LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
Why
has British Cultural Studies been so important to the development of Australian
Cultural Studies?
Historical
Background:
Origins of the
Australian nation in the exclusionary concept of the ‘white race’. Ethnic distinctions important in Britain
such as Irish, Scottish, Welsh diluted in the service of building a ‘White
Australia’.
Henry Parkes –
father of federation – ‘The Crimson thread of kinship runs through us all”.
Rights of
Indigenous and other people classified as ‘not white’ only given some
recognition and respect from the late 1960s.
Australian
Cultural Studies from the 1970s addresses questions like: what does it mean to
live in a ‘multicultural’ nation? What are challenges that reconciliation and
Indigenous sovereignty pose to the idea of the nation? What does it mean to think about Australia
as ‘part of Asia’?
Current Trends
over the past decade:
Decline of
British Empire with postcolonial independence movements by the middle of C20th
and the rise of the United States as the centre of a Global Empire after the
Cold War. Parallel shift in theoretical
influence from British Cultural Studies towards American Cultural Studies.
Example: I was
‘ideologically sound’ in the 1980s – now people are calling me ‘politically
correct’.
Are we now
‘beyond ideology’?
Key Sites of
Australian Cultural Studies’ Development
Genealogies
are as misleading for intellectual work as they are for studying personal
behaviour: they can tell us nothing about where we are going, or should go, or
might want to go… John Frow and Meaghan Morris (online Reading)
Journalist
Critics – eg McKenzie Wark,
Adrian Martin, Meaghan Morrris
Policy – debates from the late 1980s about the proper site
of cultural studies theory and application.
Policy or Criticism.
…the
very issue of choosing between policy and cultural criticism – which to write
for, which to inhabit – must turn out to be a question admitting no general
answer. There are no a priori
principles for choosing policy over cultural criticism. Nor can any presumption be made about social
utility and effectiveness as necessarily belonging to one or the other. Cultural policy and cultural criticism are
not hermetically sealed but are porous systems; open enough to permit
transformation, incorporation and translation; fluid enough to permit a great
range of practices and priorities. –
Tom O’Regan
Feminism – womens’ liberation publications and second wave
feminist historians introduced ‘everyday life’ as a political and theoretical
focus.
‘Femocrats’ –
successful women working in policy to improve the everyday lives of women in
the workplace and in the home.
Many Australian
feminists have taken the slogan “the personal is political” to mean that the
resources of the state must be captured and used in the interests of
transforming women’s lives by inceasing their access to social equity and power
(‘changing the culture’) – Frow and Morris
The National – the national character as a unique preoccupation of
Australian cultural studies theory and practice relative to the British case.
Within Australian
cultural criticism it has become conventional to construct aspects of
Australian life as distinctive – not of a class or of a subculture but of the
nation … it is increasingly difficult to understand the ideological alignments
around versions of Australian nationalism through their simple identification
with either progressive or regressive effects or through their allegiance to
the left or right of the political spectrum.
Nationalism can be inscribed into an extraordinary range of political
and cultural positions. – Graeme Turner
“Everyone’s ABC”?
Is it?
Does
“Britishness” mean “quality” always, sometimes or never?
Special
Broadcasting Service –
Gay Hawkins’ research on television and Chinese Australian audiences.
What is SBS’
cultural objective? To provide “quality” programming for distinct cultural and
linguistic communities OR to provide “popular” programming to cross-over
audiences? – eg Hong Kong action movies
Textual
analysis of the racist stereotypes and mythologies which inform Australian
understanding of Aboriginal people are revealing. The most dense relationship is not between actual people but
between white Australians and the symbols created by their predecessors. Australians do not know and relate to
Aboriginal people. They relate to
stories told by former colonists – Marcia Langton
Poorly funded
combination of public and private services for remote communities (Broadcasting
in Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme and Imparja) and programs within mainstream
public broadcasting services (SBS and ABC)
Recent
Developments
National
Indigenous Media Association of Australia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission report Digital Dreaming recommends a national
Indigenous broadcasting service be established. Why not?