Journal articles on the topic 'Insanity (Law) Jurisprudence Victoria'

In theory, an insanity defence can take two forms: the cognitive form (C-insanity) and the volitional form (V-insanity). The defence of C-insanity recognises that a disordered state of mind can make the ability to understand the nature of an action impossible. On the other hand, V-insanity is recognised in some common law jurisdictions, such as all jurisdictions in Australia except for Victoria and New South Wales, and is a full defence. It recognises that a disordered state of mind can make the exercise of self-control impossible. However, that disordered state of mind does not necessarily affect the understanding of the nature of the act impossible.

In twentieth-century Australian criminal law a distinctive departure from the M’Naghten Rules developed as a critique of the discourse of reasoning and verdicts applying in the relevant English trials from the 1880s. The English verdict of ‘guilty but insane’ was criticized by the leading jurists as contradictory. In a sequence of influential judgments, the jurist Owen Dixon articulated an approach to the insanity defence that made room for a medico-legal discourse which broadened the possible referents of what it meant to ‘know’ the legality of an act, and also acknowledged the complex behavioural factors that might determine an act of homicide. This paper explores the shaping and significance of this departure and its comparative judicial, medical and social contexts. A concluding discussion considers whether the more flexible interpretation of the insanity defence implied by the direction of Dixon’s decisions made as much of a difference to frequency of use of the defence as the contemporaneous decline and eventual abolition of capital punishment.

The upward trend of incarceration rates persists among women in Victoria, with increasingly punitive sentencing and onerous new bail laws. At the same time, the complex needs of women in the criminal justice system are becoming the focus of greater study and documentation. This article presents the case for a specialist women’s list under the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria jurisdiction, based in principles of therapeutic jurisprudence and procedural justice. While the list aims to reduce offending by addressing criminogenic factors unique to women, the picture is far bigger; the Victorian Women’s Court ultimately promotes justice for women who commit crimes.

This note discusses key themes arising from Lord Cooke's published extrajudicial writing. These themes cover Lord Cooke's conception of the common law, the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, the development of bill of rights jurisprudence in New Zealand and overseas, and the role of judges. This note arises out of the authors' involvement in the Lord Cooke project, a Victoria University of Wellington initiative that will make a complete collection of Lord Cooke's extrajudicial writings available online.

The problem of determining the limits of competence of a forensic psychiatrist expert and a psychologist expert, the principles of interaction of law, forensic psychiatry and psychology in modern domestic expert practice remain relevant to the present day. The current legislation of Ukraine regulates expert compliance with the limits of competence. In jurisprudence and psychiatry, the issue of the definition of the concept of “insanity” is currently debatable, since the so-called “formula of insanity” contains medical (biological) and psychological (legal) criteria. This article purpose The purpose of this paper: presenting of the author's systemic model of ascertaining insanity, which delimits the competences of lawyers and an expert psychiatrist; A written description of the psychiatric criteria (diagnostic, criticality and anamnestic) of determining the mental state of a person in a legally relevant period of time is given; The definition of the concept of “insanity” is formulated. No less urgent is the problem of further improvement and bringing into compliance of certain paragraphs the Procedure for conducting a forensic psychiatric examination of the current legislation of Ukraine and departmental regulatory acts governing the organization of forensic expert activity in state specialized expert institutions. Separate provisions of the Procedure for conducting a forensic psychiatric examination, which can create significant difficulties in the work of a forensic psychiatrist, are analyzed, and appropriate proposals are made to change the content of problematic provisions in the specified regulatory document.

This article is the Inaugural Address given by Professor Aikman, Professor of Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law, Victoria University College, on 11 September 1956. The author discusses the nature of international law in general terms, first by exploring the nature of traditional international law as a set of rules by which states feel themselves bound to observe in their relations with each other. The author then explores the notion that traditional international law was developed as a means for regulating external contacts rather than as the expression of the life of a true society (the favoured approach of Sir Alfred Zimmern). The function of political power is also discussed in the context of the world community, including that of the United Nations. However, the author notes that the United Nations and its related agencies also act on a functional (i.e. social, cultural, economic and humanitarian) field and at a regional level. The author then discusses the role of arbitration, judicial settlement, and the role of moral principles in international affairs. The author concludes that international law requires diversity, commitment, and acceptance.

It is a daunting assignment to review a book after it has garnered a major award bestowed by the organization that publishes this journal. Judith Baer's Our Lives before the Law not only is a very worthy recipient of the 2000 Victoria Schuck Award for the best book on women in politics but also is an erudite and wide-ranging critique of feminist thought with the goal of "forc[ing] feminists to confront mainstream discourse and mainstream discourse to confront feminism" (p. 175). This goal is in the service of Baer's desire to construct a new jurisprudence of sexual equality, one that avoids the pitfalls Baer perceives as inherent in the efforts of others to date.

This paper analyzes the recent decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court in City of Victoria v. Adams. Specifically, the paper considers three interlocking themes that emerge from the decision: (1) the nature of “public space” in the context of homelessness; (2) the autonomy of homeless individuals; and (3) the meaning and value of the “homeless body.” With reference to each theme, the paper explores how the judgment in Adams grapples with the purportedly normative “Law and Economics”- type arguments put forth by the City of Victoria. By drawing on insights from Critical Legal Studies theory and feminist jurisprudence, the paper shows that Adams subverts and destabilizes certain “normative” perspectives about public space and homelessness. However, the paper goes on to argue that in its conflation of “cardboard box” shelters with the “invisible fences” envisioned by Justice Wilson in Morgentaler, Adams presents an ambiguous victory for anti-poverty advocates. The paper argues that the decision may serve to increase barriers for a broader and more progressive understanding of section 7 in the future.Dans cet article, on analyse le jugement récent de la Cour Suprême de la Colombie Britannique dans City of Victoria v. Adams. Plus précisément, on considère trois thèmes qui ressortent du jugement et qui s’entrecroisent : (1) la nature d’«espace public» dans le contexte de l’itinérance; (2) l’autonomie des sans-abri; et (3) la signification et la valeur du «corps sans abri». En rapport avec chaque thème, on explore comment l’arrêt Adams compose avec les arguments supposément normatifs du genre «La Loi et l’Économie» avancés par la ville de Victoria. En s’inspirant de perceptions tirées de la théorie des Critical Legal Studies et de la jurisprudence féministe, l’auteure démontre que l’arrêt Adams subvertit et déséquilibre certaines perspectives «normatives» au sujet de l’espace public et l’itinérance. Cependant, elle poursuit en arguant que de fondre les abris «en boîtes en carton» et les «barrières invisibles» contemplées par la juge Wilson dans Morgentaler, comme le fait l’arrêt Adams, présente une victoire ambiguë pour ceux et celles qui luttent contre la pauvreté. L’auteure soutient que le jugement pourrait contribuer à augmenter les barrières devant une compréhension plus large et plus progressive de l’article 7 à l’avenir.

The paper signposts a number of issues identified within the research project: Postcode Justice — Rural and Regional Disadvantage in the Administration of the Law. It highlights key areas in which regional Victorians experience disadvantage in access to justice system services in comparison to their metropolitan counterparts. Issues raised by interviewees and survey participants demonstrate inherent problems with the current delivery of justice system services, programs and processes in regional Victoria. Briefly explored within the paper is the relationship of ‘distance’ to the delivery of justice. The paper suggests that little consideration is given to the spatial disadvantage experienced by regional communities in the development of legislation or the implementation of justice system programs, practices and procedures. The paper also examines the Magistrates’ Court criminal court programs which embrace the principles of ‘problem solving courts’ and ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’. While they are important innovations, these programs have had limited roll-out to regional communities. In its conclusion the paper suggests that an independent and unified ‘voice’ is needed to ensure a genuine and informed response to the diverse areas in which inequity exists in the delivery of justice system services to regional communities.

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>[</span><span>Of the many different variations that can occur in human sexual formation, trans- sexualism no doubt remains the least understood by the wider Australian commu- nity. As a consequence, the process of attaining human rights to legal status, privacy, dignity and freedom from discrimination for those who experience this unusual condition has been a slow and sometimes frustrating one. The article seeks to introduce the reader to some of the more recent developments in the interna- tional jurisprudence of transsexualism and the underlying medical evidence that has supported them. It also offers criticism of the belated attempt by the State of Victoria, with the </span><span>Births, Deaths &amp; Marriages Registration (Amendment) Act 2004, </span><span>to establish certain statutory rights in this regard. While the legislation was en- acted with the stated and very laudable purpose of providing for the correction of birth records on the Register of Births of those people with transsexualism who have altered their phenotypic sex by hormonal medication and surgery, the article argues it has also served to remove other equally important rights already won and proposes that a final remedy will only be found, as on previous occasions, in the courts.</span><span>] </span></p></div></div></div>

<p><em><span style="font-size: medium;">For more than a decade analyses of coronial processes inspired by both therapeutic jurisprudence and restorative justice have identified the potential for maximising the therapeutic and public health benefits of the investigative functions of coroners’ courts and minimising their counter-therapeutic potential. The focus of both scholarly literature and law reform proposals has been upon addressing deficits in respect of the role of families in coronial investigations and especially coroners’ inquests. This has been a constructive contribution and has improved sensitivity to the risk that family members will be disenfranchised and alienated at a highly vulnerable time after they have been bereaved. This article chronicles the development in awareness of such issues. However, the potential for adv­erse effects on parties other than family members has been inadequately recognised in the literature, save for empirical studies conducted in 2011 for the Coronial Council of Victoria and another study published in 2014 in New Zealand. This article seeks to redress that imbalance. It argues that it is appropriate also to have regard to such potential in endeavouring to provide an approach to the work of coroners that is influenced by the sensibilities of therapeutic jurisprudence and seeks to reduce, so far as possible, counter-therapeutic outcomes for all parties, at the same time prioritising accurate and robust fact-finding and formulation of constructive recommendations to avoid avoidable deaths. It calls for further empirical research on the impact of coroners’ investigations on all affected parties and argues in favour of extension of improved funding to enable approaches to be informed by therapeutic jurisprudence and in particular to enhance eligibility for the services of counselling services attached to coroners’ courts.</span></em></p>

<p>The death of the cerebral cortex is a particular type of brain death that occurs after the destruction of the cerebral cortex (the hemispheres of the brain). It is said that the individual has gone through a vegetative state. This cortex is responsible for controlling voluntary activities of the body. This condition is caused by a coma (anesthesia), and sometimes the individual remains in this state for several years. Although the person looks awake, his/her eyes are open and has some involuntary movements, there is no signs of mental and cognitive function. Moreover, the individual is physically in a state of dementia. Coma is a state in which a person cannot be awakened and does not respond to any stimulation including pain. Generally it lasts few days to a few weeks, after which some patients gradually recover, but some permanently lose all brain function (brain death), while others evolve to a vegetative state (VS). Patients in VS are unconscious and unaware of their surroundings, but they continue to have a sleep-wake cycle and can have periods of consciousness. They are able to breathe spontaneously, retain their gag, cough, sucking, and swallowing reflexes. They often look fairly “normal” to families and friends who hope and pray for their full recovery. Laws and regulations in Islamic countries originate from popular jurisprudence. Therefore, by arguing that the well-known principles of Islam are necessarily legitimate, the phenomenon of vegetative state has been recognized. Jurisprudents have conflicting opinions on brain deaths and these perspectives cannot be considered as a widespread legal basis at the level of macro policy for administrative, medical and judicial affairs. In criminal law, maniac has no criminal responsibility because the punishment is not in line with the purpose of punishment. Consequently, restrictions will be imposed on the patients. Therefore, it can be concluded that a person with vegetative state is compatible with the insanity.</p>

The McNaughton rules for determining whether a person can be successfully defended on the grounds of mental incompetence were determined by a committee of the House of Lords in 1843. They arose as a consequence of the trial of Daniel McNaughton for the killing of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel's secretary. In retrospect it is clear that McNaughton suffered from schizophrenia. The successful defence of McNaughton on the grounds of mental incompetence by his advocate Sir Alexander Cockburn involved a profound shift in the criteria for such a defence, and was largely based on the then recently published ‘scientific’ thesis of the great US psychiatrist Isaac Ray, entitled ‘A treatise on the medical jurisprudence of insanity’. Subsequent discussion of this defence in the House of Lords led to the McNaughton rules, still the basis of the defence of mental incompetence in the courts of much of the English-speaking world. This essay argues that the rules need to be reconsidered in the light of the discoveries of cognitive neuroscience made during the 160 years since Ray's treatise. It is shown, for instance, how the conflation of ‘the power of self-control’ with ‘irresistible impulse’ by Cockburn is not supported by cognitive neuroscience because these are separate capacities requiring normal activity in distinct brain structures for their expression. In this way cognitive neuroscience assists in distinguishing between different capacities. It is further shown that failure of appropriate restraint in the expression of a capacity can be related to failure of synapses in particular parts of the brain. This raises the question as to what level of synaptic loss will the legislature and the courts rule as sufficient for a subject to be no longer held responsible for their lack of restraint.

It has been argued that the practice of siege warfare is at the very limit of legality under the terms of International Humanitarian Law.[1] The question addressed in this essay might be rephrased: how do the laws of armed conflict permitsieges to become humanitarian disasters? More precisely, can military doctrine regarding the efficacy of siege warfare operations to induce surrender of besieged forces comply in real world terms with the laws of armed conflict? Since February, 2022 it is alleged that Russian armed forces perpetrated a number of crimes against humanity in Ukraine during sieges of cities such as Mariupol. These alleged crimes include indiscriminate targeting of civilian habitation and attacks on evacuation corridors.[2] In the 1990s, siege warfare in the former Yugoslavia provoked international censure and criminal prosecution of perpetrators. Nevertheless, siege operations in Syria and Kashmir today show no sign of respecting the rights of civilian populations despite international censure. The core legal issue regarding sieges is the principle of distinction between combatants and non-combatant civilians and thus decisions regarding targeting and proportionality. The essay will show that distinction is a recent innovation in International Humanitarian Law and uncertainly embodied in military doctrine. The first part reviews evolving IHL norms pertinent to modern sieges. In the second, the essay examines modern jurisprudence regarding the conduct of siege warfare derived from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecution of Major General Stanislav Galić and Major General Dragomir Milosević.[3] [1] Riordan, K., ‘Shelling, Sniping and Starvation: the Law of Armed Conflict and the Lessons of the Siege of Sarajevo’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 41 (2), p.150; Watts, S., Under Siege: International Humanitarian Law and Security Council Practice Concerning Urban Siege Operations’, Research and Policy Paper, CHE Project, May 2014. [2] https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2022/03/17/armed-conflict-in-ukraine-a-recap-of-basic-ihl-rules/ [3] https://www.icty.org/case/galic

The article is devoted to the memory of the outstanding Russian scholar Dmitriy I. Meyer (1819—1856) — the ancestor of Russian civilistics who declared that the rights of individuals depend on different circumstances that are, to some extent, natural and, to some extent, historical. Meyer’s statement that “there are different degrees of insanity: sometimes it is stronger, sometimes weaker” turned out to be accepted by the Russian legislator only in 2015 by making appropriate changes in the Russian legislation regarding the problem of legal capacity of citizens. The paper has investigated the evolution of the content of legal personality of individuals in the field of private legal relations, including family relations, as well as in the field of relations complicated by a foreign element, i.e. in the field of private international law. On the basis of the analysis, the author explores a civil legal personality of a natural person category as her ability to be a subject of civil law including such elements as capacity and legal capacity. Civil capacity should be understood as a legally equal abstract opportunity for everyone to have civil rights and duties. It is unacceptable to consider capacity as a subjective right to have the right: this leads to an unjustified doubling of the category of “subjective right” and hinders a proper understanding of the mechanism of civil regulation. The article investigates the subjective right as implementation of capacity of a particular person, and, therefore, citizens being legally equal in their capacity, to be not equal in the presence of specific subjective rights that constitute the content of their capacity in the abstract form. The authors have analyzed the amendments to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation introducing a new basis for limiting the legal capacity of citizens, as well as taking into account the degree of actual reduction of the ability of citizens to understand the meaning of their actions or to be in control of such actions. The article analyzes the conflict-of-laws principles of determination of capacity and legal capacity of foreign citizens. Jurisprudence, along with the recognition of the national regime of foreign citizens on the territory of the Russian Federation, indicates the need to apply foreign laws in determining the civil capacity and legal capacity of foreign nationals. The article analyzes the private law component of the institute of retortions the immediate purpose of which is to protect private rights and legitimate interests of Russian citizens. Thus, the content of the concept of civil personality of natural persons in the field of private law relations that consists of such categories as capacity and legal capacity evolves into the recognition of equality and the protection of the interests of all persons on the basis of the principles of justice, humanity and reasonability. At the same time, the State secures legal guarantees applied for the completion of the legal capacity of minors and certain categories of adult citizens through institutions of parental responsibility, guardianship and custody and establishes procedural guarantees of observance of the rights of these persons in judicial proceedings.

This article is a conceptual study of the characteristics and approaches of social aspects of Islamic law. This study is important because Islamic law encompasses various dimensions, namely the abstract dimension, in the form of all the commandments and the prohibitions of Allah and His Messenger, and the concrete dimension, in the form of behavior that is steady among Muslims as an effort to do the command of Allah and His Messenger, In addition, Islamic law also includes substances that are internalized into various social institutions. Therefore, the study of the social aspects approaches in Islamic law is very important. Islamic law has a character, namely rabbaniyah, syumul, al-wasthiyah, and insanity. There are several methods of Islamic law enforcement conducted by aspects of the social approach, especially in Indonesia, namely the establishment of Islamic law through fiqh, the establishment of Islamic law through the law, the establishment of Islamic law through jurisprudence, and the affirmation of Islamic law through fatwas.

Nowadays, mental disorders are some of the most common diseases in our societies. In most cases mentally disordered people will be having problems with the environment which they live, people around them and even themselves; with the probability of causing damage. The question is does the mentally disordered individual counts responsible for the consequences of his actions or not? If yes, then what type of liability is on his burden and who is responsible for redressing the damages? In any case, which a person is forced to redress another individuals damage he has civil liability against the injured party. Civil liability is a rational and jurisprudential principle, and also a legal maxim that guaranties remedies for faults of individuals inside a contract or any damages done by the acts of individuals outside of a contract. Considering the legal protection Provided for the incapacitated; liability of incapacitated individuals is an important subject of civil and criminal law. Since the sinister intention is essential for criminal liability; the minor and the insane do not have any criminal liability but insanity and minority are not among the disclaimers of civil liability. In some legal systems such as “Common Law” Civil liability of the incapacitated individuals and their wardens is under the rule of general civil liability regulation. However, in Iran I.R. liability of the incapacitated is clearly recognized by the article “1216” of Iranian Civil Code. In respect of the above, we will be researching about the psychotic and mentally ill individuals and their liability in Jurisprudence and Iranian Case Law. Point of this research is to clarify the conditions of the insane and mentally disordered in Iranian Law and the support given to them by the Legislators

Sharing this article, the act of writing and then having it read, legitimises the point of it – that is, we (and we speak on behalf of each other here) managed to negotiate western academic expectations and norms from a just-as-legitimate-but-not-always-heard female Buginese perspective written in Standard Australian English (not my first choice-of-language and I speak on behalf of myself). At times we transgressed roles, guiding and following each other through different academic, cultural, social, and linguistic domains until we stumbled upon ways of legitimating our entanglement of experiences, when we heard the similar, faint, drum beat across boundaries and journeys.This article is one storying of the results of this four year relationship between a Buginese PhD candidate and an Indigenous Australian supervisor – both in the writing of the article and the processes that we are writing about. This is our process of knowing and validating knowledge through sharing, collaboration and cultural exchange. Neither the successful PhD thesis nor this article draw from authoethnography but they are outcomes of a lived, research standpoint that fiercely fought to centre a Muslim-Buginese perspective as much as possible, due to the nature of a postgraduate program. In the effort to find a way to not privilege Western ways of knowing to the detriment of my standpoint and position, we had to find a way to at times privilege my way of knowing the world alongside a Western one. There had to be a beat that transgressed cultural and linguistic differences and that allowed for a legitimised dialogic, intersubjective dance.The PhD research focused on potential dialogue between Australian culture and Buginese culture in terms of feminism and its resulting cultural hybridity where some Australian feminist thoughts are applicable to Buginese culture but some are not. Therefore, the PhD study centred a Buginese standpoint while moving back and forth amongst Australian feminist discourses and the dominant expectations of a western academic process. The PhD research was part of a greater Indonesian tertiary movement to include, study, challenge and extend feminist literary programs and how this could be respectfully and culturally appropriately achieved. This article is written by both of us but the core knowledge comes from a Buginese standpoint, that is, the principal supervisor learned from the PhD candidate and then applied her understanding of Indigenous standpoint theory, Tuhiwahi Smith’s decolonising methodologies and Spivakian self-reflexivity to aid the candidate’s development of her dancing methodology. For this reason, the rest of this article is written from the first-person perspective of Dr Abbas.The PhD study was a literary analysis on five stories from Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers (1985). My work translated these five stories from English into Indonesian and discussed some challenges that occurred in the process of translation. By using Edward Said’s work on contrapuntal reading and Robert Warrior’s metaphor of the subaltern dancing, I, the embodied learner and the cultural translator, moved back and forth between Buginese culture and Australian culture to consider how Australian women and men are represented and how mainstream Australian society engages with, or challenges, discourses of patriarchy and power. This movement back and forth was theorised as ‘dancing’. Ultimately, another dance was performed at the end of the thesis waltz between the work which centred my Buginese standpoint and academia as a Western tertiary institution.I have been dancing with Australian feminism for over four years. My use of the word ‘dancing’ signified my challenge to articulate and engage with Australian culture, literature, and feminism by viewing it from a Buginese perspective as opposed to a ‘Non-Western’ perspective. As a Buginese woman and scholar, I centred my specific cultural standpoints instead of accepting them generally and therefore dismissed the altering label of ‘Non-Western’. Juxtaposing Australian feminism with Buginese culture was not easy. However, as my research progressed I saw interesting cultural differences between Australian and Buginese cultures that could result in a hybridized way of engaging feminist issues. At times, my cultural standpoint took the lead in directing the research or the point, at other times a Western beat was more prominent, for example, using the English language to voice my work.The Buginese, also known as the Bugis, along with the Makassar, the Mandar, and the Toraja, are one of the four main ethnic groups of the province of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. The population of the Buginese in South Sulawesi spreads into major states (Bone, Wajo, Soppeng, and Sidenreng) and some minor states (Pare-Pare, Suppa, and Sinjai). Like other ethnic groups living in other islands of Indonesia such as the Javanese, the Sundanese, the Minang, the Batak, the Balinese, and the Ambonese, the Buginese have their own culture and traditions. The Buginese, especially those who live in the villages, are still bounded strictly by ade’ (custom) or pangadereng (customary law). This concept of ade’ provides living guidelines for Buginese and consists of five components including ade’, bicara, rapang, wari’, and sara’. Pelras clarifies that pangadereng is ‘adat-hood’, a corpus of interlinked ruling principles which, besides ade’ (custom), includes also bicara (jurisprudence), rapang (models of good behaviour which ensure the proper functioning of society), wari’ (rules of descent and hierarchy) and sara’ (Islamic law and institution, derived from the Arabic shari’a) (190). So, pangadereng is an overall norm which includes advice on how Buginese should behave towards fellow human beings and social institutions on a reciprocal basis. In addition, the Buginese together with Makassarese, mind what is called siri’ (honour and shame), that is the sense of honour and shame. In the life of the Buginese-Makassar people, the most basic element is siri’. For them, no other value merits to be more detected and preserved. Siri’ is their life, their self-respect and their dignity. This is why, in order to uphold and to defend it when it has been stained or they consider it has been stained by somebody, the Bugis-Makassar people are ready to sacrifice everything, including their most precious life, for the sake of its restoration. So goes the saying.... ‘When one’s honour is at stake, without any afterthought one fights’ (Pelras 206).Buginese is one of Indonesia’s ethnic groups where men and women are intended to perform equal roles in society, especially those who live in the Buginese states of South Sulawesi where they are still bound strictly by ade’ (custom) or pangadereng (customary law). These two basic concepts are guidelines for daily life, both in the family and the work place. Buginese also praise what is called siri’, a sense of honour and shame. It is because of this sense of honour and shame that we have a saying, siri’ emmi ri onroang ri lino (people live only for siri’) which means one lives only for honour and prestige. Siri’ had to remain a guiding principle in my theoretical and methodological approach to my PhD research. It is also a guiding principle in the resulting pedagogical praxis that this work has established for my course in Australian culture and literature at Hasanuddin University. I was not prepared to compromise my own ethical and cultural identity and position yet will admit, at times, I felt pressured to do so if I was going to be seen to be performing legitimate scholarly work. Novera argues that:Little research has focused specifically on the adjustment of Indonesian students in Australia. Hasanah (1997) and Philips (1994) note that Indonesian students encounter difficulties in fulfilling certain Western academic requirements, particularly in relation to critical thinking. These studies do not explore the broad range of academic and social problems. Yet this is a fruitful area for research, not just because of the importance of Indonesian students to Australia, and the importance of the Australia-Indonesia relationship to both neighbouring nations, but also because adjustment problems are magnified by cultural differences. There are clear differences between Indonesian and Australian cultures, so that a study of Indonesian students in Australia might also be of broader academic interest […]Studies of international student adjustment discuss a range of problems, including the pressures created by new role and behavioural expectations, language difficulties, financial problems, social difficulties, homesickness, difficulties in dealing with university and other authorities, academic difficulties, and lack of assertiveness inside and outside the classroom. (467)While both my supervisor and I would agree that I faced all of these obstacles during my PhD candidature, this article is focusing solely on the battle to present my methodology, a dialogic encounter between Buginese feminism and mainstream Australian culture using Helen Garner’s short stories, to a Western process and have it be “legitimised”. Endang writes that short stories are becoming more popular in the industrial era in Indonesia and they have become vehicles for writers to articulate the realities of social life such as poverty, marginalization, and unfairness (141-144). In addition, Noor states that the short story has become a new literary form particularly effective for assisting writers in their goal to help the marginalized because its shortness can function as a weapon to directly “scoop up” the targeted issues and “knock them out at a blow” (Endang 144-145). Indeed, Helen Garner uses short stories in a way similar to that described by Endang: as a defiant act towards the government and current circumstances (145). My study of Helen Garner’s short stories explored the way her stories engage with and resist gender relations and inequality between men and women in Australian society through four themes prevalent in the narratives: the kitchen, landscape, language, and sexuality. I wrote my thesis in standard Australian English and I complied with expected forms, formatting, referencing, structuring etc. My thesis also included the Buginese translations of some of Garner’s work. However, the theoretical approaches that informed my analysis cannot be separated from the personal. In the title, I use the term ‘dancing’ to indicate a dialogue with white Australian women by moving back and forth between Australian culture and Buginese culture. I use the term ‘dancing’ as an extension of Edward Said’s work on contrapuntal reading but employ it as a signifier of my movement between insider and outsider (of Australian feminism), that is, I extend it from just a literary reading to a whole body experience. According to Ashcroft and Ahluwalia, the “essence of Said’s argument is to know something is to have power over it, and conversely, to have power is to know the world in your own terms” (83). Ashcroft and Ahluwalia add how through music, particularly the work of pianist Glenn Gould, Said formulated a way of reading imperial and postcolonial texts contrapuntally. Such a reading acknowledges the hybridity of cultures, histories and literatures, allowing the reader to move back and forth between an internal and an external standpoint of cultural references and attitudes in “an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented” (Said 66). While theorising about the potential dance between Australian and Buginese feminisms in my work, I was living the dance in my day-to-day Australian university experience. Trying to accommodate the expected requirements of a PhD thesis, while at the same time ensuring that I maintained my own personal, cultural and professional dignity, that is ade’, and siri’, required some fancy footwork. Siri’ is central to my Buginese worldview and had to be positioned as such in my PhD thesis. Also, the realities that women are still marginalized and that gender inequality and disparities persist in Indonesian society become a motivation to carry out my PhD study. The opportunity to study Australian culture and literature in that country, allowed me to increase my global and local complexity as an individual, what Pieterse refers to as “ a process of hybridization” and to become as Beck terms an “actor” and “manager’’ of my life (as cited in Edmunds 1). Gaining greater autonomy and reconceptualising both masculinity and femininity, while dominant themes in Garner’s work, are also issues I address in my personal and professional goals. In other words, this study resulted in hybridized knowledge of Australian concepts of feminism and Buginese societies that offers a reference for students to understand and engage with different feminist thought. By learning how feminism is understood differently by Australians and Buginese, my Indonesian students can decide what aspects of feminist ideas from a Western perspective can be applied to Buginese culture without transgressing Buginese customs and habits.There are few Australian literary works that have been translated into Indonesian. Those that have include Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2007) and My Life is a Fake (2009), James Vance Marshall’s Walkabout (1957), Emma Darcy’s The Billionaire Bridegroom (2010) , Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987), and Colleen McCullogh’s The Thorn Birds (1978). My translation of five short stories from Postcards from Surfers complemented these works and enriched the diversity of Indonesian translations of world literary works, the bulk of which tends to come from the United Kingdom, America, the Middle East, and Japan. However, actually getting through the process of PhD research followed by examination required my supervisor and I to negotiate cross-cultural terrain, academic agendas and Western expectations of what legitimate thesis writing should look like. Employing Said’s contrapuntal pedagogy and Warrior’s notion of subaltern dancing became my illegitimate methodological frame.Said points out that contrapuntal analysis means that students and teachers can cross-culturally “elucidate a complex and uneven topography” (318). He adds that “we must be able to think through and interpret together experiences that are discrepant, each with its particular agenda and pace of development, its own internal formations, its internal coherence and system of external relationships, all of them co-existing and interacting with others” (32). Contrapuntal is a metaphor Said derived from musical theory, meaning to counterpoint or add a rhythm or melody, in this case, Buginese and Anglo-Australian feminisms. Warrior argues for an indigenous critique of how power and knowledge is read and in doing so he writes that “the subaltern can dance, and so sometimes can the intellectual” (85). In his rereading of Spivak, he argues that subaltern and intellectual positions can meet “and in meeting, create the possibility of communication” (86). He refers to this as dancing partly because it implicitly acknowledges without silencing the voices of the subaltern (once the subaltern speaks it is no longer the subaltern, so the notion of dancing allows for communication, “a movement from subalternity to something else” (90) which can mark “a new sort of non-complicitous relationship to a family, community or class of origin” (91). By “non-complicit” Warrior means that when a member of the subaltern becomes a scholar and therefore a member of those who historically silence the subaltern, there are other methods for communicating, of moving, between political and cultural spaces that allow for a multiplicity of voices and responses. Warrior uses a traditional Osage in-losh-ka dance as an example of how he physically and intellectually interacts with multiple voices and positions:While the music plays, our usual differences, including subalternity and intellectuality, and even gender in its own way, are levelled. For those of us moving to the music, the rules change, and those who know the steps and the songs and those who can keep up with the whirl of bodies, music and colours hold nearly every advantage over station or money. The music ends, of course, but I know I take my knowledge of the dance away and into my life as a critic, and I would argue that those levelled moments remain with us after we leave the drum, change our clothes, and go back to the rest of our lives. (93)For Warrior, the dance becomes theory into practice. For me, it became not only a way to soundly and “appropriately” present my methodology and purpose, but it also became my day to day interactions, as a female Buginese scholar, with western, Australian academic and cultural worldviews and expectations.One of the biggest movements I had to justify was my use of the first person “I”, in my thesis, to signify my identity as a Buginese woman and position myself as an insider of my community with a hybrid western feminism with Australia in mind. Perrault argues that “Writing “I” has been an emancipatory project for women” (2). In the context of my PhD thesis, uttering ‘I’ confirmed my position and aims. However, this act of explicitly situating my own identity and cultural position in my research and thesis was considered one of the more illegitimate acts. In one of the examiner reports, it was stated that situating myself centrally was fraught but that I managed to avoid the pitfalls. Judy Long argues that writing in the female first person challenges patriarchal control and order (127). For me, writing in the first person was essential if I had any chance of maintaining my Buginese identity and voice, in both my thesis and in my Australian tertiary experience. As Trinh-Minh writes, “S/he who writes, writes. In uncertainty, in necessity. And does not ask whether s/he is given permission to do so or not” (8).Van Dijk, cited in Hamilton, notes that the west and north are bound by an academic ethnocentrism and this is a particular area my own research had to negotiate. Methodologically I provided a comparative rather than a universalising perspective, engaging with middle-class, heterosexual, western, white women feminism but not privileging them. It is important for Buginese to use language discourses as a weapon to gain power, particularly because as McGlynn claims, “generally Indonesians are not particularly outspoken” (38). My research was shaped by a combination of ongoing dedication to promote women’s empowerment in the Buginese context and my role as an academic teaching English literature at the university level. I applied interpretive principles that will enable my students to see how the ideas of feminism conveyed through western literature can positively improve the quality of women’s lives and be implemented in Buginese culture without compromising our identity as Indonesians and Buginese people. At the same time, my literary translation provides a cultural comparison with Australia that allows a space for further conversations to occur. However, while attempting to negotiate western and Indonesian discourses in my thesis, I was also physically and emotionally trying to negotiate how to do this as a Muslim Buginese female PhD candidate in an Anglo-Australian academic institution. The notion of ‘dancing’ was employed as a signifier of movement between insider and outsider knowledge. Throughout the research process and my thesis I ‘danced’ with Australian feminism, traditional patriarchal Buginese society, Western academic expectations and my own emerging Indonesian feminist perspective. To ensure siri’ remained the pedagogical and ethical basis of my approach I applied Edward Said’s work on contrapuntal reading and Robert Warrior’s employment of a traditional Osage dance as a self-reflexive, embodied praxis, that is, I extended it from just a literary reading to a whole body experience. The notion of ‘dance’ allows for movement, change, contact, tension, touch and distance: it means that for those who have historically been marginalised or confined, they are no longer silenced. The metaphoric act of dancing allowed me to legitimise my PhD work – it was successfully awarded – and to negotiate a western tertiary institute in Australia with my own Buginese knowledge, culture and purpose.ReferencesAshcroft., B., and P. Ahluwalia. Edward Said. 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