ends in failure and is covered up by the local police. The narrative becomes circular: for John is returned to The Yabba every time he tries to leave, and even in the final scene he is back in Tiboonda, returned to where he started, standing at the front of his classroom. But importantly, this cycle mimics John’s cycle of unresolved shame, suggests an inability to ‘wake’ from this nightmare of repetition, with no acknowledgement of his individual history and his complicity in the traumatic events. Although John has outlived his suicide attempt, this does not validate his survival as a rebirth. Rather, John’s refusal of responsibility and the accompanying complicity of local authorities suggests the inevitability of further self-damaging rage, shame, and violence. Outback NoirBoth Wake in Fright and Mystery Road have been described as “outback noir” (Dolgopolov 12), combining characteristics of the Gothic, the Western, and film noir in their depictions of suffering and the realisation (or abdication) of justice. Greg Dolgopolov explains that while traditional “film noir explores the moral trauma of crime on its protagonists, who are often escaping personal suffering or harrowing incidents from their pasts” (12), these examples of Australian (outback) noir are primarily concerned with “ancestral trauma – that of both Indigenous and settler. Outback noir challenges official versions of events that glide over historical massacres and current injustices” (12-13).Wake in Fright’s focus on John’s personal suffering even as his crimes could become allegories for national trauma, aligns this story with traditional film noir. Mystery Road is caught up with a more collectivised form of trauma, and with the ‘colonialism’ of outback noir means this adaptation is more effective in locating self-rage and melancholia as integral to social and cultural dilemmas of contemporary Australia. Each series takes a different path to the treatment of race relations in Australia within a small and isolated rural context. Wake in Fright chooses to ignore this historical context, setting up the cycle of John’s repression of trauma as an individual fate, and he is trapped to repeat it. On the other hand, Mystery Road, just like its cinematic precursors (Mystery Road and Goldstone), deals with race as a specific theme. Mystery Road’s nod to the noir and the Western is emphasised by the character of Detective Jay Swan: “a lone gunslinger attempting to uphold law and order” (Ward 111), he swaggers around the small township in his cowboy hat, jeans, and boots, stoically searching for clues to the disappearance of two local teenagers. Since Swan is himself Aboriginal, this transforms the representation of authority and its failures depicted in Wake in Fright. While the police in Wake in Fright uphold the law only when convenient to their own goals, and further, to undertake criminal activities themselves, in Mystery Road the authority figures – Jay himself, and his counterpart, Senior Sergeant Emma James, are prominent in the community and dedicated to the pursuit of justice. It is highly significant that this sense of justice reaches beyond the present situation. Emma’s family, the Ballantynes, have been prominent landowners and farmers in the region for over one hundred years, and have always prided themselves on their benevolence towards the local Indigenous population. However, when Emma discovers that her great-grandfather was responsible for the massacre of several young Aboriginal men at the local waterhole, she is overcome by shame. In her horrified tears we see how the legacy of trauma, ever present for the Aboriginal population, is brought home to Emma herself. As the figurehead for justice in the town, Emma is determined to label the murders accurately as a “crime” which must “be answered.” In this acknowledgement and her subsequent apology to Dot, she finds some release from this ancient shame.The only Aboriginal characters in Wake in Fright are marginal to the narrative – taxi drivers who remain peripheral to the traumas within the small town, and thus remain positioned as innocent bystanders to its depravity. However, Mystery Road is careful to avoid such reductionist binaries. Just as Emma discovers the truth about her own family’s violence, Uncle Keith, the current Aboriginal patriarch, is exposed as a sexual predator. In both cases the men, leaders in the past and the present, consider themselves as ‘righteous’ in order to mask their enraged and violent behaviour. The moral issue here is more than a simplistic exposition on race, rather it demonstrates that complexity surrounds those who achieve power. When Dot ultimately ‘inherits’ responsibility for the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission this indicates that Mystery Road concludes with two female figures of authority, both looking out for the welfare of the community as a whole. Likewise, they are involved in seeking the young woman, Shevorne, who becomes the focus of abuse and grief, and her daughter. Although Jay is ultimately responsible for solving the crime at the heart of the series, Mystery Road strives to position futurity and responsibility in the hands of its female characters and their shared sense of community.In conclusion, both television adaptations of classic movies located in Australian outback noir have problematised rage within two vastly different contexts. The adaptations Wake in Fright and Mystery Road do share similar themes and concerns in their responses to past traumas and how that shapes Gothic representation of the outback in present day Australia. However, it is in their treatment of rage, shame, and violence that they diverge. Wake in Fright’s failure to convert rage beyond melancholia means that it fails to offer any hope of resolution, only an ongoing cycle of shame and violence. But rage, as a driver for injustice, can evolve into something more positive. In Mystery Road, the anger of both individuals and the community as a whole moves beyond good/bad and black/white stereotypes of outrage towards a more productive form of shame. In doing so, rage itself can elicit a new model for a more responsible contemporary Australian Gothic narrative.References Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” Film Adaptation. 1948. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2000. 19-27.Bruhm, Steven. “The Contemporary Gothic: Why We Need It.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 259-76.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge, 1993.Cartmell, Deborah. “100+ Years of Adaptations, or, Adaptation as the Art Form of Democracy.” A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. Ed. Deborah Cartmell. Chichester: Blackwell, 2012. 1-13.Dolgopolov, Greg. “Balancing Acts: Ivan Sen’s Goldstone and ‘Outback Noir.’” Metro 190 (2016): 8-13.Gelder, Ken. “Australian Gothic.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Eds. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy. London: Routledge, 2007. 115-23.Hogle, Jerrold E. “History, Trauma and the Gothic in Contemporary Western Fictions.” The Gothic World. Eds. Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend. London: Routledge, 2014. 72-81.Kahane, Claire. “The Aesthetic Politics of Rage.” States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social Change. Eds. Renée R. Curry and Terry L. Allison. New York: New York UP, 1996. 126-45.Perkins, Rachel, dir. Mystery Road. ABC, 2018.Rall, Denise N. “‘Shock and Awe’ and Memory: The Evocation(s) of Trauma in post-9/11 Artworks.” Memory and the Wars on Terror: Australian and British Perspectives. Eds. Jessica Gildersleeve and Richard Gehrmann. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 163-82.Rayner, Jonathan. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.Stenders, Kriv, dir. Wake in Fright. Roadshow Entertainment, 2017.Ward, Sarah. “Shadows of a Sunburnt Country: Mystery Road, the Western and the Conflicts of Contemporary Australia.” Screen Education 81 (2016): 110-15.Wheatley, Helen. “Haunted Houses, Hidden Rooms: Women, Domesticity and the Gothic Adaptation on Television.” Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. 149-65.

Abstract:

Diaspora This article looks at diaspora through the transformations of an established public service broadcaster, the BBC World Service, by considering some of the findings of the AHRC-funded Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service, which is part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities program. Tuning In has six themes, each of which focuses upon the role of the BBC WS: The Politics of Translation, Diasporic Nationhood, Religious Transnationalism, Sport across Diasporas, Migrating Music and Drama for Development. The World Service, which was until 2011 funded by the Foreign Office, was set up to cater for the British diaspora and had the specific remit of transmitting ideas about Britishness to its audiences overseas. Tuning In demonstrates interrelationships between the global and the local in the diasporic contact zone of the BBC World Service, which has provided a mediated home for the worldwide British diaspora since its inception in 1932. The local and the global have merged, elided, and separated at different times and in different spaces in the changing story of the BBC (Briggs). The BBC WS is both local and global with activities that present Britishness both at home and abroad. The service has, however, come a long way since its early days as the Empire Service. Audiences for the World Service’s 31 foreign language services, radio, television, and Internet facilities include substantive non-British/English-speaking constituencies, rendering it a contact zone for the exploration of ideas and political opportunities on a truly transnational scale. This heterogeneous body of exilic, refugee intellectuals, writers, and artists now operates alongside an ongoing expression of Britishness in all its diverse reconfiguration. This includes the residual voice of empire and its patriarchal paternalism, the embrace of more recent expressions of neoliberalism as well as traditional values of impartiality and objectivism and, in the case of the arts, elements of bohemianism and creative innovation. The World Service might have begun as a communication system for the British ex-pat diaspora, but its role has changed along with the changing relationship between Britain and its colonial past. In the terrain of sport, for example, cricket, the “game of empire,” has shifted from Britain to the Indian subcontinent (Guha) with the rise of “Twenty 20” and the Indian Premier League (IPL); summed up in Ashis Nandy’s claim that “cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English” (Nandy viii). English county cricket dominated the airways of the World Service well into the latter half of the twentieth century, but the audiences of the service have demanded a response to social and cultural change and the service has responded. Sport can thus be seen to have offered a democratic space in which new diasporic relations can be forged as well as one in which colonial and patriarchal values are maintained. The BBC WS today is part of a network through which non-British diasporic peoples can reconnect with their home countries via the service, as well as an online forum for debate across the globe. In many regions of the world, it continues to be the single most trusted source of information at times of crisis and disaster because of its traditions of impartiality and objectivity, even though (as noted in the article on Al-Jazeera in this special issue) this view is hotly contested. The principles of objectivity and impartiality are central to the BBC WS, which may seem paradoxical since it is funded by the Commonwealth and Foreign office, and its origins lie in empire and colonial discourse. Archive material researched by our project demonstrates the specifically ideological role of what was first called the Empire Service. The language of empire was deployed in this early programming, and there is an explicit expression of an ideological purpose (Hill). For example, at the Imperial Conference in 1930, the service was supported in terms of its political powers of “strengthening ties” between parts of the empire. This view comes from a speech by John Reith, the BBC’s first Director General, which was broadcast when the service opened. In this speech, broadcasting is identified as having come to involve a “connecting and co-ordinating link between the scattered parts of the British Empire” (Reith). Local British values are transmitted across the globe. Through the service, empire and nation are reinstated through the routine broadcasting of cyclical events, the importance of which Scannell and Cardiff describe as follows: Nothing so well illustrates the noiseless manner in which the BBC became perhaps the central agent of national culture as its cyclical role; the cyclical production year in year out, of an orderly, regular progression of festivities, rituals and celebrations—major and minor, civic and sacred—that mark the unfolding of the broadcast year. (278; italics in the original) State occasions and big moments, including those directly concerned with governance and affairs of state, and those which focused upon sport and religion, were a big part in these “noiseless” cycles, and became key elements in the making of Britishness across the globe. The BBC is “noiseless” because the timetable is assumed and taken for granted as not only what is but what should be. However, the BBC WS has been and has had to be responsive to major shifts in global and local—and, indeed, glocal—power geometries that have led to spatial transformations, notably in the reconfiguration of the service in the era of postcolonialism. Some of these massive changes have involved the large-scale movement of people and a concomitant rethinking of diaspora as a concept. Empire, like nation, operates as an “imagined community,” too big to be grasped by individuals (Anderson), as well as a material actuality. The dynamics of identification are rarely linear and there are inconsistencies and disruptions: even when the voice is officially that of empire, the practice of the World Service is much more diverse, nuanced, and dialogical. The BBC WS challenges boundaries through the connectivities of communication and through different ways of belonging and, similarly, through a problematisation of concepts like attachment and detachment; this is most notable in the way in which programming has adapted to new diasporic audiences and in the reworkings of spatiality in the shift from empire to diversity via multiculturalism. There are tensions between diaspora and multiculturalism that are apparent in a discussion of broadcasting and communication networks. Diaspora has been distinguished by mobility and hybridity (Clifford, Hall, Bhaba, Gilroy) and it has been argued that the adjectival use of diasporic offers more opportunity for fluidity and transformation (Clifford). The concept of diaspora, as it has been used to explain the fluidity and mobility of diasporic identifications, can challenge more stabilised, “classic” understandings of diaspora (Chivallon). A hybrid version of diaspora might sit uneasily with a strong sense of belonging and with the idea that the broadcast media offer a multicultural space in which each voice can be heard and a wide range of cultures are present. Tuning In engaged with ways of rethinking the BBC’s relationship to diaspora in the twenty-first century in a number of ways: for example, in the intersection of discursive regimes of representation; in the status of public service broadcasting; vis-à-vis the consequences of diverse diasporic audiences; through the role of cultural intermediaries such as journalists and writers; and via global economic and political materialities (Gillespie, Webb and Baumann). Tuning In thus provided a multi-themed and methodologically diverse exploration of how the BBC WS is itself a series of spaces which are constitutive of the transformation of diasporic identifications. Exploring the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social flows and networks involves, first, reconfiguring what is understood by transnationalism, diaspora, and postcolonial relationalities: in particular, attending to how these transform as well as sometimes reinstate colonial and patriarchal discourses and practices, thus bringing together different dimensions of the local and the global. Tuning In ranges across different fields, embracing cultural, social, and political areas of experience as represented in broadcasting coverage. These fields illustrate the educative role of the BBC and the World Service that is also linked to its particular version of impartiality; just as The Archers was set up to provide information and guidance through a narrative of everyday life to rural communities and farmers after the Second World War, so the Afghan version plays an “edutainment” role (Skuse) where entertainment also serves an educational, public service information role. Indeed, the use of soap opera genre such as The Archers as a vehicle for humanitarian and health information has been very successful over the past decade, with the “edutainment” genre becoming a feature of the World Service’s broadcasting in places such as Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, India, Nepal, Burma, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. In a genre that has been promoted by the World Service Trust, the charitable arm of the BBC WS uses drama formats to build transnational production relationships with media professionals and to strengthen creative capacities to undertake behaviour change through communication work. Such programming, which is in the tradition of the BBC WS, draws upon the service’s expertise and exhibits both an ideological commitment to progressive social intervention and a paternalist approach drawing upon colonialist legacies. Nowadays, however, the BBC WS can be considered a diasporic contact zone, providing sites of transnational intra-diasporic contact as well as cross-cultural encounters, spaces for cross-diasporic creativity and representation, and a forum for cross-cultural dialogue and potentially cosmopolitan translations (Pratt, Clifford). These activities are, however, still marked by historically forged asymmetric power relations, notably of colonialism, imperialism, and globalisation, as well as still being dominated by hegemonic masculinity in many parts of the service, which thus represent sites of contestation, conflict, and transgression. Conversely, diasporic identities are themselves co-shaped by media representations (Sreberny). The diasporic contact zone is a relational space in which diasporic identities are made and remade and contested. Tuning In employed a diverse range of methods to analyse the part played by the BBC WS in changing and continuing social and cultural flows, networks, and reconfigurations of transnationalisms and diaspora, as well as reinstating colonial, patriarchal practices. The research deconstructed some assumptions and conditions of class-based elitism, colonialism, and patriarchy through a range of strategies. Texts are, of course, central to this work, with the BBC Archives at Caversham (near Reading) representing the starting point for many researchers. The archive is a rich source of material for researchers which carries a vast range of data including fragile memos written on scraps of paper: a very local source of global communications. Other textual material occupies the less locatable cyberspace, for example in the case of Have Your Say exchanges on the Web. People also featured in the project, through the media, in cyberspace, and physical encounters, all of which demonstrate the diverse modes of connection that have been established. Researchers worked with the BBC WS in a variety of ways, not only through interviews and ethnographic approaches, such as participant observation and witness seminars, but also through exchanges between the service, its practitioners, and the researchers (for example, through broadcasts where the project provided the content and the ideas and researchers have been part of programs that have gone out on the BBC WS (Goldblatt, Webb), bringing together people who work for the BBC and Tuning In researchers). On this point, it should be remembered that Bush House is, itself, a diasporic space which, from its geographical location in the Strand in London, has brought together diasporic people from around the globe to establish international communication networks, and has thus become the focus and locus of some of our research. What we have understood by the term “diasporic space” in this context includes both the materialities of architecture and cyberspace which is the site of digital diasporas (Anderssen) and, indeed, the virtual exchanges featured on “Have Your Say,” the online feedback site (Tuning In). Living the Glocal The BBC WS offers a mode of communication and a series of networks that are spatially located both in the UK, through the material presence of Bush House, and abroad, through the diasporic communities constituting contemporary audiences. The service may have been set up to provide news and entertainment for the British diaspora abroad, but the transformation of the UK into a multi-ethnic society “at home,” alongside its commitment to, and the servicing of, no less than 32 countries abroad, demonstrates a new mission and a new balance of power. Different diasporic communities, such as multi-ethnic Londoners, and local and British Muslims in the north of England, demonstrate the dynamics and ambivalences of what is meant by “diaspora” today. For example, the BBC and the WS play an ambiguous role in the lives of UK Muslim communities with Pakistani connections, where consumers of the international news can feel that the BBC is complicit in the conflation of Muslims with terrorists. Engaging Diaspora Audiences demonstrated the diversity of audience reception in a climate of marginalisation, often bordering on moral panic, and showed how diasporic audiences often use Al-Jazeera or Pakistani and Urdu channels, which are seen to take up more sympathetic political positions. It seems, however, that more egalitarian conversations are becoming possible through the channels of the WS. The participation of local people in the BBC WS global project is seen, for example, as in the popular “Witness Seminars” that have both a current focus and one that is projected into the future, as in the case of the “2012 Generation” (that is, the young people who come of age in 2012, the year of the London Olympics). The Witness Seminars demonstrate the recuperation of past political and social events such as “Bangladesh in 1971” (Tuning In), “The Cold War seminar” (Tuning In) and “Diasporic Nationhood” (the cultural movements reiterated and recovered in the “Literary Lives” project (Gillespie, Baumann and Zinik). Indeed, the WS’s current focus on the “2012 Generation,” including an event in which 27 young people (each of whom speaks one of the WS languages) were invited to an open day at Bush House in 2009, vividly illustrates how things have changed. Whereas in 1948 (the last occasion when the Olympic Games were held in London), the world came to London, it is arguable that, in 2012, in contemporary multi-ethnic Britain, the world is already here (Webb). This enterprise has the advantage of giving voice to the present rather than filtering the present through the legacies of colonialism that remain a problem for the Witness Seminars more generally. The democratising possibilities of sport, as well as the restrictions of its globalising elements, are well represented by Tuning In (Woodward). Sport has, of course become more globalised, especially through the development of Internet and satellite technologies (Giulianotti) but it retains powerful local affiliations and identifications. At all levels and in diverse places, there are strong attachments to local and national teams that are constitutive of communities, including diasporic and multi-ethnic communities. Sport is both typical and distinctive of the BBC World Service; something that is part of a wider picture but also an area of experience with a life of its own. Our “Sport across Diasporas” project has thus explored some of the routes the World Service has travelled in its engagement with sport in order to provide some understanding of the legacy of empire and patriarchy, as well as engaging with the multiplicities of change in the reconstruction of Britishness. Here, it is important to recognise that what began as “BBC Sport” evolved into “World Service Sport.” Coverage of the world’s biggest sporting events was established through the 1930s to the 1960s in the development of the BBC WS. However, it is not only the global dimensions of sporting events that have been assumed; so too are national identifications. There is no question that the superiority of British/English sport is naturalised through its dominance of the BBC WS airways, but the possibilities of reinterpretation and re-accommodation have also been made possible. There has, indeed, been a changing place of sport in the BBC WS, which can only be understood with reference to wider changes in the relationship between broadcasting and sport, and demonstrates the powerful synchronies between social, political, technological, economic, and cultural factors, notably those that make up the media–sport–commerce nexus that drives so much of the trajectory of contemporary sport. Diasporic audiences shape the schedule as much as what is broadcast. There is no single voice of the BBC in sport. The BBC archive demonstrates a variety of narratives through the development and transformation of the World Service’s sports broadcasting. There are, however, silences: notably those involving women. Sport is still a patriarchal field. However, the imperial genealogies of sport are inextricably entwined with the social, political, and cultural changes taking place in the wider world. There is no detectable linear narrative but rather a series of tensions and contradictions that are reflected and reconfigured in the texts in which deliberations are made. In sport broadcasting, the relationship of the BBC WS with its listeners is, in many instances, genuinely dialogic: for example, through “Have Your Say” websites and internet forums, and some of the actors in these dialogic exchanges are the broadcasters themselves. The history of the BBC and the World Service is one which manifests a degree of autonomy and some spontaneity on the part of journalists and broadcasters. For example, in the case of the BBC WS African sports program, Fast Track (2009), many of the broadcasters interviewed report being able to cover material not technically within their brief; news journalists are able to engage with sporting events and sports journalists have covered social and political news (Woodward). Sometimes this is a matter of taking the initiative or simply of being in the right place at the right time, although this affords an agency to journalists which is increasingly unlikely in the twenty-first century. The Politics of Translation: Words and Music The World Service has played a key role as a cultural broker in the political arena through what could be construed as “educational broadcasting” via the wider terrain of the arts: for example, literature, drama, poetry, and music. Over the years, Bush House has been a home-from-home for poets: internationalists, translators from classical and modern languages, and bohemians; a constituency that, for all its cosmopolitanism, was predominantly white and male in the early days. For example, in the 1930s and 1940s, Louis MacNeice was commissioning editor and surrounded by a friendship network of salaried poets, such as W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, C. Day Lewis, and Stephen Spender, who wrote and performed their work for the WS. The foreign language departments of the BBC WS, meanwhile, hired émigrés and exiles from their countries’ educated elites to do similar work. The biannual, book-format journal Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), which was founded in 1965 by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes, included a dedication in Weissbort’s final issue (MPT 22, 2003) to “Poets at Bush House.” This volume amounts to a celebration of the BBC WS and its creative culture, which extended beyond the confines of broadcasting spaces. The reminiscences in “Poets at Bush House” suggest an institutional culture of informal connections and a fluidity of local exchanges that is resonant of the fluidity of the flows and networks of diaspora (Cheesman). Music, too, has distinctive characteristics that mark out this terrain on the broadcast schedule and in the culture of the BBC WS. Music is differentiated from language-centred genres, making it a particularly powerful medium of cross-cultural exchange. Music is portable and yet is marked by a cultural rootedness that may impede translation and interpretation. Music also carries ambiguities as a marker of status across borders, and it combines aesthetic intensity and diffuseness. The Migrating Music project demonstrated BBC WS mediation of music and identity flows (Toynbee). In the production and scheduling notes, issues of migration and diaspora are often addressed directly in the programming of music, while the movement of peoples is a leitmotif in all programs in which music is played and discussed. Music genres are mobile, diasporic, and can be constitutive of Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” (Gilroy), which foregrounds the itinerary of West African music to the Caribbean via the Middle Passage, cross-fertilising with European traditions in the Americas to produce blues and other hybrid forms, and the journey of these forms to Europe. The Migrating Music project focused upon the role of the BBC WS as narrator of the Black Atlantic story and of South Asian cross-over music, from bhangra to filmi, which can be situated among the South Asian diaspora in east and south Africa as well as the Caribbean where they now interact with reggae, calypso, Rapso, and Popso. The transversal flows of music and lyrics encompasses the lived experience of the different diasporas that are accommodated in the BBC WS schedules: for example, they keep alive the connection between the Irish “at home” and in the diaspora through programs featuring traditional music, further demonstrating the interconnections between local and global attachments as well as points of disconnection and contradiction. Textual analysis—including discourse analysis of presenters’ speech, program trailers and dialogue and the BBC’s own construction of “world music”—has revealed that the BBC WS itself performs a constitutive role in keeping alive these traditions. Music, too, has a range of emotional affects which are manifest in the semiotic analyses that have been conducted of recordings and performances. Further, the creative personnel who are involved in music programming, including musicians, play their own role in this ongoing process of musical migration. Once again, the networks of people involved as practitioners become central to the processes and systems through which diasporic audiences are re-produced and engaged. Conclusion The BBC WS can claim to be a global and local cultural intermediary not only because the service was set up to engage with the British diaspora in an international context but because the service, today, is demonstrably a voice that is continually negotiating multi-ethnic audiences both in the UK and across the world. At best, the World Service is a dynamic facilitator of conversations within and across diasporas: ideas are relocated, translated, and travel in different directions. The “local” of a British broadcasting service, established to promote British values across the globe, has been transformed, both through its engagements with an increasingly diverse set of diasporic audiences and through the transformations in how diasporas themselves self-define and operate. On the BBC WS, demographic, social, and cultural changes mean that the global is now to be found in the local of the UK and any simplistic separation of local and global is no longer tenable. The educative role once adopted by the BBC, and then the World Service, nevertheless still persists in other contexts (“from Ambridge to Afghanistan”), and clearly the WS still treads a dangerous path between the paternalism and patriarchy of its colonial past and its responsiveness to change. In spite of competition from television, satellite, and Internet technologies which challenge the BBC’s former hegemony, the BBC World Service continues to be a dynamic space for (re)creating and (re)instating diasporic audiences: audiences, texts, and broadcasters intersect with social, economic, political, and cultural forces. The monologic “voice of empire” has been countered and translated into the language of diversity and while, at times, the relationship between continuity and change may be seen to exist in awkward tension, it is clear that the Corporation is adapting to the needs of its twenty-first century audience. ReferencesAnderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities, Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Anderssen, Matilda. “Digital Diasporas.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/cross-research/digital-diasporas›. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Briggs, Asa. A History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume II: The Golden Age of Wireless. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Cheesman, Tom. “Poetries On and Off Air.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/cross-research/bush-house-cultures›. Chivallon, Christine. “Beyond Gilroy’s Black Atlantic: The Experience of the African Diaspora.” Diaspora 11.3 (2002): 359–82. Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Fast Track. BBC, 2009. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sport/2009/03/000000_fast_track.shtml›. Gillespie, Marie, Alban Webb, and Gerd Baumann (eds.). “The BBC World Service 1932–2007: Broadcasting Britishness Abroad.” Special Issue. The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 28.4 (Oct. 2008). Gillespie, Marie, Gerd Baumann, and Zinovy Zinik. “Poets at Bush House.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/about›. Gilroy, Paul. Black Atlantic. MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Giulianotti, Richard. Sport: A Critical Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Goldblatt, David. “The Cricket Revolution.” 2009. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0036ww9›. Guha, Ramachandra. A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of an English Game. London: Picador, 2002. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, 223–37. Hill, Andrew. “The BBC Empire Service: The Voice, the Discourse of the Master and Ventriloquism.” South Asian Diaspora 2.1 (2010): 25–38. Hollis, Robert, Norma Rinsler, and Daniel Weissbort. “Poets at Bush House: The BBC World Service.” Modern Poetry in Translation 22 (2003). Nandy, Ashis. The Tao of Cricket: On Games of Destiny and the Destiny of Games. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1989. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Reith, John. “Opening of the Empire Service.” In “Empire Service Policy 1932-1933”, E4/6: 19 Dec. 1932. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/research.htm›. Scannell, Paddy, and David Cardiff. A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922-1938. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Skuse, Andrew. “Drama for Development.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/core-research/drama-for-development›. Sreberny, Annabelle. “The BBC World Service and the Greater Middle East: Comparisons, Contrasts, Conflicts.” Guest ed. Annabelle Sreberny, Marie Gillespie, Gerd Baumann. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 3.2 (2010). Toynbee, Jason. “Migrating Music.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/core-research/migrating-music›. Tuning In. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/index.htm›. Webb, Alban. “Cold War Diplomacy.” 2010. 30 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/diasporas/projects/cold-war-politics-and-bbc-world-service›. Woodward, Kath. Embodied Sporting Practices. Regulating and Regulatory Bodies. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Abstract:

IntroductionWhen a baby girl born in Britain was endowed with the topical name ‘Hashtag’, a social media post decried the naming, and a media storm followed. Before she was even home from hospital, headlines were at the ready: “Did a mother really just name her child Hashtag?” (Nye) and “Baby Hashtag: has the search for original names gone too far?” (Barkham). Trollers were also poised to react, offering: “The first name is REALLY dumb. And you're even dumber,” prompting a rejection of the baby’s name as well as her ostensibly ill-equipped parents (Facebook). Dubbed a “Public Figure” on her Facebook page, Hashtag Jameson accrued a particularly premature type of celebrity, where, with a handful of baby selfies, she declared via Twitter, and only hours after birth, that she was “already trending”.In this article, I consider the relationship between the infant child and the visual-digital economies in which it – as in the Hashtag hoax, above – performs. The infant child is brought into view with the very first sentence that frames John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. “Seeing comes before words”, he writes. “The child looks and recognizes before it can speak” (1). Berger’s reference to the seeing child positions it as an active agent in cultures and practices of visuality, but also uses an idea of the child to position vision as the primary communicative means by which we “establish our place in the surrounding world” and in which we are enveloped “before” speech (7). Here, I explore the intensified relationship between the visual culture of infancy and the economised digital movement of vision that it produces in one highly specific image-genre: the baby selfie. In doing so I aim to characterise the depictive nature of this format in terms of how it compositionally documents – to further borrow the language of Berger, who was then discussing oil paintings – “a way of seeing the world, which was ultimately determined by new attitudes to property and exchange” (87).The new sociology of childhood has been concerned with the construction of the child figure as it has interfaced with new cultural and political realities since the early 1980s (Prout). These include “phenomena such as the flexibilization of production … expanding networks of knowledge … and shifts in labour market participation, work and the global economy” (Prout 5). I suggest here that the baby selfie can be seen as an unprecedented social marker of these transformations, signalling a heightened degree of priceless sentiment within which the child – as an animator of amateur affects, viral tendencies and algorithmic logics – is given to operate. I focus on the compositional propensities of the baby selfie in order to characterise how it visually construes a particular kind of self that is intrinsically entangled with the conception of the image as a form of capital exchange. That is, I suggest that in its intense and yet paradoxical self-performativity the baby selfie depicts a way of seeing that is predicated on, but also troubles, the conceit of a commodified social relation. What Does the Baby Selfie Say?“Should babies really be taking selfies?” yells a headline warning against the perceived dangers of youth digital cultures (Cox). The 2014 story references a phone app built by father Matthew Pegula that uses front-facing cameras to “unintentionally teac[h] your baby to take selfies of themselves” by generating “rattling sounds, pictures of cute animals, and more to get the baby’s attention.” The article explains that “[w]hen the baby reaches out to touch the screen, the camera snaps their selfie and saves it to the device”. While Pegula’s Baby Selfie App is available for purchase on Google Play’s app store for $1.09, a similar device named New Born Fame, featuring “Facebook and Twitter symbols that are activated when the youngster reaches for them” and inclusions such as “a pair of shoes with an internal pedometer that tracks kicks and posts the activity online, a squeezable GPS tracker and a ‘selfie-ball’ that photographs the baby and uploads the shot whenever the ball rotates” (Peppers), artistically interrogated this relatively new category of “insta-infa-fame”.In their article “What Does the Selfie Say?”, Theresa M. Senft and Nancy K. Baym argue that the selfie exists as the hallmark genre of a new kind of self-reflexive image-making, one that is formally characterised by the “self-generated” nature of the photographic portraiture it depicts, which is in turn conceived for its transmissibility, occurring “primarily via social media” (1589). Popularised in part by new technologies (the camera phone, the smart phone, and then the front-facing phone camera) and in part by new digital platforms (“Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Tumblr, WeChat, and Tinder”) (1589), Senft and Baym further explain that the selfie is simultaneously a photographic object which transmits human feeling, a practice of sending (as well as of depicting), and third, a monetized assemblage curated by nonhuman agents. It is this last factor which renders the objecthood of the selfie as it relates to the vernacular that it enacts as well as the practice of its making, political.Notions around the simultaneously constituting and yet virally distributed “self” of social media are not new. A now prominent literature around how the selfie graphically manifests and performs: intimate publics (Walsh and Baker), a normative or resistive image repertoire (Murray), and emotionalised, communicable affect (Bayer et al.), gives rise to a range of viewpoints that aim to characterise how the hyper self-reflexivity of the selfie depicts – visually as well as ontologically – the self as an agent of their own transmissibility (Holiday et al.). From these we understand that the selfie is distinct for its (i) self-representational image-format (it is an image made by the self, of the self, and thereby is identifiable for its capturing of the self in this very process of self-composition); ii) its methods of distribution (selfies are taken and distributed often instantaneously, and thereby are not only objects of, but active agents of, the reshaping of digitally communicative economies); iii) its idiomatic performance of a sociality and aesthetic of the amateur or vernacular (Abidin).The doubled glance both inwards and outwards that the selfie casts is further characterised for how it traces as well as points to a gestural self-awareness held within its compositional characteristics (Frosh). This moves us from a semiotic reading of the selfie to a reading of its “kineasthetic sociability” – that is, its embodied inception of new forms of autobiographical inscription which say “not only ‘see this, here, now,’ but also ‘see me showing you me’” (Frosh 1609-10). Here, the selfie is less a static object and more a gestural imprint of the communicative action in process: it is “simultaneously mediating (the outstretched arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm becomes a legible and iterable sign within selfies of, among other things, the selfieness of the image)” (Frosh 1611). In this sense, its compositional logic offers a tracing of this very enactive, embodied tendency, which bears more than an indexical relationship to the field that it marks – it depicts itself as a constituting part of that field.While these characteristics are broadly accepted as being true of selfies, the “selfieness” of a baby selfie might be seen to offer a paradoxical reframing of these depictive qualities. That is, if a selfie is a self-depiction of a process of self-depiction, the baby selfie most usually performs this self-reflexivity with recourse to an external agent who is either present in the image frame or who is occluded from it but nonetheless implied by the very nature of the image (a parent or the image-facilitator, or indeed, a baby app). The baby selfie’s scene of self-depiction, then, might be thought of as a kind of self-depiction-by-proxy. At the same time, the baby selfie asks us to invest in the belief that the picture was knowingly self-taken, and in doing so, models a kind of aspirational autonomy for the child/baby figure who is depicted. In this sense, the baby selfie, by its very nature, disrupts the accepted distinguishing format of the selfie: that the picture is both self-depicting and is self-composed. Instead, the baby selfie can be seen to gesturally reincorporate into its visual scene the very question of this structural im/possibility.Depicting the Viral ChildThe figure of the child has been considered by a range of theorists as the organising principle of modernity. Philippe Aries’ foundational work has argued that the modern discovery of childhood is reflected in the rise of the nuclear family and consequential shifts from sociability to privacy. Viviana Zelizer similarly positions the emergence of the economically “useless” but sentimentally “priceless” child against comprehensive social and industrial transformations taking place across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that excluded the child as a labourer and instead situated it with the disciplinary regime of education. The hetero-normatively white child has since been shown to emblematise concepts of social futurity (Edelman) and myths of morality, humanity and the “ordering of time” (Pelligrini 98).Following Zelizer, the more recently ‘digitally’ visual cultures of childhood can be seen to spin the figure of the child around new socio-economic and discursive imperatives. Lisa Cartwright writes about photographs of waiting adoptee children, in which “children of poor countries become commodities and their images become advertisem*nts in a global market” (83). Deborah Lupton similarly considers the coding of infant bodies in popular media for their “represent[ation] as helpless, vulnerable, uncontrolled, dirty and leaky in opposition to the idealised adult body that is powerful, self-regulated, autonomous, clean, its bodily boundaries sealed from the outside world” (349). More recently, children have been considered for how they either accidentally or volitionally interact with mediated technologies (Nansen) as well as for how they are increasingly digitally surveilled as the objects of a necessary – and increasingly normalised – parental “culture of care” (Leaver 2). These studies make clear that while children are increasingly positioned as the ‘viral’ agents of new kinds of visual markets, they are also infantilised as victims in need of unprecedented cyber-protection.In 1994 Douglas Rushkoff coined the term “media virus” to account for the rapid and uncontrollable ways that popular media texts performed to either coerce or awaken viewing publics. While Rushkoff’s medium of reference was television, Henry Jenkins et al. later reframed virality to instead encompass ideas of user-led agency by linking it with a logic of “stickiness” – evoking what he termed a “peanut butter” analogy to describe the “spreadable” (3) movement of ideas in more recent social media practices. Indeed, Liam French finds a strong parallel between the “phenomenal rise in user generated content” and the turn towards newer visual cultures within social media practices more broadly, noting that it is “ordinary people” (French’s term) who actively generate the very forms of visual cultural production that become key to communicatory circulation. The selfie, in this regard, becomes both a format and an icon of the new ways of seeing brought into perspective by social media practices.Given the political, social and industrial ecologies that constitute such image cultures, it is only recently that the “viral” child, as the next delineation of the sentimentally “priceless” child, has arrived into view. Here, the baby Hashtag hoax can be seen to critically narrate a specific cultural moment: one that is concerned with stabilising the figure of the child even as it constitutes the ground through which that figure also becomes undone. I refer to the way that Hashtag, as a figural baby, presents a tautological identity, where the digital grammar of # names the mechanism by which she would also search for herself. If Hashtag is emblematic of the algorithmic and affective assemblage of contemporary image-cultures of childhood – whose image-work shapes the new temporal dimensions of our watching and viewing practices – she also illustrates how the child has been become not only an object, but a medium of the economic logics of communicative capitalism. That is, the image-work of the baby selfie can be seen to point to the very question of autonomous agency that frames the figure of the child and in doing so, provides a disruptive counterpoint to the “peanut butter” logic of spreadable visual cultures of so-called “ordinary people” more broadly.It is this light that I ask (drawing on Senft and Baym): what does the baby selfie say about how we understand or construe the figure of the child? More specifically, I ask (via Berger) what culture of vision is brought into view by the rise of such visual cultures of the viral child? The “Gestural Gaze” of Digital Infant Agency Ellentv.com recently advertised a call for viewers to send in their favourite baby selfies: “If you've got a baby and a camera, it's time to take some selfies! Take a photo of you and your baby making the same face, and send it to us!” The legal disclaimer accompanying the callout additionally advised that “[b]y submitting Materials, … you … do not violate the right of privacy or publicity of, or constitute a defamation against, any person or entity; that the Materials will not infringe upon or violate the copyright or common law rights or any other rights of any person or entity” (Ellentv.com). From the outset, there appears within baby selfie culture a curious calibration of the agency of the child, who is at once a selfie-self-taker but who is also excluded from a legal right to privacy that concerns “any person or entity”. In this respect we might further ask – following Jacqueline Bhabha’s question “what sort of human is a child?” (1526) – what sort of human is a viral child, and how does the baby selfie depict this paradoxical configuration of infantile agency?While the formality of the baby selfie still demonstrates a range of configurations which often incorporate the figure of a parent and hence contradict the discreet self-composing parameters of the selfie, here I focus in closing on one specific baby selfie that I suggest is emblematic of an increasing prevalence of apparently “true” baby selfies which operate on a range of image-sharing platforms and meme sites. These baby selfies are distinguished by seeming to be (i) an image that is made by the self, of the self, and thereby is identified for its capturing of the self in this very process of self-composition; ii) an image that is construed for methods of often instantaneous distribution; iii) an image that puts forward an idiomatic performance of an amateur vernacular – or what Abidin has called “calibrated amateurism”.One compilation, “12 of the Cutest Baby Selfies You Will Ever See”, foregrounds the autonomy of the figure of the viral child as depicted by baby selfie culture, explaining that “These babies might be small, but they can do a lot more than just laugh, crawl, and play. It turns out they can also work their way around a camera and snap some amazing selfies. Talk about impressive!” (Campbell). While all the images in the selection depict the embodied gestural sociality of the selfie that Frosh characterises – that which is “simultaneously mediating (the outstretched arm executes the taking of the selfie) and mediated (the outstretched arm becomes a legible and iterable sign within selfies of … the selfieness of the image)” (1611) – one in particular is arresting for its striking interpellation of the “innocent” figure of the child with what I will extend via Frosh to call the inherent mediality of her gestural gaze. In this iconic baby selfie, the gestural gaze is witnessed in the way that the baby’s outstretched hand seems to be extending towards us, the viewer, but is rather (we think we know) extended towards the phone camera, in order to better see herself.The infant in the image is coded female, wearing a pink bonnet, dummy clip and dummy. The dummy is centred defiantly in the baby’s mouth and doubly defiantly in the centre of the image frame as an infantile ‘technology’ that seems to undercut the technology of the phone camera apparatus. The dummy imbues the image with an iconic sense of the baby’s innate “baby-ness” which seems to directly contradict the strength of her gaze, which also appears, in following the outwards arc of her selfie-taking arm, to reach beyond the image frame and address her viewer directly. It seems to say – to paraphrase Frosh – see me here, now, showing you me. The ambivalent origins of the image are also key to how it is read and distributed here. The image in question can be found on the media site Woman’s World, which offers an untraceable credit to Instagram for its original source. The image has also, since, spread itself, appearing across a range of other multilingual sites and feeds, depicting the child at the centre of its frame as somewhat entangled in a further labour of self-duplication. The baby selfie in circulation says not only “‘see this, here, now,’” and “‘see me showing you me’,” but ‘see all of this here, and again, here and again, here.’John Berger writes of two related image genres that connect histories of vernacular depiction to histories of the evolution of the publicity image as a medium and sign of capital exchange. Writing on oil painting, he notes how the materiality of the medium signified the “thingness” of its depiction: “if you buy a painting you also buy a look of the thing that it represents” (83). He finds, therein, an “analogy between possessing and a way of seeing which is incorporated in oil painting” (83) and which, as he later explains, becomes tied to “the tangibility, the texture, the lustre, the solidity of what it depicts” (88). The textural qualities of oil painting, which for Berger construe the “real” as that which can be materially conveyed or indexed as commodity, might be compared to the gestural residue that is contained within the selfie. While oil painting construed the materiality of things – and hence, the commodifiable nature of any particular relation – the selfie might be seen to depict the self in the process of its own self-labour: the material gesture of taking the image necessitates that the self becomes an agent who then becomes the immaterial self of transmission. The selfie is in this way a depiction of the self in a form of capital relation to itself.While the selfie – as a digital composition – is not materially “real” in the same way that oil painting is, the indexical nature of the arm that reaches out beyond the image frame to point to the inherent transmissibility – and hence capital value – of the image, might be. While the baby selfie imitates these capacities, I suggest here that it also traces a compositional logic that further complicates that which Frosh charts. This is because in the very moment that the spectator of the image is confronted with the baby selfie’s call to “see me showing you me” (1609-10), the spectator is also confronted with the figure of the infant as an autonomous agent capable of their own image-constitution. In essence, the baby selfie posits a question around the baby’s innate ability to knowingly generate its image-frame, even as that very image-frame is what casts the infant into the spreadable contexts within which it will then operate – or, indeed, become ‘knowable’.In its heightened self-referentiality but tenuously depicted sense of rhetorical agency, the baby selfie then faces us with what we think we know, or do not know, about the figure of the child. This central ambivalence inherent to the compositional makeup of the baby selfie in this way both depicts and disrupts the economics of circulation that are intrinsic to selfies more broadly, pointing to a decomposing of the parameters by which a selfie is interpreted and understood. Further, it enables us to question relationships between ways of seeing and ways of being – how does the baby selfie envision the figure of the chid? What sort of human does it become? While there are valid discussions to be had around the absence of “direct self-representational agency” (Leaver) and moral rights or wrongs of the parental management of children’s image-work in online spaces, the baby selfie also opens up questions around how we understand the very contours of infantile agency, how we perceive rhetorical knowingness, and what we mean to mean by the relentless circulation of this imagery of the viral child. Indeed, as Wendy S. Hesford writes, it can be helpful to shift an understanding of agency from being an “individual enterprise” to being understood as that which is “enabled and constrained by cultural discourses and material forces” that compel it into material circulation (156).Here, I am not aiming to foreclose debates about the role of infants (or children more broadly) living with and in digital cultures. Neither do I aim to cast judgement upon on those image practices which enfold child subjects within them. I rather aim to circumvent those important debates to find – following Berger – a trace of how the image cultures that co-constitute digital infancies operate to formulate as well as depict a new field of vision that is predicated upon a seemingly impossible but nonetheless compelling logic of the contradictory impulses of the viral child. That is, it challenges us to think more carefully about what we think we know about children as well as about how we come to know them.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “#familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor.” Social Media + Society (Apr.-June 2017): 1–15.Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Trans. Robert Baldick. 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