Journal articles on the topic 'Ground Self-Defence Force'

Abstract This article is an attempt to interest the subjects associated with maritime technology — in the possibilities of increasing the safety of Polish Navy ships (or civilian ships), which may be threatened by attacks of maneuvering missiles and drones moving at low altitude at high speed. The concept proposed by the team was initially verified in simulation tests and the obtained results of these studies indicate that the automated missile self-defence system based on guided and unguided missiles with caliber 40 mm and 70 mm, can be an effective means of self-defence (even the smallest vessels). Small dimensions and mass as well as simplicity of use and reliability of this weapon system allow to believe that 40 mm MLRS1 could also be used by special forces of Polish Navy in offensive operations (destruction of lightly armoured objects of surface or ground, vehicles, force, putting smoke screens, mine mines) to 2000 m. For that reason, the system is referred to by the team of implementers as ‘pocket rocket artillery’.

In her latest book Force of Non-violence, Judith Butler lays out an updated model of gender performativity. This model relies on rapprochement of a recent criticism of her social ontology published in Seyla Benhabib’s book Exile, Statelessness, and Migration. Although Butler does not address Benhabib directly, the aim of this article is to show Butler’s possible arguments that can be seen as defence and further development of her concept of the Self. Thus, the necessary comparison of both authors is provided and with it also a discussion of their possible common ground.

Given the long history of violent encounters between the Global North and the Global South, legal arguments concerning the use of force are a fertile ground for testing the virtues and limits of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) as a theory aspiring to “address the material and ethical concerns of Third World peoples.” This essay examines the usefulness and limits of TWAIL in the context of the “unwilling or unable” doctrine currently promoted by a series of Western scholars and states in order to expand the scope of application of the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Adopting TWAIL’s impulse to historicize, this essay argues that the structure of this doctrine closely replicates the “standard of civilization” that informed international legal theory and practice throughout the nineteenth century. At the same time, widespread resistance to the “unwilling or unable” doctrine indicates that the profound transformation of international law on the use of force after 1945 and the diffusion of sovereignty outside the West put into question certain methodological and political commitments of TWAIL.

SummaryWith the end of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as the sole remaining superpower whose ambition is to create a new open and integrated world order based on principks of democratic capitalism. To ensure its hegemony, the United States is prepared to resort to military action with or without UN approval when its international and national security interests are at stake. The intervention in Iraq by the Coalition of the Willing is a good example of this policy and raises the question of its legality and legitimacy under contemporary international law. May or must a state resort to military intervention against a state sponsoring terrorism or depriving its nationals of their internationally recognized human rights? The so-called “Bush doctrine” of anticipatory or preventive self-defence against a state accused of supplying weapons of mass destruction to a foreign terrorist organization, which was one of the reasons advanced by the Coalition of the Willing for intervening in Iraq, meets neither the conditions laid out in Article 51 of the UN Charter nor those of customary international law. Thus, at the present stage of development of international law, the Bush doctrine is not even lege ferenda. It is not an extension of the customary international law right of pre-emptive self-defence. Only with the approval of the Security Council pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter or when it takes place within the strict confines of self-defence, can armed intervention be legitimate.The second reason for intervening in Iraq given by the Coalition of the Willing is based on humanitarian considerations, which raises the question whether the protection of human rights can be assured from the outside. Here, international law is evolving in the right direction since the international community is prepared to adopt the concept of responsibility to protect, which justifies the use of force to protect and enforce human rights as an exception to Article 2(4) and (7) of the UN Charter. Again, such intervention is legal only when approved by the Security Council acting pursuant to Chapter VII on the ground that human right crises do not fall “essentially within the jurisdiction of any state.” However, the international community, with the exception of the Coalition of the Willing, is not yet prepared to support a right of unilateral military intervention as a last resort when the Security Council is incapable and unwilling to do so. This includes intervention motivated by the non-democratic form of government of the targeted state. Although the primary responsibility to deal with human right crises rests with the United Nations based on the responsibility to protect, it is argued that one should not rule out unilateral military action based on a customary international law right of intervention to meet the gravity and urgency of the situation provided the intervening state fully observes the necessary precautionary principles governing such type of intervention. The conclusion is that terrorism and human rights abuses can only be effectively challenged through a concerted multilateral collective approach not through the politics of unilateralism.

The Danes and the Origin of the Danish KingdomOn the Research Programme “From Tribe to State in Denmark”Since the 1970’s, the ethnogenesis of the Danes and the origin of the Danish kingdom have attracted increased interest among Danish archaeologists. Marked changes over time observed in a growing source material form a new basis of interpretation. In written sources, the Danish realm does not appear until the Viking Age. The formation of the kingdom is traditionally placed as late as the 10th century (Jelling and all that). But prehistorians have raised the question whether the formation of the kingdom was not a much longer course. Some scholars believe that we have to study the periods preceding the Viking Age to be able to understand the development, at least from the 3rd century. In Scandinavia, this covers the Late Roman Iron Age, the Migration and Merovingian periods, as well as the early Viking Age. In a Continental perspective, it parallels the Late Antiquity (3rd-6th centuries) and the Early Middle Ages (6th-10th centuries).In 1984, the Danish Research Council launched the research programme “From Tribe to State in Denmark” which aimed to understand the formation of the Danish kingdom by studying the interaction between economic, social, and political circumstances from the Roman Period to the Viking Age. This paper presents a short synthesis of my work in the programme.Two themes have been brought into focus:1) The ethnogenesis of the Nordic peoples: the formation of the tribes that appear in the few and problematic written sources of the first millennium AD, in casu the Danes;2) The making of the Nordic kingdoms: in this case Denmark.A problem with this kind of long-term research is the inherent teleological perspective, revealed in the programme title. It is essential for me to emphasise that the early Danish kingdom was not a self-evident formation but the result of a series of concrete historical circumstances. There have been alternative possibilities at several occasions.In Scandinavia, the period is prehistoric. However, in South Scandinavia it deserves to be labelled protohistoric. Scandinavian archaeologists often forget or ignore the fact that in large parts of Europe, the first millennium AD is a historical period. The Scandinavian development is too often evaluated in isolation from the rest of Europe, in spite of the fact that the material culture demonstrates that interaction with continental as well as insular powers was continuously influencing Scandinavia. Necessarily, a relevant approach to Scandinavian late prehistory includes a historical dimension and a European perspective. South Scandinavian societies were over time linked to different realms in Europe. The Danish development was certainly part of a common west European trajectory.The best possibility of interpreting the archaeological record of South Scandinavia is by analogy with historians’ interpretations of other more or less contemporary Germanic peoples, based on descriptions in the written sources. Long-term studies of Scandinavian societies in the first millennium AD has laid new ground on which scholars have to build their image of the making of a Danish kingdom. The paper briefly describes some of the results and focuses on changes in the material that I find significant.Rural settlement: Great progress in the study of Iron Age and Early Mediaeval farming suggests economic growth, a development from subsistence economy to a production of a surplus, from collective forms of farming to individually run farmsteads, from small family farmsteads to large farms and manors. It is the surplus created by this expansion that could carry the late Viking and high medieval Danish kingdom with its administration, military power, church, towns, etc.Trade and exchange: Prestige-goods exchange dominated in the beginning of the period. Goods came from various parts of Europe. The connections to central and east Europe were broken in the sixth century, not to be reopened until the Viking Age. This explains the dominating position held by West European material culture in the development of South Scandinavia. Thus, South Scandinavia became part of the commercial zone of West Europe, certainly an important element in the making of the Danish kingdom. In the Viking Age, the rapid urbanisation demonstrates that Denmark gained great profit from its key position in the North Sea-Baltic trade network.Central places and early towns: Complex settlements appeared already in the Late Roman Iron Age, e.g. Gudme/Lundeborg, Funen. Further central sites appeared, and the number of central places grew rapidly. By the year 700, they are found in virtually every settlement area of South Scandinavia. The sites were not simple trading stations, as most were labelled a few years ago, but many also fulfilled important political, social, and religious functions; some were also manorial residences. The resident elite based their power on the mobilisation of the rural surplus; at the same time, one can say that the stimulus to produce a rural surplus was probably caused by an increasing demand from the elite at the centres.In the Viking Age, urbanisation began, which meant that the old central places lost their position and were replaced by towns like Hedeby, Ribe, and Århus. Excavations show that urbanisation started in the 8th century, a little later than the famous emporia Quentovic, Dorestad, Hamwic, and Ipswic.So today, it must be concluded that at the threshold to the Viking Age, South Scandinavian societies had a more advanced economic system and a more complex social organisation than believed only 20 years ago.Warfare: The dated indications of war cluster in two periods, the 3rd to 5th centuries, and the 10th to 11th centuries. The early period could be characterised as one of tribal warfare, in which many polities were forced to join larger confederations through the pressure of endemic warfare and conquests. In the archaeological record, indicators of war seem to disappear after AD 500, not to reappear in large numbers until the Viking Age. Was this period a Pax Danorum? Indeed, the silent archaeological record could indicate that the Danes had won hegemony in South Scandinavia. This phase can be understood as a period of consolidation between an early phase of tribal warfare and a later phase in which the territorial defence of a Danish kingdom becomes visible in the record.Wars with the Carolingian empire in the 9th century are the first wars in Denmark to be mentioned in the written record. However, archaeology demonstrates the presence of serious military threats in the centuries before, e.g. the first dykes at Danevirke. The strategic localisation of the period’s defence works reveals that threats were met with both navy and army. According to the texts, the 9th century wars are clearly national wars, either wars of conquest on a large scale between kingdoms, or civil wars, which for a large part seem to be triggered by an aggressive Frankish diplomacy.The two phases of warfare mirror two different military political situations: in the Late Roman and Migration Periods they are tribal wars and conflicts over resource control; in the Late Merovingian Period and the Viking Age they concern a Danish kingdom’s territorial defence.Religious changes: The conversion is often considered a major turning point in Scandinavian history; and in a way it was, of course. But the importance of Christianisation is heavily overestimated. The conversion was simply a step in a process that started long before. The paganism of the Scandinavians must not mislead us into believing that they were barbarians.A great change in cult practice took place around AD 500 when the use of bogs and lakes for offerings rapidly decreased. Instead, religious objects are found hoarded in settlement contexts, sometimes in the great halls of the magnates. This indicates that the elite had taken control of religion in a new way. The close link between cult and elite continued uninterrupted after Christianisation; churches were built by the magnates and on their ground. Therefore, we have a kind of cult-site continuity. From the Migration Period, the archaeological material demonstrates a close link between cult and magnates. This is certainly one important element in the formation of a Danish kingdom.Political development: Analyses of material culture reveal that South Scandinavia in the Early Iron Age consisted of many small regions, and based on sources like Tacitus and Ptolemy, one can guess that they correspond to tribal areas. In the Late Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period, the formation of a South Scandinavian super-region can be discerned, but still subdivided into a small number of distinguishable culture zones, and, again, on the basis of written sources (Jordanes and Procopius), one can guess that small tribes had joined into larger confederations precisely as on the Continent. In my opinion, a Danish kingdom appeared not later than the sixth century. Based on the well-studied material culture of the early Merovingian Period, one can assume that it had its core area in Central Denmark - South Jutland, Funen, and Zealand – with a close periphery of North Jutland, South Halland, Scania, Blekinge, and Bornholm. Probably more loosely attached to the Danish hegemony was a more distant periphery in South Sweden.So the Danish kingdom already had a history when it first appeared in the Frankish sources at the end of the 8th century. Danish involvement in European politics is first clearly observable in 777 and again in 782. Obviously, the Danish kingdom was a political and military actor on the North European scene long before the Viking Age.In the light of all these arguments, three phases can be described:– Roman Iron Age: Tribal societies with chieftains or small kings.– Late Roman Iron Age, Migration Period, and early Merovingian Period: A process of amalgamation started and warfare characterises the period. The result is the formation of tribal confederations. Written sources speak in favour of the Danes as the people who eventually won hegemony over South Scandinavia.– Late Merovingian Period and Viking Age: A process began in which royal agents replaced local chieftains. The last area to be integrated under direct Danish royal rule, in the reign of Sven Forkbeard, was probably Scania. Thus Medieval Denmark appeared.Final remarks: As a result of archaeological achievements in the last decades, a number of traditional views about Scandinavian late prehistory appear less likely, or rather erroneous. It is an underestimation that the pagans were unable of organisation and that a formation of a Danish kingdom is unthinkable before the late Viking Age. Unfortunately, the ethnogenesis of the Danes is beyond the reach of study, but a rough hypothesis may be formulated. The Danes were once one of several tribes somewhere in South Scandinavia. Events outside the Scandinavian scene were of fundamental importance for the possibility of the Danish gens to grow in power in the Late Roman and Migration Periods. Already before the Merovingian Period, the Danes won hegemony between the Baltic and the North Sea. A Danish kingdom could probably be based on this key position. Its survival was by no means a matter of course. In their continued efforts to secure the Danish position, capable kings established the borders of high medieval Denmark in the course of the Viking Age.Ulf NäsmanInstitutionen för humaniora och ­samhällsvetenskap Högskolan i Kalmar

The destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon by three highjacked civilian airliners and the crash of a fourth in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 constitute without a doubt the high point of terrorist attacks on the United States to date. The terrorists’ methods, their destructive force and the attacks’ economic and political effects are all without precedent. After September 11, the organisation responsible was quickly identified, namely a terrorist group based in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, headed by a Saudi expatriate, Osama bin Laden. After a request for his extradition was denied by the ruling Taliban, the United States and the United Kingdom conducted airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan beginning on October 7. As soon as late November 2001, the Taliban's fate was sealed. The uninterrupted bombardment of the US Air Force helped the Northern Alliance gain decisive ground in its campaign against the regime. On December 15, 2001, the various Afghan opposition groups signed a treaty on the Petersberg near Bonn, Germany, that established an interim government. The government's establishment put an end to the Taliban's rule, but it did not put an end to international terrorism with its various goals and interwoven structures.

The EU seeks to affirm itself as a major actor within the realm of international relations, trying to promote key democratic values throughout its network of diplomatic missions. Thus, EU’s foreign and internal policies are constructed as to commonly represent member states in global issues as a well-defined political entity of its own. It is through these lenses that we can observe the ways in which EU’s efforts, to remain a major global actor, are diminished because the entity lacks the force (self-reliant army) through which it could efficiently represent its military interests. The only military might, at EU’s disposal, being member state’s own troops, which can be deployed in emergency-related situations through the common security policy. As such, there are some foreign and defence ministers from the community block which are demanding, after the Afghanistan chaotic developments, an increased military independence for both the EU and its intervention forces. On a similar tone, Josep Borrell Fontelles, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, believes that it is the right time for EU to form its own military corps. Furthermore, overseeing the emerging security contexts, to which NATO responded by engaging into an ample transformation and adaptation process, we can underline some key developments, which showcase the need to revaluate EU’s military efforts, especially in terms of using its capabilities and capacities as a primordial source of credibility. As citizens’ security remains one of Brussels’ main objectives, and one of the primordial European institutions’ responsibilities, they have put forward and accepted, almost two decades ago, the European Security Strategy, which has established, for the first time, tangible goals, and objectives when it comes to protecting EU’s interests in terms of security and defence. It is this document which transforms the current approach across the continent, and its analysis can prove a starting ground for punctual optimizations to take place, to gain resilience in the face of alternative or emerging threats and risks.

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

This article will look at the use of personal photographs that attempt to convey a sense of social activism as a reaction against global terrorism. Moreover, I argue that the photographs uploaded to the site “We’re Not Afraid”, which began after the London bombings in 2005, presents a forum to promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defence against the anxiety of terror. What is compelling are the ways in which the Website promotes, seemingly, everyday modalities through what may be deemed as the domestic snapshot. Nevertheless, the aura from the context of these images operates to arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence. It promotes photography’s spectacular power. To begin it is worthwhile considering the ways in which the spectacle of terrorism is mediated. For example, the bombs activated on the London Underground and at Tavistock Square on the 7th of July 2005 marked the day that London became a victim of ‘global’ terrorism, re-instilling the fear projected by the media to be alarmed and to be suspicious. In the shadow of the terrorist events of September 11, as well as the Madrid Bombings in 2004, the incidents once again drew attention to the point that in the Western world ‘we’ again can be under attack. Furthermore, the news media plays a vital role in mediating the reality and the spectacle of terrorist attacks in the display of visual ‘proof’. After the London bombings of 7 July 2005, the BBC Website encouraged photo submissions of the incidents, under the heading “London Explosions: Your Photos”, thus promoting citizen journalism. Within six hours the BBC site received more that 1000 photographs. According to Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC’s World Service and Global News division, “people were participating in our coverage in way we had never seen before” (13). Other news Websites, such as Reuters and MSNBC also set up a similar call and display of the incidents. The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the trauma of terrorism in which they became active participants in the reportage. Leading British newspapers further evoked the sensational terror of the incidents through the captioning of horrific images of destruction. It contextualised them within the realm of fascination and fear with headlines such as “London’s Day of Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text – title, caption or article – accompanying every press photograph” (16). He suggested that, with the rise to prominence of ‘the press photograph’ as a mode of visual communication, the traditional relationship between image and text was inverted: “it is not the image which comes to elucidate or ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which comes to sublimate, patheticize or rationalize the image” (25). Frederic Jameson raises a very important point in regards to the role the media plays in terror. He suggests that the Western media is not only affected by a permanent condition of amnesia, but that this has become its primary ‘informational function’ (20). Hence, terror images are constantly repeated for their affect. “When combined with the media, terrorism’s reality-making power is astounding: its capacity to blend the media’s sensational stories, old mythical stereotypes, and a burning sense of moral wrath” (Zulaika and Douglass ix). Susan Sontag, in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others, also discusses the assault of images (116). She argues that “the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree. The sufferings most often deemed worthy of representation are those understood to be the product of wrath, divine or human” (40). Furthermore, globalisation has profoundly changed the rhetoric of terrorism in which the uses of photographs for political means are ubiquitous. Sontag argues that “it seems as if there is a greater quantity of such news than before” (116). Nevertheless, she stresses, “it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad” (116). Rather, than the focus on images of despair, the “We’re Not Afraid” Website provides a reaction against visual assaults. The images suggest a turning away from the iconography of terror and suffering to a focus on everyday western middle-class modalities. The images on the site consist of domestic ritual photographic practices, such as family snapshots. The images were disseminated following what has been referred to as the ‘incidents’ by the British press of the attacks on 7 July on the London transport system. Significantly, rather than being described as an event, such as the September 11 terrorist assaults were, the term ‘incidents’ suggests that everyday modalities, the everyday ways of being, may not be affected despite the terror of the attacks. It is, perhaps, a very British approach to the idea of ‘moving on’ despite adversity, which the Website advocates. The Website invites the general public to upload personal photographs captioned with the phrase “We’re not afraid” to “show that terrorists would not change the way people lived their lives” (Clarke).The Website began on 7 July 2005 and during the first week the site received, at times, up to 15 images a minute from across the world (Nikkah). Notably, within days of the Website’s launch it received over 3500 images and 11 million hits (Clarke).The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the incidents. These images seem to support Susan Sontag’s argument from On Photography, in which she argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The images present a social activism for the predominantly white middle-class online participants and, as such, is subversive in its move away from the contextualised sensational images of violence that abound in the mainstream press. According to the site’s creator, London Web designer, Alfie Dennen “the idea for this site came from a picture of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Dennen’s own weblog. Someone else added the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’ alongside the image” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). Hence, in Dennen’s Weblog the terror and trauma of the train images of the London underground, that were circulated in the main stream press, have been recontextualised by the caption to present defiance and survival. The images uploaded onto the Website range from personal snapshots to manipulated photographs which all bear the declaration: ‘We are not afraid’. Currently, there are 770 galleries with 24 images per gallery amounting to around 18500 images that have been sent to the site. The photographs provide a crack in the projected reality of terrorism and the iconography of suffering as espoused by the mainstream media. The Website claims: We’re not afraid is an outlet for the global community to speak out against the acts of terror that have struck London, Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel-Aviv, Afghanistan, Bali, and against the atrocities occurring in cities around the world each and every day. It is a worldwide action for people not willing to be cowed by terrorism and fear mongering. It suggests that: The historical response to these types of attacks has been a show of deadly force; we believe that there is a better way. We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear. We are not afraid. (“we’re not afraid.com: Citizens for a secure world, united against terror.”) The images evoke the social memory of our era of global terrorism. Arguably, the events since September 11 have placed the individual in a protection mode. The photographs represent, as Sontag espouses, a tool against the anxiety of our time. This is a turn away from the visual iconography of despair. As such, rather than images of suffering they are images of survival, or life carrying on as usual. Or, more precisely, the images represent depictions of everyday western middle-class existence. The images range from family snaps, touristic photographs, pictures of the London underground and some manipulated images all containing the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’. Dennen “said the site had become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London and say they will not be cowed by the bombings” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). The photographs also serve as a form of protection of western middle-class values and lifestyle that may be threatened by terrorist acts. Of consideration is that “personal photographs not only bind us to our own pasts – they bind us to the pasts of the social groups to which we belong” (Gye 280). The images on the site may be described as a “revocation of social power through visibility” and as such photography is considered a “performance of power” (Frosh 46). Barthes asserts that “formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination” (25). The images loaded onto the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ assumes notions of resilience and defiance which can be closely linked to Anglo-American cultural memory and imagination. Significantly, efforts to influence ‘heart and minds’ through support of touring exhibitions were common in the earlier days of the Cold War. Sontag argues that “photographic collections can be used to substitute a world” (162). The images exalted a universal humanism, similarly to the images on the “We’re Not Afraid” site. Many exhibits were supported throughout the 1950s, often under the auspices of the USIA (United States Information Agency). A famous example is the photography exhibit ‘The Family of Man’ which travelled to 28 countries between 1955-59 and was seen by 9 million people (Kennedy 316). It contained 503 images, 273 photographers from 68 nations “it posited humanity as a universal ideal and human empathy as a compensatory response to the threat of nuclear annihilation” (Kennedy 322). Significantly, Liam Kennedy asserts that, the Cold War rhetoric surrounding the exhibition blurred the boundaries between art, information and propaganda. The exhibition has been critiqued ideologically as an imperialist project, most notably by Allan Sekula in which he states “the worldliness of photography is the outcome, not of any immanent universality of meaning, but of a project of global domination” (96). In more recent times an exhibition, backed by the US State Department titled ‘After September 11: Images from Ground Zero’, by photojournalist/art photographer Joel Meyorowitz travelled to more than 60 countries and assisted in shaping and maintaining a public memory of the attacks of the World Trade Centre and its aftermath (Kennedy 315). Similar, to ‘The Family of Man’, it adds an epic quality to the images. As Kennedy points out that: To be sure this latter exhibit has been more overtly designed as propaganda, yet it also carries the cachet of ‘culture’ (most obviously, via the signature of a renowned photographer) and is intended to transmit a universal message that transcends the politics of difference. (Kennedy 323) The Website “We’re Not Afraid’ maintains the public memory of terrorism, without the horror of suffering. With a ‘universal message’ similar to the aforementioned exhibitions, it attempts to transcends the politics of difference by addressing the ‘we’ as the ‘everyday’ citizen. It serves as a gallery space and similarly evokes western romantic universal ideals conveyed in the exhibition ‘The Family of Man’, whilst its aesthetic forms avoid the stylististically captured scenes of ‘After September 11’. As stated earlier, the site had over 11 million hits in the first few weeks; as such the sheer number of viewers exceeds that of any formal photographic exhibition. Moreover, unlike these highly constructed art exhibitions from leading professional photographers, the Website significantly presents a democratic form of participation in which the ‘personal is political’. It is the citizen journalist. It is the ‘everyday’ person, as evidenced in the predominant snapshot aesthetics and the ordinariness in the images that are employed. Kris Cohen, in his analysis of photoblogging suggests that this aesthetic emphasises the importance in “photoblogging of not thinking too much, of the role that instinct plays in the making of photographs and the photoblog” (890). As discussed, previously, the overwhelming response and contributions to the Website within days of its launch seems to suggest this. The submission of photographs suggests a visceral response to the incidents from the ‘people’ in the celebration of the ‘everyday’ and the mundane. It also should be noted that “there are now well over a million documented blogs and photoblogs in the world”, with most appearing since 2003 (Cohen 886). As Cohen suggests “their newfound popularity has provoked a gentle storm of press, along with a significant number of utopic scenarios in which blogs feature as the next emancipatory mass media product”(886). The world-wide press coverage for the “We’re Not Afraid’ site is one key example that promotes this “utopian vision of transfigured citizens and in Benedict Anderson’s well used term an ‘imagined community” (Goggin xx). Nevertheless, the defiant captioning of the images also returns us historically to the social memory of the London Blitz 1940-41 in which the theme of a transfigured community was employed and in which the London underground and shelters became a signifier for the momentum of “We’re Not Afraid’. Barthes explained in Mythologies about the “the sight of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history” (11). What I want to argue is that the mythology surrounding the London bombings articulated in the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ is determined by 20th Century history of the media and the cultural imaginary surrounding predominantly British values*.** *The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, asserted that “qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history.” (“Blair Defines British Values”). These values are suggested in the types of photographs uploaded onto the activist Website, as such notions of the British Empire are evoked. Moreover, in his address following the incident, “Blair harkened back to the ‘Blitz spirit’ that saw Londoners through the dark days of Nazi bombing during World War II — and, by association, to Winston Churchill, the wartime leader whose determined, moving speeches helped steel the national resolve” (“Blair Delivers”). In his Churchillian cadence he paid “tribute to the stoicism and resilience of the people of London who have responded in a way typical of them”. He said Britain would show “by our spirit and dignity” that “our values will long outlast” the terrorists. He further declared that “the purpose of terrorism is just that. It is to terrorize people and we will not be terrorized” (“Blair Delivers”). The mythology of the Blitz and “the interpretive context at the time (and for some years thereafter) can be summarized by the phrase ‘the People’s War’—a populist patriotism that combined criticism of the past with expectations of social change and inclusive messages of shared heritage and values” (Field 31). The image conveyed is of a renewed sense of community. The language of triumph against adversity and the endurance of ordinary citizens are also evoked in the popular press of the London incidents. The Times announced: Revulsion and resolve: Despite the shock, horror and outrage, the calm shown in London was exemplary. Ordinary life may be inconvenienced by the spectre of terror, yet terrorism will not force free societies to abandon their fundamental features. An attack was inevitable. The casualties were dreadful. The terrorists have only strengthened the resolve of Britain and its people. (“What the Papers Say”) Similarly the Daily Express headline was “We Britons Will Never Be Defeated” (“What the Papers Say”). The declaration of “We’re not afraid” alongside images on the Website follows on from this trajectory. The BBC reported that the Website “‘We’re not afraid’ gives Londoners a voice” (“Not Afraid Website Overwhelmed”). The BBC has also made a documentary concerning the mission and the somewhat utopian principles presented. Similarly discussion of the site has been evoked in other Weblogs that overwhelmingly praise it and very rarely question its role. One example is from a discussion of “We’re Not Afraid” on another activist site titled “World Changing: Change Your Thinking”. The contributor states: Well, I live in the UK and I am afraid. I’m also scared that sites like We’re Not Afraid encourage an unhealthy solidarity of superiority, nationalism and xenophobia – perpetuating a “we’re good” and “they’re evil” mentality that avoids the big picture questions of how we got here. Posted by: John Norris at July 8, 2005 03:45 AM Notably, this statement also reiterates the previous argument on cultural diplomacy presented by theorists in regards to the exhibitions of ‘The Family of Man’ and ‘After September 11’ in which the images are viewed as propaganda, promoting western cultural values. This is also supported by the mood of commentary in the British press since the London bombings, in which it is argued that “Britain and the British way of life are under threat, the implication being that the threat is so serious that it may ultimately destroy the nation and its values” (King). The significance of the Website is that it represents a somewhat democratic medium in its call for engagement and self-expression. Furthermore, the emancipatory photography of self and space, presented in the “We’re Not Afraid” site, echoes Blair’s declaration of “we will not be terrorized”. However, it follows similar politically conservative themes that were evoked in the Blitz, such as community, family and social stability, with tacit reference to social fragmentation and multi-ethnicity (Field 41-42). In general, as befitted the theme of “a People’s War,” the Blitz imagery was positive and sympathetic in the way it promoted the endurance of the ordinary citizen. Geoffrey Field suggests “it offered an implicit rejoinder to the earlier furor—focusing especially on brave, caring mothers who made efforts to retain some semblance of family under the most difficult circumstances and fathers who turned up for work no matter how heavy the bombing had been the night before” (24). Images on the Website consist of snapshots of babies, families, pets, sporting groups, people on holiday and at celebrations. It represents a, somewhat, global perspective of middle-class values. The snapshot aesthetic presents, what Liz Kotz refers to as, the “aesthetics of intimacy”. It is a certain kind of photographic work which is quasi-documentary and consists of “colour images of individuals, families, or groupings, presented in an apparently intimate, unposed manner, shot in an off-kilter, snapshot style, often a bit grainy, unfocused, off-colour” (204). These are the types of images that provide the visual gratification of solidarity amongst its contributors and viewers, as it seemingly appears more ‘real’. Yet, Kotz asserts that these type of photographs also involve a structure of power relations “that cannot be easily evaded by the spontaneous performance before the lens” (210). For example, Sarah Boxer importantly points out that “We’re Not Afraid”, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they’re not afraid of the have-nots” (1). She argues that “there’s a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure” (1). The iconography in the images of “We’re not Afraid” certainly promotes a ‘memorialisation’ of the middle-class sphere. The site draws attention to the values of the global neoliberal order in which capital accumulation is paramount. It, nevertheless, also attempts to challenge “the true victory of terrorism”, which Jean Baudrillard circumspectly remarks is in “the regression of the value system, of all the ideology of freedom and free movement etc… that the Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its eyes its power over the rest of the world”. Self-confidence is conveyed in the images. Moreover, with the subjects welcoming gaze to the camera there may be a sense of narcissism in publicising what could be considered mundane. However, visibility is power. For example, one of the contributors, Maryland USA resident Darcy Nair, said “she felt a sense of helplessness in the days after 9/11. Posting on the We’re Not Afraid may be a small act, but it does give people like her a sense that they’re doing something” (cited in Weir). Nair states that: It seems that it is the only good answer from someone like me who’s not in the government or military…There are so many other people who are joining in. When bunches of individuals get together – it does make me feel hopeful – there are so many other people who feel the same way. (cited in Weir) Participation in the Website conveys a power which consists of defiantly celebrating western middle-class aesthetics in the form of personal photography. As such, the personal becomes political and the private becomes public. The site offers an opportunity for a shared experience and a sense of community that perhaps is needed in the era of global terrorism. It could be seen as a celebration of survival (Weir). The Website seems inspirational with its defiant message. Moreover, it also has postings from various parts of the world that convey a message of triumph in the ‘everyday’. The site also presents the ubiquitous use of photography in a western cultural tradition in which idealised constructions are manifested in ‘Kodak’ moments and in which the domestic space and leisure times are immortalised and become, significantly, the arena of activism. As previously discussed Sontag argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The Website offers the sense of a global connection. It promotes itself as “citizens for a secure world, united against terror”. It attempts to provide a universal solidarity, which appears uplifting. It is a defence against anxiety in which, in the act of using personal photographs, it becomes part of the collective memory and assists in easing the frustration of not being able to do anything. As Sontag argues “often something looks, or is felt to look ‘better’ in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things” (81). Rather than focus on the tragic victim of traditional photojournalism, in which the camera is directed towards the other, the site promotes the sharing and triumph of personal moments. In the spotlight are ‘everyday’ modalities from ‘everyday people’ attempting to confront the rhetoric of terrorism. In their welcoming gaze to the camera the photographic subjects challenge the notion of the sensational image, the spectacle that is on show is that of middle-class modalities and a performance of collective power. Note Themes from this article have been presented at the 2005 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference in Sydney, Australia and at the 2006 Association for Cultural Studies Crossroads Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. References Barthes, Roland. “The Photographic Message.” Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday Press, 1977 [1961]. 15-31. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993 [1972]. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Spirit of Terrorism.” Trans. Rachel Bloul. La Monde 2 (2001). < http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html >. “Blair Defines British Values.” BBC News 28 Mar. 2000. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/693591.stm >. “Blair Delivers a Classically British Rallying Cry.” Associated Press 7 July 2005. < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8502984/ >. Boxter, Sarah. “On the Web, Fearlessness Meets Frivolousness.” The York Times 12 July 2005. < http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/arts/design/12boxe.html?ex= 1278820800&en=e3b207245991aea8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss >. Clarke, R. “Web Site Shows Defiance to Bombers: Thousands Send Images to Say ‘We Are Not Afraid.’” CNN International 12 July 2005. < http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/11/london.website/ >. “CJ Bombings in London.” MSNBC TV Citizen Journalist. < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8499792/ >. Cohen, Kris R. “What Does the Photoblog Want?” Media, Culture & Society 27.6 (2005): 883-901. Dennen, Alfie. “We’renotafraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United Against Terror.” < http://www.werenotafraid.com/ >. Field, Geoffrey. “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940–1941.” International Labor and Working-Class History 62 (2002): 11-49. Frosh, Paul. “The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power.” Social Semiotics 11.1 (2001): 43-59. Gye, Lisa. “Picture This: The Impact of Mobile Camera Phones on Personal Photographic Practices.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.2 (2007): 279-288. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern. New York: Verso, 1998. 1-20. Kennedy, Liam. “Remembering September 11: Photography as Cultural Diplomacy.” International Affairs 79.2 (2003): 315-326. King, Anthony. “What Does It Mean to Be British?” Telegraph 27 May 2005. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/27/ nbrit27.xml >. Kotz, Liz. “The Aesthetics of Intimacy.” In D. Bright (ed.), The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. London: Routledge, 1998. 204-215. “London Explosions: Your Photos.” BBC News 8 July 2005 < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4660563.stm >. Nikkhah, Roya. “We’restillnotafraid.com.” Telegraph co.uk 23 July 2005. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/24/ nseven224.xml >. “‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed.” BBC News 12 July 2005. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/4674425.stm >. Norris, John. “We’re Not Afraid”. World Changing: Change Your Thinking. < http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003069.html >. “Reuters: You Witness News.” < http://www.reuters.com/youwitness >. Sambrook, Richard. “Citizen Journalism and the BBC.” Nieman Reports (Winter 2005): 13-16. Sekula, Allan. “The Traffic in Photographs.” In Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photoworks 1973-1983. Halifax Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia College Press, 1984. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2003. Sontag. Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1977. Weir, William. “The Global Community Support and Sends a Defiant Message to Terrorists.” Hartford Courant 14 July 2005. < http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/newsarchive/news05/jul05/notafraid.html >. We’renot afraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United against Terror. < http://www.werenotafraid.com >. “What the Papers Say.” Media Guardian 8 July 2005. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jul/08/pressandpublishing.terrorism1 >. Zulaika, Joseba, and William A. Douglass. Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 1996.

This article will look at the use of personal photographs that attempt to convey a sense of social activism as a reaction against global terrorism. Moreover, I argue that the photographs uploaded to the site “We’re Not Afraid”, which began after the London bombings in 2005, presents a forum to promote the pleasures of western cultural values as a defence against the anxiety of terror. What is compelling are the ways in which the Website promotes, seemingly, everyday modalities through what may be deemed as the domestic snapshot. Nevertheless, the aura from the context of these images operates to arouse the collective memory of terrorism and violence. It promotes photography’s spectacular power. To begin it is worthwhile considering the ways in which the spectacle of terrorism is mediated. For example, the bombs activated on the London Underground and at Tavistock Square on the 7th of July 2005 marked the day that London became a victim of ‘global’ terrorism, re-instilling the fear projected by the media to be alarmed and to be suspicious. In the shadow of the terrorist events of September 11, as well as the Madrid Bombings in 2004, the incidents once again drew attention to the point that in the Western world ‘we’ again can be under attack. Furthermore, the news media plays a vital role in mediating the reality and the spectacle of terrorist attacks in the display of visual ‘proof’. After the London bombings of 7 July 2005, the BBC Website encouraged photo submissions of the incidents, under the heading “London Explosions: Your Photos”, thus promoting citizen journalism. Within six hours the BBC site received more that 1000 photographs. According to Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC’s World Service and Global News division, “people were participating in our coverage in way we had never seen before” (13). Other news Websites, such as Reuters and MSNBC also set up a similar call and display of the incidents. The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the trauma of terrorism in which they became active participants in the reportage. Leading British newspapers further evoked the sensational terror of the incidents through the captioning of horrific images of destruction. It contextualised them within the realm of fascination and fear with headlines such as “London’s Day of Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namely the text – title, caption or article – accompanying every press photograph” (16). He suggested that, with the rise to prominence of ‘the press photograph’ as a mode of visual communication, the traditional relationship between image and text was inverted: “it is not the image which comes to elucidate or ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which comes to sublimate, patheticize or rationalize the image” (25). Frederic Jameson raises a very important point in regards to the role the media plays in terror. He suggests that the Western media is not only affected by a permanent condition of amnesia, but that this has become its primary ‘informational function’ (20). Hence, terror images are constantly repeated for their affect. “When combined with the media, terrorism’s reality-making power is astounding: its capacity to blend the media’s sensational stories, old mythical stereotypes, and a burning sense of moral wrath” (Zulaika and Douglass ix). Susan Sontag, in her 2003 book Regarding the Pain of Others, also discusses the assault of images (116). She argues that “the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree. The sufferings most often deemed worthy of representation are those understood to be the product of wrath, divine or human” (40). Furthermore, globalisation has profoundly changed the rhetoric of terrorism in which the uses of photographs for political means are ubiquitous. Sontag argues that “it seems as if there is a greater quantity of such news than before” (116). Nevertheless, she stresses, “it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad” (116). Rather, than the focus on images of despair, the “We’re Not Afraid” Website provides a reaction against visual assaults. The images suggest a turning away from the iconography of terror and suffering to a focus on everyday western middle-class modalities. The images on the site consist of domestic ritual photographic practices, such as family snapshots. The images were disseminated following what has been referred to as the ‘incidents’ by the British press of the attacks on 7 July on the London transport system. Significantly, rather than being described as an event, such as the September 11 terrorist assaults were, the term ‘incidents’ suggests that everyday modalities, the everyday ways of being, may not be affected despite the terror of the attacks. It is, perhaps, a very British approach to the idea of ‘moving on’ despite adversity, which the Website advocates. The Website invites the general public to upload personal photographs captioned with the phrase “We’re not afraid” to “show that terrorists would not change the way people lived their lives” (Clarke).The Website began on 7 July 2005 and during the first week the site received, at times, up to 15 images a minute from across the world (Nikkah). Notably, within days of the Website’s launch it received over 3500 images and 11 million hits (Clarke).The images taken by everyday people and survivors‚ suggest a visceral response to the incidents. These images seem to support Susan Sontag’s argument from On Photography, in which she argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The images present a social activism for the predominantly white middle-class online participants and, as such, is subversive in its move away from the contextualised sensational images of violence that abound in the mainstream press. According to the site’s creator, London Web designer, Alfie Dennen “the idea for this site came from a picture of one of the bombed trains sent from a mobile phone to Dennen’s own weblog. Someone else added the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’ alongside the image” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). Hence, in Dennen’s Weblog the terror and trauma of the train images of the London underground, that were circulated in the main stream press, have been recontextualised by the caption to present defiance and survival. The images uploaded onto the Website range from personal snapshots to manipulated photographs which all bear the declaration: ‘We are not afraid’. Currently, there are 770 galleries with 24 images per gallery amounting to around 18500 images that have been sent to the site. The photographs provide a crack in the projected reality of terrorism and the iconography of suffering as espoused by the mainstream media. The Website claims: We’re not afraid is an outlet for the global community to speak out against the acts of terror that have struck London, Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Gaza, Tel-Aviv, Afghanistan, Bali, and against the atrocities occurring in cities around the world each and every day. It is a worldwide action for people not willing to be cowed by terrorism and fear mongering. It suggests that: The historical response to these types of attacks has been a show of deadly force; we believe that there is a better way. We refuse to respond to aggression and hatred in kind. Instead, we who are not afraid will continue to live our lives the best way we know how. We will work, we will play, we will laugh, we will live. We will not waste one moment, nor sacrifice one bit of our freedom, because of fear. We are not afraid. (“we’re not afraid.com: Citizens for a secure world, united against terror.”) The images evoke the social memory of our era of global terrorism. Arguably, the events since September 11 have placed the individual in a protection mode. The photographs represent, as Sontag espouses, a tool against the anxiety of our time. This is a turn away from the visual iconography of despair. As such, rather than images of suffering they are images of survival, or life carrying on as usual. Or, more precisely, the images represent depictions of everyday western middle-class existence. The images range from family snaps, touristic photographs, pictures of the London underground and some manipulated images all containing the words ‘We’re Not Afraid’. Dennen “said the site had become a symbol for people to show solidarity with London and say they will not be cowed by the bombings” (“‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed”). The photographs also serve as a form of protection of western middle-class values and lifestyle that may be threatened by terrorist acts. Of consideration is that “personal photographs not only bind us to our own pasts – they bind us to the pasts of the social groups to which we belong” (Gye 280). The images on the site may be described as a “revocation of social power through visibility” and as such photography is considered a “performance of power” (Frosh 46). Barthes asserts that “formerly, the image illustrated the text (made it clearer); today, the text loads the image, burdening it with a culture, a moral, an imagination” (25). The images loaded onto the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ assumes notions of resilience and defiance which can be closely linked to Anglo-American cultural memory and imagination. Significantly, efforts to influence ‘heart and minds’ through support of touring exhibitions were common in the earlier days of the Cold War. Sontag argues that “photographic collections can be used to substitute a world” (162). The images exalted a universal humanism, similarly to the images on the “We’re Not Afraid” site. Many exhibits were supported throughout the 1950s, often under the auspices of the USIA (United States Information Agency). A famous example is the photography exhibit ‘The Family of Man’ which travelled to 28 countries between 1955-59 and was seen by 9 million people (Kennedy 316). It contained 503 images, 273 photographers from 68 nations “it posited humanity as a universal ideal and human empathy as a compensatory response to the threat of nuclear annihilation” (Kennedy 322). Significantly, Liam Kennedy asserts that, the Cold War rhetoric surrounding the exhibition blurred the boundaries between art, information and propaganda. The exhibition has been critiqued ideologically as an imperialist project, most notably by Allan Sekula in which he states “the worldliness of photography is the outcome, not of any immanent universality of meaning, but of a project of global domination” (96). In more recent times an exhibition, backed by the US State Department titled ‘After September 11: Images from Ground Zero’, by photojournalist/art photographer Joel Meyorowitz travelled to more than 60 countries and assisted in shaping and maintaining a public memory of the attacks of the World Trade Centre and its aftermath (Kennedy 315). Similar, to ‘The Family of Man’, it adds an epic quality to the images. As Kennedy points out that: To be sure this latter exhibit has been more overtly designed as propaganda, yet it also carries the cachet of ‘culture’ (most obviously, via the signature of a renowned photographer) and is intended to transmit a universal message that transcends the politics of difference. (Kennedy 323) The Website “We’re Not Afraid’ maintains the public memory of terrorism, without the horror of suffering. With a ‘universal message’ similar to the aforementioned exhibitions, it attempts to transcends the politics of difference by addressing the ‘we’ as the ‘everyday’ citizen. It serves as a gallery space and similarly evokes western romantic universal ideals conveyed in the exhibition ‘The Family of Man’, whilst its aesthetic forms avoid the stylististically captured scenes of ‘After September 11’. As stated earlier, the site had over 11 million hits in the first few weeks; as such the sheer number of viewers exceeds that of any formal photographic exhibition. Moreover, unlike these highly constructed art exhibitions from leading professional photographers, the Website significantly presents a democratic form of participation in which the ‘personal is political’. It is the citizen journalist. It is the ‘everyday’ person, as evidenced in the predominant snapshot aesthetics and the ordinariness in the images that are employed. Kris Cohen, in his analysis of photoblogging suggests that this aesthetic emphasises the importance in “photoblogging of not thinking too much, of the role that instinct plays in the making of photographs and the photoblog” (890). As discussed, previously, the overwhelming response and contributions to the Website within days of its launch seems to suggest this. The submission of photographs suggests a visceral response to the incidents from the ‘people’ in the celebration of the ‘everyday’ and the mundane. It also should be noted that “there are now well over a million documented blogs and photoblogs in the world”, with most appearing since 2003 (Cohen 886). As Cohen suggests “their newfound popularity has provoked a gentle storm of press, along with a significant number of utopic scenarios in which blogs feature as the next emancipatory mass media product”(886). The world-wide press coverage for the “We’re Not Afraid’ site is one key example that promotes this “utopian vision of transfigured citizens and in Benedict Anderson’s well used term an ‘imagined community” (Goggin xx). Nevertheless, the defiant captioning of the images also returns us historically to the social memory of the London Blitz 1940-41 in which the theme of a transfigured community was employed and in which the London underground and shelters became a signifier for the momentum of “We’re Not Afraid’. Barthes explained in Mythologies about the “the sight of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history” (11). What I want to argue is that the mythology surrounding the London bombings articulated in the Website “We’re Not Afraid’ is determined by 20th Century history of the media and the cultural imaginary surrounding predominantly British values*.** *The British Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, asserted that “qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history.” (“Blair Defines British Values”). These values are suggested in the types of photographs uploaded onto the activist Website, as such notions of the British Empire are evoked. Moreover, in his address following the incident, “Blair harkened back to the ‘Blitz spirit’ that saw Londoners through the dark days of Nazi bombing during World War II — and, by association, to Winston Churchill, the wartime leader whose determined, moving speeches helped steel the national resolve” (“Blair Delivers”). In his Churchillian cadence he paid “tribute to the stoicism and resilience of the people of London who have responded in a way typical of them”. He said Britain would show “by our spirit and dignity” that “our values will long outlast” the terrorists. He further declared that “the purpose of terrorism is just that. It is to terrorize people and we will not be terrorized” (“Blair Delivers”). The mythology of the Blitz and “the interpretive context at the time (and for some years thereafter) can be summarized by the phrase ‘the People’s War’—a populist patriotism that combined criticism of the past with expectations of social change and inclusive messages of shared heritage and values” (Field 31). The image conveyed is of a renewed sense of community. The language of triumph against adversity and the endurance of ordinary citizens are also evoked in the popular press of the London incidents. The Times announced: Revulsion and resolve: Despite the shock, horror and outrage, the calm shown in London was exemplary. Ordinary life may be inconvenienced by the spectre of terror, yet terrorism will not force free societies to abandon their fundamental features. An attack was inevitable. The casualties were dreadful. The terrorists have only strengthened the resolve of Britain and its people. (“What the Papers Say”) Similarly the Daily Express headline was “We Britons Will Never Be Defeated” (“What the Papers Say”). The declaration of “We’re not afraid” alongside images on the Website follows on from this trajectory. The BBC reported that the Website “‘We’re not afraid’ gives Londoners a voice” (“Not Afraid Website Overwhelmed”). The BBC has also made a documentary concerning the mission and the somewhat utopian principles presented. Similarly discussion of the site has been evoked in other Weblogs that overwhelmingly praise it and very rarely question its role. One example is from a discussion of “We’re Not Afraid” on another activist site titled “World Changing: Change Your Thinking”. The contributor states: Well, I live in the UK and I am afraid. I’m also scared that sites like We’re Not Afraid encourage an unhealthy solidarity of superiority, nationalism and xenophobia – perpetuating a “we’re good” and “they’re evil” mentality that avoids the big picture questions of how we got here. Posted by: John Norris at July 8, 2005 03:45 AM Notably, this statement also reiterates the previous argument on cultural diplomacy presented by theorists in regards to the exhibitions of ‘The Family of Man’ and ‘After September 11’ in which the images are viewed as propaganda, promoting western cultural values. This is also supported by the mood of commentary in the British press since the London bombings, in which it is argued that “Britain and the British way of life are under threat, the implication being that the threat is so serious that it may ultimately destroy the nation and its values” (King). The significance of the Website is that it represents a somewhat democratic medium in its call for engagement and self-expression. Furthermore, the emancipatory photography of self and space, presented in the “We’re Not Afraid” site, echoes Blair’s declaration of “we will not be terrorized”. However, it follows similar politically conservative themes that were evoked in the Blitz, such as community, family and social stability, with tacit reference to social fragmentation and multi-ethnicity (Field 41-42). In general, as befitted the theme of “a People’s War,” the Blitz imagery was positive and sympathetic in the way it promoted the endurance of the ordinary citizen. Geoffrey Field suggests “it offered an implicit rejoinder to the earlier furor—focusing especially on brave, caring mothers who made efforts to retain some semblance of family under the most difficult circumstances and fathers who turned up for work no matter how heavy the bombing had been the night before” (24). Images on the Website consist of snapshots of babies, families, pets, sporting groups, people on holiday and at celebrations. It represents a, somewhat, global perspective of middle-class values. The snapshot aesthetic presents, what Liz Kotz refers to as, the “aesthetics of intimacy”. It is a certain kind of photographic work which is quasi-documentary and consists of “colour images of individuals, families, or groupings, presented in an apparently intimate, unposed manner, shot in an off-kilter, snapshot style, often a bit grainy, unfocused, off-colour” (204). These are the types of images that provide the visual gratification of solidarity amongst its contributors and viewers, as it seemingly appears more ‘real’. Yet, Kotz asserts that these type of photographs also involve a structure of power relations “that cannot be easily evaded by the spontaneous performance before the lens” (210). For example, Sarah Boxer importantly points out that “We’re Not Afraid”, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they’re not afraid of the have-nots” (1). She argues that “there’s a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure” (1). The iconography in the images of “We’re not Afraid” certainly promotes a ‘memorialisation’ of the middle-class sphere. The site draws attention to the values of the global neoliberal order in which capital accumulation is paramount. It, nevertheless, also attempts to challenge “the true victory of terrorism”, which Jean Baudrillard circumspectly remarks is in “the regression of the value system, of all the ideology of freedom and free movement etc… that the Western world is so proud of, and that legitimates in its eyes its power over the rest of the world”. Self-confidence is conveyed in the images. Moreover, with the subjects welcoming gaze to the camera there may be a sense of narcissism in publicising what could be considered mundane. However, visibility is power. For example, one of the contributors, Maryland USA resident Darcy Nair, said “she felt a sense of helplessness in the days after 9/11. Posting on the We’re Not Afraid may be a small act, but it does give people like her a sense that they’re doing something” (cited in Weir). Nair states that: It seems that it is the only good answer from someone like me who’s not in the government or military…There are so many other people who are joining in. When bunches of individuals get together – it does make me feel hopeful – there are so many other people who feel the same way. (cited in Weir) Participation in the Website conveys a power which consists of defiantly celebrating western middle-class aesthetics in the form of personal photography. As such, the personal becomes political and the private becomes public. The site offers an opportunity for a shared experience and a sense of community that perhaps is needed in the era of global terrorism. It could be seen as a celebration of survival (Weir). The Website seems inspirational with its defiant message. Moreover, it also has postings from various parts of the world that convey a message of triumph in the ‘everyday’. The site also presents the ubiquitous use of photography in a western cultural tradition in which idealised constructions are manifested in ‘Kodak’ moments and in which the domestic space and leisure times are immortalised and become, significantly, the arena of activism. As previously discussed Sontag argues that photography is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power (8). The Website offers the sense of a global connection. It promotes itself as “citizens for a secure world, united against terror”. It attempts to provide a universal solidarity, which appears uplifting. It is a defence against anxiety in which, in the act of using personal photographs, it becomes part of the collective memory and assists in easing the frustration of not being able to do anything. As Sontag argues “often something looks, or is felt to look ‘better’ in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things” (81). Rather than focus on the tragic victim of traditional photojournalism, in which the camera is directed towards the other, the site promotes the sharing and triumph of personal moments. In the spotlight are ‘everyday’ modalities from ‘everyday people’ attempting to confront the rhetoric of terrorism. In their welcoming gaze to the camera the photographic subjects challenge the notion of the sensational image, the spectacle that is on show is that of middle-class modalities and a performance of collective power. Note Themes from this article have been presented at the 2005 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference in Sydney, Australia and at the 2006 Association for Cultural Studies Crossroads Conference in Istanbul, Turkey. References Barthes, Roland. “The Photographic Message.” Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday Press, 1977 [1961]. 15-31. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993 [1972]. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Spirit of Terrorism.” Trans. Rachel Bloul. La Monde 2 (2001). http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-the-spirit-of-terrorism.html>. “Blair Defines British Values.” BBC News 28 Mar. 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/693591.stm>. “Blair Delivers a Classically British Rallying Cry.” Associated Press 7 July 2005. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8502984/>. Boxter, Sarah. “On the Web, Fearlessness Meets Frivolousness.” The York Times 12 July 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/arts/design/12boxe.html?ex= 1278820800&en=e3b207245991aea8&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>. Clarke, R. “Web Site Shows Defiance to Bombers: Thousands Send Images to Say ‘We Are Not Afraid.’” CNN International 12 July 2005. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/11/london.website/>. “CJ Bombings in London.” MSNBC TV Citizen Journalist. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8499792/>. Cohen, Kris R. “What Does the Photoblog Want?” Media, Culture & Society 27.6 (2005): 883-901. Dennen, Alfie. “We’renotafraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United Against Terror.” http://www.werenotafraid.com/>. Field, Geoffrey. “Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz, 1940–1941.” International Labor and Working-Class History 62 (2002): 11-49. Frosh, Paul. “The Public Eye and the Citizen-Voyeur: Photography as a Performance of Power.” Social Semiotics 11.1 (2001): 43-59. Gye, Lisa. “Picture This: The Impact of Mobile Camera Phones on Personal Photographic Practices.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.2 (2007): 279-288. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern. New York: Verso, 1998. 1-20. Kennedy, Liam. “Remembering September 11: Photography as Cultural Diplomacy.” International Affairs 79.2 (2003): 315-326. King, Anthony. “What Does It Mean to Be British?” Telegraph 27 May 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/27/ nbrit27.xml>. Kotz, Liz. “The Aesthetics of Intimacy.” In D. Bright (ed.), The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. London: Routledge, 1998. 204-215. “London Explosions: Your Photos.” BBC News 8 July 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4660563.stm>. Nikkhah, Roya. “We’restillnotafraid.com.” Telegraph co.uk 23 July 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/24/ nseven224.xml>. “‘Not Afraid’ Website Overwhelmed.” BBC News 12 July 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/4674425.stm>. Norris, John. “We’re Not Afraid”. World Changing: Change Your Thinking. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003069.html>. “Reuters: You Witness News.” http://www.reuters.com/youwitness>. Sambrook, Richard. “Citizen Journalism and the BBC.” Nieman Reports (Winter 2005): 13-16. Sekula, Allan. “The Traffic in Photographs.” In Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photoworks 1973-1983. Halifax Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia College Press, 1984. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2003. Sontag. Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1977. Weir, William. “The Global Community Support and Sends a Defiant Message to Terrorists.” Hartford Courant 14 July 2005. http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/newsarchive/news05/jul05/notafraid.html>. We’renot afraid.com: Citizens for a Secure World, United against Terror. http://www.werenotafraid.com>. “What the Papers Say.” Media Guardian 8 July 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jul/08/pressandpublishing.terrorism1>. Zulaika, Joseba, and William A. Douglass. Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allmark, Panizza. "Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/06-allmark.php>. APA Style Allmark, P. (Apr. 2008) "Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/06-allmark.php>.

Dream, 2008Go to visit a friend with vulvodynia who recently had a baby only to find that she is desolate. I realise the baby–a little boy–died. We go for a walk together. She has lost weight through the ordeal & actually looks on the edge of beauty for the first time. I feel like saying something to this effect–like she had a great loss but gained beauty as a result–but don’t think it would be appreciated. I know I shouldn’t stay too long &, sure enough, when we get back to hers, she indicates she needs for me to go soon. In her grief though, her body begins to spasm uncontrollably, describing the arc of the nineteenth-century hysteric. I start to gently massage her back & it brings her great relief as her body relaxes. I notice as I massage her, that she has beautiful gold and silver studs, flowers, filigree on different parts of her back. It describes a scene of immense beauty. I comment on it.In 2008, I was following a writing path dictated by my vulvodynia, or chronic vulval pain, and was exploring the possibility of my disorder being founded in trauma. The theory did not, in my case, hold up and I had decided to move on when serendipity intervened. Books ordered for different purposes arrived simultaneously and, as I dipped into the texts, I found startling correspondence between them. The books? Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot’s lectures on hysteria, translated into English in 1889; psychiatrist W.H.R. Rivers’s explication of a biological theory of the neuroses published in 1922; and trauma neurologist Robert C. Scaer’s interpretation, in 2007, of the psychosomatic symptoms of his patients. The research grasped my intellect and imagination and maintained its grip until the ensuing chapter was done with me: my day life, papers and books skewed across tables; my night life, dreams surfeited with suffering and beauty, as I struggled with the possibility of any relationship between the two. Just as Rivers recognised that the shell-shock of World War I was not a physical injury as such but a trigger for and form of hysteria, so too, a few decades earlier, did Charcot insistently equate the railway brain/spine that resulted from railway accidents, with the hysteria of other of his patients, recognising that the precipitating incident constituted trauma that lodged in the body/mind of the victim (Clinical 221). More recently, Scaer notes that the motor vehicle accident (MVA) from which whiplash ensues is usually of insufficient force to logically cause bodily injury and, through this understanding, links whiplash and the railway brain/spine of the nineteenth century (25).In terms of comparative studies, most exciting for a researcher is the detail with which Charcot described patient after patient with hysteria in the Salpêtrière hospital, and elements of correspondence in symptomatology between these and Scaer’s patients, the case histories of which open most chapters of his book, titled appropriately, The Body Bears the Burden.Here are symptoms selected from a case study from each clinician:She subsequently developed headaches, neck pain, panic attacks, and full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder, along with significant cognitive problems [...] As her neck pain worsened and spread to her lower back, shoulders and arms, she noted increasing morning stiffness, and generalized pain and sensitivity to touch. With the development of interrupted, non-restorative sleep and chronic fatigue, she was ultimately diagnosed by a rheumatologist with fibromyalgia (Scaer 107).And:The patient suffers from a permanent headache of a constrictive character [...] All kinds of sound are painful to his ear, and he does his best to avoid them. It is impossible for him to fix his attention to any matter, or to devote himself to anything without speedily experiencing very great fatigue [...] He has insomnia and is frequently tormented by horrible dreams [...] Further, his memory appears to be considerably weakened (Charcot, Clinical 387).In the case of both patients, there was no significant physical injury, though both were left physically, as well as psychically, disabled. In the accidents that precipitated these symptoms, both were placed in positions of terrified helplessness as potential destruction bore down on them. In the case of Scaer’s patient, she froze in the driver’s seat at traffic lights as a large dump truck slowly reversed back on to her car, crushing the bonnet and engine compartment as it moved inexorably toward her. In the case of Charcot’s patient, he was dragging his barrow along the road when a laundryman’s van, pulled at “railway speed” by a careering horse, bore down on him, striking the wheel of his barrow (Clinical 375). It took some hours for the traumatised individuals of each incident to return to their senses.Scaer describes whiplash syndrome as “a diverse constellation of symptoms consisting of pain, neurologic symptoms, cognitive impairment, and emotional complaints” (xvii), and argues that the somatic or bodily expressions of the syndrome “may represent a universal constellation of symptoms attributable to any unresolved life-threatening experience” (143). Thus, as we look back through history, whiplash equals shell-shock equals railway brain equals the “swooning” and “vapours” of the eighteenth century (Shorter Chap. 1). All are precipitated by different causes, but all share the same outcome; diverse, debilitating symptoms affecting the body and mind, which have no reasonable physical explanation and which show no obvious organic cause. Human stress and trauma have always existed.In modern and historic studies of hysteria, much is made of the way in which the symptoms of hysterics have, over the centuries, mimicked “real” organic conditions (e.g. Shorter). Rivers discusses mimesis as a quality of the “gregarious” or herd instinct, noting that the enhanced suggestibility of such a state was utilised in military training. Here, preparation for combat focused on an unthinking obedience to duty and orders, and a loss of individual agency within the group: “The most successful training is one which attains such perfection of this responsiveness that each individual soldier not merely reacts at once to the expressed command of his superior, but is able to divine the nature of a command before it is given and acts as a member of the group immediately and effectively” (211–12). In the animal kingdom, the herd instinct manifests in behaviour that impacts the survival of prey and predator: schools of sardines move as one organism, seeking safety in numbers, while predatory sailfish act in silent concert to push the school into a tighter formation from which they can take orchestrated turns to feed.Unfortunately, the group mimesis created through a passive surrender of the individual ego to the herd, while providing a greater sense of security and chance of survival, also made World War I soldiers more vulnerable to the development of post-traumatic hysteria. At the Salpêtrière, Charcot described in meticulous detail the epileptic-like convulsions of hysteria major (la grande hystérie), which appeared to be an unwitting imitation of the seizures of epileptic inmates with whom hysteria patients were housed. Such convulsions included the infamous arc en circle, or backward-arched bodily semicircle, through which the individual’s body was thrust, up into the air, in an arc of distress only earthed by flexed feet and contorted neck (Veith 231). The suffering articulated in this powerful image stayed with me as I read, and percolated through my dreams.The three texts in which I remained transfixed had issued from different eras and used different language from each other, but all three contained similar and complementary insights. I found further correspondence between Charcot and Scaer in their understanding of the neurophysiology underlying hysteria/trauma. Though he did not have the technology to observe it, Charcot insisted that the symptoms of hysteria were the result of real changes in the nervous system. He distinguished between “organic” causes of disease, and the “functional” or “dynamic” causes of such disorders as hysteria and epilepsy: as he noted of the “hystero-traumatic paraplegia” of a patient, “it depends upon a dynamic lesion affecting the motor and sensory zones of the grey cortex of the brain which in a normal state preside over the functions of that limb” (Clinical 382). He proposed a potentially reversible “dynamic alteration” in the brain of the hysteric (Clinical 223–24). Compare Scaer: “Clinical syndromes previously categorized as ‘nonphysiological,’ ‘psychosomatic,’ or ‘functional’ may be based on demonstrable dynamic neurophysiological changes in the brain” (xx–xxi).Another link between the work of Charcot and Scaer is their insistence on the mind/body as a continuum, rather than separate entities. The perspicacity of the two researcher/clinicians forms bookends to a model separating mind from body that, in the wake of the popularisation and distortion of Freudian theory, characterised the twentieth-century. Said Charcot: “the physician must be a psychologist if he wants to interpret the most refined of cerebral functions, since psychology is nothing else but physiology of a part of the brain” (cited by Goetz 32). Says Scaer: “The distinction between the ‘psychological’ and physical pathological manifestations of traumatic stress, as suggested in the term ‘psychosomatic,’ needs to be discarded” (127). He proposes that, instead, we consider a mind/brain/body continuum which more accurately reflects, “the pathophysiological, neurobiological, endocrinological, and immunological changes induced by trauma” and the bodily manifestations of disease which follow (127).Charcot’s modernity is perhaps most evident in his understanding of equivalence between mind and brain, and his belief in what we now call “neuroplasticity”. Dealing with two patients with hysterical (traumatic) paralysis, Charcot recognised the value of friction, massage, and passive movements of the paralysed limb, not to build muscle strength, but to “revive” the “motor representation” in the brain as a necessary precursor to voluntary movement (Clinical 310). He noted the way in which, through repetition, movement strengthens. The parallel between Charcot’s insight, and recent research and practice which indicates that intense exercise for stroke victims assists the retrieval of motor programmes in the nervous system, in turn facilitating increased strength and movement, is quite astounding (Doidge Chap. 5).Scaer, like Rivers before him, understands the “freeze” or immobility response to threat as a very primitive or arcane level of the survival instinct. When neither fight nor flight will ensure an animal’s survival, it often manifests the freeze response, playing “dead”. After danger has passed, the animal might vibrate and shake, discharging the stored energy, physiologically “effecting” its defence or escape, and becoming fully functional again. Scaer describes this discharge process in animals as being “as imperceptible as a shudder, or as dramatic as a grand mal seizure” (19). The human, being an animal, also instinctually resorts to immobility when that is the reaction that will best ensure survival. As a result of this response, energy that would have been discharged in fighting or fleeing is bound up in the nervous system, along with accompanying terror, rage and helplessness. Unlike other animals that naturally discharge this energy when safe, humans often cognitively override the subtle but essential restorative behaviours that complete the full instinctual response, leaving them in a vicious cycle of fear and immobility and ultimately generating the symptoms of trauma.Scaer writes, “this apparent lack of discharge of autonomic energy after the occurrence of freezing [...] may represent a dangerous suppression of instinctual behavior, resulting in the imprinting of the traumatic experience in unconscious memory and arousal systems of the brain” (21). He proposes a persuasive model of “somatic dissociation” in which the body continues to manifest a threat to survival through impairment of the region of the body that perceived the sensory messages, and disability that reflects the incomplete motor defence (100). He writes of his patients in a chronic pain programme: “We invariably noticed that the patient’s unconscious posture reflected not only the pain, but also the experience of the traumatic event that produced the pain. The asymmetrical postural patterns, held in procedural memory, almost always reflect the body’s attempt to move away from the injury or threat that caused the injury” (84).Scaer’s concept of somatic dissociation, when applied to some of Charcot’s case studies, makes sense of their bodily symptoms. Charcot’s patient P— experiences no life threat, but a shock that involves grief and shame (Clinical 131–39). On a fox-hunting outing, he mistakes his friend’s dog for a fox, accidently shooting it dead. The friend is distraught, and P— consequently deeply distressed. He continues with the hunt, but later, when he raises his fire-arm to shoot a rabbit, collapses with a paralysis of the right side (he is right-handed), and then a loss of consciousness, with consequent confused recollection. Charcot’s lecture focuses on the “word-blindness” P— evidences, apparently associated with post-traumatic memory-deficits, but what is also arresting is the right-sided paralysis which lasts for some days, and the loss of vision on his right side. It is as if the act to shoot again is prevented by a body, shocked by its former action. The body parts affected hold meaning.In the case of the barrow man discussed earlier; although he has no lasting organic damage to his legs, nevertheless, his “feet remain literally fixed to the ground” (Clinical 378) when he is standing, perhaps reproducing the immobility with which he faced the rapidly looming van as it bore down on him. His paralysis speaks of his frozen helplessness, the trauma now locked in his body.In the case of the patient Ler—, aged around sixty, Charcot links her symptoms with a “series of frights” (Lectures 279): at eleven she was terrorised by a mad dog; at sixteen she was horrified by the sight of the corpse of a murdered woman; and, at the same age, she was threatened by robbers in a wood. During her violent hystero-epileptic attacks Ler— “hurls furious invectives against imaginary individuals, crying out, ‘villains! robbers! brigands! fire! fire! O, the dogs! I’m bitten!’” (Lectures 281). Here, the compilation of trauma is articulated through the body and the voice. Given that the extreme early childhood poverty and deprivation of Ler— were typical of hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière (Goetz 193), one might speculate that the hospital population of hysterics was composed of often severely traumatised women.The traumatised person is left with a constellation of symptoms familiar to anyone who has studied the history of hysteria. These comprise, but are not limited to, flashbacks, panic attacks, insomnia, depression, and unprovoked rage. The individual is also affected by physical symptoms that might include blindness or mutism, paralysis, spasms, skin anaesthesia, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, migraines, or chronic pain. For trauma theorist Peter A. Levine, the key to healing lies in completing the original instinctual response; “trauma is part of a natural physiological process that simply has not been allowed to be completed” (155). The traumatised person stays stuck in or compulsively relives trauma in order to do just that. In 1885, Jean-Martin Charcot lectured at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, including among his case studies the patient he names Deb—. She resides more evocatively in my imagination as “the lady in the carriage”, a title drawn from Charcot’s description of her symptoms, and from the associated photographs which capture static moments of her frenzied and compulsive dance:Now look at this patient [...] In the first phase, rhythmical jerkings of the right arm, like the movements of hammering, occur [...] Then after this period there succeeds a period of tonic spasms, and of contortions of the arm and head, recalling partial epilepsy [...] Finally, measured movements of the head to the right and the left occur; rapid movements defying all interpretation, for I ask you, what do they correspond to in the region of physiological acts? At the same time the patient utters a cry, or rather a kind of plaintive wail, always the same [...] You see by this example that rhythmical chorea may be in certain cases a grave affection [affliction]. Not that it directly menaces life, but that it may persist over a very long period of time, and become a most distressing infirmity [...] The chorea has lasted for more than thirty years [...] The onset occurred at the age of thirty-six. About this time, when out driving in a carriage with her husband, she fell over a precipice with the horse and carriage. After the great fright which she had thus experienced she lost consciousness for three hours. This was followed by a convulsive seizure of hysteria major, by rigidity of the limbs of the right side, and cries like the barking of a dog (Clinical 193–95).I found this case study early in my reading of Charcot, but the lady in the carriage stayed with me as a trope of the relentless embodiment of trauma in its drive to be conclusively expressed, properly acknowledged, and potentially understood. Hence the persistent pain and distress of Scaer’s MVA patients; the patients treated by Rivers, with limbs and vocal-chords frozen in a never-ending moment of self-defence; the dramatic hysterical attacks of the impoverished patients in Charcot’s Salpêtrière; and the rhythmical chorea of the lady in the carriage, her involuntary jerky dance a physical re-enactment of her original trauma, when the carriage in which she was driving went over a precipice. Her helplessness in the event which precipitated her hysteria is a central factor in her continuing distress, her involuntary passivity removing her sense of agency and, like the soldier confined endlessly and powerlessly in the trenches waiting for inevitable terrifying action, rendering her unable to fight or flee.The fact that the lady in the carriage may be stuck in a traumatic incident experienced more than thirty years before attests to the way in which trauma insistently pushes to be resolved. Her re-enactment is literal, but Levine acknowledges the relevance of a “repetition compulsion” (181), expressed originally by Freud as the “compulsion to repeat” (19). This describes the often subtle way in which we continue to involve ourselves in situations that are replays of traumatic themes from childhood—symbolic re-enactments. Levine revitalises the idea however, by focusing on the interrupted instinctual response that calls for physiological resolution: “the drive to complete the freezing response remains active no matter how long it has been in place” (111).The knowledge a traumatised person seeks is, in trauma, literally locked in the body/mind. It rises up through dreams and throws itself aggressively at one in memories that are experienced as a terrifying present. It twists limbs in painful contractures and paralyzes the limb that was lifted in defence. The fear of turning to face this knowledge locks the individual in a recurring cycle of terror and immobility. At its end-point, s/he survives in the pathological limbo of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), avoiding any arousal that might trigger all the physiological and emotional events of the original trauma. The original threat or trauma continues to exist in a perpetual present, with the individual unable to relegate it to the past as a bearable memory.It is possible to interpret such suffering in many ways. One might, for instance, focus on the pathology of an apparent system malfunction, which keeps the body/mind inefficiently glued to an unsolvable past. I choose to emphasise here, however, the creativity and persistence of the human body/mind in its drive to resolve the response to trauma, recover equilibrium and face effectively the recurrent challenges of life. As well as physical symptoms which exact attention, this drive or instinct might include the prompting of dreams and the meaningful coincidences we notice as we open our eyes to them, all of which can lead us down previously unconsidered paths. Does the body/mind only continue to malfunction due to our inability to correctly decipher its language? In relation to trauma, the body/mind bears the burden, but it might also hold the key to recovery.References Charcot, Jean-Martin. Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System. Trans. George Sigerson. London: The New Sydenham Society, 1877.---. Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System: Volume 3. Trans. Thomas Savill. London: The New Sydenham Society, 1889.Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Melbourne: Scribe, 2008.Freud, Sigmund. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. 7–64.Goetz, Christopher G, Michel Bonduelle, and Toby Gelfand. Charcot: Constructing Neurology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Levine, Peter A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997.Rivers, W. H. R. Instinct and the Unconscious: A Contribution to a Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.Scaer, Robert C. The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease. 2nd ed. New York: Haworth Press, 2007.Shorter, Edward. From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era. New York: Free Press, 1992.Veith, Ilza. Hysteria: The History of a Disease. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Stand-up is a global phenomenon. It is Australia’s most significant form of advocatorial theatre and a major platform for challenging stigma and prejudice. In the twenty-first century, Australian stand-up is transforming into a more culturally diverse form and extending the spectrum of material addressing human rights. Since the 1980s Australian stand-up routines have moved beyond the old colonial targets of England and America, and Indigenous comics such as Kevin Kopinyeri, Andy Saunders, and Shiralee Hood have gained an established following. Additionally, the turn to Asia is evident not just in trade agreements and the higher education market but also in cultural exchange and in the billing of emerging Asian stand-ups at mainstream events. The major cultural driver for stand-up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Australia’s largest cultural event, now over 30 years old, and an important site for dissecting constructs of democracy and nationhood. As John McCallum has observed, popular humour in post-World War II Australia drew on widespread feelings of “displacement, migration and otherness—resonant topics in a country of transplanted people and a dispossessed indigenous population arguing over a distinct Australian identity” (205–06). This essay considers the traditional comic strategies of first and second generation immigrant stand-ups in Australia and compares them with the new wave of post 9/11 Asian-Australian and Middle-Eastern-Australian stand-ups whose personas and interrogations are shifting the paradigm. Self-identifying Muslim stand-ups challenge myths of dominant Australian identity in ways which many still find confronting. Furthermore, the theories of incongruity, superiority, and psychological release re-rehearsed in traditional humour studies, by figures such as Palmer (1994) and Morreall (2009), are predicated on models of humour which do not always serve live performance, especially stand-up with its relational dependence on audience interaction.Stand-ups who immigrated to Australia as children or whose parents immigrated and struggled against adversity are important symbols both of the Australian comedy industry and of a national self-understanding of migrant resilience and making good. Szubanski and Berger hail from earlier waves of European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Szubanski has written eloquently of her complex Irish-Polish heritage and documented how the “hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma” and “the culture clash of competing responses to calamity” have been integral to the development of her comic success and the making of her Aussie characters (347). Rachel Berger, the child of Polish holocaust survivors, advertises and connects both identities on her LinkedIn page: “After 23 years as a stand-up comedian, growing up with Jewish guilt and refugee parents, Rachel Berger knows more about survival than any idiot attending tribal council on reality TV.”Anh Do, among Australia’s most famous immigrant stand-ups, identifies as one of the Vietnamese “boat people” and arrived as a toddler in 1976. Do’s tale of his family’s survival against the odds and his creation of a persona which constructs the grateful, happy immigrant clown is the staple of his very successful routine and increasingly problematic. It is a testament to the power of Do’s stand-up that many did not perceive the toll of the loss of his birth country; the grinding poverty; and the pain of his father’s alcoholism, violence, and survivor guilt until the publication of Do’s ironically titled memoir The Happiest Refugee. In fact, the memoir draws on many of the trauma narratives that are still part of his set. One of Do’s most legendary routines is the story of his family’s sea journey to Australia, told here on ABC1’s Talking Heads:There were forty of us on a nine metre fishing boat. On day four of the journey we spot another boat. As the boat gets closer we realise it’s a boatload of Thai pirates. Seven men with knives, machetes and guns get on our boat and they take everything. One of the pirates picks up the smallest child, he lifts up the baby and rips open the baby’s nappy and dollars fall out. And the pirate decides to spare the kid’s life. And that’s a good thing cos that’s my little brother Khoa Do who in 2005 became Young Australian of the Year. And we were saved on the fifth day by a big German merchant ship which took us to a refugee camp in Malaysia and we were there for around three months before Australia says, come to Australia. And we’re very glad that happened. So often we heard Mum and Dad say—what a great country. How good is this place? And the other thing—kids, as you grow up, do as much as you can to give back to this great country and to give back to others less fortunate.Do’s strategy is apparently one of genuflection and gratitude, an adoption of what McCallum refers to as an Australian post-war tradition of the comedy of inadequacy and embarrassment (210–14). Journalists certainly like to bill Do as the happy clown, framing articles about him with headlines like Rosemary Neill’s “Laughing through Adversity.” In fact, Do is direct about his gallows humour and his propensity to darkness: his humour, he says, is a means of countering racism, of “being able to win people over who might have been averse to being friends with an Asian bloke,” but Neill does not linger on this, nor on the revelation that Do felt stigmatised by his refugee origins and terrified and shamed by the crippling poverty of his childhood in Australia. In The Happiest Refugee, Do reveals that, for him, the credibility of his routines with predominantly white Australian audiences lies in the crafting of himself as an “Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood” (182). This is not the official narrative that is retold even if it is how Do has endeared himself to Australians, and ridding himself of the happy refugee label may yet prove difficult. Suren Jayemanne is well known for his subtle mockery of multiculturalist rhetoric. In his 2016 MICF show, Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator, Jayemanne played on the supposed contradiction of his Sri Lankan-Malaysian heritage against his teenage years in the wealthy suburb of Malvern in Melbourne, his private schooling, and his obsession with hip hop and black American culture. Jayemanne’s strategy is to gently confound his audiences, leading them slowly up a blind alley. He builds up a picture of how to identify Sri Lankan parents, supposedly Sri Lankan qualities such as an exceptional ability at maths, and Sri Lankan employment ambitions which he argues he fulfilled in becoming an accountant. He then undercuts his story by saying he has recently realised that his suburban background, his numerical abilities, his love of black music, and his rejection of accountancy in favour of comedy, in fact prove conclusively that he has, all along, been white. He also confesses that this is a bruising disappointment. Jayemanne exposes the emptiness of the conceits of white, brown, and black and of invented identity markers and plays on his audiences’ preconceptions through an old storyteller’s device, the shaggy dog story. The different constituencies in his audiences enjoy his trick equally, from quite different perspectives.Diana Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese stand-up, was both traumatised and politicised by Pauline Hanson when she was a teenager. Hanson described Nguyen’s community in Dandenong as “yellow Asian people” (Filmer). Nguyen’s career as a community development worker combating racism relates directly to her activity as a stand-up: migrant stories are integral to Australian history and Nguyen hypothesises that the “Australian psyche of being invaded or taken over” has reignited over the question of Islamic fundamentalism and expresses her concern to Filmer about the Muslim youths under her care.Nguyen’s alarm about the elision of Islamic radicalism with Muslim culture drives an agenda that has led the new generation of self-identified Muslim stand-ups since 9/11. This post 9/11 world is described by Wajahat as gorged with “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslim [. . . ] and perpetuated by negative discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life in western societies.” In Australia, Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi, Khaled Khalafalla, and Nazeem Hussain typify this newer, more assertive form of second generation immigrant stand-up—they identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown, and as Australian. They might be said to symbolise a logical response to Ghassan Hage’s famous White Nation (1998), which argues that a white supremacism underlies the mindset of the white elite in Australia. Their positioning is more nuanced than previous generations of stand-up. Nazeem Hussain’s routines mark a transformation in Australian stand-up, as Waleed Aly has argued: “ethnic comedy” has hitherto been about the parading of stereotypes for comfortable, mainstream consumption, about “minstrel characters” [. . .] but Hussain interrogates his audiences in every direction—and aggravates Muslims too. Hussain’s is the world of post 9/11 Australian Muslims. It’s about more than ethnic stereotyping. It’s about being a consistent target of political opportunism, where everyone from the Prime Minister to the Foreign Minister to an otherwise washed-up backbencher with a view on burqas has you in their sights, where bombs detonate in Western capitals and unrelated nations are invaded.Understandably, a prevalent theme among the new wave of Muslim comics, and not just in Australia, is the focus on the reading of Muslims as manifestly linked with Islamic State (IS). Jokes about mistaken identity, plane crashes, suicide bombing, and the Koran feature prominently. English-Pakistani Muslim, Shazia Mirza, gained comedy notoriety in the UK in the wake of 9/11 by introducing her routine with the words: “My name’s Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence” (Bedell). Stand-ups Negin Farsad, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidalla are all also activists challenging prevailing myths about Islam, skin colour and terrorism in America. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed acquired prominence for telling audiences in the infamous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour about how his life had changed much for the worse since 9/11. Ahmed Ahmed was the alias used by one of Osama Bin Laden’s devotees and his life became on ongoing struggle with anti-terrorism officials doing security checks (he was once incarcerated) and with the FBI who were certain that the comedian was among their most wanted terrorists. Similarly, Obeidalla, an Italian-Palestinian-Muslim, notes in his TEDx talk that “If you have a Muslim name, you are probably immune to identity theft.” His narration of a very sudden experience of becoming an object of persecution and of others’ paranoia is symptomatic of a shared understanding of a post 9/11 world among many Muslim comics: “On September 10th 2001 I went to bed as a white American and I woke up an Arab,” says Obeidalla, still dazed from the seismic shift in his life.Hussain and Khalafalla demonstrate a new sophistication and directness in their stand-up, and tackle their majority white audiences head-on. There is no hint of the apologetic or deferential stance performed by Anh Do. Many of the jokes in their routines target controversial or taboo issues, which up until recently were shunned in Australian political debate, or are absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. An Egyptian-Australian born in Saudi Arabia, Khaled Khalafalla arrived on the comedy scene in 2011, was runner-up in RAW, Australia’s most prestigious open mic competition, and in 2013 won the best of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for Devious. Khalafalla’s shows focus on racist stereotypes and identity and he uses a range of Middle Eastern and Indian accents to broach IS recruitment, Muslim cousin marriages, and plane crashes. His 2016 MICF show, Jerk, was a confident and abrasive routine exploring relationships, drug use, the extreme racism of Reclaim Australia rallies, controversial visa checks by Border Force’s Operation Fortitude, and Islamophobia. Within the first minute of his routine, he criticises white people in the audience for their woeful refusal to master Middle Eastern names, calling out to the “brown woman” in the audience for support, before lining up a series of jokes about the (mis)pronunciation of his name. Khalafalla derives his power on stage by what Oliver Double calls “uncovering.” Double contends that “one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover the unmentionable,” subjects which are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation or the broadcast media (292). For instance, in Jerk Khalafalla discusses the “whole hating halal movement” in Australia as a metaphor for exposing brutal prejudice: Let me break it down for you. Halal is not voodoo. It’s just a blessing that Muslims do for some things, food amongst other things. But, it’s also a magical spell that turns some people into fuckwits when they see it. Sometimes people think it’s a thing that can get stuck to your t-shirt . . . like ‘Oh fuck, I got halal on me’ [Australian accent]. I saw a guy the other day and he was like Fuck halal, it funds terrorism. And I was like, let me show you the true meaning of Islam. I took a lamb chop out of my pocket and threw it in his face. And, he was like Ah, what was that? A lamb chop. Oh, I fucking love lamb chops. And, I say you fool, it’s halal and he burst into flames.In effect, Khalafalla delivers a contemptuous attack on the white members of his audience, but at the same time his joke relies on those same audience members presuming that they are morally and intellectually superior to the individual who is the butt of the joke. Khalafalla’s considerable charm is a help in this tricky send-up. In 2015 the Australian Department of Defence recognised his symbolic power and invited him to join the Afghanistan Task Force to entertain the troops by providing what Doran describes as “home-grown Australian laughs” (7). On stage in Australia, Khalafalla constructs a persona which is an outsider to the dominant majority and challenges the persecution of Muslim communities. Ironically, on the NATO base, Khalafalla’s act was perceived as representing a diverse but united Australia. McCallum has pointed to such contradictions, moments where white Australia has shown itself to be a “culture which at first authenticates emigrant experience and later abrogates it in times of defiant nationalism” (207). Nazeem Hussain, born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents, is even more confrontational. His stand-up is born of his belief that “comedy protects us from the world around us” and is “an evolutionary defence mechanism” (8–9). His ground-breaking comedy career is embedded in his work as an anti-racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-generation migrant experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny. He is well-known for his pioneering television successes Legally Brown and Salam Café. In his stand-up, Hussain often dwells witheringly on the failings and peculiarities of white people’s attempts to interact with him. Like all his routines, his sell-out show Fear of the Brown Planet, performed with Aamer Rahman from 2004–2008, explored casual, pathologised racism. Hussain deliberately over-uses the term “white people” in his routines as a provocation and deploys a reverse racism against his majority white audiences, knowing that many will be squirming. “White people ask me how can Muslims have fun if they don’t drink? Muslims have fun! Of course we have fun! You’ve seen us on the news.” For Hussain stand-up is “fundamentally an art of protest,” to be used as “a tool by communities and people with ideas that challenge and provoke the status quo with a spirit of counterculture” (Low 1–3). His larger project is to humanise Muslims to white Australians so that “they see us firstly as human beings” (1–3). Hussain’s 2016 MICF show, Hussain in the Membrane, both satirised media hype and hysterical racism and pushed for a better understanding of the complex problems Muslim communities face in Australia. His show also connected issues to older colonial traditions of racism. In a memorable and beautifully crafted tirade, Hussain inveighed against the 2015 Bendigo riots which occurred after local Muslims lodged an application to Bendigo council to build a mosque in the sleepy Victorian town. [YELLING in an exaggerated Australian accent] No we don’t want Muslims! NO we don’t want Muslims—to come invade Bendigo by application to the local council! That is the most bureaucratic invasion of all times. No place in history has been invaded by lodging an application to a local council. Can you see ISIS running around chasing town planners? Of course not, Muslims like to wait 6–8 months to invade! That’s a polite way to invade. What if white people invaded that way? What a better world we’d be living in. If white people invaded Australia that way, we’d be able to celebrate Australia Day on the same day without so much blood on our hands. What if Captain Cook came to Australia and said [in a British accent] Awe we would like to apply to invade this great land and here is our application. [In an Australian accent] Awe sorry, mate, rejected, but we’ll give you Bendigo.As Waleed Aly sees it, the Australian cultural majority is still “unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness.” Hussain exposes “a binary world where there’s whiteness, and then otherness. Where white people are individuals and non-white people (a singular group) are not” (Aly). Hussain certainly speaks as an insider and goes so far as recognising his coloniser’s guilt in relation to indigenous Australians (Tan). Aly well remembers the hate mail he and Hussain received when they worked on Salam Café: “The message was clear. We were outsiders and should behave as such. We were not real Australians. We should know our place, as supplicants, celebrating the nation’s unblemished virtue.” Khalafalla, Rahman, Elleissi, and Hussain make clear that the new wave of comics identify as Muslim and Australian (which they would argue many in the audiences receive as a provocation). They have zero tolerance of racism, their comedy is intimately connected with their political activism, and they have an unapologetically Australian identity. No longer is it a question of whether the white cultural majority in Australia will anoint them as worthy and acceptable citizens, it is a question of whether the audiences can rise to the moral standards of the stand-ups. The power has been switched. For Hussain laughter is about connection: “that person laughs because they appreciate the point and whether or not they accept what was said was valid isn’t important. What matters is, they’ve understood” (Low 5). ReferencesAhmed, Ahmed. “When It Comes to Laughter, We Are All Alike.” TedXDoha (2010). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxDoha-Ahmed-Ahmed-When-it-Co>.Aly, Waleed. “Comment.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Sep. 2013."Anh Do". Talking Heads with Peter Thompson. ABC1. 4 Oct. 2010. Radio.Bedell, Geraldine. “Veiled Humour.” The Guardian (2003). 8 Aug. 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/20/comedy.artsfeatures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>.Berger, Rachel. LinkedIn [Profile page]. 14 June 2016 <http://www.linkedin.com/company/rachel-berger>.Do, Anh. The Happiest Refugee. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010. Doran, Mark. "Service with a Smile: Entertainers Give Troops a Taste of Home.” Air Force 57.21 (2015). 12 June 2016 <http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/NewsPapers/Raaf/editions/5721/5721.pdf>.Double, Oliver. Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Filmer, Natalie. "For Dandenong Comedian and Actress Diana Nguyen The Colour Yellow has a Strong Meaning.” The Herald Sun 3 Sep. 2013.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of a White Supremacy in a Multicultural Age. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998.Hussain, Nazeem. Hussain in the Membrane. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.———. "The Funny Side of 30.” Spectrum. The Age 12 Mar. 2016.Khalafalla, Khaled. Jerk. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.Low, Lian. "Fear of a Brown Planet: Fight the Power with Laughter.” Peril: Asian Australian Arts and Culture (2011). 12 June 2016 <http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition10/fear-of-a-brown-planet-fight-the-power-with-laughter>. McCallum, John. "Cringe and Strut: Comedy and National Identity in Post-War Australia.” Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. Ed. Stephen Wagg. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morreall, John. Comic Relief. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Neill, Rosemary. "Laughing through Adversity.” The Australian 28 Aug. 2010.Obeidalla, Dean. "Using Stand-Up to Counter Islamophobia.” TedXEast (2012). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxEast-Dean-Obeidalla-Using-S;TEDxEast>.Palmer, Jerry. Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge, 1994. Szubanski, Magda. Reckoning. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2015. Tan, Monica. "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Allahu Akbar! Nazeem Hussain's Bogan-Muslim Army.” The Guardian 29 Feb. 2016. "Uncle Sam.” Salam Café (2008). 11 June 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeQPAJt6caU>.Wajahat, Ali, et al. "Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” Center for American Progress (2011). 11 June 2016 <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc>.

Liquidate the entire rapacious monstrosity that is the global surf industry. Eradicate the gloating, insolent, overfed, carrion-feeding surf media altogether. Destroy the overweening, insidious and growing attraction that surf fashion is for common landlubbers. Dismantle, annihilate and devastate the whole swelling, putrescent edifice of surfing once and for all. There are too many people in the water and all I want to do is go surfing with my mates goddammit (Breuchie 26). Nick Breuchie’s letter to Tracks reflects an individual’s fight against the popularity of surfing, a popularity that he sees manifested in crowded surf line-ups boosted by the images and rhetoric found in surfing magazines. Beyond surfing magazines, surfing is currently enjoying an ultra-hip status in the world of popular culture: Hollywood has recently reinvigorated the surf movie genre that started with Gidget through putting “chicks on sticks in flicks” in the surfploitation film Blue Crush; surfing scenes open the most recent James Bond film, Die Another Day. Surf fashion is seemingly ubiquitous among youth and their baby boomer parents, and the global surf industry is worth “at least $US7.4bn,” most of which is generated through sales of apparel (Gliddon 20). No longer is surfing for youth; now it is about youth. Most importantly for Breuchie and others like him, surfing saturation in popular culture has resulted in more than an excess of representation: it has resulted in an excess of participation. For the “original” members of surfing subcultures, surfing has simply become too crowded, resulting in a frustration that is too often being expressed in aggressive behaviour and surf rage. >From any point of view, it is clear that surfing has become so popular that it is increasingly difficult to find a non-remote surf break that is not overcrowded. Carrol claims in The Association of Surfing Professionals Media Guide and Statistics Booklet that “everybody surfs – mums, dads, sisters, four-year-old groms, 80-year-old great grandparents” (21). As a result of this demand for waves, surf-travel to remote locations is experiencing massive growth and at the same time, as discussed below, intense localism is rampant. Although waves suitable for surfing in many parts of the world may be considered as a public territory where access is usually on a first-come-first-serve basis, local surfers tend to behave more dominantly at their home breaks. These surfers take what might be referred to in sporting terms as the home ground advantage. Increasingly, however, waves of the ocean are not public access spaces: these surf breaks are for exclusive use by guests of resorts that have negotiated deals with governments, traditional owners or other local authorities. Surfers, frustrated by crowds at breaks in the “surf slums” in the more populated areas of the world, are increasingly prepared to pay to play in such exclusive surf resorts as those now found in the Maldives, Indonesia and Fiji. Local enforcers guard the surf breaks of these resorts and, on behalf of the resort owners, ensure that the guests maintain the privilege of the exclusivity they have paid for. For a long time now, surfers at breaks around the world have been punching each other in the head while surfing magazines have been telling the world about the individuality, the brotherhood, the beauty and the spirituality of surfing as an “art,” “lifestyle,” “religion” and “sport.” One way of maintaining the perception of individualism and freedom of the surfing experience is through protecting the local break from newbies via localism: its advocates justify it as a means of keeping hierarchical law and order in a field where game rules do not officially exist. Viewed anthropologically, localism can be viewed as territorialism important to the self-preservation and well-being of the clan; it can also be a unifying force that may bond communities together to invest in, develop and protect common interests. Localism is one of the defining concepts of modern surfing. The mythology of surf localism is that it exists to instill order and respect in the water and provides people with a sense of belonging. Its main function for surfing communities, however, is to exclude surfers who are not from the immediate vicinity of a surfing spot. This version of localism is characterized by a masculinized, xenophobic territorialism and a hostility to outsiders that can both unite and fracture others through threatened or actual violence: it is about policing and protecting “our” waves and is enacted in the water by dominant males who “hassle” surfers who are not part of the local tribe. Surfing magazines and films often encourage the siege-like tribalism and aggressive expression of localism through advocating 'the rights' of local surfers: for example, the magazines will often not reveal the source location of surfing photographs “out of respect for the locals.” Blue Crush includes the apparently obligatory fight scene found in many Hollywood surfing films: locals who claim exclusivity to the surf fight the outsider—in this case, the kooky love interest of the film’s female star. The masculine aggressiveness of surfing argot that is extensively used in surfing magazines may be better suited to a misogynistic slasher movie than a sport—surfers ride thrusters, they carve, shred, slash, tear, pull out, perform re-entries, crack and rip filthy, sick pits, and request the male surf god Huey to make mother ocean pump. The language is more reflective of a fight with the waves than an expression of how to ride them for leisure and play. In the “age of rage” (Agbayani) localism in surfing at its most extreme is manifested through surf rage. Cralle defines a local as “anyone who’s been there a day longer than you” while localism is “territorial defiance in defence of a surf spot.” Agbayani argues that “the activity was born in 1779 when angry Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay.” The current CEO and President of the Association of Surfing Professionals and former world champion surfer, Wayne Bartholomew, somewhat confusingly writes that a beating he received from locals in the winter of 1976-1977 on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii reminded him of Captain Cook. “I don’t know what happened to Captain Cook but the scene that confronted me on the beach always reminds me of Captain Cook” (151). Bartholomew claims his selfish behaviour in the water so affronted the Hawaiians that “I was held under water, pounded round the back of the head, then pulled up and pounded in the face. They knocked all my teeth out and just flattened my nose, I had cuts all over my eyes and lips” (151). Discussing a fight with an American opponent during the 1966 world championships at San Diego, Nat Young wrote in his newspaper column: “I am afraid I lost my temper and did what most other Australians would have done—I hit him—and knocked him flat” (980). Young had his own face knocked flat after a fight with another surfer at Angourie in March 2000. Coming in from the surf, he was attacked on the beach by Michael Hutchinson, a rival longboarder, who hospitalized Young with two broken eye sockets, shattered cheekbones and destroyed sinuses. Both Young and Hutchison were locals. The incident was sparked by Young, who admitted to slapping Hutchison’s son for “bad behaviour” while out in the surf. (In a cathartic moment, Young subsequently published a book entitled Surf Rage that told stories of the pointlessness of fighting for waves). Beyond (but not unconnected to) localism, the increase in confrontations, aggression and fighting in the surf may also be partly attributable to the impact of technology upon surfing. Technology is having a significant influence on when and where people can go surfing. Readily available surf craft such as bodyboards and the (rediscovered) Malibu surfboard are allowing learners quick results in developing the ability to ride waves; warmer, more comfortable wetsuits are allowing year round surfing in cold water; and the leg rope allows people to fall off surfboards without having to swim to shore to retrieve rock-damaged foam and fibreglass. In addition to these technological developments, “surfcams” show surf conditions, and non-locals can look at real time conditions all over the world (see, for example http://www.coastalwatch.com, http://www.surf-news.com or http://www.baliwaves.com). These cameras are regularly vandalised to thwart the dissemination of this information to non-local surfers. Meanwhile, surf-forecasting services notify customers via mobile phone, pager or email when the conditions for surfing are good, so there is little chance of lonely surfs. The increasing number of surfboard riders, bodyboarders, windsurfers, surf ski riders, personal watercraft and kite surfers are straining a natural resource that is open to those who can grab a surf craft and get to the beach. The use of personal watercraft in crowded breaks to provide surfers with a technological advantage is also causing uneasiness and resentment in the water, as Chronicles (2003) notes: … I was out at Currumbin Alley the other arvo, sitting among a pack of around 50 guys and girls on shortboards, longboards and the occasional wave ski and bodyboard, when I noticed a group that wasn’t equal. With one guy driving a jet ski, four surfers were getting lifts back into the line up after every wave, doing away with the sometimes horrendous paddle-back at The Alley, which can take as along as ten or 15 minutes to get back to the line-up. After a wave, the surfer was dragged back to the top of the point by the ski. He was then dropped off a few metres from the line-up and rejoined the pack. Guys were, quite rightly, getting pissed off that they were jockeying for position on the next wave with a kid who had caught a wave not even five minutes ago. And all because one surfer could afford $12,000 or whatever it costs for a Yamaha three-seater Waverunner these days. Factors other than technology have also increased the number of surfers in the water. Baby boomers have not retired from the sport, and specialist surfing magazines such as Australian Longboarder and The Surfers Journal cater for those surfers older than thirty-five. News articles and surfing magazines are claiming that more girls and women are taking up surfing for pleasure and personal fitness, although to what degree this has occurred is contestable. Such claims seem to originate largely from the public relations departments of surfing companies, whose worldwide sales of female board shorts have grown significantly in the past three years: it would be interesting to determine whether such sales reflect growth in female participation in the sport or female consumption of its symbolic commodities. No longer viewed as a deviant subculture, surfing is marketed by surfing magazines as a global lifestyle that can be achieved through the consumption of global commodities. While the peak industry and surfing competition bodies continually espouse the need for the sport to grow, the remaining cottage industries creating commodities for use by surfers are being squeezed out by global corporations. Pop-out surfboards are being mass-produced in a Thailand factory to be sold in chain stores throughout the world. Non-paying surfers are excluded from “private” surf breaks, while wave pools and artificial reefs are being created to provide simulations of the “natural” surfing experience. The frustration expressed by Breuchie in relation to the (over)popularization of surfing is being felt in oceans around the world. Additionally, individual surfers fear that the accompanying violence and fighting may result in regulation, discipline and authoritarianism. Such regulation may manifest itself via licenses, liability insurance and other restrictions, and would regulate one of the few “free” activities that remain little affected by law. But continued fighting and surf rage may provide governments with few alternatives. Works Cited Agbayani, Caroline. Annotated Bibliography on the Age of Rage. Accessed 12 January, 2003. Bartholomew, Wayne, and Baker Tim. Bustin’ Down the Door. 2nd Edition. Sydney: HarperSports, 2002. Breuchie, Nick. Tracks, March. Sydney: EMAP Publishing, 2002. Carroll, Nick. The Association of Surfing Professionals Media Guide and Statistics Booklet. Coolangatta: Association of Surfing Professionals and Chilli Industries, 2002. Chronicles, Jonas. To Ski or not to Ski Real Surf. Accessed 9 January, 2003. Cralle, Trevor, ed. The Surfin’ary. Berkely, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2001. Gliddon, Joshua. “Mad Wax.” The Bulletin, Sydney: ACP Publishing, August 13, 2002. Young, Nat. “My punch-up at San Diego.” Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 1966. ---. Surf Rage. Angourie: Nymboida Press, 2000. Links http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2001/agbayani/report1.htm http://www.coastalwatch.com http://www.realsurf.com.au/news/newsitem.php?id=106 http://www.baliwaves.com http://www.surf-news.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Scott, Paul. "We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/05-weshallfight.php>. APA Style Scott, P., (2003, Feb 26). We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/05-weshallfight.html

In its preamble, The Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism (WA) commits the state to becoming: “A society in which respect for mutual difference is accompanied by equality of opportunity within a framework of democratic citizenship”. One of the principles of multiculturalism, as enunciated in the Charter, is “equality of opportunity for all members of society to achieve their full potential in a free and democratic society where every individual is equal before and under the law”. An important element of this principle is the “equality of opportunity … to achieve … full potential”. The implication here is that those who start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to achieving that potential deserve more than ‘equal’ treatment. Implicitly, equality can be achieved only through the recognition of and response to differential needs and according to the likelihood of achieving full potential. This is encapsulated in Kymlicka’s argument that neutrality is “hopelessly inadequate once we look at the diversity of cultural membership which exists in contemporary liberal democracies” (903). Yet such a potential commitment to differential support might seem unequal to some, where equality is constructed as the same or equal treatment regardless of differing circumstances. Until the past half-century or more, this problematic has been a hotly-contested element of the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans in the United States, especially as these rights related to educational opportunity during the years of racial segregation. For some, providing resources to achieve equal outcomes (rather than be committed to equal inputs) may appear to undermine the very ethos of liberal democracy. In Australia, this perspective has been the central argument of Pauline Hanson and her supporters who denounce programs designed as measures to achieve equality for specific disadvantaged groups; including Indigenous Australians and humanitarian refugees. Nevertheless, equality for all on all grounds of legally-accepted difference: gender, race, age, family status, sexual orientation, political conviction, to name a few; is often held as the hallmark of progressive liberal societies such as Australia. In the matter of religious freedoms the situation seems much less complex. All that is required for religious equality, it seems, is to define religion as a private matter – carried out, as it were, between consenting parties away from the public sphere. This necessitates, effectively, the separation of state and religion. This separation of religious belief from the apparatus of the state is referred to as ‘secularism’ and it tends to be regarded as a cornerstone of a liberal democracy, given the general assumption that secularism is a necessary precursor to equal treatment of and respect for different religious beliefs, and the association of secularism with the Western project of the Enlightenment when liberty, equality and science replaced religion and superstition. By this token, western nations committed to equality are also committed to being liberal, democratic and secular in nature; and it is a matter of state indifference as to which religious faith a citizen embraces – Wiccan, Christian, Judaism, etc – if any. Historically, and arguably more so in the past decade, the terms ‘democratic’, ‘secular’, ‘liberal’ and ‘equal’ have all been used to inscribe characteristics of the collective ‘West’. Individuals and states whom the West ascribe as ‘other’ are therefore either or all of: not democratic; not liberal; or not secular – and failing any one of these characteristics (for any country other than Britain, with its parliamentary-established Church of England, headed by the Queen as Supreme Governor) means that that country certainly does not espouse equality. The West and the ‘Other’ in Popular Discourse The constructed polarisation between the free, secular and democratic West that values equality; and the oppressive ‘other’ that perpetuates theocracies, religious discrimination and – at the ultimate – human rights abuses, is a common theme in much of the West’s media and popular discourse on Islam. The same themes are also applied in some measure to Muslims in Australia, in particular to constructions of the rights of Muslim women in Australia. Typically, Muslim women’s dress is deemed by some secular Australians to be a symbol of religious subjugation, rather than of free choice. Arguably, this polemic has come to the fore since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. However, as Aly and Walker note, the comparisons between the West and the ‘other’ are historically constructed and inherited (Said) and have tended latterly to focus western attention on the role and status of Muslim women as evidence of the West’s progression comparative to its antithesis, Eastern oppression. An examination of studies of the United States media coverage of the September 11 attacks, and the ensuing ‘war on terror’, reveals some common media constructions around good versus evil. There is no equal status between these. Good must necessarily triumph. In the media coverage, the evil ‘other’ is Islamic terrorism, personified by Osama bin Laden. Part of the justification for the war on terror is a perception that the West, as a force for good in this world, must battle evil and protect freedom and democracy (Erjavec and Volcic): to do otherwise is to allow the terror of the ‘other’ to seep into western lives. The war on terror becomes the defence of the west, and hence the defence of equality and freedom. A commitment to equality entails a defeat of all things constructed as denying the rights of people to be equal. Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudeaux and Garland analysed the range of discourses evident in Time and Newsweek magazines in the five weeks following September 11 and found that journalists replicated themes of national identity present in the communication strategies of US leaders and elites. The political and media response to the threat of the evil ‘other’ is to create a monolithic appeal to liberal values which are constructed as being a monopoly of the ‘free’ West. A brief look at just a few instances of public communication by US political leaders confirms Hutcheson et al.’s contention that the official construction of the 2001 attacks invoked discourses of good and evil reminiscent of the Cold War. In reference to the actions of the four teams of plane hijackers, US president George W Bush opened his Address to the Nation on the evening of September 11: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). After enjoining Americans to recite Psalm 23 in prayer for the victims and their families, President Bush ended his address with a clear message of national unity and a further reference to the battle between good and evil: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). In his address to the joint houses of Congress shortly after September 11, President Bush implicated not just the United States in this fight against evil, but the entire international community stating: “This is the world’s fight. This is civilisation’s fight” (cited by Brown 295). Addressing the California Business Association a month later, in October 2001, Bush reiterated the notion of the United States as the leading nation in the moral fight against evil, and identified this as a possible reason for the attack: “This great state is known for its diversity – people of all races, all religions, and all nationalities. They’ve come here to live a better life, to find freedom, to live in peace and security, with tolerance and with justice. When the terrorists attacked America, this is what they attacked”. While the US media framed the events of September 11 as an attack on the values of democracy and liberalism as these are embodied in US democratic traditions, work by scholars analysing the Australian media’s representation of the attacks suggested that this perspective was echoed and internationalised for an Australian audience. Green asserts that global media coverage of the attacks positioned the global audience, including Australians, as ‘American’. The localisation of the discourses of patriotism and national identity for Australian audiences has mainly been attributed to the media’s use of the good versus evil frame that constructed the West as good, virtuous and moral and invited Australian audiences to subscribe to this argument as members of a shared Western democratic identity (Osuri and Banerjee). Further, where the ‘we’ are defenders of justice, equality and the rule of law; the opposing ‘others’ are necessarily barbaric. Secularism and the Muslim Diaspora Secularism is a historically laden term that has been harnessed to symbolise the emancipation of social life from the forced imposition of religious doctrine. The struggle between the essentially voluntary and private demands of religion, and the enjoyment of a public social life distinct from religious obligations, is historically entrenched in the cultural identities of many modern Western societies (Dallmayr). The concept of religious freedom in the West has evolved into a principle based on the bifurcation of life into the objective public sphere and the subjective private sphere within which individuals are free to practice their religion of choice (Yousif), or no religion at all. Secularism, then, is contingent on the maintenance of a separation between the public (religion-free) and the private or non- public (which may include religion). The debate regarding the feasibility or lack thereof of maintaining this separation has been a matter of concern for democratic theorists for some time, and has been made somewhat more complicated with the growing presence of religious diasporas in liberal democratic states (Charney). In fact, secularism is often cited as a precondition for the existence of religious pluralism. By removing religion from the public domain of the state, religious freedom, in so far as it constitutes the ability of an individual to freely choose which religion, if any, to practice, is deemed to be ensured. However, as Yousif notes, the Western conception of religious freedom is based on a narrow notion of religion as a personal matter, possibly a private emotional response to the idea of God, separate from the rational aspects of life which reside in the public domain. Arguably, religion is conceived of as recognising (or creating) a supernatural dimension to life that involves faith and belief, and the suspension of rational thought. This Western notion of religion as separate from the state, dividing the private from the public sphere, is constructed as a necessary basis for the liberal democratic commitment to secularism, and the notional equality of all religions, or none. Rawls questioned how people with conflicting political views and ideologies can freely endorse a common political regime in secular nations. The answer, he posits, lies in the conception of justice as a mechanism to regulate society independently of plural (and often opposing) religious or political conceptions. Thus, secularism can be constructed as an indicator of pluralism and justice; and political reason becomes the “common currency of debate in a pluralist society” (Charney 7). A corollary of this is that religious minorities must learn to use the language of political reason to represent and articulate their views and opinions in the public context, especially when talking with non-religious others. This imposes a need for religious minorities to support their views and opinions with political reason that appeals to the community at large as citizens, and not just to members of the minority religion concerned. The common ground becomes one of secularism, in which all speakers are deemed to be indifferent as to the (private) claims of religion upon believers. Minority religious groups, such as fundamentalist Mormons, invoke secular language of moral tolerance and civil rights to be acknowledged by the state, and to carry out their door-to-door ‘information’ evangelisation/campaigns. Right wing fundamentalist Christian groups and Catholics opposed to abortion couch their views in terms of an extension of the secular right to life, and in terms of the human rights and civil liberties of the yet-to-be-born. In doing this, these religious groups express an acceptance of the plurality of the liberal state and engage in debates in the public sphere through the language of political values and political principles of the liberal democratic state. The same principles do not apply within their own associations and communities where the language of the private religious realm prevails, and indeed is expected. This embracing of a political rhetoric for discussions of religion in the public sphere presents a dilemma for the Muslim diaspora in liberal democratic states. For many Muslims, religion is a complete way of life, incapable of compartmentalisation. The narrow Western concept of religious expression as a private matter is somewhat alien to Muslims who are either unable or unwilling to separate their religious needs from their needs as citizens of the nation state. Problems become apparent when religious needs challenge what seems to be publicly acceptable, and conflicts occur between what the state perceives to be matters of rational state interest and what Muslims perceive to be matters of religious identity. Muslim women’s groups in Western Australia for example have for some years discussed the desirability of a Sharia divorce court which would enable Muslims to obtain divorces according to Islamic law. It should be noted here that not all Muslims agree with the need for such a court and many – probably a majority – are satisfied with the existing processes that allow Muslim men and women to obtain a divorce through the Australian family court. For some Muslims however, this secular process does not satisfy their religious needs and it is perceived as having an adverse impact on their ability to adhere to their faith. A similar situation pertains to divorced Catholics who, according to a strict interpretation of their doctrine, are unable to take the Eucharist if they form a subsequent relationship (even if married according to the state), unless their prior marriage has been annulled by the Catholic Church or their previous partner has died. Whereas divorce is considered by the state as a public and legal concern, for some Muslims and others it is undeniably a religious matter. The suggestion by the Anglican Communion’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law regarding marital disputes or financial matters is ultimately unavoidable, sparked controversy in Britain and in Australia. Attempts by some Australian Muslim scholars to elaborate on Dr Williams’s suggestions, such as an article by Anisa Buckley in The Herald Sun (Buckley), drew responses that, typically, called for Muslims to ‘go home’. A common theme in these responses is that proponents of Sharia law (and Islam in general) do not share a commitment to the Australian values of freedom and equality. The following excerpts from the online pages of Herald Sun Readers’ Comments (Herald Sun) demonstrate this perception: “These people come to Australia for freedoms they have never experienced before and to escape repression which is generally brought about by such ‘laws’ as Sharia! How very dare they even think that this would be an option. Go home if you want such a regime. Such an insult to want to come over to this country on our very goodwill and our humanity and want to change our systems and ways. Simply, No!” Posted 1:58am February 12, 2008 “Under our English derived common law statutes, the law is supposed to protect an individual’s rights to life, liberty and property. That is the basis of democracy in Australia and most other western nations. Sharia law does not adequately share these philosophies and principles, thus it is incompatible with our system of law.” Posted 12:55am February 11, 2008 “Incorporating religious laws in the secular legal system is just plain wrong. No fundamentalist religion (Islam in particular) is compatible with a liberal-democracy.” Posted 2:23pm February 10, 2008 “It should not be allowed in Australia the Muslims come her for a better life and we give them that opportunity but they still believe in covering them selfs why do they even come to Australia for when they don’t follow owe [our] rules but if we went to there [their] country we have to cover owe selfs [sic]” Posted 11:28am February 10, 2008 Conflicts similar to this one – over any overt or non-private religious practice in Australia – may also be observed in public debates concerning the wearing of traditional Islamic dress; the slaughter of animals for consumption; Islamic burial rites, and other religious practices which cannot be confined to the private realm. Such conflicts highlight the inability of the rational liberal approach to solve all controversies arising from religious traditions that enjoin a broader world view than merely private spirituality. In order to adhere to the liberal reduction of religion to the private sphere, Muslims in the West must negotiate some religious practices that are constructed as being at odds with the rational state and practice a form of Islam that is consistent with secularism. At the extreme, this Western-acceptable form is what the Australian government has termed ‘moderate Islam’. The implication here is that, for the state, ‘non-moderate Islam’ – Islam that pervades the public realm – is just a descriptor away from ‘extreme’. The divide between Christianity and Islam has been historically played out in European Christendom as a refusal to recognise Islam as a world religion, preferring instead to classify it according to race or ethnicity: a Moorish tendency, perhaps. The secular state prefers to engage with Muslims as an ethnic, linguistic or cultural group or groups (Yousif). Thus, in order to engage with the state as political citizens, Muslims must find ways to present their needs that meet the expectations of the state – ways that do not use their religious identity as a frame of reference. They can do this by utilizing the language of political reason in the public domain or by framing their needs, views and opinions exclusively in terms of their ethnic or cultural identity with no reference to their shared faith. Neither option is ideal, or indeed even viable. This is partly because many Muslims find it difficult if not impossible to separate their religious needs from their needs as political citizens; and also because the prevailing perception of Muslims in the media and public arena is constructed on the basis of an understanding of Islam as a religion that conflicts with the values of liberal democracy. In the media and public arena, little consideration is given to the vast differences that exist among Muslims in Australia, not only in terms of ethnicity and culture, but also in terms of practice and doctrine (Shia or Sunni). The dominant construction of Muslims in the Australian popular media is of religious purists committed to annihilating liberal, secular governments and replacing them with anti-modernist theocratic regimes (Brasted). It becomes a talking point for some, for example, to realise that there are international campaigns to recognise Gay Muslims’ rights within their faith (ABC) (in the same way that there are campaigns to recognise Gay Christians as full members of their churches and denominations and equally able to hold high office, as followers of the Anglican Communion will appreciate). Secularism, Preference and Equality Modood asserts that the extent to which a minority religious community can fully participate in the public and political life of the secular nation state is contingent on the extent to which religion is the primary marker of identity. “It may well be the case therefore that if a faith is the primary identity of any community then that community cannot fully identify with and participate in a polity to the extent that it privileges a rival faith. Or privileges secularism” (60). Modood is not saying here that Islam has to be privileged in order for Muslims to participate fully in the polity; but that no other religion, nor secularism, should be so privileged. None should be first, or last, among equals. For such a situation to occur, Islam would have to be equally acceptable both with other religions and with secularism. Following a 2006 address by the former treasurer (and self-avowed Christian) Peter Costello to the Sydney Institute, in which Costello suggested that people who feel a dual claim from both Islamic law and Australian law should be stripped of their citizenship (Costello), the former Prime Minister, John Howard, affirmed what he considers to be Australia’s primary identity when he stated that ‘Australia’s core set of values flowed from its Anglo Saxon identity’ and that any one who did not embrace those values should not be allowed into the country (Humphries). The (then) Prime Minister’s statement is an unequivocal assertion of the privileged position of the Anglo Saxon tradition in Australia, a tradition with which many Muslims and others in Australia find it difficult to identify. Conclusion Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia, partly because it is perceived that their faith is under attack and that it needs defending (Aly). They construct the defence of their faith as a choice and an obligation; but also as a right that they have under Australian law as equal citizens in a secular state (Aly and Green). Australian Muslims who have no difficulty in reconciling their core Australianness with their deep faith take it as a responsibility to live their lives in ways that model the reconciliation of each identity – civil and religious – with the other. In this respect, the political call to Australian Muslims to embrace a ‘moderate Islam’, where this is seen as an Islam without a public or political dimension, is constructed as treating their faith as less than equal. Religious identity is generally deemed to have no place in the liberal democratic model, particularly where that religion is constructed to be at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy, namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, it is as if the national commitment to secularism rules as out-of-bounds any identity that is grounded in religion, giving precedence instead to accepting and negotiating cultural and ethnic differences. Religion becomes a taboo topic in these terms, an affront against secularism and the values of the Enlightenment that include liberty and equality. In these circumstances, it is not the case that all religions are equally ignored in a secular framework. What is the case is that the secular framework has been constructed as a way of ‘privatising’ one religion, Christianity; leaving others – including Islam – as having nowhere to go. Islam thus becomes constructed as less than equal since it appears that, unlike Christians, Muslims are not willing to play the secular game. In fact, Muslims are puzzling over how they can play the secular game, and why they should play the secular game, given that – as is the case with Christians – they see no contradiction in performing ‘good Muslim’ and ‘good Australian’, if given an equal chance to embrace both. Acknowledgements This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. 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On the morning of Thursday, 4 May 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing entitled “Terrorist Use of the Internet.” The Intelligence committee meeting was scheduled to take place in Room 1302 of the Longworth Office Building, a Depression-era structure with a neoclassical façade. Because of a dysfunctional elevator, some of the congressional representatives were late to the meeting. During the testimony about the newest political applications for cutting-edge digital technology, the microphones periodically malfunctioned, and witnesses complained of “technical problems” several times. By the end of the day it seemed that what was to be remembered about the hearing was the shocking revelation that terrorists were using videogames to recruit young jihadists. The Associated Press wrote a short, restrained article about the hearing that only mentioned “computer games and recruitment videos” in passing. Eager to have their version of the news item picked up, Reuters made videogames the focus of their coverage with a headline that announced, “Islamists Using US Videogames in Youth Appeal.” Like a game of telephone, as the Reuters videogame story was quickly re-run by several Internet news services, each iteration of the title seemed less true to the exact language of the original. One Internet news service changed the headline to “Islamic militants recruit using U.S. video games.” Fox News re-titled the story again to emphasise that this alert about technological manipulation was coming from recognised specialists in the anti-terrorism surveillance field: “Experts: Islamic Militants Customizing Violent Video Games.” As the story circulated, the body of the article remained largely unchanged, in which the Reuters reporter described the digital materials from Islamic extremists that were shown at the congressional hearing. During the segment that apparently most captured the attention of the wire service reporters, eerie music played as an English-speaking narrator condemned the “infidel” and declared that he had “put a jihad” on them, as aerial shots moved over 3D computer-generated images of flaming oil facilities and mosques covered with geometric designs. Suddenly, this menacing voice-over was interrupted by an explosion, as a virtual rocket was launched into a simulated military helicopter. The Reuters reporter shared this dystopian vision from cyberspace with Western audiences by quoting directly from the chilling commentary and describing a dissonant montage of images and remixed sound. “I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults. Then came a recording of President George W. Bush’s September 16, 2001, statement: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” It was edited to repeat the word “crusade,” which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity. According to the news reports, the key piece of evidence before Congress seemed to be a film by “SonicJihad” of recorded videogame play, which – according to the experts – was widely distributed online. Much of the clip takes place from the point of view of a first-person shooter, seen as if through the eyes of an armed insurgent, but the viewer also periodically sees third-person action in which the player appears as a running figure wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, who dashes toward the screen with a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. Significantly, another of the player’s hand-held weapons is a detonator that triggers remote blasts. As jaunty music plays, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles burst into smoke and flame. Finally, at the triumphant ending of the video, a green and white flag bearing a crescent is hoisted aloft into the sky to signify victory by Islamic forces. To explain the existence of this digital alternative history in which jihadists could be conquerors, the Reuters story described the deviousness of the country’s terrorist opponents, who were now apparently modifying popular videogames through their wizardry and inserting anti-American, pro-insurgency content into U.S.-made consumer technology. One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular “Battlefield 2” from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as “mods,” to video games. “Millions of people create mods on games around the world,” he said. “We have absolutely no control over them. It’s like drawing a mustache on a picture.” Although the Electronic Arts executive dismissed the activities of modders as a “mustache on a picture” that could only be considered little more than childish vandalism of their off-the-shelf corporate product, others saw a more serious form of criminality at work. Testifying experts and the legislators listening on the committee used the video to call for greater Internet surveillance efforts and electronic counter-measures. Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusement – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source. Ironically, the moment in the movie from which the sound clip is excerpted is one about intelligence gathering. As an agent of Team America, a fictional elite U.S. commando squad, the hero of the film’s all-puppet cast, Gary Johnston, is impersonating a jihadist radical inside a hostile Egyptian tavern that is modelled on the cantina scene from Star Wars. Additional laughs come from the fact that agent Johnston is accepted by the menacing terrorist cell as “Hakmed,” despite the fact that he utters a series of improbable clichés made up of incoherent stereotypes about life in the Middle East while dressed up in a disguise made up of shoe polish and a turban from a bathroom towel. The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists. It wasn’t intended for the purpose what it was portrayed to be by the media. So no I don’t regret making a funny video . . . why should I? The only thing I regret is thinking that news from Reuters was objective and always right. The least they could do is some online research before publishing this. If they label me al-Qaeda just for making this silly video, that makes you think, what is this al-Qaeda? And is everything al-Qaeda? Although Sonic Jihad dismissed his own work as “silly” or “funny,” he expected considerably more from a credible news agency like Reuters: “objective” reporting, “online research,” and fact-checking before “publishing.” Within the week, almost all of the salient details in the Reuters story were revealed to be incorrect. SonicJihad’s film was not made by terrorists or for terrorists: it was not created by “Islamic militants” for “Muslim youths.” The videogame it depicted had not been modified by a “tech-savvy militant” with advanced programming skills. Of course, what is most extraordinary about this story isn’t just that Reuters merely got its facts wrong; it is that a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play. Based on their exchanges in the public record, elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal. This environment of cultural reaction can be used to explain why policy makers’ reaction to terrorists’ use of networked communication and digital media actually tells us more about our own American ideologies about technology and rhetoric in a contemporary information environment. When the experts come forward at the Sonic Jihad hearing to “walk us through the media and some of the products,” they present digital artefacts of an information economy that mirrors many of the features of our own consumption of objects of electronic discourse, which seem dangerously easy to copy and distribute and thus also create confusion about their intended meanings, audiences, and purposes. From this one hearing we can see how the reception of many new digital genres plays out in the public sphere of legislative discourse. Web pages, videogames, and Weblogs are mentioned specifically in the transcript. The main architecture of the witnesses’ presentation to the committee is organised according to the rhetorical conventions of a PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, the arguments made by expert witnesses about the relationship of orality to literacy or of public to private communications in new media are highly relevant to how we might understand other important digital genres, such as electronic mail or text messaging. The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property. To explain embarrassing leaks of infinitely replicable digital files, witness Ron Roughead says, “We’re not even sure that they don’t even hack into the kinds of spaces that hold photographs in order to get pictures that our forces have taken.” Another witness, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and International Affairs, Peter Rodman claims that “any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is released, they will modify it and change the game for their needs.” Thus, the implication of these witnesses’ testimony is that the release of code into the public domain can contribute to political subversion, much as covert intrusion into computer networks by stealthy hackers can. However, the witnesses from the Pentagon and from the government contractor SAIC often present a contradictory image of the supposed terrorists in the hearing transcripts. Sometimes the enemy is depicted as an organisation of technological masterminds, capable of manipulating the computer code of unwitting Americans and snatching their rightful intellectual property away; sometimes those from the opposing forces are depicted as pre-modern and even sub-literate political innocents. In contrast, the congressional representatives seem to focus on similarities when comparing the work of “terrorists” to the everyday digital practices of their constituents and even of themselves. According to the transcripts of this open hearing, legislators on both sides of the aisle express anxiety about domestic patterns of Internet reception. Even the legislators’ own Web pages are potentially disruptive electronic artefacts, particularly when the demands of digital labour interfere with their duties as lawmakers. Although the subject of the hearing is ostensibly terrorist Websites, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) bemoans the difficulty of maintaining her own official congressional site. As she observes, “So we are – as members, I think we’re very sensitive about what’s on our Website, and if I retained what I had on my Website three years ago, I’d be out of business. So we know that they have to be renewed. They go up, they go down, they’re rebuilt, they’re – you know, the message is targeted to the future.” In their questions, lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) compares the polluting power of insurgent bloggers to that of influential online muckrakers from the American political Right. Hastings complains of “garbage on our regular mainstream news that comes from blog sites.” Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) attempts to project a media-savvy persona by bringing up the “phenomenon of blogging” in conjunction with her questions about jihadist Websites in which she notes how Internet traffic can be magnified by cooperative ventures among groups of ideologically like-minded content-providers: “These Websites, and particularly the most active ones, are they cross-linked? And do they have kind of hot links to your other favorite sites on them?” At one point Representative Wilson asks witness Rodman if he knows “of your 100 hottest sites where the Webmasters are educated? What nationality they are? Where they’re getting their money from?” In her questions, Wilson implicitly acknowledges that Web work reflects influences from pedagogical communities, economic networks of the exchange of capital, and even potentially the specific ideologies of nation-states. It is perhaps indicative of the government contractors’ anachronistic worldview that the witness is unable to answer Wilson’s question. He explains that his agency focuses on the physical location of the server or ISP rather than the social backgrounds of the individuals who might be manufacturing objectionable digital texts. The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries. The residual subtexts in the witnesses’ conjectures about competing cultures of orality and literacy may tell us something about a reactionary rhetoric around videogames and digital culture more generally. According to the experts before Congress, the Middle Eastern audience for these videogames and Websites is limited by its membership in a pre-literate society that is only capable of abortive cultural production without access to knowledge that is archived in printed codices. Sometimes the witnesses before Congress seem to be unintentionally channelling the ideas of the late literacy theorist Walter Ong about the “secondary orality” associated with talky electronic media such as television, radio, audio recording, or telephone communication. Later followers of Ong extend this concept of secondary orality to hypertext, hypermedia, e-mail, and blogs, because they similarly share features of both speech and written discourse. Although Ong’s disciples celebrate this vibrant reconnection to a mythic, communal past of what Kathleen Welch calls “electric rhetoric,” the defence industry consultants express their profound state of alarm at the potentially dangerous and subversive character of this hybrid form of communication. The concept of an “oral tradition” is first introduced by the expert witnesses in the context of modern marketing and product distribution: “The Internet is used for a variety of things – command and control,” one witness states. “One of the things that’s missed frequently is how and – how effective the adversary is at using the Internet to distribute product. They’re using that distribution network as a modern form of oral tradition, if you will.” Thus, although the Internet can be deployed for hierarchical “command and control” activities, it also functions as a highly efficient peer-to-peer distributed network for disseminating the commodity of information. Throughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order. Witness Eric Michael describes the “oral tradition” and the conventions of communal life in the Middle East to emphasise the primacy of speech in the collective discursive practices of this alien population: “I’d like to point your attention to the media types and the fact that the oral tradition is listed as most important. The other media listed support that. And the significance of the oral tradition is more than just – it’s the medium by which, once it comes off the Internet, it is transferred.” The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era. The oral tradition now also has an aspect of rumor. A[n] event takes place. There is an explosion in a city. Rumor is that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb and is doing indiscriminate killing. This ends up being discussed on the street. It ends up showing up in a Friday sermon in a mosque or in another religious institution. It then gets recycled into written materials. Media picks up the story and broadcasts it, at which point it’s now a fact. In this particular case that we were telling you about, it showed up on a network television, and their propaganda continues to go back to this false initial report on network television and continue to reiterate that it’s a fact, even though the United States government has proven that it was not a fact, even though the network has since recanted the broadcast. In this example, many-to-many discussion on the “street” is formalised into a one-to many “sermon” and then further stylised using technology in a one-to-many broadcast on “network television” in which “propaganda” that is “false” can no longer be disputed. This “oral tradition” is like digital media, because elements of discourse can be infinitely copied or “recycled,” and it is designed to “reiterate” content. In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.” The film by SonicJihad is chosen as the final clip by the witnesses before Congress, because it allegedly combines many different types of emotional appeal, and thus it conveniently ties together all of the themes that the witnesses present to the legislators about unreliable oral or rhetorical sources in the Middle East: And there you see how all these products are linked together. And you can see where the games are set to psychologically condition you to go kill coalition forces. You can see how they use humor. You can see how the entire campaign is carefully crafted to first evoke an emotion and then to evoke a response and to direct that response in the direction that they want. Jihadist digital products, especially videogames, are effective means of manipulation, the witnesses argue, because they employ multiple channels of persuasion and carefully sequenced and integrated subliminal messages. To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses. This sharp criticism of the artful use of a presentation style that is “crafted” is ironic, given that the witnesses’ “compilation” of jihadist digital material is staged in the form of a carefully structured PowerPoint presentation, one that is paced to a well-rehearsed rhythm of “slide, please” or “next slide” in the transcript. The transcript also reveals that the members of the House Intelligence Committee were not the original audience for the witnesses’ PowerPoint presentation. Rather, when it was first created by SAIC, this “expert” presentation was designed for training purposes for the troops on the ground, who would be facing the challenges of deployment in hostile terrain. According to the witnesses, having the slide show showcased before Congress was something of an afterthought. Nonetheless, Congressman Tiahrt (R-KN) is so impressed with the rhetorical mastery of the consultants that he tries to appropriate it. As Tiarht puts it, “I’d like to get a copy of that slide sometime.” From the hearing we also learn that the terrorists’ Websites are threatening precisely because they manifest a polymorphously perverse geometry of expansion. For example, one SAIC witness before the House Committee compares the replication and elaboration of digital material online to a “spiderweb.” Like Representative Eshoo’s site, he also notes that the terrorists’ sites go “up” and “down,” but the consultant is left to speculate about whether or not there is any “central coordination” to serve as an organising principle and to explain the persistence and consistency of messages despite the apparent lack of a single authorial ethos to offer a stable, humanised, point of reference. In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.” Of course, to maintain their share of the government market, the Science Applications International Corporation also employs practices of publicity and promotion through the Internet and digital media. They use HTML Web pages for these purposes, as well as PowerPoint presentations and online video. The rhetoric of the Website of SAIC emphasises their motto “From Science to Solutions.” After a short Flash film about how SAIC scientists and engineers solve “complex technical problems,” the visitor is taken to the home page of the firm that re-emphasises their central message about expertise. The maps, uniforms, and specialised tools and equipment that are depicted in these opening Web pages reinforce an ethos of professional specialisation that is able to respond to multiple threats posed by the “global war on terror.” By 26 June 2006, the incident finally was being described as a “Pentagon Snafu” by ABC News. From the opening of reporter Jake Tapper’s investigative Webcast, established government institutions were put on the spot: “So, how much does the Pentagon know about videogames? Well, when it came to a recent appearance before Congress, apparently not enough.” Indeed, the very language about “experts” that was highlighted in the earlier coverage is repeated by Tapper in mockery, with the significant exception of “independent expert” Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. If the Pentagon and SAIC deride the legitimacy of rhetoric as a cultural practice, Bogost occupies himself with its defence. In his recent book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost draws upon the authority of the “2,500 year history of rhetoric” to argue that videogames represent a significant development in that cultural narrative. Given that Bogost and his Watercooler Games Weblog co-editor Gonzalo Frasca were actively involved in the detective work that exposed the depth of professional incompetence involved in the government’s line-up of witnesses, it is appropriate that Bogost is given the final words in the ABC exposé. As Bogost says, “We should be deeply bothered by this. We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting.” Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see. References ABC News. “Terrorist Videogame?” Nightline Online. 21 June 2006. 22 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2105341>. Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Game Politics. “Was Congress Misled by ‘Terrorist’ Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage.” 11 May 2006. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html#cutid1>. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. julieb. “David Morgan Is a Horrible Writer and Should Be Fired.” Online posting. 5 May 2006. Dvorak Uncensored Cage Match Forums. http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,130.0.html>. Mahmood. “Terrorists Don’t Recruit with Battlefield 2.” GGL Global Gaming. 16 May 2006 http://www.ggl.com/news.php?NewsId=3090>. Morgan, David. “Islamists Using U.S. Video Games in Youth Appeal.” Reuters online news service. 4 May 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=topNews &storyID=2006-05-04T215543Z_01_N04305973_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY- VIDEOGAMES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc= NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2>. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen, 1982. Parker, Trey. Online posting. 7 May 2006. 9 May 2006 http://www.treyparker.com>. Plato. “Gorgias.” Plato: Collected Dialogues. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Shrader, Katherine. “Pentagon Surfing Thousands of Jihad Sites.” Associated Press 4 May 2006. SonicJihad. “SonicJihad: A Day in the Life of a Resistance Fighter.” Online posting. 26 Dec. 2005. Planet Battlefield Forums. 9 May 2006 http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1>. Tapper, Jake, and Audery Taylor. “Terrorist Video Game or Pentagon Snafu?” ABC News Nightline 21 June 2006. 30 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Technology/story?id=2105128&page=1>. U.S. Congressional Record. Panel I of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Subject: “Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.” Federal News Service. 4 May 2006. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and the New Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Losh, Elizabeth. "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>. APA Style Losh, E. (Oct. 2007) "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>.

(Views of Major General S B Asthana,SM,VSM, (Veteran), Questioned by Jiangtao Shi of South China Morning Post on 29 August 2017.Question 1 (SCMP)Are you surprised that the over 70-day military standoff ended all of a sudden just days ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s trip to China for the BRICS summit? The deliberate ambiguity in both sides’ statements seems to indicate that both sides were willing to make some kind of concessions in a bid to end the dispute in a mutually acceptable face-saving manner. What are the main reasons and factors behind the seemingly peaceful solution for China and India respectively? (For China , BRICS and the 19th party congress? For India, domestic political support and economic reform?)Answer 1 by Major General S B AsthanaI am not really surprised that the over 70-day military standoff ended all of a sudden just days ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s trip to China for the BRICS summit. As you have rightly pointed out, both sides (China and India) were looking for an opportunity for a face saving resolution, without appearing to be weak domestically. The likelihood of absence of PM Modi in BRICS Summit, and its resultant political and diplomatic cost, triggered that opportunity. In my opinion, the main reasons behind such a sudden resolution were:-Any escalation beyond the point of standoff as on 28 August could have been cost prohibitive in terms of economical engagement, political and diplomatic cost, human casualties, without any worthwhile gains for both sides. Prolonging it was not in the national interest of either of the country.Success of BRICS is important for all member countries including China. China refusal to talk without precondition of Indian withdrawal and repeated provocative statements was exhibiting its arrogance. This wasn’t going well with global community, besides giving an indirect message to all including BRICS, about its hegemonic intentions and poor diplomatic acumen. Even US and Japan, who were not involved with Doklam, chose to state that both must talk to resolve it. The fact that China did not accept ICA verdict, continued aggressive posturing in South China Sea, violated 2012 Agreement in Doklam Triangle, and was seen as not doing enough to implement UN obligation against North Korea. It was affecting its global image adversely, hence some midcourse correction was needed, which has been done through this adjustment.An India China conflict, besides shattering dreams of economic prosperity of both countries, could have escalated to international dimensions, more so with ongoing problems of North Korea and South China Sea, and turbulence in Af- Pak Region. The fact that both are nuclear states cannot be discounted in strategic calculus of escalation dynamics.Militarily the escalation dynamics was not thought through. If war gamed properly, the escalation would have resulted in stalemate, which would have damaged the image of President Xi Jinping and reduced his chances for getting favourable people in 19th Party Congress in his second term and any possible prospects of his third term.From Indian perspective also, escalation of this standoff wasn’t in its National Interest. India needs China’s market for its growth in future, even if the balance of trade is not in its favour today. Now that India is on ‘Make in India’ path, as fastest growing economy to bring prosperity to its people,it may not like to slow down due to such meaningless disruptions.There was no domestic pressure on Indian Government, as all political parties,Security forces and public were determined to check Chinese encroachment and arrogance, at any cost.Question 2(SCMP)While an “expeditious disengagement” in Doklam brought an end to the border standoff and ease tensions between the two countries, do you think it could fuel nationalist sentiment, mistrust and hostility in both nations and cast a long shadow over the longstanding border dispute between China and India and their relations? What are the immediate and long-term implications of the border standoff on bilateral relations, especially considering the strategic competition and rivalry for dominance in the region between the nuclear-armed Asian giants? Will it have a long-term impact on the regional geopolitical landscape?Answer 2 by Major General S B AsthanaDoklam standoff is neither the first, nor the last, and not even the longest standoff between India and China. Many strategists argue that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are strong leaders, leading their nations with patriotic sentiments. The nationalist self-confidence from both sides may ignite a heated rivalry in which bilateral relations could deteriorate, because an “expeditious disengagement” in Doklam is only a temporary answer to the bigger problem of longstanding border dispute between both.Out of 14 countries with which China had border issues, it has resolved with 12 except India and Bhutan. With India, China has been delaying settling the border issue on some pretext or the other, and with Bhutan it has been shifting its claim lines many times. I understand that permanent resolution of Border Dispute is the ultimate solution, which needs to be expedited. It is a complex problem, as both sides read history in a manner that it supports their claims. This was the reason for both countries to have signed various agreements to ensure peace and tranquillity along the borders, which have been reasonably successful, as no bullet has been fired amongst both Forces in last four decades.Even if resolution of boundary is considered to be a complex problem, the demarcation, delineation and defining of Line of Actual Control (LAC), (which is not a mutually accepted line as of now), is an inescapable necessity. This is do-able by cooperative political intent, to be followed by intense diplomatic efforts. This action cannot be postponed further if the two neighbours have to live peacefully in future without further standoffs’. It needs to be understood that with un-demarcated LAC, troops of both sides will patrol as per their own perceptions of LAC; some areas will be common which both sides will patrol to be its own. Every such patrol will be called as intrusion by the other side, hence such face-offs will continue tillit’s demarcated, and the identification of its demarcation is made known to troops manning the borders. The short term impacts of standoffs were the anxiety among people, possible temporary setback to trade, tension on borders, non attendance of important events like BRF/BRICS if not resolved. The long term impact could have been hardening of varying stand on border resolution, aggressive strategic competition, and growth of interest based strategic partnerships to balance each other.Being neighbors, most populated, developing countries and significant trading partners of future, China and India have convergence of interests in many areas.Our economical engagements, mutual cooperation can proceed with strategic divergences, and this has been demonstrated adequately in past.Question3(SCMP)What are messages for other Asian nations caught between the increasing rivalry between China and India? What are the main takeaways for countries like Bhutan , Sri Lanka , Vietnam , Myanmar , Japan , Singapore and Mongolia ?Answer 3 by Major General S B AsthanaI do not subscribe to the idea of growing rivalry between China and India. The extension of economical and strategic space by large growing countries like China and India, to fulfil their genuine needs is natural and may not necessarily be a rivalry. In case some Asian nation is caught between contradictory needs of China and India, in my opinion it should look after its own national interest.The main message which comes out loud and clear from Doklam episode is that in today’s world no country can afford to be arrogant to bully smaller sovereign nation, if the smaller Nation is determined to stand up for its national interest. If Cuba could stand up to US, Bhutan could stand up to China, Vietnam could stand up to China as well as US, then smaller countries should also look after their national interest, without worrying about the size and might of any power, trying to push them or manipulate their genuine strategic choices.In my perception, the DoklamPlateau was presumably chosen by China for road construction to violate 2012 Treaty at this point of time because:-India and Bhutan boycotted Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation, the Doklam ingress could embarrass both the countries simultaneously.Stressing on 1890 Treaty by China takes away the logic of Tibet, as a player in dealing with India, thus a subtle message to Dalai Lama that he is not a stake holder in Tibet.Test the depth of Indo- Bhutanese security relationship.The area being too close to Siliguri Corridor/Chicken’s Neck, India had to be concerned and had to decide whether to intervene or otherwise in India’s own national interest, thereby conveying a message of standing up or not standing up to a challenge from Beijing in future too.As the construction activity was in Bhutanese Territory, a strong Indian reaction was not expected.In case India takes action, China can proclaim itself as an innocent victim and blame India to be an aggressor.China was however surprised by an unexpectedly strong Indian reaction, and then it realized that the point chosen was such, where it had strategic and tactical disadvantages for her in escalating it. China was also surprised that in multiparty democracy like India, all parties are on the same page as far as stand on sovereignty and Doklam Issue was concerned.The end result was that China was extremely disturbed about it, and churning out fresh provocative statements almost on daily basis, launching psychological and propaganda war, war of words, and resorting to every possible means short of war to put pressure on India to withdraw its troops. The Indian side on the other side has been relatively balanced, but firm in its stance, making very few statements, and was globally appreciated for its diplomatic maturity. No one bought the idea of India being an aggressor. India proved that it could physically resist China when its national interest demands so, and it also honors the security arrangement promised to Bhutan by physical action.Chinese efforts to establish bilateral talks with Bhutan, including financial allurement (Purse Diplomacy) did not materialize. India and Bhutan stood by each other and could resist Chinese aggressive activity. Chinese efforts to involve Nepal also resulted in response from their Deputy Prime Minister expressing unwillingness to take sides. Japanese Ambassador in New Delhi also said that there should be no attempt to change status quo on the ground by force.Vietnam has stood up earlier against China as well as US for its national interest. The Doklam episode will encourage countries like, Mongolia (Visit of Dalai Lama), Singapore( trade issues), Srilanka ( Hambantota Port), Myanmar( Dam construction), and Japan( East China Sea/Senkakuislands) to stand up to China for various issues of divergences, and cause others like Philippines, to reconsider their options to give away their strategic choices.China in last few years has been on island grabbing spree using ‘Incremental Encroachment’ as part of ‘Active Defence’ Strategy’, with its economic and military clout, using ‘Purse Diplomacy’ with some countries and ‘Infrastructure Diplomacy’ with others. In some cases the disagreements amongst some countries have become quite pronounced due to unfair deals. Singaporehad a strong interest in ensuring navigation in South China Seas is not restricted. Mongolia displayed the temerity of hosting the Dalai Lama, despite Chinese opposition.The bigger lesson is that no sovereign country should be pushed to take sides, and if it is done aggressively by any stronger power, the nation which is being pushed will be forced to seek security and other interests elsewhere, in terms of various other partnerships.Question 4 (SCMP)With India insisting that China should respect the 2012 understanding on tri-junctions, which specifically said “the tri-junction boundary points between India, China and third countries will be finalised in consultation with the concerned countries,” do you think it will further delay the border talks between China and Bhutan? Does it mean India will have to be directly involved as the third party in Sino-Bhutanese border talks in the future?Answer 4 by Major General S B AsthanaAs per the lay of the ground, the resolution of border dispute of China and Bhutan especially at triangle/ junction points, is closely linked and cannot be done in isolation. At Doklam plateau the location of Tri-junction as per India supported by Bhutan is Batang La, whereas China contends it to be at Gyemochenon Jampheri Ridge, which amounts to an encroachment of 7-8 km. These issues cannot be resolved in isolation. If there is political will to resolve it, then meeting of three delegation will not take any time. The delay is only in making political decision and directing the diplomats to resolve it in time bound manner.Additional PointAlthough there is a contradiction in the manner in which each country has reported it perhaps to amuse their domestic audience, and both sides can claim it to be a diplomatic achievement. It is a welcomed step towards peace and tranquilityalong the borders, hence which side blinked first or had an upper hand is not relevant, although both will claim it. This resolution has ensured that there has been no exchange of bullets, and India and China as responsible nations have been able to resolve their differences peacefully on Doklam Standoff. It also ensured that both the countries found a peaceful solution, with a face-saving gesture to ease tension, without disturbing the core interest of either.

In PilsenTwenty-six Station Road,She climbed to the third floorUp stairs which were all that was leftOf the whole house,She opened her doorFull on to the sky,Stood gaping over the edge.For this was the placeThe world ended.Thenshe locked up carefullylest someone stealSiriusor Aldebaranfrom her kitchen,went back downstairsand settled herselfto waitfor the house to rise againand for her husband to rise from the ashesand for her children’s hands and feet to be stuck back in placeIn the morning they found herstill as stone, sparrows pecking her hands.Five Minutes after the Air Raidby Miroslav Holub(Calder 287) Holding Still Detonation. Affect. During the Second World War, London and other European cities were subjected to the terrors of aerial bombardment, rendered through nightmarish anticipations of the bomber (Gollin 7) and the material storm of the real air-raid. The fall of bombs plagued cities and their citizens with the terrible rain of explosives and incendiary weapons. A volatile landscape was formed as the urban environment was ‘unmade’ and urged into violent motion. Flying projectiles of shrapnel, debris and people; avalanches of collapsing factories and houses; the inhale and exhale of compressed air and firestorms; the scream of the explosion. All these composed an incredibly fluid urban traumatic, as atmospheres fell over the cities that was thick with smoke, dust, and ventilated only by terror (see for instance Sebald 10 and Mendieta’s 3 recent commentary). Vast craters were imprinted onto the charred morphologies of London and Berlin as well as Coventry, Hamburg and Dresden. Just as the punctuations of the bombing saw the psychic as well as the material give way, writers portraying Britain as an ‘volcano island’ (Spaight 5) witnessed eruptive projections – the volleys of the material air-war; the emotional signature of charged and bitter reprisals; pain, anguish and vengeance - counter-strikes of affect. In the midst of all of this molten violence and emotion it seems impossible that a simultaneous sense of quiescence could be at all possible. More than mere physical fixity or geographical stasis, a rather different sort of experience could take place. Preceding, during and following the excessive mobilisation of an air raid, ‘stillness’ was often used to describe certain plateuing stretches of time-space which were slowed and even stopped (Anderson 740). Between the eruptions appeared hollows of calm and even boredom. People’s nervous flinching under the reverberation of high-explosive blasts formed part of what Jordan Crandall might call a ‘bodily-inclination’ position. Slackened and taut feelings condensed around people listening out for the oncoming bomber. People found that they prepared for the dreadful wail of the siren, or relaxed in the aftermath of the attack. In these instances, states of tension and apprehension as well as calm and relief formed though stillness. The peculiar experiences of ‘stillness’ articulated in these events open out, I suggest, distinctive ways-of-being which undo our assumptions of perpetually fluid subjectivities and the primacy of the ‘body in motion’ even within the context of unparalleled movement and uncertainty (see Harrison 423 and also Rose and Wylie 477 for theoretical critique). The sorts of “musics of stillness and silence able to be discovered in a world of movement” (Thrift, Still 50), add to our understandings of the material geographies of war and terror (see for instance Graham 63; Gregory and Pred 3), whilst they gesture towards complex material-affective experiences of bodies and spaces. Stillness in this sense, denotes apprehending and anticipating spaces and events in ways that sees the body enveloped within the movement of the environment around it; bobbing along intensities that course their way through it; positioned towards pasts and futures that make themselves felt, and becoming capable of intense forms of experience and thought. These examples illustrate not a shutting down of the body to an inwardly focused position – albeit composed by complex relations and connections – but bodies finely attuned to their exteriors (see Bissell, Animating 277 and Conradson 33). In this paper I draw from a range of oral and written testimony archived at the Imperial War Museum and the Mass Observation wartime regular reports. Edited publications from these collections were also consulted. Detailing the experience of aerial bombing during the Blitz, particularly on London between September 1940 to May 1941, forms part of a wider project concerning the calculative and affective dimensions of the aeroplane’s relationship with the human body, especially through the spaces it has worked to construct (infrastructures such as airports) and destroy. While appearing extraordinary, the examples I use are actually fairly typical of the patternings of experience and the depth and clarity with which they are told. They could be taken to be representative of the population as a whole or coincidentally similar testimonials. Either way, they are couched within a specific cultural historical context of urgency, threat and unparalleled violence.Anticipations The complex material geographies of an air raid reveal the ecological interdependencies of populations and their often urban environments and metabolisms (Coward 419; Davis 3; Graham 63; Gregory The Colonial 19; Hewitt Place 257). Aerial warfare was an address of populations conceived at the register of their bio-rhythmical and metabolic relationship to their milieu (Adey). The Blitz and the subsequent Allied bombing campaign constituted Churchill’s ‘great experiment’ for governments attempting to assess the damage an air raid could inflict upon a population’s nerves and morale (Brittain 77; Gregory In Another 88). An anxious and uncertain landscape constructed before the war, perpetuated by public officials, commentators and members of parliament, saw background affects (Ngai 5) of urgency creating an atmosphere that pressurised and squeezed the population to prepare for the ‘gathering storm’. Attacks upon the atmosphere itself had been readily predicted in the form of threatening gas attacks ready to poison the medium upon which human and animal life depended (Haldane 111; Sloterdijk 41-57). One of the most talked of moments of the Blitz is not necessarily the action but the times of stillness that preceded it. Before and in-between an air raid stillness appears to describe a state rendered somewhere between the lulls and silences of the action and the warnings and the anticipatory feelings of what might happen. In the awaiting bodies, the materialites of silence could be felt as a kind-of-sound and as an atmospheric sense of imminence. At the onset of the first air-raids sound became a signifier of what was on the way (MO 408). Waiting – as both practice and sensation – imparted considerable inertia that went back and forth through time (Jeffrey 956; Massumi, Parables 3). For Geographer Kenneth Hewitt, sound “told of the coming raiders, the nearness of bombs, the plight of loved ones” (When the 16). The enormous social survey of Mass Observation concluded that “fear seems to be linked above all with noise” (original emphasis). As one report found, “It is the siren or the whistle or the explosion or the drone – these are the things that terrify. Fear seems to come to us most of all through our sense of hearing” (MO 378). Yet the power of the siren came not only from its capacity to propagate sound and to alert, but the warning held in its voice of ‘keeping silent’. “Prefacing in a dire prolepsis the post-apocalyptic event before the event”, as Bishop and Phillips (97) put it, the stillness of silence was incredibly virtual in its affects, disclosing - in its lack of life – the lives that would be later taken. Devastation was expected and rehearsed by civilians. Stillness formed a space and body ready to spring into movement – an ‘imminent mobility’ as John Armitage (204) has described it. Perched on the edge of devastation, space-times were felt through a sense of impending doom. Fatalistic yet composed expectations of a bomb heading straight down pervaded the thoughts and feelings of shelter dwellers (MO 253; MO 217). Waves of sound disrupted fragile tempers as they passed through the waiting bodies in the physical language of tensed muscles and gritted teeth (Gaskin 36). Silence helped form bodies inclined-to-attention, particularly sensitive to aural disturbances and vibrations from all around. Walls, floors and objects carried an urban bass-line of warning (Goodman). Stillness was forged through a body readied in advance of the violence these materialities signified. A calm and composed body was not necessarily an immobile body. Civilians who had prepared for the attacks were ready to snap into action - to dutifully wear their gas-mask or escape to shelter. ‘Backgrounds of expectation’ (Thrift, Still 36) were forged through non-too-subtle procedural and sequential movements which opened-out new modes of thinking and feeling. Folding one’s clothes and placing them on the dresser in-readiness; pillows and sheets prepared for a spell in the shelter, these were some of many orderly examples (IWM 14595). In the event of a gas attack air raid precautions instructions advised how to put on a gas mask (ARPD 90-92),i) Hold the breath. ii) Remove headgear and place between the knees. iii) Lift the flap of the haversack [ …] iv) Bring the face-piece towards the face’[…](v) Breathe out and continue to breathe in a normal manner The rational technologies of drill, dressage and operational research enabled poise in the face of an eventual air-raid. Through this ‘logistical-life’ (Reid 17), thought was directed towards simple tasks by minutely described instructions. Stilled LifeThe end of stillness was usually marked by a reactionary ‘flinch’, ‘start’ or ‘jump’. Such reactionary ‘urgent analogs’ (Ngai 94; Tomkins 96) often occurred as a response to sounds and movements that merely broke the tension rather than accurately mimicking an air raid. These atmospheres were brittle and easily disrupted. Cars back-firing and changing gear were often complained about (MO 371), just as bringing people out of the quiescence of sleep was a common effect of air-raids (Kraftl and Horton 509). Disorientation was usually fostered in this process while people found it very difficult to carry out the most simple of tasks. Putting one’s clothes on or even making their way out of the bedroom door became enormously problematic. Sirens awoke a ‘conditioned reflex’ to take cover (MO 364). Long periods of sleep deprivation brought on considerable fatigue and anxiety. ‘Sleep we Must’ wrote journalist Ritchie Calder (252) noticing the invigorating powers of sleep for both urban morale and the bare existence of survival. For other more traumatized members of the population, psychological studies found that the sustained concentration of shelling caused what was named ‘apathy-retreat’ (Harrisson, Living 65). This extreme form of acquiescence saw especially susceptible and vulnerable civilians suffer an overwhelming urge to sleep and to be cared-for ‘as if chronically ill’ (Janis 90). A class and racial politics of quiescent affect was enacted as several members of the population were believed far more liable to ‘give way’ to defeat and dangerous emotions (Brittain 77; Committee of Imperial Defence).In other cases it was only once an air-raid had started that sleep could be found (MO 253). The boredom of waiting could gather in its intensity deforming bodies with “the doom of depression” (Anderson 749). The stopped time-spaces in advance of a raid could be soaked with so much tension that the commencement of sirens, vibrations and explosions would allow a person overwhelming relief (MO 253). Quoting from a boy recalling his experiences in Hannover during 1943, Hewitt illustrates:I lie in bed. I am afraid. I strain my ears to hear something but still all is quiet. I hardly dare breathe, as if something horrible is knocking at the door, at the windows. Is it the beating of my heart? ... Suddenly there seems relief, the sirens howl into the night ... (Heimatbund Niedersachsen 1953: 185). (Cited in Hewitt, When 16)Once a state of still was lost getting it back required some effort (Bissell, Comfortable 1697). Cautious of preventing mass panic and public hysteria by allowing the body to erupt outwards into dangerous vectors of mobility, the British government’s schooling in the theories of panicology (Orr 12) and contagious affect (Le Bon 17; Tarde 278; Thrift, Intensities 57; Trotter 140), made air raid precautions (ARP) officers, police and civil defence teams enforce ‘stay put’ and ‘hold firm’ orders to protect the population (Jones et al, Civilian Morale 463, Public Panic 63-64; Thomas 16). Such orders were meant to shield against precisely the kinds of volatile bodies they were trying to compel with their own bombing strategies. Reactions to the Blitz were moralised and racialised. Becoming stilled required self-conscious work by a public anxious not to be seen to ‘panic’. This took the form of self-disciplination. People exhausted considerable energy to ‘settle’ themselves down. It required ‘holding’ themselves still and ‘together’ in order to accomplish this state, and to avoid going the same way as the buildings falling apart around them, as some people observed (MO 408). In Britain a cup of tea was often made as a spontaneous response in the event of the conclusion of a raid (Brown 686). As well as destroying bombing created spaces too – making space for stillness (Conradson 33). Many people found that they could recall their experiences in vivid detail, allocating a significant proportion of their memories to the recollection of the self and an awareness of their surroundings (IWM 19103). In this mode of stillness, contemplation did not turn-inwards but unfolded out towards the environment. The material processual movement of the shell-blast literally evacuated all sound and materials from its centre to leave a vacuum of negative pressure. Diaries and oral testimonies stretch out these millisecond events into discernable times and spaces of sensation, thought and the experience of experience (Massumi, Parables 2). Extraordinarily, survivors mention serene feelings of quiet within the eye of the blast (see Mortimer 239); they had, literally, ‘no time to be frightened’ (Crighton-Miller 6150). A shell explosion could create such intensities of stillness that a sudden and distinctive lessening of the person and world are expressed, constituting ‘stilling-slowing diminishments’ (Anderson 744). As if the blast-vacuum had sucked all the animation from their agency, recollections convey passivity and, paradoxically, a much more heightened and contemplative sense of the moment (Bourke 121; Thrift, Still 41). More lucid accounts describe a multitude of thoughts and an attention to minute detail. Alternatively, the enormous peaking of a waking blast subdued all later activities to relative obsolescence. The hurricane of sounds and air appear to overload into the flatness of an extended and calmed instantaneous present.Then the whistling stopped, then a terrific thump as it hit the ground, and everything seem to expand, then contract with deliberation and stillness seemed to be all around. (As recollected by Bill and Vi Reagan in Gaskin 17)On the other hand, as Schivelbusch (7) shows us in his exploration of defeat, the cessation of war could be met with an outburst of feeling. In these micro-moments a close encounter with death was often experienced with elation, a feeling of peace and well-being drawn through a much more heightened sense of the now (MO 253). These are not pre-formed or contemplative techniques of attunement as Thrift has tracked, but are the consequence of significant trauma and the primal reaction to extreme danger.TracesSusan Griffin’s haunting A Chorus of Stones documents what she describes as a private life of war (1). For Griffin, and as shown in these brief examples, stillness and being-stilled describe a series of diverse experiences endured during aerial bombing. Yet, as Griffin narrates, these are not-so private lives. A common representation of air war can be found in Henry Moore’s tube shelter sketches which convey sleeping tube-dwellers harboured in the London underground during the Blitz. The bodies are represented as much more than individuals being connected by Moore’s wave-like shapes into the turbulent aggregation of a choppy ocean. What we see in Moore’s portrayal and the examples discussed already are experiences with definite relations to both inner and outer worlds. They refer to more-than individuals who bear intimate relations to their outsides and the atmospheric and material environments enveloping and searing through them. Stillness was an unlikely state composed through these circulations just as it was formed as a means of address. It was required in order to apprehend sounds and possible events through techniques of listening or waiting. Alternatively being stilled could refer to pauses between air-strikes and the corresponding breaks of tension in the aftermath of a raid. Stillness was composed through a series of distributed yet interconnecting bodies, feelings, materials and atmospheres oriented towards the future and the past. The ruins of bombed-out building forms stand as traces even today. Just as Massumi (Sensing 16) describes in the context of architecture, the now static remainder of the explosion “envelops in its stillness a deformational field of which it stands as the trace”. The ruined forms left after the attack stand as a “monument” of the passing of the raid to be what it once was – house, factory, shop, restaurant, library - and to become something else. The experience of those ‘from below’ (Hewitt 2) suffering contemporary forms of air-warfare share many parallels with those of the Blitz. Air power continues to target, apparently more precisely, the affective tones of the body. Accessed by kinetic and non-kinetic forces, the signs of air-war are generated by the shelling of Kosovo, ‘shock and awe’ in Iraq, air-strikes in Afghanistan and by the simulated air-raids of IDF aircraft producing sonic-booms over sleeping Palestinian civilians, now becoming far more real as I write in the final days of 2008. Achieving stillness in the wake of aerial trauma remains, even now, a way to survive the (private) life of air war. AcknowledgementsI’d like to thank the editors and particularly the referees for such a close reading of the article; time did not permit the attention their suggestions demanded. Grateful acknowledgement is also made to the AHRC whose funding allowed me to research and write this paper. ReferencesAdey, Peter. Aerial Geographies: Mobilities, Bodies and Subjects. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 (forthcoming). 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Boxing is a purely masculine activity and it inhabits a purely masculine world. […] Boxing is for men, and it is about men, and is men. (Joyce Carol Oates) IntroductionWriting about boxing is an intimate, private, and unusual activity. Although a decade has passed since I first “stepped into the ring” (sparring or fighting), I have not engaged with boxing in academic terms. I undertook a doctoral degree from 2012 to 2016, during which I competed and won amateur titles in three different countries. Boxing, in a sense, shadowed my research. My fieldwork, researching heritage foods networks, brought me to various locales, situating my body in reference to participants and academics as well as my textual analysis. My daily interactions and reflections in the boxing gym, though, were marginalised to give priority to my doctorate. In a mirrored journey to Wacquant’s “carnal ethnography of the skilled body” (Habitus 87), I boxed as a hobby. It was a means to escape my life as a doctoral student, my thesis, and the library. Research belonged to the realm of academia; boxing, to the realm of the physical. In this paper, I seek to implode this self-imposed distinction.Practising the “noble art,” as boxing is commonly called, profoundly altered not only my body but also my way of seeing the world, myself, and others. I explore these themes through an autoethnographic account of my experience in the ring. Focusing on sparring, rather than competing, I explore conceptualisations of my face as a material, as well as part of my body, and also as a surface for violence and apprenticeship. Reflecting upon a decade of sparring, the analysis presented in this paper is grounded in the phenomenological tradition whereby knowledge is not an abstract notion that exists over and above felt experience: it is sensed and embodied through practice.I delve into the narratives of my personal “social logic of a bodily craft” of boxing (Wacquant, Habitus 85). More specifically, I reflect upon my experiences of getting hit in the face by men in the ring, and the acclimatisation required, evolving from feelings of intrusion, betrayal, and physical pain to habit, and at times, excitement. As a surface for punching, my face became both material and immaterial. It was a tool that had to be tuned to varying degrees of pain to inform me of my performance as well as my opponent’s. Simultaneously, it was a surface that was abstracted and side-lined in order to put myself purposefully in harm’s way as one does when stepping into the ring. Through reflecting on my face, I consider how the sport offered new embodied experiences through which I became keenly aware of my body as a delineated target for—as well as the source of—violence. In particular, my body boundaries were profoundly reconfigured in the ring: sparring partners demonstrated their respect by hitting me, validating both my body and my skill as a boxer. In this manner, I discuss the spatiality of the ring as eliciting transitions of felt and abstracted pain as well as shaping my self-image as a re-gendered boxer in the ring and out. Throughout my account, I briefly engage with Wacquant’s discussion of “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99) and his claims that boxing is the epitome of masculine valour. In the final section, I conclude with deliberations upon the new bodily awareness(es) I gained through the sport, and the re-materiality I experienced as a strong woman.Methodological and Conceptual FrameworksThe analysis in this paper is based on the hybrid narrative of ethnography and autobiography: autoethnography. In the words of Tami Spry, autoethnography is “a self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self and others in social context” (710). As such, I take stock in hindsight (Bruner; Denzin) of the evolution of my thoughts on boxing, my stance as a boxer, and the ways the ring has affected my sense of self and my body.Unlike Wacquant's “carnal ethnography” (Habitus 83) whose involvement with boxing was foregrounded in an academic context where he wrote detailed field-notes and conducted participant observation, my involvement was deliberately non-academic until I began to write this paper. Based on hindsight, the data collected through this autoethnography are value-inflected in ways that differ from other modes of data collection. But I have sought to recreate a dialectic between perceptual experience and cultural practices and patterns, in a manner aligned with Csordas’s paradigm of embodiment. My method is to “retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture” (Ellis et al. 276) of boxing. These epiphanies, as sensed and embodied knowledge, were not solely conceptual moments but also physical realisations that my body performed, such as understanding—and executing—a well-timed slip to the side to avoid a punch.Focusing on my embodied experiences in the ring and out, I have sought to uncover “somatic modes of attention:” the “culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of others” (Csordas 138). The aim of this engagement is to convey my self-representation as a boxer in the ring, which emerged in part through the inter-subjectivity of interacting with other boxers whilst prioritising representations of my face. As such, my personal narrative is enmeshed with insights gleaned during embodied epiphanies I had in the ring, interweaving storytelling with theory.I have chosen to use the conventions of storytelling (Ellis and Ellingson) to explore the defining moments that shaped the image I hold of myself as a boxer. My personal narrative—where I view myself as the phenomenon—seeks “to produce aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience” (Ellis et al. 287) whilst striving to remain accessible to a broader audience than within academia (Bochner). Personal narratives offer an understanding of the “self or aspect of a life as it intersects with a cultural context, connect to other participants as co-researchers, and invite readers to enter the author's world and to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives” (Ellis 14; see also Ellis et al. 289).As the focus of my narrative is my face, I used my body, in Longhurst et al.’s words, as the “primary tool through which all interactions and emotions filter in accessing subjects and their geographies” (208). As “the foundation of the entire pugilistic regimen”, the body is the site of an intimate self-awareness, of the “body-sense” (Heiskanen 26). Taking my body as the starting point of my analysis, my conceptual framework is heavily informed by Thrift’s non-representational theory, enabling me to inquire into the “skills and knowledges [people] get from being embodied beings” (127), and specifically, embodied boxers. The analysis presented here is thus based on an “epistemic reflexivity” (Wacquant, Habitus 89) and responds to what Wacquant coins the “pugilistic habitus” (Body 99): a set of acquired dispositions of the boxer. Bourdieu believes that people are social agents who actively construct social reality through “categories of perception, appreciation and action” (30). The boxing habitus needs to be grasped with one’s body: it intermingles “cognitive categories, bodily skills and desires which together define the competence and appetence specific to the boxer” (Wacquant, Habitus 87). Through this habitus, I construct an image of myself not only as a boxer, but also as a re-gendered being, directly critiquing Wacquant’s arguments of the “pugilist” as fundamentally male.Resistance to Female BoxingMischa Merz’s manuscript on her boxing experience is the most accurate narrative I have yet read on female boxing, as a visceral as well as incorporeal experience, which led Merz to question and reconsider her own identity. When Merz published her manuscript in 2000, six years before I put the gloves on, the boxing world was still resisting the presence of women in the ring. In the UK, licenses for boxing were refused to women until 1998, and in New South Wales, Australia, it was illegal for women to compete until December 2008. It was not until 2012 that female boxing became internationally recognised as a sport in its own right. During the London Olympics, after a sulphurous debate on whether women should be made to box in skirts to “differentiate” them from men, women were finally allowed to compete in three weight categories, compared to ten for men.When I first started training in 2006 at the age of 21, I was unaware of the long list of determined and courageous women who had carved their way—and facilitated mine—into the ring, fighting for their right to practise a sport considered men’s exclusive domain. By the time I started learning the “sweet science” (another popular term used for boxing), my presence was accepted, albeit still unusual. My university had decreed boxing a violent sport that could not be allowed on campus. As a result, I only started boxing when I obtained a driving licence, and could attend training sessions off-campus. My desire to box had been sparked five years before, when I viewed Girlfight, a film depicting a young woman’s journey into the ring. Until then, I had never imagined a woman could box, let alone be inspirational in the use of her strength, aggression, and violence; to be strong was, for me, to be manly—which, as a woman, translated as monstrous or a perversion. I suddenly recognised in boxing a possibility to rid myself of the burden of what I saw as my bulk, and transform my body into a graceful pugilist—a fighter.First Sparring SessionTwo months after I had first thrown a punch in my coach’s pad—the gear coaches wear to protect their hands when a boxer is punching them to train—I was allowed into the ring to spar. Building up to this moment, I had anticipated and dreaded my first steps in the ring as the test of my skill and worthiness as a boxer. This moment would show my physical conditioning: whether I had trained and dieted correctly, if I was strong or resilient enough to fight. More crucially, it would lay bare my personality, the strength of my character, the extent of my willpower and belief in myself: it would reveal, in boxing terminology, if I had “heart.” Needless to say I had fantasised often about this moment. It was my initiation into the art of being punched and I hoped I would prove myself a hardened individual, capable of withstanding pain without flinching or retreating.The memory of the first punch to my face—my nose, to be exact—remains clear and vivid. My sparring partner was my coach, a retired boxer who hit me repeatedly in the head during the entirety of my first round. Getting hit in the face for the first time is a profound moment of rupture. Until then, my face had been a bodily surface reserved for affective gestures by individuals of trust: kisses of greeting on the cheeks or caresses from lovers. Only once had I been slapped, in an act of aggression that had left me paralysed with shock and feeling violated. Now in the ring, being punched in the face by a man I trusted, vastly more experienced and stronger than I, provoked a violent reaction of indignation and betrayal. Feelings of deceit, physical intrusion, and confusion overwhelmed me; pain was an entirely secondary concern. I had, without realising, assumed my coach would “go easy” on me, softening his punches and giving me time to react adequately to his attacks as we had practised on the pads. A couple of endless minutes later, I stepped out of the ring, breathless and staring at the floor to hide my tears of humiliation and overwhelming frustration.It is a common experience amongst novices, when first stepping into the ring, to forget everything they have been taught: footwork, defence, combinations, chin down, guard up … etc. They often freeze, as I did, with the first physical contact. Suddenly and concretely, with the immediacy of pain, they become aware of the extent of the danger they have purposely placed themselves in. The disturbance I felt was matched in part by my belief that I was essentially a coward. In an act condemned by the boxing community, I had turned my face away from punches: I tried to escape the ring instead of dominating it. Merz succinctly describes this experience in the boxing realm: “aspects of my character were frequently tossed in my face for assessment. I saw gaping holes in my tenacity, my resilience, my courage, my athleticism” (49). That night, I felt an unfamiliar sting as I took my jumper off, noticing a slight yet painful bruise on the bridge of my nose. It reminded me of my inadequacy and, I believed at the time, a fundamental failure of character: I lacked heart.My Face: A Tool for Sensing and Ignoring PainTo get as accustomed as a punching bag to repeated hits without flinching I had to mould my face into a mask of impassivity, revealing little to my opponent. My face also became a calibrated tool to measure my opponent’s skill, strength, and intent through the levels of pain it would experience. If an opponent repeatedly targeted my nose, I knew the sparring session was not a “friendly encounter.” Most often though, we would nod at each other in acknowledgement of the other’s successful “contact,” such as when their punches hurt my body. The ring is the only space I know and inhabit where the display of physical violence can be interpreted as a “friendly gesture” (Merz 12).Boxers, like most athletes, are carefully attuned to measuring the degrees of pain they undergo during a fight and training, whilst accomplishing the paradoxical feat—when they are hit—of setting aside that pain lest it be a distraction. In other words, boxers’ bodies are both material and immaterial: they are sites for accessing sensory information, notably pain levels, as well as tools that—at times detrimentally—have learned to abstract pain in the effort to ignore physical limitations, impediments or fatigue. Boxers with “heart,” I believe, are those who inhabit this duality of material and immaterial bodies.I have systematically been questioned whether I fear bruising or scarring my face. It would seem illogical to many that a woman would voluntarily engage in an activity that could blemish her appearance. Beyond this concern lies the issue, as Merz puts it, that “physical prowess and femininity seem to be so fundamentally incompatible” (476). My face used to be solely a source of concern as a medium of beautification and the platform from which I believed the world judged my degree of attractiveness. It also served as a marker of distinction: those I trusted intimately could touch my face, others could not. Throughout my training, my face evolved and also became an instrument that I conditioned and used strategically in the ring. The bruises I received attested to my readiness to exchange punches, a mark of valour I came to relish more than looking “nice.”Boxing has taught me how to feel my body in new ways. I no longer inhabit an “absent body” (Leder). I intimately know the border between my skin and the world, aware of exactly how far my body extends into that world and how much “punishment” (getting hit) it can withstand: boxing—which Oates (26) observed as a spectator rather than boxer—“is an act of consummate self-determination—the constant re-establishment of the parameters of one’s being.” A strong initial allure of boxing was the strict discipline it gave to my eating habits, an anchor—and at times, a torture—for someone who suffered from decade-long eating disorders. Although boxing plagued me with the need to “make weight”—to fight in a designated weight category—I no longer sought to be as petite as I could manage. As a female boxer, I was reminded of my gender, and my “unusual” body, as I am uncommonly big, strong, and heavy compared to most female fighters. I still find it difficult to find women to spar with, let alone fight. Unlike in the world outside the gym, though, my size is something I continuously learn to value as an advantage in the ring, a tool for affirmation, and significantly, a means of acceptance by, and equality with, men.The Ring: A Place of Re-GenderingAs sparring became routine, I had an epiphany: what I had taken as an act of betrayal from my coach was actually one of respect. Opponents who threw “honest” (painful) punches esteemed me as a boxer. I have, to this day, very rarely sparred with women. I often get told that I punch “like a guy,” an ability with which I have sought to impress coaches and boxers alike. As such, I am usually partnered with men who believe, as they have told me, that hitting a “girl”—and even worse, hitting a girl in the face—is simply unacceptable. Many have admitted that they fear hurting me, though some have quickly wanted to after a couple of exchanges. I have found that their views of “acceptable” violence seem unchanged after a session, as I believe they have come to view me as a boxer first and as a woman second.It would be disingenuous to omit that boxing attracted me as much for the novelty status I have gained within and outside of it. I have often walked a thin line between revelling in the sense of belonging that boxing provides me—anchored in a feeling that gender no longer matters—and the acute sense of feeling special because I am a woman performing as a man in what is still considered a man’s world. I have wavered between feeling as though I am shrugging off the very notion of gender in the ring, to deeply reconsidering what my gender means to me and the world, embracing a more fluid and performative understanding of gender than I had before (Messner; Young).In a way, my sense of self is shaped conflictingly by the ways in which boxers behave towards me in the ring, and how others see me outside of the boxing gym. As de Bruin and de Haan suggest, my body, in its active dimension, is open to the other and grounds inter-subjectivity. This inter-subjectivity of embodiment—how other bodies constitute my own sensory and perceptual experience of being-in-the-world—remains ambivalent. It has led me to feel at times genderless—or rather, beyond gender—in the ring and, because of this feeling, I simultaneously question and continuously re-explore more vividly what can be understood as “female masculinity” (Halberstam). As training progressed, I increasingly felt that:If women are going to fight, we have to be reminded, at every chance available, time and again, that they are still feminine or capable, at least, of wearing the costume of femininity, being hobbled by high heels and constrained by tight dresses. All female athletes in a way are burdened with having to re-iterate this same public narrative. (Merz)As I learned to box, I also learned to delineate myself alongside the ring: as I questioned notions of gender inside, I consequently sought to reaffirm a specific and static idea of gender through overt femininity outside the ring, as other female athletes have also been seen to do (Duncan). During my first years of training, I was the only woman at the gyms I trained in. I believed I had to erase any physical reminders of femininity: my sport clothes were loose fitting, my hair short, and I never wore jewellery or make-up. I wanted to be seen as a boxer, not a woman: my physical attractiveness was, for once, irrelevant. Ironically, I could not conceive of myself as a woman in the ring, and did not believe I could be seen as a woman in the ring. Outside the gym, I increasingly sought to reassert a stereotypical feminine appearance, taking pleasure in subverting another set of beliefs. People are usually hesitant to visualise a woman in a skirt, without a broken nose, as a competitive fighter with a mouth guard and headgear. As Wacquant succinctly put it, “I led a sort of Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde existence” (Habitus 86), which crystallised when one of my coaches failed to recognise me on three occasions outside the gym, in my “normal” clothes.I have now come to resent profoundly the marginal, sensationalised status that being a boxer denotes for a woman. This is premised on particular social norms surrounding gender, which dictate that if a woman boxes, she is not “your usual” woman. I have striven to re-gender my experience, especially in light of the recent explosion of interest in female boxing, where new norms are being established. As I have trained around the world, including in Cuba, France, and the USA, and competed in the UK, Mexico, and Belgium, I have valued the tacit connection between those who practice the “noble art.” Boxing fashions a particular habitus (Bourdieu), the “pugilistic habitus” (Wacquant, Body 12). Stepping into the ring, and being able to handle getting hit in the face, constitutes a common language that boxers around the world, male and female, understand, value, and share; a language that transcends the tacit everyday embodiments of gender and class. Boxing is habitually said to give access to an upward mobility (Wacquant, Habitus; Heiskanen). In my case, as a white, educated, middle-class woman, boxing has given me access to cross-class associations: I have trained alongside men who had been shot in Coventry, were jobless in Cuba, or dealt with drug gangs in Mexico. The ring is an equalising space, where social, gender—and in my experience, ethnic—divides can be smoothed down to leave the pugilistic valour, the property of boxing excellence, as the main metric of appreciation.The freedom I have found in the ring is one that has allowed my gendered identity to be thought of in new and creative ways that invite continuous revision. I have discovered myself not solely through the prism of a gendered lens, but as an emotive athlete, and as a person desperate to be accepted despite—or because of—her physical strength. I find myself returning to Merz’s eloquence: “boxing cannot help but make you question who you really are. You cannot hide from yourself in a boxing ring. It might seem a crazy path to self-knowledge, but to me it has been the most rich, rewarding, and perhaps, the only true one” (111). Using Wacquant’s own words to disprove his theory that boxing is fundamentally a virile activity that reaffirms specific notions of masculinity, to become a boxer is to “efface the distinction between the physical and the spiritual [...] to defy the border between reason and passion” (Body 20). In my view, it is to implode the oppositional definitions that have kept males inside the ring and females, out. The ring, in ways unrivalled elsewhere, has shown me that I am not reducible, as the world has at times convinced me, to my strength or my gender. I can, and indeed do, coalesce and transcend both.ConclusionAfter having pondered the significance of the ring to my life, I now begin to understand Merz’s journey as “so much more than a mere dalliance on the dark side of masculine culture” (21). When I box, I am always boxing against myself. The ring is the ultimate space of revelation, where one is starkly confronted with one’s own weaknesses and fears. As a naked mirror, the ring is also a place for redemption, where one can overcome flaws, and uncover facets of who one is. Having spent almost as much time at university as I have boxing, it was in the ring that I learned that “thinking otherwise entails being otherwise, relating to oneself, one’s body, and ambient beings in a new way” (Sharp 749). Through the “boxing habitus,” I have simultaneously developed a boxer’s body and habits as well as integrated new notions of gender. As an exercise in re-gendering, sparring has led me to reflect more purposefully on the multiplicity of meanings that gender can espouse, and on the possibilities of negotiating the world as both strong and female. Practising the “noble art” has given me new tools with which to carve out, within the structures of the society I inhabit, liberating possibilities of being a pugilistic woman. However, I have yet to determine if women have fashioned a space within the ring for themselves, or if they still need to reaffirm a gendered identity in the eyes of others to earn the right to get hit in the face.References Bochner, Arthur P. “It’s about Time: Narrative and the Divided Self.” Qualitative Inquiry 3.4 (1997): 418–438.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1990.Bruner, Jerome. “The Autobiographical Process.” The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Ed. Robert Folkenflik. Vol. 6. Stanford UP, 1993. 38–56.Csordas, Thomas. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993): 135–156.De Bruin, Leon, and Sanneke de Haan. “Enactivism and Social Cognition: In Search of the Whole Story.” Cognitive Semiotics 4.1 (2009): 225–50.Denzin, Norman K. Interpretive Biography. London: Sage, 1989.Duncan, Margaret C. “Gender Warriors in Sport: Women and the Media.” Handbook of Sports and Media. Eds. Arthur A. Raney and Jennings Bryant. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 231–252.Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung (2011): 273–90.Ellis, Carolyn, and Laura Ellingson. “Qualitative Methods.” Encyclopedia of Sociology. Eds. Edgar F. Borgatta and Rhonda JV Montgomery. Macmillan Library Reference, 2000. 2287–96.Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.Heiskanen, Benita. The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring. Vol. 13. Routledge, 2012.Girlfight. Dir. Karyn Kusama. Screen Gems, 2000.Leder, Drew. The Absent Body. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Longhurst, Robyn, Elsie Ho, and Lynda Johnston. “Using ‘the Body’ as an Instrument of Research: Kimch’i and Pavlova.” Area 40.2 (2008): 208–17.Messner, Michael. Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. New York: SUNY Press, 2010.Merz, Mischa. Bruising: A Boxer’s Story. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2000.Oates, Joyce Carol. On Boxing. Garden City, New York: Harper Collins, 1987.Sharp, Hasana. “The Force of Ideas in Spinoza.” Political Theory 35.6 (2007): 732–55.Spry, Tami. “Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis.” Qualitative Inquiry 7.6 (2001): 706–32.Thrift, Nigel. “The Still Point: Resistance, Expressive Embodiment and Dance.” Geographies of Resistance (1997): 124–51.Wacquant, Loïc. Body & Soul. New York: Oxford UP, 2004.———. “Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 8.1 (2011): 81–92.Young, Iris Marion. Throwing like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1990.

The concept of war is inextricably linked to violence, and military action almost always resounds with the emotion and language of rage. Since the War on Terror began in September 2001, post-9/11 expressions of terror and rage have influenced academics to evaluate rage and its meanings (Gildersleeve and Gehrmann). Of course, it has directly influenced the lives of those affected by global conflicts in war-torn regions of the Middle East and North Africa. The populace there has reacted violently to military invasions with a deep sense of rage, while in the affluent West, rage has also infiltrated everyday life through clothes, haircuts, and popular culture as military chic became ‘all the rage’ (Rall 177). Likewise, post-9/11 popular films directly tap into rage and violence to explain (or justify?) conflict and war. The film version of the life of United States Iraq veteran Chris Kyle in American Sniper (2014) reveals fascinating depictions of rage through the perspective of a highly trained shooter who waits patiently above the battlefield, watching for hours before taking human life with a carefully planned long-distance shot. The significance of the complexities of rage as presented in this film are discussed later. Foundations of Rage: Colonial Legacy, Arab Spring, and ISISThe War on Terror may have purportedly began with the rage of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda missions and the responding rage of George Bush’s America determined to seek vengeance for 9/11, but the rage simmering in the Middle East has deeper origins. This includes: the rejection of the Shah of Iran's secular dictatorship in 1979, the ongoing trauma of an Arab Palestinian state that was promised in 1947, and the blighted hopes of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalism that offered so much in the 1950s but failed to deliver. But these events should not be considered in isolation from events of the whole 20th century, in particular the betrayal of Arab nationalism by the Allied forces, especially Britain and France after the First World War. The history of injustice that Robert Fisk has chronicled in a monumental volume reveals the complexity and nuances of an East-West conflict that continued to fracture the Middle East. In a Hollywood-based film such as American Sniper it is easy to depict the region from a Western perspective without considering the cycle of injustice and oppression that gave birth to the rage that eventually lashed out at the West. Rage can also be rage against war, or rage about the mistreatment of war victims. The large-scale protests against the war before the 2003 Iraq invasion have faded into apparent nothingness, despite nearly two decades of war. Protest rage appears to have been replaced by outrage on behalf of the victims of war; the refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants and those displaced by the ever- spreading conflict that received a new impetus in 2011 with the Arab Spring democracy movements. One spark point for rage ignited when Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi embarked on his act of self-immolation in protest against harassment by public officials. This moment escalated into a kaleidoscope of collective rage as regimes were challenged from Syria to Libya, but met with a tragic aftermath. Sadly, democratic governments did not emerge, but turned into regimes of extremist violence exemplified in the mediaeval misogynistic horror now known as ISIS, or IS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Hassan). This horror intensified as millions of civilised Syrians and Iraqis sought to flee their homelands. The result was the movement of peoples, which included manipulation by ruthless people smugglers and detention by governments determined to secure borders — even even as this eroded decades of consensus on the rights of refugees. One central image, that of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s corpse washed up on a beach (Smith) should invoke open rage. Here, the incongruity was that a one-time Turkish party beach for affluent 18 to 35-year-olds from Western Europe would signify the death place of a Syrian refugee child, now displaced by war. The historical significance of East/West conflicts in the Middle East, recent events post- Arab Spring, the resulting refugee crisis in the region, and global anti-war protests should be foremost when examining Clint Eastwood's film about an American military sniper in Iraq.Hot Rage and Cold Rage Recent mass shootings in the United States have delineated factions within the power of rage: it seems to blow either hot or cold. US Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan was initially calm when he embarked on a public expression of rage, wounding 30 people and murdering 13 others in a mass shooting event in 2009 (MacAskill). Was this to be categorised as the rage of a nihilist, an Islamist - or as just another American mass shooting like events in Orlando or Sandy Hook? The war journalist and film maker Sebastian Junger authored a study on belonging, where he linked mass shootings (or rampage killings) to social stress and disunity, as a “tendency rising steadily in the US since the 1980s” (115-116). In contrast, the actions of a calm and isolated shooter on a rooftop can be justified as acceptable behaviour if this occurs during war. Now in the case of Chris Kyle, he normalised his tale of calm killing, as an example identified by action “built on a radically asymmetric violence” (Pomarede 53).Enemy at the Gates The point is that sniper killings can be presented in film as morally good. For example, the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates portrays a duel of two snipers in Stalingrad, Russia. This is a fictionalised contest of a fictionalised event, because there was only tangential evidence that Russian sniper hero Vasily Zaytsev actually engaged in a three-day sniper duel with his German enemy during the Second World War. Enemy at the Gates presents the sniper as an acceptable figure in mass popular culture (or even a hero?), which provides the justification for American Sniper. However, in this instance, viewers could recognise a clear struggle between good and evil.Politically, Enemy at the Gates, whether viewed from a conservative or a progressive perspective, presents a struggle between a soldier of the allies (the Soviet Union) and the forces of Nazism, undeniably the most evil variant of fascism. We can interpret this as a defence of the communist heartland, or the defence of a Russian motherland, or the halting of Nazi aggression at its furthest expansion point. Whichever way it is viewed, the Russian sniper is a good man, and although in the movie’s plot the actor Ralph Fiennes as political commissar injects a dimension of manipulation and Stalinist authoritarian control, this does not detract from the idea of the hero defeating evil with single aimed shots. There is rage, but it is overshadowed by the moral ‘good.’American Sniper The true story of Chris Kyle is quite simple. A young man grows up in Texas with ‘traditional’ American values, tries sport and University, tries ranch life, and joins the US Navy Special Forces. He becomes a SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) team member, and is trained as a specialist sniper. Kyle excels as a sniper in Iraq, where he self-identifies as America's most successful sniper. He kills a lot of enemies in Iraq, experiences multiple deployments followed by the associated trauma of reintegration to family life and redeployment, suffers from PTSD, returns to civilian life in America and is himself shot dead by a distressed veteran, in an ironic act of rage. Admired by many, the veracity of Kyle’s story is challenged by others, a point I will return to. As noted above, Kyle kills a lot of people, many of whom are often unaware of his existence. In his book On Killing, Lieutenant-Colonel David Grossman notes this a factor that actually causes the military to have a “degree of revulsion towards snipers” (109), which is perhaps why the movie version of Kyle’s life promotes a rehabilitation of the military in its “unambiguous advocacy of the humility, dedication, mastery, and altruism of the sniper” as hero (Beck 218). Most enlisted soldiers never actually kill their enemies, but Kyle kills well over 100 while on duty.The 2012 book memoir of United States Navy sniper Chris Kyle at war in Iraq became a national cultural artefact. The film followed in 2014, allowing the public dramatisation of this to offer a more palatable form for a wider audience. It is noted that military culture at the national level is malleable and nebulous (Black 42), and these constructs are reflected in the different variants of American Sniper. These cultural products are absorbed differently when consumed by the culture that has produced them (the military), as compared to the way that they are consumed by the general public, and the book American Sniper reflects this. Depending upon readers’ perspectives, it is a book of raw honesty or nationalistic jingoism, or perhaps both. The ordinary soldier’s point of view is reiterated and directed towards a specifically American audience. Despite controversy and criticism the book was immensely successful, with weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. While it naturally appealed to many in its primary American audience, from an Australian perspective, the jingoism of this book jars. In fact, it really jars a lot, to the point of being quite challenging to read. That Australian readers would have difficulty with this text is probably appropriate, because after all, the book was not created for Australians but for Americans.On the other hand, Americans have produced balanced accounts of the soldier experience in Iraq. A very different exemplar is Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury blog that became the book The Sandbox (2007). Here American men and women soldiers wrote their own very revealing stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in autobiographical accounts that ranged from nuanced explanations of the empathy for the soldier’s predicament, to simple outright patriotism. TIn their first-hand accounts of war showed a balance of ordinary pathos, humour – and the raw brutality of a soldier finding the neck stem of a human spine on the ground after a suicide bomb attack (Trudeau 161) – and even this seems more palatable to read than American Sniper. A similar book on the US military sniper experience (Cavallaro and Larsen) also shows it is possible to incorporate a variety of perspectives without patriotic jingoism, or even military propaganda being predominant.In contrast to the book, the film American Sniper narrates a more muted story. The movie is far more “saccharine”, in the words of critical Rolling Stone reviewer Matt Taibbi, but still reflects a nationalistic attitude to war and violence — appropriate to the mood of the book. American producer/director Clint Eastwood has developed his own style for skipping around the liminal space that exists between thought-provoking analysis and populism, and American Sniper is no exception. The love story of Chris Kyle and his wife Taya looks believable, and the intensity of military training and war fighting, including the dispassionate thoughts of Kyle as sniper, are far more palatable in the film version than as the raw words on the page.The Iraq War impacted on millions of Americans, and it is the compelling images shown re-living Chris Kyle’s funeral at the film’s conclusion that leaves a lasting message. The one-time footballer’s memorial service is conducted in a Texas football stadium and this in itself is poignant: but it is the thousands of people who lined the highway overpasses for over 200 miles to farewell him and show respect as his body travels towards the funeral in the stadium, that gives us an insight into the level of disenchantment and rage at America’s loss. This is a rage fuelled by losing their military ‘empire’ coupled with a traumatised search for meaning that Jerry Lembcke sees as inextricably linked to US national failure in war and the tragedy of an individual soldier’s PTSD. Such sentiments seem intimately connected to Donald Trump’s version of America, and its need to exercise global power. Kyle died before Trump’s election, but it seems evident that such rage, anger and alienation experienced by a vast segment of the American population contributed to the election result (Kluger). Calm Cold Calculation Ironically, the traditional sniper embodies the antithesis of hot-blooded rage. Firing any long- distance range weapon with accuracy requires discipline, steady breathing and intense muscle control. Olympic shooting or pentathlons demonstrate this, and Gina Cavallaro and Matt Larsen chronicle both sniper training and the sniper experience in war. So, the notion of sniper shooting and rage can only coexist if we accept that rage becomes the cold, calculating rage of a person doing a highly precise job when killing enemies. In the book, Kyle clearly has no soldierly respect for his Iraqi insurgent enemies and is content to shoot them down one by one. In the film, there is greater emphasis on Kyle having more complex emotions based around the desire to protect his fellow soldiers by shooting in a calm and detached fashion at his designated targets.Chris Kyle’s determination to kill his enemies regardless of age or gender seems at odds with the calm detached passivity of the sniper. The long-distance shooter should be dispassionate but Kyle experiences rage as he kills to protect his fellow soldiers. Can we argue he exhibits ‘cold rage’ not ‘hot rage’, but rage none the less? It would certainly seem so. War Hero and Fantasist?In life, as in death, Chris Kyle presents a figure of controversy, being praised by the political far right, yet condemned by a diverse coalition that included radicals, liberals, and even conservatives such as former soldier Michael Fumento. Fumento commented that Kyle’s literary embellishments and emphasis on his own prowess denigrated the achievements of fellow American snipers. Reviewer Lindy West described him as “a hate filled killer”, only to become a recipient of rage and hatred from Kyle supporters. Paul Rieckhoff described the film as not the most complex nor deepest nor provocative, but the best film made about the Iraq war for its accuracy in storytelling and attention to detail.Elsewhere, reviewer Mark Kermode argues that the way the film is made introduces a significant ambiguity: that we as an audience can view Kyle as either a villain, a hero, or a combination of both. Critics have also examined Kyle’s reportage on his military exploits, where it seems he received less fewer medals than he claimed, as well as his ephemeral assertion that he shot looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Lamothe). In other claims, the US courts have upheld the assertion of former wrestler turned politician Jesse Ventura that Kyle fabricated a bar-room brawl between the two. But humans are complex beings, and Drew Blackburn sees it as “entirely plausible to become both a war hero and a liar” in his candid (Texas-based) assessment of one person who was, like many of us, a multifaceted figure.Conclusion This article has addressed the complicated issues of rage originating in the historical background of military actions that have taken place in the East/West conflicts in the Middle East that began in the region after the Second World War, and continue to the present day. Rage has become a popular trope within popular culture as military chic becomes ‘all the rage’. Rage is inextricably linked to the film American Sniper. Patriotism and love of his fellow soldiers motivated Chris Kyle, and his determination to kill his country’s enemies in Iraq and protect the lives of his fellow American soldiers is clear, as is his disdain for both his Iraqi allies and enemies. With an ever- increasing number of mass shootings in the United States, the military sniper will be a hero revered by some and a villain reviled by others. Rage infuses the film American Sniper, whether the rage of battle, rage at the moral dilemmas his role demands, domestic rage between husband and wife, PTSD rage, or rage inspired following his pointless murder. But rage, even when it expresses a complex vortex of emotions, remains dangerous for those who are obsessed with guns, and look to killing others either as a ‘duty’ or to soothe an individual crisis of confidence. ReferencesAmerican Sniper. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Warner Brothers, 2014.Beck, Bernard. “If I Forget Thee: History Lessons in Selma, American Sniper, and A Most Violent Year.” Multicultural Perspectives 17.4 (2015): 215-19.Black, Jeremy. War and the Cultural Turn. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.Blackburn, Drew. “How We Talk about Chris Kyle.” Texas Monthly 2 June 2016. 18 Feb. 2019 <https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/chris-kyle-rorschach/>.Cavallaro, Gina, and Matt Larsen. Sniper: American Single-Shot Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guildford, Connecticut: Lyons, 2010. Enemy at the Gates. Dir. Jean-Jaques Annaud. Paramount/Pathe, 2001.Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.Fumento, Michael. “American Sniper’s Myths and Misrepresentations.” The American Conservative 13 Mar. 2015. 18 Feb. 2019 <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clint-eastwoods-fabricated-sniper/>.Gildersleeve, Jessica, and Richard Gehrmann. “Memory and the Wars on Terror”. Memory and the Wars on Terror: Australian and British Perspectives. Eds. Jessica Gildersleeve and Richard Gehrmann. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 1-19.Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.Hassan, Hassan. “The True Origins of ISIS.” The Atlantic 30 Nov. 2018. 17 Feb. 2019 <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/isis-origins-anbari-zarqawi/577030/>.Kermode, Mark. “American Sniper Review – Bradley Cooper Stars in Real-Life Tale of Legendary Marksman.” The Guardian 18 Jan. 2015. 18 Feb. 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/18/american-sniper-review-bradley-cooper-real-life-tale-legendary-marksman>.Kluger, Jeffrey. “America's Anger Is Out of Control.” TIME 1 June 2016. 17 Feb. 2019 <http://time.com/4353606/anger-america-enough-already>.Kyle, Chris. American Sniper. New York: Harper, 2012. Junger, Sebastian. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. London: Fourth Estate, 2016.Lamothe, Dan. “How ‘American Sniper’ Chris Kyle’s Truthfulness Is in Question Once Again.” 25 May 2016. 19 Feb. 2019 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/05/25/how-american-sniper-chris-kyles-truthfulness-is-in-question-once-again/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d8806f2b8d3a>.Lembcke, Jerry. PTSD: Diagnosis and Identity in Post-Empire America. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2013.Pomarède, Julien. “Normalizing Violence through Front-Line Stories: The Case of American Sniper.” Critical Military Studies 4.1 (2018): 52-71. Rall, Denise N. “Afterword: The Military in Contemporary Fashion.” Fashion and War in Popular Culture. Ed. Denise N. Rall. Bristol: Intellect, 2014. 177-179. Rieckhoff, Paul. “A Veteran's View of American Sniper.” Variety 16 Jan. 2015. 19 Feb. 2019 <https://variety.com/2015/film/opinion/a-veterans-view-of-american-sniper-guest-column-1201406349/>.Smith, Heather, and Richard Gehrmann. “Branding the Muscled Male Body as Military Costume.” Fashion and War in Popular Culture. Ed. Denise N. Rall. Bristol: Intellect, 2014. 57-71.Smith, Helena. “Shocking Images of Drowned Syrian Boy Show Tragic Plight of Refugees.” The Guardian 2 Sep. 2015. 17 Feb. 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees>.Stanford, David (ed.). The Sandbox: Dispatches from Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2007.Taibbi, Matt. “American Sniper Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticise.” Rolling Stone 21 Jan. 2015. <https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-240955/>.Trudeau, Garry B. The Sandbox: Dispatches from Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kansas City: Andrew McMeel Publishing, 2007.West, Lindy. “The Real American Sniper Was a Hate-Filled Killer: Why Are Simplistic Patriots Treating Him as a Hero?” The Guardian 6 Jan. 2015. 19 Feb. 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle>.

This article explores resilience as it is experienced by refugees in the context of a relational community, visiting the notions of trauma, a thicker description of resilience and the trajectory toward positive growth through community. It calls for going beyond a Western biomedical therapeutic approach of exploration and adopting more of an emic perspective incorporating the worldview of the refugees. The challenge is for service providers working with refugees (who have experienced trauma) to move forward from a ‘harm minimisation’ model of care to recognition of a facilitative, productive community of people who are in a transitional phase between homelands. Contextualising Trauma Prior to the 1980s, the term ‘trauma’ was not widely used in literature on refugees and refugee mental health, hardly existing as a topic of inquiry until the mid-1980’s (Summerfield 422). It first gained prominence in relation to soldiers who had returned from Vietnam and in need of medical attention after being traumatised by war. The term then expanded to include victims of wars and those who had witnessed traumatic events. Seahorn and Seahorn outline that severe trauma “paralyses you with numbness and uses denial, avoidance, isolation as coping mechanisms so you don’t have to deal with your memories”, impacting a person‘s ability to risk being connected to others, detaching and withdrawing; resulting in extreme loneliness, emptiness, sadness, anxiety and depression (6). During the Civil War in the USA the impact of trauma was referred to as Irritable Heart and then World War I and II referred to it as Shell Shock, Neurosis, Combat Fatigue, or Combat Exhaustion (Seahorn & Seahorn 66, 67). During the twenty-five years following the Vietnam War, the medicalisation of trauma intensified and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became recognised as a medical-psychiatric disorder in 1980 in the American Psychiatric Association international diagnostic tool Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM–III). An expanded description and diagnosis of PTSD appears in the DSM-IV, influenced by the writings of Harvard psychologist and scholar, Judith Herman (Scheper-Hughes 38) The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) outlines that experiencing the threat of death, injury to oneself or another or finding out about an unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of the same kind to a family member or close person are considered traumatic events (Chung 11); including domestic violence, incest and rape (Scheper-Hughes 38). Another significant development in the medicalisation of trauma occurred in 1998 when the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (VFST) released an influential report titled ‘Rebuilding Shattered Lives’. This then gave clinical practice a clearer direction in helping people who had experienced war, trauma and forced migration by providing a framework for therapeutic work. The emphasis became strongly linked to personal recovery of individuals suffering trauma, using case management as the preferred intervention strategy. A whole industry soon developed around medical intervention treating people suffering from trauma related problems (Eyber). Though there was increased recognition for the medicalised discourse of trauma and post-traumatic stress, there was critique of an over-reliance of psychiatric models of trauma (Bracken, et al. 15, Summerfield 421, 423). There was also expressed concern that an overemphasis on individual recovery overlooked the socio-political aspects that amplify trauma (Bracken et al. 8). The DSM-IV criteria for PTSD model began to be questioned regarding the category of symptoms being culturally defined from a Western perspective. Weiss et al. assert that large numbers of traumatized people also did not meet the DSM-III-R criteria for PTSD (366). To categorize refugees’ experiences into recognizable, generalisable psychological conditions overlooked a more localized culturally specific understanding of trauma. The meanings given to collective experience and the healing strategies vary across different socio-cultural groupings (Eyber). For example, some people interpret suffering as a normal part of life in bringing them closer to God and in helping gain a better understanding of the level of trauma in the lives of others. Scheper-Hughes raise concern that the PTSD model is “based on a conception of human nature and human life as fundamentally vulnerable, frail, and humans as endowed with few and faulty defence mechanisms”, and underestimates the human capacity to not only survive but to thrive during and following adversity (37, 42). As a helping modality, biomedical intervention may have limitations through its lack of focus regarding people’s agency, coping strategies and local cultural understandings of distress (Eyber). The benefits of a Western therapeutic model might be minimal when some may have their own culturally relevant coping strategies that may vary to Western models. Bracken et al. document case studies where the burial rituals in Mozambique, obligations to the dead in Cambodia, shared solidarity in prison and the mending of relationships after rape in Uganda all contributed to the healing process of distress (8). Orosa et al. (1) asserts that belief systems have contributed in helping refugees deal with trauma; Brune et al. (1) points to belief systems being a protective factor against post-traumatic disorders; and Peres et al. highlight that a religious worldview gives hope, purpose and meaning within suffering. Adopting a Thicker Description of Resilience Service providers working with refugees often talk of refugees as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ populations and strive for ‘harm minimisation’ among the population within their care. This follows a critical psychological tradition, what (Ungar, Constructionist) refers to as a positivist mode of inquiry that emphasises the predictable relationship between risk and protective factors (risk and coping strategies) being based on a ‘deficient’ outlook rather than a ‘future potential’ viewpoint and lacking reference to notions of resilience or self-empowerment (342). At-risk discourses tend to focus upon antisocial behaviours and appropriate treatment for relieving suffering rather than cultural competencies that may be developing in the midst of challenging circumstances. Mares and Newman document how the lives of many refugee advocates have been changed through the relational contribution asylum seekers have made personally to them in an Australian context (159). Individuals may find meaning in communal obligations, contributing to the lives of others and a heightened solidarity (Wilson 42, 44) in contrast to an individual striving for happiness and self-fulfilment. Early naturalistic accounts of mental health, influenced by the traditions of Western psychology, presented thin descriptions of resilience as a quality innate to individuals that made them invulnerable or strong, despite exposure to substantial risk (Ungar, Thicker 91). The interest then moved towards a non-naturalistic contextually relevant understanding of resilience viewed in the social context of people’s lives. Authors such as Benson, Tricket and Birman (qtd. in Ungar, Thicker) started focusing upon community resilience, community capacity and asset-building communities; looking at areas such as - “spending time with friends, exercising control over aspects of their lives, seeking meaningful involvement in their community, attaching to others and avoiding threats to self-esteem” (91). In so doing far more emphasis was given in developing what Ungar (Thicker) refers to as ‘a thicker description of resilience’ as it relates to the lives of refugees that considers more than an ability to survive and thrive or an internal psychological state of wellbeing (89). Ungar (Thicker) describes a thicker description of resilience as revealing “a seamless set of negotiations between individuals who take initiative, and an environment with crisscrossing resources that impact one on the other in endless and unpredictable combinations” (95). A thicker description of resilience means adopting more of what Eyber proposes as an emic approach, taking on an ‘insider perspective’, incorporating the worldview of the people experiencing the distress; in contrast to an etic perspective using a Western biomedical understanding of distress, examined from a position outside the social or cultural system in which it takes place. Drawing on a more anthropological tradition, intervention is able to be built with local resources and strategies that people can utilize with attention being given to cultural traditions within a socio-cultural understanding. Developing an emic approach is to engage in intercultural dialogue, raise dilemmas, test assumptions, document hopes and beliefs and explore their implications. Under this approach, healing is more about developing intelligibility through one’s own cultural and social matrix (Bracken, qtd. in Westoby and Ingamells 1767). This then moves beyond using a Western therapeutic approach of exploration which may draw on the rhetoric of resilience, but the coping strategies of the vulnerable are often disempowered through adopting a ‘therapy culture’ (Furedi, qtd. in Westoby and Ingamells 1769). Westoby and Ingamells point out that the danger is by using a “therapeutic gaze that interprets emotions through the prism of disease and pathology”, it then “replaces a socio-political interpretation of situations” (1769). This is not to dismiss the importance of restoring individual well-being, but to broaden the approach adopted in contextualising it within a socio-cultural frame. The Relational Aspect of Resilience Previously, the concept of the ‘resilient individual’ has been of interest within the psychological and self-help literature (Garmezy, qtd. in Wilson) giving weight to the aspect of it being an innate trait that individuals possess or harness (258). Yet there is a need to explore the relational aspect of resilience as it is embedded in the network of relationships within social settings. A person’s identity and well-being is better understood in observing their capacity to manage their responses to adverse circumstances in an interpersonal community through the networks of relationships. Brison, highlights the collective strength of individuals in social networks and the importance of social support in the process of recovery from trauma, that the self is vulnerable to be affected by violence but resilient to be reconstructed through the help of others (qtd. in Wilson 125). This calls for what Wilson refers to as a more interdisciplinary perspective drawing on cultural studies and sociology (2). It also acknowledges that although individual traits influence the action of resilience, it can be learned and developed in adverse situations through social interactions. To date, within sociology and cultural studies, there is not a well-developed perspective on the topic of resilience. Resilience involves a complex ongoing interaction between individuals and their social worlds (Wilson 16) that helps them make sense of their world and adjust to the context of resettlement. It includes developing a perspective of people drawing upon negative experiences as productive cultural resources for growth, which involves seeing themselves as agents of their own future rather than suffering from a sense of victimhood (Wilson 46, 258). Wilson further outlines the display of a resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from what might have been otherwise negative migration experiences (Wilson 47). Wu refers to ‘imagineering’ alternative futures, for people to see beyond the current adverse circumstances and to imagine other possibilities. People respond to and navigate their experience of trauma in unique, unexpected and productive ways (Wilson 29). Trauma can cripple individual potential and yet individuals can also learn to turn such an experience into a positive, productive resource for personal growth. Grief, despair and powerlessness can be channelled into hope for improved life opportunities. Social networks can act as protection against adversity and trauma; meaningful interpersonal relationships and a sense of belonging assist individuals in recovering from emotional strain. Wilson asserts that social capabilities assist people in turning what would otherwise be negative experiences into productive cultural resources (13). Graybeal (238) and Saleeby (297) explore resilience as a strength-based practice, where individuals, families and communities are seen in relation to their capacities, talents, competencies, possibilities, visions, values and hopes; rather than through their deficiencies, pathologies or disorders. This does not present an idea of invulnerability to adversity but points to resources for navigating adversity. Resilience is not merely an individual trait or a set of intrinsic behaviours that can be displayed in ‘resilient individuals’. Resilience, rather than being an unchanging attribute, is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon, a relational concept of a dynamic nature that is situated in interpersonal relations (Wilson 258). Positive Growth through a Community Based Approach Through migrating to another country (in the context of refugees), Falicov, points out that people often experience a profound loss of their social network and cultural roots, resulting in a sense of homelessness between two worlds, belonging to neither (qtd. in Walsh 220). In the ideological narratives of refugee movements and diasporas, the exile present may be collectively portrayed as a liminality, outside normal time and place, a passage between past and future (Eastmond 255). The concept of the ‘liminal’ was popularised by Victor Turner, who proposed that different kinds of marginalised people and communities go through phases of separation, ‘liminali’ (state of limbo) and reincorporation (qtd. in Tofighian 101). Difficulties arise when there is no closure of the liminal period (fleeing their former country and yet not being able to integrate in the country of destination). If there is no reincorporation into mainstream society then people become unsettled and feel displaced. This has implications for their sense of identity as they suffer from possible cultural destabilisation, not being able to integrate into the host society. The loss of social supports may be especially severe and long-lasting in the context of displacement. In gaining an understanding of resilience in the context of displacement, it is important to consider social settings and person-environment transactions as displaced people seek to experience a sense of community in alternative ways. Mays proposed that alternative forms of community are central to community survival and resilience. Community is a source of wellbeing for building and strengthening positive relations and networks (Mays 590). Cottrell, uses the concept of ‘community competence’, where a community provides opportunities and conditions that enable groups to navigate their problems and develop capacity and resourcefulness to cope positively with adversity (qtd. in Sonn and Fisher 4, 5). Chaskin, sees community as a resilient entity, countering adversity and promoting the well-being of its members (qtd. in Canavan 6). As a point of departure from the concept of community in the conventional sense, I am interested in what Ahmed and Fortier state as moments or sites of connection between people who would normally not have such connection (254). The participants may come together without any presumptions of ‘being in common’ or ‘being uncommon’ (Ahmed and Fortier 254). This community shows little differentiation between those who are welcome and those who are not in the demarcation of the boundaries of community. The community I refer to presents the idea as ‘common ground’ rather than commonality. Ahmed and Fortier make reference to a ‘moral community’, a “community of care and responsibility, where members readily acknowledge the ‘social obligations’ and willingness to assist the other” (Home office, qtd. in Ahmed and Fortier 253). Ahmed and Fortier note that strong communities produce caring citizens who ensure the future of caring communities (253). Community can also be referred to as the ‘soul’, something that stems out of the struggle that creates a sense of solidarity and cohesion among group members (Keil, qtd. in Sonn and Fisher 17). Often shared experiences of despair can intensify connections between people. These settings modify the impact of oppression through people maintaining positive experiences of belonging and develop a positive sense of identity. This has enabled people to hold onto and reconstruct the sociocultural supplies that have come under threat (Sonn and Fisher 17). People are able to feel valued as human beings, form positive attachments, experience community, a sense of belonging, reconstruct group identities and develop skills to cope with the outside world (Sonn and Fisher, 20). Community networks are significant in contributing to personal transformation. Walsh states that “community networks can be essential resources in trauma recovery when their strengths and potential are mobilised” (208). Walsh also points out that the suffering and struggle to recover after a traumatic experience often results in remarkable transformation and positive growth (208). Studies in post-traumatic growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi) have found positive changes such as: the emergence of new opportunities, the formation of deeper relationships and compassion for others, feelings strengthened to meet future life challenges, reordered priorities, fuller appreciation of life and a deepening spirituality (in Walsh 208). As Walsh explains “The effects of trauma depend greatly on whether those wounded can seek comfort, reassurance and safety with others. Strong connections with trust that others will be there for them when needed, counteract feelings of insecurity, hopelessness, and meaninglessness” (208). Wilson (256) developed a new paradigm in shifting the focus from an individualised approach to trauma recovery, to a community-based approach in his research of young Sudanese refugees. Rutter and Walsh, stress that mental health professionals can best foster trauma recovery by shifting from a predominantly individual pathology focus to other treatment approaches, utilising communities as a capacity for healing and resilience (qtd. in Walsh 208). Walsh highlights that “coming to terms with traumatic loss involves making meaning of the trauma experience, putting it in perspective, and weaving the experience of loss and recovery into the fabric of individual and collective identity and life passage” (210). Landau and Saul, have found that community resilience involves building community and enhancing social connectedness by strengthening the system of social support, coalition building and information and resource sharing, collective storytelling, and re-establishing the rhythms and routines of life (qtd. in Walsh 219). Bracken et al. suggest that one of the fundamental principles in recovery over time is intrinsically linked to reconstruction of social networks (15). This is not expecting resolution in some complete ‘once and for all’ getting over it, getting closure of something, or simply recovering and moving on, but tapping into a collective recovery approach, being a gradual process over time. Conclusion A focus on biomedical intervention using a biomedical understanding of distress may be limiting as a helping modality for refugees. Such an approach can undermine peoples’ agency, coping strategies and local cultural understandings of distress. Drawing on sociology and cultural studies, utilising a more emic approach, brings new insights to understanding resilience and how people respond to trauma in unique, unexpected and productive ways for positive personal growth while navigating the experience. This includes considering social settings and person-environment transactions in gaining an understanding of resilience. Although individual traits influence the action of resilience, it can be learned and developed in adverse situations through social interactions. Social networks and capabilities can act as a protection against adversity and trauma, assisting people to turn what would otherwise be negative experiences into productive cultural resources (Wilson 13) for improved life opportunities. The promotion of social competence is viewed as a preventative intervention to promote resilient outcomes, as social skill facilitates social integration (Nettles and Mason 363). As Wilson (258) asserts that resilience is not merely an individual trait or a set of intrinsic behaviours that ‘resilient individuals’ display; it is a complex, socio-cultural phenomenon that is situated in interpersonal relations within a community setting. References Ahmed, Sara, and Anne-Marie Fortier. “Re-Imagining Communities.” International of Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 251-59. Bracken, Patrick. J., Joan E. Giller, and Derek Summerfield. Psychological Response to War and Atrocity: The Limitations of Current Concepts. Elsevier Science, 1995. 8 Aug, 2013 ‹http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/sites/default/files/documents/Summerfield-PsychologicalResponses.pdf>. Brune, Michael, Christian Haasen, Michael Krausz, Oktay Yagdiran, Enrique Bustos and David Eisenman. “Belief Systems as Coping Factors for Traumatized Refugees: A Pilot Study.” Eur Psychiatry 17 (2002): 451-58. Canavan, John. “Resilience: Cautiously Welcoming a Contested Concept.” Child Care in Practice 14.1 (2008): 1-7. Chung, Juna. Refugee and Immigrant Survivors of Trauma: A Curriculum for Social Workers. Master’s Thesis for California State University. Long Beach, 2010. 1-29. Eastmond, Maria. “Stories of Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research.” Journal of Refugee Studies 20.2 (2007): 248-64. Eyber, Carola “Cultural and Anthropological Studies.” In Forced Migration Online, 2002. 8 Aug, 2013. ‹http://www.forcedmigration.org/research-resources/expert-guides/psychosocial- issues/cultural-and-anthropological-studies>. Graybeal, Clay. “Strengths-Based Social Work Assessment: Transforming the Dominant Paradigm.” Families in Society 82.3 (2001): 233-42. Kleinman, Arthur. “Triumph or Pyrrhic Victory? The Inclusion of Culture in DSM-IV.” Harvard Rev Psychiatry 4 (1997): 343-44. Mares, Sarah, and Louise Newman, eds. Acting from the Heart- Australian Advocates for Asylum Seekers Tell Their Stories. Sydney: Finch Publishing, 2007. Mays, Vicki M. “Identity Development of Black Americans: The Role of History and the Importance of Ethnicity.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 40.4 (1986): 582-93. Nettles, Saundra Murray, and Michael J. Mason. “Zones of Narrative Safety: Promoting Psychosocial Resilience in Young People.” The Journal of Primary Prevention 25.3 (2004): 359-73. Orosa, Francisco J.E., Michael Brune, Katrin Julia Fischer-Ortman, and Christian Haasen. “Belief Systems as Coping Factors in Traumatized Refugees: A Prospective Study.” Traumatology 17.1 (2011); 1-7. Peres, Julio F.P., Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Antonia, G. Nasello, and Harold, G. Koenig. “Spirituality and Resilience in Trauma Victims.” J Relig Health (2006): 1-8. Saleebey, Dennis. “The Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice: Extensions and Cautions.” Social Work 41.3 (1996): 296-305. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “A Talent for Life: Reflections on Human Vulnerability and Resilience.” Ethnos 73.1 (2008): 25-56. Seahorn, Janet, J. and Anthony E. Seahorn. Tears of a Warrior. Ft Collins, USA: Team Pursuits, 2008. Sonn, Christopher, and Adrian Fisher. “Sense of Community: Community Resilient Responses to Oppression and Change.” Unpublished article. Curtin University of Technology & Victoria University of Technology: undated. Summerfield, Derek. “Childhood, War, Refugeedom and ‘Trauma’: Three Core Questions for Medical Health Professionals.” Transcultural Psychiatry 37.3 (2000): 417-433. Tofighian, Omid. “Prolonged Liminality and Comparative Examples of Rioting Down Under”. Fear and Hope: The Art of Asylum Seekers in Australian Detention Centres Literature and Aesthetics (Special Edition) 21 (2011): 97-103. Ungar, Michael. “A Constructionist Discourse on Resilience: Multiple Contexts, Multiple Realities Among at-Risk Children and Youth.” Youth Society 35.3 (2004): 341-365. Ungar, Michael. “A Thicker Description of Resilience.” The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work 3 & 4 (2005): 85-96. Walsh, Froma. “Traumatic Loss and Major Disasters: Strengthening Family and Community Resilience.” Family Process 46.2 (2007): 207-227. Weiss, Daniel. S., Charles R. Marmar, William. E. Schlenger, John. A. Fairbank, Kathleen Jordon, Richard L. Hough, and Richard A. Kulka. “The Prevalence of Lifetime and Partial Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam Theater Veterans.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 5.3 (1992):365-76. Westoby, Peter, and Ann Ingamells. “A Critically Informed Perspective of Working with Resettling Refugee Groups in Australia.” British Journal of Social Work 40 (2010): 1759-76. Wilson, Michael. “Accumulating Resilience: An Investigation of the Migration and Resettlement Experiences of Young Sudanese People in the Western Sydney Area.” PHD Thesis. University of Western Sydney ( 2012): 1-297. Wu, K. M. “Hope and World Survival.” Philosophy Forum 12.1-2 (1972): 131-48.

One of the first challenges faced by new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was what to do with the former government’s controversial citizenship test. While a quick evaluation of the test shows that 93 percent of those who have sat it ‘passed’ (Hoare), most media controversy has focussed less on the validity of such a test than whether questions relating to Australian cricketing legend, Don Bradman, are appropriate (Hawley). While the citizenship test seems nothing more that a crude and populist measure imposed by the former Howard government in its ongoing nationalistic agenda, which included paying schools to raise the Australian flag (“PM Unfurls Flag”), its imposition seems a timely reminder of the challenge of understanding citizenship today. For as the demographic structures around us continue to change, so must our understandings of ‘citizenship’. More importantly, this fluid understanding of citizenship is not limited to academics, and policy-makers, but new technologies, the processes of globalisation including a globalised media, changing demographic patterns including migration, as well as environmental challenges that place pressure on limited resources is altering the citizens understanding of their own role as well as those around them. This paper aims to sketch out a proposed new research agenda that seeks to investigate this fluid and heterogenous nature of citizenship. The focus of the research has so far been Sydney and is enveloped by a broader aim of promoting an increased level of citizen engagement both within formal and informal political structures. I begin by sketching the complex nature of Sydney before presenting some initial research findings. Sydney – A Complex City The so-called ‘emerald city’ of Sydney has been described in many ways: from a ‘global’ city (Fagan, Dowling and Longdale 1) to an ‘angry’ city (Price 16). Sarah Price’s investigative article included research from the University of Western Sydney’s Centre of Culture Research, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and interviews with Tony Grabs, the director of trauma at St Vincent’s Hospital in inner city Darlinghurst. Price found that both injuries from alcohol and drug-related violence had risen dramatically over the last few years and seemed to be driven by increasing frustrations of a city that is perceived to be lacking appropriate infrastructure and rising levels of personal and household debt. Sydney’s famous harbour and postcard landmarks are surrounded by places of controversy and poverty, with residents of very backgrounds living in close proximity: often harmoniously and sometimes less so. According to recent research by Griffith University’s Urban Research Program, the city is becoming increasingly polarised, with the wealthiest enjoying high levels of access to amenities while other sections of the population experiencing increasing deprivation (Frew 7). Sydney is often segmented into different regions: the growth corridors of the western suburbs which include the ‘Aspirational class’; the affluent eastern suburb; the southern beachside suburbs surrounding Cronulla affectionately known by local residents as ‘the Shire’, and so on. This, however, hides that fact that these areas are themselves complex and heterogenous in character (Frew 7). As a result, the many clichés associated with such segments lead to an over simplification of regional characteristics. The ‘growth corridors’ of Western Sydney, for example, have, in recent times, become a focal point of political and social commentary. From the rise of the ‘Aspirational’ voter (Anderson), seen to be a key ‘powerbroker’ in federal and state politics, to growing levels of disenfranchised young people, this region is multifaceted and should not be simplified. These areas often see large-scale, private housing estates; what Brendan Gleeson describes as ‘privatopias’, situated next to rising levels of homelessness (“What’s Driving”): a powerful and concerning image that should not escape our attention. (Chamberlain and Mackenzie pay due attention to the issue in Homeless Careers.) It is also home to a growing immigrant population who often arrive as business migrants and as well as a rising refugee population traumatised by war and displacement (Collins 1). These growth corridors then, seem to simultaneously capture both the ambitions and the fears of Sydney. That is, they are seen as both areas of potential economic boom as well as social stress and potential conflict (Gleeson 89). One way to comprehend the complexity associated with such diversity and change is to reflect on the proximity of the twin suburbs of Macquarie Links and Macquarie Fields situated in Sydney’s south-western suburbs. Separated by the clichéd ‘railway tracks’, one is home to the growing Aspirational class while the other continues to be plagued by the stigma of being, what David Burchell describes as, a ‘dysfunctional dumping ground’ whose plight became national headlines during the riots in 2005. The riots were sparked after a police chase involving a stolen car led to a crash and the death of a 17 year-old and 19 year-old passengers. Residents blamed police for the deaths and the subsequent riots lasted for four nights – involving 150 teenagers clashing with New South Wales Police. The dysfunction, Burchell notes is seen in crime statistics that include 114 stolen cars, 227 burglaries, 457 cases of property damage and 279 assaults – all in 2005 alone. Interestingly, both these populations are surrounded by exclusionary boundaries: one because of the financial demands to enter the ‘Links’ estate, and the other because of the self-imposed exclusion. Such disparities not only provide challenges for policy makers generally, but also have important implications on the attitudes that citizens’ experience towards their relationship with each other as well as the civic institutions that are meant to represent them. This is particular the case if civic institutions are seen to either neglect or favour certain groups. This, in part, has given rise to what I describe here as a ‘citizenship surplus’ as well as a ‘citizenship deficit’. Research Agenda: Investigating Citizenship Surpluses and Deficits This changing city has meant that there has also been a change in the way that different groups interact with, and perceive, civic bodies. As noted, my initial research shows that this has led to the emergence of both citizenship surpluses and deficits. Though the concept of a ‘citizen deficits and surpluses’ have not emerged within the broader literature, there is a wide range of literature that discusses how some sections of the population lack of access to democratic processes. There are three broad areas of research that have emerged relevant here: citizenship and young people (see Arvanitakis; Dee); citizenship and globalisation (see Della Porta; Pusey); and citizenship and immigration (see Baldassar et al.; Gow). While a discussion of each of these research areas is beyond the scope of this paper, a regular theme is the emergence of a ‘democratic deficit’ (Chari et al. 422). Dee, for example, looks at how there exist unequal relationships between local and central governments, young people, communities and property developers in relation to space. Dee argues that this shapes social policy in a range of settings and contexts including their relationship with broader civic institutions and understandings of citizenship. Dee finds that claims for land use that involve young people rarely succeed and there is limited, if any, recourse to civic institutions. As such, we see a democratic deficit emerge because the various civic institutions involved fail in meeting their obligations to citizens. In addition, a great deal of work has emerged that investigates attempts to re-engage citizens through mechanisms to promote citizenship education and a more active citizenship which has also been accompanied by government programs with the same goals (See for example the Western Australian government’s ‘Citizenscape’ program ). For example Hahn (231) undertakes a comparative study of civic education in six countries (including Australia) and the policies and practices with respect to citizenship education and how to promote citizen activism. The results are positive, though the research was undertaken before the tumultuous events of the terrorist attacks in New York, the emergence of the ‘war on terror’ and the rise of ‘Muslim-phobia’. A gap rises, however, within the Australian literature when we consider both the fluid and heterogenous nature of citizenship. That is, how do we understand the relationship between these diverse groups living within such proximity to each other overlayed by changing migration patterns, ongoing globalised processes and changing political environments as well as their relations to civic institutions? Further, how does this influence the way individuals perceive their rights, expectations and responsibilities to the state? Given this, I believe that there is a need to understand citizenship as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary. When discussing citizenship I am interested in how people perceive both their rights and responsibilities to civic institutions as well as to the residents around them. A second, obviously related, area of interest is ‘civic engagement’: that is, “the activities of people in the various organisations and associations that make up what scholars call ‘civil society’” (Portney and Leary 4). Before describing these categories in more detail, I would like to briefly outline the methodological processes employed thus far. Much of the research to this point is based on a combination of established literature, my informal discussions with citizen groups and my observations as ‘an activist.’ That is, over the last few years I have worked with a broad cross section of community-based organisations as well as specific individuals that have attempted to confront perceived injustices. I have undertaken this work as both an activist – with organisations such as Aid/Watch and Oxfam Australia – as well as an academic invited to share my research. This work has involved designing and implementing policy and advocacy strategies including media and public education programs. All interactions begin with a detailed discussion of the aims, resources, abilities and knowledge of the groups involved, followed by workshopping campaigning strategies. This has led to the publication of an ‘activist handbook’ titled ‘From Sitting on the Couch to Changing the World’, which is used to both draft the campaign aims as well as design a systematic strategy. (The booklet, which is currently being re-drafted, is published by Oxfam Australia and registered under a creative commons licence. For those interested, copies are available by emailing j.arvanitakis (at) uws.edu.au.) Much research is also sourced from direct feedback given by participants in reviewing the workshops and strategies The aim of tis paper then, is to sketch out the initial findings as well as an agenda for more formalised research. The initial findings have identified the heterogenous nature of citizenship that I have separated into four ‘citizenship spaces.’ The term space is used because these are not stable groupings as many quickly move between the areas identified as both the structures and personal situations change. 1. Marginalisation and Citizenship Deficit The first category is a citizenship deficit brought on by a sense of marginalisation. This is determined by a belief that it is pointless to interact with civic institutions, as the result is always the same: people’s opinions and needs will be ignored. Or in the case of residents from areas such as Macquarie Fields, the relationship with civic institutions, including police, is antagonistic and best avoided (White par. 21). This means that there is no connection between the population and the civic institutions around them – there is no loyalty or belief that efforts to be involved in political and civic processes will be rewarded. Here groups sense that they do not have access to political avenues to be heard, represented or demand change. This is leading to an experience of disconnection from political processes. The result is both a sense of disengagement and disempowerment. One example here emerged in discussions with protesters around the proposed development of the former Australian Defence Industry (ADI) site in St Marys, an outer-western suburb of Sydney. The development, which was largely approved, was for a large-scale housing estate proposed on sensitive bushlands in a locality that resident’s note is under-serviced in terms of public space. (For details of these discussions, see http://www.adisite.org/.) Residents often took the attitude that whatever the desire of the local community, the development would go ahead regardless. Those who worked at information booths during the resident protests informed me that the attitude was one best summarised by: “Why bother, we always get stuffed around any way.” This was confirmed by my own discussions with local residents – even those who joined the resident action group. 2. Privatisation and Citizenship Deficit This citizenship deficit not only applies to the marginalised, however, for there are also much wealthier populations who also appear to experience a deficit that results from a lack of access to civic institutions. This tends to leads to a privatisation of decision-making and withdrawal from the public arena as well as democratic processes. Consequently, the residents in the pockets of wealth may not be acting as citizens but more like consumers – asserting themselves in terms of Castells’s ‘collective consumption’ (par. 25). This citizenship deficit is brought on by ongoing privatisation. That is, there is a belief that civic institutions (including government bodies) are unable or at least unwilling to service the local community. As a result there is a tendency to turn to private suppliers and believe that individualisation is the best way to manage the community. The result is that citizens feel no connection to the civic institutions around them, not because there is no desire, but there are no services. This group of citizens has often been described as the ‘Aspirationals’ and are most often found in the growth corridors of Sydney. There is no reason to believe that this group is this way because of choice – but rather a failure by government authorities to service their needs. This is confirmed by research undertaken as early as 1990 which found that the residents now labelled Aspirational, were demanding access to public infrastructure services including public schools, but have been neglected by different levels of government. (This was clearly stated by NSW Labor MP for Liverpool, Paul Lynch, who argued for such services as a way to ensure a functioning community particularly for Western Sydney; NSWPD 2001.) As a result there is a reliance on private schools, neighbourhoods, transport and so on. Any ‘why bother’ attitude is thus driven by a lack of evidence that civic institutions can or are not willing to meet their needs. There is a strong sense of local community – but this localisation limited to others in the same geographical location and similar lifestyle. 3. Citizenship Surplus – Empowered Not Engaged The third space of citizenship is based on a ‘surplus’ even if there is limited or no political engagement. This group has quite a lot in common with the ‘Aspirationals’ but may come from areas that are higher serviced by civic institutions: the choice not to engage is therefore voluntary. There is a strong push for self-sufficiency – believing that their social capital, wealth and status mean that they do not require the services of civic institutions. While not antagonistic towards such institutions, there is often a belief is that the services provided by the private sector are ultimately superior to public ones. Consequently, they feel empowered through their social background but are not engaged with civic institutions or the political process. Despite this, my initial research findings show that this group has a strong connection to decision-makers – both politicians and bureaucrats. This lack of engagement changes if there is a perceived injustice to their quality of life or their values system – and hence should not be dismissed as NIMBYs (not in my backyard). They believe they have the resources to mobilise and demand change. I believe that we see this group materialise in mobilisations around proposed developments that threaten the perceived quality of life of the local environment. One example brought to my attention was the rapid response of local residents to the proposed White City development near Sydney’s eastern suburbs that was to see tennis courts and public space replaced by residential and commercial buildings (Nicholls). As one resident informed me, she had never seen any political engagement by local residents previously – an engagement that was accompanied by a belief that the development would be stopped as well as a mobilisation of some impressive resources. Such mobilisations also occur when there is a perceived injustice. Examples of this group can be found in what Hugh Mackay (13) describes as ‘doctor’s wives’ (a term that I am not wholly comfortable with). Here we see the emergence of ‘Chilout’: Children out of Detention. This was an organisation whose membership was described to me as ‘north shore professionals’, drew heavily on those who believed the forced incarceration of young refugee children was an affront to their values system. 4. Insurgent Citizenship – Empowered and Engaged The final space is the insurgent citizen: that is, the citizen who is both engaged and empowered. This is a term borrowed from South Africa and the USA (Holston 1) – and it should be seen as having two, almost diametrically opposed, sides: progressive and reactionary. This group may not have access to a great deal of financial resources, but has high social capital and both a willingness and ability to engage in political processes. Consequently, there is a sense of empowerment and engagement with civic institutions. There is also a strong push for self-sufficiency – but this is encased in a belief that civic institutions have a responsibility to provide services to the public, and that some services are naturally better provided by the public sector. Despite this, there is often an antagonistic relationship with such institutions. From the progressive perspective, we see ‘activists’ promoting social justice issues (including students, academics, unionists and so on). Organisations such as A Just Australia are strongly supported by various student organisations, unions and other social justice and activist groups. From a reactionary perspective, we see the emergence of groups that take an anti-immigration stance (such as ‘anti-immigration’ groups including Australia First that draw both activists and have an established political party). (Information regarding ‘anti-refugee activists’ can be found at http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au/ while the official website for the Australia First political part is at http://www.australiafirstparty.com.au/cms/.) One way to understand the relationship between these groups is through the engagement/empowered typology below. While a detailed discussion of the limitations of typologies is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to acknowledge that any typology is a simplification and generalisation of the arguments presented. Likewise, it is unlikely that any typology has the ability to cover all cases and situations. This typology can, however, be used to underscore the relational nature of citizenship. The purpose here is to highlight that there are relationships between the different citizenship spaces and individuals can move between groups and each cluster has significant internal variation. Key here is that this can frame future studies. Conclusion and Next Steps There is little doubt there is a relationship between attitudes to citizenship and the health of a democracy. In Australia, democracy is robust in some ways, but many feel disempowered, disengaged and some feel both – often believing they are remote from the workings of civic institutions. It would appear that for many, interest in the process of (formal) government is at an all-time low as reflected in declining membership of political parties (Jaensch et al. 58). Democracy is not a ‘once for ever’ achievement – it needs to be protected and promoted. To do this, we must ensure that there are avenues for representation for all. This point also highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the aforementioned citizenship test. According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the test is designed to: help migrants integrate and maximise the opportunities available to them in Australia, and enable their full participation in the Australian community as citizens. (par. 4) Those designing the test have assumed that citizenship is both stable and, once achieved, automatically ensures representation. This paper directly challenges these assumptions and offers an alternative research agenda with the ultimate aim of promoting high levels of engagement and empowerment. References Anderson, A. “The Liberals Have Not Betrayed the Menzies Legacy.” Online Opinion 25 Oct. 2004. < http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2679 >. Arvanitakis, J. “Highly Affected, Rarely Considered: The International Youth Parliament Commission’s Report on the Impacts of Globalisation on Young People.” Sydney: Oxfam Australia, 2003. Baldassar, L., Z. Kamalkhani, and C. Lange. “Afghan Hazara Refugees in Australia: Constructing Australian Citizens.” Social Identities 13.1 (2007): 31-50. Burchell, D. “Dysfunctional Dumping Grounds.” The Australian 10 Feb. 2007. < http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21199266-28737,00.html >. Burnley, I.H. The Impact of Immigration in Australia: A Demographic Approach. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2001. Castells, M. “European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy.” New Left Review I/204 (March-April 1994): 46-57. Chamberlain, C., and D. Mackenzie. Homeless Careers: Pathways in and out of Homelessness. Melbourne: RMIT University, 2002. Chari, R., J. Hogan, and G. Murphy. “Regulating Lobbyists: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Canada, Germany and the European Union.” The Political Quarterly 78.3 (2007): 423-438. Collins, J. “Chinese Entrepreneurs: The Chinese Diaspora in Australia.” International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research 8.1/2 (2002): 113-133. Dee, M. “Young People, Citizenship and Public Space.” International Sociological Association Conference Paper, Brisbane, 2002. Della Porta, D. “Globalisations and Democracy.” Democratizations 12.5 (2005): 668-685. Fagan, B., R. Dowling, and J. Longdale. “Suburbs in the ‘Global City’: Sydney since the Mid 1990s.” State of Australian cities conference. Parramatta, 2003. Frew, W. “And the Most Polarised City Is…” Sydney Morning Herald 16-17 Feb. 2008: 7. Gleeson, B. Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Gleeson, B. “What’s Driving Suburban Australia?” Australian Policy Online 15 Jan. 2004. < http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=00558 >. Gow, G. “Rubbing Shoulders in the Global City: Refugees, Citizenship and Multicultural Alliances in Fairfield, Sydney.” Ethnicities 5.3 (2005): 386-405. Hahn, C. L. “Citizenship Education: An Empirical Study of Policy, Practices and Outcomes.” Oxford Review of Education 25.1/2 (1999): 231-250. Hawley, S. “Sir Donald Bradman Likely to Be Dumped from Citizenship Test.” ABC Local Radio Online. 29 Jan. 2008. < http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s2148383.htm >. Hoare, D. “Bradman’s Spot in Citizenship Test under Scrutiny.” ABC Local Radio online. 29 Jan. 2008. < http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2149325.htm >. Holston, J. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. California: Cloth, 2007. Jaensch, D., P. Brent, and B. Bowden. “Australian Political Parties in the Spotlight.” Democratic Audit of Australia Report 4. Australian National University, 2004. Mackay, H. “Sleepers Awoke from Slumber of Indifference.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Nov. 2007: 13. NSWPD – New South Wales Parliamentary Debates. “South Western Sydney Banking Services.” Legislative Assembly Hansard, 52nd NSW Parliament, 19 Sep. 2001. Portney, K.E., and L. O’Leary. Civic and Political Engagement of America’s Youth: National Survey of Civic and Political Engagement of Young People. Medford, MA: Tisch College, Tufts University, 2007. Price, S. “Stress and Debt Make Sydney a Violent City.” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Jan. 2008: 16. Pusey, M. The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. White, R. “Swarming and the Social Dynamics of Group Violence.” Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 326 (Oct. 2006). < http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi326t.html >. Wolfe, P. “Race and Citizenship.” Magazine of History 18.5 (2004): 66-72.

Introduction One of the first challenges faced by new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was what to do with the former government’s controversial citizenship test. While a quick evaluation of the test shows that 93 percent of those who have sat it ‘passed’ (Hoare), most media controversy has focussed less on the validity of such a test than whether questions relating to Australian cricketing legend, Don Bradman, are appropriate (Hawley). While the citizenship test seems nothing more that a crude and populist measure imposed by the former Howard government in its ongoing nationalistic agenda, which included paying schools to raise the Australian flag (“PM Unfurls Flag”), its imposition seems a timely reminder of the challenge of understanding citizenship today. For as the demographic structures around us continue to change, so must our understandings of ‘citizenship’. More importantly, this fluid understanding of citizenship is not limited to academics, and policy-makers, but new technologies, the processes of globalisation including a globalised media, changing demographic patterns including migration, as well as environmental challenges that place pressure on limited resources is altering the citizens understanding of their own role as well as those around them. This paper aims to sketch out a proposed new research agenda that seeks to investigate this fluid and heterogenous nature of citizenship. The focus of the research has so far been Sydney and is enveloped by a broader aim of promoting an increased level of citizen engagement both within formal and informal political structures. I begin by sketching the complex nature of Sydney before presenting some initial research findings. Sydney – A Complex City The so-called ‘emerald city’ of Sydney has been described in many ways: from a ‘global’ city (Fagan, Dowling and Longdale 1) to an ‘angry’ city (Price 16). Sarah Price’s investigative article included research from the University of Western Sydney’s Centre of Culture Research, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and interviews with Tony Grabs, the director of trauma at St Vincent’s Hospital in inner city Darlinghurst. Price found that both injuries from alcohol and drug-related violence had risen dramatically over the last few years and seemed to be driven by increasing frustrations of a city that is perceived to be lacking appropriate infrastructure and rising levels of personal and household debt. Sydney’s famous harbour and postcard landmarks are surrounded by places of controversy and poverty, with residents of very backgrounds living in close proximity: often harmoniously and sometimes less so. According to recent research by Griffith University’s Urban Research Program, the city is becoming increasingly polarised, with the wealthiest enjoying high levels of access to amenities while other sections of the population experiencing increasing deprivation (Frew 7). Sydney, is often segmented into different regions: the growth corridors of the western suburbs which include the ‘Aspirational class’; the affluent eastern suburb; the southern beachside suburbs surrounding Cronulla affectionately known by local residents as ‘the Shire’, and so on. This, however, hides that fact that these areas are themselves complex and heterogenous in character (Frew 7). As a result, the many clichés associated with such segments lead to an over simplification of regional characteristics. The ‘growth corridors’ of Western Sydney, for example, have, in recent times, become a focal point of political and social commentary. From the rise of the ‘Aspirational’ voter (Anderson), seen to be a key ‘powerbroker’ in federal and state politics, to growing levels of disenfranchised young people, this region is multifaceted and should not be simplified. These areas often see large-scale, private housing estates; what Brendan Gleeson describes as ‘privatopias’, situated next to rising levels of homelessness (“What’s Driving”): a powerful and concerning image that should not escape our attention. (Chamberlain and Mackenzie pay due attention to the issue in Homeless Careers.) It is also home to a growing immigrant population who often arrive as business migrants and as well as a rising refugee population traumatised by war and displacement (Collins 1). These growth corridors then, seem to simultaneously capture both the ambitions and the fears of Sydney. That is, they are seen as both areas of potential economic boom as well as social stress and potential conflict (Gleeson 89). One way to comprehend the complexity associated with such diversity and change is to reflect on the proximity of the twin suburbs of Macquarie Links and Macquarie Fields situated in Sydney’s south-western suburbs. Separated by the clichéd ‘railway tracks’, one is home to the growing Aspirational class while the other continues to be plagued by the stigma of being, what David Burchell describes as, a ‘dysfunctional dumping ground’ whose plight became national headlines during the riots in 2005. The riots were sparked after a police chase involving a stolen car led to a crash and the death of a 17 year-old and 19 year-old passengers. Residents blamed police for the deaths and the subsequent riots lasted for four nights – involving 150 teenagers clashing with New South Wales Police. The dysfunction, Burchell notes is seen in crime statistics that include 114 stolen cars, 227 burglaries, 457 cases of property damage and 279 assaults – all in 2005 alone. Interestingly, both these populations are surrounded by exclusionary boundaries: one because of the financial demands to enter the ‘Links’ estate, and the other because of the self-imposed exclusion. Such disparities not only provide challenges for policy makers generally, but also have important implications on the attitudes that citizens’ experience towards their relationship with each other as well as the civic institutions that are meant to represent them. This is particular the case if civic institutions are seen to either neglect or favour certain groups. This, in part, has given rise to what I describe here as a ‘citizenship surplus’ as well as a ‘citizenship deficit’. Research Agenda: Investigating Citizenship Surpluses and Deficits This changing city has meant that there has also been a change in the way that different groups interact with, and perceive, civic bodies. As noted, my initial research shows that this has led to the emergence of both citizenship surpluses and deficits. Though the concept of a ‘citizen deficits and surpluses’ have not emerged within the broader literature, there is a wide range of literature that discusses how some sections of the population lack of access to democratic processes. There are three broad areas of research that have emerged relevant here: citizenship and young people (see Arvanitakis; Dee); citizenship and globalisation (see Della Porta; Pusey); and citizenship and immigration (see Baldassar et al.; Gow). While a discussion of each of these research areas is beyond the scope of this paper, a regular theme is the emergence of a ‘democratic deficit’ (Chari et al. 422). Dee, for example, looks at how there exist unequal relationships between local and central governments, young people, communities and property developers in relation to space. Dee argues that this shapes social policy in a range of settings and contexts including their relationship with broader civic institutions and understandings of citizenship. Dee finds that claims for land use that involve young people rarely succeed and there is limited, if any, recourse to civic institutions. As such, we see a democratic deficit emerge because the various civic institutions involved fail in meeting their obligations to citizens. In addition, a great deal of work has emerged that investigates attempts to re-engage citizens through mechanisms to promote citizenship education and a more active citizenship which has also been accompanied by government programs with the same goals (See for example the Western Australian government’s ‘Citizenscape’ program ). For example Hahn (231) undertakes a comparative study of civic education in six countries (including Australia) and the policies and practices with respect to citizenship education and how to promote citizen activism. The results are positive, though the research was undertaken before the tumultuous events of the terrorist attacks in New York, the emergence of the ‘war on terror’ and the rise of ‘Muslim-phobia’. A gap rises, however, within the Australian literature when we consider both the fluid and heterogenous nature of citizenship. That is, how do we understand the relationship between these diverse groups living within such proximity to each other overlayed by changing migration patterns, ongoing globalised processes and changing political environments as well as their relations to civic institutions? Further, how does this influence the way individuals perceive their rights, expectations and responsibilities to the state? Given this, I believe that there is a need to understand citizenship as a fluid and heterogenous phenomenon that can be in surplus, deficit, progressive and reactionary. When discussing citizenship I am interested in how people perceive both their rights and responsibilities to civic institutions as well as to the residents around them. A second, obviously related, area of interest is ‘civic engagement’: that is, “the activities of people in the various organisations and associations that make up what scholars call ‘civil society’” (Portney and Leary 4). Before describing these categories in more detail, I would like to briefly outline the methodological processes employed thus far. Much of the research to this point is based on a combination of established literature, my informal discussions with citizen groups and my observations as ‘an activist.’ That is, over the last few years I have worked with a broad cross section of community-based organisations as well as specific individuals that have attempted to confront perceived injustices. I have undertaken this work as both an activist – with organisations such as Aid/Watch and Oxfam Australia – as well as an academic invited to share my research. This work has involved designing and implementing policy and advocacy strategies including media and public education programs. All interactions begin with a detailed discussion of the aims, resources, abilities and knowledge of the groups involved, followed by workshopping campaigning strategies. This has led to the publication of an ‘activist handbook’ titled ‘From Sitting on the Couch to Changing the World’, which is used to both draft the campaign aims as well as design a systematic strategy. (The booklet, which is currently being re-drafted, is published by Oxfam Australia and registered under a creative commons licence. For those interested, copies are available by emailing j.arvanitakis (at) uws.edu.au.) Much research is also sourced from direct feedback given by participants in reviewing the workshops and strategies The aim of tis paper then, is to sketch out the initial findings as well as an agenda for more formalised research. The initial findings have identified the heterogenous nature of citizenship that I have separated into four ‘citizenship spaces.’ The term space is used because these are not stable groupings as many quickly move between the areas identified as both the structures and personal situations change. 1. Marginalisation and Citizenship Deficit The first category is a citizenship deficit brought on by a sense of marginalisation. This is determined by a belief that it is pointless to interact with civic institutions, as the result is always the same: people’s opinions and needs will be ignored. Or in the case of residents from areas such as Macquarie Fields, the relationship with civic institutions, including police, is antagonistic and best avoided (White par. 21). This means that there is no connection between the population and the civic institutions around them – there is no loyalty or belief that efforts to be involved in political and civic processes will be rewarded. Here groups sense that they do not have access to political avenues to be heard, represented or demand change. This is leading to an experience of disconnection from political processes. The result is both a sense of disengagement and disempowerment. One example here emerged in discussions with protesters around the proposed development of the former Australian Defence Industry (ADI) site in St Marys, an outer-western suburb of Sydney. The development, which was largely approved, was for a large-scale housing estate proposed on sensitive bushlands in a locality that resident’s note is under-serviced in terms of public space. (For details of these discussions, see http://www.adisite.org/.) Residents often took the attitude that whatever the desire of the local community, the development would go ahead regardless. Those who worked at information booths during the resident protests informed me that the attitude was one best summarised by: “Why bother, we always get stuffed around any way.” This was confirmed by my own discussions with local residents – even those who joined the resident action group. 2. Privatisation and Citizenship Deficit This citizenship deficit not only applies to the marginalised, however, for there are also much wealthier populations who also appear to experience a deficit that results from a lack of access to civic institutions. This tends to leads to a privatisation of decision-making and withdrawal from the public arena as well as democratic processes. Consequently, the residents in the pockets of wealth may not be acting as citizens but more like consumers – asserting themselves in terms of Castells’s ‘collective consumption’ (par. 25). This citizenship deficit is brought on by ongoing privatisation. That is, there is a belief that civic institutions (including government bodies) are unable or at least unwilling to service the local community. As a result there is a tendency to turn to private suppliers and believe that individualisation is the best way to manage the community. The result is that citizens feel no connection to the civic institutions around them, not because there is no desire, but there are no services. This group of citizens has often been described as the ‘Aspirationals’ and are most often found in the growth corridors of Sydney. There is no reason to believe that this group is this way because of choice – but rather a failure by government authorities to service their needs. This is confirmed by research undertaken as early as 1990 which found that the residents now labelled Aspirational, were demanding access to public infrastructure services including public schools, but have been neglected by different levels of government. (This was clearly stated by NSW Labor MP for Liverpool, Paul Lynch, who argued for such services as a way to ensure a functioning community particularly for Western Sydney; NSWPD 2001.) As a result there is a reliance on private schools, neighbourhoods, transport and so on. Any ‘why bother’ attitude is thus driven by a lack of evidence that civic institutions can or are not willing to meet their needs. There is a strong sense of local community – but this localisation limited to others in the same geographical location and similar lifestyle. 3. Citizenship Surplus – Empowered Not Engaged The third space of citizenship is based on a ‘surplus’ even if there is limited or no political engagement. This group has quite a lot in common with the ‘Aspirationals’ but may come from areas that are higher serviced by civic institutions: the choice not to engage is therefore voluntary. There is a strong push for self-sufficiency – believing that their social capital, wealth and status mean that they do not require the services of civic institutions. While not antagonistic towards such institutions, there is often a belief is that the services provided by the private sector are ultimately superior to public ones. Consequently, they feel empowered through their social background but are not engaged with civic institutions or the political process. Despite this, my initial research findings show that this group has a strong connection to decision-makers – both politicians and bureaucrats. This lack of engagement changes if there is a perceived injustice to their quality of life or their values system – and hence should not be dismissed as NIMBYs (not in my backyard). They believe they have the resources to mobilise and demand change. I believe that we see this group materialise in mobilisations around proposed developments that threaten the perceived quality of life of the local environment. One example brought to my attention was the rapid response of local residents to the proposed White City development near Sydney’s eastern suburbs that was to see tennis courts and public space replaced by residential and commercial buildings (Nicholls). As one resident informed me, she had never seen any political engagement by local residents previously – an engagement that was accompanied by a belief that the development would be stopped as well as a mobilisation of some impressive resources. Such mobilisations also occur when there is a perceived injustice. Examples of this group can be found in what Hugh Mackay (13) describes as ‘doctor’s wives’ (a term that I am not wholly comfortable with). Here we see the emergence of ‘Chilout’: Children out of Detention. This was an organisation whose membership was described to me as ‘north shore professionals’, drew heavily on those who believed the forced incarceration of young refugee children was an affront to their values system. 4. Insurgent Citizenship – Empowered and Engaged The final space is the insurgent citizen: that is, the citizen who is both engaged and empowered. This is a term borrowed from South Africa and the USA (Holston 1) – and it should be seen as having two, almost diametrically opposed, sides: progressive and reactionary. This group may not have access to a great deal of financial resources, but has high social capital and both a willingness and ability to engage in political processes. Consequently, there is a sense of empowerment and engagement with civic institutions. There is also a strong push for self-sufficiency – but this is encased in a belief that civic institutions have a responsibility to provide services to the public, and that some services are naturally better provided by the public sector. Despite this, there is often an antagonistic relationship with such institutions. From the progressive perspective, we see ‘activists’ promoting social justice issues (including students, academics, unionists and so on). Organisations such as A Just Australia are strongly supported by various student organisations, unions and other social justice and activist groups. From a reactionary perspective, we see the emergence of groups that take an anti-immigration stance (such as ‘anti-immigration’ groups including Australia First that draw both activists and have an established political party). (Information regarding ‘anti-refugee activists’ can be found at http://ausfirst.alphalink.com.au/ while the official website for the Australia First political part is at http://www.australiafirstparty.com.au/cms/.) One way to understand the relationship between these groups is through the engagement/empowered typology below. While a detailed discussion of the limitations of typologies is beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to acknowledge that any typology is a simplification and generalisation of the arguments presented. Likewise, it is unlikely that any typology has the ability to cover all cases and situations. This typology can, however, be used to underscore the relational nature of citizenship. The purpose here is to highlight that there are relationships between the different citizenship spaces and individuals can move between groups and each cluster has significant internal variation. Key here is that this can frame future studies. Conclusion and Next Steps There is little doubt there is a relationship between attitudes to citizenship and the health of a democracy. In Australia, democracy is robust in some ways, but many feel disempowered, disengaged and some feel both – often believing they are remote from the workings of civic institutions. It would appear that for many, interest in the process of (formal) government is at an all-time low as reflected in declining membership of political parties (Jaensch et al. 58). Democracy is not a ‘once for ever’ achievement – it needs to be protected and promoted. To do this, we must ensure that there are avenues for representation for all. This point also highlights one of the fundamental flaws of the aforementioned citizenship test. According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the test is designed to: help migrants integrate and maximise the opportunities available to them in Australia, and enable their full participation in the Australian community as citizens. (par. 4) Those designing the test have assumed that citizenship is both stable and, once achieved, automatically ensures representation. This paper directly challenges these assumptions and offers an alternative research agenda with the ultimate aim of promoting high levels of engagement and empowerment. References Anderson, A. “The Liberals Have Not Betrayed the Menzies Legacy.” Online Opinion 25 Oct. 2004. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2679>. Arvanitakis, J. “Highly Affected, Rarely Considered: The International Youth Parliament Commission’s Report on the Impacts of Globalisation on Young People.” Sydney: Oxfam Australia, 2003. Baldassar, L., Z. Kamalkhani, and C. Lange. “Afghan Hazara Refugees in Australia: Constructing Australian Citizens.” Social Identities 13.1 (2007): 31-50. Burchell, D. “Dysfunctional Dumping Grounds.” The Australian 10 Feb. 2007. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21199266-28737,00.html>. Burnley, I.H. The Impact of Immigration in Australia: A Demographic Approach. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2001. Castells, M. “European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy.” New Left Review I/204 (March-April 1994): 46-57. Chamberlain, C., and D. Mackenzie. Homeless Careers: Pathways in and out of Homelessness. Melbourne: RMIT University, 2002. Chari, R., J. Hogan, and G. Murphy. “Regulating Lobbyists: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Canada, Germany and the European Union.” The Political Quarterly 78.3 (2007): 423-438. Collins, J. “Chinese Entrepreneurs: The Chinese Diaspora in Australia.” International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research 8.1/2 (2002): 113-133. Dee, M. “Young People, Citizenship and Public Space.” International Sociological Association Conference Paper, Brisbane, 2002. Della Porta, D. “Globalisations and Democracy.” Democratizations 12.5 (2005): 668-685. Fagan, B., R. Dowling, and J. Longdale. “Suburbs in the ‘Global City’: Sydney since the Mid 1990s.” State of Australian cities conference. Parramatta, 2003. Frew, W. “And the Most Polarised City Is…” Sydney Morning Herald 16-17 Feb. 2008: 7. Gleeson, B. Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Gleeson, B. “What’s Driving Suburban Australia?” Australian Policy Online 15 Jan. 2004. http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=00558>. Gow, G. “Rubbing Shoulders in the Global City: Refugees, Citizenship and Multicultural Alliances in Fairfield, Sydney.” Ethnicities 5.3 (2005): 386-405. Hahn, C. L. “Citizenship Education: An Empirical Study of Policy, Practices and Outcomes.” Oxford Review of Education 25.1/2 (1999): 231-250. Hawley, S. “Sir Donald Bradman Likely to Be Dumped from Citizenship Test.” ABC Local Radio Online. 29 Jan. 2008. http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s2148383.htm>. Hoare, D. “Bradman’s Spot in Citizenship Test under Scrutiny.” ABC Local Radio online. 29 Jan. 2008. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2149325.htm>. Holston, J. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. California: Cloth, 2007. Jaensch, D., P. Brent, and B. Bowden. “Australian Political Parties in the Spotlight.” Democratic Audit of Australia Report 4. Australian National University, 2004. Mackay, H. “Sleepers Awoke from Slumber of Indifference.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Nov. 2007: 13. NSWPD – New South Wales Parliamentary Debates. “South Western Sydney Banking Services.” Legislative Assembly Hansard, 52nd NSW Parliament, 19 Sep. 2001. Portney, K.E., and L. O’Leary. Civic and Political Engagement of America’s Youth: National Survey of Civic and Political Engagement of Young People. Medford, MA: Tisch College, Tufts University, 2007. Price, S. “Stress and Debt Make Sydney a Violent City.” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Jan. 2008: 16. Pusey, M. The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. White, R. “Swarming and the Social Dynamics of Group Violence.” Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 326 (Oct. 2006). http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi2/tandi326t.html>. Wolfe, P. “Race and Citizenship.” Magazine of History 18.5 (2004): 66-72. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Arvanitakis, James. "The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average?." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/07-arvanitakis.php>. APA Style Arvanitakis, J. (Apr. 2008) "The Heterogenous Citizen: How Many of Us Care about Don Bradman’s Average?," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/07-arvanitakis.php>.

The Harry Potter (HP) Fan Fiction (FF) phenomenon offers an opportunity to explore the nature of fame and the work of fans (including the second author, a participant observer) in creating and circulating cultural products within fan communities. Matt Hills comments (xi) that “fandom is not simply a ‘thing’ that can be picked over analytically. It is also always performative; by which I mean that it is an identity which is (dis-)claimed, and which performs cultural work”. This paper explores the cultural work of fandom in relation to FF and fame. The global HP phenomenon – in which FF lists are a small part – has made creator J K Rowling richer than the Queen of England, according to the 2003 ‘Sunday Times Rich List’. The books (five so far) and the films (three) continue to accelerate the growth in Rowling’s fortune, which quadrupled from 2001-3: an incredible success for an author unknown before the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997. Even the on-screen HP lead actor, Daniel Radcliffe, is now Britain’s second wealthiest teenager (after England’s Prince Harry). There are other globally successful books, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Narnia collection, but neither of these series has experienced the momentum of the HP rise to fame. (See Endnote for an indication of the scale of fan involvement with HP FF, compared with Lord of the Rings.) Contemporary ‘Fame’ has been critically defined in relation to the western mass media’s requirement for ‘entertaining’ content, and the production and circulation of celebrity as opposed to ‘hard news’(Turner, Bonner and Marshall). The current perception is that an army of publicists and spin doctors are usually necessary, but not sufficient, to create and nurture global fame. Yet the HP phenomenon started out with no greater publicity investment than that garnered by any other promising first novelist: and given the status of HP as children’s publishing, it was probably less hyped than equivalent adult-audience publications. So are there particular characteristics of HP and his creator that predisposed the series and its author to become famous? And how does the fame status relate to fans’ incorporation of these cultural materials into their lives? Accepting that it is no more possible to predict the future fame of an author or (fictional) character than it is to predict the future financial success of a book, film or album, there is a range of features of the HP phenomenon that, in hindsight, helped accelerate the fame momentum, creating what has become in hindsight an unparalleled global media property. J K Rowling’s personal story – in the hands of her publicity machine – itself constituted a magical myth: the struggling single mother writing away (in longhand) in a Scottish café, snatching odd moments to construct the first book while her infant daughter slept. (Comparatively little attention was paid by the marketers to the author’s professional training and status as a teacher, or to Rowling’s own admission that the first book, and the outline for the series, took five years to write.) Rowling’s name itself, with no self-evident gender attribution, was also indicative of ambiguity and mystery. The back-story to HP, therefore, became one of a quintessentially romantic endeavour – the struggle to write against the odds. Publicity relating to the ‘starving in a garret’ background is not sufficient to explain the HP/Rowling grip on the popular imagination, however. Instead it is arguable that the growth of HP fame and fandom is directly related to the growth of the Internet and to the middle class readers’ Internet access. If the production of celebrity is a major project of the conventional mass media, the HP phenomenon is a harbinger of the hyper-fame that can be generated through the combined efforts of the mass media and online fan communities. The implication of this – evident in new online viral marketing techniques (Kirby), is that publicists need to pique cyber-interest as well as work with the mass media in the construction of celebrity. As the cheer-leaders for online viral marketing make the argument, the technique “provides the missing link between the [bottom-up] word-of-mouth approach and the top-down, advertainment approach”. Which is not to say that the initial HP success was a function of online viral marketing: rather, the marketers learned their trade by analysing the magnifier impact that the online fan communities had upon the exponential growth of the HP phenomenon. This cyber-impact is based both on enhanced connectivity – the bottom-up, word-of-mouth dynamic, and on the individual’s need to assume an identity (albeit fluid) to participate effectively in online community. Critiquing the notion that the computer is an identity machine, Streeter focuses upon (649) “identities that people have brought to computers from the culture at large”. He does not deal in any depth with FF, but suggests (651) that “what the Internet is and will come to be, then, is partly a matter of who we expect to be when we sit down to use it”. What happens when fans sit down to use the Internet, and is there a particular reason why the Internet should be of importance to the rise and rise of HP fame? From the point of view of one of us, HP was born at more or less the same time as she was. Eleven years old in the first book, published in 1997, Potter’s putative birth year might be set in 1986 – in line with many of the original HP readership, and the publisher’s target market. At the point that this cohort was first spellbound by Potter, 1998-9, they were also on the brink of discovering the Internet. In Australia and many western nations, over half of (two-parent) families with school-aged children were online by the end of 2000 (ABS). Potter would notionally have been 14: his fans a little younger but well primed for the ‘teeny-bopper’ years. Arguably, the only thing more famous than HP for that age-group, at that time, was the Internet itself. As knowledge of the Internet grew stories about it constituted both news and entertainment and circulated widely in the mass media: the uncertainty concerning new media, and their impact upon existing social structures, has – over time – precipitated a succession of moral panics … Established commercial media are not noted for their generosity to competitors, and it is unsurprising that many of the moral panics circulating about pornography on the Net, Internet stalking, Web addiction, hate sites etc are promulgated in the older media. (Green xxvii) Although the mass media may have successfully scared the impressionable, the Internet was not solely constructed as a site of moral panic. Prior to the general pervasiveness of the Internet in domestic space, P. David Marshall discusses multiple constructions of the computer – seen by parents as an educational tool which could help future-proof their children; but which their children were more like to conceptualise as a games machine, or (this was the greater fear) use for hacking. As the computer was to become a site for the battle ground between education, entertainment and power, so too the Internet was poised to be colonised by teenagers for a variety of purposes their parents would have preferred to prevent: chat, pornography, game-playing (among others). Fan communities thrive on the power of the individual fan to project themselves and their fan identity as part of an ongoing conversation. Further, in constructing the reasons behind what has happened in the HP narrative, and in speculating what is to come, fans are presenting themselves as identities with whom others might agree (positive affirmation) or disagree (offering the chance for engagement through exchange). The genuinely insightful fans, who apparently predict the plots before they’re published, may even be credited in their communities with inspiring J K Rowling’s muse. (The FF mythology is that J K Rowling dare not look at the FF sites in case she finds herself influenced.) Nancy Baym, commenting on a soap opera fan Usenet group (Usenet was an early 1990s precursor to discussion groups) notes that: The viewers’ relationship with characters, the viewers’ understanding of socioemotional experience, and soap opera’s narrative structure, in which moments of maximal suspense are always followed by temporal gaps, work together to ensure that fans will use the gaps during and between shows to discuss with one another possible outcomes and possible interpretations of what has been seen. (143) In HP terms the The Philosopher’s Stone constructed a fan knowledge that J K Rowling’s project entailed at least seven books (one for each year at Hogwarts School) and this offered plentiful opportunities to speculate upon the future direction and evolution of the HP characters. With each speculation, each posting, the individual fan can refine and extend their identity as a member of the FF community. The temporal gaps between the books and the films – coupled with the expanding possibilities of Internet communication – mean that fans can feel both creative and connected while circulating the cultural materials derived from their engagement with the HP ‘canon’. Canon is used to describe the HP oeuvre as approved by Rowling, her publishers, and her copyright assignees (for example, Warner Bros). In contrast, ‘fanon’ is the name used by fans to refer the body of work that results from their creative/subversive interactions with the core texts, such as “slash” (homo-erotic/romance) fiction. Differentiation between the two terms acknowledges the likelihood that J K Rowling or her assignees might not approve of fanon. The constructed identities of fans who deal solely with canon differ significantly from those who are engaged in fanon. The implicit (romantic) or explicit (full-action descriptions) sexualisation of HP FF is part of a complex identity play on behalf of both the writers and readers of FF. Further, given that the online communities are often nurtured and enriched by offline face to face exchanges with other participants, what an individual is prepared to read or not to read, or write or not write, says as much about that person’s public persona as does another’s overt consumption of pornography; or diet of art house films, in contrast to someone else’s enthusiasm for Friends. Hearn, Mandeville and Anthony argue that a “central assertion of postmodern views of consumption is that social identity can be interpreted as a function of consumption” (106), and few would disagree with them: herein lies the power of the brand. Noting that consumer culture centrally focuses upon harnessing ‘the desire to desire’, Streeter’s work (654, on the opening up of Internet connectivity) suggests a continuum from ‘desire provoked’; through anticipation, ‘excitement based on what people imagined would happen’; to a sense of ‘possibility’. All this was made more tantalising in terms of the ‘unpredictability’ of how cyberspace would eventually resolve itself (657). Thus a progression is posited from desire through to the thrill of comparing future possibilities with eventual outcomes. These forces clearly influence the HP FF phenomenon, where a section of HP fans have become impatient with the pace of the ‘official’/canon HP text. J K Rowling’s writing has slowed down to the point that Harry’s initial readership has overtaken him by several years. He’s about to enter his sixth year (of seven) at secondary school – his erstwhile-contemporaries have already left school or are about to graduate to University. HP is yet to have ‘a relationship’: his fans are engaged in some well-informed speculation as to a range of sexual possibilities which would likely take J K Rowling some light years from her marketers’ core readership. So the story is progressing more slowly than many fans would choose and with less spice than many would like (from the evidence of the web, at least). As indicated in the Endnote, the productivity of the fans, as they ‘fill in the gaps’ while waiting for the official narrative to resume, is prodigious. It may be that as the fans outstrip HP in their own social and emotional development they find his reactions in later books increasingly unbelievable, and/or out of character with the HP they felt they knew. Thus they develop an alternative ‘Harry’ in fanon. Some FF authors identify in advance which books they accept as canon, and which they have decided to ignore. For example, popular FF author Midnight Blue gives the setting of her evolving FF The Mirror of Maybe as “after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and as an alternative to the events detailed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, [this] is a Slash story involving Harry Potter and Severus Snape”. Some fans, tired of waiting for Rowling to get Harry grown up, ‘are doin’ it for themselves’. Alternatively, it may be that as they get older the first groups of HP fans are unwilling to relinquish their investment in the HP phenomenon, but are equally unwilling to align themselves uncritically with the anodyne story of the canon. Harry Potter, as Warner Bros licensed him, may be OK for pre-teens, but less cool for the older adolescent. The range of identities that can be constructed using the many online HP FF genres, however, permits wide scope for FF members to identify with dissident constructions of the HP narrative and helps to add to the momentum with which his fame increases. Latterly there is evidence that custodians of canon may be making subtle overtures to creators of fanon. Here, the viral marketers have a particular challenge – to embrace the huge market represented by fanon, while not disturbing those whose HP fandom is based upon the purity of canon. Some elements of fanon feel their discourses have been recognised within the evolving approved narrative . This sense within the fan community – that the holders of the canon have complimented them through an intertextual reference – is much prized and builds the momentum of the fame engagement (as has been demonstrated by Watson, with respect to the band ‘phish’). Specifically, Harry/Draco slash fans have delighted in the hint of a blown kiss from Draco Malfoy to Harry (as Draco sends Harry an origami bird/graffiti message in a Defence against the Dark Arts Class in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as an acknowledgement of their cultural contribution to the development of the HP phenomenon. Streeter credits Raymond’s essay ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ as offering a model for the incorporation of voluntary labour into the marketplace. Although Streeter’s example concerns the Open Source movement, derived from hacker culture, it has parallels with the prodigious creativity (and productivity) of the HP FF communities. Discussing the decision by Netscape to throw open the source code of its software in 1998, allowing those who use it to modify and improve it, Streeter comments that (659) “the core trope is to portray Linux-style software development like a bazaar, a real-life competitive marketplace”. The bazaar features a world of competing, yet complementary, small traders each displaying their skills and their wares for evaluation in terms of the product on offer. In contrast, “Microsoft-style software production is portrayed as hierarchical and centralised – and thus inefficient – like a cathedral”. Raymond identifies “ego satisfaction and reputation among other [peers]” as a specific socio-emotional benefit for volunteer participants (in Open Source development), going on to note: “Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon [… for example] science fiction fandom, which unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recognized ‘egoboo’ (ego-boosting, or the enhancement of one’s reputation among other fans) as the basic drive behind volunteer activity”. This may also be a prime mover for FF engagement. Where fans have outgrown the anodyne canon they get added value through using the raw materials of the HP stories to construct fanon: establishing and building individual identities and communities through HP consumption practices in parallel with, but different from, those deemed acceptable for younger, more innocent, fans. The fame implicit in HP fandom is not only that of HP, the HP lead actor Daniel Radcliffe and HP’s creator J K Rowling; for some fans the famed ‘state or quality of being widely honoured and acclaimed’ can be realised through their participation in online fan culture – fans become famous and recognised within their own community for the quality of their work and the generosity of their sharing with others. The cultural capital circulated on the FF sites is both canon and fanon, a matter of some anxiety for the corporations that typically buy into and foster these mega-media products. As Jim Ward, Vice-President of Marketing for Lucasfilm comments about Star Wars fans (cited in Murray 11): “We love our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact someone is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that’s not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is.” Slash fans would beg to differ, and for many FF readers and writers, the joy of engagement, and a significant engine for the growth of HP fame, is partly located in the creativity offered for readers and writers to fill in the gaps. Endnote HP FF ranges from posts on general FF sites (such as fanfiction.net >> books, where HP has 147,067 stories [on 4,490 pages of hotlinks] posted, compared with its nearest ‘rival’ Lord of the rings: with 33,189 FF stories). General FF sites exclude adult content, much of which is corralled into 18+ FF sites, such as Restrictedsection.org, set up when core material was expelled from general sites. As an example of one adult site, the Potter Slash Archive is selective (unlike fanfiction.net, for example) which means that only stories liked by the site team are displayed. Authors submitting work are asked to abide by a list of ‘compulsory parameters’, but ‘warnings’ fall under the category of ‘optional parameters’: “Please put a warning if your story contains content that may be offensive to some authors [sic], such as m/m sex, graphic sex or violence, violent sex, character death, major angst, BDSM, non-con (rape) etc”. Adult-content FF readers/writers embrace a range of unexpected genres – such as Twincest (incest within either of the two sets of twin characters in HP) and Weasleycest (incest within the Weasley clan) – in addition to mainstream romance/homo-erotica pairings, such as that between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. (NB: within the time frame 16 August – 4 October, Harry Potter FF writers had posted an additional 9,196 stories on the fanfiction.net site alone.) 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Houghton Mifflin. “Potlatch.” Encyclopedia of North American Indians. http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/ na_030900_potlatch.htm>. Kirby, Justin. “Brand Papers: Getting the Bug.” Brand Strategy July-August 2004. http://www.dmc.co.uk/pdf/BrandStrategy07-0804.pdf>. Marshall, P. David. “Technophobia: Video Games, Computer Hacks and Cybernetics.” Media International Australia 85 (Nov. 1997): 70-8. Murray, Simone. “Celebrating the Story the Way It Is: Cultural Studies, Corporate Media and the Contested Utility of Fandom.” Continuum 18.1 (2004): 7-25. Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. 2000. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s11.html>. Streeter, Thomas. The Romantic Self and the Politics of Internet Commercialization. Cultural Studies 17.5 (2003): 648-68. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge UP. Watson, Nessim. “Why We Argue about Virtual Community: A Case Study of the Phish.net Fan Community.” Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety. Ed. Steven G. Jones. London: Sage, 1997. 102-32. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia, and Carmen Guinery. "Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/14-green.php>. APA Style Green, L., and C. Guinery. (Nov. 2004) "Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/14-green.php>.

While the term “visual literacy” has grown in popularity in the last 50 years, its meaning remains nebulous. It is described variously as: a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation, a means of defence against visual manipulation, a sorting mechanism for an increasingly data-saturated age, and a prerequisite to civic inclusion (Fransecky 23; Messaris 181; McTigue and Flowers 580). Scholars have written extensively about the first three subjects but there has been less research on how visual literacy frames civic life and how it might help the public as a tool to address disadvantage and assist in removing social and cultural barriers. This article examines a forerunner to visual literacy in the push to create an international symbol language born out of popular education movements, a project that fell short of its goals but still left a considerable impression on graphic media. This article, then, presents an analysis of visual literacy campaigns in the early postwar era. These campaigns did not attempt to invent a symbolic language but posited that images themselves served as a universal language in which students could receive training. Of particular interest is how the concept of visual literacy has been mobilised as a pedagogical tool in design, digital humanities and in broader civic education initiatives promoted by Third Space institutions. Behind the creation of new visual literacy curricula is the idea that images can help anchor a world community, supplementing textual communication. Figure 1: Visual Literacy Yearbook. Montebello Unified School District, USA, 1973. Shedding Light: Origins of the Visual Literacy Frame The term “visual literacy” came to the fore in the early 1970s on the heels of mass literacy campaigns. The educators, creatives and media theorists who first advocated for visual learning linked this aim to literacy, an unassailable goal, to promote a more radical curricular overhaul. They challenged a system that had hitherto only acknowledged a very limited pathway towards academic success; pushing “language and mathematics”, courses “referred to as solids (something substantial) as contrasted with liquids or gases (courses with little or no substance)” (Eisner 92). This was deemed “a parochial view of both human ability and the possibilities of education” that did not acknowledge multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner). This change not only integrated elements of mass culture that had been rejected in education, notably film and graphic arts, but also encouraged the critique of images as a form of good citizenship, assuming that visually literate arbiters could call out media misrepresentations and manipulative political advertising (Messaris, “Visual Test”). This movement was, in many ways, reactive to new forms of mass media that began to replace newspapers as key forms of civic participation. Unlike simple literacy (being able to decipher letters as a mnemonic system), visual literacy involves imputing meanings to images where meanings are less fixed, yet still with embedded cultural signifiers. Visual literacy promised to extend enlightenment metaphors of sight (as in the German Aufklärung) and illumination (as in the French Lumières) to help citizens understand an increasingly complex marketplace of images. The move towards visual literacy was not so much a shift towards images (and away from books and oration) but an affirmation of the need to critically investigate the visual sphere. It introduced doubt to previously upheld hierarchies of perception. Sight, to Kant the “noblest of the senses” (158), was no longer the sense “least affected” by the surrounding world but an input centre that was equally manipulable. In Kant’s view of societal development, the “cosmopolitan” held the key to pacifying bellicose states and ensuring global prosperity and tranquillity. The process of developing a cosmopolitan ideology rests, according to Kant, on the gradual elimination of war and “the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture” (188-89). Transforming disparate societies into “a universal cosmopolitan existence” that would “at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop” and would take well-funded educational institutions and, potentially, a new framework for imparting knowledge (Kant 51). To some, the world of the visual presented a baseline for shared experience. Figure 2: Exhibition by the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, photograph c. 1927. An International Picture Language The quest to find a mutually intelligible language that could “bridge worlds” and solder together all of humankind goes back to the late nineteenth century and the Esperanto movement of Ludwig Zamenhof (Schor 59). The expression of this ideal in the world of the visual picked up steam in the interwar years with designers and editors like Fritz Kahn, Gerd Arntz, and Otto and Marie Neurath. Their work transposing complex ideas into graphic form has been rediscovered as an antecedent to modern infographics, but the symbols they deployed were not to merely explain, but also help education and build international fellowship unbounded by spoken language. The Neuraths in particular are celebrated for their international picture language or Isotypes. These pictograms (sometimes viewed as proto-emojis) can be used to represent data without text. Taken together they are an “intemporal, hieroglyphic language” that Neutrath hoped would unite working-class people the world over (Lee 159). The Neuraths’ work was done in the explicit service of visual education with a popular socialist agenda and incubated in the social sphere of Red Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social and Economic Museum) where Otto served as Director. The Wirtschaftsmuseum was an experiment in popular education, with multiple branches and late opening hours to accommodate the “the working man [who] has time to see a museum only at night” (Neurath 72-73). The Isotype contained universalist aspirations for the “making of a world language, or a helping picture language—[that] will give support to international developments generally” and “educate by the eye” (Neurath 13). Figure 3: Gerd Arntz Isotype Images. (Source: University of Reading.) The Isotype was widely adopted in the postwar era in pre-packaged sets of symbols used in graphic design and wayfinding systems for buildings and transportation networks, but with the socialism of the Neuraths’ peeled away, leaving only the system of logos that we are familiar with from airport washrooms, charts, and public transport maps. Much of the uptake in this symbol language could be traced to increased mobility and tourism, particularly in countries that did not make use of a Roman alphabet. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo helped pave the way when organisers, fearful of jumbling too many scripts together, opted instead for black and white icons to represent the program of sports that summer. The new focus on the visual was both technologically mediated—cheaper printing and broadcast technologies made the diffusion of image increasingly possible—but also ideologically supported by a growing emphasis on projects that transcended linguistic, ethnic, and national borders. The Olympic symbols gradually morphed into Letraset icons, and, later, symbols in the Unicode Standard, which are the basis for today’s emojis. Wordless signs helped facilitate interconnectedness, but only in the most literal sense; their application was limited primarily to sports mega-events, highway maps, and “brand building”, and they never fulfilled their role as an educational language “to give the different nations a common outlook” (Neurath 18). Universally understood icons, particularly in the form of emojis, point to a rise in visual communication but they have fallen short as a cosmopolitan project, supporting neither the globalisation of Kantian ethics nor the transnational socialism of the Neuraths. Figure 4: Symbols in use. Women's bathroom. 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (Source: The official report of the Organizing Committee.) Counter Education By mid-century, the optimism of a universal symbol language seemed dated, and focus shifted from distillation to discernment. New educational programs presented ways to study images, increasingly reproducible with new technologies, as a language in and of themselves. These methods had their roots in the fin-de-siècle educational reforms of John Dewey, Helen Parkhurst, and Maria Montessori. As early as the 1920s, progressive educators were using highly visual magazines, like National Geographic, as the basis for lesson planning, with the hopes that they would “expose students to edifying and culturally enriching reading” and “develop a more catholic taste or sensibility, representing an important cosmopolitan value” (Hawkins 45). The rise in imagery from previously inaccessible regions helped pupils to see themselves in relation to the larger world (although this connection always came with the presumed superiority of the reader). “Pictorial education in public schools” taught readers—through images—to accept a broader world but, too often, they saw photographs as a “straightforward transcription of the real world” (Hawkins 57). The images of cultures and events presented in Life and National Geographic for the purposes of education and enrichment were now the subject of greater analysis in the classroom, not just as “windows into new worlds” but as cultural products in and of themselves. The emerging visual curriculum aimed to do more than just teach with previously excluded modes (photography, film and comics); it would investigate how images presented and mediated the world. This gained wider appeal with new analytical writing on film, like Raymond Spottiswoode's Grammar of the Film (1950) which sought to formulate the grammatical rules of visual communication (Messaris 181), influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics; the emphasis on grammar can also be seen in far earlier writings on design systems such as Owen Jones’s 1856 The Grammar of Ornament, which also advocated for new, universalising methods in design education (Sloboda 228). The inventorying impulse is on display in books like Donis A. Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973), a text that meditates on visual perception but also functions as an introduction to line and form in the applied arts, picking up where the Bauhaus left off. Dondis enumerates the “syntactical guidelines” of the applied arts with illustrations that are in keeping with 1920s books by Kandinsky and Klee and analyse pictorial elements. However, at the end of the book she shifts focus with two chapters that examine “messaging” and visual literacy explicitly. Dondis predicts that “an intellectual, trained ability to make and understand visual messages is becoming a vital necessity to involvement with communication. It is quite likely that visual literacy will be one of the fundamental measures of education in the last third of our century” (33) and she presses for more programs that incorporate the exploration and analysis of images in tertiary education. Figure 5: Ideal spatial environment for the Blueprint charts, 1970. (Image: Inventory Press.) Visual literacy in education arrived in earnest with a wave of publications in the mid-1970s. They offered ways for students to understand media processes and for teachers to use visual culture as an entry point into complex social and scientific subject matter, tapping into the “visual consciousness of the ‘television generation’” (Fransecky 5). Visual culture was often seen as inherently democratising, a break from stuffiness, the “artificialities of civilisation”, and the “archaic structures” that set sensorial perception apart from scholarship (Dworkin 131-132). Many radical university projects and community education initiatives of the 1960s made use of new media in novel ways: from Maurice Stein and Larry Miller’s fold-out posters accompanying Blueprint for Counter Education (1970) to Emory Douglas’s graphics for The Black Panther newspaper. Blueprint’s text- and image-dense wall charts were made via assemblage and they were imagined less as charts and more as a “matrix of resources” that could be used—and added to—by youth to undertake their own counter education (Cronin 53). These experiments in visual learning helped to break down old hierarchies in education, but their aim was influenced more by countercultural notions of disruption than the universal ideals of cosmopolitanism. From Image as Text to City as Text For a brief period in the 1970s, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan et al., Massage) and artists like Bruno Munari (Tanchis and Munari) collaborated fruitfully with graphic designers to create books that mixed text and image in novel ways. Using new compositional methods, they broke apart traditional printing lock-ups to superimpose photographs, twist text, and bend narrative frames. The most famous work from this era is, undoubtedly, The Medium Is the Massage (1967), McLuhan’s team-up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, but it was followed by dozens of other books intended to communicate theory and scientific ideas with popularising graphics. Following in the footsteps of McLuhan, many of these texts sought not just to explain an issue but to self-consciously reference their own method of information delivery. These works set the precedent for visual aids (and, to a lesser extent, audio) that launched a diverse, non-hierarchical discourse that was nonetheless bound to tactile artefacts. In 1977, McLuhan helped develop a media textbook for secondary school students called City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. It is notable for its direct address style and its focus on investigating spaces outside of the classroom (provocatively, a section on the third page begins with “Should all schools be closed?”). The book follows with a fine-grained analysis of advertising forms in which students are asked to first bring advertisements into class for analysis and later to go out into the city to explore “a man-made environment, a huge warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of charge” (McLuhan et al., City 149). As a document City as Classroom is critical of existing teaching methods, in line with the radical “in the streets” pedagogy of its day. McLuhan’s theories proved particularly salient for the counter education movement, in part because they tapped into a healthy scepticism of advertisers and other image-makers. They also dovetailed with growing discontent with the ad-strew visual environment of cities in the 1970s. Budgets for advertising had mushroomed in the1960s and outdoor advertising “cluttered” cities with billboards and neon, generating “fierce intensities and new hybrid energies” that threatened to throw off the visual equilibrium (McLuhan 74). Visual literacy curricula brought in experiential learning focussed on the legibility of the cities, mapping, and the visualisation of urban issues with social justice implications. The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a “collective endeavour of community research and education” that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 uprisings, is the most storied of the groups that suffused the collection of spatial data with community engagement and organising (Warren et al. 61). The following decades would see a tamed approach to visual literacy that, while still pressing for critical reading, did not upend traditional methods of educational delivery. Figure 6: Beginning a College Program-Assisting Teachers to Develop Visual Literacy Approaches in Public School Classrooms. 1977. ERIC. Searching for Civic Education The visual literacy initiatives formed in the early 1970s both affirmed existing civil society institutions while also asserting the need to better inform the public. Most of the campaigns were sponsored by universities, major libraries, and international groups such as UNESCO, which published its “Declaration on Media Education” in 1982. They noted that “participation” was “essential to the working of a pluralistic and representative democracy” and the “public—users, citizens, individuals, groups ... were too systematically overlooked”. Here, the public is conceived as both “targets of the information and communication process” and users who “should have the last word”. To that end their “continuing education” should be ensured (Study 18). Programs consisted primarily of cognitive “see-scan-analyse” techniques (Little et al.) for younger students but some also sought to bring visual analysis to adult learners via continuing education (often through museums eager to engage more diverse audiences) and more radical popular education programs sponsored by community groups. By the mid-80s, scores of modules had been built around the comprehension of visual media and had become standard educational fare across North America, Australasia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the role of data and image presentation in decision-making, as evidenced by the surprising commercial success of Edward Tufte’s 1982 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Visual literacy—or at least image analysis—was now enmeshed in teaching practice and needed little active advocacy. Scholarly interest in the subject went into a brief period of hibernation in the 1980s and early 1990s, only to be reborn with the arrival of new media distribution technologies (CD-ROMs and then the internet) in classrooms and the widespread availability of digital imaging technology starting in the late 1990s; companies like Adobe distributed free and reduced-fee licences to schools and launched extensive teacher training programs. Visual literacy was reanimated but primarily within a circumscribed academic field of education and data visualisation. Figure 7: Visual Literacy; What Research Says to the Teacher, 1975. National Education Association. USA. Part of the shifting frame of visual literacy has to do with institutional imperatives, particularly in places where austerity measures forced strange alliances between disciplines. What had been a project in alternative education morphed into an uncontested part of the curriculum and a dependable budget line. This shift was already forecasted in 1972 by Harun Farocki who, writing in Filmkritik, noted that funding for new film schools would be difficult to obtain but money might be found for “training in media education … a discipline that could persuade ministers of education, that would at the same time turn the budget restrictions into an advantage, and that would match the functions of art schools” (98). Nearly 50 years later educators are still using media education (rebranded as visual or media literacy) to make the case for fine arts and humanities education. While earlier iterations of visual literacy education were often too reliant on the idea of cracking the “code” of images, they did promote ways of learning that were a deep departure from the rote methods of previous generations. Next-gen curricula frame visual literacy as largely supplemental—a resource, but not a program. By the end of the 20th century, visual literacy had changed from a scholarly interest to a standard resource in the “teacher’s toolkit”, entering into school programs and influencing museum education, corporate training, and the development of public-oriented media (Literacy). An appreciation of image culture was seen as key to creating empathetic global citizens, but its scope was increasingly limited. With rising austerity in the education sector (a shift that preceded the 2008 recession by decades in some countries), art educators, museum enrichment staff, and design researchers need to make a case for why their disciplines were relevant in pedagogical models that are increasingly aimed at “skills-based” and “job ready” teaching. Arts educators worked hard to insert their fields into learning goals for secondary students as visual literacy, with the hope that “literacy” would carry the weight of an educational imperative and not a supplementary field of study. Conclusion For nearly a century, educational initiatives have sought to inculcate a cosmopolitan perspective with a variety of teaching materials and pedagogical reference points. Symbolic languages, like the Isotype, looked to unite disparate people with shared visual forms; while educational initiatives aimed to train the eyes of students to make them more discerning citizens. The term ‘visual literacy’ emerged in the 1960s and has since been deployed in programs with a wide variety of goals. Countercultural initiatives saw it as a prerequisite for popular education from the ground up, but, in the years since, it has been formalised and brought into more staid curricula, often as a sort of shorthand for learning from media and pictures. The grand cosmopolitan vision of a complete ‘visual language’ has been scaled back considerably, but still exists in trace amounts. Processes of globalisation require images to universalise experiences, commodities, and more for people without shared languages. Emoji alphabets and globalese (brands and consumer messaging that are “visual-linguistic” amalgams “increasingly detached from any specific ethnolinguistic group or locality”) are a testament to a mediatised banal cosmopolitanism (Jaworski 231). In this sense, becoming “fluent” in global design vernacular means familiarity with firms and products, an understanding that is aesthetic, not critical. It is very much the beneficiaries of globalisation—both state and commercial actors—who have been able to harness increasingly image-based technologies for their benefit. To take a humorous but nonetheless consequential example, Spanish culinary boosters were able to successfully lobby for a paella emoji (Miller) rather than having a food symbol from a less wealthy country such as a Senegalese jollof or a Morrocan tagine. This trend has gone even further as new forms of visual communication are increasingly streamlined and managed by for-profit media platforms. The ubiquity of these forms of communication and their global reach has made visual literacy more important than ever but it has also fundamentally shifted the endeavour from a graphic sorting practice to a critical piece of social infrastructure that has tremendous political ramifications. Visual literacy campaigns hold out the promise of educating students in an image-based system with the potential to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. This cosmopolitan political project has not yet been realised, as the visual literacy frame has drifted into specialised silos of art, design, and digital humanities education. It can help bridge the “incomplete connections” of an increasingly globalised world (Calhoun 112), but it does not have a program in and of itself. Rather, an evolving visual literacy curriculum might be seen as a litmus test for how we imagine the role of images in the world. 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