Journal articles on the topic 'Feminist post-structuralism'

This article identifies a misfit between transnational feminist networks observed at the World Social Forum and the extant scholarship on transnational feminism. The conceptual divide is posited as one between transnational feminism understood, on the one hand, as a normative discourse involving a particular analytic and methodological approach in feminist knowledge production and, on the other, as an empirical referent to feminist cross-border organising. The author proposes that the US-based and Anglophone character of the scholarship, its post-structuralist and post-colonial genealogies and the transnational paradigm’s displacement of area studies can be seen as contributing to the misfit. The article concludes by arguing for theoretical reconsideration of activist practice, place and the ‘posts’ – post-structuralism and post-colonialism – in the study of contemporary transnational feminist activisms. This marks an effort to get beyond the binary framework of ‘transnational feminism’ versus ‘global sisterhood’ in analysing activist practices within an increasingly diverse and complex transnational feminist field.

Since the 1980s, feminism and post-colonialism began to exchange and dialogue, forming a new interpretation space, that is, post-colonial feminist cultural theory. There is a very complicated relationship between post-colonialism and feminism, both in practice and theory. It was obvious that they have always been consistent as both cultural theories focus on the marginalization of the "other" that is marginalized by the ruling structure, consciously defending their interests. Post-structuralism is used to deny the common foundation of patriarchy and colonialism—the thinking mode of binary opposition. However, only in the most recent period, Postcolonialism and feminism "Running" is more "near", it is almost like an alliance. (The factor contributing to this alliance is that both parties recognize their limitations.) Furthermore, for quite some time there have been serious conflicts between these two equally famous critical theories. They have been deeply divided on issues, such as how to evaluate the third world women’s liberation, how to view the relationship between imperialism and feminism, and how to understand that colonialists use the standards of feminism to support their "civilization mission." This article has greatly benefited from the perspectives and materials of Leela Gandhi's Postcolonial Theory; A Critical Introduction.

In the article, Katarzyna Lisowska analyzes selected literary studies metaphors (Edward Bal-cerzan’s term) in order to discuss the way in which they represent the academic worldview of the author. The paper focuses on the phrases from the semantic field of corporeality and/or eroticism and their presence in four influential methodologies: structuralism, post-structuralism (as well as the perspectives related to it: deconstruction and deconstructionism), feminist criticism and gender studies discourse. The analyses reveal a significant role of metaphors in expressing and formulating the assumptions of a given methodology, as well as some paradoxes which result from the applica-tion of the presented phrases.

Cultural studies is a diversity knowledge from different variety of perspectives, through the production of theory trying to intervene in political culture. Cultural studies explores culture as a practice purport in the context of social force. In this case, cultural studies is not only based on one point only, but also cultural studies tries to compose a variety of theoretical studies of other disciplines developed wider, so that covers a wide range of academic theories that already existed, including Marxism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, and feminism. By eclectic method, cultural studies puts the positioning to all knowledges, including on its knowledge which integrates with culture, practice of signification, representation, discourse, authority, articulation, text, read, and consumption. Cultural studies could be described as a language game or formation of discourse associated with relation to power in signification practice of human life. In addition to cultural studies, there is also feminism theory participated in the concept of feminist cultural studies that reconstructs and transforms view of misperception between feminism and cultural studies. Feminism affects cultural studies, but not all feminism can be viewed as cultural studies, and not all cultural studies talks about gender. Both of cultural studies and feminism have substantive importance in relation to power, representation, pop-culture, subjectivity, identity and consumption. The theory of social construction is also has connectivity with cultural studies. Construction of reality is inseparable from mark, symbol, and language. Media are full of reality constructed for people to affect people as ethics persuasion in media do.

This study aims to explore the concepts of ‘place' and ‘place-experience' within the context of Post-phenomenology. During 70's, humanistic geographers have introduced ‘phenomenology of place' as a revolutionary approach toward place, which has been largely condemned by Marxist, Feminist and Post-Structural critiques through the last three decades. Accordingly, this study attempts to merge these place-related critiques in order to clarify a new framework titled ‘Post-phenomenology of place'. ‘Post-phenomenology', as a novel philosophical trend, is a merged school of thought, trying to re-read phenomenology based on Post-structuralism, Pragmatism and Materialism. In this study after a theoretical review on the formation of Post-phenomenology, the various aspects of place are discussed in order to clarify distinctions and paradoxes between phenomenological and Post-phenomenological understandings of place.

AbstractThis paper re-examines ideas of culture that have been dominant within the field of Aboriginal education. It draws upon feminist post-structuralism and postmodernism in order to critique the practice of dichotomising differences between Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultural practices. It uses this critique to examine current mismatch theories of differential educational location. Finally, it asks whether we need to sustain an interest in macrotheories in order to retain the ability to theorize about gender and Aboriginality across different sites.

Research in African literature articulated a number of literary and philosophical theories, particularly in the way that they can potentially undo conventional understandings of gender in the Nigerian context. This paper seeks to apply these insights in the form of a critical narratology.� Although narratology has a structuralist or formalist orientation, having its theoretical beginning in Saussure�s modern linguistics, and like structuralism, aspires to �scientific� or �universalist� claims, it, also, examines the way in which narratives affect the way we perceive the world. This paper will attempt to mobilise narratology critically, with the benefit of the insights emerging from various articles, in order to help our understanding of the question of gender and social themes in Nigerian post-colonial literature. Most especially, this paper will visualise the analysis of structural narratology and finally with feminist narratology in order to correct the inadequacies of structural narratology and the suppression of women in texts.Keywords: African literature, feminist narratology, gender identity, structural narratology

Home visiting programs for marginalized families have included both Public Health Nurses (PHNs) and Community Home Visitors (CHV). Support for families requires health care providers to implement effective communication and collaboration practices; however, few studies have examined how this is carried out. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore how an Enhanced Home Visiting (EHV) program in Nova Scotia Canada was organized, delivered through the experiences of PHNs and CHVs. Feminist post-structuralism informed by discourse analysis was used to understand how their experiences were socially and institutionally constructed. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 PHNs and 8 CHVs and one focus group was held with 10 of the participants. A social discourse on mothering layered within a social discourse of working with a vulnerable population added a deeper understanding of how communication was constructed through the everyday practices of PHNs and CHVs. Findings may be used to inform reporting and communication practices between health care providers who work with marginalized families.

AbstractBased on the author’s experience as one of the German translators ofThe Making, this article lays out its protracted and contradictory reception in Germany. When E.P. Thompson’smagnum opuswas published fifty years ago, German scholars on both sides of the Iron Curtain failed to take note of it for several years. The relatively muted reception in West Germany during the 1970s was marked by its dismissal as theory-lacking and “subjectivist”. Examining the contrasting contexts of postwar Britain, with its popular anti-fascist experience, and post-fascist West Germany helps to understand why Thompson’s “empirical idiom” of class history failed to strike a chord at the time with leading representatives of the new generation of “progressive” social historians in Germany and a broader reading public. It was only with the arrival ofAlltagsgeschichte, feminist history, and, more generally, the cultural turn in humanities thatThe Makingand its German translation became a canonical point of reference both in working-class history and the wider humanities. A brief epilogue discusses its lasting potential for a historical understanding of today’s processes of post-Cold War class formation and human rights struggles.

This article presents findings from a study undertaken by a pre-service early childhood teacher, that investigated the experiences of four beginning early childhood qualified teachers in primary school settings. The study explored the metaphors that these teachers used when describing their lived experience stories and analysed what these metaphors indicated about the discourses the teachers perceived were available to them, and where they had chosen to situate themselves within these discourses. Throughout the article, the metaphor of ‘border crossings' is used to highlight the focus within much of the literature on the difference and separation between early childhood and primary education. Data were generated through in-depth, open-ended interviews, a group discussion, visual representations and written material. The thematic recurrences and discursive positionings within the metaphors and narratives of the participants were deconstructed and critically analysed using a framework of feminist post-structuralism. In particular, this article explores the discursive positionings related to the teachers' movement within the borderland of early childhood education and primary education. It argues that early childhood teachers in primary schools are operating within an exciting space — an intersection between early childhood education and primary education. Rather than focusing on the difference and separation between these points, the focus shifts to working toward creating points of overlap, of connection — a shared borderland between early childhood education and primary education.

Walzer's work has been criticised by liberal writers on the grounds of its interpretive underpinnings, which have been equated with communitarianism. Theorists working in branches of radical political theory (such as feminism, critical theory or post-structuralism) have generally accepted this criticism and considered Walzer's work excessively conservative. Its influence on radical political theory has therefore been abbreviated. But the contention of this article is that, properly understood, the grounds on which Walzer takes issue with objectivist liberalism closely resemble those advanced within radical political theory, and therefore his work can be rescued from its conservative associations.

We need a critical theory of globalization that is necessarily trans-disciplinary and that, which does not buy into ideological valorizations and affirms difference, resistance, and democratic self-determination against forms of global domination and subordination. A wide range of theorists has argued that the proliferation of differences and the shift from the level of globalization to focus on the local, the specific, the particular, the heterogeneous, and the micro level of everyday experience. Several theories are associated with post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism and focus on difference, 'otherness', marginality, the personal, the particular, and the concrete over more general theory and politics that aim at more global or universal conditions.

Literary theories have arisen to address some perceived needs in the critical appreciation of literature but flipside theory is a novelty that fills a gap in literary theory. By means of a critical look at some literary theories particularly Formalism, Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism but also Queer theory, New Criticism, New Historicism, postcolonialism, and reader-response, this essay establishes that a gap exists, which is the lack of a literary theory that laser-focuses on depictions of victims of social existence (people who simply for reasons of where and when they are born, where they reside and other unforeseen circumstances are pushed to the margins). Flipside criticism investigates whether such people are depicted as main characters in works of literature, and if so, how they impact society in very decisive ways such as causing the rise or fall of some important people, groups or social dynamics while still characterized as flipside society rather than developed to flipview society. While flipside literary criticism can be done on any work of literature, only works that distinctively provide this kind of plot can lay claim to being flipside works. This essay also distinguishes flipside theory from others that multitask such as Marxism, which explores the economy and class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and feminism, which explores depictions of women (the rich and the poor alike) and issues of sex and gender. In addition, flipside theory underscores the point that society is equally constituted by both flipview society and flipside society like two sides of a coin.

The basic challenge of Israeli sociology always has been, and continues to be to present days, the designation of its object of study; i.e. ‘Israeli society’. The history of Israeli sociology and its conception of ‘Israeli society’ may be discerned into the five following modules: 1. Proto-sociology. In the pre-state era, sociological thought thrived within the context of the socialist Zionism. The two prominent ‘proto-sociologists' were Arthur Ruppin and Martin Buber, who professed German communal perspectives. 2. Modernization sociology. The formative phase of sociology as a discipline was from 1950 to 1977. It was led by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, who effected a transition from the German anti-modernist paradigm to an American modernization theory. 3. Critical sociology. The critical phase took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical sociology was manifested in elitism, pluralism, Marxism, feminism and colonization approaches. Simultaneously there emerged a robust branch of ‘quantitative sociology’. 4. Post-modern sociology. The turn towards post-modernity started in the 1990s. The three noticeable post-modern perspectives are: post-structuralism, post-colonialism and post-Marxism. 5. Palestinian Arab sociology in Israel. Palestinian Arab sociology is emerging and coming to its own since the 1990s. It reflects integration as well as alienation.

The feminist performance troupe the V-Girls satirized the conventions of academia and trends in deconstructionist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and feminist thought in their three performances, “Academia in the Alps: In Search of Swiss Mis(s)” (1988-92), “The Question of Manet’s Olympia: Posed and Skirted” (1989-92), and “The V-Girls: Daughters of the ReVolution,” (1993-96). In their earliest two performances, the V-Girls simultaneously identify with and question post-structuralism, suggesting that its critique of humanism’s autonomous subject actually bolsters academics’ claim to individual mastery. By explaining away her beliefs as effects of pre-existing ideologies, the V-Girls suggest, the post-structuralist academic need not risk advancing her convictions or participating in collective action. In their final performance, the V-Girls ask if second-wave feminism provides a salvageable model of the self-identified, authentic subject ready to speak out and work collaboratively. In so doing, they also reveal overlooked parallels between the humanist and second-wave feminist conception of the subject.

The article investigates the consequences for feminist politics of the neoliberal turn. Feminist scholars have analysed the political changes in the situation of women that have been brought about by neoliberalism, but their assessments of neoliberalism’s consequences for feminist theory and politics vary. Feminist thinkers such as Hester Eisenstein and Sylvia Walby have argued that feminism must now return its focus to socialist politics and foreground economic questions of redistribution in order to combat the hegemony of neoliberalism. Some have further identified post-structuralism and its dominance in feminist scholarship as being responsible for the debilitating move away from socialist or Marxist paradigms. I share their diagnosis to the extent that it is my contention that the rapid neoliberalization characterising the last thirty years has put women and feminist thought in a completely new political situation. However, in contrast to those feminist thinkers who put the blame for the current impasse on the rise of poststructuralist modes of thought, it is my contention that the poststructuralist turn in feminist theory in the 1980s and 1990s continues to represent an important theoretical advance. I will discuss Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism in order to assess the ways it can contribute to feminist theory and politics today. I contend that Foucault can provide a critical diagnostic framework for feminist theory as well as for prompting new feminist political responses to the spread and dominance of neoliberalism. I will also return to Nancy Fraser and Judith’s Butler’s seminal debate on feminist politics in the journal Social Text (1997) in order to demonstrate that a critical analysis of the economic/cultural distinction must be central when we consider feminist forms of resistance to neoliberalism.

This research note examines feminist theory from socialist feminism through the post-structural turn associated with thinkers like Foucault, Derrida and Butler to neo-materialism, this last noted for its emphasis on the body's materiality as opposed to the subject as a socially constructed or merely linguistic practice. Tracing these theoretical developments is contextualized with respect to theories and concepts such as feminist standpoint theories of epistemology, historical materialism and Baumann's "liquid modernity". I ask: have we lost sight of the strength of feminist structuralism - particularly the effects of capital - in order to accommodate multiple and complex subjectifications associated with gender? Mary O'Brien's reproductive consciousness, her argument that women's consciousness is fundamentally shaped through the different moments related to reproduction, is re-examined in light of recent developments in egg donation and surrogacy. This is not intended as an exercise in romantic longing for some sort of utopian society where femininity is venerated. Rather, it is an exploration of the potential for reproductive consciousness to guide political responses to contemporary problems raised by new reproductive technologies that combine capital and gender in a single dialectic.

The aim of this research is to apply a deconstructive approach to a short story. For this purpose, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s short story “Saleema” is selected and analyzed. Through deconstruction, the feminist reading of the story is dismantled and the power dynamics of the patriarchal Pakistani society are subverted. The research is anchored in Derrida’s concept of the unreliability of language and Cuddon’s idea of reversal of binary oppositions. The paper finds that the protagonist Saleema is not as weak and oppressed as she is perceived to be, rather she is a resilient, independent woman who uses any means possible to get what she wants. The power and authority reside with her and not with any male character. The study is purely qualitative and exploratory in nature. Keywords: Deconstruction, Post-structuralism, Feminism, Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Saleema

The aim of this research is to apply a deconstructive approach to a short story. For this purpose, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s short story “Saleema” is selected and analyzed. Through deconstruction, the feminist reading of the story is dismantled and the power dynamics of the patriarchal Pakistani society are subverted. The research is anchored in Derrida’s concept of the unreliability of language and Cuddon’s idea of reversal of binary oppositions. The paper finds that the protagonist Saleema is not as weak and oppressed as she is perceived to be, rather she is a resilient, independent woman who uses any means possible to get what she wants. The power and authority reside with her and not with any male character. The study is purely qualitative and exploratory in nature. Keywords: Deconstruction, Post-structuralism, Feminism, Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Saleema

Resumo: Este artigo pretender analisar as demandas de gênero no contexto da teoria feminista contemporânea, com especial ênfase aos trabalhos de Drucilla Cornell e Judith Butler, e a relação que guardam com certos conceitos jurídicos, como o de sujeito de direito e cidadania. Pretende destacar a especificidade dessas demandas e como devemos considerá-las no contexto das democracias liberais que vislumbram na igualdade e na liberdade valores indispensáveis. Repensar a diferença sexual e o sujeito de direito torna-se relevante. Defende-se que uma compreensão cuidadosa da dimensão sexual dos sujeitos de direito se faz importante para uma reflexão teórica em torno das condições em que os indivíduos formulam suas demandas perante o poder soberano.Palavras-chave: Pós-Estruturalismo; Gênero; Cidadania. Abstract: This article intends to analyze demands of gender within contemporary feminist theory, paying careful attention to the works of Drucilla Cornell and Judith Butler, and the possible relations that it guards with certain legal concepts such as legal subjects and citizenship. It pretends to highlight not only the particularities of these demands but also how we should considerate them in light of liberal democracies that regards freedom and equality as indispensable values. Rethinking sexual difference and legal subject becomes quite relevant for this project. We defend that a sensible understanding of the importance of the sexual domain regarding the existence of legal subjects is important for a theoretical reflection on the conditions which they formulate its political demands to the sovereign power.Keywords: Post-Structuralism; Gender; Citizenship.

Early home visits provided by public health nurses (PHNs) around the world have been proven to positively impact physical, social, emotional and mental health outcomes of mothers and babies. Most of the research has focused on home visiting programs delivered by public health nurses and lay home visitors to support <em>at</em> <em>risk</em> or <em>targeted</em> mothers. Little research has been conducted to examine <em>universal</em> home visiting programs for mothers who are perceived to be lower-risk. The purpose of this research was to explore how universal and targeted early home visiting programs for mothers and babies were organized, delivered and experienced through the everyday practices of PHNs, mothers, and managers in one city in Atlantic Canada. Feminist post-structuralism was used to collect and analyze data through semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 16 PHNs, 16 mothers and 4 managers. Personal, social and institutional discourses of program delivery were examined using discourse analysis. Four main themes of the study include: i) understanding targeted and universal programming; ii) health outcomes; iii) building relationships; and iv) exploring a new surveillance. This article will discuss the first theme; understanding targeted and universal programming.

Heterosexuality has been largely untheorised within both sociology, feminism and gay and lesbian studies, which have traditionally been focusing on hierarchical dichotomies between men and women, heterosexuality and homo- sexuality. As the most prominent tales of heterosexuality today, post-structuralism and queer theory have contributed fruitfully to the denaturalisation of heterosexuality, but have also gained a monopoly of telling stories which are neither necessarily productive in terms of the scientific integrity nor no longer helpful for people in general. The article puts forward a critique of these scientific tales, among others the work of Judith Butler, as contributing to a rather monolithic concep- tualisation focusing on heterosexuality as on- ly a ‘discourse’, an ‘institution’, an ‘identity’ or a ‘norm’. Moreover, by constructing a new binary between ‘queer’ and ‘normal’, queer theory fails to transgress the logics and con- cepts of dichotomies and identity. The article argues that people in late modern Denmark in fact no longer strictly conforms to a hete- rosexual norm and therefore, it alternatively suggests a tale of heterosexuality as ‘a tribe or community of taste’ inspired by the sociolo- gists Michel Maffesoli and Henning Bech, addressing perspectives and categories such as lust, taste, aesthetics, sociality, sensation and emotions. This new tale is not intended to re- place post-structuralism or queer theory, but as both an adequate and a very productive qualified tale, it should be supplementary in respect of the fact that heterosexuality is a multifarious phenomenon which must be studied from various angles in different con- texts.

In 1991 the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival evicted two female identified transsexual attendees on the grounds that they violated its women only policy of admittance. The Festival, established in 1976 and now the largest of its kind, turned into a "microcosm of the conflicts that have plagued the women's movement" (Rubin 18) and revived widespread debate about the place of trans and non-standard gender performances in feminist activism. A pro-trans event, aptly named Camp Trans, was held outside the Festival's gates with the aim of inciting greater interest in the area. The Festival's founder and on going organiser, Lisa Vogel, responded with a statement in 2001 claiming the "intention is for the Festival to be for womyn-born womyn, meaning people who were born and have lived their entire life experience as female" (Vogel 2000). This resulted in the exclusion of not only trans individuals, but also a plethora of non-conventional gender identities. Bitter debate ensued, revealing the Festival's role not just in appealing to a defined, recognisable demographic, but in constructing and maintaining an entire category of identity. My initial encounters with the Festival occurred through independent media and the internet. It become particularly widely debated after artists from the Queer orientated Mr Lady record label (most famously Le Tigre, fronted by riot grrl icon Kathleen Hanna) confirmed that they would perform at the event, despite knowledge of the anti-trans policy. Perhaps the most poignant reflection came from Ciara Xyerra's 2001 zine A Renegade's Handbook To Love And Sabotage. She comments that the Festival's intent was to provide "not only just a 'safe space' for women, but specifically for 'womyn born womyn.'" […] this essentialist logic is […] flawed in that it assumes every "womyn born womyn" was socialized in exactly the same way, that differences regarding race, class, ability, personal history, have no bearing on how a woman perceives herself as a woman […](69). Certainly the revised womyn born womyn label is a problematic way of dealing with the situation. The standard woman is assumed not to encounter trans issues, at least not in a way that impacts on her sense of gendered self. This issue provokes comparisons to the race debates that wreaked havoc through US feminism in early eighties. The sentiments of the Camp Trans protest echo Audre Lorde's 1984 criticism that: As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define women in terms of their experience alone, then women of Color become 'other', the outsider whose experience is too alien to comprehend (632). In retrospect what remains most striking about the race debates is how incredibly poorly they were handled. The period is marked by a tendency towards splinter and separatist groups, evident in the writing of people like bell hooks and Mary Daly. Communication between various factions collapsed amid accusations of racism and ignorance of the wider struggle, leaving ruptures still visible today. (Gubar 884-890) The emphasis has shifted from presumed racial background to presumed biological characteristics, but at its core this is the same argument about which performances of self are given legitimacy, and which are passed off as outside the interests of the feminist community. Indeed the Festival's anti-trans policy can also be traced back to the early 1980's, stemming from clashes between separatists and post-operative transsexuals entering feminist activism. In both instances there has been an assumption that the majority of members within the community experience the world from a common perspective, a collective sense of self at the core of the movement, outlining its wider agenda. I am reminded of Gayatri Spivak's comment that "We take the explanations we produce to be the grounds of our action; they are endowed with coherence in terms of our explanation of self" (In Other Worlds 104). Conflict arises when internal factions find their concerns being overlooked, and begin questioning exactly whose experience is taken as the model for the collective self. There is a tendency towards viewing this as a threat to the movement's solidarity. In an effort to maintain wider group cohesion, divergent voices are often dealt with by claiming they arise from entirely different strains of selfhood. New identities, or at the least hyphenated subcategories, proliferate under "the essentialist's claim that there must be an ultimate (that is, comprehensive), complete, consistent, coherent set of types" (Spinosa and Dreyfus 72). These redefinitions explain and dispel difference without actually addressing it. It would be naive to assume this sort of essentialism exists only for the Festival and older activist methodology. While Queer theory has certainly given us new tools for understanding the issues, its practical application does not necessarily avoid "knitting out more fashionably an otherwise reconstructed […] essentialism" (Jagose). As people like Martha Nussbaum and Benita Parry have argued, if somewhat problematically, there is a fine line between fluidity and dissolution. Activist and liberal scepticism towards deconstructive methodology contains an at least reasonably justified trepidation towards tinkering with political communities which have proved historically successful. The unfortunate revival of the 'old school' activism versus 'new school' theory attitude, itself founded on an essentialist belief in a single, correct ideological stance, has further complicated matters. Festival attendee Janel Smith, writing for one of the bastions of 'old school' activism, Off Our Backs, voiced activist scepticism when commenting that post structuralism is "an entire movement and theory […] designed to debunk these 'myths' about gender and racial identity." She continues: We often make sense of other people by categorizing them into labels and boxes that we ourselves feel comfortable with. Dominant discourse tends to dismiss this process as inherently negative, one that limits people and their understanding of self and projected identity (17). The criticism of dominant academic discourse is worth consideration. If it "is not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak" (Foucault 130), we need to be acutely aware of the way we act within culture, and wary of any movement which claims to fully recognise and transcend its boundaries. Our treatment of identity needs to "avoid the mistake of slipping between 'no absolute truth' and 'absolutely no truth,'" as Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield and Reece Plunkett suggest. From the alternate perspective, Aviva Rubin argues "our activism is characterized by seemingly incompatible inclinations to generalize and to particularize" (17). She writes that the Festival's attempt to develop a "theoretical 'she'" with which we "identify sameness – she shares our politics, our goals, our place" is fundamentally flawed as "the notion collapses when confronted with the differences we've deliberately ignored" (8). This leaves the situation double bound. A standard sense of gendered self provides unity and a workable common agenda, but comes into conflict with the identities it has excluded from its definition. The unified self combats repression, but, as Judith Butler so aptly puts it, "exclusion operates prior to repression" (71). However there are certainly areas of common ground. Rubin's "plea for grey", or an area "between absolutes," (20) is remarkably similar to Smith's endeavour to exist "somewhere in-between butch and femme" (14). Yet, for the Festival, that difference was enough to cause a gap between those who found it "an atmosphere of unparalleled safety" (Smith 13) and the pro-trans attendees who felt they needed "an escort to get out safely after darkness fell" (Wilchins 2000). As these relative similarities exist, it is disappointing to see that the arising differences have met with such aggressively negative reactions. Given the unlikeliness of everyone agreeing on a definitive understanding in the near future, it would seem beneficial to shift the focus away from searches for correct identities and ideologies, and develop new approaches to the debates themselves. I am again reminded of a comment from Gayatri Spivak, this time from her 1992 essay "More on Power/Knowledge". She comments that "if the lines of making sense of something are laid down in a certain way, then you are able to do only those things with that something which are possible within and by arrangement of those lines" (151). This is as true for our concepts of self as it is for any other issue. If we cannot reach outside of the structures of culture to find more universally true categories, or expect an ideological stance to present entirely new and more correct understandings, how we handle the arising debate is of major importance. Homi Bhabha's comment that "our political references and priorities […] are not there in some primordial, naturalistic sense" (26) does not necessarily render them null and void. There is a difference between needing to debate an identity or ideology, and needing to discard or reinvent it. Instead of looking for a true model of self or a correct ideology, the problem becomes looking at the cultural structure we have, trying to "recognise it as best one can and, through one's necessarily inadequate interpretation, to work to change it" (Spivak 1988 120). From this perspective the conflict that emerges from the Festival is as important as the possibilities for final resolution. Rather than treating differences as immediate problems and being "shocked, disappointed and instantly sidetracked into seeking resolution" (Rubin 20), it seems possible to consider the debate important in its own right. In practice this would mean keeping the lines of communication between the various factions open, and treating debate as an integral and on going process, rather than an unwelcome confrontation to be settled as quickly and quietly as possible. The commitment of the Camp Trans protesters to "workshops to educate festival goers" (Wilchins 2000), and their modest success, indicates that maintaining ongoing debate is a workable and productive approach. On the other hand Vogel's unwillingness to talk to the Camp Trans group is perhaps as open to criticism as her definitions of gender identity. Surely if a definitive concept of self cannot be settled upon easily, the lines of communication between Camp Trans and the Festival can at least be expected to keep the search from stagnating. The role the Festival has served as "a locus of political and cultural debate" (Delany) combined with its relatively successful negotiations of class and race issues indicates that it can play this role successfully. Although the womyn born womyn policy might not have changed, it is difficult to imagine many other platforms on which trans related debates could occur on such a large scale. In light of this it does not seem unrealistic to think of the debate as beneficial in ensuring continued rethinking of the issues, and not just as part of some potential revision or creation of identities which will hopefully be completed some time in the future. References Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. 1994 London: Routledge. 2000. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999. Delany, Anngel. "Michigan Womyn's Music Festival celebrates 25 years of controversy." Gay.Com (2002) May 10th, 2002. http://content.gay.com/people/women_spac... Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A Sheridan Smith. Ed. R.D Laing, London: Routledge, 2000. Gubar, Susan. "What Ails Feminist Criticism?" Critical Inquiry 24.4 (1998): 878-903. Jagose, Annamarie. "Queer Theory." Australian Humanities Review 4 (1996) http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archiv... (28-6-02). Lorde, Audre. "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference". Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 4th Ed. Malden: Blackwell, 1998: 630-636. Newman, Felicity, Summerfield, Tracy and Plunkett, Reece. "Three Cultures from the 'Inside': or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go Into This Bar…" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/count.... (28-5-02) Nussbaum, Martha. "The Professor of Parody: The Hip Defeatism of Judith Butler." The New Republic 22 Feb. 1999: 38-45. Parry, Benita. "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse." Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987) 27-58. Rubin, Aviva. "The Search for Grey: an agree-to-disagree." Canadian Dimensions 31.5 (1997) 17-21. Smith, Janel. "Identity Crisis: Fuches Rise up and Unite." Off Our Backs 30.9 (2000): 13-20. Spinosa, Charles and Hubert Dreyfus. "Two Kinds of Antiessentialism and Their Consequences." Critical Inquiry 22.4 (1996) 735-764. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravority. In Other Worlds. London: Routledge, 1988. ---, "More On Power/Knowledge." The Spivak Reader. Ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean. New York: Routledge, 1996: 141-174. Vogel, Lisa. "Official Statement of Policy by MWMF." (2000).http://www.camptrans.com/press/2000_mwmf... (30-6-2002). Wilchins, Riki Ann. Interview with In Your Face. (2000) http://www.camptrans.com/stories/intervi... (30-6-02). Xyerra, Ciara. A Renegades Handbook to Love and Sabotage 4. Madford: Independently Published, 2001. Links http://www.camptrans.com/ http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.html http://www.camptrans.com/stories/interview.html http://www.camptrans.com/press/2000_mwmf.html http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Dec-1996/jagose.html http://content.gay.com/people/women_space/michigan_000807.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Ware, Ianto. "Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt. Chicago Style Ware, Ianto, "Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Ware, Ianto. (2002) Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Ware.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Sometimes ... we don’t want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake (Nigella Lawson, How to be a Domestic Goddess vii). IntroductionFor today’s female readers, the idea of trailing “nutmeggy fumes” of home-baked pie through their kitchens could be as much a source of gender-stereotyping outrage as one of desire or longing. Regardless of personal response, there seems little doubt that the image Lawson’s words create prevails even in the 21st century: an apron-clad, kitchen-bound woman, cooking for others as an expression of love and communication. This is particularly true of contemporary cookbooks written by and aimed at women. Two examples are Sophie Dahl’s Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights (2010) and Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess (2000). This paper explores how Dahl and Lawson use three narrative strategies—sequence, description and voice—to frame their recipes; it also analyses how these narrative strategies encourage readers to embrace traditional constructs of domestic femininity, albeit in a contemporary and celebratory light. The authors’ use of these strategies also makes their cookbooks more than simply instruction manuals—instead, they become engaging and pleasurable texts that use memoir, humour and nostalgia to convey their recipes and create distinct authorial personas and cultural ideas about food and femininity. While primary purpose of cookbooks is to instruct, what makes them distinctive—and, arguably, so popular—is their mix of pleasure and utility. The stories they tell, both cultural and personal, are what make us continue to buy and read them, despite bookshelves that may already bend beneath the weight of three hundred different versions of chicken risotto and chocolate cake; as Anne Bower notes, many women read cookbooks for escapism and enjoyment. This concept of escapism and enjoyment is closely tied to the role of narrative. Cognitive narratology, a more recent strand of narrative theory, emphasises what readers bring to a text, and how narrative allows readers to frame and understand texts and the world around them. Therefore, cookbooks that situate their recipes among personal anecdotes and familiar cultural ideals or myths—such as the woman in the kitchen—appeal to our experiences and emotions. Cookbooks thus become engaging and resonant on personal and sociocultural levels: Gvion argues that cookbooks are “social texts” (54), which seems appropriate when considering the meanings we ascribe to food—it remains a fundamental part of our culture and identity (Lupton). Certain cookbooks—those that emphasise the social and emotional aspects of what we consume—can be regarded as a reflection of how we attach meanings to foods in particular contexts (Mintz). The books discussed in this paper combine the societal and personal aspects of this process: their authors blend familiar cultural tropes with their own engaging autobiographical anecdotes using sequence, description and voice. Narrative theory has traditionally been applied to fiction, and cookbooks obviously lack fictional elements such as plot and character. However, cognitivist narratology, which directs its focus to humans’ cognitive understanding and perception of various actions and events (Fludernik, Histories), makes it applicable to a range of texts. Cookbooks’ use of sequence, description, and voice create “storyworlds” for readers, which “can be viewed as [a] global mental representation enabling interpreters to draw inferences about items and occurrences either explicitly or implicitly included in a narrative” (Herman 9). Cookbook authors use memories, anecdotes and imagery to conjure scenes to which readers can aspire or relate, perhaps prompting responses similar to those experienced when reading fiction.Prince characterises narrative as a “representation of events in a time sequence” (82). The sequence of information and anecdotes in a cookbook—its introduction, chapter structure and recipe structure—positions readers to read and interpret the text in a particular way; it is both part of how the texts authors construct a sense of self and of how they encourage readers to construct their own meanings in response. Dahl, for example, arranges her recipes according to season, since she places great importance on seasonal eating. Description is the cornerstone of any successful cookbook, since it becomes impossible to successfully replicate a dish if you cannot make sense of the instructions. However, in a narrative sense, description operates as part of a narrator’s “rhetorical strategy” (Bal 36); it helps construct their narrative persona and enables them to reinforce the associations between food, culture and identity in evocative language. Voice is the final piece of the narrative puzzle. These cookbooks are all “narrated” by their authors, who offer selected anecdotes and stories to support their authorial intentions and position readers to interpret their texts in a particular way. Feminist narratologist Susan Lanser regards voice as the “intersection of social identity and textual form” (14), a definition that recognises the broader social and cultural significance of cookbooks. Since they tend to be narrated “directly” from author to readers, authorial voice serves not only to engage readers, but also to establish authors’ culinary authority. The two cookbooks analysed here are written by—and, arguably, primarily aimed at—women, and this paper contends that their authors use narrative to reclaim a powerful sense of feminine ownership. While they are just two of many contemporary cookbooks that arguably strive to achieve similar ends (Tessa Kiros’s 2010 Apples for Jam, and Monica Trapaga’s 2010 She’s Leaving Home, are two recent Australian examples), Dahl’s and Lawson’s texts are apt case studies: both are commercially successful and their authors occupy a significant space in the public imagination, particularly where women’s identity is concerned. Dahl is a former plus-size model who lost weight “rather publicly” (Dahl xi) and whose book charts the evolution of her complex relationship with food; Lawson’s books and cooking programs have seen her variously characterised as “prefeminist housewife … antifeminist Stepford wife … the saviour of downshifting middle-class career women and as both the negative and positive product of postfeminism” (Hollows 180). Dahl and Lawson narrate the knowledge and skill of their recipes in a context of experiences and memories related to their lives as mothers and/or partners and food professionals, which underscores the weight of their kitchen authority as women while still maintaining that rather mythic connection between the feminine and domestic. Sequence The introductory pages and internal structure of each book reflects both its author’s intentions, and the persona they construct within the text that speaks directly to readers. It also foregrounds the link between women and food. The link between this domesticity and feminine identity is explicit in both texts. Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights is a food memoir as well as a cookbook, and Dahl’s use of narrative sequence makes this clear: in her introduction, she reveals that “the second word I ever spoke was ‘crunch,’ muddled baby-speak for fudge” (viii). Interspersed between the book’s four sections (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer) are essays that chart Dahl’s evolving relationship with food and cooking, framed particularly in terms of her female identity: they detail her progression from a plump-cheeked teenager unhappy about carrying a few extra pounds to a woman at ease with her body and appetite who cannot “get away from the siren call of the kitchen” (15). Dahl often introduces her recipes with reference to their personal significance, particularly in relation to cooking as an act of love or communication—“Musician’s Breakfast,” for example, is so named because it is a favourite of her boyfriend, jazz musician Jamie Cullum (152). Lawson’s book is ostensibly more practical—her chapters are arranged according to types of dish, such cakes or biscuits. She also explicitly summons the familiar vision of the woman at home in the kitchen. Although she draws on the clichéd image of the domestic goddess, her preface seems aimed at making female readers feel at ease. For example, she writes that she does not want her audience to think of baking as a “land you do not inhabit” or to “confine you to kitchen quarters” (vii); rather, her aim is to make them “feel” (vii) like a domestic goddess rather than be one, an act that might be interpreted as an attempt to put a more contemporary spin on a dated archetype.Nonetheless, throughout Lawson’s book, the prose that introduces her recipes draws on those associations between baking and homely comfort: cake-baking “implies effort and domestic prowess,” (2) but is easy in practice, and baking loaf cakes makes one feel “humble and worthy and brimming with good things” (5). Again, Lawson’s own experience—particularly as a busy mother and career woman—shapes the introductory words for each recipe and establishes a sense of her authorial persona in relation to broader social constructs of food and the feminine. Description Vivid, evocative descriptions of food and food-related memories and experiences are an integral part of what makes these texts narratively engaging, and how they continue to enforce and idealise that connection between the feminine and the domestic. Both authors frequently describe food in terms that create concepts of cosy domesticity: Lawson describes baking as a metaphor for “familial warmth” (vii), and for Dahl, roast chicken “is Sunday ... there’s something about that smell wafting through the house” (53). A distinct sense of nostalgia is at play here; as Linda Hutcheon observes, one can “look and reject” or “look and linger longingly” (online), and this apparent yearning to return to simpler times summons a “mythical past of comfort and stability” (Duruz 57), seemingly embodied in images of wholesome foods cooked for us by mothers or wives. This idea of food as emotionally nourishing is frequently related in terms of the author’s duties as domestic providers and as women who occasionally—and by choice—inhabit traditional female roles. However, Lawson and Dahl reveal the tensions between past and present: while they embrace the pleasures of old-fashioned domesticity, they do not—and cannot—wholly recreate it. Instead, they must balance it with other priorities, making space for a more liberated and contemporary female home cook who can choose to occupy a place at the stove. Of course, the title of Lawson’s book—and the wording of its preface, quoted at the start of this paper—refers explicitly to the old-fashioned idea of the domestic goddess. But Lawson aims to update or demystify the concept for today’s busy women: she expresses the view that many have become “alienated” from the domestic sphere, but that “it can actually make us feel better to claim back some of that space, make it comforting rather than frightening” (vii). While she summons very traditional images—for example, “a pie is just what we all know should be emanating from the kitchen of a domestic goddess” (81)—she also puts a new spin on them, perhaps in an attempt to make them seem less patronising or intimidating while still enforcing how satisfying it can be to feel like a domestic goddess without slaving in the kitchen. She frequently emphasises the simplicity of her recipes and describes food in terms of the pleasure it brings the cook as well as those for whom she is cooking: while baking bread brings “crucial satisfaction, that warm feeling of homespun achievement,” she also notes that “my way of baking bread is designed to fit more easily into the sort of lives we lead” (291). As Hollows notes, the “Nigella cooking philosophy” is that “cooking should be pleasurable and should start from the desire to eat” (182), a concept far removed from the traditional construct of women as “providers of food for others” who have difficulty “experiencing food as pleasurable themselves, particularly in a domestic context” (184). Dahl also emphasises pleasure, ease and practicality, and describes food in terms of its nostalgic and emotional associations, particularly in relation to her female relatives. As a child, Dahl attended boarding school, and on the last night of her holidays—before she returned to terrible school food, with its “gristly stew, grey Scotch eggs and collapsed beetroot” (7)—her mother would cook her a special dinner, and she remembers feasting on “roast chicken wrapped in bacon with tarragon creeping wistfully over its breast, potatoes golden and gloriously crispy on the outside and flaking softly from within” (7). Although Dahl’s mother taught her the importance of “cooking for your man,” this very old-fashioned idea is presented in a tongue-in-cheek way, with the caveat, “woe betide any man who doesn’t appreciate it” (73). Again, the act of cooking is described as something that brings intense domestic satisfaction, and represents a conscious choice to relive the past in a contemporary, and perhaps slightly ironic (albeit still enjoyable), context: making tawny granola “makes one feel very fifties housewife, because as it bakes the house is bathed in a warm cinnamon-y glow” (25). Such descriptions of food and cooking are both evocative and romantic, even while they emphasise convenience and practicality. This perhaps reflects the realities of modern life for busy modern women juggling work and family commitments; it emphasises that tension between the ideal of the past and the reality of the present. While Lawson and Dahl still idealise the correlation between women, food and the domestic, drawing on familiar and perhaps comforting associations, they nonetheless manage to make their cookbooks both narratively engaging and culturally revealing: as Susan Leonardi points out, recipes are an exchange between reader and writer, and they require “a recommendation, a context ... a reason to be” (340). Descriptions of memories, emotions and sensations in relation to cooking and women’s identity help to create a particular narrative “storyworld” (Herman 9) or familiar context; the authors here describe experiences that are likely to resonate with female readers to enforce that connection between women and their kitchens. Since they draw so heavily on their authors’ lives, these cookbooks are almost forms of life narrative; by drawing on their own recollections to appeal to readers and share recipes, their narrators are “performing several rhetorical acts, justifying their own perceptions, conveying cultural information” (Smith and Watson 10). This is a fundamental aspect of narrative voice: who “speaks” in the text (Genette 185). Voice Both authors use their identity as women and home cooks to enforce the feminine/domestic connection and relate to their audience. They each create a distinct narrating voice or authorial persona that speaks directly to readers and aims to win their trust and sympathy. Lawson positions herself as a busy mother and wife; Dahl focuses on her evolving relationship with food, particularly in the context of her former career as a plus-size model and her subsequent weight loss. Both women share cooking anecdotes, and often, significantly, their kitchen failures—Dahl’s recipe for asparagus soup reveals that one of her attempts at trialling the recipe resulted in soup spurting from her blender, “covering me, the walls and floor in a thick slick of green” (168). Both women write as passionate home cooks: what seems most important is a love of food and what it represents, the joy of cooking as much as the culinary skill it may require. Lanser writes that “the authority of a given voice or text is produced from a conjunction of social and rhetorical properties” (6), and both Dahl’s and Lawson’s authority comes from their domestic experience and their roles as women who cook for themselves and for the pleasure it brings them as much as for their families. Although they advocate this sense of enjoyment over duty, there remains in each text a distinctly romantic idea of what it means to cook; specifically, to be a female home cook. This is most explicit in how Dahl and Lawson narrate their texts, particularly in terms of the confidences they share. Both confess their shortcomings in relaxed and informal tones: Lawson writes about an occasion when she found herself in “dire straits” when trying to make marzipan (6), and confesses to being a “negligent mother” because all she does with her children is cook with them (209); Dahl says that she “would plant tarragon in my garden in London, but the neighbour’s cat is partial to peeing on every herb I have” (58). Both imbue their actual recipes, as well as the prose that surrounds them, with a very personal tone, offering tips and advice drawn from their own experience: Dahl advises readers to “go by instinct and taste, adding or taking away as you want” (52) and Lawson suggests leaving “a decent amount of uncooked cake batter in the bowl for scraping-out purposes” (183). Conclusion Pasupathi’s work on constructing identity in storytelling, and how recounting stories becomes a way of establishing a sense of self, is particularly relevant here; a similar concept is evident in cookbooks. Lawson and Dahl choose familiar life stories and situations that readers, (particularly female), might recognise and engage with. As Fludernik observes, narrators are integral to narrative texts, since they help to establish narrative meaning and interest (An Introduction to Narratology). The narrating voices of Dahl’s and Lawson’s cookbooks foreground their identity as women and home cooks to highlight experiences and issues relevant to women. All three of the narrative strategies discussed in this paper contribute to this. Both texts do, to a degree, enforce cultural stereotypes—most obviously, the idea of a woman’s kitchen as a kind of natural habitat—but they also emphasise the pleasures of cooking. Despite the clichéd imagery and heavy nostalgia, Dahl’s and Lawson’s appropriation of the domestic goddess image exposes and reconfigures the contradictions between the idealised past and more liberated present; offering female readers and cooks “beguiling possibilities … for re-enactment” (Duruz 57). Lawson and Dahl’s use of narrative strategies not only makes their texts more engaging to read, but reflects the social and cultural relevance of cookbooks, and how they can embody and reshape our engrained values and ideas. In their own way, they seek to affirm the female domestic experience and position it as something celebratory rather than oppressive. Perhaps no one puts it so aptly as Lawson: “I know the idea of being in the kitchen faffing around with bottles and jars and hot pans might seem confining to many, but honestly, I have found it liberating. The sense of connectedness you get, with your kitchen, your home, your food, is the very opposite of constraint” (334). This seems an apt reflection of cookbooks’ narrative power and ability to explore fundamental social and cultural ideas; they engage us, inspire us and entertain us. References Bal, Mieke. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997. Bower, Anne. “Romanced by Cookbooks.” Gastronomica 4.2 (2004): 35–42. Dahl, Sophie. Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights. London: HarperCollins, 2009. Duruz, Jean. “Haunted Kitchens: Cooking and Remembering.” Gastronomica 4.1 (2004): 57–68. Fludernik, Monica. An Introduction to Narratology. New York: Routledge, 2009. Fludernik, Monica. “Histories of Narrative (II): From Structuralism to the Present.” A Companion to Narrative Theory. Eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Hoboken: Blackwell, 2005. Blackwell Reference Online. 4 Apr. 2013. Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. New York: Cornell UP, 1980. Gvion, Liora. “What’s Cooking in America? Cookbooks Narrate Ethnicity: 1850–1990.” Food, Culture, and Society 7.1 (2004): 53–76. Herman, David. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Hollows, Joanne. “Feeling Like a Domestic Goddess: Postfeminism and Cooking.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6.2 (2003): 179–202. Hutcheon, Linda. “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern.” U of Toronto English Library, 1998. 21 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hutchinp.html›. Lanser, Susan. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. New York: Cornell UP, 1992. Lawson, Nigella. How to be a Domestic Goddess. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000. Leonardi, Susan. “Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster á la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie.” Modern Language Association 104.3 (1989): 340–47. Lupton, Deborah. “Food and Emotion.” The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Berg, 2005. 317–24. Mintz, Sidney. “Sweetness and Meaning.” The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Berg, 2005. 110–22. Pasupathi, Monisha. “Silk from Sow’s Ears: Collaborative Construction of Everyday Selves in Everyday Stories.” Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative. Ed. Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich. Vol. 4. Washington, DC: APA, 2006. 129–50. Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton, 1982. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.

What is the countercultural potential of citizen science? As a participant in the wider citizen science movement, I can attest that contemporary citizen science initiatives rarely characterise themselves as countercultural. Rather, the goal of most citizen science projects is to be seen as producing orthodox scientific knowledge: the ethos is respectability rather than rebellion (NERC). I will suggest instead that there are resonances with the counterculture that emerged in the 1960s, most visibly through an emphasis on participatory experimentation and the principles of environmental sustainability and social justice. This will be illustrated by example, through two citizen science projects that have a commitment to combining social values with scientific practice. I will then describe the explicitly countercultural organisation, Science for the People, which arose from within the scientific community itself, out of opposition to the Vietnam War. Methodological and conceptual weaknesses in the authoritative model of science are explored, suggesting that there is an opportunity for citizen science to become anti-hegemonic by challenging the hegemony of science itself. This reformulation will be expressed through Deleuze and Guattari's notion of nomadic science, the means through which citizen science could become countercultural. Counterculture Before examining the countercultural potential of citizen science, I set out some of the grounds for identifying a counterculture drawing on the ideas of Theodore Roszak, who invented the term counterculture to describe the new forms of youth movements that emerged in the 1960s (Roszak). This was a perspective that allowed the carnivalesque procession of beatniks, hippies and the New Left to be seen as a single paradigm shift combining psychic and social revolution. But just as striking and more often forgotten is the way Roszak characterised the role of the counterculture as mobilising a vital critique of the scientific worldview (Roszak 273-274). The concept of counterculture has been taken up in diverse ways since its original formation. We can draw, for example, on Lawrence Grossberg's more contemporary analysis of counterculture (Grossberg) to clarify the main concepts and contrast them with a scientific approach. Firstly, a counterculture works on and through cultural formations. This positions it as something the scientific community would see as the other, as the opposite to the objective, repeatable and quantitative truth-seeking of science. Secondly, a counterculture is a diverse and hybrid space without a unitary identity. Again, scientists would often see science as a singular activity applied in modulated forms depending on the context, although in practice the different sciences can experience each other as different tribes. Thirdly, a counterculture is lived as a transformative experience where the participant is fundamentally changed at a psychic level through participation in unique events. Contrast this with the scientific idea of the separation of observer and observed, and the objective repeatability of the experiment irrespective of the experimenter. Fourthly, a counterculture is associated with a unique moment in time, a point of shift from the old to the new. For the counterculture of the 1960s this was the Age of Aquarius. In general, the aim of science and scientists is to contribute to a form of truth that is essentially timeless, in that a physical law is assumed to hold across all time (and space), although science also has moments of radical change with regard to scientific paradigms. Finally, and significantly for the conclusions of this paper, according to Roszak a counterculture stands against the mainstream. It offers a challenge not at the level of detail but, to the fundamental assumptions of the status quo. This is what “science” cannot do, in as much as science itself has become the mainstream. It was the character of science as the bedrock of all values that Roszak himself opposed and for which he named and welcomed the counterculture. Although critical of some of the more shallow aspects of its psychedelic experimentation or political militancy, he shared its criticism of the technocratic society (the technocracy) and the egocentric mode of consciousness. His hope was that the counterculture could help restore a visionary imagination along with a more human sense of community. What Is Citizen Science? In recent years the concept of citizen science has grown massively in popularity, but is still an open and unstable term with many variants. Current moves towards institutionalisation (Citizen Science Association) are attempting to marry growth and stabilisation, with the first Annual General Meeting of the European Citizen Science Association securing a tentative agreement on the common principles of citizen science (Haklay, "European"). Key papers and presentations in the mainstream of the movement emphasise that citizen science is not a new activity (Bonney et al.) with much being made of the fact that the National Audubon Society started its annual Christmas Bird Count in 1900 (National Audubon Society). However, this elides the key role of the Internet in the current surge, which takes two distinct forms; the organisation of distributed fieldwork, and the online crowdsourcing of data analysis. To scientists, the appeal of citizen science fieldwork follows from its distributed character; they can research patterns over large scales and across latitudes in ways that would be impossible for a researcher at a single study site (Toomey). Gathering together the volunteer, observations are made possible by an infrastructure of web tools. The role of the citizen in this is to be a careful observer; the eyes and ears of the scientist in cyberspace. In online crowdsourcing, the internet is used to present pattern recognition tasks; enrolling users in searching images for signs of new planets or the jets of material from black holes. The growth of science crowdsourcing is exponential; one of the largest sites facilitating this kind of citizen science now has well in excess of a million registered users (Zooniverse). Such is the force of the technological aura around crowdsourced science that mainstream publications often conflate it with the whole of citizen science (Parr). There are projects within citizen science which share core values with the counterculture as originally defined by Roszak, in particular open participation and social justice. These projects also show characteristics from Grossberg's analysis of counterculture; they are diverse and hybrid spaces, carry a sense of moving from an old era to a new one, and have cultural forms of their own. They open up the full range of the scientific method to participation, including problem definition, research design, analysis and action. Citizen science projects that aim for participation in all these areas include the Extreme Citizen Science research group (ExCiteS) at University College London (UCL), the associated social enterprise Mapping for Change (Mapping for Change), and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab). ExCiteS sees its version of citizen science as "a situated, bottom-up practice" that "takes into account local needs, practices and culture". Public Lab, meanwhile, argue that many citizen science projects only offer non-scientists token forms of participation in scientific inquiry that rarely amount to more that data collection and record keeping. They counter this through an open process which tries to involve communities all the way from framing the research questions, to prototyping tools, to collating and interpreting the measurements. ExCiteS and Public Lab also share an implicit commitment to social justice through scientific activity. The Public Lab mission is to "put scientific inquiry at the heart of civic life" and the UCL research group strive for "new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world". All of their work is framed by environmental sustainability and care for the planet, whether it's enabling environmental monitoring by indigenous communities in the Congo (ExCiteS) or developing do-it-yourself spectrometry kits to detect crude oil pollution (Public Lab, "Homebrew"). Having provided a case for elements of countercultural DNA being present in bottom-up and problem-driven citizen science, we can contrast this with Science for the People, a scientific movement that was born out of the counterculture. Countercultural Science from the 1970s: Science for the People Science for the People (SftP) was a scientific movement seeded by a rebellion of young physicists against the role of US science in the Vietnam War. Young members of the American Physical Society (APS) lobbied for it to take a position against the war but were heavily criticised by other members, whose written complaints in the communications of the APS focused on the importance of scientific neutrality and the need to maintain the association's purely scientific nature rather than allowing science to become contaminated by politics (Sarah Bridger, in Plenary 2, 0:46 to 1:04). The counter-narrative from the dissidents argued that science is not neutral, invoking the example of Nazi science as a justification for taking a stand. After losing the internal vote the young radicals left to form Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), which later became Science for the People (SftP). As well as opposition to the Vietnam War, SftP embodied from the start other key themes of the counterculture, such as civil rights and feminism. For example, the first edition of Science for the People magazine (appearing as Vol. 2, No. 2 of the SESPA Newsletter) included an article about leading Black Panther, Bobby Seale, alongside a piece entitled “Women Demand Equality in Science.” The final articles in the same issue are indicators of SftP's dual approach to science and change; both the radicalisation of professionals (“Computer Professionals for Peace”) and the demystification of technical practices (“Statistics for the People”) (Science for the People). Science for the People was by no means just a magazine. For example, their technical assistance programme provided practical support to street health clinics run by the Black Panthers, and brought SftP under FBI surveillance (Herb Fox, in Plenary 1, 0:25 to 0:35). Both as a magazine and as a movement, SftP showed a tenacious longevity, with the publication being produced every two months between August 1970 and May/June 1989. It mutated through a network of affiliated local groups and international links, and was deeply involved in constructing early critiques of nuclear power and genetic determinism. SftP itself seems to have had a consistent commitment to non-hierarchical processes and, as one of the founders expressed it, a “shit kicking” approach to putting its principles in to practice (Al Weinrub, in Plenary 1, 0:25 to 0:35). SftP criticised power, front and centre. It is this opposition to hegemony that puts the “counter” into counterculture, and is missing from citizen science as currently practised. Cracks in the authority of orthodox science, which can be traced to both methodologies and basic concepts, follow in this paper. These can be seen as an opportunity for citizen science to directly challenge orthodox science and thus establish an anti-hegemonic stance of its own. Weaknesses of Scientific Hegemony In this section I argue that the weaknesses of scientific hegemony are in proportion to its claims to authority (Feyerabend). Through my scientific training as an experimental particle physicist I have participated in many discussions about the ontological and epistemological grounds for scientific authority. While most scientists choose to present their practice publicly as an infallible machine for the production of truths, the opinions behind the curtain are far more mixed. Physicist Lee Somolin has written a devastating critique of science-in-practice that focuses on the capture of the institutional economy of science by an ideological grouping of string theorists (Smolin), and his account is replete with questions about science itself and ethnographic details that bring to life the messy behind-the-scenes conflicts in scientific-knowledge making. Knowledge of this messiness has prompted some citizen science advocates to take science to task, for example for demanding higher standards in data consistency from citizen science than is often the case in orthodox science (Haklay, "Assertions"; Freitag, "Good Science"). Scientists will also and invariably refer to reproducibility as the basis for the authority of scientific truths. The principle that the same experiments always get the same results, irrespective of who is doing the experiment, and as long as they follow the same method, is a foundation of scientific objectivity. However, a 2012 study of landmark results in cancer science was able to reproduce only 11 per cent of the original findings (Begley and Ellis). While this may be an outlier case, there are broader issues with statistics and falsification, a bias on positive results, weaknesses in peer review and the “publish or perish” academic culture (The Economist). While the pressures are all-too-human, the resulting distortions are rarely acknowledged in public by scientists themselves. On the other hand, citizen science has been slow to pick up the gauntlet. For example, while some scientists involved in citizen science have commented on the inequality and inappropriateness of orthodox peer review for citizen science papers (Freitag, “What Is the Role”) there has been no direct challenge to any significant part of the scientific edifice. I argue that the nearest thing to a real challenge to orthodox science is the proposal for a post-normal science, which pre-dates the current wave of citizen science. Post-normal science tries to accommodate the philosophical implications of post-structuralism and at the same time position science to tackle problems such as climate change, intractable to reproducibility (Funtowicz and Ravetz). It accomplishes this by extending the domains in which science can provide meaningful answers to include issues such as global warming, which involve high decision stakes and high uncertainty. It extends traditional peer review into an extended peer community, which includes all the stakeholders in an issue, and may involve active research as well as quality assessment. The idea of extended peer review has obvious overlaps with community-oriented citizen science, but has yet to be widely mobilised as a theoretical buttress for citizen-led science. Prior even to post-normal science are the potential cracks in the core philosophy of science. In her book Cosmopolitics, Isabelle Stengers characterises the essential nature of scientific truth as the ability to disqualify and exclude other truth claims. This, she asserts, is the hegemony of physics and its singular claim to decide what is real and what is true. Stengers traces this, in part, to the confrontation more than one hundred years ago between Max Planck and Ernst Mach, whereas the latter argued that claims to an absolute truth should be replaced by formulations that tied physical laws to the human practices that produced them. Planck stood firmly for knowledge forms that were unbounded by time, space or specific social-material procedures (Stengers). Although contemporary understandings of science are based on Planck's version, citizen science has the potential to re-open these questions in a productive manner for its own practices, if it can re-conceive of itself as what Deleuze and Guattari would call nomadic science (Deleuze; Deleuze & Guattari). Citizen Science as Nomadic Science Deleuze and Guattari referred to orthodox science as Royal Science or Striated Science, referring in part to its state-like form of authority and practice, as well as its psycho-social character. Their alternative is a smooth or nomadic science that, importantly for citizen science, does not have the ambition to totalise knowledge. Nomadic science is a form of empirical investigation that has no need to be hooked up to a grand narrative. The concept of nomadic science is a natural fit for bottom-up citizen science because it can valorise truths that are non-dual and that go beyond objectivity to include the experiential. In this sense it is like the extended peer review of post-normal science but without the need to be limited to high-risk high-stakes questions. As there is no a priori problem with provisional knowledges, it naturally inclines towards the local, the situated and the culturally reflective. The apparent unreliability of citizen science in terms of participants and tools, which is solely a source of anxiety, can become heuristic for nomadic science when re-cast through the forgotten alternatives like Mach's formulation; that truths are never separated from the specifics of the context and process that produced them (Stengers 6-18; 223). Nomadic science, I believe, will start to emerge through projects that are prepared to tackle toxic epistemology as much as toxic pollutants. For example, the Community Based Auditing (CBA) developed by environmental activists in Tasmania (Tattersall) challenges local alliances of state and extractive industries by undermining their own truth claims with regards to environmental impact, a process described in the CBA Toolbox as disconfirmation. In CBA, this mixture of post-normal science and Stenger's critique is combined with forms of data collection and analysis known as Community Based Sampling (Tattersall et al.), which would be recognisable to any citizen science project. The change from citizen science to nomadic science is not a total rupture but a shift in the starting point: it is based on an overt critique of power. One way to bring this about is being tested in the “Kosovo Science for Change” project (Science for Change Kosovo), where I am a researcher and where we have adopted the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire as the starting point for our empirical investigations (Freire). Critical pedagogy is learning as the co-operative activity of understanding—how our lived experience is constructed by power, and how to make a difference in the world. Taking a position such as nomadic science, openly critical of Royal Science, is the anti-hegemonic stance that could qualify citizen science as properly countercultural. Citizen Science and Counterculture Counterculture, as I have expressed it, stands against or rejects the hegemonic culture. However, there is a strong tendency in contemporary social movements to take a stance not only against the dominant structures but against hegemony itself. They contest what Richard Day calls the hegemony of hegemony (Day). I witnessed this during the counter-G8 mobilisation of 2001. Having been an activist in the 1980s and 1990s I was wearily familiar with the sectarian competitiveness of various radical narratives, each seeking to establish itself as the correct path. So it was a strongly affective experience to stand in the convergence centre and listen to so many divergent social groups and movements agree to support each other's tactics, expressing a solidarity based on a non-judgemental pluralism. Since then we have seen the emergence of similarly anti-hegemonic countercultures around the Occupy and Anonymous movements. It is in this context of counterculture that I will try to summarise and evaluate the countercultural potential of citizen science and what being countercultural might offer to citizen science itself. To be countercultural it is not enough for citizen science to counterpose participation against the institutional and hierarchical aspects of professional science. As an activity defined purely by engagement it offers to plug the legitimacy gap for science while still being wholly dependent on it. A countercultural citizen science must pose a strong challenge to the status quo, and I have suggested that a route to this would be to develop as nomadic science. This does not mean replacing or overthrowing science but constructing an other to science with its own claim to empirical methods. It is fair to ask what this would offer citizen science that it does not already have. At an abstract level it would gain a freedom of movement; an ability to occupy Deleuzian smooth spaces rather than be constrained by the striation of established science. The founders of Science for the People are clear that it could never have existed if it had not been able to draw on the mass movements of its time. Being countercultural would give citizen science an affinity with the bottom-up, local and community-based issues where empirical methods are likely to have the most social impact. One of many examples is the movement against fracking (the hydraulic fracturing of deep rock formations to release shale gas). Together, these benefits of being countercultural open up the possibility for forms of citizen science to spread rhizomatically in a way that is not about immaterial virtual labour but is itself part of a wider cultural change. 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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. 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