Journal articles on the topic 'Philip (Philip John) Criticism and interpretation'

This paper considers Sarah Siddons’s cross-gender performances as Hamlet in relation to critical fascination with the character’s interiority in the early Romantic era. An examination of the responses to Siddons’s Hamlet in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century studies of the play reveals that Siddons’s contemporaries saw the actress’s femininity and acting methods as particularly effective for conveying the sensibility and irresolution that became increasingly associated with Hamlet in literary criticism of the period. In particular, the responses to Siddons’s performances emphasise Hamlet’s first encounter with his father’s Ghost, a scene often considered the focal point of definitive performances by actors like Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, and Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble. The fact that these commentators describe Siddons’s Hamlet as superior to her brother’s and praise her reactions in the Ghost scene suggests that Siddons succeeded in creating a dramatic interpretation of the character that aligned with the Romantic focus on Hamlet’s inner life.

Religiocity, being an immanent part of an individual’s personality, influences numerous aspects of psychological functioning. One of them is a temporal dimension of human existence. Being a member of a religious community in times of growing secularity encourages a reflection on motivation and specifics of religiosity of people engaged. The aim of current work is to verify the relationship between religiosity and temporal perspectives and to characterize the religiosity of young Catholics belonging to the three most popular in Poland religious communities. There were 172 participants. They filled in a questionnaire „Your religiosity”, measuring religious orientations or a „Religion Centralism” scale, which describes religion in five dimensions. Every participant also filled in a time perspective questionnaire. The analysis revealed a negative correlation between past-negative tmeporal perspective and religious engagement. An unexpected result was a positive correlation between a social aspect of religious orientation and transcendental future. Additionally, religion centralism correlated negatively with a deviant factor of temporal perspective balance. Based on the obtained results it can be suggested that among all temporal perspectives, the qualitative interpretation of one’s own past has the biggest influence on religious engagement. Another conclusion is that an important factor of religious activity is a possibility of meeting affiliation needs. Conducted analysis also allowed conclusions on the specifics of the religiosity of young Catholics.

It is said in the Norton Introduction to Literature that "poetry gives a vocabulary for emotion." Peter Howarth argues in his book British Poetry in the Age of Modernism that the social progress that has taken place in modern times has left obvious imprints upon the poetic form. This author is of the opinion that, as a result of advances in scientific knowledge, poetry has advanced, both in terms of its form and its meaning. In his book "The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism," Thomas Stern Eliot provides evidence in favour of this viewpoint by confirming that political and socio-historical existence may be analyzed via poetry. In doing so, Eliot anticipates Howarth's interpretation of this concept. When Philip Arthur Larkin says that he works as diligently as possible not just to analyze the social climate throughout his poems but also to discover measures to soothe the traumas endured in the second half of the twentieth century, one can really agree with him. This British poet places the social unrest that occurred during the World Wars in the forefront by adopting such a position, and from this point on, his attention is kept on the existential quest that was manifested in the post-war period when many British citizens were intrigued about their material renovation. This is because the poet believes that the conflicts between the sexes were the root cause of the social unrest.

The essay explores the question of the evidence of distinct Lutheran and Reformed confessional practices of exegesis particularly concerning interpretations of Old Testament prophecy. It begins by outlining differences in Martin Luther and John Calvin’s practices of christological exegesis and vision of sacred history in their interpretations of the Minor Prophets. Next, it traces the evolution of these differences in a set of figures from the next generation of Lutheran and Reformed exegetes in order to discern whether consistent patterns emerge to indicate ways in which biblical interpretation shaped confessional identity. Through a survey of commentaries on the Minor Prophets by a set of next generation Lutherans (Philip Melanchthon, Aegidius Hunnius, Lucas Osiander, and Nicolas Selnecker) and next generation Reformed (David Pareus, Lambert Daneau, Johannes Drusius, and Johannes Piscator) the author provides a picture of how biblical interpretation did indeed play a significant role in the formation and expression of confessional identity in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze a selection of works by Silesian Protestants who, in poetic form, explained the biblical theme of the fall of the first parents in the context of the Reformation teaching on justification. The article consists of three parts. The first gives a short presentation of the literary phenomenon of neo-Latin poetic alterations of various books, fragments, and biblical themes by Silesian poets who were active in this literary field from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. The scale, area and time frame of the mass distribution of this literature are presented here, and it is noted that it was created as a result of the cultural and educational influence of the leading teacher of the Lutheran Reformation, viz. Philip Melanchthon. The second part of the article provides a theological explanation of the biblical story of the fall of the first parents, or original sin, in the context of the doctrine of justification as interpreted by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. The third part discusses how some Silesian poets like Thomas Mawer (1536–1575), Laurentius Fabricius (1539–1577), Melchior Ostius (1569–1637) and Fridericus Wolbertus (active at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) presented the doctrine of justification in poems describing the fall of Adam and Eve. The conclusions emphasize the importance of this type of work for the spread of the Reformation doctrine of justification, which opened the peaceful path to ideological and religious discussions in Central and Eastern Europe at that time.

This article deals with some important changes that occurred in the ritual of the Eucharist and its theological interpretation between Late Antiquity and the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These had been studied especially by Henri de Lubac in his book Corpus Mysticum. It is quite common – especially among liturgical historians – to present these processes in a purely negatively light and to interpret them in terms of liturgical decline and disintegration, in particular emphasizing the purported loss of the communal, ecclesial character of the Eucharist. This view has been criticized persuasively by other historians (Gary Macy; Eamon Duffy). While taking this criticism seriously, an attempt is made to sketch a differentiated picture of these developments. Making use in particular of mediaeval liturgical commentaries that have received relatively little attention in research, it is argued that the developments are illustrative of some processes which, according to Philip Sheldrake, profoundly affected the approach to spiritual life in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and attest a remarkable reconfiguration in the relations between liturgy, theology and spirituality.

Kathryn Tanner’s book Christianity and the new Spirit of Capitalism generated an interesting debate about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, as exemplified by the four review essays—by David Cloutier, Nicole M. Flores, Philip Goodchild, and John E. Thiel, respectively—published in Modern Theology in 2019. While the responses contain many interesting critical points, this article focuses on two particular trajectories in the debate that indirectly demand an empirical engagement with Tanner’s work. One strand of criticism charges that Tanner offers too generic examples of the economic reality that she examines, while her description of Christianity is too specific without being contextualized. The second strand argues that Tanner makes a dichotomy between a religious project and an economic project, which leads to the construction of a “pure” Christian conduct. This article continues this debate by fleshing out the issues of purity and impurity through an empirical study of two Christian networks, the Economy of Communion and Business as Mission. Using Bruno Latour’s account of modernization, the main finding is that the two logics, purity and impurity, continually configure the relationship between religion and economy. We further discuss these findings in relation to Tanner and her critics, and argue that theological ethical studies of the relationship between Christianity and economy would benefit from starting with empirical studies of the actual intertwining of religion and economy. Tanner convincingly argues that in order to challenge capitalism one has to work for structural, political changes and not only improve conditions within the economic system. However, this does not necessarily imply the use of pure and abstract normative principles. Normative ethical insights that are developed through analyses of everyday religious–economic practices may turn out to be as convincing.

This paper suggests a translation from the Byzantine Greek and an interpretation of two passages from Theodore Metochites’ (ca. 1270–1332) works addressing the strength and weakness of our word and the communication based on it. The third translated passage is taken from Ps.-Lucian’s Encomium to Demosthenes, which interprets one of Metochites’ texts. Using examples and reasoning, the megas logothete demonstrated the highs and lows, the strength and weakness of our speech acts (in the meaning of John Searle’s and other modern theories). If Demosthenes’ word was like “hammered” and in this form formed a formidable threat to Philip of Macedonia, despite he defeated the Hellenes at Cheronea, the first third of the fourteenth century Byzantines, intellectuals in particular, were totally unable to make themselves understand each other. To put it another way, there were great difficulties with bringing specific information, feelings or emotions to another person, or, in short, with making clear to someone else all the propositions of the one’s discursive intellect, notwithstanding the fact that one can both explain and mentally represent to him-/herself the matter of reflection. However, one is forceless to turn the above-said into clear-cut utterances. Such a communication crisis within the Byzantine society on the eve of the Hesychasm controversy evidently turned out to be a verge of the general civilization crisis. In this regard, Metochites’ works made a contribution into the overcoming of the crisis, as he constantly summoned to a dialogue between generations of not only his contemporaries, but also of their predecessors and descendants. Discussing the reciprocal unity of word and image/icon, Metochites expressed the Byzantine culture’s in-depth archetypes, particularly its centuries-long creative principle of iconicity in its approach to the Umwelt. This paper suggests parallels to Metochites’ ideas in the Byzantine hagiography of the eighth and fourteenth century (Stephen the Deacon, Theoktistos the Stoudite) and some pieces of reflection to sound in tune with Metochites, which originate from the works of great twentieth-century philosophers Friar Florenskii and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

القرآن الكريم والقراءة الحداثية دراسة تحليلية نقدية لإشكالية النص عند محمد أركون، الحسن العباقي، دمشق: صفحات للدراسات والنشر، 2009م، 320 صفحة. أزمة الحضارة العربية المترددة، أبو يعرب المرزوقي، الدوحة: الدار العربية للعلوم ناشرون، مركز الجزيرة للدراسات، 2009م، 71 صفحة. العولمة وأزمة الليبرالية الجديدة - الكتاب الثاني، محمد عابد الجابري، بيروت: الشبكة العربية للأبحاث والنشر، 2009م، 392 صفحة. أزمة القيم من مأزق الأخلاقيات إلى جماليات الوجود، جمال مفرج، بيروت: الدار العربية للعلوم ناشرون، 2009م، 95 صفحة. التعليم وأزمة الهوية الثقافية، محمد عبد الرؤوف عطية، القاهرة: مؤسسة طيبة للنشر والتوزيع، 2009م، 334 صفحة. Media, Religion and Conflict, By Lee Marsden, and Heather Savigny, London: Ashgate Publishing; Har/Ele edition (October 30, 2009), 184 pages. Muslims and Media Images: News versus Views, By Ather Farouqui, Oxford University Press, New York: USA (October 11, 2009), 368 Arab News and Conflict: A Multidisciplinary Discourse Study (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture),By Samia Bazzi, John Benjamins Pub Co (October 15, 2009), 240 pages. Terror Post 9/11 and the Media (Global Crises and the Media), By David L. Altheide, Peter Lang Publishing; First printing edition (July 15, 2009), 232 pages. Al-Ghazali, Averroes and the Interpretation of the Qur'an: Common Sense and Philosophy in Islam (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East), By Avital Wohlman, Routledge; 1 edition (December 25, 2009), 130 pages. Al- Ghazali's Philosophical Theology, By Frank Griffel, New York: Oxford University Press, USA (May 28, 2009), 424 pages. The Qur'an in Its Time (So as Middle East Issues), By Werner Daum, Al Saqi (September 24, 2009), 224 pages. The East-West dichotomy, By Thorsten Pattberg, New York: LoD Press, (August 18, 2009), 276 pages. Understanding Muslim Identity: Rethinking Fundamentalism, By Gabriele Marranci, Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (February 17, 2009), 242 pages. God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis (The Future of Christianity), By Philip Jenkins, Oxford University Press, USA; Reprint edition (April 6, 2009), 352 pages. Was Jesus a Muslim?: Questioning Categories in the Study of Religion, By Robert F. Shedinger, Fortress Press (May 1, 2009), 192 pages. A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, By Mark D. Siljander, HarperOne; 1 edition, (October 7, 2008), 272 pages. للحصول على كامل المقالة مجانا يرجى النّقر على ملف ال PDF في اعلى يمين الصفحة.

Central to the conference, held during March 5-6, 2004, at Trinity College,University of Toronto (Canada), was the desire of its organizer, AndrewHughes, to find analogies in other disciplines to his speculation that theEuropean plainsong (liturgical chant) of the Middle Ages was performed in a manner similar to that of Middle Eastern music (“Continuous Music:Natural or Eastern? The Origins of Modern Performance Style”). His speculationstemmed from decades of discussions with his colleague TimothyMcGee about the nature of musical sound. Oral transmission, its replacementby various difficult-to-interpret notations, and an often polemic rejectionof Arabic influence make the investigation difficult and controversial.1McGee responded (“Some Concerns about Eastern Influence in MedievalMusic”) and later, working from practical experiments presented by agroup of graduate students attending the conference, offered a very interestingnew interpretation. Some reservations were expressed by CharlesBurnett (Warburg Institute, London), a distinguished Arabist with musicologicalqualifications. He was invited to comment on the initial round tableand the conference as a whole.Other papers relevant to music were George Sawa’s review of Arabictheories of medieval music (“The Uses of Arabic Language in MedievalRhythmic Discourses”). He referred to numerous matters that might havea bearing on European music, especially with respect to ornamentationand rhythm. Art Levine discussed other non-western musical cultures,some of which were also influenced by Islamic music, and raised questionsabout ornamentation, tuning, and the nature of pitch (e.g., what is anote? “What Can Non-Western Music Offer?”).Moving from the sound of music to words about it, Randall Rosenfelddescribed numerous pilgrimage and Crusader chronicles. They containpassages reporting that Europeans found little strange in eastern music,suggesting that eastern and western music cannot have been as dissimilaras seems to be the case today (“Frankish Reports of Central Asian andMiddle Eastern Musical Practice”). John Haines traced in detail the use ofArabic terms from Adelard of Bath’s twelfth-century translation ofEuclid’s geometrical writings to an important mid-thirteenth-centurymusical treatise, where the terms for quadrilateral shapes resemblingsquare notation are used to refer to musical symbols (“Anonymous IV’sElmuahim and Elmuarifa”). Luisa Nardini presented details of particularmelodic characteristics in Gregorian chants that identify Byzantine andGallican melodies in Gregorian repertories (“Aliens in Disguise:Byzantine and Gallican Songs as Mass Propers in Italian Sources”).In other disciplines, Philip Slavin revealed the striking similarities oftopics and words between Byzantine and Roman (Gregorian) penitentialliturgy, seeing possible origins in Jewish prayers and the fourth-centuryConstitutiones Apostolorum (“Byzantine and Western Penitential Prayers ...

BackgroundRheumatoid arthritis (RA) guidelines recommend methotrexate (MTX) as anchor therapy in combination with biologic or targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (b/tsDMARDs). However, its tolerability is challenging with a significant proportion of patients not adhering to their prescribed MTX regimen following b/tsDMARD initiation. Rates of MTX tapering and withdrawal have been reported elsewhere but Canadian data are lacking.ObjectivesThis multi-centre, retrospective chart-based cohort study assessed the frequency of MTX withdrawal or tapering following initiation of a b/tsDMARD in Canadian adults with RA.MethodsPatients were eligible if they received MTX for ≥3 months before initiation of a b/tsDMARD that was then prescribed continuously for ≥18 months and was initiated in combination with MTX. Patients taking oral prednisone or equivalent at a dose >10 mg per day, and those whose b/tsDMARD was prescribed prior to 2014, were excluded.ResultsData from 889 patients were included in the analysis. Mean age was 50.6 years and 72.6% were female. Mean time since diagnosis was approximately 8 years. Of the 46.1% of patients with a documented assessment of disease status at baseline, 62.7% of patients had high disease activity. Baseline mean (SD) MTX dose was 18.9 (6.63) mg/week, administered orally (57.4%), subcutaneously (41.3%), or intramuscularly (1.2%). Overall, 270 (30.4%) patients either tapered (123, 13.8%) or discontinued (147, 16.5%) their MTX within 2 years of initiating the b/tsDMARD. Methotrexate dose was unchanged for 582 (65.5%) subjects and increased for 37 (4.2%) subjects. The prescribed b/tsDMARD was most often a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi,52.1%), followed by a Janus kinase inhibitor (JAKi, 18.3%), other modes of action (OMA) which included abatacept and rituximab (17.7%) and interleukin-6 inhibitor (IL-6i, 11.9%). The b/tsDMARD type with the highest frequency of MTX Taper or Discontinued was IL-6i (37 patients, 34.9%) followed by TNFi (144 patients, 31.1%), JAKi (47 patients, 28.8%) and OMA (44 patients, 28.0%). In the MTX Discontinued group, the most common reasons for MTX discontinuation were patient decision (27.2%) and adverse events (24.5%). In the MTX Tapered group, the most common reasons for MTX dose change were planned tapering (36.6%) and adverse events (29.3%). In the MTX Increased group, insufficient clinical response (73.0%) was the most common reason provided for MTX dose change. Baseline factors associated with MTX dose discontinuation and tapering by multiple logistic regression were a shorter time since diagnosis (Odds ratio [OR]: 0.981; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.964 – 0.999. P=0.0401), use of non-DMARD medications excluding steroids (OR: 0.683; 95%CI: 0.503 – 0.929. P=0.0150) and a greater number of comorbidities (OR: 1.054; 95%CI: 1.001 – 1.110. P=0.0444). The mean (SD) weekly MTX dose at the end of the data extraction period was 14.13 (4.81) mg for the MTX Tapered group, with 109 (88.6%) subjects taking a weekly MTX dose ≥10 mg. In the MTX Increased group the mean (SD) weekly MTX dose was 22.3 (3.74) mg. Interpretation of the effect of MTX dose on disease activity, fatigue, pain and functional status is challenging due to missing data, but most patients in all 4 groups transitioned to low disease activity or remission during the study period.ConclusionMethotrexate withdrawal or tapering occurred in 30.4% of Canadians with RA within two years following b/tsDMARD initiation. There was no evidence of worsening disease activity in these patients. These proportion of Canadian RA patients who reduce or discontinue MTX after the initiation of a ts/bDMARD are generally consistent with those reported in other regions of the world.AcknowledgementsAbbVie Corp. funded the research for this study and provided writing support for this abstract. AbbVie participated in the study design; study research; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; and writing, reviewing, and approving this abstract for submission. All authors had access to the data; participated in the development, review, and approval of the abstract; and agreed to submit this abstract to EULAR 2022.AbbVie and the authors thank all study investigators for their contributions and the patients who participated in this study. Medical writing support was provided by John Howell PhD of McDougall Scientific and funded by AbbVie, Inc.Disclosure of InterestsLouis Bessette Speakers bureau: Amgen, BMS, Janssen, UCB, AbbVie, Pfizer, Merck, Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Sandoz, Gilead, Fresenius Kabi, Consultant of: Amgen, BMS, Janssen, UCB, AbbVie, Pfizer, Merck, Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Sandoz, Gilead, Fresenius Kabi, Grant/research support from: Amgen, BMS, Janssen, UCB, AbbVie, Pfizer, Merck, Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Sandoz, Gilead, Fresenius Kabi, Brandusa Florica Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Novartis, Merck, Consultant of: AbbVie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Novartis, Merck, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Novartis, Merck, Pierre-André Fournier Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Tanya Girard Shareholder of: AbbVie, Employee of: AbbVie, Latha Naik Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Consultant of: AbbVie, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Dalton Sholter Speakers bureau: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Gilead, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sandoz, UCB, Consultant of: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Gilead, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sandoz, UCB, Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Amgen, BMS, Celgene, Gilead, Janssen, Lilly, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sandoz, UCB, Philip Baer Speakers bureau: Abbvie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Teva, Fresenius Kabi, Viatris, Opticann, Novartis, Organon, Gilead, Celltrion, Astra Zeneca, GSK, Consultant of: Abbvie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Teva, Fresenius Kabi, Viatris, Opticann, Novartis, Organon, Gilead, Celltrion, Astra Zeneca, GSK, Grant/research support from: Abbvie, Amgen, Lilly, Pfizer, Janssen, Teva, Fresenius Kabi, Viatris, Opticann, Novartis, Organon, Gilead, Celltrion, Astra Zeneca, GSK

Against certain broader context of discussing the historical reflection of relationship between pre-literate culture and writing, the author of the article pays detailed attention to the unusual transformations in folksong development that are brought about by literacy. We usually rightfully consider literacy as an unmistakable indication of cultural progress. In this regard, subsequent recording and printing of folksongs that started in later periods of literacy also merit positive evaluation. Although both modes of fixation belong to the same period of Lithuanian cultural history, however, from the middle of the 18th century until the beginning of the 19th century, printed publications of folksongs acquired immense importance. Looking from a historical distance – the present times, the author of the article reconsiders and reinterprets the sociocultural surroundings of this new mode of folklore dissemination, taking into account what aims the first folklore publishers had and whether or not they managed to achieve them. Essentially, one particular aspect in the beginning of the written Lithuanian folksong tradition is in the focus of attention – namely, how and why the state of folksong altered in the process of becoming a printed source. In the first chapter, following the historical revisions of medieval culture, the author of the article reconsiders the prehistory of folklore publication as the common European process. She takes into account the sociocultural aspects of this period: namely, creations of the “singing peasantry” – the part of the society belonging to the lower classes and engaged in agriculture, which was essentially banned from writing and ignored by the literate society. Like in the rest of Europe, in the medieval literature of the multilingual Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Lithuanian-speaking Eastern Prussia (currently, the Lithuania Minor), contemporary reflection of folk culture was almost entirely absent or obscure until the middle of the 18th century. As noted in the second chapter, the situation of folk poetry started changing in the Lithuania Minor (the early center of the Lithuanian written culture) with Philip Ruhig publishing his linguistic treatise in 1745 and including (for research purposes) three Lithuanian folksongs. Shortly after, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing reprinted two of them in one of his “Literary Letters” (1759). Subsequently, another famous figure of the German pre-Romanticism and its ideologist Johann Gottfried von Herder included as many as eight Lithuanian folksongs translated into German into his international collection “The Voices of Peoples in Songs”. Thus, the history of Lithuanian folksong publication started with altering attitude towards the so-called “third estate”; this shift is currently regarded as a sociocultural turn inspired by pre-Romanticism and clearing the way for the poetic folk creativity allegedly harboring the “national spirit”. These ideas inspired the famous theologian and pedagogue Liudvikas Rėza (Ludwig Rhesa) to edit the first book of Lithuanian folksongs. This bilingual collection (in Lithuanian and German) saw publication in Konigsberg in 1825. However, traces of the former social separation were persistent. As such, one could name the early tendency of folklore recording and publication: to indicate just the publisher (collector), leaving aside the main actors – the folk singers, although currently they stand out as representatives of the people. Folklorists would subsequently correct this situation. The author of the article goes on to discuss the losses suffered by the folk creativity under the new conditions of literacy. Comparison of the first printed folksongs with their mode of existence in the living folksong process of the 18th – beginning of the 19th century reveals clear changes in the folksong identity. The frozen printed variant loses its capacity to change, along with its former vitality granted by the oral culture; as any other product of the written culture, the printed folksong immediately becomes the past event. Besides, transition from the oral transmission to the area of written culture turns the song into some kind of literary work: therefore, the value of the songs would for a long time since be measured by literary means, and publishing of the songs as poems (leaving out the melodies) would become a common practice. The main thing is, nevertheless, that publication of folksongs in writing and their separate reading completely erase the typical folk communication of ritual culture by means of common places of folksongs – shared for many generations in the pre-literate culture. However, the emerging parallel folksong publication opens up entirely new mode of communication. Already at the very beginning of Lithuanian folksong publication, its publisher obviously acquired individual right to edit the folklore at discretion. Selection of materials for publication (including some changes and reconstructions made along the way) followed primarily the actual purposes of publication, which included presenting the folksong image that would be more readily acceptable to the contemporary readership and satisfy the community’s expectations. It is public knowledge that Rėza, the initiator of the first Lithuanian folksong book, following the nice inspiration of his pre-Romantic period (maintaining that national spirit lived in folklore) also aspired to use folksongs in order to reveal the noble and dignified picture of the ancient Lithuanian people. Part of this picture – harmonious family and correspondingly ideal relations between its members – received vivid attention in this collection. The article concludes with interpretation of a couple of folksongs discussing a case of early insignificant corrections of the motives reflecting the ritual purpose of folksongs. So far, the author leaves aside certain prominent tendencies of re-creation that already have received harsh criticism before.

When I first proposed founding a journal in 1973, while teaching at the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, I had four broad, if also vague, ends in mind: archival reports, text criticism, historiography, and comparative studies.1 I first floated the idea with Philip Curtin, and certainly had no reason to be particularly sanguine that anything concrete would eventuate. Timing must have been everything, because James Duffy, the Executive Director of the African Studies Association, soon wrote me saying that Phil had mentioned the idea to him and, since the Association was then in a mood to foster publications, well, maybe something could come of the notion.Matters progressed, fitfully and no doubt very slowly for the anguished editor-in-waiting. In a letter dated 26 February 1974, Jim Duffy wrote that “[w]e would expect the first editor to be responsible for the first three years of the annual.” In my reply of 7 March I wrote that “my own feeling is that I would like to remain editor more or less ad infinitum—it is a job I would like both in its mechanics and from my commitment to the utility of such a journal.”In a further letter dated 17 May 1974 I promised to “see that every mistake is corrected and every ambiguity resolved for the typist's sake,” going so far as to commit myself that I would be “disappointed if there were so much as a single cryptic footnote citation,” at least in volume 1¡ For the first several years / was that typist, retyping every contribution to ensure a clean copy for the printers, but gave this unwelcome chore up in favor of dealing with local typists to produce camera-ready copy. Eventually word-processing and then e-mail found me, and all was well. Of course I needed to rely on those more skilled in page formatting than I was and have been lucky indeed to have had Jeff Kaufmann doing this reliably and intelligently for the past many years.Having a publisher meant coming up with a product, and I was fortunate that enough contributors could be persuaded to audition for the new journal that the maiden issue appeared not much more than a year later, after some toing and froing regarding length, name, mailing lists, and a potpourri of minor issues. On 27 September 1974 I sent off the typescript for volume 1, but kept adding dribs and drabs for another month. No doubt this contributed to HA 191A appearing only in April of 1975, far outside our target date of late October 1974 in time for the Annual Meeting in Chicago that year. At 182 pages this proved to be considerably longer than the 128-page sized number that had originally somehow surfaced as a norm.But enough prehistory. While editors and publishers are necessary, they are no more than the curators of the body of work created over time by a journal's contributors, and there, I think, History in Africa has been fortunate. Like a plane taking off, the size of HA continued gradually but inexorably to rise, from 182 pages to over 500 pages in many later issues. It is worth noting that among the contributors to the first few issues were Robin Law and Jan Vansina, whose work is also represented in this number, 35 years on, and others have contributed over spans of twenty years or more. Along the way, about 800 articles have appeared by authors residing in some 30 countries. How many of these would have otherwise appeared, in more traditional venues is anyone's guess—mine is that only a small minority would have found their way, or even have been written.While little has fallen short of my modest initial hopes, I must admit to disappointment that controversial points of view—or even those less controversial, but not therefore necessarily right—have only seldom been challenged. I had envisaged—apparently under the influence of some latter-day ambrosia—numerous and contentious conversations about evidence and interpretation that would in sum advance our knowledge—or if necessary our ignorance—about various issues, for all history, perhaps especially African history, teems with uncertainties. This simply failed to happen very often, or at least often enough—a pity. On the other hand, the onset of the internet has allowed controversy to flourish in the atmosphere of an all but immediate comment-and-response cycle.Perhaps even more disappointing has been the paucity of comparative approaches. In my foreword noted above, I wrote that “History in Africa hopes in time to become very broadly comparative and to encourage useful colloquy among the various discrete units of the discipline [of history].” This goal must be written off as largely unachieved, although a few papers dealing with non-African topics have appeared. In aid of this, from 1974 through 1984 History in Africa included a “comparative bibliography” that eventually ran to nearly fifty pages annually, but I gave this up when I could no longer convince myself that it was serving any purpose—that body of water was simply not being drunk.As of this writing, it is uncertain what will happen to History in Africa, so I will close by saying that it is (naturally) my hope that it can carry as it has for so long, and that its contributor base will become increasingly larger, more diversified, and more engaged. I am hopeful in this because, it seems to me, African historiography has come farther faster than is true for most new fields of history. The natural optimism of the beginning became tempered sooner than might have been expected, and intramural rumination has not been wanting (despite my comment above), while new sources have been discovered and put to use with encouraging frequency. It is true that to some degree the study of Africa's past has followed the various siren songs of new departures that have characterized not only history but most other disciplines as well, but throughout—and in contrast to the limited half life of most of these new ‘paradigms'—a core cadre of truth-seekers has continued to practice, opening up new vistas by dint of mining for new evidence rather than being content to adopt new theories.[DH]

Philip Kitcher argued that the freedom to pursue one's version of the good life is the main aim of Mill's argument for freedom of expression. According to Kitcher, in certain scientific fields, political and epistemological asymmetries bias research toward conclusions that threaten this most important freedom of underprivileged groups. Accordingly, Kitcher claimed that there are Millian grounds for limiting freedom of inquiry in these fields to protect the freedom of the underprivileged. I explore Kitcher's argument in light of the interpretation Helen Longino gave to Mill's argument. She argued that free critical dialogue in the community allows bias to be overcome, through intersubjective criticism of hypotheses and the background assumptions that frame them. I suggest that Longino's approach allows for the identification of the fundamental problems of the research programs Kitcher targeted, and for the rejection of their claims to knowledge. Thus it is possible to address Kitcher's problem without limiting freedom of speech.

The paper explores the dynamics of exile and restoration both in the old and new Testaments through Biblical Spirituality. Paying attention to the dynamics of spiritual relation, the paper traces the Divine-human relation beginning from Genesis 3, the fall of Adam and Eve to the Patriarchs specifically Abraham. It also explores the time of the kingdom and temples leading to the Assyrian and Babylonian Exile. Taking a cue from the beginning of the Gospels, the paper shows the continuity of exile in the New Testament as it shows the connection between the Passover, the last supper, the passion and death of Jesus, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the celebration of the sacrament of Eucharist. References Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press, 1984; 2nd ed., revised by Richard Clifford and Daniel Harrington, 2012. Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Carvalho, Corrine L. Primer on Biblical Methods. Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2009. Carvalho, Corrine L. Encountering Ancient Voices: A Guide to Reading the Old Testament. Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2006; 2nd ed., 2010. Ceresko, Anthony R. Introduction to the Old Testament: A Liberation Perspective. New York: Orbis, 1997; 2nd ed., 2001. Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2004; 3rd ed., 2018. Dictionnaire de spiritualité. ed. Marcel Viller, Charles Baumgartner and André Rayezin, Paris : G. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1932-1995, Tomme 1-17. Sheldrake, Philip. Images of Holiness. Duggan, Michael W. The Consuming Fire: A Christian Guide to the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2010. Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 7th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Gorman, Michael J. Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers. Revised ed. Baker Academic, 2010. Gottwald, Norman K. The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literary Introduction. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002. Green, Joel B., ed. Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Harrington, Daniel J. Interpreting the Old Testament: A Practical Guide. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. Harrington, Daniel J. Interpreting the New Testament: A Practical Guide. Rev. ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990. Johnson, Luke T. The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. Montague, George T. Understanding the Bible: A Basic Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2007. Stenger, Werner. Introduction to New Testament Exegesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993. Stuart, Douglas. Old Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors. 4th ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version. UK: Bible Society Resources Ltd., 2011. Waaijman, Kees. Spirituality: Forms, Foundations, Methods. Leuven: Peeters, 2002. Welzen Huub. Contours of Biblical Spirituality as a Discipline, Acta Theologica, 15 (2011), 37-60. The Roman Missal. 3rd ed. 2010.

In the public domain of end, what is the real impact of endism on our cultural and political lives? Are the proponents of apocalypse and armageddon correct to assume that there is an impending divine climax to the system of human affairs on this planet? Researching in the world of endism, it is usually the extreme, often dangerous forms of endist belief which the media popularly exploit to define 'other' forms of 'endist' fundamentalism. Reading about the apocacidal (suicides for the apocalypse) tendencies of various cults and sects horrifies us in their acts of forcible manipulation. Yet apocaholicism (a mental state of intoxication on the endtimes) can not be limited to the extra-societal gathering in the outer suburbs that awaits an end with grim but enthusiastic anticipation and which makes the occasional evening news headline or Sixty Minutes exposure. Nor can a keen sense of apocalypse be situated as being primarily a characteristic of religious fundamentalism. Secular society itself, as suggested by this collection of essays, is drunk on different meditations of the 'end'. In film alone, from Deep Impact through Armageddon to The End of Days, a mainstream space exists for courting the end in public forms of spectacularisation and profit-making. In this use, the end creates revenue. But there are other senses of the end too in secular society. Within the broader scope of the public exist those individuals who comprise this mass, and who also experience an ultimate more personal end, death. Yet death is only regarded literally by the physical professions. In the more social sphere, this phenomenon is as highly constructed as any other cultural entity. For instance, death functions as closure to the individual narrative of life. In this place, it is greeted with wails of sorrow and remorse for the deceased, and it is for this reason that death is also constructed as a beginning for a transformed body and other world in some belief systems. This latter view of death minimises the importance of death by subscribing to a perspective, which postulates life as an ongoing series of endings - of childhood, education, career, hearing and physical existence. However, death manifests itself in many other forms, as this issue of M/C demonstrates. In this collection, twelve authors wrestle with the question of 'end' and interrogate the links between the character of 'end' and the crisis of definition in what exactly is an 'end'? Refusing to offer superficial solutions to defining 'end', participants from America, Australia, New Zealand and England maintain that the 'end' is never neutral, but that the totality of a given time, of individual personalities reading 'signs of the endtimes', and the question of narrative -- not just the benefits of charting an 'end' from a supposed 'beginning' -- must be taken into account. The two streams of public and private senses of the end have directed the flow and organisation of content within this issue of M/C. How we engage with private, often personal treatments of 'end' is as important as how we deal with 'endism' in the public domain. Yet, as became apparent in shaping this engagement for publication, these two spheres of interrogation are not similar and sometimes mutually inconsistent. In order to not favour public over private, we decided to arrange the collection into two sections: 'critiques' and 'perspectives', with the addition of two guided internet tours by the editors. Six writers examine the domain of end as public narrative: The critiques section feature article asks, 'the end of the world is near, or is it?' It can be suggested that endtime expectants are tied to doctrines of theology that define the 'end' in very specialised terms. The terms can be contradictory across theologica -- one religious organisation may understand Sunday worship to mark a sign of the end whereas another perceives something more immediate and apocalyptic in the ascendancy of smart cards -- but for endtimes believers their interpretative home resides along a single intellectual path: the 'end' is theological. With the layperson in mind, David Bennett marks out this theological landscape used to represent and define the apocalypse in Australia. He introduces us to an often hidden character of the armageddon script, the Endtimer, and reminds us that prophecy popularisation in Australia, if less visible than in our western counterparts, remains alive and well in 1999. How well received is the Endtimer within society? Nick Caldwell takes on another type of Endtimer, the 'spoilers and cheaters' -- those democratisers of access and evaluation to the 'end' of a film or game. He argues that since we cannot have an 'end' without narrative, we need to think about the textual strategies used when we try to locate the 'end' in a particular textual place and the reading strategies used to avoid this 'end' until its appointed time of authorial revelation. Nick re-evaluates the place of the spoiler or cheater in contemporary reading practices, though not without a strategically placed spoiler of his own... Extending narrative to medium, 'Bandwidth' is clearly a term whose time is here. But what would the reconceptualisation of 'bandwidth' suggest for its future? Axel Bruns interrogates the ways in which 'bandwidth' is created and defined by its users and controllers. In 'The End of Bandwidth', he considers the tactical implications of 'non-bandwidth' activity upon the media environment and suggests the migration of the term 'bandwidth' to the periphery in favour of a less commercially framed interpretation -- the intersubjective 'infinite' -- is more suited to a contemporary and workable understanding of the Net. 'Apocacides, Apocaholics and Apocalists' takes a selective tour through the landscape of endism that permeates the Internet. One must ask, 'why contemporary apocalypticism'? Certainly not because visions of extinction dominate private, popular and scientific imaginations today? Nor because the apocalypse is an interesting anecdote from scriptures past, a tale of postponed divine re-creation to be told from generation to generation of what might have been had Friedrich Nietzsche not spoken up? Too many expect an imminent literal end to the world as we know it for the detractors of endism to dismiss it so easily. The reasons for apocalyptism are often hidden, slippery in definition -- sometimes for the complex history of the endtimes narrative, other times for the less than enthusiastic responses it evokes in the non-Christianised world. Geoff Hoyte offers one explanation regarding the endurance of endism: hope. In a common-sense approach to the 'end', he relates a humble perspective of dignified courtship with apocalypticism and suggests a key to an even greater 'beginning'. Can there be a context for intellectual legitimacy of the apocalypse? Henry Lawton outlines a variety of approaches to endism and in the process positions as a central concern questions to do with representations of the 'end' in popular and intellectual work. From the discipline of psychohistory, Henry argues that it is possible to chart the development of endist perspectives. From a listener's perspective, Alex Burns examines the cycles of alien discontinuity, fragmentation and post-millennium foreboding within a gritty meditation on 'end', the album The Fragile. As a reflexive index of social-political realities, Alex argues that certain styles of music can be embraced within a space for Sadeian aesthetics and that the 'dynamic synthesis' Nine Inch Nails embodies within its music has wider implications for the nature and direction of contemporary global cultural shift. A unique subjectivity, 'The Machine is Obsolete' invokes a rarely-used, if sometimes impossible language of review: the description of musical form, an aural projection, via written text, the visual projection. Six writers examine the domain of death as a private narrative: The perspectives section's feature article comes from a New Zealand Funeral Director, Michael Wolffram. From this profession, he examines the manner in which the bereaved construct death through religious and secular belief systems. According to Wolffram, these views on death actually affirm notions of beginnings rather than the presumed endings -- religious frameworks discuss death in terms of an afterlife whilst secular paradigms present the advent of an altered state of life after death via the impact of the deceased's works in a community. However, Wolffram believes that the focus of death has shifted from the community to the individual more recently, with society marginalising the experience of dying by discarding traditional systems of support. He suggests that contemporary society has yet to produce a new system of support, which has, perhaps positively, empowered the individual to choose and own a framework of death -- be it already existing, individually patented or indeed non-existent. Philip Nitschke's article continues this theme of the individual's empowerment of death. Nitschke is an Australian medical doctor best known for his strong advocacy of euthanasia and its legalisation. He begins with a story of an encounter with an 85-year-old German woman who had survived a Nazi concentration camp. She was in good health, but was requesting the power to end her life. This is a common situation, along with the requests received from terminally-ill patients, according to Nitschke, and he further claims that statistics are beginning to indicate that individuals who are empowered with their own deaths achieve an improved quality of life -- be they terminally ill or well in health. He provides these statistics as continuing evidence in his crusade to encourage medical doctors to relinquish their potential sovereignty over the timing of death in these cases and empower the individual in this matter. Pain and suffering are relative -- or so Donna Lee Brien suggests in an excerpt from her fictionalised biography of Edith and John Power. As standards of life deteriorate under war conditions, Edith Power becomes aware of the value of life itself rather than life values, by which she once judged her existence. But as she begins to appreciate living, she learns of the immanent death of her husband, John. Once again what is held dear and valued in her life shifts when all she is left with is memories. "The virtual is dead! Long live online!" cries Lelia Green in her manifesto-like article, which calls for the end of the phrase "virtual community". Green revisits some of the negative criticism of online communication and communities, addressing these by presenting some negative attributes of 'real' life and the benefits of online. As we move into the next millennium, Green believes that the notion of 'virtual' with respect to online activity should die its rightful death, and that the term "online community", in its better reflection of the its environment, should be adopted. Philosophy has long held that one cannot experience death directly or first hand, but can only hope to gain a semblance of understanding through representation. Using Levinas and Heidegger, Laurie Johnson challenges this premise, proposing that personal death can be 'experienced' through Other's death. Johnson recounts his own dream of death to explore the narrative and character of death within this dream. The character of death is identified as himself and the death dream is equated with personal experience. The author leaves the reader with the question of the extent to which dreams can potentially be related to experience. Physical, individual end can be discussed as 'death', or less obviously as the rear-end, as Simon Astley-Scholfield has done in his article on Allen Ginsberg's 1986 poem, "Sphincter". Scholfield suggests that Ginsberg's poem indicates a significant point in his writing by marking a transition in this poet's construction of sexual pleasure. As Scholfield notes, "Sphincter" incorporates an awareness of wider social issues, for instance AIDS and age, and transforms anal-erotic joy from an act involving flesh contact to that of "safe sex". This transition and maturing of the poet is observed by Scholfield in the context of his larger body of work. Endism is in a constant state of creation and intense negotiation. The 'end' derives its power from the contestation over its senses and uses: Is the 'end' as understood within an apocalyptic framework imminent? What are the signs of its approach? Is the death of self ultimate and final? What experience, if any, lies beyond that final curtain each of us will one day face? Within public and private domains, the competition for meaning over 'end' is diverse and complex but one thing is certain: the 'end' is never here nor there -- it is always nigh! Jason Ensor, Felicity Meakins-- 'End' Issue Editors Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jason Ensor, Felicity Meakins. "Editorial: 'End'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/edit.php>. Chicago style: Jason Ensor, Felicity Meakins, "Editorial: 'End'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jason Ensor, Felicity Meakins. (1999) Editorial: 'end'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture v(n). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionIn his seminal article, “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism” (1977), Dallas Smythe suggested that audiences are the commodity form of advertiser-supported communications, as their time is sold to advertisers. Audience measurement firms establish the audience size for a programme by calculating how many people are “tuned in” to a particular offering, and then provide their estimates to advertisers and break down their figures on the basis of demographic characteristics (these characteristics include age, gender, and income level). These ratings have long been the currency of the television industry. Essentially, Smythe points out that advertisers purchase, “the services of audiences with predictable specifications who will pay attention in predictable numbers and at particular times to particular means of communication” (4). Ien Ang has proposed that audience measurement produces an “objectified category of others” that can be governed and abstracted from the “messiness of everyday life” (8, 132). Indeed, Ang sees ratings to be a means of controlling the audience by creating a truth about them that suits the industry’s needs for an exchangeable commodity.In the United States, Nielsen ratings dictate the terms for the buying and selling of television advertising. Over the years, Nielsen has adjusted the measurement methodology to satisfy the demands of various stakeholders: audience measurement companies, advertisers, programme producers, and network executives, among others. Recently, however, social media (particularly Twitter) has threatened Nielsen’s preeminence. Writing in Wired magazine in 2013, Tom Vanderbilt went so far as to declare that the Nielsen Family—the “25,000 households whose TV habits collectively provide a statistical snapshot of a nation’s viewing behavior” (n.p.)—was now dead. He proposed that a show’s “tweetability” had become more important than its Nielsen rating.Nielsen, for its part, has tried to keep up with the changing television landscape and the demands of the television industry. In 2012 they partnered with McKinsey & Company to create the social media consulting company NM Incite, and acquired social TV startup SocialGuide. The following year the company introduced Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings (NTTR) as a supplement to its traditional ratings offering. This step is in line with the shifting industry interest from measuring audience exposure to programming to measuring audience engagement with programming (Jenkins; and Napoli).With NTTR, Nielsen has made, we suggest here, a fairly unimaginative and restricted addition to existing metrics in that it limits its measurements to tweet volume and tweet impressions. In this paper we explore other ways Twitter might be used to create insights that would be useful for audience research. Richard Rogers has raised the question of whether and when standard methods should be applied to the study of a new medium (162). We respond by proposing that, in the case of NTTR, traditional methods should not be applied to Twitter.We begin by briefly discussing the emergence of social media metrics and some of the problems involved in employing these metrics in current audience research. We then investigate how Twitter invites new forms of inquiry, drawing a picture of relationships among television programmes based on viewer tweets. In this re-imagining of audience research, following the Digital Methods tradition, we treat Twitter as a “postdemographic machine” (Rogers) that profiles user tastes, interests, favourite things, and so forth (rather than demographics such as age, income, educational level, and ethnicity).Nielsen and the Introduction of NTTRNielsen collects data about television viewing through diaries kept by members of a relatively small audience sample and meters that are connected to television sets. They provide ratings for programmes according to a system where one Nielsen rating point equals one per cent of all US households with television sets tuned into that programme. Two trends now strain this traditional form of the “exposure metrics” used in the buying and selling of primetime advertising: audience fragmentation and audience autonomy (Napoli). These terms refer, respectively, to the explosion of channels and platforms, first via cable television and later the Internet, on which viewers can watch television programming, and to viewers’ increased control over what television programmes they watch and when they watch them, thanks to technologies such as remote control, DVR, and now the Internet. These trends have eroded audience size for broadcast television and have made traditional metrics, which measure a sample of the audience, increasingly less representative of the viewing population as a whole. Responding to the changing television landscape, Nielsen introduced its “C3 rating” in 2009. This rating measures commercials watched both during first-run broadcasts and on DVR playback within three days (Nielsen Company, “C3 TV Ratings”). In this new landscape, producers and advertisers have begun to think that a small, yet engaged, group of viewers might be more valuable than a larger, more superficial audience (Jenkins 63). They have become increasingly interested in viewers’ engagement with particular programmes. Since around 2009, social TV as a television strategy—to stimulate people to watch television at its scheduled broadcast time and to deepen their engagement with programmes using the real-time features of social media—has gained prominence (van Es). Social TV efforts protect the existing business model for television.The Internet, and its communication structures, are becoming a valuable companion to television, not only because social media reinvigorates first-run viewing, but also because it provides data about viewing activity (Lee and Andrejevic). Social TV’s popularity made the introduction of NTTR unsurprising. Moreover, the particular partnership with Twitter, as opposed to other social platforms, makes sense, because Twitter is—at least for now—the biggest player in the social TV space. Its current ascendency may be due to the particular public openness of the platform, which unlike Facebook allows even non-account holders access to Twitter streams, and its users’ propensity to share their responses to TV on Twitter in real time (Proulx and Shepatin 13).NTTR measures the total number of tweets that refer to a specific television episode, the number of times these tweets were viewed (“impressions”), “unique authors” (accounts that tweeted at least once about a specific episode), and “unique audience” (the number of individual accounts that received at least one “impression” of the tweets about a specific episode [Nielsen Company, “Weekly Top Ten”]). Since May 2014, Nielsen also includes a demographic breakdown in NTTR, specifying the age and gender of those who tweet and view tweets (related to programming from 250 US TV networks). Through a partnership with GfK, a leading market research institute in Europe, Nielsen has since introduced Twitter TV ratings in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands.In the United States, other companies besides Nielsen generate social TV analytics. Philip Napoli has compared the leading three social TV analytics providers: BlueFin Labs, Trenddr.tv, and General Sentiment. Twitter has recently acquired the first two of these firms as part of its efforts to solidify its position in the social TV landscape. These social TV analytics providers, Napoli claims, and we would add NTTR to the list, are methodologically distinct from traditional ratings in three ways. First, they track everyone who is tweeting about a programme rather than using a “representative” sample. Second, people do not receive incentives to participate in the research, or even get to opt in or out of it. Third, social analytics can focus on not only the “volume” but also the “valence” of an online conversation: it can assign, for instance, a quantitative score between 1 and 10 to reflect either positive or negative contributions on social media (Napoli 11).Among the reviewed providers, Napoli found two main methodological disparities: the platforms they draw data from and the time windows used (10-15). He contends that by measuring different factors they offer different interpretations of “engagement” and give conflicting representations of the audience as a commodity. Social media metrics are not going to work as long as there is disagreement over how to measure and value television’s viewers.Social media metrics have been met with considerable criticism. Like traditional metrics, they track a particular demographic rather than a random sample of people, and so are not broadly representative. Nancy Baym points out how social media metrics in audience research are affected by factors such as “skew,” a by-product of the fact that platforms actively shape the communication that takes place on them. Trending topics on Twitter may, for instance, boost the number of tweets about a programme. She also identifies the problem of deception: bots can tweet about topics and accounts can purchase certain forms of engagement (Baym n.p.).Most important here, perhaps, is what Baym calls “ambiguous meaning”: actions on social media are “uncoupled from contexts of action and application” (Dean in Baym n.p.). In the case of Twitter, for instance, it is not readily evident why people tweet, or why they retweet or favourite certain tweets; one can learn why people do so only through methods such as interviews.The discussion of these limitations highlights the need for a certain sensibility when encountering social media metrics. The limitations themselves, however, do not mean that Twitter is ineffectual for audience research. Tweets can help generate insights and raise new questions about television viewing. Between Counting Viewers and Counting TweetsTo explore the relationship between traditional ratings and NTTR, we collected tweets about television programmes in The Netherlands during the first four weeks of September 2014. This project was conducted, on behalf of BuzzCapture, by a group of research assistants of the Utrecht Data School (Leila Essanoussi, Friso Leder, David de Wied, and Koen Mooij) under our instruction. Specifically, we extracted tweets from 1 September up to, and including, 29 September 2014. We included one extra day since programmes aired on Sunday 28 might still have been discussed around midnight. Initially, we collected tweets on the basis of the official and popular hashtags relating to the 30 most-watched television programmes (rated by the national association for audience research, Stichting KijkOnderzoek, SKO); we then added two programmes not included in this list that were frequently mentioned on Twitter. We collected tweets referring to these 32 programmes as well as profile information of the related Twitter accounts. After removing marketing and spam accounts, we had a sample of 135,882 tweets posted by 39,792 unique tweeters.Figure 1: Number of Viewers versus Average Number of TweetsWe then compared the number of viewers to the average number of tweets referring to the 32 television programmes in a scatterplot (see Figure 1). We took the average number of tweets as our reference point to correct for the fact that the frequency of broadcasting differed among the programmes. Figure 1 shows that some programmes attract a large audience but generate few tweets, and vice versa. For example, Het Journaal, with three million viewers, generates an average of 160 tweets per broadcast, while Pauw, with fewer than 750,000 viewers, generates on average nearly 1,000 tweets.This sort of disparity suggests that what is “successful” in terms of the number of tweets may not be “successful” in terms of the number of viewers. There are several possible explanations for the variation in Twitter activity: a political talk show like Pauw consists of highly controversial content, making it more likely to “spark” tweets and retweets, while the eight o’clock news airs less polarising points of view. Moreover, reality shows like The Voice of Holland not only stir up conflict and invite enthusiastic judgements (Bratich) but also actively encourage their audience to interact through social media.Our sample, moreover, suggests that viewing television and tweeting about programming constitute two distinct phenomena. However, there remains a lot of speculation about what can be inferred from a tweet and tweet impressions, and thus what price tag to attach to these sorts of activities. Twitter numbers are now used either as a point of differentiation from traditional methods (such as, to sell programmes by claiming that they are successful, despite their low ratings), or when a programme’s audience is too small to be registered by traditional methods (Napoli). In what follows, we explore how tweets can be used to study viewing patterns, and briefly consider the advantages of doing so.Looking at Affiliations among TV Programmes through Tweets In his book Digital Methods (2013), Richard Rogers points out how social networking sites allow for new methods to study social networks. Information supplied to social media platforms can be used to explore “post-demographics,” meaning that they can be used to profile users’ tastes, interests, and favourite items, and the co-occurrences of the expressions of these preferences (154). Although this approach is common on various platforms (for example, in Amazon recommendations) and in online marketing practices (as in those that establish affiliations among the brands people tweet about), it has not commonly been used to research audiences. Looking at affiliations can, we suggest here, help create new knowledge about audiences.Figure 2: The Overlap in Tweeters among 32 Programmes in the NetherlandsUsing the same dataset of tweets used for the scatterplot, we tracked the viewing patterns of tweeters, analysing the sequence in which they used programme hashtags. We found that 8,958 people tweeted about more than one programme. The data revealed very interesting results when we calculated the relative overlap among programmes, charting the number of interrelating tweeters with respect to the absolute number of tweeters who referred to the two respective programmes. We imported the 32 nodes (the programmes) and the relative relations to Gephi in order to generate an association network, using the force-directed layout algorithm ForceAtlas2. The resulting network helps illuminate which programmes attract the same tweeters (see Figure 2). Our decision to rectify for the bias of highly social programmes has serious consequences and its validity is open to discussion. We did so to help expose taste relations (rather than reflect popularity).The association network demonstrates that TV shows of the same genre attract similar Twitter audiences: Dubbeltje op Zijn Kant and Uitstel van Executie are both reality shows about personal financial struggles, Studio Sport and Studio Voetbal are sport programmes, Hart van Nederland and RTL Boulevard are tabloid news shows, and Spoorloos and Familiedinner are programmes that centre on family issues. Aside from the strong overlap between programmes of the same genre, the visualisation also shows a concentration of programmes from public broadcasters—on the left-hand side of the figure—and those on commercial television—seen on the right. These connections suggest that people that watch commercial television tend to focus their viewing to commercial television (and the same is true for public television). The Voice of Holland, which seems to have a weak overlap in tweeters with multiple programmes, presents an intriguing case. This observation invites further consideration of its audience composition (which traditional ratings might help with).These are just some quick reflections made possible by using different methods to study Twitter. Although the input from an association network does not provide neat numbers that can serve as a “commodity,” it could help inform the programme schedules of television networks (they could adjust air times to better fit audience preferences, for example, by scheduling two TV shows with similar Twitter audiences in back-to-back time slots). Such insights could assist advertisers better understand consumer behaviour and viewing habits and thus maximise the effectiveness of their commercials. Television producers could also explore on-air and online collaborations between programmes. ConclusionIn this paper we have discussed the limitations of both traditional metrics and newer social media metrics. We explored how tweets can be used to generate insights into viewing patterns, briefly considering how such findings could benefit various parties. We have shown that the counting of tweets addresses the tweetability of a show but seems unrelated to the show’s number of viewers. We speculate, also, that programmes that spark polarised debate or motivate users to engage through social media are receiving many more mentions on Twitter than other sorts of programming. There is much space for TV programmers to build new relationships with their viewers.We have offered some criticism on the decision of NTTR to apply old methods to a new medium, and proposed that audience research on social media should—as the digital methods dictum goes—“follow the medium.” That is, such research should make use of the features of the medium (links, tags, timestamps, and the like) that invite new forms of inquiry. Finally, we have shown that a digital methods approach, although it will not necessarily provide conclusive answers, raises relevant questions that can elicit additional research.ReferencesAng, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge, 1991.Baym, Nancy. “Data Not Seen: The Uses and Shortcomings of Social Media Metrics.” First Monday 18.10 (2013). 23 Sep. 2015 ‹http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4873/3752›.Bratich, Jack. “Affective Convergence in Reality Television: A Case Study in Divergence.” Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence. Ed. M. Kackman, M. Binfield, M. Payne, A. Perlman, and B. Sebok. New York: Routledge, 2011. 55–74.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: New York UP, 2006.Lee, Hye Jin, and Mark Andrejevic. “Second-Screen Theory: From the Democratic Surround to the Digital Enclosure.” Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming, & Sharing Media in the Digital Era. Eds. Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson. New York: Routledge, 2014. 40–61.Napoli, Philip M. “The Institutionally Effective Audience in Flux: Social Media and the Reassessment of the Audience Commodity.” SSRN Electronic Journal (2013). 23 Sep. 2015 ‹http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2260925_code548166.pdf?abstractid=2260925&mirid=3›.Proulx, Mike, and Stacey Shepatin. Social TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Rogers, Richard. Digital Methods. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. SKO. “Kijkcijfers.” Home—Kijkonderzoek. n.d. 23 Sep. 2015 ‹https://kijkonderzoek.nl/kijkcijfers›.Smythe, Dallas W. “Communications: Blind Spot of Western Marxism.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 1.3 (1977): 1–27.The Nielsen Company. “C3 TV Ratings Show Impact of DVR Ad Viewing.” What People Watch, Listen to and Buy. Oct. 2009. 23 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2009/c3-tv-ratings-show-impact-of-dvr-ad-viewing.html›.———. "Weekly Top Ten." Nielsen Social. n.d. 23 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.nielsensocial.com/nielsentwittertvratings/weekly/›.Vanderbilt, Tom. "The New Rules of the Hyper-Social, Data-Driven, Actor-Friendly, Super-Seductive Platinum Age of Television." Wired, Mar. 2013. 23 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.wired.com/2013/03/nielsen-family-is-dead/›.Van Es, Karin. “The Perks and Perils of Social TV: On the Participation Dilemma in NBC’s The Voice.” Television & New Media (forthcoming).

“As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what’s new”—Dennis Baron, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stage of Literacy Technologies Popular music is firmly rooted within realist practice, or what has been called the "culture of authenticity" associated with modernism. As Lawrence Grossberg notes, the accelleration of the rate of change in modern life caused, in post-war youth culture, an identity crisis or "lived contradiction" that gave rock (particularly) and popular music (generally) a peculiar position in regard to notions of authenticity. Grossberg places rock's authenticity within the "difference" it maintains from other cultural forms, and notes that its difference "can be justified aesthetically or ideologically, or in terms of the social position of the audiences, or by the economics of its production, or through the measure of its popularity or the statement of its politics" (205-6). Popular music scholars have not adequately addressed issues of authenticity and individuality. Two of the most important questions to be asked are: How is authenticity communicated in popular music? What is the site of the interpretation of authenticity? It is important to ask about sound, technology, about the attempt to understand the ideal and the image, the natural and artificial. It is these that make clear the strongest connections between popular music and contemporary culture. Popular music is a particularly appropriate site for the study of authenticity as a cultural category, for several reasons. For one thing, other media do not follow us, as aural media do, into malls, elevators, cars, planes. Nor do they wait for us, as a tape player paused and ready to play. What is important is not that music is "everywhere" but, to borrow from Vivian Sobchack, that it creates a "here" that can be transported anywhere. In fact, we are able to walk around enveloped by a personal aural environment, thanks to a Sony Walkman.1 Also, it is more difficult to shut out the aural than the visual. Closing one's ears does not entirely shut out sound. There is, additionally, the sense that sound and music are interpreted from within, that is, that they resonate through and within the body, and as such engage with one's self in a fashion that coincides with Charles Taylor's claim that the "ideal of authenticity" is an inner-directed one. It must be noted that authenticity is not, however, communicated only via music, but via text and image. Grossberg noted the "primacy of sound" in rock music, and the important link between music, visual image, and authenticity: Visual style as conceived in rock culture is usually the stage for an outrageous and self-conscious inauthenticity... . It was here -- in its visual presentation -- that rock often most explicitly manifested both an ironic resistance to the dominant culture and its sympathies with the business of entertainment ... . The demand for live performance has always expressed the desire for the visual mark (and proof) of authenticity. (208) But that relationship can also be reversed: Music and sound serve in some instances to provide the aural mark and proof of authenticity. Consider, for instance, the "tear" in the voice that Jensen identifies in Hank Williams's singing, and in that of Patsy Cline. For the latter, voicing, in this sense, was particularly important, as it meant more than a singing style, it also involved matters of self-identity, as Jensen appropriately associates with the move of country music from "hometown" to "uptown" (101). Cline's move toward a more "uptown" style involved her visual image, too. At a significant turning point in her career, Faron Young noted, Cline "left that country girl look in those western outfits behind and opted for a slicker appearance in dresses and high fashion gowns" (Jensen 101). Popular music has forged a link with visual media, and in some sense music itself has become more visual (though not necessarily less aural) the more it has engaged with industrial processes in the entertainment industry. For example, engagement with music videos and film soundtracks has made music a part of the larger convergence of mass media forms. Alongside that convergence, the use of music in visual media has come to serve as adjunct to visual symbolisation. One only need observe the increasingly commercial uses to which music is put (as in advertising, film soundtracks and music videos) to note ways in which music serves image. In the literature from a variety of disciplines, including communication, art and music, it has been argued that music videos are the visualisation of music. But in many respects the opposite is true. Music videos are the auralisation of the visual. Music serves many of the same purposes as sound does generally in visual media. One can find a strong argument for the use of sound as supplement to visual media in Silverman's and Altman's work. For Silverman, sound in cinema has largely been overlooked (pun intended) in favor of the visual image, but sound is a more effective (and perhaps necessary) element for willful suspension of disbelief. One may see this as well in the development of Dolby Surround Sound, and in increased emphasis on sound engineering among video and computer game makers, as well as the development of sub-woofers and high-fidelity speakers as computer peripherals. Another way that sound has become more closely associated with the visual is through the ongoing evolution of marketing demands within the popular music industry that increasingly rely on visual media and force image to the front. Internet technologies, particularly the WorldWideWeb (WWW), are also evidence of a merging of the visual and aural (see Hayward). The development of low-cost desktop video equipment and WWW publishing, CD-i, CD-ROM, DVD, and other technologies, has meant that visual images continue to form part of the industrial routine of the music business. The decrease in cost of many of these technologies has also led to the adoption of such routines among individual musicians, small/independent labels, and producers seeking to mimic the resources of major labels (a practice that has become considerably easier via the Internet, as it is difficult to determine capital resources solely from a WWW site). Yet there is another facet to the evolution of the link between the aural and visual. Sound has become more visual by way of its representation during its production (a representation, and process, that has largely been ignored in popular music studies). That representation has to do with the digitisation of sound, and the subsequent transformation sound and music can undergo after being digitised and portrayed on a computer screen. Once digitised, sound can be made visual in any number of ways, through traditional methods like music notation, through representation as audio waveform, by way of MIDI notation, bit streams, or through representation as shapes and colors (as in recent software applications particularly for children, like Making Music by Morton Subotnick). The impetus for these representations comes from the desire for increased control over sound (see Jones, Rock Formation) and such control seems most easily accomplished by way of computers and their concomitant visual technologies (monitors, printers). To make computers useful tools for sound recording it is necessary to employ some form of visual representation for the aural, and the flexibility of modern computers allows for new modes of predominately visual representation. Each of these connections between the aural and visual is in turn related to technology, for as audio technology develops within the entertainment industry it makes sense for synergistic development to occur with visual media technologies. Yet popular music scholars routinely analyse aural and visual media in isolation from one another. The challenge for popular music studies and music philosophy posed by visual media technologies, that they must attend to spatiality and context (both visual and aural), has not been taken up. Until such time as it is, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to engage issues of authenticity, because they will remain rootless instead of situated within the experience of music as fully sensual (in some cases even synaesthetic). Most of the traditional judgments of authenticity among music critics and many popular music scholars involve space and time, the former in terms of the movement of music across cultures and the latter in terms of history. None rely on notions of the "situatedness" of the listener or musicmaker in a particular aural, visual and historical space. Part of the reason for the lack of such an understanding arises from the very means by which popular music is created. We have become accustomed to understanding music as manipulation of sound, and so far as most modern music production is concerned such manipulation occurs as much visually as aurally, by cutting, pasting and otherwise altering audio waveforms on a computer screen. Musicians no more record music than they record fingering; they engage in sound recording. And recording engineers and producers rely less and less on sound and more on sight to determine whether a recording conforms to the demands of digital reproduction.2 Sound, particularly when joined with the visual, becomes a means to build and manipulate the environment, virtual and non-virtual (see Jones, "Sound"). Sound & Music As we construct space through sound, both in terms of audio production (e.g., the use of reverberation devices in recording studios) and in terms of everyday life (e.g., perception of aural stimuli, whether by ear or vibration in the body, from points surrounding us), we centre it within experience. Sound combines the psychological and physiological. Audio engineer George Massenburg noted that in film theaters: You couldn't utilise the full 360-degree sound space for music because there was an "exit sign" phenomena [sic]. If you had a lot of audio going on in the back, people would have a natural inclination to turn around and stare at the back of the room. (Massenburg 79-80) However, he went on to say, beyond observations of such reactions to multichannel sound technology, "we don't know very much". Research in psychoacoustics being used to develop virtual audio systems relies on such reactions and on a notion of human hardwiring for stimulus response (see Jones, "Sense"). But a major stumbling block toward the development of those systems is that none are able to account for individual listeners' perceptions. It is therefore important to consider the individual along with the social dimension in discussions of sound and music. For instance, the term "sound" is deployed in popular music to signify several things, all of which have to do with music or musical performance, but none of which is music. So, for instance, musical groups or performers can have a "sound", but it is distinguishable from what notes they play. Entire music scenes can have "sounds", but the music within such scenes is clearly distinct and differentiated. For the study of popular music this is a significant but often overlooked dimension. As Grossberg argues, "the authenticity of rock was measured by its sound" (207). Visually, he says, popular music is suspect and often inauthentic (sometimes purposefully so), and it is grounded in the aural. Similarly in country music Jensen notes that the "Nashville Sound" continually evoked conflicting definitions among fans and musicians, but that: The music itself was the arena in and through which claims about the Nashville Sound's authenticity were played out. A certain sound (steel guitar, with fiddle) was deemed "hard" or "pure" country, in spite of its own commercial history. (84) One should, therefore, attend to the interpretive acts associated with sound and its meaning. But why has not popular music studies engaged in systematic analysis of sound at the level of the individual as well as the social? As John Shepherd put it, "little cultural theoretical work in music is concerned with music's sounds" ("Value" 174). Why should this be a cause for concern? First, because Shepherd claims that sound is not "meaningful" in the traditional sense. Second, because it leads us to re-examine the question long set to the side in popular music studies: What is music? The structural homology, the connection between meaning and social formation, is a foundation upon which the concept of authenticity in popular music stands. Yet the ability to label a particular piece of music "good" shifts from moment to moment, and place to place. Frith understates the problem when he writes that "it is difficult ... to say how musical texts mean or represent something, and it is difficult to isolate structures of musical creation or control" (56). Shepherd attempts to overcome this difficulty by emphasising that: Music is a social medium in sound. What [this] means ... is that the sounds of music provide constantly moving and complex matrices of sounds in which individuals may invest their own meanings ... [however] while the matrices of sounds which seemingly constitute an individual "piece" of music can accommodate a range of meanings, and thereby allow for negotiability of meaning, they cannot accommodate all possible meanings. (Shepherd, "Art") It must be acknowledged that authenticity is constructed, and that in itself is an argument against the most common way to think of authenticity. If authenticity implies something about the "pure" state of an object or symbol then surely such a state is connected to some "objective" rendering, one not possible according to Shepherd's claims. In some sense, then, authenticity is autonomous, its materialisation springs not from any necessary connection to sound, image, text, but from individual acts of interpretation, typically within what in literary criticism has come to be known as "interpretive communities". It is not hard to illustrate the point by generalising and observing that rock's notion of authenticity is captured in terms of songwriting, but that songwriters are typically identified with places (e.g. Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Liverpool, etc.). In this way there is an obvious connection between authenticity and authorship (see Jones, "Popular Music Studies") and geography (as well in terms of musical "scenes", e.g. the "Philly Sound", the "Sun Sound", etc.). The important thing to note is the resultant connection between the symbolic and the physical worlds rooted (pun intended) in geography. As Redhead & Street put it: The idea of "roots" refers to a number of aspects of the musical process. There is the audience in which the musician's career is rooted ... . Another notion of roots refers to music. Here the idea is that the sounds and the style of the music should continue to resemble the source from which it sprang ... . The issue ... can be detected in the argument of those who raise doubts about the use of musical high-technology by African artists. A final version of roots applies to the artist's sociological origins. (180) It is important, consequently, to note that new technologies, particularly ones associated with the distribution of music, are of increasing importance in regulating the tension between alienation and progress mentioned earlier, as they are technologies not simply of musical production and consumption, but of geography. That the tension they mediate is most readily apparent in legal skirmishes during an unsettled era for copyright law (see Brown) should not distract scholars from understanding their cultural significance. These technologies are, on the one hand, "liberating" (see Hayward, Young, and Marsh) insofar as they permit greater geographical "reach" and thus greater marketing opportunities (see Fromartz), but on the other hand they permit less commercial control, insofar as they permit digitised music to freely circulate without restriction or compensation, to the chagrin of copyright enthusiasts. They also create opportunities for musical collaboration (see Hayward) between performers in different zones of time and space, on a scale unmatched since the development of multitracking enabled the layering of sound. Most importantly, these technologies open spaces for the construction of authenticity that have hitherto been unavailable, particularly across distances that have largely separated cultures and fan communities (see Paul). The technologies of Internetworking provide yet another way to make connections between authenticity, music and sound. Community and locality (as Redhead & Street, as well as others like Sara Cohen and Ruth Finnegan, note) are the elements used by audience and artist alike to understand the authenticity of a performer or performance. The lived experience of an artist, in a particular nexus of time and space, is to be somehow communicated via music and interpreted "properly" by an audience. But technologies of Internetworking permit the construction of alternative spaces, times and identities. In no small way that has also been the situation with the mediation of music via most recordings. They are constructed with a sense of space, consumed within particular spaces, at particular times, in individual, most often private, settings. What the network technologies have wrought is a networked audience for music that is linked globally but rooted in the local. To put it another way, the range of possibilities when it comes to interpretive communities has widened, but the experience of music has not significantly shifted, that is, the listener experiences music individually, and locally. Musical activity, whether it is defined as cultural or commercial practice, is neither flat nor autonomous. It is marked by ever-changing tastes (hence not flat) but within an interpretive structure (via "interpretive communities"). Musical activity must be understood within the nexus of the complex relations between technical, commercial and cultural processes. As Jensen put it in her analysis of Patsy Cline's career: Those who write about culture production can treat it as a mechanical process, a strategic construction of material within technical or institutional systems, logical, rational, and calculated. But Patsy Cline's recording career shows, among other things, how this commodity production view must be linked to an understanding of culture as meaning something -- as defining, connecting, expressing, mattering to those who participate with it. (101) To achieve that type of understanding will require that popular music scholars understand authenticity and music in a symbolic realm. Rather than conceiving of authenticity as a limited resource (that is, there is only so much that is "pure" that can go around), it is important to foreground its symbolic and ever-changing character. Put another way, authenticity is not used by musician or audience simply to label something as such, but rather to mean something about music that matters at that moment. Authenticity therefore does not somehow "slip away", nor does a "pure" authentic exist. Authenticity in this regard is, as Baudrillard explains concerning mechanical reproduction, "conceived according to (its) very reproducibility ... there are models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences" (56). Popular music scholars must carefully assess the affective dimensions of fans, musicians, and also record company executives, recording producers, and so on, to be sensitive to the deeply rooted construction of authenticity and authentic experience throughout musical processes. Only then will there emerge an understanding of the structures of feeling that are central to the experience of music. Footnotes For analyses of the Walkman's role in social settings and popular music consumption see du Gay; Hosokawa; and Chen. It has been thus since the advent of disc recording, when engineers would watch a record's grooves through a microscope lens as it was being cut to ensure grooves would not cross over one into another. References Altman, Rick. "Television/Sound." Studies in Entertainment. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 39-54. Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Death and Exchange. London: Sage, 1993. Brown, Ronald. Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995. Chen, Shing-Ling. "Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening." Annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Washington, D.C. 1993. Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 1997. Frith, Simon. Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Fromartz, Steven. "Starts-ups Sell Garage Bands, Bowie on Web." Reuters newswire, 4 Dec. 1996. Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place. London: Routledge, 1992. Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the New Frontier." Convergence 1.2 (Winter 1995): 29-44. Hosokawa, Shuhei. "The Walkman Effect." Popular Music 4 (1984). Jensen, Joli. The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialisation and Country Music. Nashville, Vanderbilt UP, 1998. Jones, Steve. Rock Formation: Music, Technology and Mass Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. ---. "Popular Music Studies and Critical Legal Studies" Stanford Humanities Review 3.2 (Fall 1993): 77-90. ---. "A Sense of Space: Virtual Reality, Authenticity and the Aural." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.3 (Sep. 1993), 238-52. ---. "Sound, Space & Digitisation." Media Information Australia 67 (Feb. 1993): 83-91. Marrsh, Brian. "Musicians Adopt Technology to Market Their Skills." Wall Street Journal 14 Oct. 1994: C2. Massenburg, George. "Recording the Future." EQ (Apr. 1997): 79-80. Paul, Frank. "R&B: Soul Music Fans Make Cyberspace Their Meeting Place." Reuters newswire, 11 July 1996. Redhead, Steve, and John Street. "Have I the Right? Legitimacy, Authenticity and Community in Folk's Politics." Popular Music 8.2 (1989). Shepherd, John. "Art, Culture and Interdisciplinarity." Davidson Dunston Research Lecture. Carleton University, Canada. 3 May 1992. ---. "Value and Power in Music." The Sound of Music: Meaning and Power in Culture. Eds. John Shepherd and Peter Wicke. Cambridge: Polity, 1993. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space. New York: Ungar, 1982. Young, Charles. "Aussie Artists Use Internet and Bootleg CDs to Protect Rights." Pro Sound News July 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steve Jones. "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php>. Chicago style: Steve Jones, "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steve Jones. (1999) Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: "Remixing" Authenticity in Popular Music Studies. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]).

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

This paper will compare the metaphoric structuring of the ecological concept of resilience—with its roots in Holling's 1973 paper; with psychological concepts of resilience which followed from research—such as Werner, Bierman, and French and Garmezy and Streitman) published in the early 1970s. This metaphoric analysis will expose the difference between complex adaptive systems models of resilience in ecology and studies related to resilience in relation to climate change; compared with the individualism of linear equilibrium models of resilience which have dominated discussions of resilience in psychology and economics. By examining the ontological commitments of these competing metaphors, I will show that the individualistic concept of resilience which dominates psychological discussions of resilience is incompatible with the ontological commitments of ecological concepts of resilience. Because the ontological commitments of the concepts of ecological resilience on the one hand, and psychological resilience on the other, are so at odds with one another, it is important to be clear which concept of resilience is being evaluated for its adequacy as a concept. Having clearly distinguished these competing metaphors and their ontological commitments, this paper will show that it is the complex adaptive systems model of resilience from ecology, not the individualist concept of psychological resilience, that has been utilised by both the academic discussions of adaptation to climate change, and the operationalisation of the concept of resilience by social movements like the permaculture, ecovillage, and Transition Towns movements. Ontological Metaphors My analysis of ontological metaphors draws on insights from Kuhn's (114) account of gestalt perception in scientific paradigm shifts; the centrality of the role of concrete analogies in scientific reasoning (Masterman 77); and the theorisation of ontological metaphors in cognitive linguistics (Gärdenfors). Figure 1: Object Ontological commitments reflect the shared beliefs within a community about the sorts of things that exist. Our beliefs about what exists are shaped by our sensory and motor interactions with objects in the physical world. Physical objects have boundaries and surfaces that separate the object from not-the-object. Objects have insides and outsides, and can be described in terms of more-or-less fixed and stable “objective” properties. A prototypical example of an “object” is a “container”, like the example shown in Figure 1. Ontological metaphors allow us to conceive of “things” which are not objects as if they were objects by picking “out parts of our experience and treat them as [if they were] discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind” (Lakoff and Johnson 25). We use ontological metaphors when we imagine a boundary around a collection of things, such as the members of a team or trees in a forest, and conceive of them as being in a container (Langacker 191–97). We can then think of “things” like a team or forest as if they were a single entity. We can also understand processes and activities as if they were things with boundaries. Whether or not we characterise some aspect of our experience as a noun (a bounded entity) or as a verb (a process that occurs over time) is not determined by the nature of things in themselves, but by our understanding and interpretation of our experience (Langacker 233). In this paper I employ a technique that involves examining the details of “concrete images” from the source domains for metaphors employed in the social sciences to expose for analysis their ontological commitments (Harrison, “Politics” 215; Harrison, “Economics” 7). By examining the ontological metaphors that structure the resilience literature I will show how different conceptions of resilience reflect different beliefs and commitments about the sorts of “things” there are in the world, and hence how we can study and understand these “things.” Engineering Metaphors In his discussion of engineering resilience, Holling (“Engineering Vs. Ecological” 33) argues that this conception is the “foundation for economic theory”, and defined in terms of “resistance to disturbance and the speed of return to the equilibrium” or steady state of the system. Whereas Holling takes his original example of the use of the engineering concept of resilience from economics, Pendall, Foster, & Cowell (72), and Martin-Breen and Anderies (6) identify it as the concept of resilience that dominates the field of psychology. They take the stress loading of bridges to be the engineering source for the metaphor. Figure 2: Pogo stick animation (Source: Blacklemon 67, CC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif). In order to understand this metaphor, we need to examine the characteristics of the source domain for the metaphor. A bridge can be “under tension, compression or both forces at the same time [and] experiences what engineers define as stress” (Matthews 3). In order to resist these forces, bridges need to be constructed of material which “behave much like a spring” that “strains elastically (deforms temporarily and returns to its original shape after a load has been removed) under a given stress” (Gordon 52; cited in Matthews). The pogostick shown in Figure 2 illustrates how a spring returns to its original size and configuration once the load or stress is removed. WGBH Educational Foundation provides links to simple diagrams that illustrate the different stresses the three main designs of bridges are subject to, and if you compare Computers & Engineering's with Gibbs and Bourne's harmonic spring animation you can see how both a bridge under live load and the pogostick in Figure 2 oscillate just like an harmonic spring. Subject to the elastic limits of the material, the deformation of a spring is proportional to the stress or load applied. According to the “modern theory of elasticity [...] it [is] possible to deduce the relation between strain and stress for complex objects in terms of intrinsic properties of the materials it is made of” (“Hooke’s Law”). When psychological resilience is characterised in terms of “properties of individuals [that] are identified in isolation” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 12); and in terms of “behaviours and attributes [of individuals] that allow people to get along with one another and to succeed socially” (Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 72), they are reflecting this engineering focus on the properties of materials. Martin-Breen and Anderies (42) argue that “the Engineering Resilience framework” has been informed by ontological metaphors which treat “an ecosystem, person, city, government, bridge, [or] society” as if it were an object—“a unified whole”. Because this concept of resilience treats individuals as “objects,” it leads researchers to look for the properties or characteristics of the “materials” which individuals are “made of”, which are either elastic and allow them to “bounce” or “spring” back after stress; or are fragile and brittle and break under load. Similarly, the Designers Institute (DINZ), in its conference on “Our brittle society,” shows it is following the engineering resilience approach when it conceives of a city or society as an object which is made of materials which are either “strong and flexible” or “brittle and fragile”. While Holling characterises economic theory in terms of this engineering metaphor, it is in fact chemistry and the kinetic theory of gases that provides the source domain for the ontological metaphor which structures both static and dynamic equilibrium models within neo-classical economics (Smith and Foley; Mirowski). However, while springs are usually made out of metals, they can be made out of any “material [that] has the required combination of rigidity and elasticity,” such as plastic, and even wood (in a bow) (“Spring (device)”). Gas under pressure turns out to behave the same as other springs or elastic materials do under load. Because both the economic metaphor based on equilibrium theory of gases and the engineering analysis of bridges under load can both be subsumed under spring theory, we can treat both the economic (gas) metaphor and the engineering (bridge) metaphor as minor variations of a single overarching (spring) metaphor. Complex Systems Metaphors Holling (“Resilience & Stability” 13–15) critiques equilibrium models, arguing that non-deterministic, complex, non-equilibrium and multi-equilibrium ecological systems do not satisfy the conditions for application of equilibrium models. Holling argues that unlike the single equilibrium modelled by engineering resilience, complex adaptive systems (CAS) may have multi or no equilibrium states, and be non-linear and non-deterministic. Walker and Salt follow Holling by calling for recognition of the “dynamic complexity of the real world” (8), and that “these [real world] systems are complex adaptive systems” (11). Martin-Breen and Anderies (7) identify the key difference between “systems” and “complex adaptive systems” resilience as adaptive capacity, which like Walker and Salt (xiii), they define as the capacity to maintain function, even if system structures change or fail. The “engineering” concept of resilience focuses on the (elastic) properties of materials and uses language associated with elastic springs. This “spring” metaphor emphasises the property of individual components. In contrast, ecological concepts of resilience examine interactions between elements, and the state of the system in a multi-dimensional phase space. This systems approach shows that the complex behaviour of a system depends at least as much on the relationships between elements. These relationships can lead to “emergent” properties which cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts of the system. To explain these relationships and connections, ecologists and climate scientists use language and images associated with landscapes such as 2-D cross-sections and 3-D topology (Holling, “Resilience & Stability” 20; Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 74). Figure 3 is based on an image used by Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (fig. 1b) to represent possible states of ecological systems. The “basins” in the image rely on our understanding of gravitational forces operating in a 3-D space to model “equilibrium” states in which the system, like the “ball” in the “basin”, will tend to settle. Figure 3: (based on Langston; in Walker et al. fig. 1b) – Tipping Point Bifurcation Wasdell (“Feedback” fig. 4) adapted this image to represent possible climate states and explain the concept of “tipping points” in complex systems. I have added the red balls (a, b, and c to replace the one black ball (b) in the original which represented the state of the system), the red lines which indicate the path of the ball/system, and the black x-y axis, in order to discuss the image. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) takes the left basin to represents “the variable, near-equilibrium, but contained dynamics of the [current] glacial/interglacial period”. As a result of rising GHG levels, the climate system absorbs more energy (mostly as heat). This energy can force the system into a different, hotter, state, less amenable to life as we know it. This is shown in Figure 3 by the system (represented as the red ball a) rising up the left basin (point b). From the perspective of the gravitational representation in Figure 3, the extra energy in the basin operates like the rotation in a Gravitron amusement ride, where centrifugal force pushes riders up the sides of the ride. If there is enough energy added to the climate system it could rise up and jump over the ridge/tipping point separating the current climate state into the “hot earth” basin shown on the right. Once the system falls into the right basin, it may be stuck near point c, and due to reinforcing feedbacks have difficulty escaping this new “equilibrium” state. Figure 4 represents a 2-D cross-section of the 3-D landscape shown in Figure 3. This cross-section shows how rising temperature and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in a multi-equilibrium climate topology can lead to the climate crossing a tipping point and shifting from state a to state c. Figure 4: Topographic cross-section of possible climate states (derived from Wasdell, “Feedback” 26 CC). As Holling (“Resilience & Stability”) warns, a less “desirable” state, such as population collapse or extinction, may be more “resilient”, in the engineering sense, than a more desirable state. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) warns that the climate forcing as a result of human induced GHG emissions is in fact pushing the system “far away from equilibrium, passed the tipping point, and into the hot-earth scenario”. In previous episodes of extreme radiative forcing in the past, this “disturbance has then been amplified by powerful feedback dynamics not active in the near-equilibrium state [… and] have typically resulted in the loss of about 90% of life on earth.” An essential element of system dynamics is the existence of (delayed) reinforcing and balancing causal feedback loops, such as the ones illustrated in Figure 5. Figure 5: Pre/Predator model (Bellinger CC-BY-SA) In the case of Figure 5, the feedback loops illustrate the relationship between rabbit population increasing, then foxes feeding on the rabbits, keeping the rabbit population within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Fox predation prevents rabbit over-population and consequent starvation of rabbits. The reciprocal interaction of the elements of a system leads to unpredictable nonlinearity in “even seemingly simple systems” (“System Dynamics”). The climate system is subject to both positive and negative feedback loops. If the area of ice cover increases, more heat is reflected back into space, creating a positive feedback loop, reinforcing cooling. Whereas, as the arctic ice melts, as it is doing at present (Barber), heat previously reflected back into space is absorbed by now exposed water, increasing the rate of warming. Where negative feedback (system damping) dominates, the cup-shaped equilibrium is stable and system behaviour returns to base when subject to disturbance. [...]The impact of extreme events, however, indicates limits to the stable equilibrium. At one point cooling feedback loops overwhelmed the homeostasis, precipitating the "snowball earth" effect. […] Massive release of CO2 as a result of major volcanic activity […] set off positive feedback loops, precipitating runaway global warming and eliminating most life forms at the end of the Permian period. (Wasdell, “Topological”) Martin-Breen and Anderies (53–54), following Walker and Salt, identify four key factors for systems (ecological) resilience in nonlinear, non-deterministic (complex adaptive) systems: regulatory (balancing) feedback mechanisms, where increase in one element is kept in check by another element; modularity, where failure in one part of the system will not cascade into total systems failure; functional redundancy, where more than one element performs every essential function; and, self-organising capacity, rather than central control ensures the system continues without the need for “leadership”. Transition Towns as a Resilience Movement The Transition Town (TT) movement draws on systems modelling of both climate change and of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.). TT takes seriously Limits to Growth modelling that showed that without constraints in population and consumption the world faces systems collapse by the middle of this century. It recommends community action to build as much capacity as possible to “maintain existence of function”—Holling's (“Engineering vs. Ecological” 33) definition of ecological resilience—in the face of failing economic, political and environmental systems. The Transition Network provides a template for communities to follow to “rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions”. Rob Hopkins, the movements founder, explicitly identifies ecological resilience as its central concept (Transition Handbook 6). The idea for the movement grew out of a project by (2nd year students) completed for Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College. According to Hopkins (“Kinsale”), this project was inspired by Holmgren’s Permaculture principles and Heinberg's book on adapting to life after peak oil. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a design system for creating agricultural systems modelled on the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems (Mollison ix; Holmgren xix). Permaculture draws its scientific foundations from systems ecology (Holmgren xxv). Following CAS theory, Mollison (33) defines stability as “self-regulation”, rather than “climax” or a single equilibrium state, and recommends “diversity of beneficial functional connections” (32) rather than diversity of isolated elements. Permaculture understands resilience in the ecological, rather than the engineering sense. The Transition Handbook (17) “explores the issues of peak oil and climate change, and how when looked at together, we need to be focusing on the rebuilding of resilience as well as cutting carbon emissions. It argues that the focus of our lives will become increasingly local and small scale as we come to terms with the real implications of the energy crisis we are heading into.” The Transition Towns movement incorporate each of the four systems resilience factors, listed at the end of the previous section, into its template for building resilient communities (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 55–6). Many of its recommendations build “modularity” and “self-organising”, such as encouraging communities to build “local food systems, [and] local investment models”. Hopkins argues that in a “more localised system” feedback loops are tighter, and the “results of our actions are more obvious”. TT training exercises include awareness raising for sensitivity to networks of (actual or potential) ecological, social and economic relationships (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 60–1). TT promotes diversity of local production and economic activities in order to increase “diversity of functions” and “diversity of responses to challenges.” Heinberg (8) wrote the forward to the 2008 edition of the Transition Handbook, after speaking at a TotnesTransition Town meeting. Heinberg is now a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), which was established in 2003 to “provide […] the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century [… in] a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds” (PCI, “About”), of the sort envisioned by the Limits to Growth model discussed in the previous section. Given the overlapping goals of PCI and Transition Towns, it is not surprising that Rob Hopkins is now a Fellow of PCI and regular contributor to Resilience, and there are close ties between the two organisations. Resilience, which until 2012 was published as the Energy Bulletin, is run by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI). Like Transition Towns, Resilience aims to build “community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. […] It has [its] roots in systems theory” (PCI, “About Resilience”). Resilience.org says it follows the interpretation of Resilience Alliance (RA) Program Director Brian Walker and science writer David Salt's (xiii) ecological definition of resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.“ Conclusion This paper has analysed the ontological metaphors structuring competing conceptions of resilience. The engineering resilience metaphor dominates in psychological resilience research, but is not adequate for understanding resilience in complex adaptive systems. Ecological resilience, on the other hand, dominates in environmental and climate change research, and is the model of resilience that has been incorporated into the global permaculture and Transition Towns movements. References 2nd year students. Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan. Kinsale, Cork, Ireland: Kinsale Further Education College, 2005. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/KinsaleEnergyDescentActionPlan.pdf>. Barber, Elizabeth. “Arctic Ice Continues to Thin, and Thin, European Satellite Reveals.” Christian Science Monitor 11 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0911/Arctic-ice-continues-to-thin-and-thin-European-satellite-reveals>. 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Introduction In this article, I explore the phenomenon of augmentation by questioning its representational nature and analyzing aesthetic modes of our interrelationship with the environment. How can senses be augmented and how do they serve as mechanisms of enhancing the feeling of presence? Media art practices offer particularly valuable scenarios of activating such mechanisms, as the employment of digital technology allows them to operate on a more subtle level of perception. Given that these practices are continuously evolving, this analysis cannot claim to be a comprehensive one, but rather aims to introduce aspects of the specific relations between augmentation, sense of proprioception, technology, and art. Proprioception is one of the least detectable and trackable human senses because it involves our intuitive sense of positionality, which suggests a subtle equilibrium between a center (our individual bodies) and the periphery (our immediate environments). Yet, as any sense, proprioception implies a communicational chain, a network of signals traveling and exchanging information within the body-mind complex. The technological augmentation of this dynamic process produces an interference in our understanding of the structure and elements, the information sent/received. One way to understand the operations of the senses is to think about them as images that the mind creates for itself. Artistic intervention (usually) builds upon exactly this logic: representation of images generated in mind, supplementing or even supplanting the existing collection of inner images with new, created ones. Yet, in case of proprioception the only means to interfere with and augment these inner images is on bodily level. Hence, the question of communication through images (or representations) should be extended towards a more complex theory of embodied perception. Drawing on phenomenology, cognitive science, and techno-cultural studies, I focus on the potential of biofeedback technologies to challenge and transform our self-perception by conditioning new pathways of apprehension (sometimes by creating mechanisms of direct stimulation of neural activity). I am particularly interested in how the awareness of the self (grounded in the felt relationality of our body parts) is most significantly activated at the moments of disturbance of balance, in situations of perplexity and disorientation. Projects by Marco Donnarumma, Sean Montgomery, and other artists working with biofeedback aesthetically validate and instantiate current research about neuro-plasticity, with technologically mediated sensory augmentation as one catalyst of this process. Augmentation as Representation: Proprioception and Proprioceptive Media Representation has been one of the key ways to comprehend reality. But representation also constitutes a spatial relation of distancing and separation: the spectator encounters an object placed in front of him, external to him. Thus, representation is associated more with an analytical, rather than synthetic, methodology because it implies detachment and division into parts. Both methods involve relation, yet in the case of representation there is a more distinct element of distance between the representing subject and represented object. Representation is always a form of augmentation: it extends our abilities to see the "other", otherwise invisible sides and qualities of the objects of reality. Representation is key to both science and art, yet in case of the latter, what is represented is not a (claimed) "objective" scheme of reality, but rather images of the imaginary, inner reality (even figurative painting always presents a particular optical and psychological perspective, to say nothing about forms of abstract art). There are certain kinds of art (visual arts, music, dance, etc.) that deal with different senses and thus, build their specific representational structures. Proprioception is one of the senses that occupies relatively marginal position in artistic production (which is exactly because of the specificity of its representational nature and because it does not create a sense of an external object. The term "proprioception" comes from Latin propius, or "one's own", "individual", and capio, cepi – "to receive", "to perceive". It implies a sense of one's self felt as a relational unity of parts of the body most vividly discovered in movement and in effort employed in it. The loss of proprioception usually means loss of bodily orientation and a feeling of one's body (Sacks 43-54). On the other hand, in case of additional stimulation and training of this sense (not only via classical cyber-devices, like cyber-helmets, gloves, etc. that set a different optics, but also techniques of different kinds of altered states of mind, e.g. through psychotropics, but also through architecture of virtual space and acoustics) a sense of disorientation that appears at first changes towards some analogue of reactions of enthusiasm, excitement discovery, and emotion of approaching new horizons. What changes is not only perception of external reality, but a sense of one's self: the self is felt as fluid, flexible, with penetrable borders. Proprioception implies initial co-existence of the inner and outer space on the basis of originary difference and individuality/specificity of the occupied position. Yet, because they are related, the "external" and "other" already feels as "one's own", and this is exactly what causes the sense of presence. Among the many possible connections that the body, in its sense of proprioception, is always already ready for, only a certain amount gets activated. The result of proprioception is a special kind of meta-stable internal image. This image may not coincide with the optical, auditory, or haptic image. According to Brian Massumi, proprioception translates the exertions and ease of the body's encounters with objects into a muscular memory of relationality. This is the cumulative memory of skill, habit, posture. At the same time as proprioception folds tactility in, it draws out the subject's reactions to the qualities of the objects it perceives through all five senses, bringing them into the motor realm of externalizable response. (59) This internal image is not mediated by anything, though it depends directly on the relations between the parts. It cannot be grasped because it is by definition fluid and dynamic. The position in one point is replaced here by a position-in-movement (point-in-movement). "Movement is not indexed by position. Rather, the position is born in movement, from the relation of movement towards itself" (Massumi 179). Philosopher of "extended mind" Andy Clark notes that we should distinguish between a real body schema (non-conscious configuration) and a body image (conscious construct) (Clark). It is the former that is important to understand, and yet is the most challenging. Due to its fluidity and self-referentiality, proprioception is not presentable to consciousness (the unstable internal image that it creates resides in consciousness but cannot be grasped and thus re-presented). A feeling/sense, it is not bound by sensible forms that would serve as means of objectification and externalization. As Barbara Montero observes, while the objects of vision and hearing, i.e. the most popular senses involved in the arts, are beyond one's body, sense of proprioception relates directly to the bodily sensation, it does not represent any external objects, but the sensory itself (231). These characteristics of proprioception help to reframe the question of augmentation as mediation: in the case of proprioception, the medium of sensation is the very relational structure of the body itself, irrespective of the "exteroceptive" (tactile) or "interoceptive" (visceral) dimensions of sensibility. The body is understood, then, as the "body without image,” and its proprioceptive effect can then be described as "the sensibility proper to the muscles and ligaments" (Massumi 58). Proprioception in (Media) Art One of the most convincing ways of externalization and (re)presentation of the data of proprioception is through re-production of its structure and its artificial enhancement with the help of technology. This can be achieved in at least two ways: by setting up situations and environments that emphasize self-perspective and awareness of perception, and by presenting measurements of bio-data and inviting into dialogue with them. The first strategy may be connected to disorientation and shifted perspective that are created in immersive virtual environments that make the role of otherwise un-trackable, fluid sense of proprioception actually felt and cognized. These effects are closely related to the nuances of perception of space, for instance, to spatial illusion. Practice of spatial illusion in the arts traces its history as far back as Roman frescos, trompe l’oeil, as well as phantasmagorias, like magic lantern. Geometrically, the system of the 360º image is still the most effective in producing a sense of full immersion—either in spaces from panoramas, Stereopticon, Cinéorama to CAVE (Computer Augmented Virtual Environments), or in devices for an individual spectator’s usage, like a stereoscope, Sensorama and more recent Head Mounted Displays (HMD). All these devices provide a sense of hermetic enclosure and bodily engagement with its scenes (realistic or often fantastical). Their images are frameless and thus immeasurable (lack of the sense of proportion provokes feeling of disorientation), image apparatus and the image itself converge here into an almost inseparable total unity: field of vision is filled, and the medium becomes invisible (Grau 198-202; 248-255). Yet, the constructed image is even more frameless and more peculiarly ‘mental’ in environments created on the basis of objectless or "immaterial" media, like light or sound; or in installations prioritizing haptic sensation and in responsive architectures, i.e. environments that transform physically in reaction to their inhabitants. The examples may include works by Olafur Eliasson that are centered around the issues of conscious perception and employ various optical and other apparata (mirrors, curved surfaces, coloured glass, water systems) to shift the habitual perspective and make one conscious of the subtle changes in the environment depending on one's position in space (there have been instances of spectators in Eliasson's installations falling down after trying to lean against an apparent wall that turned out to be a mere optical construct.). Figure 1: Olafur Eliasson, Take Your Time, 2008. © Olafur Eliasson Studio. In his classic H2OExpo project for Delta Expo in 1997, the Dutch architect Lars Spuybroek experimented with the perception of instability. There is no horizontal surface in the pavilion; floors, composed of interconnected elliptical volumes, transform into walls and walls into ceilings, promoting a sense of fluidity and making people respond by falling, leaning, tilting and "experiencing the vector of one’s own weight, and becoming sensitized to the effects of gravity" (Schwartzman 63). Along the way, specially installed sensors detect the behaviour of the ‘walker’ and send signals to the system to contribute further to the agenda of imbalance and confusion by changing light, image projection, and sound.Figure 2: Lars Spuybroek, H2OExpo, 1994-1997. © NOX/ Lars Spuybroek. Philip Beesley’s Hylozoic Ground (2010) is also a responsive environment filled by a dense organic network of delicate illuminated acrylic tendrils that can extend out to touch the visitor, triggering an uncanny mixture of delight and discomfort. The motif of pulsating movement was inspired by fluctuations in coral reefs and recreated via the system of precise sensors and microprocessors. This reference to an unfamiliar and unpredictable natural environment, which often makes us feel cautious and ultra-attentive, is a reminder of our innate ability of proprioception (a deeply ingrained survival instinct) and its potential for a more nuanced, intimate, emphatic and bodily rooted communication. Figure 3: Philip Beesley, Hylozoic Ground, 2010. © Philip Beesley Architect Inc. Works of this kind stimulate awareness of both the environment and one's own response to it. Inviting participants to actively engage with the space, they evoke reactions of self-reflexivity, i.e. the self becomes the object of its own exploration and (potentially) transformation. Another strategy of revealing the processes of the "body without image" is through representing various kinds of bio-data, bodily affective reactions to certain stimuli. Biosignal monitoring technologies most often employed include EEG (Electroencephalogram), EMG (Electromyogram), GSR (Galvanic Skin Response), ECG (Electrocardiogram), HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and others. Previously available only in medical settings and research labs, many types of sensors (bio and environmental) now become increasingly available (bio-enabled products ranging from cardio watches—an instance of the "quantified self" trend—to brain wave-controlled video games). As the representatives of the DIY makers community put it: "By monitoring some phenomena (biofeedback) you can train yourself to modulate them, possibly improving your emotional state. Biosensing lets you interact more naturally with digital systems, creating cyborg-like extensions of your body that overcome disabilities or provide new abilities. You can also share your bio-signals, if you choose, to participate in new forms of communication" (Montgomery). What is it about these technologies besides understanding more accurately the unconscious and invisible signals? The critical question in relation to biofeedback data is about the adequacy of the transference of the initial signal, about the "new" brought by the medium, as well as the ontological status of the resulting representation. These data are reflections of something real, yet themselves have a different weight, also providing the ground for all sorts of simulative methods and creation of mixed realities. External representations, unlike internal, are often attributed a prosthetic nature that is treated as extensions of existing skills. Besides serving their direct purpose (for instance, maps give detailed picture of a distant location), these extensions provide certain psychological effects, such as disorientation, displacement, a shift in a sense of self and enhancement of the sense of presence. Artistic experiments with bio-data started in the 1960s most famously with employing the method of sonification. Among the pioneers were the composers Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, David Rosenblum, Erkki Kurenemi, Pierre Henry, and others. Today's versions of biophysical performance may include not only acoustic, but also visual interpretation, as well as subtle narrative scenarios. An example can be Marco Donnarumma's Hypo Chrysos, a piece that translates visceral strain in sound and moving images. The title refers to the type of a punishing trial in one of the circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy: the eternal task of carrying heavy rocks is imitated by the artist-performer, while the audience can feel the bodily tension enhanced by sound and imagery. The state of the inner body is, thus, amplified, or augmented. The sense of proprioception experienced by the performer is translated into media perceivable by others. In this externalized form it can also be shared, i.e. released into a space of inter-subjectivity, where it receives other, collective qualities and is not perceived negatively, in terms of pressure. Figure 4: Marco Donnarumma, Hypo Chrysos, 2011. © Marco Donnarumma. Another example can be an installation Telephone Rewired by the artist-neuroscientist Sean Montgomery. Brainwave signals are measured from each visitor upon the entrance to the installation site. These individual data then become part of the collective archive of the brainwaves of all the participants. In the second room, the viewer is engulfed by pulsing light and sound that mimic endogenous brain waveforms of the previous viewers. As in the experience of Donnarumma's performance, this process encourages tuning in to the inner state of the other and finding resonating states in one's own body. It becomes a tool for self-exploration, self-knowledge, and self-control, as well as for developing skills of collective being, of shared body-mind topologies. Synchronization of mental and bodily states of multiple people serves here a broader and deeper goal of training collaborative and empathic abilities. An immersive experience, it triggers deep embodied neural circuits, reaching towards the most authentic reactions not mediated by conscious procedures and judgment. Figure 5: Sean Montgomery, Telephone Rewired, 2013. © Sean Montgomery. Conclusion The potential of biofeedback as a strategy for art projects is a rich area that artists have only begun to explore. The layer of the imaginary and the fictional (which makes art special and different from, for instance, science) can add a critical dimension to understanding the processes of augmentation and mediation. As the described examples demonstrate, art is an investigative journey that can be engaging, surprising, and awakening towards the more subtle and acute forms of thinking and feeling. This astuteness and percipience are especially needed as media and technologies penetrate and affect our very abilities to apprehend reality. We need new tools to make independent and individual judgment. The sense of proprioception establishes a productive challenge not only for science, but also for the arts, inviting a search for new mechanisms of representing the un-presentable and making shareable and communicable what is, by definition, individual, fluid, and ungraspable. Collaborative cognition emerging from the augmentation of proprioception that is enabled by biofeedback technologies holds distinct promise for exploration of not only subjective, but also inter-subjective states and aesthetic strategies of inducing them. References Beesley, Philip. Hylozoic Ground. 2010. Venice Biennale, Venice. Clark, Andy, and David J. Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58.1 (1998):7-19. Donnarumma, Marco. Hypo Chrysos: Action Art for Vexed Body and Biophysical Media. 2011. Xth Sense Biosensing Wearable Technology. MADATAC Festival, Madrid. Eliasson, Olafur. Take Your Time, 2008. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre; Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Montero, Barbara. "Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.2 (2006): 231-242. Montgomery, Sean, and Ira Laefsky. "Biosensing: Track Your Body's Signals and Brain Waves and Use Them to Control Things." Make 26. 1 Oct. 2013 ‹http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol26?pg=104#pg104›. Sacks, Oliver. "The Disembodied Lady". The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Philippines: Summit Books, 1985. Schwartzman, Madeline, See Yourself Sensing. Redefining Human Perception. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2011. Spuybroek, Lars. Waterland. 1994-1997. H2O Expo, Zeeland, NL.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media? How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use? What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation? What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”? Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation? Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators? How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. Barlow, Aaron. The Rise of the Blogosphere. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000. Boriss, Steve. “Citizen Journalism Is Dead. Expert Journalism Is the Future.” The Future of News. 28 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/11/28/citizen-journalism-is-dead- expert-journalism-is-the-future/>. Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Rev. ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Campbell, Vincent. Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context. New York: Arnold, 2004. Carlile, Paul R., and Clayton M. Christensen. “The Cycles of Building Theory in Management Research.” Innosight working paper draft 6. 6 Jan. 2005. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.innosight.com/documents/Theory%20Building.pdf>. Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit>. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm>. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all>. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy>. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm>. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out>. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine>. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39>. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Burns, Alex. "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (Apr. 2008) "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media?How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use?What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation?What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”?Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation?Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators?How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. 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Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit >. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm >. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all >. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy >. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm >. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out >. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine >. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39 >. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

Area Studies and Study Abroad in the 21st Century The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning. - Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker, Thinking for a Living, xiii Few today would argue with the conviction that nearly every phase of our daily lives is shaped and informed by global societies, corporations, events and ideas. More than ever before, it is possible to claim that we are increasingly aware of the dynamic power and penetrating effects of global flows on information, technology, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and languages. Borderless, spaceless and timeless, such sources of knowledge, it appears, are effortlessly digested and disseminated without clocks, calendars, or physical limitations. It is, of course, a mistake to believe that packages of “instant” knowledge that appear to wing their way at megahertz speeds in and through our earthly lives account for all or nearly all that there is to know—or, more importantly, to learn—about our communities, regions and the globe itself. On the contrary: the “knowing” about how to live, to work, to prosper, or to understand ourselves and those around us is not what educators mean when they speak of intellectual achievement and practical understanding. It is the “learning” about us, our societies and our global knowledge that lies at the heart of the international educator’s life work, and it is the learning that is the most controversial aspect of education. The act of “learning,” in fact, is less objective and more subjective, is less passive and more active, and is less superficial and more profound in each of our lives. By definition, a responsible learner is one who takes on the intellectual challenge and the social and personal obligation to leave this globe a better place for those who follow, who assumes the life work of influencing the lives of others, and who is committed to making the best of every opportunity both within the reach and beyond the vision of the mind’s eye. Study abroad has traditionally been viewed as a time of seeing and viewing, however passively, the differences and similarities of other peoples, societies and cultures. The period of knowing about what others do or say can occur at any time during one’s life; however, the “knowing” of studying abroad is accomplished in the college years prior to the accumulated knowledge about practical learning and living. In this respect, study abroad has been seen as an experience which may or may not invest the students in greater or lesser insights about the peoples, societies or cultures around them. Further, when study abroad is bound up with travel or movement from place to place, it can become a passive act, so much so that travel rather than learning becomes the goal of the study abroad experience. Simply put, the more that one travels, the more, it is argued, one learns. Furthermore, while seen as desirable for “classroom learning,” some would say that no amount of academic preparation appears to be useful in the enterprise of the travel experience, since so many experiences are unpredictable, individualized and, in some cases, arbitrary. From the perspective of study abroad, it might be said that the gods of area studies no longer completely fulfill our students’ needs, while the gods of global studies have not yet fulfilled their promises. Janus-like, international educators look in one direction at a still highly intense and valued picture of local cultures and identities, and in another direction toward an increasingly common culture, economy and society. The former appears to celebrate the differences and “uncommonness” of the human experience while the latter smoothes over the differences to underscore the commonalities and sameness of our contemporary world. The choice appears to be between the particular and the universal, the local and the global. Academic preparations, such as area studies programs, appear to be unnecessary for the individualized forms of learning, such as study abroad. Indeed, since an area studies preparation may raise or strengthen stereotypical perceptions of the overseas peoples, societies and cultures, it has been argued that it best be left aside. In this context, students are viewed as a tabula rasa on which new discoveries from living and studying overseas leave an imprint or impression. It seems that sending as many students as possible in as many directions as possible has become the dominant study abroad objective. Thus, “whole world” presentations and documentation often rely on the “other” as the learning objective with little or no attempt to discriminate or distinguish the levels of learning that such “whole world” immersion entails. In recent times, additional concerns about liability, health, safety and comfort levels have been added to the “pre-departure” orientations and training programs. The “student as self-learner” continues to be viewed and treated as a “customer knowledge-consumer” within both U.S. private and public colleges and universities. In the age of “globalization,” it is the conviction of the editors of Frontiers that knowledge consumption is only a small aspect of the 21st century international educators’ arsenal. More importantly, it will be argued in this special issue on area studies and Study Abroad that the intellectual development of the U.S. undergraduate needs to be enhanced with skills of self-learning and transdisciplinary perspectives on local and regional cultures and languages. The authors contributing to this special thematic issue of Frontiers have been asked to bring their state-of-the-art thinking on area studies to bear on the key question confronting study abroad: How does specialized understanding of geographical and cultural areas of the world enhance and strengthen undergraduate learning on and beyond our campuses? In other words, in what ways do area studies inform overseas learning through the activity of study abroad? The variety of responses demonstrates two principal ways in which area studies has begun to reformulate its goals and strategies. First, area studies reaffirms a commitment to local and regional comprehensive research and teaching, and redefines its mission in terms of the need to come to grips with local knowledge and specific social and cultural practices within a globalized world. Second, area studies specialists question long-held definitions of concepts, including those of “geographical area” and “globalization,” in order to maximize contributions to U.S. undergraduate learning. David Ludden begins our issue with a review of the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation’s understanding of the transition in area studies from the Sputnik era to the globalization era. Ludden notes the faculty dilemma in working in an “area.” He points out the political interests of the Cold War for public funding of such specialized academic skills, skills which, whether funded by the government or not, were and continue to be defined by the scholar first and then by finances. Drawing on his own experience at the South Asia Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Ludden takes the reader through the intellectual rationale for area studies, and how that rationale is being redefined in favor of stronger area studies in the present globalization era. Gregory Kulacki’s study of China and the Chinese experience points accurately to one approach to defining area studies; that is, in terms of the peoples and cultures studied. In a sense, Kulacki makes it clear that Chinese studies is “legitimate” and has authority as long as it reflects the Chinese themselves, their experiences and lives. Ann Curthoys, on the other hand, notes the growing importance of defining Australians and Australian studies not only in terms of the changing experiences of contemporary Australia, but also in terms of the demands of non-Australians, who ask for more precision in defining Australians, their history, society and cultures. Richard Beach and George Sherman take on a more difficult matter, at least from the viewpoint of U.S. faculty and students. Canada is rarely seen as a study abroad site for U.S. students, not only because of its geographical position but also for its cultural and historical proximity. The overall U.S. view, albeit unflattering, is that Canada and Canadians are very much like the U.S. and Americans, so why study in Canada? Beach and Sherman argue that history, languages, and borders do make a difference, both physically as well as culturally. Using the argument of the previous area studies specialists, they are interested in the ways that Canadians have shaped and informed their cultural and social identities in the teeth of U.S. economic and political domination in the region. The implications of globalization are, perhaps, more immediately evident in the Canadian case than in any other world region. U.S. students would do well to observe the processes of adaptation and acculturation first-hand by studying and living in Canada. James Petras gives us a broader vista of regional adaptation to the economic and political forces of globalization with his essay on Latin America. Indeed, Latin America has a dynamic similar to that of Canada due to its physical, cultural and historical proximity to the U.S. It would be a mistake to see Latin America only in terms of the north-south regional dynamics, since Europe, Asia and Africa have also shaped both past and present structures and institutions within that region in ways far more dramatic than has the United States. Study abroad, Petras reminds us, is an excellent way of learning directly about Latin American societies, cultures and politics from Latin Americans themselves, a learning that may be widely different from the official U.S. diplomatic and corporate perspectives. Finally, the very familiar world regions, such as England, offer in some cases more challenges to the U.S. undergraduate than might be expected. Jane Edwards looks at Britain and all that U.S. students may or may not know about that culture and society. The study of Britain lends itself, Edwards argues, to more than the usual challenges, due to the preconceived notions that U.S. students bring with them to, say, London. Understanding the “European-ness” of Britain and its historic relationship with continental Western Europe will justify the need to see Britain as less familiar and more complex, thus necessitating the need to study, visit and live in parts of Britain and Western Europe. In this case, the area does define the country, its identity and culture in a historical interplay of social, cultural and economic forces. David Lloyd, Philip Khoury and Russell Bova invite the reader to return to large regional perspectives through African, Middle Eastern and Russian area studies. David Lloyd presents an analysis of the broad and immediate contexts of African studies. While recognizing the difficulty of establishing consistently causal links between African studies and study abroad in Africa, he delineates the significance of local, experience-based study for the development of collaborative African studies research. Lloyd argues that the benefits of study abroad in Africa to African studies belie the relatively small number of students involved. Further, assessment for funding and other purposes needs to utilize criteria that take into account the challenges of on-site study in Africa and the depth of post-study abroad participation not just in African studies per se, but in other related areas as well. Considering the recent past of Middle East studies, Philip Khoury charts its response to post-Cold War criticism. He illustrates new directions the field is taking towards including different geographic areas, and new emphasis in organizational priorities, noting the importance of funding for providing first-hand contact for students in Middle Eastern studies with scholars from the Middle East. Khoury assesses the impact of recent historical and political events in the area on Middle Eastern studies, and looks toward more inclusive research efforts. Russell Bova examines another region that has undergone considerable political, social and economic change in the 20th century. Having moved from empire to soviet socialist states and now to a confederation of nation states, Russia and, naturally, Russian area studies, offer an excellent example of local and regional complexities both in the nomenclature of the region and in the changes in Russian studies programs. Bova illustrates the need to understand the specific dynamics of local communities in their relationship to larger administrative units such as provinces, states and national capitals. In referring to the “double transition” of contemporary Russia, Bova reminds us that globalization is both a grass roots and elite process with many unlikely “bedfellows” that is also changing more rapidly each decade than had been the case fifty years ago. Finally, Richard Falk and Nancy Kanach collaborate to discuss the ways in which globalization and study abroad are emerging in the post-Cold War period. The sudden shifts of economic and political power make our world more fragile and more difficult to comprehend without considering the “computer gap” that is rapidly leaving whole communities and even nations in a more uneven relationship with the power brokers than ever before. The need to reflect with care and precision through area studies is complemented by the additional pressing need to study, see and learn outside of the U.S. Globalization means promoting study abroad and reaffirming the strengths of local and regional studies. Taken together, these essays invite international educators to reconsider notions of learning before, during and after study abroad. The writers view study abroad as an opportunity for social and intellectual engagement with other peoples and with oneself. The essays point to a variety of ways of intellectually preparing our students for their initial encounters with sets of real-life global experiences. Reflecting on such engagement and encounters allows students to begin to formulate, with increasing sophistication, specific and general concepts about individual differences, local and regional commonalities, and the global transformations of our present era. In light of the current area studies debates, we might also reconsider approaches to pre-departure preparations, create onsite projects, and reorganize the overseas curricula of study abroad programs themselves. In particular, students can continue to benefit from area and global studies programs back on the home campus upon their return, where they can enter effectively into scholarly debates and continue the learning and personal growth that began while they were abroad. Frontiers welcomes comments and suggestions for future special issues. We see ourselves and our field of international education in greater need of close cooperation with our faculty colleagues both in terms of defining the work of international learning, and in terms of formulating and designing international or global programs. We thus invite our readers to see Frontiers as a forum for such academic exchanges, and promise that Frontiers will respond to articles, essays, book reviews and reviews of resources for study abroad with collegial interest and enthusiasm. We wish to thank especially Brian Whalen, Rhoda Borcherding and our other colleagues on the Editorial Board for their support, encouragement and assistance in completing this special issue. We are particularly pleased with the authors and their willingness to listen to our requests and comments. Thomas Ricks, Villanova University Katharine Krebs, SUNY Binghamton Michael Monahan, Macalester College Suggestions for Further Reading Altbach, Philip G. and Patti McGill Peterson, eds. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response. IIE Research Report Number 29. Annapolis, MD: IIE Books, 1999. This slim volume focuses on principal topics for colleges and universities to consider both locally and globally. Philip Altbach and Todd Davis set the tone of the volume with their “notes for an international dialogue on higher education.” Stressing the need for practical education, the authors also raise issues about the role of technology, the increase in “internationally mobile students,” the global role of graduate education, privatization of higher education, committed faculty and the threats of “managerialized” universities. The eight responses to the opening themes address specific issues for China, India, Africa and South Africa, Latin America, Japan and Europe. The work is a very good discussion text for international educators and their area studies faculty colleagues, and also provides a theoretical basis for the design and development of overseas programs. Stephen R. Graubard, ed. “Education Yesterday, Education Tomorrow.” Daedalus. Vol. 127, No. 4 (Fall, 1998). The eleven authors of this issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences build off the Fall 1995 issue of Daedalus and its topic of “American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal.” While neither accepting nor rejecting the thrust of A Nation at Risk, the authors look both at what has occurred over the past three decades, and at what is on the horizon for the next decade. In stressing reforms of systems and innovative ways of learning, the authors’ discussions invite the international educator to address a variety of ways in which students learn and to challenge the system in which they thrive. WWW. NAFSA.ORG/SECUSSA.WHYSTUDY In 1989, NAFSA and COUNCIL created the Whole World Committee (WWC). Initially chaired by John Sommers and now chaired by Mick Vandenberg, the WWC set out to find ways by which U.S. students could and would choose non-European overseas sites for a semester of study and learning. One of the tasks that the WWC accomplished was the creation of four area study essays on Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. Each essay, entitled “Why Study in …,” addresses basic fears and stereotyping of the non-European world regions. The essays then focus on benefits, health and safety, “getting started,” housing, and practical learning in each of these regions. In newly-attached longer versions, the essays also have a bibliography and more informative texts. The shorter versions were published serially in Transitions Abroad. NAFSA has added two additional important essays to this website, on “Class and Study Abroad” and “An African-American in South Africa.” Overall, the readers of Frontiers will be well-advised to access the articles at the website and consider using all the essays in their pre-departure orientation training, faculty area studies discussion groups, and in welcome-back sessions for returning students. Richard Falk. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999. The thesis of Richard Falk’s critique is that “predatory globalization’ has eroded, if not altogether broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century or so” (p. 3). The breaking of that contract resulted from the state’s “deference to the discipline of global capital” and the neglect of the common good. Falk argues that only the “massing of strong transnational social pressures on the states of the world could alter the political equation to the point where the state could sufficiently recover its autonomy in relation to the world economy.” He demonstrates the emergence of a new kind of transnational politics referred to as “globalization-from-below.” In restoring “global civil society,” this new politics will need to move forward with the project of cosmopolitan democracy, including the protection of human rights. For the international educator, creating overseas programs that allow for a better understanding of the interconnectedness of regional and global levels is an admirable goal. More important, however, are those programs that offer U.S. undergraduates insights into “world order priorities” such as global poverty, protection of the planet, the sources of transnational violence, and “responsible sovereignty” in ways rarely found in traditional classroom learning on our campuses. Mark Tessler, Jodi Nachtwey and Anne Banda. Eds. Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. This edited work addresses a wide range of issues involved in the “rational choice” versus area studies debate that is so well elucidated by David Ludden in the opening article of our special issue. Looking at the “area studies controversy” from the perspective of political scientists, the editors’ Introduction underscores questions that we international educators need to address ourselves. It is valuable to wonder about the “uses and abuses” of area studies in planning our overseas programs, or discussing the “internationalization” of our curricula. It is also critical to understand the Eurocentric and overly-simplistic approaches of the social science “rational choice” models. While agreeing that both area studies and the social science theories and methodologies are necessary for a global understanding, the present work places such questions within the context of the Middle East as a stimulus and a model for increasing the value of research about any country or region.

To use the overworked metaphor of the movie reviewers, Adaptation (2002)—directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman—is that rare Hollywood flower, a “literary” film that succeeds both with the critics and at the box office. But Kaufman’s literary colleagues, his fellow screenwriters whose opinions are rarely noticed by movie reviewers or the public, express their support in more interesting terms. Robert McKee, the real-life screenwriter and teacher played by Brian Cox in the movie, writes about Kaufman as one of the few to “step out of screenwriting anonymity to gain national recognition as an artist—without becoming a director” (131). And the screenwriter Stephen Schiff (Lolita [Adrian Lyne, 1997], The Deep End of the Ocean [Ulu Grosbard, 1999]) embraces the film as a manifesto, claiming that Kaufman’s work offers “redemption” to him and his fellow screenwriters who are “struggling to adapt to the world’s dismissive view of adaptation.” The comments by Kaufman’s colleagues suggest that new respect for the work of adaptation, and the role of the screenwriter go hand in hand. The director—whom auteur theory, the New Wave, and film schools helped to establish as the primary creative agent behind a film—has long overshadowed the screenwriter, but Kaufman’s acclaim as a screenwriter reflects a new sensibility. This was illustrated by the controversy among Academy Award voters in 2002. They found that year’s nominees, including Adaptation, unsettled the Academy’s traditional distinction between “original screenplay” and “adapted screenplay”, debating whether a nominee for best original screenplay, such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwik, 2002), was more like an adaptation, while Adaptation, a nominee for best adapted screenplay, was more like an original screenplay. The Academy’s confusion on this score is not without precedents; nonetheless, as Rick Lyman of The New York Times reports, it led some to wonder, “in an age of narrative deconstruction and ‘reality television’,” whether the distinction between original and adaptation was still valid. If, as the famed critic Alexandre Astruc claimed, the director should be seen as someone who uses the camera as a pen to “write” the movie, then the screenwriter, in Ben Stoltzfus’s words, is increasingly seen as someone who uses the pen to “shoot” the movie. While this appreciation of the screenwriter as an “adaptor” who directs the movie opens new possibilities within Hollywood filmmaking, it also occurs in a Hollywood where TV shows, video games, and rides at Disneyland are adapted to film as readily as literary works once were. Granted, some stand to gain, but who or what is lost in this new hyper-adaptive environment? While there is much to be said for Kaufman’s movie, I suggest its optimistic account of adaptation—both as an existential principle and cinematic practice—is one-sided. Part of the dramatic impact of the movie’s one word title is the way it shoves the act of adaptation out from the wings and places it front and center in the filmmaking process. An amusing depiction of the screenwriter’s marginalisation occurs at the movie’s beginning, immediately following Charlie’s (Nicholas Cage) opening monologue delivered against a black screen. It is presented as a flashback to the making of Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999), the movie for which Kaufman wrote his first screenplay, making him “a name” in Hollywood. Although scripted, the scene is shot with a hand-held video camera and looks as though it is occurring in real time. The central character is John Malkovich in costume as a woman who shouts orders at everyone on the set—deftly illustrating how the star’s power in the new Hollywood enables him or her to become “the director” of the movie. His directions are then followed by ones from the first assistant director and the cinematographer. Meanwhile, Charlie stands silently and awkwardly off to the side, until he is chased away by the first assistant director—not even the director or the cinematographer—who tells him, “You. You’re in the eyeline. Can you please get off the stage?” (Kaufman and Kaufman, 3). There are other references that make the movie’s one-word title evocative. It forces one to think about the biological and literary senses of the word—evolution as a narrative process and narrative as an evolutionary process—lifting the word’s more colloquial meaning of “getting along” to the level of an existential principle. Or, as Laroche (Chris Cooper) explains to Orlean (Meryl Streep), “Adaptation’s a profound process. It means you figure out how to thrive in the world” (Kaufman and Kaufman, 35). But Laroche’s definition of adaptation, which the movie endorses and dramatises, is only half the story. In fact evolutionary science shows that nature’s “losers” vastly outnumber nature’s “winners.” As Peter Bowler expresses it in his historical account of the theory of natural selection, “Evolution becomes a process of trial and error based on massive wastage and the death of vast numbers of unfit creatures”(6). Turning the “profound process” of adaptation into a story about the tiny fraction who “figure out how to thrive in the world” has been done before. It manifested itself in Herbert Spencer’s late-nineteenth-century philosophical “adaptation” of Charles Darwin’s work on natural selection, coining the phrase, “survival of the fittest.” Both the scientist Darwin and the philosopher Spencer, as Bowler points out, would have been horrified at how their work was used to justify the rapacious capitalism and harsh social policies of American industry (301). Nonetheless, although by now largely discredited in the academy, the ideology of social Darwinism persists within the broader culture in various watered-down or subterranean forms. Perhaps in the movie’s violent climax when Laroche is killed by an alligator—a creature that represents one of the more impressive examples of adaptation in the natural world—Kaufman is suggesting the darker side to the story of natural selection in which adaptation is not only a story about the mutable and agile orchid that “figure[s] out how to thrive in the world.” There are no guarantees for the tiny fraction of species that do survive, whether they are as perfectly adapted to their environment as orchids and alligators or, for that matter, individuals like Laroche with his uncanny ability to adapt to whatever life throws at him. But after the movie’s violent eruption, which does away not only with Laroche but also Donald (Nicholas Cage) and in effect Orlean, Charlie emerges as the sole survivor, reassuring the viewer that the story of adaptation is about nature’s winners. The darker side to the story of natural selection is subsumed within the movie’s layers of meta-commentary, which make the violence at the movie’s end an ironic device within Charlie’s personal and artistic evolution—a way for him to maintain a critical distance on the Hollywood conventions he has resisted while simultaneously incorporating them into his art. A cinematically effective montage dramatically represents the process of evolution. However, as with the movie’s one-sided account of adaptation, as a story about those who “figure out how to thrive in the world,” this depiction of evolution is framed, both figuratively and literally, by Charlie’s personal growth—as though the logical and inevitable endpoint of the evolutionary process is the human individual. The montage is instigated by Charlie’s questions to himself, “Why am I here? How did I get here?” and concludes with a close-up on the bawling face of a newborn baby, whom the viewer assumes is Charlie (Kaufman and Kaufman, 3). This assumption is reinforced by the next scene, which begins with a close-up on the face of the adult Charlie who is sweating profusely as he struggles to survive a business luncheon with the attractive studio executive Valerie (Tilda Swinton). Although Orlean’s novel doesn’t provide a feminist reading of Darwin, she does alert her readers to the fact that he was a Victorian man and, as such, his science might reflect the prejudices of his day. In discussing Darwin’s particular fondness for his “‘beloved Orchids’” (47), she recounts his experiments to determine how they release their pollen: “He experimented by poking them with needles, camel-hair brushes, bristles, pencils, and his fingers. He discovered that parts were so sensitive that they released pollen upon the slightest touch, but that ‘moderate degrees of violence’ on the less sensitive parts had no effect ….” (48). In contrast to this humorous view of Darwin as the historically situated man of science, the movie depicts Darwin (Bob Yerkes) as the stereotypical Man of Science. Kaufman does incorporate some of Orlean’s discussion of Darwin’s study of orchids, but the portion he uses advances the screenplay’s sexualisation/romanticisation of Orlean’s relationship with Laroche. At an orchid show, Laroche lectures to Orlean about Darwin’s theory that a particular orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, is pollinated by a moth with a twelve-inch proboscis. When Orlean takes exception to Laroche for telling her that proboscis means “nose,” he chides her, “Hey, let’s not get off the subject. This isn’t a pissing contest” (23). After this scene bristling with phallic imagery—and with his female pupil sufficiently chastised—Laroche proceeds to wax poetic about pollination as a “little dance” (24) between flower and insect. “[The] only barometer you have is your heart …” (24) he tells Orlean, who is clearly impressed by the depth of his soliloquy. On the literary and social level, a one-sided reading of adaptation as a positive process may be more justified, although here too one may question what the movie slights or ignores. What about the human ability to adapt to murderous and dehumanising social systems: slavery, fascism, colonialism, and so on? Or, more immediately, even if one acknowledges the writer’s “maturity,” as T.S. Eliot famously phrased it, in “stealing” from his or her source, what about the element of compromise implicit in the concept of adaptation? Several critics question whether the film’s ending, despite the movie’s self-referential ironies, ultimately reinforces the Hollywood formulas it sets out to critique. But only Stuart Klawans of The Nation connects it to the movie’s optimistic, one-sided view of adaptation. “Still,” he concludes, “I’m disappointed by that crashing final act. I wonder about the environmental pressure that must bear down on today’s filmmakers as they struggle to adapt, even when they’re as prodigious as Charlie Kaufman.” Oddly, for a self-reflexive movie about the creative process, it has little to say about the “environmental pressure” of the studio system and its toll on the artist. There are incisive character sketches of studio types, such as the attractive and painfully earnest executive, Valerie, who hires Charlie to write the screenplay for Orlean’s book, or Charlie’s sophomoric agent, Marty (Ron Livingston), who daydreams about anal sex with the women in his office while talking to his client. And, of course, a central plot line of the movie is the competition, at least as one of them sees it, between Charlie and his twin brother Donald. Charlie, the self-conscious Hollywood screenwriter who is stymied by his success and notions of artistic integrity, suffers defeat after humiliating defeat as Donald, the screenwriting neophyte who will stoop to any cliché or cheap device to advance his screenplay, receives a six-figure contract for his first effort: a formulaic and absurd serial-killer movie, The Three, that their mother admires as a cross between Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991). Because of the emotional arc of the brothers’ personal relationship, however, any qualms about Donald selling out look churlish at best. When Donald excitedly tells his brother about his good fortune, Charlie responds approvingly, rather than with one of the snide putdowns the viewer has grown to expect from him, signaling not only Charlie’s acceptance of his brother but the new awareness that will enable him to overcome his writer’s block. While there is a good deal of satire directed at the filmmaking process—as distinct from the studio system—it is ultimately a cherishing sort of satire. It certainly doesn’t reach the level of indictment found in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) or Joel and Ethan Cohen’s Barton Fink (1991) for example. But the movie most frequently compared to Adaptation is Frederico Fellini’s masterpiece of auteurist self-reflexivity, 8 ½ (1963). This is high praise indeed, although the enthusiastic endorsements of some film critics do not stop there. Writing for the Observer, Philip French cites such New Wave movies as Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mepris (1963), Francois Truffaut’s La Nuit Americaine (1973), and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Trans-Europ-Express (1966). However, in passing, he qualifies the comparison by pointing out that, unlike the French auteurs, “Kaufman and Jonze are concerned with turning someone else’s idea into a piece of commercial cinema.” Some would argue the filmmakers’ ability to playfully adapt Orlean’s artistry to the commercial environment of Hollywood is what saves Adaptation’s meta-commentary from the didactic and elitist seriousness of many of its literary and cinematic precursors (Miller). This is a valid preference, but it slights the “environmental pressure” of the new studio system and how it sets the terms for success and failure. While Fellini and the New Wave auteurs were not entirely free of commercial cinema, they could claim an opposition to it that Kaufman, even if he wanted to, cannot. Film scholar Timothy Corrigan argues that the convergence of the new media, in particular television and film, radically alters the meaning and function of “independent” cinema: a more flexible and varied distribution network has responded to contemporary audiences, who now have the need and the power to pick and choose among the glut of images in contemporary television and film culture. Within this climate and under these conditions, the different, the more peculiar, the controversial enter the marketplace not as an opposition but as a revision and invasion of an audience market defined as too large and diverse by the dominant blockbusters. (25-6) Corrigan’s argument explains the qualitative differences between the sense of adaptation employed by the older auteurs and the new sense of adaptation required by contemporary auteurs fully incorporated within the new studio system and its new distribution technologies. Not everyone is disturbed by this state of affairs. A. O. Scott, writing for the New York Times, notes a similar “two-tier system” in Hollywood—with studios producing lavish “critic- and audience-proof franchise pictures” on the one hand and “art” or “independent” movies on the other—which strikes him as “a pretty good arrangement.” Based on what Adaptation does and does not say about the studio system, one imagines that Kaufman would, ultimately, concur. In contrast, however, a comment by Michel Gondry, the director Kaufman worked with on Human Nature (2001), gives a better indication of the costs incurred by adapting to the current system when he expresses his frustration with the delayed release of the picture by New Line Cinema: ‘First they were, like, “O.K. if Rush Hour 2 [Brett Ratner, 2001] does good business, then we’re in a good position,”’ Mr. Gondry said. ‘You fight to do something original and then you depend on Rush Hour 2 for the success of your movie? It’s like you are the last little thing on the bottom of the scale and you’re looking up watching the planets colliding. It’s been so frustrating.’ (Rochlin) No doubt, when Fellini and Godard thought about doing “something original” they also had considerable obstacles to face. But at least the success of 8 ½ or Le Mepris wasn’t dependent upon the success of films like Rush Hour 2. Given this sort of environmental pressure, as Klawans and Corrigan remind us, we need to keep in mind what might be lost as the present system’s winners adapt to what is generally understood as “a pretty good arrangement.” Another indication of the environmental pressure on artists in Hollywood’s present arrangement comes from Adaptation’s own story of adaptation—not the one told by Kaufman or his movie, but the one found in Susan Orlean’s account of how she and her novel were “adapted” by the filmmakers. Although Orlean is an enthusiastic supporter of the movie, when she first read the screenplay, she thought, “the whole thing ‘seemed completely nuts’” and wondered whether she wanted “that much visibility” (Boxer). She decided to give her consent on the condition they not use her name. This solution, however, wouldn’t work because she didn’t want her book “in a movie with someone else’s name on it” (Boxer). Forced to choose between an uncomfortable visibility and the loss of authorship, she chose the former. Of course, her predicament is not Kaufman’s fault; nonetheless, it is important to stress that the process of adaptation did not enforce a similar “choice” upon him. Her situation, like that of Gondry, indicates that successful adaptation to any system is a story of losing as well as winning. References Astruc, Alexandre. “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: Le Camera-Stylo.” Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Ed. Timothy Corrigan. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999, 158-62. Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. 3rd ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2003. Boxer, Sarah. “New Yorker Writer Turns Gun-Toting Floozy? That’s Showbiz.” The New York Times 9 Dec. 2002, sec. E. Corrigan, Timothy. A Cinema without Walls. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991. Eliot, T.S. “Philip Massinger.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. 1922. http://www.bartleby.com/> French, Philip. “The Towering Twins.” The Observer 2 Mar. 2003. Guardian Unlimited. 12 Feb. 2007. http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review>. Kaufman, Charlie and Donald Kaufman. Adaptation: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket Press, 2002. Klawans, Stuart. “Adeptations.” The Nation 23 Dec. 2002. 12 Febr. 2007. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021223/klawans>. Lyman, Rick. “A Jumble of Categories for Screenwriter Awards.” The New York Times 21 Feb. 2003. McKee, Robert. “Critical Commentary.” Adaptation: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket Press, 2002. 131-5. Miller, Laura. “This Is the Way We Live Now.” The New York Times Magazine 17 Nov. 2002. Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. Rochlin, Margy. “From an Untamed Mind Springs an Ape Man.” The New York Times 7 Apr. 2002. Schiff, Stephen. “All Right, You Try: Adaptation Isn’t Easy.” The New York Times 1 Dec. 2002. Scott, A. O. “As Requested My Thoughts on the Oscars.” The New York Times 9 Feb. 2003. Stoltzfus, Ben. “Shooting with the Pen.” Writing in a Film Age. Ed. Keith Cohen. Niwot, CO: UP of Colorado, 1991. 246-63. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Rizzo, Sergio. "Adaptation and the Art of Survival." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/02-rizzo.php>. APA Style Rizzo, S. (May 2007) "Adaptation and the Art of Survival," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/02-rizzo.php>.

Western notions of authors’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), as expressed within copyright law, maintain a potentially fraught relationship with a range of philosophical and theoretical positions on writing and authorship that have developed within contemporary Western thinking. For Roland Barthes, authorship is compromised, de-identified and multiplied by the very nature of writing: ‘Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing’ (142). Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari follow a related line of thought in A Thousand Plateaus: ‘Write, form a rhizome, increase your territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point where it becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency’ (11). Similarly, in Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida suggests that ‘Writing is that forgetting of the self, that exteriorization, the contrary of the interiorizing memory’ (24). To the extent that these philosophical and theoretical positions emerge within the practices of creative writers as remixes of appropriation, homage and/or pastiche, prima facie they problematize the commercial rights of writers as outlined in law. The case of Kathy Acker often comes up in such discussions. Acker’s 1984 novel Blood and Guts in High School, for example, incorporates techniques that have attracted the charge of plagiarism as this term is commonly defined. (Peter Wollen notes this in his aptly named essay ‘Death [and Life] of the Author.’) For texts like Acker’s, the comeback against charges of plagiarism usually involves underscoring the quotient of creativity involved in the re-combination or ‘remixing’ of the parts of the original texts. (Pure repetition would, it would seem, be much harder to defend.) ‘Plagiarism’, so-called, was simply one element of Acker’s writing technique; Robert Lort nuances plagiarism as it applies to Acker as ‘pseudo-plagiarism’. According to Wollen, ‘as she always argued, it wasn’t really plagiarism because she was quite open about what she did.’ As we shall demonstrate in more detail later on, however, there is another and, we suggest, more convincing reason why Acker’s work ‘wasn’t really plagiarism.’ This relates to her conscious interest in calligraphy and to her (perhaps unconscious) appropriation of a certain strand of Chinese philosophy. All the same, within the Western context, the consistent enforcement of copyright law guarantees the rights of authors to control the distribution of their own work and thus its monetised value. The author may be ‘dead’ in writing—just the faintest trace of remixed textuality—but he/she is very much ‘alive’ as in recognised at law. The model of the author as free-standing citizen (as a defined legal entity) that copyright law employs is unlikely to be significantly eroded by the textual practices of authors who tarry artistically in the ‘de-authored territories’ mapped by figures like Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, and Derrida. Crucially, disputes concerning copyright law and the ethics of remix are resolved, within the Western context, at the intersection of relatively autonomous creative and legal domains. In the West, it is seen that these two domains are related within the one social fabric; each nuances the other (as Acker’s example shows in the simultaneity of her legal/commercial status as an author and her artistic practice as a ‘remixer’ of the original works of other authors). Legal and writing issues co-exist even as they fray each other’s boundaries. And in Western countries there is force to the law’s operations. However, the same cannot be said of the situation with respect to copyright law in China. Chinese artists are traditionally regarded as being aloof from mundane legal and commercial matters, with the consequence that the creative and the legal domains tend to ‘miss each other’ within the fabric of Chinese society. To this extent, the efficacy of the law is muted in China when it comes into contact with circumstances of authorship, writing, originality and creativity. (In saying this though, we do not wish to fall into the trap of cultural essentialism: in this article, ‘China’ and ‘The West’ are placeholders for variant cultural tendencies—clustered, perhaps, around China and its disputed territories such as Taiwan on the one hand, and around America on the other—rather than homogeneous national/cultural blocs.) Since China opened its system to Western capitalist economic activity in the 1980s, an ongoing criticism, sourced mainly out of the West, has been that the country lacks proper respect for notions of authorship and, more directly, for authorship’s derivative: copyright law. Tellingly, it took almost ten years of fierce negotiations between elements of the capitalist lobby in China and the Legislative Bureau to make the Seventh National People’s Congress pass the first Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China on 7 September 1990. A law is one thing though, and adherence to the law is another. Jayanthi Iyengar of Asia Times Online reports that ‘the US government estimates that piracy within China [of all types of products] costs American companies $20-24 billion a year in damages…. If one includes European and Japanese firms, the losses on account of Chinese piracy is in excess of $50 billion annually.’ In 2008, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported that more than 99% of all music files in China are pirated. In the same year, Cara Anna wrote in The Seattle Times that, in desperation at the extent of Chinese infringement of its Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), Microsoft has deployed an anti-piracy tactic that blacks out the screens of computers detected running a fake copy of Windows. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has filed complaints from many countries against China over IPRs. Iyengar also reports that, under such pressure, the State Intellectual Property Office in Beijing has vowed it will continue to reinforce awareness of IPRs in order to better ensure their protection. Still, from the Western perspective at least, progress on this extremely contentious issue has been excruciatingly slow. Such a situation in respect of Chinese IPRs, however, should not lead to the conclusion that China simply needs to catch up with the more ‘morally advanced’ West. Rather, the problematic relations of the law and of creativity in China allow one to discern, and to trace through ancient Chinese history and philosophy, a different approach to remix that does not come into view so easily within Western countries. Different materialisms of writing and authorship come into play across global space, with different effects. The resistance to both the introduction and the policing of copyright law in China is, we think, the sign of a culture that retains something related to authorship and creativity that Western culture only loosely holds onto. It provides a different way of looking at remix, in the guise of what the West would tend to label plagiarism, as a practice, especially, of creativity. The ‘death’ of the author in China at law (the failure to legislate and/or police his/her rights) brings the author, as we will argue, ‘alive’ in the writing. Remix as anonymous composition (citing Barthes) becomes, in the Chinese example, remix as creative expression of singular feelings—albeit remix set adrift from the law. More concretely, our example of the Chinese writer/writing takes remix to its limit as a practice of repetition without variation—what the West would be likely to call plagiarism. Calligraphy is key to this. Of course, calligraphy is not the full extent of Chinese writing practice—not all writing is calligraphic strictly speaking. But all calligraphy is writing, and in this it influences the ethics of Chinese writing, whether character-based or otherwise, more generally. We will have more to say about the ‘pictorial’ material aspect of Chinese writing later on. In traditional Chinese culture, writing is regarded as a technical practice perfected through reproduction. Chinese calligraphy (visual writing) is learnt through exhaustively tracing and copying the style of the master calligrapher. We are tempted to say that what is at stake in Chinese remix/calligraphy is ‘the difference that cannot be helped:’ that is, the more one tries, as it were, to repeat, the more repetition becomes impossible. In part, this is explained by the interplay of Qing 情 (‘feelings’) and Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’). Now, the order of the characters—Qing 情 (‘feelings’) before Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’)—suggests that Qing creates and supports Yun. To this extent, what we have here is something akin to a Western understanding of creative writing (of the creativity of writing) in which individual and singular feelings are given expression in the very movement of the writing itself (through the bodily actions of the writer). In fact though, the Chinese case is more complicated than this, for the apprenticeship model of Chinese calligraphy cultivates a two-way interplay of Qing 情 (‘feelings’) and Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’). More directly, the ‘composed body movements’ that one learns from the master calligrapher help compose one’s own ‘feelings’. The very repetition of the master’s work (its remixing, as it were…) enables the creativity of the apprentice. If this model of creativity is found somewhat distasteful from a Western perspective (that is, if it is seen to be too restrictive of originality) then that is because such a view, we think, depends upon a cultural misunderstanding that we will try to clear up here. To wit, the so-called Confucian model of rote learning that is more-or-less frowned upon in the West is not, at least not in the debased form that it adopts in Western stereotypes, the philosophy active in the case of Chinese calligraphy. That philosophy is Taoism. As Wing-Tsit Chan elucidates, ‘by opposing Confucian conformity with non-conformity and Confucian worldliness with a transcendental spirit, Taoism is a severe critic of Confucianism’ (136). As we will show in a moment, Chinese calligraphy exemplifies this special kind of Taoist non-conformity (in which, as Philip J. Ivanhoe limns it, ‘one must unweave the social fabric’). Chan again: ‘As the way of life, [Taoism] denotes simplicity, spontaneity, tranquility, weakness, and most important of all, non-action (wu-wei). By the latter is not meant literally “inactivity” but rather “taking no action that is contrary to Nature”—in other words, letting Nature take its own course’ (136). Thus, this is a philosophy of ‘weakness’ that is neither ‘negativism’ nor ‘absolute quietism’ (137). Taoism’s supposed weakness is rather a certain form of strength, of (in the fullest sense) creative possibilities, which comes about through deference to the way of Nature. ‘Hold fast to the great form (Tao), / And all the world will come’ illustrates this aspect of Taoism in its major philosophical tract, The Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching) or The Classic of the Way and its Virtue (section 35, Chan 157). The guiding principle is one of deference to the original (way, Nature or Tao) as a strategy of an expression (of self) that goes beyond the original. The Lao Tzu is full of cryptic, metaphoric expressions of this idea: ‘The pursuit of learning is to increase day after day. / The pursuit of Tao is to decrease day after day. / It is to decrease and further decrease until one reaches the point of taking no action. / No action is undertaken, and yet nothing is left undone’ (section 48, Chan 162). Similarly, The female always overcomes the male by tranquility, / And by tranquility she is underneath. / A big state can take over a small state if it places itself below the small state; / And the small state can take over a big state if it places itself below the big state. / Thus some, by placing themselves below, take over (others), / And some, by being (naturally) low, take over (other states) (section 61, Chan 168). In Taoism, it is only by (apparent) weakness and (apparent) in-action that ‘nothing is left undone’ and ‘states’ are taken over. The two-way interplay of Qing 情 (‘feelings’) and Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’), whereby the apprentice copies the master, aligns with this key element of Taoism. Here is the linkage between calligraphy and Taoism. The master’s work is Tao, Nature or the way: ‘Hold fast to the great form (Tao), / And all the world will come’ (section 35, Chan 157). The apprentice’s calligraphy is ‘all the world’ (‘all the world’ being, ultimately in this context, Qing 情 [‘feelings’]). Indeed, Taoism itself is a subtle philosophy of learning (of apprenticeship to a master), unlike Confucianism, which Chan characterises as a doctrine of ‘social order’ (of servitude to a master) (136). ‘“Learn not learn”’ is how Wang Pi, as quoted by Chan (note 121, 170), understands what he himself (Chan) translates as ‘He learns to be unlearned’ (section 64, 170). In unlearning one learns what cannot be taught: this is, we suggest, a remarkable definition of creativity, which also avoids falling into the trap of asserting a one-to-one equivalence between (unlearnt) originality and creativity, for there is both learning and creativity in this Taoist paradox of pedagogy. On this, Michael Meehan points out that ‘originality is an over-rated and misguided concept in many ways.’ (There is even a sense in which, through its deliberate repetition, The Lao Tzu teaches itself, traces over itself in ‘self-plagiarising’ fashion, as if it were reflecting on the re-tracings of calligraphic pedagogy. Chan notes just how deliberate this is: ‘Since in ancient times books consisted of bamboo or wooden slabs containing some twenty characters each, it was not easy for these sentences… to be added by mistake…. Repetitions are found in more than one place’ [note 102, 166].) Thinking of Kathy Acker too as a learner, Peter Wollen’s observation that she ‘incorporated calligraphy… in her books’ and ‘was deeply committed to [the] avant-garde tradition, a tradition which was much stronger in the visual arts’ creates a highly suggestive connection between Acker’s work and Taoism. The Taoist model for learning calligraphy as, precisely, visual art—in which copying subtends creativity—serves to shift Acker away from a Barthesian or Derridean framework and into a Taoist context in which adherence to another’s form (as ‘un-learnt learning’) creatively unravels so-called plagiarism from the inside. Acker’s conscious interest in calligraphy is shown by its prevalence in Blood and Guts in High School. Edward S. Robinson identifies this text as part of her ‘middle phase’, which ‘saw the introduction of illustrations and diagrams to create multimedia texts with a collage-like feel’ (154). To our knowledge, Acker never critically reflected upon her own calligraphic practices; perhaps if she had, she would have troubled what we see as a blindspot in critics’ interpretations of her work. To wit, whenever calligraphy is mentioned in criticism on Acker, it tends to be deployed merely as an example of her cut-up technique and never analysed for its effects in its own cultural, philosophical and material specificity. (Interestingly, if the words of Chinese photographer Liu Zheng are any guide, the Taoism we’re identifying in calligraphy has also worked its way into other forms of Chinese visual art: she refers to ‘loving photographic details and cameras’ with the very Taoist term, ‘lowly’ 低级 [Three Shadows Photography Art Centre 187].) Being ‘lowly’, ‘feminine’ or ‘underneath’ has power as a radical way of learning. We mentioned above that Taoism is very metaphoric. As the co-writer of this paper Cher Coad recalls from her calligraphy classes, students in China grow up with a metaphoric proverb clearly inspired by Lao Tzu’s Taoist philosophy of learning: ‘Learning shall never stop. Black comes from blue, but is more than the blue.’ ‘Black comes from blue, but is more than the blue.’ What could this mean? Before answering this question with recourse to two Western notions that, we hope, will further effect (building on Acker’s example) a rapprochement between Chinese and Western ways of thinking (be they nationally based or not), we reiterate that the infringement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in China should not be viewed only as an egregious denial of universally accepted law. Rather, whatever else it may be, we see it as the shadow in the commercial realm—mixed through with all the complexities of Chinese tradition, history and cultural difference, and most particularly of the Taoist strand within Confucianism—of the never-quite-perfect copying of calligraphic writing/remixing. More generally, the re-examination of stereotypical assumptions about Chinese culture cues a re-examination of the meaning behind the copying of products and technology in contemporary, industrialised China. So, ‘Black comes from blue, but is more than the blue.’ What is this ‘more than the blue of black’? Or put differently, why is calligraphic writing, as learnt from the master, always infused with the singular feelings of the (apprentice) writer? The work of Deleuze, Guattari and Claire Parnet provides two possible responses. In On the Line, Deleuze and Guattari (and Deleuze in co-authorship with Parnet) author a number of comments that support the conception we are attempting to develop concerning the lines of Chinese calligraphy. A line, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, is always a line of lines (‘Line of chance, line of hips, line of flight’ [57]). In the section of On the Line entitled ‘Politics’, Deleuze and Parnet outline the impossibility of any line being just one line. If life is a line (as it is said, you throw someone a life line), then ‘We have as many entangled lines in our lives as there are in the palm of a hand’ (71). Of any (hypothetical) single line it can be said that other lines emerge: ‘Black comes from blue, but is more than the blue.’ The feelings of the apprentice calligrapher (his/her multiple lines) emerge through the repeated copying of the lines and composed body movements of the master. The Deleuzean notion of repetition takes this idea further. Repetitive Chinese calligraphy clearly indexes what Claire Colebrook refers to as ‘Deleuze’s concept of eternal return. The only thing that is repeated or returns is difference; no two moments of life can be the same. By virtue of the flow of time, any repeated event is necessarily different (even if different only to the extent that it has a predecessor)’ (121). Now, it might be objected that Chinese calligraphic practices, because of the substantially ideographic nature of Chinese writing (see Kristeva 72-81), allow for material mutations that can find no purchase in Western, alphabetical systems of writing. But the materiality of time that Colebrook refers to as part of her engagement with Deleuzean non-repetitious (untimely) repetition guarantees the materiality of all modes of writing. Furthermore, Julia Kristeva notes that, with any form of language, one cannot leave ‘the realm of materialism’ (6) and Adrian Miles, in his article ‘Virtual Actual: Hypertext as Material Writing,’ sees the apparently very ‘unmaterial’ writing of hypertext ‘as an embodied activity that has its own particular affordances and possibilities—its own constraints and local actualisations’ (1-2). Calligraphic repetition of the master’s model creates the apprentice’s feelings as (inevitable) difference. In this then, the learning by the Chinese apprentice of the lines of the master’s calligraphy challenges international (both Western and non-Western) artists of writing to ‘remix remix’ as a matter—as a materialisation—of the line. Not the line as a self-identical entity of writing that only goes to make up writing more generally; rather, lines as a materialisation of lines within lines within lines. More self-reflexively, even the collaborative enterprise of this article, co-authored as it is by a woman of Chinese ethnicity and a white Australian man, suggests a remixing of writing through, beneath and over each other’s lines. Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’) expresses and maximises Qing 情 (‘feelings’). Taoist ‘un-learnt learning’ generates remix as the singular creativity of the writer. Writers get into a blue with the line—paint it, black. Of course, these ideas won’t and shouldn’t make copyright infringement (or associated legalities) redundant notions. But in exposing the cultural relativisms often buried within the deployment of this and related terms, the idea of lines of lines far exceeds a merely formalistic practice (one cut off from the materialities of culture) and rather suggests a mode of non-repetitious repetition in contact with all of the elements of culture (of history, of society, of politics, of bodies…) wherever these may be found, and whatever their state of becoming. In this way, remix re-creates the depths of culture even as it stirs up its surfaces of writing. References Acker, Kathy. Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1978. Anna, Cara. ‘Microsoft Anti-Piracy Technology Upsets Users in China.’ The Seattle Times. 28 Oct. 2008 ‹http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2008321919_webmsftchina28.html›. Barthes, Roland. ‘The Death of the Author.’ Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana Press, 1977. 142-148. Chan, Wing-Tsit. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969. Colebrook, Claire. Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge, 2002. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. On the Line. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. ‘Recording Industry Steps Up Campaign against Internet Piracy in China.’ ifpi. 4 Feb. 2008 ‹http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20080204.html›. Ivanhoe, Philip J. ‘Taoism’. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Ed. Robert Audi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 787. Iyengar, Jayanthi. ‘Intellectual Property Piracy Rocks China Boat.’ Asia Times Online. 16 Sept. 2004 ‹http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FI16Ad07.html›. Kristeva, Julia. Language: The Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Lort, Robert. ‘Kathy Acker (1944-1997).’ Jahsonic: A Vocabulary of Culture. 2003 ‹http://www.jahsonic.com/KathyAcker.html›. Meehan, Michael. ‘Week 5a: Playing with Genres.’ Lecture notes. Unit ALL705. Short Stories: Writers and Readers. Trimester 2. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013. Miles, Adrian. ‘Virtual Actual: Hypertext as Material Writing.’ Studies in Material Thinking 1.2 (April 2008) ‹http://www.materialthinking.org/papers/29›. Robinson, Edward S. Shift Linguals: Cut-up Narratives from William S. Burroughs to the Present. New York: Editions Rodopi, 2011. Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. ‘Photography and Intimate Space Symposium.’ Conversations: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre’s 2007 Symposium Series. Ed. RongRong, inri, et al. Beijing: Three Shadows Press Limited, 2008. 179-191. Wollen, Peter. ‘Death (and Life) of the Author.’ London Review of Books 20.3 (5 Feb. 1998). ‹http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n03/peter-wollen/death-and-life-of-the-author›.

IntroductionAccounts of criminals, their victims, and their pursuers have become entrenched within the sphere of popular culture; most obviously in the genres of true crime and crime fiction. The centrality of the pursuer in the form of the detective, within these stories, dates back to the nineteenth century. This, often highly-stylised and regularly humanised protagonist, is now a firm feature of both factual and fictional accounts of crime narratives that, today, regularly focus on the energies of the detective in solving a variety of cases. So familiar is the figure of the detective, it seems that these men and women—amateurs and professionals—have always had an important role to play in the pursuit and punishment of the wrongdoer. Yet, the first detectives were forced to overcome significant resistance from a suspicious public. Some early efforts to reimagine punishment and to laud the detective include articles written by Charles Dickens; pieces on public hangings and policing that reflect the great Victorian novelist’s commitment to shed light on, through written commentaries, a range of important social issues. This article explores some of Dickens’s lesser-known pieces, that—appearing in daily newspapers and in one of his own publications Household Words—helped to change some common perceptions of punishment and policing. Image 1: Harper's Magazine 7 December 1867 (Charles Dickens Reading, by Charles A. Barry). Image credit: United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. A Reliance on the Scaffold: Early Law Enforcement in EnglandCrime control in 1720s England was dependent upon an inconsistent, and by extension ineffective, network of constables and night watchmen. It would be almost another three decades before Henry Fielding established the Bow Street Foot Patrol, or Bow Street Runners, in 1749, “six men in blue coats, patrolling the area within six miles of Charing Cross” (Worsley 35). A large-scale, formalised police force was attempted by Pitt the Younger in 1785 with his “Bill for the Further prevention of Crime and for the more Speedy Detection and Punishment of Offenders against the Peace” (Lyman 144). The proposed legislation was withdrawn due to fierce opposition that was underpinned by fears, held by officials, of a divestment of power to a new body of law enforcers (Lyman 144).The type of force offered in 1785 would not be realised until the next century, when the work of Robert Peel saw the passing of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829. The Police Act, which “constituted a revolution in traditional methods of law enforcement” (Lyman 141), was focused on the prevention of crime, “to reassure the lawful and discourage the wrongdoer” (Hitchens 51). Until these changes were implemented violent punishment, through the Waltham Black Act 1723, remained firmly in place (Cruickshanks and Erskine-Hill 359) as part of the state’s arsenal against crime (Pepper 473).The Black Act, legislation often referred to as the ‘Bloody Code’ as it took the number of capital felonies to over 350 (Pepper 473), served in lieu of consistency and cooperation, across the country, in relation to the safekeeping of the citizenry. This situation inevitably led to anxieties about crime and crime control. In 1797 Patrick Colquhoun, a magistrate, published A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis in which he estimated that, out of a city population of just under 1 million, 115,000 men and women supported themselves “in and near the Metropolis by pursuits either criminal-illegal-or immoral” (Lyman 144). Andrew Pepper highlights tensions between “crime, governance and economics” as well as “rampant petty criminality [… and] widespread political corruption” (474). He also notes a range of critical responses to crime and how, “a particular kind of writing about crime in the 1720s demonstrated, perhaps for the first time, an awareness of, or self-consciousness about, this tension between competing visions of the state and state power” (Pepper 474), a tension that remains visible today in modern works of true crime and crime fiction. In Dickens’s day, crime and its consequences were serious legal, moral, and social issues (as, indeed, they are today). An increase in the crime rate, an aggressive state, the lack of formal policing, the growth of the printing industry, and writers offering diverse opinions—from the sympathetic to the retributive—on crime changed crime writing. The public wanted to know about the criminal who had disturbed society and wanted to engage with opinions on how the criminal should be stopped and punished. The public also wanted to be updated on changes to the judicial system such as the passing of the Judgement of Death Act 1823 which drastically reduced the number of capital crimes (Worsley 122) and how the Gaols Act, also of 1823, “moved tentatively towards national prison reform” (Gattrell 579). Crimes continued to be committed and alongside the wrongdoers were readers that wanted to be diverted from everyday events by, but also had a genuine need to be informed about, crime. A demand for true crime tales demonstrating a broader social need for crimes, even the most minor infractions, to be publicly punished: first on the scaffold and then in print. Some cases were presented as sensationalised true crime tales; others would be fictionalised in short stories and novels. Standing Witness: Dickens at the ScaffoldIt is interesting to note that Dickens witnessed at least four executions in his lifetime (Simpson 126). The first was the hanging of a counterfeiter, more specifically a coiner, which in the 1800s was still a form of high treason. The last person executed for coining in England was in early 1829; as Dickens arrived in London at the end of 1822, aged just 10-years-old (Simpson 126-27) he would have been a boy when he joined the crowds around the scaffold. Many journalists and writers who have documented executions have been “criticised for using this spectacle as a source for generating sensational copy” (Simpson 127). Dickens also wrote about public hangings. His most significant commentaries on the issue being two sets of letters: one set published in The Daily News (1846) and a second set published in The Times (1849) (Brandwood 3). Yet, he was immune from the criticism directed at so many other writers, in large part, due to his reputation as a liberal, “social reformer moved by compassion, but also by an antipathy toward waste, bureaucratic incompetence, and above all toward exploitation and injustice” (Simpson 127). As Anthony Simpson points out, Dickens did not sympathise with the condemned: “He wrote as a realist and not a moralist and his lack of sympathy for the criminal was clear, explicit and stated often” (128). Simpson also notes that Dickens’s letters on execution written in 1846 were “strongly supportive of total abolition” while later letters, written in 1849, presented arguments against public executions rather than the practice of execution. In 1859 Dickens argued against pardoning a poisoner. While in 1864 he supported the execution of the railway carriage murderer Franz Müller, explaining he would be glad to abolish both public executions and capital punishment, “if I knew what to do with the Savages of civilisation. As I do not, I would rid Society of them, when they shed blood, in a very solemn manner” (in Simpson 138-39) that is, executions should proceed but should take place in private.Importantly, Dickens was consistently concerned about society’s fascination with the scaffold. In his second letter to The Daily News, Dickens asks: round what other punishment does the like interest gather? We read of the trials of persons who have rendered themselves liable to transportation for life, and we read of their sentences, and, in some few notorious instances, of their departure from this country, and arrival beyond the sea; but they are never followed into their cells, and tracked from day to day, and night to night; they are never reproduced in their false letters, flippant conversations, theological disquisitions with visitors, lay and clerical […]. They are tried, found guilty, punished; and there an end. (“To the Editors of The Daily News” 6)In this passage, Dickens describes an overt curiosity with those criminals destined for the most awful of punishments. A curiosity that was put on vile display when a mob gathered on the concourse to watch a hanging; a sight which Dickens readily admitted “made [his] blood run cold” (“Letter to the Editor” 4).Dickens’s novels are grand stories, many of which feature criminals and criminal sub-plots. There are, for example, numerous criminals, including the infamous Fagin in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress (1838); several rioters are condemned to hang in Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (1841); there is murder in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844); and murder, too, in Bleak House (1853). Yet, Dickens never wavered in his revulsion for the public display of the execution as revealed in his “refusal to portray the scene at the scaffold [which] was principled and heartfelt. He came, reluctantly to support capital punishment, but he would never use its application for dramatic effect” (Simpson 141).The Police Detective: A Public Relations ExerciseBy the mid-1700s the crime story was one of “sin to crime and then the gallows” (Rawlings online): “Crimes of every defcription (sic) have their origin in the vicious and immoral habits of the people” (Colquhoun 32). As Philip Rawlings notes, “once sin had been embarked upon, capture and punishment followed” (online). The origins of this can be found in the formula relied upon by Samuel Smith in the seventeenth century. Smith was the Ordinary of Newgate, or prison chaplain (1676–1698), who published Accounts of criminals and their gruesome ends. The outputs swelled the ranks of the already burgeoning market of broadsides, handbills and pamphlets. Accounts included: 1) the sermon delivered as the prisoner awaited execution; 2) a brief overview of the crimes for which the prisoner was being punished; and 3) a reporting of the events that surrounded the execution (Gladfelder 52–53), including the prisoner’s behaviour upon the scaffold and any last words spoken. For modern readers, the detective and the investigation is conspicuously absent. These popular Accounts (1676–1772)—over 400 editions offering over 2,500 criminal biographies—were only a few pence a copy. With print runs in the thousands, the Ordinary earnt up to £200 per year for his efforts (Emsley, Hitchcock, and Shoemaker online). For:penitence and profit made comfortable bedfellows, ensuring true crime writing became a firm feature of the business of publishing. That victims and villains suffered was regrettable but no horror was so terrible anyone forgot there was money to be made. (Franks, “Stealing Stories” 7)As the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were having their full impact, many were looking for answers, and certainty, in a period of radical social transformation. Sin as a central motif in crime stories was insufficient: the detective was becoming essential (Franks, “True Crime” 239). “In the nineteenth century, the role of the newly-fashioned detective as an agent of consolation or security is both commercially and ideologically central to the subsequent project of popular crime writing” (Bell 8). This was supported by an “increasing professionalism and proficiency of policemen, detectives, and prosecutors, new understandings about psychology, and advances in forensic science and detection techniques” (Murley 10). Elements now included in most crime narratives. Dickens insisted that the detective was a crucial component of the justice system—a figure to be celebrated, one to take centre stage in the crime story—reflecting his staunch support “of the London Metropolitan Police” (Simpson 140). Indeed, while Dickens is known principally for exposing wretched poverty, he was also interested in a range of legal issues as can be evinced from his writings for Household Words. Image 2: Household Words 27 July 1850 (Front Page). Image credit: Dickens Journals Online. W.H. Wills argued for the acceptance of the superiority of the detective when, in 1850, he outlined the “difference between a regular and a detective policeman” (368). The detective must, he wrote: “counteract every sort of rascal whose only means of existence it avowed rascality, but to clear up mysteries, the investigation of which demands the utmost delicacy and tact” (368). The detective is also extraordinarily efficient; cases are solved quickly, in one example a matter is settled in just “ten minutes” (369).Dickens’s pro-police pieces, included a blatantly promotional, two-part work “A Detective Police Party” (1850). The narrative begins with open criticism of the Bow Street Runners contrasting these “men of very indifferent character” to the Detective Force which is “so well chosen and trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business in such a workman-like manner, and is always so calmly and steadily engaged in the service of the public” (“Police Party, Part I” 409). The “party” is just that: a gathering of detectives and editorial staff. Men in a “magnificent chamber”, seated at “a round table […] with some glasses and cigars arranged upon it; and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in between that stately piece of furniture and the wall” (“Police Party, Part I” 409). Two inspectors and five sergeants are present. Each man prepared to share some of their experiences in the service of Londoners:they are, [Dickens tells us] one and all, respectable-looking men; of perfectly good deportment and unusual intelligence; with nothing lounging or slinking in their manners; with an air of keen observation, and quick perception when addressed; and generally presenting in their faces, traces more or less marked of habitually leading lives of strong mental excitement. (“Police Party, Part I” 410) Dickens goes to great lengths to reinforce the superiority of the police detective. These men, “in a glance, immediately takes an inventory of the furniture and an accurate sketch of the editorial presence” and speak “very concisely, and in well-chosen language” and who present as an “amicable brotherhood” (“Police Party, Part I” 410). They are also adaptable and constantly working to refine their craft, through apeculiar ability, always sharpening and being improved by practice, and always adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and opposing itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can invent, for which this important social branch of the public service is remarkable! (“Police Party, Part II” 459)These detectives are also, in some ways, familiar. Dickens’s offerings include: a “shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman – in appearance not at all unlike a very acute, thoroughly-trained schoolmaster”; a man “with a ruddy face and a high sun-burnt forehead, [who] has the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the army” (“Police Party, Part I” 409-10); and another man who slips easily into the role of the “greasy, sleepy, shy, good-natured, chuckle-headed, un-suspicious, and confiding young butcher” (“Police Party, Part II” 457). These descriptions are more than just attempts to flesh out a story; words on a page reminding us that the author is not just another journalist but one of the great voices of the Victorian era. These profiles are, it is argued here, a deliberate strategy to reassure readers.In summary, police detectives are only to be feared by those residing on the wrong side of the law. For those without criminal intent; detectives are, in some ways, like us. They are people we already know and trust. The stern but well-meaning, intelligent school teacher; the brave and loyal soldier defending the Empire; and the local merchant, a person we see every day. Dickens provides, too, concrete examples for how everyone can contribute to a safer society by assisting these detectives. This, is perfect public relations. Thus, almost singlehandedly, he builds a professional profile for a new type of police officer. The problem (crime) and its solution (the detective) neatly packaged, with step-by-step instructions for citizens to openly support this new-style of constabulary and so achieve a better, less crime-ridden community. This is a theme pursued in “Three Detective Anecdotes” (1850) where Dickens continued to successfully merge “solid lower-middle-class respectability with an intimate knowledge of the criminal world” (Priestman 177); so, proffering the ideal police detective. A threat to the criminal but not to the hard-working and honest men, women, and children of the city.The Detective: As Fact and as FictionThese writings are also a precursor to one of the greatest fictional detectives of the English-speaking world. Dickens observes that, for these new-style police detectives: “Nothing is so common or deceptive as such appearances at first” (“Police Party, Part I” 410). In 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle would write that: “There is nothing so deceptive as an obvious fact” (78). Dickens had prepared readers for the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes: who was smarter, more observant and who had more determination to take on criminals than the average person. The readers of Dickens were, in many respects, positioned as prototypes of Dr John Watson: a hardworking, loyal Englishman. Smart. But not as smart as those who would seek to do harm. Watson needed Holmes to make the world a better place; the subscriber to Household Words needed the police detective.Another article, “On Duty with Inspector Field” (1851), profiled the “well-known hand” responsible for bringing numerous offenders to justice and sending them, “inexorably, to New South Wales” (Dickens 266). Critically this true crime narrative would be converted into a crime fiction story as Inspector Field is transformed (it is widely believed) into the imagined Inspector Bucket. The 1860s have been identified as “a period of awakening for the detective novel” (Ashley x), a predictor of which is the significant sub-plot of murder in Dickens’s Bleak House. In this novel, a murder is committed with the case taken on, and competently solved by, Bucket who is a man of “skill and integrity” a man presented as an “ideal servant” though one working for a “flawed legal system” (Walton 458). Mr Snagsby, of Bleak House, observes Bucket as a man whoseems in some indefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply at the very last moment [… He] notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great mourning ring on his little finger, or the brooch, composed of not much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt. (278) This passage, it is argued here, places Bucket alongside the men at the detective police party in Household Words. He is simultaneously superhuman in mind and manner, though rather ordinary in dress. Like the real-life detectives of Dickens’s articles; he is a man committed to keeping the city safe while posing no threat to law-abiding citizens. ConclusionThis article has explored, briefly, the contributions of the highly-regarded Victorian author, Charles Dickens, to factual and fictional crime writing. The story of Dickens as a social commentator is one that is familiar to many; what is less well-known is the connection of Dickens to important conversations around capital punishment and the rise of the detective in crime-focused narratives; particularly how he assisted in building the professional profile of the police detective. In this way, through fact and fiction, Dickens performed great (if under-acknowledged) public services around punishment and law enforcement: he contributed to debates on the death penalty and he helped to build trust in the radical social project that established modern-day policing.AcknowledgementsThe author offers her sincere thanks to the New South Wales Dickens Society, Simon Dwyer, and Peter Kirkpatrick. The author is also grateful to the reviewers of this article for their thoughtful comments and valuable suggestions. ReferencesAshley, Mike. “Introduction: Seeking the Evidence.” The Notting Hill Mystery. Author. Charles Warren Adams. London: The British Library, 2012. xxi-iv. Bell, Ian A. “Eighteenth-Century Crime Writing.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. Ed. Martin Priestman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003/2006. 7-17.Brandwood, Katherine. “The Dark and Dreadful Interest”: Charles Dickens, Public Death and the Amusements of the People. MA Thesis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2013. 19 Feb. 2017 <https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/558266/Brandwood_georgetown_0076M_12287.pdf;sequence=1>.Collins, Philip. Dickens and Crime. London: Macmillan & Co, 1964.Cruickshanks, Eveline, and Howard Erskine-Hill. “The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism.” Journal of British Studies 24.3 (1985): 358-65.Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. London: Richard Bentley,1838.———. Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty. London: Chapman & Hall, 1841. ———. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Chapman & Hall, 1844.———. “To the Editors of The Daily News.” The Daily News 28 Feb. 1846: 6. (Reprinted in Antony E. Simpson. Witnesses to the Scaffold. Lambertville: True Bill P, 2008. 141–149.)———. “Letter to the Editor.” The Times 14 Nov. 1849: 4. (Reprinted in Antony E. Simpson. Witnesses to the Scaffold. Lambertville: True Bill P, 2008. 149-51.)———. “A Detective Police Party, Part I.” Household Words 1.18 (1850): 409-14.———. “A Detective Police Party, Part II.” Household Words 1.20 (1850): 457-60.———. “Three Detective Anecdotes.” Household Words 1.25 (1850): 577-80.———. “On Duty with Inspector Field.” Household Words 3.64 (1851): 265-70.———. Bleak House. 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Introduction In The X-Files episode “Humbug”, agents Scully and Mulder travel to Florida to investigate a series of murders taking place in a community of sideshow performers, or freaks. At the episode’s end, one character, a self-made freak and human blockhead, muses on the future of the freak community:twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the Siamese twins and the alligator-skinned people, but you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite or a not-so-high cheek bone … . Nature abhors normality. It can’t go very long without creating a mutant. (“Humbug”) Freaks, he says, are there to remind people of the necessity of mutations. His observation that genetic engineering will eradicate anomalies of nature accurately illustrates the gradual shift that society was witnessing in the late twentieth century away from the anomalous freak and toward surgical perfection. Yet this desire for perfection, which has manifested itself in often severe surgical deformities, has seen a shift in what constitutes the freak for a contemporary audience, turning what was once an anomaly into a mass-produced creation. While the freaks of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were born with facial or anatomical deformities that warranted their place in the sideshow performance (bearded ladies, midgets, faints, lobster men, alligator-skinned people, etc.), freaks of the twenty-first century can be seen as something created by a plastic surgeon, a shift which undermines the very understanding of freak ontology. As Katherine Dunne put it: “a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born” (28). In her discussion of the monstrous body, Linda Williams writes that “the monster’s body is perceived as freakish in its possession of too much or too little” (63). This may have included a missing or additional limb, distorted sizes and heights, and anatomical growths. John Merrick, or the “Elephant Man” (fig. 1), as he was famously known, perfectly embodied this sense of excess that is vital to what people perceive as the monstrous body. In his discussion of freaks and the freakshow, Robert Bogdan notes that promotional posters exaggerated the already-deformed nature of freaks by emphasising certain physical anomalies and turning them into mythological creatures: “male exhibits with poorly formed arms were billed as ‘The Seal Man’; with poorly formed legs, ‘the Frog Man’; with excesses of hair, ‘The Lion Man’ or ‘Dog Boy’” (100). Figure 1: John Merrick (the Elephant Man) <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/193584483966192229/>.The freak’s anomalous nature made them valuable, financially but also culturally: “in many ways, the concept of ‘freak,’ is an anomaly in current social scientific thinking about demonstrable human variation. During its prime the freak show was a place where human deviance was valuable, and in that sense valued” (Bogdan 268). Many freaks were presented as “human wonders”, while “their claims to fame were quite commonplace” (Bogdan 200). Indeed, Bogdan argues that “while highly aggrandized exhibits really were full of grandeur, with respectable freaks the mundane was exploited as amazing and ordinary people were made into human wonders” (200). Lucian Gomoll similarly writes that freakshows “directed judgement away from the audience and onto the performers, assuring observers of their own unmarked normalcy” (“Objects of Dis/Order” 205).The anomalous nature of the freak therefore promoted the safety of normality at the same time as it purported to showcase the brilliance of the extraordinary. While the freaks themselves were normal, intelligent people, the freakshow served as a vehicle to gaze at oneself with a sense of relief. As much as many freakshows attempt to dismantle notions of normality, they serve to emphasise empathy, not envy. The anomalous freak is never an envied body; the particular dimensions of the freakshow mean that it is the viewer who is to be envied, and the freak who is to be pitied. From Freakshow to SideshowIn nineteenth-century freakshows, exploitation was rife; as Alison Piepmeier explains, “many of the so-called Aztecs, Pinheads, and What Is Its?”, were, in fact, “mentally disabled people dressed in wild costumes and forced to perform” (53). As a result, “freakishness often implied loss of control over one’s self and one’s destiny” (53). P.T. Barnum profited from his exploitation of freaks, while many freaks themselves also benefited from being exhibited. As Jessica Williams writes, “many freak show performers were well paid, self-sufficient, and enjoyed what they did” (69). Bogdan similarly pointed out that “some [freaks] were exploited, it is true, but in the culture of the amusement world, most human oddities were accepted as showmen. They were congratulated for parlaying into an occupation [that], in another context, might have been a burden” (268). Americans of all classes, Anissa Janine Wardi argues, enjoyed engaging in the spectacle of the freak. She writes that “it is not serendipitous that the golden age of the freak show coincided with the building of America’s colonial empire” (518). Indeed, the “exploration of the non-Western world, coupled with the transatlantic slave trade, provided the backdrop for America’s imperialist gaze, with the native ‘other’ appearing not merely in the arena of popular entertainment, but particularly in scientific and medical communities” (518). Despite the accusations levelled against Barnum, his freakshows were seen as educational and therefore beneficial to both the public and the scientific community, who, thanks to Barnum, directly benefited from the commercialisation of and rising public interest in the freak. Discussing “western conventions of viewing exotic others”, Lucian Gomoll writes that “the freak and the ‘normal’ subject produced each other in a relationship of uneven reciprocity” (“Feminist Pleasures” 129). He writes that Barnum “encouraged onlookers to define their own identities in contrast to those on display, as not disabled, not animalistic, not androgynous, not monstrous and so on”. By the twentieth century, he writes, “shows like Barnum’s were banned from public spaces as repugnant and intolerable, and forced to migrate to the margins” (129).Gomoll commends the Freakatorium, a museum curated by the late sword swallower Johnny Fox, as “demonstrating and commemorating the resourcefulness and talents of those pushed to the social margins” (“Objects of Dis/Order” 207). Gomoll writes that Fox did not merely see freaks as curiosities in the way that Barnum did. Instead, Fox provided a dignified memorial that celebrated the uniqueness of each freak. Fox’s museum displays, he writes, are “respectable spaces devoted to the lives of amazing people, which foster potential empathy from the viewers – a stark contrast to nineteenth-century freakshows” (205). Fox himself described the necessity of the Freakatorium in the wake of the sideshow: New York needs a place where people can come see the history of freakdom. People that were born with deformities that were still amazing and sensitive people and they allowed themselves to be viewed and exhibited. They made a good living off doing that. Those people were to be commended for their courageousness and bravery for standing in front of people. (Hartzman)Fox also described the manner in which the sideshow circuit was banned over time:then sideshows went out because some little girl was offended because she thought the only place she could work was the sideshow. Her mother thought it was disgraceful that people exhibited themselves so she started calling the governor and state’s attorney trying to get sideshows banned. I think it was Florida or South Carolina. It started happening in other states. They said no exhibiting human anomalies. These people who had been working in sideshows for years had their livelihood taken away from them. What now, they’re supposed to go be institutionalized? (Hartzman) Elizabeth Stephens argues that a shift occurred in the early twentieth century, and that by the late ‘30s “people with physical anomalies had been transformed in the cultural imagination from human oddities or monsters to sick people requiring diagnoses and medical intervention” (Stephens). Bogdan noted that by the 1930s, “the meaning of being different changed in American society. Scientific medicine had undermined the mystery of certain forms of human variation, and the exotic and aggrandized modes had lost their flamboyant attractiveness” (274). So-called freaks became seen as diseased bodies who “were now in the province of physicians, not the general public” (274). Indeed, scientific interest transformed the freak into a medical curiosity, contributing to the waning popularity of freakshows. Ironically, although the freaks declined in popularity as they moved into the medical community, medicine would prove to be the domain of a new kind of freak in the ensuing years. The Manufactured Freak As the freakshow declined in popularity, mainstream culture found other subjects whose appearance provoked curiosity, awe, and revulsion. Although plastic surgery is associated with the mid-to-late twentieth century and beyond, it has a long history in the medical practice. In A History of Plastic Surgery, Paolo Santoni-Rugiu and Philip J. Sykes note that “operations for the sole purpose of improving appearances came on the scene in 1906” (322). Charles C. Miller was one of the earliest pioneers of plastic surgery; Santoni-Rugiu and Sykes write that “he never disguised the fact that his ambition was to do Featural Surgery, correcting imperfections that from a medical point of view were not considered to be deformities” (302). This attitude would fundamentally transform notions of the “normal” body. In the context of cosmetic surgery, it is the normal body that becomes manipulated in order to produce something which, despite intentions, proves undoubtedly freakish. Although men certainly engage in plastic surgery (notably Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff) the twenty-first century surgical freak is synonymous with women. Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs points out the different expectations levelled against men and women with respect to ageing and plastic surgery. While men, she says, “are closely scrutinised for attempting to hide signs of ageing, particularly hair loss”, women, in contrast, “are routinely maligned if they fail to hide the signs of ageing” (363). She observes that while popular culture may accept the ageing man, the ageing woman is less embraced by society. Consequently, women are encouraged—by the media, their fans, and by social norms around beauty—to engage in surgical manipulation, but in such a way as to make their enhancements appear seamless. Women who have successful plastic surgery—in the sense that their ageing is well-hidden—are accepted as having successfully manipulated their faces so as to appear flawless, while those whose surgical exploits are excessive or turn out badly become decidedly freakish. One of the most infamous plastic surgery cases is that of Jocelyn Wildenstein, also known as “catwoman”. Born Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset in 1940, Wildenstein met billionaire art dealer Alec N. Wildenstein whom she married in the late 1970s. After discovering her husband was being unfaithful, Wildenstein purportedly turned to cosmetic surgery in order to sculpt her face to resemble a cat, her husband’s favourite animal. Ironically but not surprisingly, her husband purportedly screamed in terror when he saw his wife’s revamped face for the first time. And although their relationship ended in divorce, Wildenstein, dubbed “the Bride of Wildenstein”, continued to visit her plastic surgeon, and her face became progressively more distorted over the years (Figure 2). Figure 2: Jocelyn Wildenstein over the years <https://i.redd.it/vhh3yp6tgki31.jpg>. The exaggerated and freakish contours of Wildenstein’s face would undoubtedly remind viewers of the anatomical exaggerations seen in traditional freaks. Yet she does not belong to the world of the nineteenth century freak. Her deformities are self-inflicted in an attempt to fulfil certain mainstream beauty ideals to exaggerated lengths. Like many women, Wildenstein has repeatedly denied ever having received plastic surgery, claiming that her face is natural, while professing admiration for Brigitte Bardot, her beauty idol. Such denial has made her the target of further criticism, since women are not only expected to conceal the signs of ageing successfully but are also ironically expected to be honest and transparent about having had work done to their faces and bodies, particularly when it is obvious. The role that denial plays not just in Wildenstein’s case, but in plastic surgery cases more broadly, constitutes a “desirability of naturalness” (122), according to Debra Gimlin. There is, she argues, an “aesthetic preference for (surgically enhanced) ‘naturalness’” (122), a desire that sits between the natural body and the freak. This kind of appearance promotes more of an uncanny naturalness that removes signs of ageing but without being excessive; as opposed to women whose use of plastic surgery is obvious (and deemed excessive according to Williams’ “monstrous body”) the unnatural look that some plastic surgery promotes is akin to an absence of normal features, such as wrinkles. One surgeon that Gimlin cites argues that he would not remove the wrinkles of a woman in her 60s: “she’s gonna look like a freak without them”, he says. This admission signifies a clear distinction between what we understand as freakish plastic surgery (Wildenstein) and the not-yet-freakish appearance of women whose surgically enhanced appearance is at once uncanny and accepted, perpetuating norms around plastic surgery and beauty. Denial is thus part of the fabric of performing naturalness and the desire to make the unnatural seem natural, adding another quasi-freakish dimension to the increasingly normalised appearance of surgically enhanced women. While Wildenstein is mocked for her grotesque appearance, in addition to her denial of having had plastic surgery, women who have navigated plastic surgery successfully are congratulated and envied. Although contemporary media increasingly advocates the ability to age naturally, with actresses like Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep frequently cited as natural older beauties, natural ageing is only accepted to the extent that this look of naturalness is appeasing. Unflattering, unaltered naturalness, on the other hand, is demonised, with such women encouraged to turn to the knife after all in order to achieve a more acceptable look of natural ageing, one that will inevitably and ironically provoke further criticism. For women considering plastic surgery, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Grant McCracken notes the similarities between Wildenstein and the famous French body artist Orlan: “like Orlan, Wildenstein had engaged in an extravagant, destructive creativity. But where Orlan sought transformational opportunity by moving upward in the Renaissance hierarchy, toward saints and angels, Wildenstein moved downwards, toward animals” (25). McCracken argues that it isn’t entirely clear whether Orlan and Wildenstein are “outliers or precursors” to the contemporary obsession with plastic surgery. But he notes how the transition of plastic surgery from a “shameful secret” to a ubiquitous if not obligatory phenomenon coincides with the surgical work of Orlan and Wildenstein. “The question remains”, he says, “what will we use this surgery to do to ourselves? Orlan and Wildenstein suggest two possibilities” (26).Meredith Jones, in her discussion of Wildenstein, echoes the earlier sentiments of Williams in regards to the monster’s body possessing too much or too little. In Wildenstein’s case, her freakishness is provoked by excess: “when too many body parts become independent they are deemed too disparate: wayward children who no longer lend harmony or respect to their host body. Jocelyn Wildenstein’s features do this: her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead and her lips are all striking enough to be deemed untoward” (125). For Jones, the combination of these features “form a grotesquery that means their host can only be deemed, at best, perversely beautiful” (125). Wildenstein has been referred to as a “modern-day freak”, and to a certain extent she does share something in common with the nineteenth century freak, specifically through the manner in which her distorted features invite viewers to gawk. Like the Elephant Man, her freakish body possesses “too much”, as Williams put it. Yet her appearance evokes none of the empathy afforded traditional freaks, whose facial or anatomical deformities were inherent and thus cause for empathy. They played no role in the formation of their deformities, only reclaiming agency once they exhibited themselves. While Wildenstein is, certainly, an anomaly in the sense that she is the only known woman who has had her features surgically altered to appear cat-like, her appearance more broadly represents an unnerving trajectory that reconstructs the freak as someone manufactured rather than born, upending Katherine Dunne’s assertion that true freaks are born, not made. Indeed, Wildenstein can be seen as a precursor to Nannette Hammond and Valeria Lukyanova, women who surgically enhanced their faces and bodies to resemble a real-life Barbie doll. Hammond, a woman from Cincinnati, has been called the first ‘Human Barbie’, chronicling the surgical process on her Instagram account. She states that her children and husband are “just so proud of me and what I’ve achieved through surgery” (Levine). This surgery has included numerous breast augmentations, botox injections and dental veneers, in addition to eyelash extensions and monthly fake tans. But while Hammond is certainly considered a “scalpel junkie”, Valeria Lukyanova’s desire to transform herself into a living Barbie doll is particularly uncanny. Michael’s Idov’s article in GQ magazine titled: “This is not a Barbie Doll. This is an Actual Human Being” attests to the uncanny appearance of Lukyanova. “Meeting Valeria Lukyanova is the closest you will come to an alien encounter”, Idov writes, describing the “queasy fear” he felt upon meeting her. “A living Barbie is automatically an Uncanny Valley Girl. Her beauty, though I hesitate to use the term, is pitched at the exact precipice where the male gaze curdles in on itself.” Lukyanova, a Ukrainian, admits to having had breast implants, but denies that she has had any more modifications, despite the uncanny symmetry of her face and body that would otherwise allude to further surgeries (Figure 3). Importantly, Lukyanova’s transformation both fulfils and affronts beauty standards. In this sense, she is at once freakish but does not fit the profile of the traditional freak, whose deformities are never confused with ideals of beauty, at least not in theory. While Johnny Fox saw freaks as talented, unique individuals, their appeal was borne of their defiance of the ideal, rather than a reinforcement of it, and the fact that their appearance was anomalous and unique, rather than reproducible at whim. Figure 3: Valeria Lukyanova with a Barbie Doll <http://shorturl.at/mER06>.Conclusion As a modern-day freak, these Barbie girls are a specific kind of abomination that undermines the very notion of the freak due to their emphasis on acceptance, on becoming mainstream, rather than being confined to the margins. As Jones puts it: “if a trajectory […] is drawn between mainstream cosmetic surgery and these individuals who have ‘gone too far’, we see that while they may be ‘freaks’ now, they nevertheless point towards a moment when such modifications could in fact be near mainstream” (188). The emphasis that is placed on mainstream acceptance and reproducibility in these cases affronts traditional notions of the freak as an anomalous individual whose features cannot be replicated. But the shift that society has seen towards genetic and surgical perfection has only accentuated the importance of biological anomalies who affront the status quo. While Wildenstein and the Barbie girls may provoke a similar sense of shock, revulsion and pity as the Elephant Man experienced, they possess none of the exceptionality or cultural importance of real freaks, whose very existence admonishes mainstream standards of beauty, ability, and biology. References Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1990. Dunne, Katherine. Geek Love. London: Abacus, 2015. Fairclough-Isaacs, Kirsty. "Celebrity Culture and Ageing." Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Eds. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin. New York: Routledge, 2015. 361-368.Gimlin, Debra. Cosmetic Surgery Narratives: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Accounts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Gommol, Lucian. “The Feminist Pleasures of Coco Rico’s Social Interventions.” Art and the Artist in Society. Eds. José Jiménez-Justiniano, Elsa Luciano Feal, and Jane Elizabeth Alberdeston. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 119-134. ———. “Objects of Dis/Order: Articulating Curiosities and Engaging People at the Freakatorium.” Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities. Eds. Amy K. Levin and Joshua G. Adair. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 197-212. Hartzman, Marc. “Johnny Fox: A Tribute to the King of Swords.” Weird Historian. 17 Dec. 2017. <https://www.weirdhistorian.com/johnny-fox-a-tribute-to-the-king-of-swords/>.“Humbug.” The X-Files: The Complete Season 3. Writ. Darin Morgan. Dir. Kim Manners. Fox, 2007. Idov, Michael. “This Is Not a Barbie Doll. This Is an Actual Human Being.” GQ. 12 July 2017. <https://www.gq.com/story/valeria-lukyanova-human-barbie-doll>.Jones, Meredith. Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery. Oxford: Berg, 2008.McCracken, Grant. Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2008.Levine, Daniel D. “Before and After: What $500,000 of Plastic Surgery Bought Human Barbie.” PopCulture.com. 7 Dec. 2017. <https://popculture.com/trending/news/nannette-hammond-before-human-barbie-cost-photos/>. Piepmeier, Alison. Out in Public: Configurations of Women's Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill and London: U of North Carolina P, 2004. Santoni-Rugiu, Paolo, and Philip J. Sykes. A History of Plastic Surgery. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2017. Stephens, Elizabeth. “Twenty-First Century Freak Show: Recent Transformations in the Exhibition of Non-Normative Bodies.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25.3 (2005). <https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/580/757>.Wardi, Anissa Janine. “Freak Shows, Spectacles, and Carnivals: Reading Jonathan Demme’s Beloved.” African American Review 39.4 (Winter 2005): 513-526.Williams, Jessica L. Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” Horror, The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 61-66.

Introduction Utopia has always been countercultural, and ever since technological progress has allowed, utopia has been using alternative media to promote and strengthen its underpinning ideals. In this article, I am seeking to clarify the connections between counterculture and alternative media in utopian contexts to demonstrate their reciprocity, then draw together these threads through reference to a well-known figure of the Rainbow Region–Rusty Miller. His trajectory from iconic surfer and Aquarian reporter to mediator for utopian politics and ideals in the Rainbow Region encompasses in a single identity the three elements underpinning this study. In concluding, I will turn to Rusty’s Byron Guide, questioning its classification as alternative or mainstream media, and whether Byron Bay is represented as countercultural and utopian in this long-running and ongoing publication. Counterculture and Alternative Media in Utopian Contexts Counterculture is an umbrella that enfolds utopia, among many other genres and practices. It has been most often situated in the 1960s and 1970s as a new form of social movement embodying youth resistance to the technocratic mainstream and its norms of gender, sexuality, politics, music, and language (Roszak). Many scholars of counterculture underscore its utopian impulses both in the projection of better societies where the social goals are achieved, and in the withdrawal from mainstream society into intentional communities (Yinger 194-6; McKay 5; Berger). Before exploring further the connections between counterculture and alternative media, I want to define the scope of countercultural utopian contexts in general, and the Rainbow Region in particular. Utopia is a neologism created by Sir Thomas More almost 500 years ago to designate the island community that demonstrates order, harmony, justice, hope and desire in the right balance so that it seems like an ideal land. This imaginary place described in Utopia (1516) as a counterpoint to the social, political and religious shortcomings of contemporary 16th century British society, has attracted accusations of heresy (Molner), and been used as a pejorative term, an insult to denigrate political projects that seem farfetched or subversive, especially during the 19th century. Almost every study of utopian theory, literature and practice points to a dissatisfaction with the status quo, which inspires writers, politicians, architects, artists, individuals and communities to rail against it (see for example Davis, Moylan, Suvin, Levitas, Jameson). Kingsley Widmer’s book Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts reiterates what many scholars have stated when he writes that utopias should be understood in terms of what they are countering. Lyman Tower Sargent defines utopia as “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” and utopianism as “social dreaming” (9), to which I would add that both indicate an improvement on the alternatives, and may indeed be striving to represent the best place imaginable. Utopian contexts, by extension, are those situations where the “social dreaming” is enhanced through human agency, good governance, just laws, education, and work, rather than being a divinely ordained state of nature (Schaer et al). In this way, utopian contexts are explicitly countercultural through their very conception, as human agency is required and their emphasis is on social change. These modes of resistance against dominant paradigms are most evident in attempts to realise textual projections of a better society in countercultural communal experiments. Almost immediately after its publication, More’s Utopia became the model for Bishop Vasco de Quiroga’s communitarian hospital-town Santa Fe de la Laguna in Michoacan, Mexico, established in the 1530s as a counterculture to the oppressive enslavement and massacres of the Purhépecha people by Nuno Guzmán (Green). The countercultural thrust of the 1960s and 1970s provided many utopian contexts, perhaps most readily identifiable as the intentional communities that spawned and flourished, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (Metcalf, Shared Lives). They were often inspired by texts such as Charles A. Reich’s The Greening of America (1970) and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and this convergence of textual practices and alternative lifestyles can be seen in the development of Australia’s own Rainbow Region. Located in northern New South Wales, the geographical area of the Northern Rivers that has come to be known as the Rainbow Region encompasses Byron Bay, Nimbin, Mullumbimby, Bangalow, Clunes, Dunoon, Federal, with Lismore as the region’s largest town. But more evocative than these place names are the “rivers and creeks, vivid green hills, fruit and nut farms […] bounded by subtropical beaches and rainforest mountains” (Wilson 1). Utopian by nature, and recognised as such by the indigenous Bundjalung people who inhabited it before the white settlers, whalers and dairy farmers moved in, the Rainbow Region became utopian through culture–or indeed counterculture–during the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin when the hippies of Mullumbimby and the surfers of Byron Bay were joined by up to 10,000 people seeking alternative ways of being in the world. When the party was over, many Aquarians stayed on to form intentional communities in the beautiful region, like Tuntable Falls, Nimbin’s first and largest such cooperative (Metcalf, From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality 74-83). In utopian contexts, from the Renaissance to the 1970s and beyond, counterculture has underpinned and alternative media has circulated the aims and ideals of the communities of resistance. The early utopian context of the Anabaptist movement has been dubbed as countercultural by Sigrun Haude: “During the reign of the Münster (1534-5) Anabaptists erected not only a religious but also a social and political counterculture to the existing order” (240). And it was this Protestant Reformation that John Downing calls the first real media war, with conflicting movements using pamphlets produced on the new technology of the Gutenberg press to disseminate their ideas (144). What is striking here is the confluence of ideas and practices at this time–countercultural ideals are articulated, published, and disseminated, printing presses make this possible, and utopian activists realise how mass media can be used and abused, exploited and censored. Twentieth century countercultural movements drew on the lessons learnt from historical uprising and revolutions, understanding the importance of getting the word out through their own forms of media which, given the subversive nature of the messages, were essentially alternative, according to the criteria proposed by Chris Atton: alternative media may be understood as a radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media. Alternative media privileges a journalism that is closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of “objectivity” with overt advocacy and oppositional practices. Its practices emphasize first person, eyewitness accounts by participants; a reworking of the populist approaches of tabloid newspapers to recover a “radical popular” style of reporting; collective and antihierarchical forms of organization which eschew demarcation and specialization–and which importantly suggest an inclusive, radical form of civic journalism. (267) Nick Couldry goes further to point out the utopian processes required to identify agencies of change, including alternative media, which he defines as “practices of symbolic production which contest (in some way) media power itself–that is, the concentration of symbolic power in media institutions” (25). Alternative media’s orientation towards oppositional and contestatory practices demonstrates clear parallels between its ambitions and those of counterculture in utopian contexts. From the 1960s onwards, the upsurge in alternative newspaper numbers is commensurate with the blossoming of the counterculture and increased utopian contexts; Susan Forde describes it thus: “a huge resurgence in the popularity of publications throughout the ‘counter-culture’ days of the 1960s and 1970s” (“Monitoring the Establishment”, 114). The nexus of counterculture and alternative media in such utopian contexts is documented in texts like Roger Streitmatter’s Voices of Revolution and Bob Osterlag’s People’s Movements, People’s Press. Like the utopian newspapers that came out of 18th and 19th century intentional communities, many of the new alternative press served to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the countercultural movements, often focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events (see also Frobert). The radical press in Australia was also gaining ground, with OZ in Australia from 1963-1969, and then from 1967-1973 in London. Magazines launched by Philip Frazer like The Digger, Go-Set, Revolution and High Times, and university student newspapers were the main avenues for youth and alternative expression on the Vietnam war and conscription, gay and lesbian rights, racism, feminism and ecological activism (Forde, Challenging the News; Cock & Perry). Nimbin 1973: Rusty Miller and The Byron Express The 1973 Aquarius Festival of counterculture in Nimbin (12-23 May) was a utopian context that had an alternative media life of its own before it arrived in the Rainbow Region–in student publications like Tharnuka and newsletters distributed via the Aquarius Foundation. There were other voices that announced the coming of the Aquarius Festival to Nimbin and reported on its impact, like The Digger from Melbourne and the local paper, The Northern Star. During the Festival, the Nimbin Good Times first appeared as the daily bulletin and continues today with the original masthead drawn by the Festival’s co-organiser, Graeme Dunstan. Some interesting work has been done on this area, ranging from general studies of the Rainbow Region (Wilson; Munro-Clark) to articles analysing its alternative press (Ward & van Vuuren; Martin & Ellis), but to date, there has been no focus on the Rainbow Region’s first alternative newspaper, The Byron Express. Co-edited by Rusty Miller and David Guthrie, this paper presented and mediated the aims and desires of the Aquarian movement. Though short-lived, as only 7 issues were published from 15 February 1973 to September 1973, The Byron Express left a permanent printed vestige of the Aquarian counterculture movement’s activism and ideals from an independent regional perspective. Miller’s credentials for starting up the newspaper are clear–he has always been a trailblazer, mixing “smarts” with surfing and environmental politics. After graduating from a Bachelor of Arts in history from San Diego State College, he first set foot in Byron Bay during his two semesters with the inaugural Chapman College affiliated University of the Seven Seas in 1965-6. Returning to his hometown of Encinitas, he co-founded the Surf Research accessory company with legendary Californian surfer Mike Doyle, and launched Waxmate, the first specially formulated surf wax in 1967 (Davis, Witzig & James; Warshaw 217), selling his interest in the business soon after to spend a couple of years “living the counterculture life on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai” (Davis, Witzig & James), before heading back to Byron Bay via Bells Beach in 1970 (Miller & Shantz) and Sydney, where he worked as an advertising salesman and writer with Tracks surfing magazine (Martin & Ellis). In 1971, he was one of the first to ride the now famous waves of Uluwatu in Bali, and is captured with Steven Cooney in the iconic publicity image for Albe Falzon’s 1971 film, Morning Of The Earth. The champion surfer from the US knew a thing or two about counterculture, alternative media, advertising and business when he found his new utopian context in Byron Bay. Miller and Guthrie’s front-page editorial of the inaugural issue of The Byron Express, published on 15 February 1973, with the byline “for a higher shire”, expressed the countercultural (cl)aims of the publication. Land use, property development and the lack of concern that some people in Byron had for their impact on the environment and people of the region were a prime target: With this first issue of the Byron Express, we hope to explain that the area is badly in need of a focal point. The transitions of present are vast and moving fast. The land is being sold and resold. Lots of money is coming into the area in the way of developments […] caravan parts, hotels, businesses and real estate. Many of the trips incoming are not exactly “concerned” as to what long term effect such developments might have on the environment and its people. We hope to serve as a focus of concern and service, a centre for expression and reflection. We would ask your contributions in vocal and written form. We are ready for some sock it to ya criticism… and hope you would grab us upon the street to tell us how you feel…The mission of this alternative newspaper is thereby defined by the need for a “focal point” that inscribes the voices of the community in a freely accessible narrative, recorded in print for posterity. Although this first issue contains no mention of the Aquarius Festival, there were already rumours circulating about it, as organisers Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen had been up to Main Arm, Mullumbimby and Nimbin on reconnaissance missions beginning in September 1972. Instead, there was an article on “Mullumbimby Man–Close to the Land” by Nicholas Shand, who would go on to found the community-based weekly newspaper The Echo in 1986, then called The Brunswick Valley Echo and still going strong. Another by Bob McTavish asked whether there could be a better form of government; there was a surf story, and a soul food section with a recipe for honey meade entitled “Do you want to get out of it on 10 cents a bottle?” The second issue continues in much the same vein. It is not until the third issue comes out on 17 March 1973 that the Aquarius Festival is mentioned in a skinny half column on page four. And it’s not particularly promising: Arrived at Nimbin, sleepy hamlet… Office in disused R.S.L. rooms, met a couple of guys recently arrived, said nothing was being done. “Only women here, you know–no drive”. Met Joanne and Vi, both unable to say anything to be reported… Graham Dunstan (codenamed Superfest) and John Allen nowhere in sight. Allen off on trip overseas. Dunstan due back in a couple of weeks. 10 weeks to go till “they” all come… and to what… nobody is quite sure. This progress report provides a fascinating contemporary insight into the tensions–between the local surfies and hippies on one hand, and the incoming students on the other–around the organisation of the Aquarius Festival. There is an unbridled barb at the sexist comments made by the guys, implicit criticism of the absent organisers, obvious skepticism about whether anyone will actually come to the festival, and wonderment at what it will be like. Reading between the lines, we might find a feeling of resentment about not being privy to new developments in their own backyard. The final lines of the article are non-committal “Anyway, let’s see what eventuates when the Chiefs return.” It seems that all has been resolved by the fifth issue of 11 May, which is almost entirely dedicated to the Aquarius Festival with the front page headline “Welcome to the New Age”. But there is still an undertone of slight suspicion at what the newcomers to the area might mean in terms of property development: The goal is improving your fellow man’s mind and nourishment in concert with your own; competition to improve your day and the quality of the day for society. Meanwhile, what is the first thing one thinks about when he enters Byron and the area? The physical environment is so magnificent and all encompassing that it can actually hold a man’s breath back a few seconds. Then a man says, “Wow, this land is so beautiful that one could make a quid here.” And from that moment the natural aura and spells are broken and the mind lapses into speculative equations, sales projections and future interest payments. There is plenty of “love” though, in this article: “The gathering at Nimbin is the most spectacular demonstration of the faith people have in a belief that is possible (and possible just because they want it to be) to live in love, through love together.” The following article signed by Rusty Miller “A Town Together” is equally focused on love: “See what you could offer the spirit at Nimbin. It might introduce you to a style that could lead to LOVE.” The centre spread features photos: the obligatory nudes, tents, and back to nature activities, like planting and woodworking. With a text box of “random comments” including one from a Lismore executive: ‘I took my wife and kids out there last weekend and we had such a good time. Seems pretty organized and the town was loaded with love. Heard there is some hepatitis about and rumours of VD. Everyone happy.” And another from a land speculator (surely the prime target of Miller’s wrath): “Saw guys kissing girls on the street, so sweet, bought 200 acres right outside of town, it’s going to be valuable out there some day.” The interview with Johnny Allen as the centrepiece includes some pertinent commentary on the media and reveals a well-founded suspicion of the mediatisation of the Aquarius Festival: We have tried to avoid the media actually. But we haven’t succeeded in doing so. Part of the basic idea is that we don’t need to be sold. All the down town press can do is try and interpret you. And by doing that it automatically places it in the wrong sort of context. So we’ve tried to keep it to people writing about the festival to people who will be involved in it. It’s an involvement festival. Coopting The Byron Express as an “involved” party effects a fundamental shift from an external reporting newspaper to a kind of proponent or even propaganda for the Aquarius festival and its ideas, like so many utopian newspapers had done before. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that The Byron Express should disappear very soon after the Aquarius festival. Fiona Martin and Rhonda Ellis explain that Rusty Miller stopped producing the paper because he “found the production schedule exhausting and his readership too small to attract consistent advertising” (5). At any rate, there were only two more issues, one in June–with some follow up reporting of the festival–and another in September 1973, which was almost entirely devoted to environmentally focused features, including an interview with Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). Byron Bay 2013: Thirty Years of Rusty’s Byron Guide What Rusty did next is fairly well known locally–surfing and teaching people how to surf and a bit of writing. When major local employer Walkers slaughterhouse closed in 1983, he and his wife, social geographer Tricia Shantz, were asked by the local council to help promote Byron Bay as a tourist destination, writing the first Byron guide in 1983-4. Incorporating essays by local personalities and dedicated visitors, the Byron guide perpetuates the ideal of environmental awareness, spiritual experimentation, and respect for the land and sea. Recent contributors have included philosopher Peter Singer, political journalist Kerry O’Brien, and writer John Ralston Saul, and Miller and Shantz always have an essay in there themselves. “People, Politics and Culture” is the new byline for the 2013 edition. And Miller’s opening essay mediates the same utopian desires and environmental community messages that he espoused from the beginning of The Byron Express: The name Byron Bay represents something that we constantly try to articulate. If one was to dream up a menu of situations and conditions to compose a utopia, Australia would be the model of the nation-state and Byron would have many elements of the actual place one might wish to live for the rest of their lives. But of course there is always the danger of excesses in tropical paradises especially when they become famous destinations. Australia is being held to ransom for the ideology that we should be slaves to money and growth at the cost of a degraded and polluted physical and social environment. Byron at least was/is a refuge against this profusion of the so-called real-world perception that holds profit over environment as the way we must choose for our future. Even when writing for a much more commercial medium, Miller retains the countercultural utopian spirit that was crystallised in the Aquarius festival of 1973, and which remains relevant to many of those living in and visiting the Rainbow Region. Miller’s ethos moves beyond the alternative movements and communities to infiltrate travel writing and tourism initiatives in the area today, as evidenced in the Rusty’s Byron Guide essays. By presenting more radical discourses for a mainstream public, Miller together with Shantz have built on the participatory role that he played in launching the region’s first alternative newspaper in 1973 that became albeit briefly the equivalent of a countercultural utopian gazette. Now, he and Shantz effectively play the same role, producing a kind of countercultural form of utopian media for Byron Bay that corresponds to exactly the same criteria mentioned above. Through their free publication, they aim to educate, socialise, promote and represent the special interests of the founders and followers of the Rainbow Region, focusing on the philosophy and ideals underpinning these communities rather than the everyday events. The Byron Bay that Miller and Shantz promote is resolutely utopian, and certainly countercultural if compared to other free publications like The Book, a new shopping guide, or mainstream media elsewhere. Despite this new competition, they are planning the next edition for 2015 with essays to make people think, talk, and understand the region’s issues, so perhaps the counterculture is still holding its own against the mainstream. References Atton, Chris. “What Is ‘Alternative’ Journalism?” Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism 4.3 (2003): 267-72. Berger, Bennett M. The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life among Rural Communards. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Cock, Peter H., & Paul F. Perry. “Australia's Alternative Media.” Media Information Australia 6 (1977): 4-13. Couldry, Nick. “Mediation and Alternative Media, or Relocating the Centre of Media and Communication Studies.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 103, (2002): 24-31. Davis, Dale, John Witzig & Don James. “Rusty Miller.” Encyclopedia of Surfing. 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/miller-rusty›. Downing, John. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Davis, J.C. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Forde, Susan. Challenging the News: The Journalism of Alternative and Independent Media. Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2011. ---. “Monitoring the Establishment: The Development of the Alternative Press in Australia” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 87 (May 1998): 114-133. Frobert, Lucien. “French Utopian Socialists as the First Pioneers in Development.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 35 (2011): 729-49. Green, Toby. Thomas More’s Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico. London: Phoenix, 2004. Goffman, Ken, & Dan Joy. Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. New York: Villard Books. 2004. Haude, Sigrun. “Anabaptism.” The Reformation World. Ed. Andrew Pettegree. London: Routledge, 2000. 237-256. Jameson, Fredric. Archeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. Levitas, Ruth. Utopia as Method. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Martin, Fiona, & Rhonda Ellis. “Dropping In, Not Out: The Evolution of the Alternative Press in Byron Shire 1970-2001.” Transformations 2 (2002). 10 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_02/pdf/MartinEllis.pdf›. McKay, George. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. London: Verso, 1996. Metcalf, Bill. From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality: Cooperative Lifestyles in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995. ---. Shared Visions, Shared Lives: Communal Living around the Globe. Forres, UK: Findhorn Press, 1996. Miller, Rusty & Tricia Shantz. Turning Point: Surf Portraits and Stories from Bells to Byron 1970-1971. Surf Research. 2012. Molnar, Thomas. Utopia: The Perennial Heresy. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Methuen, 1986. Munro-Clark, Margaret. Communes in Rural Australia: The Movement since 1970. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986. Osterlag, Bob. People’s Movements, People’s Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. New York: Anchor, 1969. Sargent, Lyman Tower. “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 1-37. Schaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: New York Public Library/Oxford UP, 2000. Streitmatter, Roger. Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. Columbia: Columbia UP, 2001. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Ward, Susan, & Kitty van Vuuren. “Belonging to the Rainbow Region: Place, Local Media, and the Construction of Civil and Moral Identities Strategic to Climate Change Adaptability.” Environmental Communication 7.1 (2013): 63-79. Warshaw, Matt. The History of Surfing. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011. Wilson, Helen. (Ed.). Belonging in the Rainbow Region: Cultural Perspectives on the NSW North Coast. Lismore, NSW: Southern Cross University Press, 2003. Widmer, Kingsley. Counterings: Utopian Dialectics in Contemporary Contexts. Ann Arbor, London: UMI Research Press, 1988. Yinger, J. Milton. Countercultures: The Promise and Peril of a World Turned Upside Down. New York: The Free Press, 1982.

IntroductionThe National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program (NSCSWP) has been one of the most controversial Australian news topics in the past eight years. Newspaper representations of the NSCSWP have been prolific since the Program began in 2006/07. In my previous research into the NSCSWP, I found that initially the Program was well received. Following the High Court Challenge campaign, however, which began in late 2010, newspaper reports portrayed the NSCSWP in a predominantly negative light. These negative portrayals of the NSCSWP persisted in the lead up to the second High Court Challenge from 2013 until June 2014. During this time, newspaper representations portrayed the Program as an illegitimate form of counseling for state school students. However, I would argue that it was the newspaper representations of the NSCSWP that were in fact illegitimate. In this article, I contend that illegitimate representations of the NSCSWP became hegemonic because of a lack of evidence-based research conducted into the Program’s operation within state schools. Evidence-based research would have appropriately evaluated the Program’s progress and contributed to a legitimate and fair representation of chaplains in online newspapers. My analysis acknowledges the overwhelming prejudice against the NSCSWP. Whether chaplains were indeed a legitimate or illegitimate form of counseling is not my argument. My argument is that newspaper representations of the NSCSWP were illegitimate because news articles were presenting biased and incomplete information to the Australian community. Defining IllegitimacyIllegitimacy as a term has a long history dating back to early modern England, when it was commonly used to refer to children born out of wedlock (Pritchard 19). However, the definition of illegitimacy extends beyond this social phenomenon. Katie Pritchard states:The understanding of illegitimacy encompasses a kind of theoretical illegitimacy that is nothing to do with birth, referring to a kind of falseness or unsuitability that can be applied in many circumstances. (21)For this article, I will be using the term ‘illegitimate’ to describe how the newspaper representations of the NSCSWP were unsuitable because they were biased and lacked valuable information. Newspaper reports, which can be accessed online via the newspaper company’s website, include important authoritative voices. However, these voices expressed a certain opinion or concern, rather than delivering information that contributed to society’s understanding of the NSCSWP. Therefore, newspapers did not present legitimate facts, but instead a range of subjective opinions.The Illegitimacy of Newspaper ReportingThe ideological bias of newspapers has been recently examined regarding News Corp, the owner of national title The Australian, and many of the major Australian state newspapers: The Daily Telegraph; The Courier Mail, Herald Sun; The Advertiser; and Sunday Times. This organisation has recently been accused of showing bias in its newspaper articles (Meade). Meade quotes Mark Scott, the ABC Managing Director, who states:Given the aggressive editorial positioning of some of their mastheads and their willingness to adopt and pursue an editorial position, an ideological position and a market segmentation, you could argue that News Corporation newspapers have never been more assertive in exercising media power. (1)The market domination enjoyed by large organisations such as News Corp, and even Fairfax Media, leads to consistency in journalists’ writing on political, social, religious, and economic issues, which may predominate over the articles published by smaller newspapers. There is the concern that over time a particular point of view will be favoured. According to Mark Scott “a range of influential voices [is] essential to ensure a fair and open media” (Meade 1). Scott cites Rupert Murdoch who stated, back in 1967, that “freedom of the press mustn’t be one-sided just for a publisher to speak as he pleases, to try and bully the community” (Meade 1). Therefore, it has been acknowledged that a biased news article is illegitimate, and national news articles are to present facts, not the opinions of the newspaper.A Methodological Framework For this article I will utilise Norman Fairclough’s theory of Critical Discourse Analysis. Fairclough states:By ‘critical’ discourse analysis I mean discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes. (132-133)This method of analysis examines three assumptions: Existential, Propositional and Value. Existential assumptions make claims about what exists with regards to the problem, and refers to social phenomena such as globalisation or social cohesion (56). Propositional assumptions make predictions about what is or will be (55). Value assumptions simply evaluate things as good or bad, needed or not needed (57). These assumptions can be identified through analysis of the various direct quotes included within online newspaper articles.Direct quotations in newspaper articles available online often represent polarised views demonstrating whether people agree or disagree with the topic being discussed. The selection, or framing, of dominant voices within an article can be used to construct or re-present certain ideologies (Entman, 165). Entman explains that “we can define framing as the process of culling a few elements of perceived reality and assembling a narrative that highlights connections among them to promote a particular interpretation” (164). The framing of direct quotes within an article, therefore, assists the reader in identifying the article’s bias. The National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare ProgramThe National School Chaplaincy Program was first established in 2006 by the Howard Government, and in 2011 Julia Gillard included secular youth workers, expanding it from 2012 to become the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program. According to the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Guidelines, the Program aimed to “assist school communities to provide pastoral care and general spiritual, social and emotional comfort to all students, irrespective of their faith or beliefs” (6). Chaplaincy in Australia has been a predominantly Christian counseling service with Christianity being the most commonly practiced religion in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics). However, there have been chaplains representing other faiths such as Islam, Judaism and Buddhism (Australian Government 8). Chaplains were chosen by their respective schools and were partly funded by the Government to provide support to students and staff.State Newspaper Articles Online: Representations 2013-2014My sample of articles came from nine state newspapers with an online presence: The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Courier Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, Melbourne Age, Northern Times, The Australian, The West Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Mercury. A total of 36 articles were collected, from the newspaper’s Website, for 2013 and 2014, and were divided into two categories.The two categories are Supportive (of the Program) and Unsupportive (of the Program). In 2013, two articles were supportive of the Program, whereas in 2014 there were four. In 2013 three articles were unsupportive of the Program, whereas in 2014 there were 27 unsupportive articles, representing the growing interest in the scheme in the final lead up to the High Court Challenge in 2014. An online newspaper article from 2013, which portrays the NSCSWP and in particular chaplains as illegitimate, is Call for Naked School Chaplain to Be Defrocked (Domjen). This article explains how an off-duty school chaplain was preaching naked in the main street of a country town in NSW. The NSW Teachers Federation President Maurie Mulheron, and Parents and Citizens Association publicity officer Rachael Sowden were quoted in this article. It is through their direct quotes that the illegitimacy of chaplaincy is framed. President Mulheron states:We believe the chaplaincy program is wrong and that money should be used for an increase in school-based counsellors. Obviously the right checks and balances are not in place. (1)When President Mulheron states “We” it is unclear to the reader as to whether he is referring to all NSW Teachers or the organisation’s administrators. The reader is left to make their own assumptions about whom he is referring to. The President also makes a value assumption that the money would be better spent on school-based counselors, thus expressing his own opinion that they are a better option. A propositional assumption is made when he claims that the “right checks and balances are not in place”, but is he basing his claim on this one incident or is there other research to support this assumption?Perhaps this naked chaplain appeared fine when the school hired him, perhaps he does not have a previous record of inappropriate behaviour, perhaps it was an isolated incident. The reader is not given any background information on this chaplain and is therefore meant to take the President’s assumptions as legitimate fact. Ms Sowden, representing the Parents’ and Citizens’ Association, also expresses the same assumptions and concerns. Ms Sowden states:We have great concerns about the chaplain scheme - many parents do. We are concerned about whether they go through the same processes as teachers in terms of working with children checks and their suitability to the position, and this case highlights that.Ms Sowden makes a propositional assumption that many parents and citizens are concerned about the Program. It would be interesting to know what the Parents and Citizens Association was doing about this, considering the choice to have a chaplain is a decision made by the school community? Ms Sowden also asks whether chaplains “go through the same processes as teachers in terms of working with children checks and their suitability to the position”. Chaplains do not go through the same process as teachers in their training as they have a different role in the school. However, chaplains do require a Certificate IV in Pastoral Care as well as a Working with Children Check because they are in close proximity to children, and are being paid for their school counseling service (Working with Children Check). Ms Sowden’s value assumption that chaplains are unsuitable for the position is based on her own limited understanding of their qualifications, which she admits to not knowing. In fact, to be appointed to represent parents and citizens and to even voice their concerns, but not know the qualifications of chaplains in her community, is an interesting area of ignorance.This article has been framed to evaluate the actions of all chaplains through the example of a publicly-naked chaplain, discussed without context in this article. The Program is portrayed as hiring unsuitable and thus illegitimate chaplains. However, the quotes are based on concerns and assumptions that are unfounded, and are fears presented as facts. Therefore the representation is illegitimate because it does not report any information that the public can use to better understand the NSCSWP, or even to understand the circumstances surrounding the chaplain who preached naked in the street. Another article from 2014, which represents chaplains as illegitimate, is Push to Divert Chaplain Cash to School Councillors (Paine). This article focuses on the comments of the Tasmanian Association of State School Organisations President Jenny Eddington, and the Australian Education Union President Angelo Gavrielatos. These dominant voices within the Tasmanian and Australian communities are chosen to express their opinion that the money once used for chaplains should now be used to fund psychologists in schools. AEU President Angelo Gavrielatos states: Apart from undermining our secular traditions, this additional funding should have been allocated to schools to better meet the educational needs of students with trained, specialist staff.Mr Gavrielatos makes a propositional assumption that chaplains are untrained staff and are thus illegitimate staff. However, chaplains are trained and specialise in providing counseling services. Thus, through his call for “trained, specialist staff” he aims to delegitimize the training of chaplains. Mr Gavrielatos also makes a value assumption when he claims that the funding put towards the NSCSWP undermines “our secular traditions”. “Secular traditions” is an existential assumption in positioning that Australians have secular traditions, and that these do not involve chaplaincy because the Australian Government is not supposed to support religion. The Australian Bureau of Statistics states:Enlightenment principles promoted a secular government, detached from the church, that encouraged tolerance and supported religious pluralism, including the right to practice no religion. By Federation, this diversity was enshrined in the Australian Constitution, which says that the Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion. (1)The funding of the Program was a contentious issue from the time of its inception; although it could be argued that it was the prerogative of the Government to support the practice of diverse cultural and religious beliefs by allowing schools to hire religious counselors of their choice. Given that not every student is Christian some would perhaps benefit from chaplains or counselors representing other faiths.These news articles have selected dominant voices to construct and promote an ideology of chaplains as an illegitimate resource for school communities. In these newspaper reports existential, propositional and value assumptions were expressed by dominant voices who expressed concern about the role and behaviour of chaplains in schools. However, research into the Program and its operation within each state may have avoided the representation of unfounded and illegitimate assumptions.Evidence-Based Research: Avoiding Illegitimacy Over the course of the Chaplaincy Program various resources, such as reports and journal articles attempted to provide evidence of how the NSCSWP was funded and operated within state schools.The Department of Education received frequent progress reports by state schools who hired chaplains, although this information was not made available to the public. However, in 2011 then Education Minister Peter Garrett released a discussion paper informing Australians about the current set up of the Program and how the community could have their say on the Program’s fulfillment from 2012-2014. The discussion paper was reported on by The Australian, which portrayed the Program as not catering to the needs of Australian youth because chaplains are predominantly Christian (Ferrari). The newspaper report focuses on the concerns of Australian communities regarding the funding, and qualifications of chaplains, and the cost of the Program. Thus, the Program appeared illegitimate and as though it could not cater to the Australian community’s expectations.Reports conducted by organisations external to the Education Department tried to examine schools communities’ expectations and experiences of the Program. One such report was written in 2009 by Dr Philip Hughes and Professor Margaret Sims from Edith Cowan University who aimed to examine how Australian schools evaluated the Program, and the role of chaplains, but their report excluded the state of NSW.Hughes and Sims state that chaplains’ “contribution was widely appreciated” by schools (6). This report attempted to provide a legitimate and independent account of the Program, however, the report was deemed biased by NSW Greens MLC, Dr John Kaye who remarked that the study was “deeply flawed” and lacked independence (Thielking & MacKenzie 1). According to critics, the study focussed on the positive benefits of chaplains, but the only benefit that was unique to them was that they were religious (The Greens). The study also neglected to report that Hughes was an employee of the Christian Research Association and that his background could impede his objectivity. In the same year, 2009, ACCESS ministries published a report titled: The value of chaplains in Victorian schools. The independent research conducted by Social Compass covers: “the value of chaplains; their social, spiritual and academic impacts; the difference made to the health, well being and quality of life of students; and the contributions made to strengthen communities” (2).This study promoted a positive view of chaplaincy within schools and tried to report on a portion of the community’s experiences with chaplains. However, it was limited in that it pertains only to Victorian schools and received very little media attention online. Even if this information were available online it would have only related to Victoria. Further research conducted into chaplaincy has been published in the Journal of Christian Education. This journal contains many articles on chaplaincy, but these are not easily available online as they require a subscription. The findings from these articles have not been published in newspaper articles online and have therefore not been made available to the general public. The Christian bias of the journal may have also contributed to its contents being neglected by news articles made available online, although they might have assisted in providing a more balanced representation of the NSCSWP.The extent of the research conducted into The National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program has not been entirely delineated here, but these are some of the prominent resources. Nonetheless, the rigorous evaluation of the contribution of the NSCSWP was minimal, and the quality of its evaluation predominantly biased.Robert Slavin states that school program evaluations must “produce reliable, unbiased, and meaningful information on the strength of evidence behind each program” (1). Unfortunately, the research conducted into the Chaplaincy Program was not free from bias, consistent or properly designed in a way that legitimately evaluated the NSCSWP. According to Monica Thielking and David MacKenzie:The fact is that the provision of support services for students in Australian schools has never been subjected to serious research and evaluation, and any analysis is made more difficult by the fact that the various states and territories deploy somewhat different models. (1)Thus, the information on the Chaplaincy Program’s progress and the responsibilities of chaplains in schools was not comprehensive or accurate enough to be appropriately reported in newspapers available online. Therefore, newspaper articles used quotes and information based on a limited understanding of the Program, which in turn produced illegitimate representations of the NSCSWP.ConclusionNewspaper reports available online drew conclusions about the Program’s effectiveness, which had not been appropriately tested. If research had been made available to the public, or published within state-based media online, Australians would have had a more legitimate understanding of the Program’s operation within state education, even if that understanding could not have changed the High Court ruling.The Chaplaincy Program demonstrates how a lack of evidence-based research allows the media to construct illegitimate representations based on promoting the assumptions of dominant, and I would argue the loudest, voices, in society. The bias represented in a consistent approach adopted by newspapers owned by dominant media companies, is a factor in the re-presentation and promotion of certain ideologies. This was made evident by the fact that, in 2014, across nine state newspapers available online, 27 articles were unsupportive of the Program as opposed to only four articles that were supportive. Audiences need to be presented with facts rather than opinions, which are based on very little research. Hopefully newspaper reporting will change in the future to offer audiences a more legitimate representation of news events. ReferencesACCESS Ministries. The Value of Chaplains in Victorian Schools. NSW, 2009. Australian Bureau of Statistics. "Reflecting a Nation: Stories from the 2011 Census, 2012–2013." 2012. Australian Government. National School Chaplaincy Program: A Discussion Paper. Australia: Commonwealth of Australian, 2011. Chaplaincy Australia. "Training." n.d. Commonwealth of Australia. National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program Guidelines. Australia: Australian Government, 2012. Domjen, Briana. “Call for Naked School Chaplain to Be Defrocked.” The Australian 3 Feb. 2013: 1.Entman, Robert. "Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power." Journal of Communications 1 (2007): 163-73.Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Longman, 2003.Ferrari, Justine. "School Chaplains Not Representative." The Australian 12 Feb. 2011: 1.Hughes, Philip, and Margaret Sims. The Effectivess of Chaplaincy: As Provided by the National School Chaplaincy Association to Government Schools in Australia. Perth: Edith Cowan University, 2009.Meade, Amanda. "Mark Scott: News Corp Papers Never More Aggressive than Now." The Guardian 3 Oct. 2014: 1.Paine, Michelle. “Push to Divert Chaplain Cash to School Councillors.” The Mercury 21 Jun. 2014: 1.Pritchard, Katie. "Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s British Plays." U of Manchester, 2011.Slavin, Robert. "Perspectives on Evidence-Based Research in Education: What Works? Issues in Synthesizing Educational Program Evaluations." Educational Researcher 37.1 (2008): 5-14. The Greens. "Chaplaincy Program Study 'Flawed and Biased': Conclusions Not Justified." n.d. Thielking, Monica, and David MacKenzie. “School Chaplains: Time to Look at the Evidence.” 2011. Working with Children Check. "Categories of Work." 2008.

1991 An afternoon in late 1991 found me on a Sydney bus reading Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). A disembarking passenger paused at my side and, as I glanced up, hissed, ‘I don’t know how you can read that filth’. As she continued to make her way to the front of the vehicle, I was as stunned as if she had struck me physically. There was real vehemence in both her words and how they were delivered, and I can still see her eyes squeezing into slits as she hesitated while curling her mouth around that final angry word: ‘filth’. Now, almost fifteen years later, the memory is remarkably vivid. As the event is also still remarkable; this comment remaining the only remark ever made to me by a stranger about anything I have been reading during three decades of travelling on public transport. That inflamed commuter summed up much of the furore that greeted the publication of American Psycho. More than this, and unusually, condemnation of the work both actually preceded, and affected, its publication. Although Ellis had been paid a substantial U.S. $300,000 advance by Simon & Schuster, pre-publication stories based on circulating galley proofs were so negative—offering assessments of the book as: ‘moronic … pointless … themeless … worthless (Rosenblatt 3), ‘superficial’, ‘a tapeworm narrative’ (Sheppard 100) and ‘vile … pornography, not literature … immoral, but also artless’ (Miner 43)—that the publisher cancelled the contract (forfeiting the advance) only months before the scheduled release date. CEO of Simon & Schuster, Richard E. Snyder, explained: ‘it was an error of judgement to put our name on a book of such questionable taste’ (quoted in McDowell, “Vintage” 13). American Psycho was, instead, published by Random House/Knopf in March 1991 under its prestige paperback imprint, Vintage Contemporary (Zaller; Freccero 48) – Sonny Mehta having signed the book to Random House some two days after Simon & Schuster withdrew from its agreement with Ellis. While many commented on the fact that Ellis was paid two substantial advances, it was rarely noted that Random House was a more prestigious publisher than Simon & Schuster (Iannone 52). After its release, American Psycho was almost universally vilified and denigrated by the American critical establishment. The work was criticised on both moral and aesthetic/literary/artistic grounds; that is, in terms of both what Ellis wrote and how he wrote it. Critics found it ‘meaningless’ (Lehmann-Haupt C18), ‘abysmally written … schlock’ (Kennedy 427), ‘repulsive, a bloodbath serving no purpose save that of morbidity, titillation and sensation … pure trash, as scummy and mean as anything it depicts, a dirty book by a dirty writer’ (Yardley B1) and ‘garbage’ (Gurley Brown 21). Mark Archer found that ‘the attempt to confuse style with content is callow’ (31), while Naomi Wolf wrote that: ‘overall, reading American Psycho holds the same fascination as watching a maladjusted 11-year-old draw on his desk’ (34). John Leo’s assessment sums up the passionate intensity of those critical of the work: ‘totally hateful … violent junk … no discernible plot, no believable characterization, no sensibility at work that comes anywhere close to making art out of all the blood and torture … Ellis displays little feel for narration, words, grammar or the rhythm of language’ (23). These reviews, as those printed pre-publication, were titled in similarly unequivocal language: ‘A Revolting Development’ (Sheppard 100), ‘Marketing Cynicism and Vulgarity’ (Leo 23), ‘Designer Porn’ (Manguel 46) and ‘Essence of Trash’ (Yardley B1). Perhaps the most unambiguous in its message was Roger Rosenblatt’s ‘Snuff this Book!’ (3). Of all works published in the U.S.A. at that time, including those clearly carrying X ratings, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) selected American Psycho for special notice, stating that the book ‘legitimizes inhuman and savage violence masquerading as sexuality’ (NOW 114). Judging the book ‘the most misogynistic communication’ the organisation had ever encountered (NOW L.A. chapter president, Tammy Bruce, quoted in Kennedy 427) and, on the grounds that ‘violence against women in any form is no longer socially acceptable’ (McDowell, “NOW” C17), NOW called for a boycott of the entire Random House catalogue for the remainder of 1991. Naomi Wolf agreed, calling the novel ‘a violation not of obscenity standards, but of women’s civil rights, insofar as it results in conditioning male sexual response to female suffering or degradation’ (34). Later, the boycott was narrowed to Knopf and Vintage titles (Love 46), but also extended to all of the many products, companies, corporations, firms and brand names that are a feature of Ellis’s novel (Kauffman, “American” 41). There were other unexpected responses such as the Walt Disney Corporation barring Ellis from the opening of Euro Disney (Tyrnauer 101), although Ellis had already been driven from public view after receiving a number of death threats and did not undertake a book tour (Kennedy 427). Despite this, the book received significant publicity courtesy of the controversy and, although several national bookstore chains and numerous booksellers around the world refused to sell the book, more than 100,000 copies were sold in the U.S.A. in the fortnight after publication (Dwyer 55). Even this success had an unprecedented effect: when American Psycho became a bestseller, The New York Times announced that it would be removing the title from its bestseller lists because of the book’s content. In the days following publication in the U.S.A., Canadian customs announced that it was considering whether to allow the local arm of Random House to, first, import American Psycho for sale in Canada and, then, publish it in Canada (Kirchhoff, “Psycho” C1). Two weeks later, when the book was passed for sale (Kirchhoff, “Customs” C1), demonstrators protested the entrance of a shipment of the book. In May, the Canadian Defence Force made headlines when it withdrew copies of the book from the library shelves of a navy base in Halifax (Canadian Press C1). Also in May 1991, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), the federal agency that administers the classification scheme for all films, computer games and ‘submittable’ publications (including books) that are sold, hired or exhibited in Australia, announced that it had classified American Psycho as ‘Category 1 Restricted’ (W. Fraser, “Book” 5), to be sold sealed, to only those over 18 years of age. This was the first such classification of a mainstream literary work since the rating scheme was introduced (Graham), and the first time a work of literature had been restricted for sale since Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969. The chief censor, John Dickie, said the OFLC could not justify refusing the book classification (and essentially banning the work), and while ‘as a satire on yuppies it has a lot going for it’, personally he found the book ‘distasteful’ (quoted in W. Fraser, “Sensitive” 5). Moreover, while this ‘R’ classification was, and remains, a national classification, Australian States and Territories have their own sale and distribution regulation systems. Under this regime, American Psycho remains banned from sale in Queensland, as are all other books in this classification category (Vnuk). These various reactions led to a flood of articles published in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and the U.K., voicing passionate opinions on a range of issues including free speech and censorship, the corporate control of artistic thought and practice, and cynicism on the part of authors and their publishers about what works might attract publicity and (therefore) sell in large numbers (see, for instance, Hitchens 7; Irving 1). The relationship between violence in society and its representation in the media was a common theme, with only a few commentators (including Norman Mailer in a high profile Vanity Fair article) suggesting that, instead of inciting violence, the media largely reflected, and commented upon, societal violence. Elayne Rapping, an academic in the field of Communications, proposed that the media did actively glorify violence, but only because there was a market for such representations: ‘We, as a society love violence, thrive on violence as the very basis of our social stability, our ideological belief system … The problem, after all, is not media violence but real violence’ (36, 38). Many more commentators, however, agreed with NOW, Wolf and others and charged Ellis’s work with encouraging, and even instigating, violent acts, and especially those against women, calling American Psycho ‘a kind of advertising for violence against women’ (anthropologist Elliot Leyton quoted in Dwyer 55) and, even, a ‘how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women’ (Leo 23). Support for the book was difficult to find in the flood of vitriol directed against it, but a small number wrote in Ellis’s defence. Sonny Mehta, himself the target of death threats for acquiring the book for Random House, stood by this assessment, and was widely quoted in his belief that American Psycho was ‘a serious book by a serious writer’ and that Ellis was ‘remarkably talented’ (Knight-Ridder L10). Publishing director of Pan Macmillan Australia, James Fraser, defended his decision to release American Psycho on the grounds that the book told important truths about society, arguing: ‘A publisher’s office is a clearing house for ideas … the real issue for community debate [is] – to what extent does it want to hear the truth about itself, about individuals within the community and about the governments the community elects. If we care about the preservation of standards, there is none higher than this. Gore Vidal was among the very few who stated outright that he liked the book, finding it ‘really rather inspired … a wonderfully comic novel’ (quoted in Tyrnauer 73). Fay Weldon agreed, judging the book as ‘brilliant’, and focusing on the importance of Ellis’s message: ‘Bret Easton Ellis is a very good writer. He gets us to a ‘T’. And we can’t stand it. It’s our problem, not his. American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel that revolves around its own nasty bits’ (C1). Since 1991 As unlikely as this now seems, I first read American Psycho without any awareness of the controversy raging around its publication. I had read Ellis’s earlier works, Less than Zero (1985) and The Rules of Attraction (1987) and, with my energies fully engaged elsewhere, cannot now even remember how I acquired the book. Since that angry remark on the bus, however, I have followed American Psycho’s infamy and how it has remained in the public eye over the last decade and a half. Australian OFLC decisions can be reviewed and reversed – as when Pasolini’s final film Salo (1975), which was banned in Australia from the time of its release in 1975 until it was un-banned in 1993, was then banned again in 1998 – however, American Psycho’s initial classification has remained unchanged. In July 2006, I purchased a new paperback copy in rural New South Wales. It was shrink-wrapped in plastic and labelled: ‘R. Category One. Not available to persons under 18 years. Restricted’. While exact sales figures are difficult to ascertain, by working with U.S.A., U.K. and Australian figures, this copy was, I estimate, one of some 1.5 to 1.6 million sold since publication. In the U.S.A., backlist sales remain very strong, with some 22,000 copies sold annually (Holt and Abbott), while lifetime sales in the U.K. are just under 720,000 over five paperback editions. Sales in Australia are currently estimated by Pan MacMillan to total some 100,000, with a new printing of 5,000 copies recently ordered in Australia on the strength of the book being featured on the inaugural Australian Broadcasting Commission’s First Tuesday Book Club national television program (2006). Predictably, the controversy around the publication of American Psycho is regularly revisited by those reviewing Ellis’s subsequent works. A major article in Vanity Fair on Ellis’s next book, The Informers (1994), opened with a graphic description of the death threats Ellis received upon the publication of American Psycho (Tyrnauer 70) and then outlined the controversy in detail (70-71). Those writing about Ellis’s two most recent novels, Glamorama (1999) and Lunar Park (2005), have shared this narrative strategy, which also forms at least part of the frame of every interview article. American Psycho also, again predictably, became a major topic of discussion in relation to the contracting, making and then release of the eponymous film in 2000 as, for example, in Linda S. Kauffman’s extensive and considered review of the film, which spent the first third discussing the history of the book’s publication (“American” 41-45). Playing with this interest, Ellis continues his practice of reusing characters in subsequent works. Thus, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, who first appeared in The Rules of Attraction as the elder brother of the main character, Sean – who, in turn, makes a brief appearance in American Psycho – also turns up in Glamorama with ‘strange stains’ on his Armani suit lapels, and again in Lunar Park. The book also continues to be regularly cited in discussions of censorship (see, for example, Dubin; Freccero) and has been included in a number of university-level courses about banned books. In these varied contexts, literary, cultural and other critics have also continued to disagree about the book’s impact upon readers, with some persisting in reading the novel as a pornographic incitement to violence. When Wade Frankum killed seven people in Sydney, many suggested a link between these murders and his consumption of X-rated videos, pornographic magazines and American Psycho (see, for example, Manne 11), although others argued against this (Wark 11). Prosecutors in the trial of Canadian murderer Paul Bernardo argued that American Psycho provided a ‘blueprint’ for Bernardo’s crimes (Canadian Press A5). Others have read Ellis’s work more positively, as for instance when Sonia Baelo Allué compares American Psycho favourably with Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs (1988) – arguing that Harris not only depicts more degrading treatment of women, but also makes Hannibal Lecter, his antihero monster, sexily attractive (7-24). Linda S. Kauffman posits that American Psycho is part of an ‘anti-aesthetic’ movement in art, whereby works that are revoltingly ugly and/or grotesque function to confront the repressed fears and desires of the audience and explore issues of identity and subjectivity (Bad Girls), while Patrick W. Shaw includes American Psycho in his work, The Modern American Novel of Violence because, in his opinion, the violence Ellis depicts is not gratuitous. Lost, however, in much of this often-impassioned debate and dialogue is the book itself – and what Ellis actually wrote. 21-years-old when Less than Zero was published, Ellis was still only 26 when American Psycho was released and his youth presented an obvious target. In 1991, Terry Teachout found ‘no moment in American Psycho where Bret Easton Ellis, who claims to be a serious artist, exhibits the workings of an adult moral imagination’ (45, 46), Brad Miner that it was ‘puerile – the very antithesis of good writing’ (43) and Carol Iannone that ‘the inclusion of the now famous offensive scenes reveals a staggering aesthetic and moral immaturity’ (54). Pagan Kennedy also ‘blamed’ the entire work on this immaturity, suggesting that instead of possessing a developed artistic sensibility, Ellis was reacting to (and, ironically, writing for the approval of) critics who had lauded the documentary realism of his violent and nihilistic teenage characters in Less than Zero, but then panned his less sensational story of campus life in The Rules of Attraction (427-428). Yet, in my opinion, there is not only a clear and coherent aesthetic vision driving Ellis’s oeuvre but, moreover, a profoundly moral imagination at work as well. This was my view upon first reading American Psycho, and part of the reason I was so shocked by that charge of filth on the bus. Once familiar with the controversy, I found this view shared by only a minority of commentators. Writing in the New Statesman & Society, Elizabeth J. Young asked: ‘Where have these people been? … Books of pornographic violence are nothing new … American Psycho outrages no contemporary taboos. Psychotic killers are everywhere’ (24). I was similarly aware that such murderers not only existed in reality, but also in many widely accessed works of literature and film – to the point where a few years later Joyce Carol Oates could suggest that the serial killer was an icon of popular culture (233). While a popular topic for writers of crime fiction and true crime narratives in both print and on film, a number of ‘serious’ literary writers – including Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Kate Millet, Margaret Atwood and Oates herself – have also written about serial killers, and even crossed over into the widely acknowledged as ‘low-brow’ true crime genre. Many of these works (both popular or more literary) are vivid and powerful and have, as American Psycho, taken a strong moral position towards their subject matter. Moreover, many books and films have far more disturbing content than American Psycho, yet have caused no such uproar (Young and Caveney 120). By now, the plot of American Psycho is well known, although the structure of the book, noted by Weldon above (C1), is rarely analysed or even commented upon. First person narrator, Patrick Bateman, a young, handsome stockbroker and stereotypical 1980s yuppie, is also a serial killer. The book is largely, and innovatively, structured around this seeming incompatibility – challenging readers’ expectations that such a depraved criminal can be a wealthy white professional – while vividly contrasting the banal, and meticulously detailed, emptiness of Bateman’s life as a New York über-consumer with the scenes where he humiliates, rapes, tortures, murders, mutilates, dismembers and cannibalises his victims. Although only comprising some 16 out of 399 pages in my Picador edition, these violent scenes are extreme and certainly make the work as a whole disgustingly confronting. But that is the entire point of Ellis’s work. Bateman’s violence is rendered so explicitly because its principal role in the novel is to be inescapably horrific. As noted by Baelo Allué, there is no shift in tone between the most banally described detail and the description of violence (17): ‘I’ve situated the body in front of the new Toshiba television set and in the VCR is an old tape and appearing on the screen is the last girl I filmed. I’m wearing a Joseph Abboud suit, a tie by Paul Stuart, shoes by J. Crew, a vest by someone Italian and I’m kneeling on the floor beside a corpse, eating the girl’s brain, gobbling it down, spreading Grey Poupon over hunks of the pink, fleshy meat’ (Ellis 328). In complete opposition to how pornography functions, Ellis leaves no room for the possible enjoyment of such a scene. Instead of revelling in the ‘spine chilling’ pleasures of classic horror narratives, there is only the real horror of imagining such an act. The effect, as Kauffman has observed is, rather than arousing, often so disgusting as to be emetic (Bad Girls 249). Ellis was surprised that his detractors did not understand that he was trying to be shocking, not offensive (Love 49), or that his overall aim was to symbolise ‘how desensitised our culture has become towards violence’ (quoted in Dwyer 55). Ellis was also understandably frustrated with readings that conflated not only the contents of the book and their meaning, but also the narrator and author: ‘The acts described in the book are truly, indisputably vile. The book itself is not. Patrick Bateman is a monster. I am not’ (quoted in Love 49). Like Fay Weldon, Norman Mailer understood that American Psycho posited ‘that the eighties were spiritually disgusting and the author’s presentation is the crystallization of such horror’ (129). Unlike Weldon, however, Mailer shied away from defending the novel by judging Ellis not accomplished enough a writer to achieve his ‘monstrous’ aims (182), failing because he did not situate Bateman within a moral universe, that is, ‘by having a murderer with enough inner life for us to comprehend him’ (182). Yet, the morality of Ellis’s project is evident. By viewing the world through the lens of a psychotic killer who, in many ways, personifies the American Dream – wealthy, powerful, intelligent, handsome, energetic and successful – and, yet, who gains no pleasure, satisfaction, coherent identity or sense of life’s meaning from his endless, selfish consumption, Ellis exposes the emptiness of both that world and that dream. As Bateman himself explains: ‘Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in. This was civilisation as I saw it, colossal and jagged’ (Ellis 375). Ellis thus situates the responsibility for Bateman’s violence not in his individual moral vacuity, but in the barren values of the society that has shaped him – a selfish society that, in Ellis’s opinion, refused to address the most important issues of the day: corporate greed, mindless consumerism, poverty, homelessness and the prevalence of violent crime. Instead of pornographic, therefore, American Psycho is a profoundly political text: Ellis was never attempting to glorify or incite violence against anyone, but rather to expose the effects of apathy to these broad social problems, including the very kinds of violence the most vocal critics feared the book would engender. Fifteen years after the publication of American Psycho, although our societies are apparently growing in overall prosperity, the gap between rich and poor also continues to grow, more are permanently homeless, violence – whether domestic, random or institutionally-sanctioned – escalates, and yet general apathy has intensified to the point where even the ‘ethics’ of torture as government policy can be posited as a subject for rational debate. The real filth of the saga of American Psycho is, thus, how Ellis’s message was wilfully ignored. While critics and public intellectuals discussed the work at length in almost every prominent publication available, few attempted to think in any depth about what Ellis actually wrote about, or to use their powerful positions to raise any serious debate about the concerns he voiced. Some recent critical reappraisals have begun to appreciate how American Psycho is an ‘ethical denunciation, where the reader cannot but face the real horror behind the serial killer phenomenon’ (Baelo Allué 8), but Ellis, I believe, goes further, exposing the truly filthy causes that underlie the existence of such seemingly ‘senseless’ murder. But, Wait, There’s More It is ironic that American Psycho has, itself, generated a mini-industry of products. A decade after publication, a Canadian team – filmmaker Mary Harron, director of I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), working with scriptwriter, Guinevere Turner, and Vancouver-based Lions Gate Entertainment – adapted the book for a major film (Johnson). Starring Christian Bale, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon and, with an estimated budget of U.S.$8 million, the film made U.S.$15 million at the American box office. The soundtrack was released for the film’s opening, with video and DVDs to follow and the ‘Killer Collector’s Edition’ DVD – closed-captioned, in widescreen with surround sound – released in June 2005. Amazon.com lists four movie posters (including a Japanese language version) and, most unexpected of all, a series of film tie-in action dolls. The two most popular of these, judging by E-Bay, are the ‘Cult Classics Series 1: Patrick Bateman’ figure which, attired in a smart suit, comes with essential accoutrements of walkman with headphones, briefcase, Wall Street Journal, video tape and recorder, knife, cleaver, axe, nail gun, severed hand and a display base; and the 18” tall ‘motion activated sound’ edition – a larger version of the same doll with fewer accessories, but which plays sound bites from the movie. Thanks to Stephen Harris and Suzie Gibson (UNE) for stimulating conversations about this book, Stephen Harris for information about the recent Australian reprint of American Psycho and Mark Seebeck (Pan Macmillan) for sales information. References Archer, Mark. “The Funeral Baked Meats.” The Spectator 27 April 1991: 31. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. First Tuesday Book Club. First broadcast 1 August 2006. Baelo Allué, Sonia. “The Aesthetics of Serial Killing: Working against Ethics in The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and American Psycho (1991).” Atlantis 24.2 (Dec. 2002): 7-24. Canadian Press. “Navy Yanks American Psycho.” The Globe and Mail 17 May 1991: C1. Canadian Press. “Gruesome Novel Was Bedside Reading.” Kitchener-Waterloo Record 1 Sep. 1995: A5. Dubin, Steven C. “Art’s Enemies: Censors to the Right of Me, Censors to the Left of Me.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 28.4 (Winter 1994): 44-54. Dwyer, Victor. “Literary Firestorm: Canada Customs Scrutinizes a Brutal Novel.” Maclean’s April 1991: 55. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. London: Macmillan-Picador, 1991. ———. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1999. ———. The Informers. New York: Knopf, 1994. ———. Less than Zero. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. ———. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005. ———. The Rules of Attraction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Fraser, James. :The Case for Publishing.” The Bulletin 18 June 1991. Fraser, William. “Book May Go under Wraps.” The Sydney Morning Herald 23 May 1991: 5. ———. “The Sensitive Censor and the Psycho.” The Sydney Morning Herald 24 May 1991: 5. Freccero, Carla. “Historical Violence, Censorship, and the Serial Killer: The Case of American Psycho.” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 27.2 (Summer 1997): 44-58. Graham, I. “Australian Censorship History.” Libertus.net 9 Dec. 2001. 17 May 2006 http://libertus.net/censor/hist20on.html>. Gurley Brown, Helen. Commentary in “Editorial Judgement or Censorship?: The Case of American Psycho.” The Writer May 1991: 20-23. Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. New York: St Martins Press, 1988. Harron, Mary (dir.). American Psycho [film]. Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation, Lions Gate Films, Muse Productions, P.P.S. Films, Quadra Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 2004. Hitchens, Christopher. “Minority Report.” The Nation 7-14 January 1991: 7. Holt, Karen, and Charlotte Abbott. “Lunar Park: The Novel.” Publishers Weekly 11 July 2005. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA624404.html? pubdate=7%2F11%2F2005&display=archive>. Iannone, Carol. “PC & the Ellis Affair.” Commentary Magazine July 1991: 52-4. Irving, John. “Pornography and the New Puritans.” The New York Times Book Review 29 March 1992: Section 7, 1. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/lifetimes/25665.html>. Johnson, Brian D. “Canadian Cool Meets American Psycho.” Maclean’s 10 April 2000. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.macleans.ca/culture/films/article.jsp?content=33146>. Kauffman, Linda S. “American Psycho [film review].” Film Quarterly 54.2 (Winter 2000-2001): 41-45. ———. Bad Girls and Sick Boys: Fantasies in Contemporary Art and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Kennedy, Pagan. “Generation Gaffe: American Psycho.” The Nation 1 April 1991: 426-8. Kirchhoff, H. J. “Customs Clears Psycho: Booksellers’ Reaction Mixed.” The Globe and Mail 26 March 1991: C1. ———. “Psycho Sits in Limbo: Publisher Awaits Customs Ruling.” The Globe and Mail 14 March 1991: C1. Knight-Ridder News Service. “Vintage Picks up Ellis’ American Psycho.” Los Angeles Daily News 17 November 1990: L10. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. “Psycho: Wither Death without Life?” The New York Times 11 March 1991: C18. Leo, John. “Marketing Cynicism and Vulgarity.” U.S. News & World Report 3 Dec. 1990: 23. Love, Robert. “Psycho Analysis: Interview with Bret Easton Ellis.” Rolling Stone 4 April 1991: 45-46, 49-51. Mailer, Norman. “Children of the Pied Piper: Mailer on American Psycho.” Vanity Fair March 1991: 124-9, 182-3. Manguel, Alberto. “Designer Porn.” Saturday Night 106.6 (July 1991): 46-8. Manne, Robert. “Liberals Deny the Video Link.” The Australian 6 Jan. 1997: 11. McDowell, Edwin. “NOW Chapter Seeks Boycott of ‘Psycho’ Novel.” The New York Times 6 Dec. 1990: C17. ———. “Vintage Buys Violent Book Dropped by Simon & Schuster.” The New York Times 17 Nov. 1990: 13. Miner, Brad. “Random Notes.” National Review 31 Dec. 1990: 43. National Organization for Women. Library Journal 2.91 (1991): 114. Oates, Joyce Carol. “Three American Gothics.” Where I’ve Been, and Where I’m Going: Essays, Reviews and Prose. New York: Plume, 1999. 232-43. Rapping, Elayne. “The Uses of Violence.” Progressive 55 (1991): 36-8. Rosenblatt, Roger. “Snuff this Book!: Will Brett Easton Ellis Get Away with Murder?” New York Times Book Review 16 Dec. 1990: 3, 16. Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York: Random House, 1969. Shaw, Patrick W. The Modern American Novel of Violence. Troy, NY: Whitson, 2000. Sheppard, R. Z. “A Revolting Development.” Time 29 Oct. 1990: 100. Teachout, Terry. “Applied Deconstruction.” National Review 24 June 1991: 45-6. Tyrnauer, Matthew. “Who’s Afraid of Bret Easton Ellis?” Vanity Fair 57.8 (Aug. 1994): 70-3, 100-1. Vnuk, Helen. “X-rated? Outdated.” The Age 21 Sep. 2003. 17 May 2006 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/19/1063625202157.html>. Wark, McKenzie. “Video Link Is a Distorted View.” The Australian 8 Jan. 1997: 11. Weldon, Fay. “Now You’re Squeamish?: In a World as Sick as Ours, It’s Silly to Target American Psycho.” The Washington Post 28 April 1991: C1. Wolf, Naomi. “The Animals Speak.” New Statesman & Society 12 April 1991: 33-4. Yardley, Jonathan. “American Psycho: Essence of Trash.” The Washington Post 27 Feb. 1991: B1. Young, Elizabeth J. “Psycho Killers. Last Lines: How to Shock the English.” New Statesman & Society 5 April 1991: 24. Young, Elizabeth J., and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on American ‘Blank Generation’ Fiction. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992. Zaller, Robert “American Psycho, American Censorship and the Dahmer Case.” Revue Francaise d’Etudes Americaines 16.56 (1993): 317-25. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in : A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D. (Nov. 2006) "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>.

Refereed publications (also known as peer-reviewed) are the currency of academia, yet many PhD theses in Australia result in only one or two such papers. Typically, a doctoral thesis requires the candidate to present (and pass) a public Confirmation Seminar, around nine to twelve months into candidacy, in which a panel of the candidate’s supervisors and invited experts adjudicate upon whether the work is likely to continue and ultimately succeed in the goal of a coherent and original contribution to knowledge. A Final Seminar, also public and sometimes involving the traditional viva voce or oral defence of the thesis, is presented two or three months before approval is given to send the 80,000 to 100,000 word tome off for external examination. And that soul-destroying or elation-releasing examiner’s verdict can be many months in the delivery: a limbo-like period during which the candidate’s status as a student is ended and her or his receipt of any scholarship or funding guerdon is terminated with perfunctory speed. This is the only time most students spend seriously writing up their research for publication although, naturally, many are more involved in job hunting as they pin their hopes on passing the thesis examination.There is, however, a slightly more palatable alternative to this nail-biting process of the traditional PhD, and that is the PhD by Published Papers (also known as PhD by Publications or PhD by Published Works). The form of my own soon-to-be-submitted thesis, it permits the submission for examination of a collection of papers that have been refereed and accepted (or are in the process of being refereed) for publication in academic journals or books. Apart from the obvious benefits in getting published early in one’s (hopefully) burgeoning academic career, it also takes away a lot of the stress come final submission time. After all, I try to assure myself, the thesis examiners can’t really discredit the process of double-blind, peer-review the bulk of the thesis has already undergone: their job is to examine how well I’ve unified the papers into a cohesive thesis … right? But perhaps they should at least be wary, because, unfortunately, the requirements for this kind of PhD vary considerably from institution to institution and there have been some cases where the submitted work is of questionable quality compared to that produced by graduates from more demanding universities. Hence, this paper argues that in my subject area of interest—film and television studies—there is a huge range in the set requirements for doctorates, from universities that award the degree to film artists for prior published work that has undergone little or no academic scrutiny and has involved little or no on-campus participation to at least three Australian universities that require candidates be enrolled for a minimum period of full-time study and only submit scholarly work generated and published (or submitted for publication) during candidature. I would also suggest that uncertainty about where a graduate’s work rests on this continuum risks confusing a hard-won PhD by Published Papers with the sometimes risible honorary doctorate. Let’s begin by dredging the depths of those murky, quasi-academic waters to examine the occasionally less-than-salubrious honorary doctorate. The conferring of this degree is generally a recognition of an individual’s body of (usually published) work but is often conferred for contributions to knowledge or society in general that are not even remotely academic. The honorary doctorate does not usually carry with it the right to use the title “Dr” (although many self-aggrandising recipients in the non-academic world flout this unwritten code of conduct, and, indeed, Monash University’s Monash Magazine had no hesitation in describing its 2008 recipient, musician, screenwriter, and art-school-dropout Nick Cave, as “Dr Cave” (O’Loughlin)). Some shady universities even offer such degrees for sale or ‘donation’ and thus do great damage to that institution’s credibility as well as to the credibility of the degree itself. Such overseas “diploma mills”—including Ashwood University, Belford University, Glendale University and Suffield University—are identified by their advertising of “Life Experience Degrees,” for which a curriculum vitae outlining the prospective graduand’s oeuvre is accepted on face value as long as their credit cards are not rejected. An aspiring screen auteur simply specifies film and television as their major and before you can shout “Cut!” there’s a degree in the mail. Most of these pseudo-universities are not based in Australia but are perfectly happy to confer their ‘titles’ to any well-heeled, vanity-driven Australians capable of completing the online form. Nevertheless, many academics fear a similarly disreputable marketplace might develop here, and Norfolk Island-based Greenwich University presents a particularly illuminating example. Previously empowered by an Act of Parliament consented to by Senator Ian Macdonald, the then Minister for Territories, this “university” had the legal right to confer honorary degrees from 1998. The Act was eventually overridden by legislation passed in 2002, after a concerted effort by the Australian Universities Quality Agency Ltd. and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee to force the accreditation requirements of the Australian Qualifications Framework upon the institution in question, thus preventing it from making degrees available for purchase over the Internet. Greenwich University did not seek re-approval and soon relocated to its original home of Hawaii (Brown). But even real universities flounder in similarly muddy waters when, unsolicited, they make dubious decisions to grant degrees to individuals they hold in high esteem. Although meaning well by not courting pecuniary gain, they nevertheless invite criticism over their choice of recipient for their honoris causa, despite the decision usually only being reached after a process of debate and discussion by university committees. Often people are rewarded, it seems, as much for their fame as for their achievements or publications. One such example of a celebrity who has had his onscreen renown recognised by an honorary doctorate is film and television actor/comedian Billy Connolly who was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by The University of Glasgow in 2006, prompting Stuart Jeffries to complain that “something has gone terribly wrong in British academia” (Jeffries). Eileen McNamara also bemoans the levels to which some institutions will sink to in search of media attention and exposure, when she writes of St Andrews University in Scotland conferring an honorary doctorate to film actor and producer, Michael Douglas: “What was designed to acknowledge intellectual achievement has devolved into a publicity grab with universities competing for celebrity honorees” (McNamara). Fame as an actor (and the list gets even weirder when the scope of enquiry is widened beyond the field of film and television), seems to be an achievement worth recognising with an honorary doctorate, according to some universities, and this kind of discredit is best avoided by Australian institutions of higher learning if they are to maintain credibility. Certainly, universities down under would do well to follow elsewhere than in the footprints of Long Island University’s Southampton College. Perhaps the height of academic prostitution of parchments for the attention of mass media occurred when in 1996 this US school bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters upon that mop-like puppet of film and television fame known as the “muppet,” Kermit the Frog. Indeed, this polystyrene and cloth creation with an anonymous hand operating its mouth had its acceptance speech duly published (see “Kermit’s Acceptance Speech”) and the Long Island University’s Southampton College received much valuable press. After all, any publicity is good publicity. Or perhaps this furry frog’s honorary degree was a cynical stunt meant to highlight the ridiculousness of the practice? In 1986 a similar example, much closer to my own home, occurred when in anticipation and condemnation of the conferral of an honorary doctorate upon Prince Philip by Monash University in Melbourne, the “Members of the Monash Association of Students had earlier given a 21-month-old Chihuahua an honorary science degree” (Jeffries), effectively suggesting that the honorary doctorate is, in fact, a dog of a degree. On a more serious note, there have been honorary doctorates conferred upon far more worthy recipients in the field of film and television by some Australian universities. Indigenous film-maker Tracey Moffatt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Griffith University in November of 2004. Moffatt was a graduate of the Griffith University’s film school and had an excellent body of work including the films Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990) and beDevil (1993). Acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Williamson was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by The University of Queensland in December of 2004. His work had previously picked up four Australian Film Institute awards for best screenplay. An Honorary Doctorate of Visual and Performing Arts was given to film director Fred Schepisi AO by The University of Melbourne in May of 2006. His films had also been earlier recognised with Australian Film Institute awards as well as the Golden Globe Best Miniseries or Television Movie award for Empire Falls in 2006. Director George Miller was crowned with an Honorary Doctorate in Film from the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School in April 2007, although he already had a medical doctor’s testamur on his wall. In May of this year, filmmaker George Gittoes, a fine arts dropout from The University of Sydney, received an honorary doctorate by The University of New South Wales. His documentaries, Soundtrack to War (2005) and Rampage (2006), screened at the Sydney and Berlin film festivals, and he has been employed by the Australian Government as an official war artist. Interestingly, the high quality screen work recognised by these Australian universities may have earned the recipients ‘real’ PhDs had they sought the qualification. Many of these film artists could have just as easily submitted their work for the degree of PhD by Published Papers at several universities that accept prior work in lieu of an original exegesis, and where a film is equated with a book or journal article. But such universities still invite comparisons of their PhDs by Published Papers with honorary doctorates due to rather too-easy-to-meet criteria. The privately funded Bond University, for example, recommends a minimum full-time enrolment of just three months and certainly seems more lax in its regulations than other Antipodean institution: a healthy curriculum vitae and payment of the prescribed fee (currently AUD$24,500 per annum) are the only requirements. Restricting my enquiries once again to the field of my own research, film and television, I note that Dr. Ingo Petzke achieved his 2004 PhD by Published Works based upon films produced in Germany well before enrolling at Bond, contextualized within a discussion of the history of avant-garde film-making in that country. Might not a cynic enquire as to how this PhD significantly differs from an honorary doctorate? Although Petzke undoubtedly paid his fees and met all of Bond’s requirements for his thesis entitled Slow Motion: Thirty Years in Film, one cannot criticise that cynic for wondering if Petzke’s films are indeed equivalent to a collection of refereed papers. It should be noted that Bond is not alone when it comes to awarding candidates the PhD by Published Papers for work published or screened in the distant past. Although yet to grant it in the area of film or television, Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) is an institution that distinctly specifies its PhD by Publications is to be awarded for “research which has been carried out prior to admission to candidature” (8). Similarly, the Griffith Law School states: “The PhD (by publications) is awarded to established researchers who have an international reputation based on already published works” (1). It appears that Bond is no solitary voice in the academic wilderness, for SUT and the Griffith Law School also apparently consider the usual milestones of Confirmation and Final Seminars to be unnecessary if the so-called candidate is already well published. Like Bond, Griffith University (GU) is prepared to consider a collection of films to be equivalent to a number of refereed papers. Dr Ian Lang’s 2002 PhD (by Publication) thesis entitled Conditional Truths: Remapping Paths To Documentary ‘Independence’ contains not refereed, scholarly articles but the following videos: Wheels Across the Himalaya (1981); Yallambee, People of Hope (1986); This Is What I Call Living (1988); The Art of Place: Hanoi Brisbane Art Exchange (1995); and Millennium Shift: The Search for New World Art (1997). While this is a most impressive body of work, and is well unified by appropriate discussion within the thesis, the cynic who raised eyebrows at Petzke’s thesis might also be questioning this thesis: Dr Lang’s videos all preceded enrolment at GU and none have been refereed or acknowledged with major prizes. Certainly, the act of releasing a film for distribution has much in common with book publishing, but should these videos be considered to be on a par with academic papers published in, say, the prestigious and demanding journal Screen? While recognition at awards ceremonies might arguably correlate with peer review there is still the question as to how scholarly a film actually is. Of course, documentary films such as those in Lang’s thesis can be shown to be addressing gaps in the literature, as is the expectation of any research paper, but the onus remains on the author/film-maker to demonstrate this via a detailed contextual review and a well-written, erudite argument that unifies the works into a cohesive thesis. This Lang has done, to the extent that suspicious cynic might wonder why he chose not to present his work for a standard PhD award. Another issue unaddressed by most institutions is the possibility that the publications have been self-refereed or refereed by the candidate’s editorial colleagues in a case wherein the papers appear in a book the candidate has edited or co-edited. Dr Gillian Swanson’s 2004 GU thesis Towards a Cultural History of Private Life: Sexual Character, Consuming Practices and Cultural Knowledge, which addresses amongst many other cultural artefacts the film Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean 1962), has nine publications: five of which come from two books she co-edited, Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two, (Gledhill and Swanson 1996) and Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives (Crisp et al 2000). While few would dispute the quality of Swanson’s work, the persistent cynic might wonder if these five papers really qualify as refereed publications. The tacit understanding of a refereed publication is that it is blind reviewed i.e. the contributor’s name is removed from the document. Such a system is used to prevent bias and favouritism but this level of anonymity might be absent when the contributor to a book is also one of the book’s editors. Of course, Dr Swanson probably took great care to distance herself from the refereeing process undertaken by her co-editors, but without an inbuilt check, allegations of cronyism from unfriendly cynics may well result. A related factor in making comparisons of different university’s PhDs by Published Papers is the requirements different universities have about the standard of the journal the paper is published in. It used to be a simple matter in Australia: the government’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) held a Register of Refereed Journals. If your benefactor in disseminating your work was on the list, your publications were of near-unquestionable quality. Not any more: DEST will no longer accept nominations for listing on the Register and will not undertake to rule on whether a particular journal article meets the HERDC [Higher Education Research Data Collection] requirements for inclusion in publication counts. HEPs [Higher Education Providers] have always had the discretion to determine if a publication produced in a journal meets the requirements for inclusion in the HERDC regardless of whether or not the journal was included on the Register of Refereed Journals. As stated in the HERDC specifications, the Register is not an exhaustive list of all journals which satisfy the peer-review requirements (DEST). The last listing for the DEST Register of Refereed Journals was the 3rd of February 2006, making way for a new tiered list of academic journals, which is currently under review in the Australian tertiary education sector (see discussion of this development in the Redden and Mitchell articles in this issue). In the interim, some university faculties created their own rankings of journals, but not the Faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) where I am studying for my PhD by Published Papers. Although QUT does not have a list of ranked journals for a candidate to submit papers to, it is otherwise quite strict in its requirements. The QUT University Regulations state, “Papers submitted as a PhD thesis must be closely related in terms of subject matter and form a cohesive research narrative” (QUT PhD regulation 14.1.2). Thus there is the requirement at QUT that apart from the usual introduction, methodology and literature review, an argument must be made as to how the papers present a sustained research project via “an overarching discussion of the main features linking the publications” (14.2.12). It is also therein stated that it should be an “account of research progress linking the research papers” (4.2.6). In other words, a unifying essay must make an argument for consideration of the sometimes diversely published papers as a cohesive body of work, undertaken in a deliberate journey of research. In my own case, an aural auteur analysis of sound in the films of Rolf de Heer, I argue that my published papers (eight in total) represent a journey from genre analysis (one paper) to standard auteur analysis (three papers) to an argument that sound should be considered in auteur analysis (one paper) to the major innovation of the thesis, aural auteur analysis (three papers). It should also be noted that unlike Bond, GU or SUT, the QUT regulations for the standard PhD still apply: a Confirmation Seminar, Final Seminar and a minimum two years of full-time enrolment (with a minimum of three months residency in Brisbane) are all compulsory. Such milestones and sine qua non ensure the candidate’s academic progress and intellectual development such that she or he is able to confidently engage in meaningful quodlibets regarding the thesis’s topic. Another interesting and significant feature of the QUT guidelines for this type of degree is the edict that papers submitted must be “published, accepted or submitted during the period of candidature” (14.1.1). Similarly, the University of Canberra (UC) states “The articles or other published material must be prepared during the period of candidature” (10). Likewise, Edith Cowan University (ECU) will confer its PhD by Publications to those candidates whose thesis consists of “only papers published in refereed scholarly media during the period of enrolment” (2). In other words, one cannot simply front up to ECU, QUT, or UC with a résumé of articles or films published over a lifetime of writing or film-making and ask for a PhD by Published Papers. Publications of the candidate prepared prior to commencement of candidature are simply not acceptable at these institutions and such PhDs by Published Papers from QUT, UC and ECU are entirely different to those offered by Bond, GU and SUT. Furthermore, without a requirement for a substantial period of enrolment and residency, recipients of PhDs by Published Papers from Bond, GU, or SUT are unlikely to have participated significantly in the research environment of their relevant faculty and peers. Such newly minted doctors may be as unfamiliar with the campus and its research activities as the recipient of an honorary doctorate usually is, as he or she poses for the media’s cameras en route to the glamorous awards ceremony. Much of my argument in this paper is built upon the assumption that the process of refereeing a paper (or for that matter, a film) guarantees a high level of academic rigour, but I confess that this premise is patently naïve, if not actually flawed. Refereeing can result in the rejection of new ideas that conflict with the established opinions of the referees. Interdisciplinary collaboration can be impeded and the lack of referee’s accountability is a potential problem, too. It can also be no less nail-biting a process than the examination of a finished thesis, given that some journals take over a year to complete the refereeing process, and some journal’s editorial committees have recognised this shortcoming. Despite being a mainstay of its editorial approach since 1869, the prestigious science journal, Nature, which only publishes about 7% of its submissions, has led the way with regard to varying the procedure of refereeing, implementing in 2006 a four-month trial period of ‘Open Peer Review’. Their website states, Authors could choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer review process. Anyone in the field could then post comments, provided they were prepared to identify themselves. Once the usual confidential peer review process is complete, the public ‘open peer review’ process was closed and the editors made their decision about publication with the help of all reports and comments (Campbell). Unfortunately, the experiment was unpopular with both authors and online peer reviewers. What the Nature experiment does demonstrate, however, is that the traditional process of blind refereeing is not yet perfected and can possibly evolve into something less problematic in the future. Until then, refereeing continues to be the best system there is for applying structured academic scrutiny to submitted papers. With the reforms of the higher education sector, including forced mergers of universities and colleges of advanced education and the re-introduction of university fees (carried out under the aegis of John Dawkins, Minister for Employment, Education and Training from 1987 to 1991), and the subsequent rationing of monies according to research dividends (calculated according to numbers of research degree conferrals and publications), there has been a veritable explosion in the number of institutions offering PhDs in Australia. But the general public may not always be capable of differentiating between legitimately accredited programs and diploma mills, given that the requirements for the first differ substantially. From relatively easily obtainable PhDs by Published Papers at Bond, GU and SUT to more rigorous requirements at ECU, QUT and UC, there is undoubtedly a huge range in the demands of degrees that recognise a candidate’s published body of work. The cynical reader may assume that with this paper I am simply trying to shore up my own forthcoming graduation with a PhD by Published papers from potential criticisms that it is on par with a ‘purchased’ doctorate. Perhaps they are right, for this is a new degree in QUT’s Creative Industries faculty and has only been awarded to one other candidate (Dr Marcus Foth for his 2006 thesis entitled Towards a Design Methodology to Support Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Apartment Buildings). But I believe QUT is setting a benchmark, along with ECU and UC, to which other universities should aspire. In conclusion, I believe further efforts should be undertaken to heighten the differences in status between PhDs by Published Papers generated during enrolment, PhDs by Published Papers generated before enrolment and honorary doctorates awarded for non-academic published work. Failure to do so courts cynical comparison of all PhD by Published Papers with unearnt doctorates bought from Internet shysters. References Brown, George. “Protecting Australia’s Higher Education System: A Proactive Versus Reactive Approach in Review (1999–2004).” Proceedings of the Australian Universities Quality Forum 2004. Australian Universities Quality Agency, 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.auqa.edu.au/auqf/2004/program/papers/Brown.pdf>. Campbell, Philip. “Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate.” Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science. December 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/> Crisp, Jane, Kay Ferres, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives. London: Routledge, 2000. Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). “Closed—Register of Refereed Journals.” Higher Education Research Data Collection, 2008. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/online_forms_services/ higher_education_research_data_ collection.htm>. Edith Cowan University. “Policy Content.” Postgraduate Research: Thesis by Publication, 2003. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.ecu.edu.au/GPPS/policies_db/tmp/ac063.pdf>. Gledhill, Christine, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Griffith Law School, Griffith University. Handbook for Research Higher Degree Students. 24 March 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/slrc/pdf/rhdhandbook.pdf>. Jeffries, Stuart. “I’m a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!” The Guardian 6 July 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1813525,00.html>. Kermit the Frog. “Kermit’s Commencement Address at Southampton Graduate Campus.” Long Island University News 19 May 1996. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.southampton.liu.edu/news/commence/1996/kermit.htm>. McNamara, Eileen. “Honorary senselessness.” The Boston Globe 7 May 2006. ‹http://www. boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/07/honorary_senselessness/>. O’Loughlin, Shaunnagh. “Doctor Cave.” Monash Magazine 21 (May 2008). 13 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/monmag/issue21-2008/alumni/cave.html>. Queensland University of Technology. “Presentation of PhD Theses by Published Papers.” Queensland University of Technology Doctor of Philosophy Regulations (IF49). 12 Oct. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.mopp.qut.edu.au/Appendix/appendix09.jsp#14%20Presentation %20of%20PhD%20Theses>. Swinburne University of Technology. Research Higher Degrees and Policies. 14 Nov. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/registrar/ppd/docs/RHDpolicy& procedure.pdf>. University of Canberra. Higher Degrees by Research: Policy and Procedures (The Gold Book). 7.3.3.27 (a). 15 Nov. 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.canberra.edu.au/research/attachments/ goldbook/Pt207_AB20approved3220arp07.pdf>.

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). In a continent inhabited by dead rabbits—a community of the dead—remembering these lost individuals and their lost lives is an important task for making sure that no death is a mere death. An ethic of ecological remembrance follows this recuperative aim. References Arthur, Jay M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Bagust, Phil. “Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy.” “Imaging Natures”: University of Tasmania Conference Proceedings (2004). 25 April 2012 ‹www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/bagust.pdf› Bekoff, Marc. “First Do No Harm.” New Scientist (28 August 2010): 24 – 25. Bergstrom, Dana M., Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pederson, and Steven L. Chown. “Indirect Effects of Invasive Species Removal Devastate World Heritage Island.” Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2009): 73– 81. Botkin, Daniel. B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Carroll, Scott. P. “Conciliation Biology: The Eco-Evolutionary Management of Permanently Invaded Biotic Systems.” Evolutionary Applications 4.2 (2011): 184 – 99. Coman, Brian. Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1999. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 – 1900. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Davis, Mark., Matthew Chew, Richard Hobbs, Ariel Lugo, John Ewel, Geerat Vermeij, James Brown, Michael Rosenzweig, Mark Gardener, Scott Carroll, Ken Thompson, Steward Pickett, Juliet Stromberg, Peter Del Tredici, Katharine Suding, Joan Ehrenfield, J. Philip Grime, Joseph Mascaro and John Briggs. “Don’t Judge Species on their Origins.” Nature 474 (2011): 152 – 54. Ewel, John J. and Francis E. Putz. “A Place for Alien Species in Ecosystem Restoration.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2.7 (2004): 354-60. Forsyth, David M. and Ben Reddiex. “Control of Pest Mammals for Biodiversity Protection in Australia.” Wildlife Research 33 (2006): 711–17. Garnett, Ali, and Kaye Kessing. Easter Bilby. Department of Environment and Heritage: Kaye Kessing Productions, 2006. Heishman, Darice. “VHD Factsheet.” House Rabbit Network (2011). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/vhd.shtml› Low, Tim. New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 2002. Phillips, Sara. “How Eating Easter Chocolate Can Save Endangered Animals.” ABC Environment (1 April 2010). 15 June 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/04/01/2862039.htm› Plumwood, Val. “Decolonising Australian Gardens: Gardening and the Ethics of Place.” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-2005/09Plumwood.html› Ponsonby Veterinary Centre. “Rabbit Viral Hemorrhagic Disease (VHD).” Small Pets. 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.petvet.co.nz/small_pets.cfm?content_id=85› Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007. Rose, Deborah Bird. Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004. ——-. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Rosenzweig, Michael. L. “Reconciliation Ecology and the Future of Species Diversity.” Oryx 37.2 (2003): 194 – 205. Save the Bilby Fund. “Bilby Fact Sheet.” Easterbilby.com.au (2003). 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.easterbilby.com.au/Project_material/factsheet.asp› Van Dooren, Thom. “Invasive Species in Penguin Worlds: An Ethical Taxonomy of Killing for Conservation.” Conservation and Society 9.4 (2011): 286 – 98. Wiesel, Elie. From the Kingdom of Memory. New York: Summit Books, 1990.

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. References ABC. “A Jihad for Love.” Life Matters (Radio National), 21 Feb. 2008. 11 March 2008. < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2167874.htm >.Aly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen.” M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). 13 April 2008 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08aly-green.php >.Aly, Anne, and David Walker. “Veiled Threats: Recurrent Anxieties in Australia.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27.2 (2007): 203-14.Brasted, Howard.V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000.” Muslim Communities in Australia. Eds. Abdullah Saeed and Akbarzadeh, Shahram. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001. 206-28.Brown, Chris. “Narratives of Religion, Civilization and Modernity.” Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. Eds. Ken Booth and Tim Dunne. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 293-324. Buckley, Anisa. “Should We Allow Sharia Law?” Sunday Herald Sun 10 Feb. 2008. 8 March 2008 < http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,231869735000117,00.html >.Bush, George. W. “President Outlines War Effort: Remarks by the President at the California Business Association Breakfast.” California Business Association 2001. 17 April 2007 < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011017-15.html >.———. “Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”. Washington, 2001. 17 April 2007 < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html >.Charney, Evan. “Political Liberalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the Public Sphere.” The American Political Science Review 92.1 (1998): 97- 111.Costello, Peter. “Worth Promoting, Worth Defending: Australian Citizenship, What It Means and How to Nurture It.” Address to the Sydney Institute, 23 February 2006. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.treasurer.gov.au/DisplayDocs.aspx?doc=speeches/2006/004.htm &pageID=05&min=phc&Year=2006&DocType=1 >.Dallmayr, Fred. “Rethinking Secularism.” The Review of Politics 61.4 (1999): 715-36.Erjavec, Karmen, and Zala Volcic. “‘War on Terrorism’ as Discursive Battleground: Serbian Recontextualisation of G. W. Bush’s Discourse.” Discourse and Society 18 (2007): 123- 37.Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1-14.Herald Sun. “Readers’ Comments: Should We Allow Sharia Law?” Herald Sun Online Feb. 2008. 8 March 2008. < http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/comments/0,22023,23186973-5000117,00.html >.Humphries, David. “Live Here, Be Australian.” The Sydney Morning Herald 25 Feb. 2006, 1 ed.Hutcheson, John S., David Domke, Andre Billeaudeaux, and Philip Garland. “U.S. National Identity, Political Elites, and Patriotic Press Following September 11.” Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 27-50.Kymlicka, Will. “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality.” Ethics 99.4 (1989): 883-905.Modood, Tariq. “Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship.” The Political Quarterly (1994): 53-74.Osuri, Goldie, and Subhabrata B. Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151- 71.Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971.Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books 1978.Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism. WA: Government of Western Australia, Nov. 2004. 11 March 2008 < http://www.equalopportunity.wa.gov.au/pdf/wa_charter_multiculturalism.pdf >.Yousif, Ahmad. “Islam, Minorities and Religious Freedom: A Challenge to Modern Theory of Pluralism.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 20.1 (2000): 30-43.

IntroductionIn March 2015, I visited the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (established 1967) in the “cherry capital of Australia”, the town of Young, New South Wales, in preparation for a student excursion. Like other Australian folk museums, this museum focuses on the ordinary and the everyday of rural life, and is heavily reliant on local history, local historians, volunteers, and donated objects for the collection. It may not sound as though the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (LFFM) holds much potential for a fashion curator, as fashion exhibitions have become high points of innovation in exhibition design. It is quite a jolt to return to old style folk museums, when travelling shows such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 – V&A Museum 2015) or The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (V&A Museum 2011­ – NGV 2014) are popping up around the globe. The contrast stimulated this author to think on the role and the power of curators. This paper will show that the potential for fashion as a vehicle for demonstrating ideas other than through rubrics of design or history has been growing. We all wear dress. We express identity, politics, status, age, gender, social values, and mental state through the way we dress each and every day. These key issues are also explored in many museum exhibitions.Small museums often have an abundance of clothing. For them, it is a case of not only managing and caring for growing collections but also curating objects in a way that communicates regional and often national identity, as well as narrating stories in meaningful ways to audiences. This paper argues that the way in which dress is curated can greatly enhance temporary and permanent exhibitions. Fashion curation is on the rise (Riegels Melchior). This paper looks at why this is so, the potential for this specialisation in curation, the research required, and the sensitivity needed in communicating ideas in exhibitions. It also suggests how fashion curation skills may facilitate an increasing demand.Caring for the AudienceThe paper draws on a case study of how Chinese people at the LFFM are portrayed. The Chinese came to the Young district during the 1860s gold rush. While many people often think the Chinese were sojourners (Rolls), that is, they found gold and returned to China, many actually settled in regional Australia (McGowan; Couchman; Frost). At Young there were riots against the Chinese miners, and this narrative is illustrated at the museum.In examining the LFFM, this paper points to the importance of caring for the audience as well as objects, knowing and acknowledging the current and potential audiences. Caring for how the objects are received and perceived is vital to the work of curators. At this museum, the stereotypic portrayal of Chinese people, through a “coolie” hat, a fan, and two dolls dressed in costume, reminds us of the increased professionalisation of the museum sector in the last 20 years. It also reminds us of the need for good communication through both the objects and texts. Audiences have become more sophisticated, and their expectations have increased. Displays and accompanying texts that do not reflect in depth research, knowledge, and sensitivities can result in viewers losing interest quickly. Not long into my visit I began thinking of the potential reaction by the Chinese graduate students. In a tripartite model called the “museum experience”, Falk and Dierking argue that the social context, personal context, and physical context affect the visitor’s experience (5). The social context of who we visit with influences enjoyment. Placing myself in the students’ shoes sharpened reactions to some of the displays. Curators need to be mindful of a wide range of audiences. The excursion was to be not so much a history learning activity, but a way for students to develop a personal interest in museology and to learn the role museums can play in society in general, as well as in small communities. In this case the personal context was also a professional context. What message would they get?Communication in MuseumsStudies by Falk et al. indicate that museum visitors only view an exhibition for 30 minutes before “museum fatigue” sets in (249–257). The physicality of being in a museum can affect the museum experience. Hence, many institutions responded to these studies by placing the key information and objects in the introductory areas of an exhibition, before the visitor gets bored. As Stephen Bitgood argues, this can become self-fulfilling, as the reaction by the exhibition designers can then be to place all the most interesting material early in the path of the audience, leaving the remainder as mundane displays (196). Bitgood argues there is no museum fatigue. He suggests that there are other things at play which curators need to heed, such as giving visitors choice and opportunities for interaction, and avoiding overloading the audience with information and designing poorly laid-out exhibitions that have no breaks or resting points. All these factors contribute to viewers becoming both mentally and physically tired. Rather than placing the onus on the visitor, he contends there are controllable factors the museum can attend to. One of his recommendations is to be provocative in communication. Stimulating exhibitions are more likely to engage the visitor, minimising boredom and tiredness (197). Xerxes Mazda recommends treating an exhibition like a good story, with a beginning, a dark moment, a climax, and an ending. The LFFM certainly has those elements, but they are not translated into curation that gives a compelling narration that holds the visitors’ attention. Object labels give only rudimentary information, such as: “Wooden Horse collar/very rare/donated by Mr Allan Gordon.” Without accompanying context and engaging language, many visitors could find it difficult to relate to, and actively reflect on, the social narrative that the museum’s objects could reflect.Text plays an important role in museums, particularly this museum. Communication skills of the label writers are vital to enhancing the museum visit. Louise Ravelli, in writing on museum texts, states that “communication needs to be more explicit and more reflexive—to bring implicit assumptions to the surface” (3). This is particularly so for the LFFM. Posing questions and using an active voice can provoke the viewer. The power of text can be seen in one particular museum object. In the first gallery is a banner that contains blatant racist text. Bringing racism to the surface through reflexive labelling can be powerful. So for this museum communication needs to be sensitive and informative, as well as pragmatic. It is not just a case of being reminded that Australia has a long history of racism towards non-Anglo Saxon migrants. A sensitive approach in label-writing could ask visitors to reflect on Australia’s long and continued history of racism and relate it to the contemporary migration debate, thereby connecting the present day to dark historical events. A question such as, “How does Australia deal with racism towards migrants today?” brings issues to the surface. Or, more provocatively, “How would I deal with such racism?” takes the issue to a personal level, rather than using language to distance the issue of racism to a national issue. Museums are more than repositories of objects. Even a small underfunded museum can have great impact on the viewer through the language they use to make meaning of their display. The Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner at the LFFMThe “destination” object of the museum in Young is the Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner. Those with a keen interest in Australian history and politics come to view this large sheet of canvas that elicits part of the narrative of the Lambing Flat Riots, which are claimed to be germane to the White Australia Policy (one of the very first pieces of legislation after the Federation of Australia was The Immigration Restriction Act 1901).On 30 June 1861 a violent anti-Chinese riot occurred on the goldfields of Lambing Flat (now known as Young). It was the culmination of eight months of growing conflict between European and Chinese miners. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Europeans lived and worked in these goldfields, with little government authority overseeing the mining regulations. Earlier, in November 1860, a group of disgruntled European miners marched behind a German brass band, chasing off 500 Chinese from the field and destroying their tents. Tensions rose and fell until the following June, when the large banner was painted and paraded to gather up supporters: “…two of their leaders carrying in advance a magnificent flag, on which was written in gold letters – NO CHINESE! ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ...” (qtd. in Coates 40). Terrified, over 1,270 Chinese took refuge 20 kilometres away on James Roberts’s property, “Currawong”. The National Museum of Australia commissioned an animation of the event, The Harvest of Endurance. It may seem obvious, but the animators indicated the difference between the Chinese and the Europeans through dress, regardless that the Chinese wore western dress on the goldfields once the clothing they brought with them wore out (McGregor and McGregor 32). Nonetheless, Chinese expressions of masculinity differed. Their pigtails, their shoes, and their hats were used as shorthand in cartoons of the day to express the anxiety felt by many European settlers. A more active demonstration was reported in The Argus: “ … one man … returned with eight pigtails attached to a flag, glorifying in the work that had been done” (6). We can only imagine this trophy and the de-masculinisation it caused.The 1,200 x 1,200 mm banner now lays flat in a purpose-built display unit. Viewers can see that it was not a hastily constructed work. The careful drafting of original pencil marks can be seen around the circus styled font: red and blue, with the now yellow shadowing. The banner was tied with red and green ribbon of which small remnants remain attached.The McCarthy family had held the banner for 100 years, from the riots until it was loaned to the Royal Australian Historical Society in November 1961. It was given to the LFFM when it opened six years later. The banner is given key positioning in the museum, indicating its importance to the community and its place in the region’s memory. Just whose memory is narrated becomes apparent in the displays. The voice of the Chinese is missing.Memory and Museums Museums are interested in memory. When visitors come to museums, the work they do is to claim, discover, and sometimes rekindle memory (Smith; Crane; Williams)—-and even to reshape memory (Davidson). Fashion constantly plays with memory: styles, themes, textiles, and colours are repeated and recycled. “Cutting and pasting” presents a new context from one season to the next. What better avenue to arouse memory in museums than fashion curation? This paper argues that fashion exhibitions fit within the museum as a “theatre of memory”, where social memory, commemoration, heritage, myth, fantasy, and desire are played out (Samuels). In the past, institutions and fashion curators often had to construct academic frameworks of “history” or “design” in order to legitimise fashion exhibitions as a serious pursuit. Exhibitions such as Fashion and Politics (New York 2009), Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism (Oslo 2014) and Fashion as Social Energy (Milan 2015) show that fashion can explore deeper social concerns and political issues.The Rise of Fashion CuratorsThe fashion curator is a relative newcomer. What would become the modern fashion curator made inroads into museums through ethnographic and anthropological collections early in the 20th century. Fashion as “history” soon followed into history and social museums. Until the 1990s, the fashion curator in a museum was seen as, and closely associated with, the fashion historian or craft curator. It could be said that James Laver (1899–1975) or Stella Mary Newton (1901–2001) were the earliest modern fashion curators in museums. They were also fashion historians. However, the role of fashion curator as we now know it came into its own right in the 1970s. Nadia Buick asserts that the first fashion exhibition, Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curated by the famous fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. He was not a museum employee, a trained curator, or even a historian (15). The museum did not even collect contemporary fashion—it was a new idea put forward by Beaton. He amassed hundreds of pieces of fashion items from his friends of elite society to complement his work.Radical changes in museums since the 1970s have been driven by social change, new expectations and new technologies. Political and economic pressures have forced museum professionals to shift their attention from their collections towards their visitors. There has been not only a growing number of diverse museums but also a wider range of exhibitions, fashion exhibitions included. However, as museums and the exhibitions they mount have become more socially inclusive, this has been somewhat slow to filter through to the fashion exhibitions. I assert that the shift in fashion exhibitions came as an outcome of new writing on fashion as a social and political entity through Jennifer Craik’s The Face of Fashion. This book has had an influence, beyond academic fashion theorists, on the way in which fashion exhibitions are curated. Since 1997, Judith Clark has curated landmark exhibitions, such as Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back (Antwerp 2004), which examine the idea of what fashion is rather than documenting fashion’s historical evolution. Dress is recognised as a vehicle for complex issues. It is even used to communicate a city’s cultural capital and its metropolitan modernity as “fashion capitals” (Breward and Gilbert). Hence the reluctant but growing willingness for dress to be used in museums to critically interrogate, beyond the celebratory designer retrospectives. Fashion CurationFashion curators need to be “brilliant scavengers” (Peoples). Curators such as Clark pick over what others consider as remains—the neglected, the dissonant—bringing to the fore what is forgotten, where items retrieved from all kinds of spheres are used to fashion exhibitions that reflect the complex mix of the tangible and intangible that is present in fashion. Allowing the brilliant scavengers to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life can make for exciting exhibitions. Clothing of the everyday can be used to narrate complex stories. We only need think of the black layette worn by Baby Azaria Chamberlain—or the shoe left on the tarmac at Darwin Airport, having fallen off the foot of Mrs Petrov, wife of the Russian diplomat, as she was forced onto a plane. The ordinary remnants of the Chinese miners do not appear to have been kept. Often, objects can be transformed by subsequent significant events.Museums can be sites of transformation for its audiences. Since the late 1980s, through the concept of the New Museum (Vergo), fashion as an exhibition theme has been used to draw in wider museum audiences and to increase visitor numbers. The clothing of Vivienne Westwood, (34 Years in Fashion 2005, NGA) Kylie Minogue (Kylie: An Exhibition 2004­–2005, Powerhouse Museum), or Princess Grace (Princess Grace: Style Icon 2012, Bendigo Art Gallery) drew in the crowds, quantifying the relevance of museums to funding bodies. As Marie Riegels Melchior notes, fashion is fashionable in museums. What is interesting is that the New Museum’s refrain of social inclusion (Sandell) has yet to be wholly embraced by art museums. There is tension between the fashion and museum worlds: a “collision of the fashion and art worlds” (Batersby). Exhibitions of elite designer clothing worn by celebrities have been seen as very commercial operations, tainting the intellectual and academic reputations of cultural institutions. What does fashion curation have to do with the banner mentioned previously? It would be miraculous for authentic clothing worn by Chinese miners to surface now. In revising the history of Lambing Flat, fashion curators need to employ methodologies of absence. As Clynk and Peoples have shown, by examining archives, newspaper advertisements, merchants’ account books, and other material that incidentally describes the business of clothing, absence can become present. While the later technology of photography often shows “Sunday best” fashions, it also illustrates the ordinary and everyday dress of Chinese men carrying out business transactions (MacGowan; Couchman). The images of these men bring to mind the question: were these the children of men, or indeed the men themselves, who had their pigtails violently cut off years earlier? The banner was also used to show that there are quite detailed accounts of events from local and national newspapers of the day. These are accessible online. Accounts of the Chinese experience may have been written up in Chinese newspapers of the day. Access to these would be limited, if they still exist. Historian Karen Schamberger reminds us of the truism: “history is written by the victors” in her observations of a re-enactment of the riots at the Lambing Flat Festival in 2014. The Chinese actors did not have speaking parts. She notes: The brutal actions of the European miners were not explained which made it easier for audience members to distance themselves from [the Chinese] and be comforted by the actions of a ‘white hero’ James Roberts who… sheltered the Chinese miners at the end of the re-enactment. (9)Elsewhere, just out of town at the Chinese Tribute Garden (created in 1996), there is evidence of presence. Plaques indicating donors to the garden carry names such as Judy Chan, Mrs King Chou, and Mr and Mrs King Lam. The musically illustrious five siblings of the Wong family, who live near Young, were photographed in the Discover Central NSW tourist newspaper in 2015 as a drawcard for the Lambing Flat Festival. There is “endurance”, as the title of NMA animation scroll highlights. Conclusion Absence can be turned around to indicate presence. The “presence of absence” (Meyer and Woodthorpe) can be a powerful tool. Seeing is the pre-eminent sense used in museums, and objects are given priority; there are ways of representing evidence and narratives, and describing relationships, other than fashion presence. This is why I argue that dress has an important role to play in museums. Dress is so specific to time and location. It marks specific occasions, particularly at times of social transitions: christening gowns, bar mitzvah shawls, graduation gowns, wedding dresses, funerary shrouds. Dress can also demonstrate the physicality of a specific body: in the extreme, jeans show the physicality of presence when the body is removed. The fashion displays in the museum tell part of the region’s history, but the distraction of the poor display of the dressed mannequins in the LFFM gets in the way of a “good story”.While rioting against the Chinese miners may cause shame and embarrassment, in Australia we need to accept that this was not an isolated event. More formal, less violent, and regulated mechanisms of entry to Australia were put in place, and continue to this day. It may be that a fashion curator, a brilliant scavenger, may unpick the prey for viewers, placing and spacing objects and the visitor, designing in a way to enchant or horrify the audience, and keeping interest alive throughout the exhibition, allowing spaces for thinking and memories. Drawing in those who have not been the audience, working on the absence through participatory modes of activities, can be powerful for a community. Fashion curators—working with the body, stimulating ethical and conscious behaviours, and constructing dialogues—can undoubtedly act as a vehicle for dynamism, for both the museum and its audiences. 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When we think of disability today in the Western world, Christopher Reeve most likely comes to mind. A film star who captured people’s imagination as Superman, Reeve was already a celebrity before he took the fall that would lead to his new position in the fame game: the role of super-crip. As a person with acquired quadriplegia, Christopher Reeve has become both the epitome of disability in Western culture — the powerful cultural myth of disability as tragedy and catastrophe — and, in an intimately related way, the icon for the high-technology quest for cure. The case of Reeve is fascinating, yet critical discussion of Christopher Reeve in terms of fame, celebrity and his performance of disability is conspicuously lacking (for a rare exception see McRuer). To some extent this reflects the comparative lack of engagement of media and cultural studies with disability (Goggin). To redress this lacuna, we draw upon theories of celebrity (Dyer; Marshall; Turner, Bonner, & Marshall; Turner) to explore the production of Reeve as celebrity, as well as bringing accounts of celebrity into dialogue with critical disability studies. Reeve is a cultural icon, not just because of the economy, industrial processes, semiotics, and contemporary consumption of celebrity, outlined in Turner’s 2004 framework. Fame and celebrity are crucial systems in the construction of disability; and the circulation of Reeve-as-celebrity only makes sense if we understand the centrality of disability to culture and media. Reeve plays an enormously important (if ambiguous) function in the social relations of disability, at the heart of the discursive underpinning of the otherness of disability and the construction of normal sexed and gendered bodies (the normate) in everyday life. What is distinctive and especially powerful about this instance of fame and disability is how authenticity plays through the body of the celebrity Reeve; how his saintly numinosity is received by fans and admirers with passion, pathos, pleasure; and how this process places people with disabilities in an oppressive social system, so making them subject(s). An Accidental Star Born September 25, 1952, Christopher Reeve became famous for his roles in the 1978 movie Superman, and the subsequent three sequels (Superman II, III, IV), as well as his role in other films such as Monsignor. As well as becoming a well-known actor, Reeve gained a profile for his activism on human rights, solidarity, environmental, and other issues. In May 1995 Reeve acquired a disability in a riding accident. In the ensuing months, Reeve’s situation attracted a great deal of international attention. He spent six months in the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey, and there gave a high-rating interview on US television personality Barbara Walters’ 20/20 program. In 1996, Reeve appeared at the Academy Awards, was a host at the 1996 Paralympic Games, and was invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. In the same year Reeve narrated a film about the lives of people living with disabilities (Mierendorf). In 1998 his memoir Still Me was published, followed in 2002 by another book Nothing Is Impossible. Reeve’s active fashioning of an image and ‘new life’ (to use his phrase) stands in stark contrast with most people with disabilities, who find it difficult to enter into the industry and system of celebrity, because they are most often taken to be the opposite of glamorous or important. They are objects of pity, or freaks to be stared at (Mitchell & Synder; Thomson), rather than assuming other attributes of stars. Reeve became famous for his disability, indeed very early on he was acclaimed as the pre-eminent American with disability — as in the phrase ‘President of Disability’, an appellation he attracted. Reeve was quickly positioned in the celebrity industry, not least because his example, image, and texts were avidly consumed by viewers and readers. For millions of people — as evident in the letters compiled in the 1999 book Care Packages by his wife, Dana Reeve — Christopher Reeve is a hero, renowned for his courage in doing battle with his disability and his quest for a cure. Part of the creation of Reeve as celebrity has been a conscious fashioning of his life as an instructive fable. A number of biographies have now been published (Havill; Hughes; Oleksy; Wren). Variations on a theme, these tend to the hagiographic: Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy (Alter). Those interested in Reeve’s life and work can turn also to fan websites. Most tellingly perhaps is the number of books, fables really, aimed at children, again, on a characteristic theme: Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve (Kosek; see also Abraham; Howard). The construction, but especially the consumption, of Reeve as disabled celebrity, is consonant with powerful cultural myths and tropes of disability. In many Western cultures, disability is predominantly understood a tragedy, something that comes from the defects and lack of our bodies, whether through accidents of birth or life. Those ‘suffering’ with disability, according to this cultural myth, need to come to terms with this bitter tragedy, and show courage in heroically overcoming their lot while they bide their time for the cure that will come. The protagonist for this this script is typically the ‘brave’ person with disability; or, as this figure is colloquially known in critical disability studies and the disability movement — the super-crip. This discourse of disability exerts a strong force today, and is known as the ‘medical’ model. It interacts with a prior, but still active charity discourse of disability (Fulcher). There is a deep cultural history of disability being seen as something that needs to be dealt with by charity. In late modernity, charity is very big business indeed, and celebrities play an important role in representing the good works bestowed on people with disabilities by rich donors. Those managing celebrities often suggest that the star finds a charity to gain favourable publicity, a routine for which people with disabilities are generally the pathetic but handy extras. Charity dinners and events do not just reinforce the tragedy of disability, but they also leave unexamined the structural nature of disability, and its associated disadvantage. Those critiquing the medical and charitable discourses of disability, and the oppressive power relations of disability that it represents, point to the social and cultural shaping of disability, most famously in the British ‘social’ model of disability — but also from a range of other perspectives (Corker and Thomas). Those formulating these critiques point to the crucial function that the trope of the super-crip plays in the policing of people with disabilities in contemporary culture and society. Indeed how the figure of the super-crip is also very much bound up with the construction of the ‘normal’ body, a general economy of representation that affects everyone. Superman Flies Again The celebrity of Christopher Reeve and what it reveals for an understanding of fame and disability can be seen with great clarity in his 2002 visit to Australia. In 2002 there had been a heated national debate on the ethics of use of embryonic stem cells for research. In an analysis of three months of the print media coverage of these debates, we have suggested that disability was repeatedly, almost obsessively, invoked in these debates (‘Uniting the Nation’). Yet the dominant representation of disability here was the cultural myth of disability as tragedy, requiring cure at all cost, and that this trope was central to the way that biotechnology was constructed as requiring an urgent, united national response. Significantly, in these debates, people with disabilities were often talked about but very rarely licensed to speak. Only one person with disability was, and remains, a central figure in these Australian stem cell and biotechnology policy conversations: Christopher Reeve. As an outspoken advocate of research on embryonic stem-cells in the quest for a cure for spinal injuries, as well as other diseases, Reeve’s support was enlisted by various protagonists. The current affairs show Sixty Minutes (modelled after its American counterpart) presented Reeve in debate with Australian critics: PRESENTER: Stem cell research is leading to perhaps the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time… Imagine a world where paraplegics could walk or the blind could see … But it’s a breakthrough some passionately oppose. A breakthrough that’s caused a fierce personal debate between those like actor Christopher Reeve, who sees this technology as a miracle, and those who regard it as murder. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) Sixty Minutes starkly portrays the debate in Manichean terms: lunatics standing in the way of technological progress versus Christopher Reeve flying again tomorrow. Christopher presents the debate in utilitarian terms: CHRISTOPHER REEVE: The purpose of government, really in a free society, is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And that question should always be in the forefront of legislators’ minds. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) No criticism of Reeve’s position was offered, despite the fierce debate over the implications of such utilitarian rhetoric for minorities such as people with disabilities (including himself!). Yet this utilitarian stance on disability has been elaborated by philosopher Peter Singer, and trenchantly critiqued by the international disability rights movement. Later in 2002, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, invited Reeve to visit Australia to participate in the New South Wales Spinal Cord Forum. A journalist by training, and skilled media practitioner, Carr had been the most outspoken Australian state premier urging the Federal government to permit the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Carr’s reasons were as much as industrial as benevolent, boosting the stocks of biotechnology as a clean, green, boom industry. Carr cleverly and repeated enlisted stereotypes of disability in the service of his cause. Christopher Reeve was flown into Australia on a specially modified Boeing 747, free of charge courtesy of an Australian airline, and was paid a hefty appearance fee. Not only did Reeve’s fee hugely contrast with meagre disability support pensions many Australians with disabilities live on, he was literally the only voice and image of disability given any publicity. Consuming Celebrity, Contesting Crips As our analysis of Reeve’s antipodean career suggests, if disability were a republic, and Reeve its leader, its polity would look more plutocracy than democracy; as befits modern celebrity with its constitutive tensions between the demotic and democratic (Turner). For his part, Reeve has criticised the treatment of people with disabilities, and how they are stereotyped, not least the narrow concept of the ‘normal’ in mainstream films. This is something that has directly effected his career, which has become limited to narration or certain types of television and film work. Reeve’s reprise on his culture’s notion of disability comes with his starring role in an ironic, high-tech 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (Bleckner), a movie that in the original featured a photojournalist injured and temporarily using a wheelchair. Reeve has also been a strong advocate, lobbyist, and force in the politics of disability. His activism, however, has been far more strongly focussed on finding a cure for people with spinal injuries — rather than seeking to redress inequality and discrimination of all people with disabilities. Yet Reeve’s success in the notoriously fickle star system that allows disability to be understood and mapped in popular culture is mostly an unexplored paradox. As we note above, the construction of Reeve as celebrity, celebrating his individual resilience and resourcefulness, and his authenticity, functions precisely to sustain the ‘truth’ and the power relations of disability. Reeve’s celebrity plays an ideological role, knitting together a set of discourses: individualism; consumerism; democratic capitalism; and the primacy of the able body (Marshall; Turner). The nature of this cultural function of Reeve’s celebrity is revealed in the largely unpublicised contests over his fame. At the same time Reeve was gaining fame with his traditional approach to disability and reinforcement of the continuing catastrophe of his life, he was attracting an infamy within certain sections of the international disability rights movement. In a 1996 US debate disability scholar David T Mitchell put it this way: ‘He’s [Reeve] the good guy — the supercrip, the Superman, and those of us who can live with who we are with our disabilities, but who cannot live with, and in fact, protest and retaliate against the oppression we confront every second of our lives are the bad guys’ (Mitchell, quoted in Brown). Many feel, like Mitchell, that Reeve’s focus on a cure ignores the unmet needs of people with disabilities for daily access to support services and for the ending of their brutal, dehumanising, daily experience as other (Goggin & Newell, Disability in Australia). In her book Make Them Go Away Mary Johnson points to the conservative forces that Christopher Reeve is associated with and the way in which these forces have been working to oppose the acceptance of disability rights. Johnson documents the way in which fame can work in a variety of ways to claw back the rights of Americans with disabilities granted in the Americans with Disabilities Act, documenting the association of Reeve and, in a different fashion, Clint Eastwood as stars who have actively worked to limit the applicability of civil rights legislation to people with disabilities. Like other successful celebrities, Reeve has been assiduous in managing his image, through the use of celebrity professionals including public relations professionals. In his Australian encounters, for example, Reeve gave a variety of media interviews to Australian journalists and yet the editor of the Australian disability rights magazine Link was unable to obtain an interview. Despite this, critiques of the super-crip celebrity function of Reeve by people with disabilities did circulate at the margins of mainstream media during his Australian visit, not least in disability media and the Internet (Leipoldt, Newell, and Corcoran, 2003). Infamous Disability Like the lives of saints, it is deeply offensive to many to criticise Christopher Reeve. So deeply engrained are the cultural myths of the catastrophe of disability and the creation of Reeve as icon that any critique runs the risk of being received as sacrilege, as one rare iconoclastic website provocatively prefigures (Maddox). In this highly charged context, we wish to acknowledge his contribution in highlighting some aspects of contemporary disability, and emphasise our desire not to play Reeve the person — rather to explore the cultural and media dimensions of fame and disability. In Christopher Reeve we find a remarkable exception as someone with disability who is celebrated in our culture. We welcome a wider debate over what is at stake in this celebrity and how Reeve’s renown differs from other disabled stars, as, for example, in Robert McRuer reflection that: ... at the beginning of the last century the most famous person with disabilities in the world, despite her participation in an ‘overcoming’ narrative, was a socialist who understood that disability disproportionately impacted workers and the power[less]; Helen Keller knew that blindness and deafness, for instance, often resulted from industrial accidents. At the beginning of this century, the most famous person with disabilities in the world is allowing his image to be used in commercials … (McRuer 230) For our part, we think Reeve’s celebrity plays an important contemporary role because it binds together a constellation of economic, political, and social institutions and discourses — namely science, biotechnology, and national competitiveness. In the second half of 2004, the stem cell debate is once again prominent in American debates as a presidential election issue. Reeve figures disability in national culture in his own country and internationally, as the case of the currency of his celebrity in Australia demonstrates. In this light, we have only just begun to register, let alone explore and debate, what is entailed for us all in the production of this disabled fame and infamy. Epilogue to “Fame and Disability” Christopher Reeve died on Sunday 10 October 2004, shortly after this article was accepted for publication. His death occasioned an outpouring of condolences, mourning, and reflection. We share that sense of loss. How Reeve will be remembered is still unfolding. The early weeks of public mourning have emphasised his celebrity as the very embodiment and exemplar of disabled identity: ‘The death of Christopher Reeve leaves embryonic-stem-cell activism without one of its star generals’ (Newsweek); ‘He Never Gave Up: What actor and activist Christopher Reeve taught scientists about the treatment of spinal-cord injury’ (Time); ‘Incredible Journey: Facing tragedy, Christopher Reeve inspired the world with hope and a lesson in courage’ (People); ‘Superman’s Legacy’ (The Express); ‘Reeve, the Real Superman’ (Hindustani Times). In his tribute New South Wales Premier Bob Carr called Reeve the ‘most impressive person I have ever met’, and lamented ‘Humankind has lost an advocate and friend’ (Carr). The figure of Reeve remains central to how disability is represented. In our culture, death is often closely entwined with disability (as in the saying ‘better dead than disabled’), something Reeve reflected upon himself often. How Reeve’s ‘global mourning’ partakes and shapes in this dense knots of associations, and how it transforms his celebrity, is something that requires further work (Ang et. al.). The political and analytical engagement with Reeve’s celebrity and mourning at this time serves to underscore our exploration of fame and disability in this article. Already there is his posthumous enlistment in the United States Presidential elections, where disability is both central and yet marginal, people with disability talked about rather than listened to. The ethics of stem cell research was an election issue before Reeve’s untimely passing, with Democratic presidential contender John Kerry sharply marking his difference on this issue with President Bush. After Reeve’s death his widow Dana joined the podium on the Kerry campaign in Columbus, Ohio, to put the case herself; for his part, Kerry compared Bush’s opposition to stem cell research as akin to favouring the candle lobby over electricity. As we write, the US polls are a week away, but the cultural representation of disability — and the intensely political role celebrity plays in it — appears even more palpably implicated in the government of society itself. References Abraham, Philip. Christopher Reeve. New York: Children’s Press, 2002. Alter, Judy. Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy. Danbury, Conn.: Franklin Watts, 2000. Ang, Ien, Ruth Barcan, Helen Grace, Elaine Lally, Justine Lloyd, and Zoe Sofoulis (eds.) Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning. Sydney: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. Bleckner, Jeff, dir. Rear Window. 1998. Brown, Steven E. “Super Duper? The (Unfortunate) Ascendancy of Christopher Reeve.” Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled, October 1996. Repr. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/brown96c.html>. Carr, Bob. “A Class Act of Grace and Courage.” Sydney Morning Herald. 12 Oct. 2004: 14. Corker, Mairian and Carol Thomas. “A Journey around the Social Model.” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Ed. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Donner, Richard, dir. Superman. 1978. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: BFI Macmillan, 1986. Fulcher, Gillian. Disabling Policies? London: Falmer Press, 1989. Furie, Sidney J., dir. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. 1987. Finn, Margaret L. Christopher Reeve. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997. Gilmer, Tim. “The Missionary Reeve.” New Mobility. November 2002. 13 Aug. 2004 http://www.newmobility.com/>. Goggin, Gerard. “Media Studies’ Disability.” Media International Australia 108 (Aug. 2003): 157-68. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005. —. “Uniting the Nation?: Disability, Stem Cells, and the Australian Media.” Disability & Society 19 (2004): 47-60. Havill, Adrian. Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve. New York, N.Y.: Signet, 1996. Howard, Megan. Christopher Reeve. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1999. Hughes, Libby. Christopher Reeve. Parsippany, NJ.: Dillon Press, 1998. Johnson, Mary. Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights. Louisville : Advocado Press, 2003. Kosek, Jane Kelly. Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve. 1st ed. New York : PowerKids Press, 1999. Leipoldt, Erik, Christopher Newell, and Maurice Corcoran. “Christopher Reeve and Bob Carr Dehumanise Disability — Stem Cell Research Not the Best Solution.” Online Opinion 27 Jan. 2003. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=510>. Lester, Richard (dir.) Superman II. 1980. —. Superman III. 1983. Maddox. “Christopher Reeve Is an Asshole.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Mierendorf, Michael, dir. Without Pity: A Film about Abilities. Narr. Christopher Reeve. 1996. “Miracle or Murder?” Sixty Minutes. Channel 9, Australia. March 17, 2002. 15 June 2002 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2002_03_17/story_532.asp>. Mitchell, David, and Synder, Sharon, eds. The Body and Physical Difference. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan, 1997. 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Berkeley Heights, NJ : Enslow, 1999. Younis, Steve. “Christopher Reeve Homepage.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/greatsleep/1023/main.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard & Newell, Christopher. "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. & Newell, C. (Nov. 2004) "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>.

Who can be represented in art? How can we make it? How can we experience it? [...] It has provided an open space of possibility for many to test their sense of self and how they might communicate this to a wider world. (Gormley)On Friday 17 July 2009, from 12.00 am to 1.00 am, I was on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, as part of British sculptor Antony Gormley’s One & Other project. Over a period of 100 days, 2,400 people were randomly selected (from 34,000 applicants) to occupy this site for sixty minutes each. Gormley’s sculptures have mostly focused on explorations of the human form in relation to memory, environment and community and the questions they raise about existence, mortality and metaphysics resonate with my own personal concerns and performance work (see: Gormley). One & Other (2009), a participatory incarnation of his work, was, he claimed “about the democratisation of art.” It was also video-streamed live over the Internet and it became, particularly due to Sky Arts’s involvement as a project partner, a media event (Antony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’). Ever since I can remember, I have had a fear of heights. Without a sturdy barrier I either retreat rapidly to a safe distance, freeze or drop to the ground. The relationship between my private sense of self, myself as performer, an iconic public space, an unpredictable (and partly unseen) audience, the critical gaze of the media, and, not least, the artist’s intention, quickly became a complex web to negotiate. How much was I prepared to risk, reveal, or mask in desiring to serve another’s artistic purpose? This article explores the invitation to disclose/expose set against this set of circumstances, focusing on the tensions between the desire to perform, my deep personal fear of heights (acrophobia), the media’s greedy commodification of disclosure and the complicity of the participant. Also considered is the unstable notion of communicating authentic disclosure(s) within a performative framework, and, finally, the transformational possibilities of such disclosure. While recognising that claims to truth and authenticity—and to some degree transformation—within solo (autobiographical) performance are problematic (Heddon 26), I do not see my phobia as culturally-produced here; I use these terms to signify the actuality of a significant shift in levels of personal fear experienced whilst on the plinth. As a performer with a background in devising, acting, biographical theatre and site-specific performance, the framework for discussion centres on writing from these fields, and also draws on performance art, particularly Eelka Lampe’s examination of the work of Rachel Rosenthal (291), an interdisciplinary performance artist whose work has drawn significantly on autobiographical elements and on both Western and Asian performance trainings and vocabularies. Media sources directly relevant to Gormley’s project are also considered. Congratulations!Participation in One & Other was a matter of luck, offering a unique opportunity to become part of Gormley’s oeuvre. I placed myself in the draw and was thrilled when, on 6 June 2009, the congratulatory e-mail arrived. However, the reality of what I was to participate in soon began to dawn upon me. An hour, at midnight, on a plinth 4.4m x 1.7m at a height of 8m. Although there would be a safety net, there would be no barrier. Every move or sound that I made would also be watched by Webcams and transmitted live to unknowable individuals. The peculiarity of this event was bewildering, but I put my misgivings aside and focused on the question everybody asked me, “So what are you going to do?” (see fig. 1). Figure 1. Image: Adam J. Ledger. Performer: Jill Dowse. One & Other. 2009.Resorting to habit, I immediately regarded the opportunity as an artistic endeavour and started to create a performance piece, layering site- and time-specific discoveries with personal associations, memories and jokes about acrophobia. The use of autobiographical material as an aid to both understanding and devising biographical theatre is not foreign to me, but using it as a primary source was new, and I was wary of the potential for appearing self-indulgent, for the performance to be, to use Howell’s terminology, “ego show” rather than revelation (158). My first two ideas, which were subsequently abandoned, appear to me now as attempts to deflect the content of my performance away from myself, thereby resisting disclosure. Others planned a plinth-as-soapbox approach, drawing attention to various charitable and socio-political causes (“Participants, Oliver”; “Participants, Bushewacker”; “Participants, RachelW”). These seemed worthy and worthwhile, and forced me to re-consider my approach and examine my own ideals and concerns, but I was reluctant to advocate for a single cause. This reluctance was compounded by several further factors—the live coverage threatened a post hoc call to account for anything I might say or do, leaving me open to misinterpretation and criticism from the public or media. The experience of TV’s Big Brother participants, to which Gormley’s project has often been compared and criticised as a cheapening of cultural values (Brooker), is called to mind. Despite its limitations, however, one of the attractions of the soapbox performance is that it does at least refract attention away from the individual and onto the cause. The consideration of my acrophobia was renewed, leading me to consider withdrawing from the project. Gormley’s desire to “make a portrait of the UK now” is a complex proposition (qtd. in Antony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’). How might it be possible to be myself on an illuminated plinth, for a full hour, in public? Gormley, while acknowledging the performative nature of the project as “a combination of the stocks and the stage” also asserts that “whether acted or real…the inner condition of the individual will be revealed” (Gormley). While his point is debatable in a general sense, for me it was not the possible disclosure of this inner condition (via words) that was traumatic but the prospective public personal humiliation of both my private self (via irrational conduct in a public arena) as well as professional humiliation (an inability to perform) as a result of unforeseeable and potentially debilitating behavioural responses. This conflict—I “bottle out” if I withdraw, I face difficult challenges if I continue—led directly to the first consideration of tactics for survival. My notebook records, “I’d like to do something that allows me space to respond, to contemplate being up there. And something which allows me to be hidden” (Workbook 118). The paradoxical desire to be “hidden” on a raised plinth exposes the key tension within which tactics were discovered and structured. As I re-worked my first idea, I realized that I was straying once again from the theatre world I usually inhabit, which involves creating performances in which a role(s) or character is adopted, to the field of performance art, where autobiographical material and personal disclosure are often expressed and negotiated as central concerns. If acting is, as Joseph Chaikin proposes, “a demonstration of self with or without a disguise”, then my usual “disguise” of role/character would be (at least partially) shed, leaving my “demonstration of self” more exposed (2) (see fig. 2). Figure 2. Image: Adam J. Ledger. Performer: Jill Dowse. One & Other. 2009.Controlling the PerformanceNotions of “self” within acting and performance have been explored by many performance theorists (Schechner, Phelan and Lane, Auslander, Zarrilli, Carlson), but, here I draw on Lampe’s discussion of the work of Rachel Rosenthal, since her performances move beyond mimesis. Rosenthal often performs several “fragments” of herself (which she also identifies as differentiable personae) within a single performance (Lampe 296). These personae are at different distances from her “daily” self. Lampe’s “Model of Performing/Non-Performing” is an illustration of a matrix of performance modes which moves from the “not performing” Self which is self-contained, “feeling unobserved”, through to the “Self in Ritual”, which is also self-contained and may be observed/unobserved (Lampe 291). Lampe identifies the “not performing” self as having “least control over performative display” and the Self in Ritual as having the “most control over performative display” (300). The question of control, both of my fear and of the revelation and communication of that fear, and within an environment over which I had very limited control, was paramount. This model offers a way of understanding how and why I shifted through various modes of disclosure, creating, for example an “Aesthetic Persona,” (“performing a part of oneself”), as in the playing out of a “fantasy” of myself as a winged creature, and moving towards “Techniques of Virtuosity,” (which includes “transforming the self”) seen, for example, in my use of adornment, mask and ritualistic elements. In exploring the elements of martyrdom in the artist Orlan’s work (an artist who has described her work as “carnal art” and who sought to reinvent herself and ideas of beauty via often unusual plastic surgery), Tanya Augsburg (298) suggests thatto be a martyr […] involves self-sacrifice and loss of social status; one undergoes humiliation, pain, even death for the sake of a higher purpose. Martyrdom as a self-conscious loss of self is nevertheless the result of free choice – even if that choice stems from a sense of obligation or duty.Whilst I recognise all these ingredients in my process, I now identify my struggle as the struggle against martyrdom, the assembling of the tactics necessary to resist and minimize the possibility and impact of any quasi-martyrdom.PerspectivesEkow Eshun, Artistic Director of London’s Institute for Contemporary Art and Chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, also acknowledged the project’s “performativity” and the media fuelled the pressure to “do” or perform (qtd. in Antony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’). Yet when the project began on 6 July and I viewed the live streaming, it became clear that this was not an easily manageable context for any kind of presentation. I realised that I could not organise my performance in any way that I am used to and that in regarding the site as some kind of stage I had earlier made several false assumptions. The spatial dynamic gives the on-site onlooker, as Patricia Bickers points out, “a depressingly foreshortened view from above or below which diminishes, in every sense, both audience and participant”, whereas the live feed offers a “privileged view” (12). In this spectatorial confusion, how would I know where to direct myself? Secondly, it would be impossible to speak to onlookers in Trafalgar Square with a conversational or natural tone—amplification would be necessary. Thirdly, I also noticed that most onlookers stayed for a short time and then left, probably at least partly as a result of these factors. Was it likely that on-line viewers would watch for a whole hour? What, therefore, was the point of creating a dramaturgically sound piece for an audience whose presence would be so unpredictable?Gormley’s partner in the project was Sky Arts, with the event produced by Artichoke. The weekly Sky Arts programme dedicated to presenting the week’s “highlights from the plinth” was unashamedly concerned with the level of “entertainment” offered, hosted by a condescending presenter (Antony Gormley’s ‘One & Other’). Celebrities and media pundits got their spot on the sofa to make their sound bites and choose their “Top 5 plinthers”. It was cheap TV, with participants routinely objectified, commodified and codified, labelled alternately crazy, funny, boring, and so on. This programme, as well as much of the media surrounding the project, failed to understand and respond in any meaningful way to what each individual brought to it.Given the unconducive performance arena, I made a radical shift of emphasis from word to image, from sound to silence, from script to improvisation. Many of the personal memories and associations I had explored in my first idea were subsumed into representative (but also personally associated) objects, symbols, adornments and actual signs. Although my clothing would be my own and I would look like “myself,” I would wear a pair of wings and a sign stating, “SCARED OF HEIGHTS.” I assembled a suitcase of objects for use in possible improvisations that would be unrehearsed and responsive to the given moment. Plan B, in case of disabling fear, was to ask to come down from the plinth. The sign drew attention to my fear, thereby diminishing, to some extent, its power to humiliate. It displayed my vulnerability and invited spectators to contextualise my behaviour and perhaps even to empathise. Wings have many symbolic cultural meanings, many of which overlap with my own interest in and fantasies of flight and “winged-ness.” Although these two elements were personally relevant, I also hoped that even a fleeting glance at this figure might engage the viewer momentarily with the irony in the juxtaposition of wings, which suggests the possibility or desire to fly, with the written message indicating a fear of heights, which would thereby limit the possibility or pleasure of flight. There are various modes of disclosure. Words, gesture and expression are three. Since a camera’s tendency is to focus on the face, and in particular the eyes, as the site of reading emotion, my instinct was to have in my arsenal some means of disguising, masking or otherwise concealing my eyes, thus partially withholding the full expression of emotion. My desire to hide, which might be interpreted as a desire for privacy, could at least be partially brought about. I took a joke “disguise” mask (spectacles, nose and moustache) and glow-in-the-dark Halloween skeleton spectacles (associated with my fear of death), both of which belong to my son. I set up the potential for other small, wry acts of resistance, including in my suitcase a pair of binoculars and a Polaroid camera, for turning the tables on those who looked upon and made images of me. Rather than using these personal objects to evoke or represent emotional memory, as performance artists such as Cristina Castrillo do (Aston 177), my personal objects acted primarily as both public sign or symbol, and as a comfort blanket of familiarity for my period of extremis—literally, props.The HourIn the “Welcome Lounge” I signed a Mephistopholean contract with Sky Arts, effectively handing over copyright of this hour of my life, agreed to an interview with an interviewer who had trouble listening, and allowed them to take photos of me, “for Antony”. The hour itself, however, proved quietly revelatory (see: http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Jill.).The first few minutes were exhausting as I acclimatised to my bizarre surroundings. But this intensity subsided somewhat as I realised my fear was manageable and that it would be neither traumatic nor debilitating. Oddly, I could not even see the Webcams out in the darkness. To return to Lampe’s analysis, I identify, throughout the hour, a shifting between different registers of performance, or personae, recognising myself as performer, my private self, my masked self (transformable) and an impossible fantasy of myself (adorned). Elements of ritual—repetition, mask, heightened awareness and responses—permeated the hour. These different registers seem to indicate different levels and means of disclosure dependent on the degree of control exercised through them. The self-contained episode of dancing while wearing the child’s disguise spectacles, while possibly amusing, might, for example, suggest an attitude towards my disclosure, an ironic stance towards the situation. Furthermore, and paradoxically, the feigning, or performing of control, in that dance, led to an actual increase of confidence. Whilst dancing, I felt a distancing between my outer, communicating self, which danced happily, enjoying the repetitive action as well as a sense of the odd figure I cut, and my private self, relieved to be behind a mask able to take this time to process and recover from what had been happening up until this point (see fig. 3). Figure 3. Image: Adam J. Ledger. Performer: Jill Dowse. One & Other. 2009.A few minutes before leaving the plinth, I took out the marker pen and added the words “A BIT LESS…” to the beginning of the sign. I realised that a real transformation had taken place, and marked it for myself, while simultaneously disclosing it to the observer. Yet after the event, I was astonished to discover that the veracity of my public self-disclosure was called into question. Some people, including the security guard who was only a few feet from me, asked me if I was really scared of heights. Clearly, my “inner condition” was not revealed, or rather, perhaps, it was not trusted because “performance is not the real world” (Heddon 28). If it is true that to act means “to feign, to simulate, to represent, to impersonate,” then mine was not a predominantly “acted” performance (Kirby 40). Claire MacDonald claims that “when a performance artist stands up in front of an audience she is assumed to be performing as herself” (189), but does that also suggest that their statements are to be believed or that their gestures might not be feigned? Perhaps this simply reveals a contemporary distrust of anyone placed on a pedestal and putting on a “show,” be it plinther or politician. The relationship between the power and control I have over myself to the power and control exercised by other agencies remains ambivalent. At many points during the process, I was complicit in perpetuating the commodification of myself and the project: my small acts of resistance—deciding against uploading a photo to my “profile”, refusing the “Sky Arts” emblazoned umbrella offered on the day in favour of my own anonymous one (though this was partly an aesthetic choice), refusing the radio mike so that those on the Internet could not easily hear any voluntary or involuntary sound I may make—are hardly radical. It was dangerously easy, within this heightened period, for me to succumb to a carefully orchestrated media machine which performed interest in the individual while mitigating against the possibility of gaining deeper insights or connections. I have been surprised to discover how deeply I care what others think of me. I still recognise the desire that I remember from adolescence to be, through performance, more visible, applauded, approved of. Although it is vital to learn not to attach undue importance to judgements with questionable value, the media has a certain (albeit highly contested) authority, and it can therefore be difficult to ignore opinions, and particularly negative ones, when they are broadcasted or published for anyone to hear or read. I feel fortunate that my vulnerability (and disclosure of such) was manageable, as if one willingly steps into a public arena, one must expect to be judged and be prepared not to be given a public right of reply.Nonetheless, if one strips back the negative aspects of the media circus which surrounded it, One & Other was a meaningful event in which to have taken part. The public exposure against which I had armed myself proved unexpectedly peaceful and empowering and I experienced Gormley’s assertion that One & Other offered participants the opportunity to “test their sense of self and how they might communicate this to a wider world” (qtd. in Antony Gormley’s “One & Other”). Artistically, I discovered that my attraction to certain performance styles and methodologies is implicitly and deeply linked to aspects of my own personality and how I desire to communicate. Finally, it has forced me to re-think and re-imagine my relationship with fear and challenge, recognising, even in the core of fear, the potential for transformation. ReferencesAntony Gormley’s “One & Other”. Pres. Clive Anderson. Dir. Peter Dick. Prod. Liberty Bell Productions. British Sky Broadcasting Ltd, London. 24 July, 1 Aug., 8 Aug., 23 Aug., 28 Aug., 4 Sep., 11 Sep., 18 Sep., 26 Sep., 10 Oct., and 16 Oct. 2009. Aston, Elaine. Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook. London: Routledge, 1999.Augsburg, Tanya. “Orlan’s Performative Transformations.” The Ends of Performance. Eds. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 5–314. Auslander, Philip. Performance. 2. London: Routledge, 2003. Bickers, Patricia. Editorial. Art Monthly 9 Sep. 2009. 12.Brooker, Charlie. “Charlie Brooker’s screen burn”. Guardian Newspaper 11 July 2009. 13 Sep. 2009. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jul/11/screenburn-antony-gormley >.Carlson, Marvin. Performance. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2004.Chaikin, Joseph. The Presence of the Actor. New York: Atheneum, 1980. Dowse, Jill. Workbook. MS.Gormley, Antony. “Conclusion of ‘One & Other’ October 2009”. antonygormley.com 2009. 29 Nov. 2009 < http://antonygormley.com >.Gormley, Antony. “Sculptures”. antonygormley.com. 2009. 7 Dec. 2009 < http://antonygormley.com/#/sculptures/chronology >.Heddon, Deirdre. Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008.Howell, John. "Solo in Soho." Performance Art Journal IV. 1 and 2 (1979/80): 152–159.Kirby, Michael. “On Acting and Not-Acting.” Acting (Re)Considered. 2nd ed. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. London: Routledge, 2002. 40–52. Lampe, Eelka. “Rachel Rosenthal Creating Her Selves.” Acting (Re)Considered. 2nd ed. Ed. Phillip B. Zarrilli. London: Routledge, 2002. 291–304.MacDonald, Claire. “Assumed Identities: Feminism, Autobiography and Performance Art.” The Uses of Autobiography. Ed. Julia Swindells. London: Taylor and Frances, 1995. 187–95One & Other. Artichoke, Headshift and Sky Arts. 2009. 6 May 2009 < http://www.oneandother.co.uk/ >.“Participants, Oliver”. One & Other. Artichoke, Headshift and Sky Arts. 2009. 6 May 2009 < http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Oliver >.“Participants, Bushewacker ”. One & Other. Artichoke, Headshift and Sky Arts. 2009. 6 May 2009 < http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Bushewacker >.“Participants, Jill”. One & Other. Artichoke, Headshift and Sky Arts. 2009. 6 May 2009 < http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Jill >.“Participants, RachelW”. One & Other. Artichoke, Headshift and Sky Arts. 2009. 6 May 2009 < http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/RachelW >.Phelan, Peggy, and Jill Lane, eds. The Ends of Performance. New York: New York University Press, 1998.Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1988.Zarrilli, Phillip B., ed. Acting (Re)Considered. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.

Introduction Automated or semi-automated software agents, better known as bots, have become an integral part of social media platforms. Reportedly, bots now generate twenty-four per cent of all posts on Twitter (Orlean “Man”), yet we know very little about who these bots are, what they do, or how to attend to these bots. This article examines one particular prominent exemplar: @Horse_ebooks, a much beloved Twitter bot that turned out not to be a “proper” bot after all. By examining how people responded to the revelations that the @Horse_ebooks account was in fact a human and not an automated software program, the intention here is not only to nuance some of the more common discourses around Twitter bots as spam, but more directly and significantly, to use the concept of persona as a useful analytical framework for understanding the relationships people forge with bots. Twitter bots tend to be portrayed as annoying parasites that generate “fake traffic” and “steal identities” (Hill; Love; Perlroth; Slotkin). According to such news media presentations, bots are part of an “ethically-questionable industry,” where they operate to provide an (false) impression of popularity (Hill). In a similar vein, much of the existing academic research on bots, especially from a computer science standpoint, tends to focus on the destructive nature of bots in an attempt to design better spam detection systems (Laboreiro et.al; Weiss and Tscheligi; Zangerle and Specht). While some notable exceptions exist (Gehl; Hwang et al; Mowbray), there is still an obvious lack of research on Twitter bots within Media Studies. By examining a case of “bot fakeness”—albeit in a somewhat different manner—this article contributes an understanding of Twitter bots as medium-specific personas. The case of @Horse_ebooks does show how people treat it as having a distinct personality. More importantly, this case study shows how the relationship people forge with an alleged bot differs from how they would relate to a human. To understand the ambiguity of the concept of persona as it applies to bots, this article relies on para-social interaction theory as developed by Horton and Wohl. In their seminal article first published in 1956, Horton and Wohl understood para-social interaction as a “simulacrum of conversational give and take” that takes place particularly between mass media users and performers (215). The relationship was termed para-social because, despite of the nonreciprocal exposure situation, the viewer would feel as if the relationship was real and intimate. Like theater, an illusory relationship would be created between what they called the persona—an “indigenous figure” presented and created by the mass media—and the viewer (Horton and Wohl 216). Like the “new types of performers” created by the mass media—”the quizmasters, announcers or ‘interviewers’” —bots too, seem to represent a “special category of ‘personalities’ whose existence is a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). In what follows, I revisit the concept of para-social interaction using the case of @Horse_ebooks, to show that there is potential to expand an understanding of persona to include non-human actors as well. Everything Happens So Much: The Case of @Horse_ebooks The case of the now debunked Twitter account @Horse_ebooks is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it highlights the presence of what we might call botness, the belief that bots possess distinct personalities or personas that are specific to algorithms. In the context of Twitter, bots are pieces of software or scripts that are designed to automatically or semi-automatically publish tweets or make and accept friend requests (Mowbray). Typically, bots are programmed and designed to be as humanlike as possible, a goal that has been pursued ever since Alan Turing proposed what has now become known as the Turing test (Gehl; Weiss and Tschengeli). The Turing test provides the classic challenge for artificial intelligence, namely, whether a machine can impersonate a human so convincingly that it becomes indistinguishable from an actual human. This challenge is particularly pertinent to spambots as they need to dodge the radar of increasingly complex spam filters and detection algorithms. To avoid detection, bots masquerade as “real” accounts, trying to seem as human as possible (Orlean “Man”). Not all bots, however, pretend to be humans. Bots are created for all kinds of purposes. As Mowbray points out, “many bots are designed to be informative or otherwise useful” (184). For example, bots are designed to tweet news headlines, stock market quotes, traffic information, weather forecasts, or even the hourly bell chimes from Big Ben. Others are made for more artistic purposes or simply for fun by hackers and other Internet pundits. These bots tell jokes, automatically respond to certain keywords typed by other users, or write poems (i.e. @pentametron, @ProfJocular). Amidst the growing bot population on Twitter, @Horse_ebooks is perhaps one of the best known and most prominent. The account was originally created by Russian web developer Alexey Kouznetsov and launched on 5 August 2010. In the beginning, @Horse_ebooks periodically tweeted links to an online store selling e-books, some of which were themed around horses. What most people did not know, until it was revealed to the public on 24 September 2013 (Orlean “Horse”), was that the @Horse_ebooks account had been taken over by artist and Buzzfeed employee Jacob Bakkila in September 2011. Only a year after its inception, @Horse_ebooks went from being a bot to being a human impersonating a bot impersonating a human. After making a deal with Kouznetsov, Bakkila disabled the spambot and started generating tweets on behalf of @Horse_ebooks, using found material and text strings from various obscure Internet sites. The first tweet in Bakkila’s disguise was published on 14 September 2011, saying: “You will undoubtedly look on this moment with shock and”. For the next two years, streams of similar, “strangely poetic” (Chen) tweets were published, slowly giving rise to a devoted and growing fan base. Over the years, @Horse_ebooks became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon—an Internet celebrity of sorts. By 2012, @Horse_ebooks had risen to Internet fame; becoming one of the most mentioned “spambots” in news reports and blogs (Chen). Responses to the @Horse_ebooks “Revelation” On 24 September 2013, journalist Susan Orlean published a piece in The New Yorker revealing that @Horse_ebooks was in fact “human after all” (Orlean “@Horse_ebooks”). The revelation rapidly spurred a plethora of different reactions by its followers and fans, ranging from indifference, admiration and disappointment. Some of the sadness and disappointment felt can be seen clearly in the many of media reports, blog posts and tweets that emerged after the New Yorker story was published. Meyer of The Atlantic expressed his disbelief as follows: @Horse_ebooks, reporters told us, was powered by an algorithm. [...] We loved the horse because it was the network talking to itself about us, while trying to speak to us. Our inventions, speaking—somehow sublimely—of ourselves. Our joy was even a little voyeuristic. An algorithm does not need an audience. To me, though, that disappointment is only a mark of the horse’s success. We loved @Horse_ebooks because it was seerlike, childlike. But no: There were people behind it all along. We thought we were obliging a program, a thing which needs no obliging, whereas in fact we were falling for a plan. (Original italics) People felt betrayed, indeed fooled by @Horse_ebooks. As Watson sees it, “The internet got up in arms about the revelation, mostly because it disrupted our desire to believe that there was beauty in algorithms and randomness.” Several prominent Internet pundits, developers and otherwise computationally skilled people, quickly shared their disappointment and even anger on Twitter. As Jacob Harris, a self-proclaimed @Horse_ebooks fan and news hacker at the New York Times expressed it: Harris’ comparisons to the winning chess-playing computer Deep Blue speaks to the kind of disappointment felt. It speaks to the deep fascination that people feel towards the mysteries of the machine. It speaks to the fundamental belief in the potentials of machine intelligence and to the kind of techno-optimism felt amongst many hackers and “webbies.” As technologist and academic Dan Sinker said, “If I can’t rely on a Twitter bot to actually be a bot, what can I rely on?” (Sinker “If”). Perhaps most poignantly, Sinker noted his obvious disbelief in a blog post tellingly titled “Eulogy for a horse”: It’s been said that, given enough time, a million monkeys at typewriters would eventually, randomly, type the works of Shakespeare. It’s just a way of saying that mathematically, given infinite possibilities, eventually everything will happen. But I’ve always wanted it literally to be true. I’ve wanted those little monkeys to produce something beautiful, something meaningful, and yet something wholly unexpected.@Horse_ebooks was my monkey Shakespeare. I think it was a lot of people’s…[I]t really feels hard, like a punch through everything I thought I knew. (Sinker “Eulogy”) It is one thing is to be fooled by a human and quite another to be fooled by a “Buzzfeed employee.” More than anything perhaps, the question of authenticity and trustworthiness seems to be at stake. In this sense, “It wasn’t the identities of the feed’s writers that shocked everyone (though one of the two writers works for BuzzFeed, which really pissed people off). Rather, it was the fact that they were human in the first place” (Farago). As Sinker put it at the end of the “Eulogy”: I want to believe this wasn’t just yet another internet buzz-marketing prank.I want to believe that @Horse was as beautiful and wonderful today as it was yesterday.I want to believe that beauty can be assembled from the randomness of life all around us.I want to believe that a million monkeys can make something amazingGod.I really, really do want to believe.But I don’t think I do.And that feels even worse. Bots as Personae: Revisiting Horton and Wohl’s Concept of Para-Social Relations How then are we to understand and interpret @Horse_ebooks and peoples’ responses to the revelations? Existing research on human-robot relations suggest that machines are routinely treated as having personalities (Turkle “Life”). There is even evidence to suggest that people often imagine relationships with (sufficiently responsive) robots as being better than relationships with humans. As Turkle explains, this is because relationships with machines, unlike humans, do not demand any ethical commitments (Turkle “Alone”). In other words, bots are oftentimes read and perceived as personas, with which people forge affective relationships. The term “persona” can be understood as a performance of personhood. In a Goffmanian sense, this performance describes how human beings enact roles and present themselves in public (Goffman). As Moore puts it, “the persona is a projection, a puppet show, usually constructed by an author and enlivened by the performance, interpretation, or adaptation”. From Marcel Mauss’ classic analysis of gifts as objects thoroughly personified (Scott), through to the study of drag queens (Stru¨bel-Scheiner), the concept of persona signifies a masquerade, a performance. As a useful concept to theorise the performance and doing of personhood, persona has been used to study everything from celebrity culture (Marshall), fiction, and social networking sites (Zhao et al.). The concept also figures prominently in Human Computer Interaction and Usability Studies where the creation of personas constitutes an important design methodology (Dong et al.). Furthermore, as Marshall points out, persona figures prominently in Jungian psychoanalysis where it exemplifies the idea of “what a man should appear to be” (166). While all of these perspectives allow for interesting analysis of personas, here I want to draw on an understanding of persona as a medium specific condition. Specifically, I want to revisit Horton and Wohl’s classic text about para-social interaction. Despite the fact that it was written almost 60 years ago and in the context of the then emerging mass media – radio, television and movies – their observations are still relevant and useful to theorise the kinds of relations people forge with bots today. According to Horton and Wohl, the “persona offers, above all, a continuing relationship. His appearance is a regular and dependable event, to be counted on, planned for, and integrated into the routines of daily life” (216). The para-social relations between audiences and TV personas are developed over time and become more meaningful to the audience as it acquires a history. Not only are devoted TV audiences characterized by a strong belief in the character of the persona, they are also expected to “assume a sense of personal obligation to the performer” (Horton and Wohl 220). As Horton and Wohl note, “the “fan” - comes to believe that he “knows” the persona more intimately and profoundly than others do; that he “understands” his character and appreciates his values and motives (216). In a similar vein, fans of @Horse_ebooks expressed their emotional attachments in blog posts and tweets. For Sinker, @Horse_ebooks seemed to represent the kind of dependable and regular event that Horton and Wohl described: “Even today, I love @Horse_ebooks. A lot. Every day it was a gift. There were some days—thankfully not all that many—where it was the only thing I looked forward to. I know that that was true for others as well” (Sinker “Eulogy”). Judging from searching Twitter retroactively for @Horse_ebooks, the bot meant something, if not much, to other people as well. Still, almost a year after the revelations, people regularly tweet that they miss @Horse_ebooks. For example, Harris tweets messages saying things like: “I’m still bitter about @Horse_ebooks” (12 November 2013) or “Many of us are still angry and hurt about @Horse_ebooks” (27 December 2013). Twitter user @third_dystopia says he feels something is missing from his life, realizing “horse eBooks hasn’t tweeted since September.” Another of the many messages posted in retrospect similarly says: “I want @Horse_ebooks back. Ever since he went silent, Twitter hasn’t been the same for me” (Lockwood). Indeed, Marshall suggests that affect is at “the heart of a wider persona culture” (162). In a Deleuzian understanding of the term, affect refers to the “capacity to affect and be affected” (Steward 2). Borrowing from Marshall, what the @Horse_ebooks case shows is “that there are connections in our culture that are not necessarily coordinated with purposive and rational alignments. They are organised around clusters of sentiment that help situate people on various spectra of activity and engagement” (162). The concept of persona helps to understand how the performance of @Horse_ebooks depends on the audience to “contribute to the illusion by believing in it” (Horton and Wohl 220). “@Horse_ebooks was my monkey” as Sinker says, suggests a fundamental loss. In this case the para-social relation could no longer be sustained, as the illusion of being engaged in a relation with a machine was taken away. The concept of para-social relations helps not only to illuminate the similarities between how people reacted to @Horse_ebooks and the way in which Horton and Wohl described peoples’ reactions to TV personas. It also allows us to see some crucial differences between the ways in which people relate to bots compared to how they relate to a human. For example, rather than an expression of grief at the loss of a social relationship, it could be argued that the responses triggered by the @Horse_ebooks revelations was of a more general loss of belief in the promises of artificial intelligence. To a certain extent, the appeal of @Horse_ebooks was precisely the fact that it was widely believed not to be a person. Whereas TV personas demand an ethical and social commitment on the part of the audience to keep the masquerade of the performer alive, a bot “needs no obliging” (Meyer). Unlike TV personas that depend on an illusory sense of intimacy, bots do “not need an audience” (Meyer). Whether or not people treat bots in the same way as they treat TV personas, Horton and Wohl’s concept of para-social relations ultimately points towards an understanding of the bot persona as “a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). If quizmasters were seen as the “typical and indigenous figures” of mass media in 1956 (Horton and Wohl 216), the bot, I would suggest, constitutes such an “indigenous figure” today. The bot, if not exactly a “new type of performer” (Horton and Wohl 216), is certainly a pervasive “performer”—indeed a persona—on Twitter today. While @Horse_ebooks was somewhat paradoxically revealed as a “performance art” piece (Orlean “Man”), the concept of persona allows us to see the “real” performance of @Horse_ebooks as constituted in the doing of botness. As the responses to @Horse_ebooks show, the concept of persona is not merely tied to beliefs about “what man should appear to be” (Jung 158), but also to ideas about what a bot should appear to be. Moreover, what the curious case of @Horse_ebooks shows, is how bots are not necessarily interpreted and judged by the standards of the original Turing test, that is, how humanlike they are, but according to how well they perform as bots. 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Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.

Biology teaches us that organisms adapt—or don’t; sociology claims that people adapt—or don’t. We know that ideas can adapt; sometimes even institutions can adapt. Or not. Various papers in this issue attest in exciting ways to precisely such adaptations and maladaptations. (See, for example, the articles in this issue by Lelia Green, Leesa Bonniface, and Tami McMahon, by Lexey A. Bartlett, and by Debra Ferreday.) Adaptation is a part of nature and culture, but it’s the latter alone that interests me here. (However, see the article by Hutcheon and Bortolotti for a discussion of nature and culture together.) It’s no news to anyone that not only adaptations, but all art is bred of other art, though sometimes artists seem to get carried away. My favourite example of excess of association or attribution can be found in the acknowledgements page to a verse drama called Beatrice Chancy by the self-defined “maximalist” (not minimalist) poet, novelist, librettist, and critic, George Elliot Clarke. His selected list of the incarnations of the story of Beatrice Cenci, a sixteenth-century Italian noblewoman put to death for the murder of her father, includes dramas, romances, chronicles, screenplays, parodies, sculptures, photographs, and operas: dramas by Vincenzo Pieracci (1816), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1819), Juliusz Slowacki (1843), Waldter Landor (1851), Antonin Artaud (1935) and Alberto Moravia (1958); the romances by Francesco Guerrazi (1854), Henri Pierangeli (1933), Philip Lindsay (1940), Frederic Prokosch (1955) and Susanne Kircher (1976); the chronicles by Stendhal (1839), Mary Shelley (1839), Alexandre Dumas, père (1939-40), Robert Browning (1864), Charles Swinburne (1883), Corrado Ricci (1923), Sir Lionel Cust (1929), Kurt Pfister (1946) and Irene Mitchell (1991); the film/screenplay by Bertrand Tavernier and Colo O’Hagan (1988); the parody by Kathy Acker (1993); the sculpture by Harriet Hosmer (1857); the photograph by Julia Ward Cameron (1866); and the operas by Guido Pannain (1942), Berthold Goldschmidt (1951, 1995) and Havergal Brian (1962). (Beatrice Chancy, 152) He concludes the list with: “These creators have dallied with Beatrice Cenci, but I have committed indiscretions” (152). An “intertextual feast”, by Clarke’s own admission, this rewriting of Beatrice’s story—especially Percy Bysshe Shelley’s own verse play, The Cenci—illustrates brilliantly what Northrop Frye offered as the first principle of the production of literature: “literature can only derive its form from itself” (15). But in the last several decades, what has come to be called intertextuality theory has shifted thinking away from looking at this phenomenon from the point of view of authorial influences on the writing of literature (and works like Harold Bloom’s famous study of the Anxiety of Influence) and toward considering our readerly associations with literature, the connections we (not the author) make—as we read. We, the readers, have become “empowered”, as we say, and we’ve become the object of academic study in our own right. Among the many associations we inevitably make, as readers, is with adaptations of the literature we read, be it of Jane Austin novels or Beowulf. Some of us may have seen the 2006 rock opera of Beowulf done by the Irish Repertory Theatre; others await the new Neil Gaiman animated film. Some may have played the Beowulf videogame. I personally plan to miss the upcoming updated version that makes Beowulf into the son of an African explorer. But I did see Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel film, and yearned to see the comic opera at the Lincoln Centre Festival in 2006 called Grendel, the Transcendence of the Great Big Bad. I am not really interested in whether these adaptations—all in the last year or so—signify Hollywood’s need for a new “monster of the week” or are just the sign of a desire to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings. For all I know they might well act as an ethical reminder of the human in the alien in a time of global strife (see McGee, A4). What interests me is the impact these multiple adaptations can have on the reader of literature as well as on the production of literature. Literature, like painting, is usually thought of as what Nelson Goodman (114) calls a one-stage art form: what we read (like what we see on a canvas) is what is put there by the originating artist. Several major consequences follow from this view. First, the implication is that the work is thus an original and new creation by that artist. However, even the most original of novelists—like Salman Rushdie—are the first to tell you that stories get told and retold over and over. Indeed his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, takes this as a major theme. Works like the Thousand and One Nights are crucial references in all of his work. As he writes in Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born of old” (86). But illusion of originality is only one of the implications of seeing literature as a one-stage art form. Another is the assumption that what the writer put on paper is what we read. But entire doctoral programs in literary production and book history have been set up to study how this is not the case, in fact. Editors influence, even change, what authors want to write. Designers control how we literally see the work of literature. Beatrice Chancy’s bookend maps of historical Acadia literally frame how we read the historical story of the title’s mixed-race offspring of an African slave and a white slave owner in colonial Nova Scotia in 1801. Media interest or fashion or academic ideological focus may provoke a publisher to foreground in the physical presentation different elements of a text like this—its stress on race, or gender, or sexuality. The fact that its author won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for poetry might mean that the fact that this is a verse play is emphasised. If the book goes into a second edition, will a new preface get added, changing the framework for the reader once again? As Katherine Larson has convincingly shown, the paratextual elements that surround a work of literature like this one become a major site of meaning generation. What if literature were not a one-stage an art form at all? What if it were, rather, what Goodman calls “two-stage” (114)? What if we accept that other artists, other creators, are needed to bring it to life—editors, publishers, and indeed readers? In a very real and literal sense, from our (audience) point of view, there may be no such thing as a one-stage art work. Just as the experience of literature is made possible for readers by the writer, in conjunction with a team of professional and creative people, so, arguably all art needs its audience to be art; the un-interpreted, un-experienced art work is not worth calling art. Goodman resists this move to considering literature a two-stage art, not at all sure that readings are end products the way that performance works are (114). Plays, films, television shows, or operas would be his prime examples of two-stage arts. In each of these, a text (a playtext, a screenplay, a score, a libretto) is moved from page to stage or screen and given life, by an entire team of creative individuals: directors, actors, designers, musicians, and so on. Literary adaptations to the screen or stage are usually considered as yet another form of this kind of transcription or transposition of a written text to a performance medium. But the verbal move from the “book” to the diminutive “libretto” (in Italian, little book or booklet) is indicative of a view that sees adaptation as a step downward, a move away from a primary literary “source”. In fact, an entire negative rhetoric of “infidelity” has developed in both journalistic reviewing and academic discourse about adaptations, and it is a morally loaded rhetoric that I find surprising in its intensity. Here is the wonderfully critical description of that rhetoric by the king of film adaptation critics, Robert Stam: Terms like “infidelity,” “betrayal,” “deformation,” “violation,” “bastardisation,” “vulgarisation,” and “desecration” proliferate in adaptation discourse, each word carrying its specific charge of opprobrium. “Infidelity” carries overtones of Victorian prudishness; “betrayal” evokes ethical perfidy; “bastardisation” connotes illegitimacy; “deformation” implies aesthetic disgust and monstrosity; “violation” calls to mind sexual violence; “vulgarisation” conjures up class degradation; and “desecration” intimates religious sacrilege and blasphemy. (3) I join many others today, like Stam, in challenging the persistence of this fidelity discourse in adaptation studies, thereby providing yet another example of what, in his article here called “The Persistence of Fidelity: Adaptation Theory Today,” John Connor has called the “fidelity reflex”—the call to end an obsession with fidelity as the sole criterion for judging the success of an adaptation. But here I want to come at this same issue of the relation of adaptation to the adapted text from another angle. When considering an adaptation of a literary work, there are other reasons why the literary “source” text might be privileged. Literature has historical priority as an art form, Stam claims, and so in some people’s eyes will always be superior to other forms. But does it actually have priority? What about even earlier performative forms like ritual and song? Or to look forward, instead of back, as Tim Barker urges us to do in his article here, what about the new media’s additions to our repertoire with the advent of electronic technology? How can we retain this hierarchy of artistic forms—with literature inevitably on top—in a world like ours today? How can both the Romantic ideology of original genius and the capitalist notion of individual authorship hold up in the face of the complex reality of the production of literature today (as well as in the past)? (In “Amen to That: Sampling and Adapting the Past”, Steve Collins shows how digital technology has changed the possibilities of musical creativity in adapting/sampling.) Like many other ages before our own, adaptation is rampant today, as director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman clearly realised in creating Adaptation, their meta-cinematic illustration-as-send-up film about adaptation. But rarely has a culture denigrated the adapter as a secondary and derivative creator as much as we do the screenwriter today—as Jonze explores with great irony. Michelle McMerrin and Sergio Rizzo helpfully explain in their pieces here that one of the reasons for this is the strength of auteur theory in film criticism. But we live in a world in which works of literature have been turned into more than films. We now have literary adaptations in the forms of interactive new media works and videogames; we have theme parks; and of course, we have the more common television series, radio and stage plays, musicals, dance works, and operas. And, of course, we now have novelisations of films—and they are not given the respect that originary novels are given: it is the adaptation as adaptation that is denigrated, as Deborah Allison shows in “Film/Print: Novelisations and Capricorn One”. Adaptations across media are inevitably fraught, and for complex and multiple reasons. The financing and distribution issues of these widely different media alone inevitably challenge older capitalist models. The need or desire to appeal to a global market has consequences for adaptations of literature, especially with regard to its regional and historical specificities. These particularities are what usually get adapted or “indigenised” for new audiences—be they the particularities of the Spanish gypsy Carmen (see Ioana Furnica, “Subverting the ‘Good, Old Tune’”), those of the Japanese samurai genre (see Kevin P. Eubanks, “Becoming-Samurai: Samurai [Films], Kung-Fu [Flicks] and Hip-Hop [Soundtracks]”), of American hip hop graffiti (see Kara-Jane Lombard, “‘To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious’: The Adaptation of Hip Hop Graffiti to an Australian Context”) or of Jane Austen’s fiction (see Suchitra Mathur, “From British ‘Pride’ to Indian ‘Bride’: Mapping the Contours of a Globalised (Post?)Colonialism”). What happens to the literary text that is being adapted, often multiple times? Rather than being displaced by the adaptation (as is often feared), it most frequently gets a new life: new editions of the book appear, with stills from the movie adaptation on its cover. But if I buy and read the book after seeing the movie, I read it differently than I would have before I had seen the film: in effect, the book, not the adaptation, has become the second and even secondary text for me. And as I read, I can only “see” characters as imagined by the director of the film; the cinematic version has taken over, has even colonised, my reader’s imagination. The literary “source” text, in my readerly, experiential terms, becomes the secondary work. It exists on an experiential continuum, in other words, with its adaptations. It may have been created before, but I only came to know it after. What if I have read the literary work first, and then see the movie? In my imagination, I have already cast the characters: I know what Gabriel and Gretta Conroy of James Joyce’s story, “The Dead,” look and sound like—in my imagination, at least. Then along comes John Huston’s lush period piece cinematic adaptation and the director superimposes his vision upon mine; his forcibly replaces mine. But, in this particular case, Huston still arguably needs my imagination, or at least my memory—though he may not have realised it fully in making the film. When, in a central scene in the narrative, Gabriel watches his wife listening, moved, to the singing of the Irish song, “The Lass of Aughrim,” what we see on screen is a concerned, intrigued, but in the end rather blank face: Gabriel doesn’t alter his expression as he listens and watches. His expression may not change—but I know exactly what he is thinking. Huston does not tell us; indeed, without the use of voice-over, he cannot. And since the song itself is important, voice-over is impossible. But I know exactly what he is thinking: I’ve read the book. I fill in the blank, so to speak. Gabriel looks at Gretta and thinks: There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. … Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter. (210) A few pages later the narrator will tell us: At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart. (212) This joy, of course, puts him in a very different—disastrously different—state of mind than his wife, who (we later learn) is remembering a young man who sang that song to her when she was a girl—and who died, for love of her. I know this—because I’ve read the book. Watching the movie, I interpret Gabriel’s blank expression in this knowledge. Just as the director’s vision can colonise my visual and aural imagination, so too can I, as reader, supplement the film’s silence with the literary text’s inner knowledge. The question, of course, is: should I have to do so? Because I have read the book, I will. But what if I haven’t read the book? Will I substitute my own ideas, from what I’ve seen in the rest of the film, or from what I’ve experienced in my own life? Filmmakers always have to deal with this problem, of course, since the camera is resolutely externalising, and actors must reveal their inner worlds through bodily gesture or facial expression for the camera to record and for the spectator to witness and comprehend. But film is not only a visual medium: it uses music and sound, and it also uses words—spoken words within the dramatic situation, words overheard on the street, on television, but also voice-over words, spoken by a narrating figure. Stephen Dedalus escapes from Ireland at the end of Joseph Strick’s 1978 adaptation of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with the same words as he does in the novel, where they appear as Stephen’s diary entry: Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. … Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead. (253) The words from the novel also belong to the film as film, with its very different story, less about an artist than about a young Irishman finally able to escape his family, his religion and his country. What’s deliberately NOT in the movie is the irony of Joyce’s final, benign-looking textual signal to his reader: Dublin, 1904 Trieste, 1914 The first date is the time of Stephen’s leaving Dublin—and the time of his return, as we know from the novel Ulysses, the sequel, if you like, to this novel. The escape was short-lived! Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has an ironic structure that has primed its readers to expect not escape and triumph but something else. Each chapter of the novel has ended on this kind of personal triumphant high; the next has ironically opened with Stephen mired in the mundane and in failure. Stephen’s final words in both film and novel remind us that he really is an Icarus figure, following his “Old father, old artificer”, his namesake, Daedalus. And Icarus, we recall, takes a tumble. In the novel version, we are reminded that this is the portrait of the artist “as a young man”—later, in 1914, from the distance of Trieste (to which he has escaped) Joyce, writing this story, could take some ironic distance from his earlier persona. There is no such distance in the film version. However, it stands alone, on its own; Joyce’s irony is not appropriate in Strick’s vision. His is a different work, with its own message and its own, considerably more romantic and less ironic power. Literary adaptations are their own things—inspired by, based on an adapted text but something different, something other. I want to argue that these works adapted from literature are now part of our readerly experience of that literature, and for that reason deserve the same attention we give to the literary, and not only the same attention, but also the same respect. I am a literarily trained person. People like me who love words, already love plays, but shouldn’t we also love films—and operas, and musicals, and even videogames? There is no need to denigrate words that are heard (and visualised) in order to privilege words that are read. Works of literature can have afterlives in their adaptations and translations, just as they have pre-lives, in terms of influences and models, as George Eliot Clarke openly allows in those acknowledgements to Beatrice Chancy. I want to return to that Canadian work, because it raises for me many of the issues about adaptation and language that I see at the core of our literary distrust of the move away from the written, printed text. I ended my recent book on adaptation with a brief examination of this work, but I didn’t deal with this particular issue of language. So I want to return to it, as to unfinished business. Clarke is, by the way, clear in the verse drama as well as in articles and interviews that among the many intertexts to Beatrice Chancy, the most important are slave narratives, especially one called Celia, a Slave, and Shelley’s play, The Cenci. Both are stories of mistreated and subordinated women who fight back. Since Clarke himself has written at length about the slave narratives, I’m going to concentrate here on Shelley’s The Cenci. The distance from Shelley’s verse play to Clarke’s verse play is a temporal one, but it is also geographic and ideological one: from the old to the new world, and from a European to what Clarke calls an “Africadian” (African Canadian/African Acadian) perspective. Yet both poets were writing political protest plays against unjust authority and despotic power. And they have both become plays that are more read than performed—a sad fate, according to Clarke, for two works that are so concerned with voice. We know that Shelley sought to calibrate the stylistic registers of his work with various dramatic characters and effects to create a modern “mixed” style that was both a return to the ancients and offered a new drama of great range and flexibility where the expression fits what is being expressed (see Bruhn). His polemic against eighteenth-century European dramatic conventions has been seen as leading the way for realist drama later in the nineteenth century, with what has been called its “mixed style mimesis” (Bruhn) Clarke’s adaptation does not aim for Shelley’s perfect linguistic decorum. It mixes the elevated and the biblical with the idiomatic and the sensual—even the vulgar—the lushly poetic with the coarsely powerful. But perhaps Shelley’s idea of appropriate language fits, after all: Beatrice Chancy is a woman of mixed blood—the child of a slave woman and her slave owner; she has been educated by her white father in a convent school. Sometimes that educated, elevated discourse is heard; at other times, she uses the variety of discourses operative within slave society—from religious to colloquial. But all the time, words count—as in all printed and oral literature. Clarke’s verse drama was given a staged reading in Toronto in 1997, but the story’s, if not the book’s, real second life came when it was used as the basis for an opera libretto. Actually the libretto commission came first (from Queen of Puddings Theatre in Toronto), and Clarke started writing what was to be his first of many opera texts. Constantly frustrated by the art form’s demands for concision, he found himself writing two texts at once—a short libretto and a longer, five-act tragic verse play to be published separately. Since it takes considerably longer to sing than to speak (or read) a line of text, the composer James Rolfe keep asking for cuts—in the name of economy (too many singers), because of clarity of action for audience comprehension, or because of sheer length. Opera audiences have to sit in a theatre for a fixed length of time, unlike readers who can put a book down and return to it later. However, what was never sacrificed to length or to the demands of the music was the language. In fact, the double impact of the powerful mixed language and the equally potent music, increases the impact of the literary text when performed in its operatic adaptation. Here is the verse play version of the scene after Beatrice’s rape by her own father, Francis Chancey: I was black but comely. Don’t glance Upon me. This flesh is crumbling Like proved lies. I’m perfumed, ruddied Carrion. Assassinated. Screams of mucking juncos scrawled Over the chapel and my nerves, A stickiness, as when he finished Maculating my thighs and dress. My eyes seep pus; I can’t walk: the floors Are tizzy, dented by stout mauling. Suddenly I would like poison. The flesh limps from my spine. My inlets crimp. Vultures flutter, ghastly, without meaning. I can see lice swarming the air. … His scythe went shick shick shick and slashed My flowers; they lay, murdered, in heaps. (90) The biblical and the violent meet in the texture of the language. And none of that power gets lost in the opera adaptation, despite cuts and alterations for easier aural comprehension. I was black but comely. Don’t look Upon me: this flesh is dying. I’m perfumed, bleeding carrion, My eyes weep pus, my womb’s sopping With tears; I can hardly walk: the floors Are tizzy, the sick walls tumbling, Crumbling like proved lies. His scythe went shick shick shick and cut My flowers; they lay in heaps, murdered. (95) Clarke has said that he feels the libretto is less “literary” in his words than the verse play, for it removes the lines of French, Latin, Spanish and Italian that pepper the play as part of the author’s critique of the highly educated planter class in Nova Scotia: their education did not guarantee ethical behaviour (“Adaptation” 14). I have not concentrated on the music of the opera, because I wanted to keep the focus on the language. But I should say that the Rolfe’s score is as historically grounded as Clarke’s libretto: it is rooted in African Canadian music (from ring shouts to spirituals to blues) and in Scottish fiddle music and local reels of the time, not to mention bel canto Italian opera. However, the music consciously links black and white traditions in a way that Clarke’s words and story refuse: they remain stubbornly separate, set in deliberate tension with the music’s resolution. Beatrice will murder her father, and, at the very moment that Nova Scotia slaves are liberated, she and her co-conspirators will be hanged for that murder. Unlike the printed verse drama, the shorter opera libretto functions like a screenplay, if you will. It is not so much an autonomous work unto itself, but it points toward a potential enactment or embodiment in performance. Yet, even there, Clarke cannot resist the lure of words—even though they are words that no audience will ever hear. The stage directions for Act 3, scene 2 of the opera read: “The garden. Slaves, sunflowers, stars, sparks” (98). The printed verse play is full of these poetic associative stage directions, suggesting that despite his protestations to the contrary, Clarke may have thought of that version as one meant to be read by the eye. After Beatrice’s rape, the stage directions read: “A violin mopes. Invisible shovelsful of dirt thud upon the scene—as if those present were being buried alive—like ourselves” (91). Our imaginations—and emotions—go to work, assisted by the poet’s associations. There are many such textual helpers—epigraphs, photographs, notes—that we do not have when we watch and listen to the opera. We do have the music, the staged drama, the colours and sounds as well as the words of the text. As Clarke puts the difference: “as a chamber opera, Beatrice Chancy has ascended to television broadcast. But as a closet drama, it play only within the reader’s head” (“Adaptation” 14). Clarke’s work of literature, his verse drama, is a “situated utterance, produced in one medium and in one historical and social context,” to use Robert Stam’s terms. In the opera version, it was transformed into another “equally situated utterance, produced in a different context and relayed through a different medium” (45-6). I want to argue that both are worthy of study and respect by wordsmiths, by people like me. I realise I’ve loaded the dice: here neither the verse play nor the libretto is primary; neither is really the “source” text, for they were written at the same time and by the same person. But for readers and audiences (my focus and interest here), they exist on a continuum—depending on which we happen to experience first. As Ilana Shiloh explores here, the same is true about the short story and film of Memento. I am not alone in wanting to mount a defence of adaptations. Julie Sanders ends her new book called Adaptation and Appropriation with these words: “Adaptation and appropriation … are, endlessly and wonderfully, about seeing things come back to us in as many forms as possible” (160). The storytelling imagination is an adaptive mechanism—whether manifesting itself in print or on stage or on screen. The study of the production of literature should, I would like to argue, include those other forms taken by that storytelling drive. If I can be forgiven a move to the amusing—but still serious—in concluding, Terry Pratchett puts it beautifully in his fantasy story, Witches Abroad: “Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling.” In biology as in culture, adaptations reign. References Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Bruhn, Mark J. “’Prodigious Mixtures and Confusions Strange’: The Self-Subverting Mixed Style of The Cenci.” Poetics Today 22.4 (2001). Clarke, George Elliott. “Beatrice Chancy: A Libretto in Four Acts.” Canadian Theatre Review 96 (1998): 62-79. ———. Beatrice Chancy. Victoria, BC: Polestar, 1999. ———. “Adaptation: Love or Cannibalism? Some Personal Observations”, unpublished manuscript of article. Frye, Northrop. The Educated Imagination. Toronto: CBC, 1963. Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. Hutcheon, Linda, and Gary R. Bortolotti. “On the Origin of Adaptations: Rethinking Fidelity Discourse and “Success”—Biologically.” New Literary History. Forthcoming. Joyce, James. Dubliners. 1916. New York: Viking, 1967. ———. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916. Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1960. Larson, Katherine. “Resistance from the Margins in George Elliott Clarke’s Beatrice Chancy.” Canadian Literature 189 (2006): 103-118. McGee, Celia. “Beowulf on Demand.” New York Times, Arts and Leisure. 30 April 2006. A4. Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. New York: Viking, 1988. ———. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. London: Granta/Penguin, 1990. Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London and New York: Routledge, 160. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Cenci. Ed. George Edward Woodberry. Boston and London: Heath, 1909. Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hutcheon, Linda. "In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/01-hutcheon.php>. APA Style Hutcheon, L. (May 2007) "In Defence of Literary Adaptation as Cultural Production," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/01-hutcheon.php>.

Introduction The term ‘resilience’ is on everyone’s lips - from politicians to community service providers to the seemingly endless supply of self-help gurus. The concept is undergoing a renaissance of sorts in contemporary Western society; but why resilience now? One possible explanation is that individuals and their communities are experiencing increased and intensified levels of adversity and hardship, necessitating the accumulation and deployment of ‘more resilience’. Whilst a strong argument could made that this is in fact the case, it would seem that the capacity to survive and thrive has been a feature of human survival and growth long before we had a name for it. Rather than an inherent characteristic, trait or set of behaviours of particularly ‘resilient’ individuals or groups, resilience has come to be viewed more as a common and everyday capacity, expressed and expressible by all people. Having researched the concept for some time now, we believe that we are only marginally closer to understanding this captivating but ultimately elusive concept. What we are fairly certain of is that resilience is more than basic survival but less than an invulnerability to adversity, resting somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Given the increasing prevalence of populations affected by war and other disasters, we are certain however that efforts to better understand the accumulative dynamics of resilience, are now, more than ever, a vital area of public and academic concern. In our contemporary world, the concept of resilience is coming to represent a vital conceptual tool for responding to the complex challenges emerging from broad scale movements in climate change, rural and urban migration patterns, pollution, economic integration and other consequences of globalisation. In this article, the phenomenon of human resilience is defined as the cumulative build-up of both particular kinds of knowledge, skills and capabilities as well as positive affects such as hope, which sediment over time as transpersonal capacities for self-preservation and ongoing growth (Wilson). Although the accumulation of positive affect is crucial to the formation of resilience, the ability to re-imagine and utilise negative affects, events and environmental limitations, as productive cultural resources, is a reciprocal and under-researched aspect of the phenomenon. In short, we argue that resilience is the protective shield, which capacitates individuals and communities to at least deal with, and at best, overcome potential challenges, while also facilitating the realisation of hoped-for objects and outcomes. Closely tied to the formation of resilience is the lived experience of hope and hoping practices, with an important feature of resilience related to the future-oriented dimensions of hope (Parse). Yet it is important to note that the accumulation of hope, as with resilience, is not headed towards some state of invulnerability to adversity; as presumed to exist in the foundational period of psychological research on the construct (Garmezy; Werner and Smith; Werner). In contrast, we argue that the positive affective experience of hopefulness provides individuals and communities with a means of enduring the present, while the future-oriented dimensions of hope offer them an instrument for imagining a better future to come (Wilson). Given the complex, elusive and non-uniform nature of resilience, it is important to consider the continued relevance of the resilience concept. For example, is resilience too narrow a term to describe and explain the multiple capacities, strategies and resources required to survive and thrive in today’s world? Furthermore, why do some individuals and communities mobilise and respond to a crisis; and why do some collapse? In a related discussion, Ungar (Constructionist) posed the question, “Why keep the term resilience?” Terms like resilience, even strengths, empowerment and health, are a counterpoint to notions of disease and disorder that have made us look at people as glasses half empty rather than half full. Resilience reminds us that children survive and thrive in a myriad of ways, and that understanding the etiology of health is as, or more, important than studying the etiology of disease. (Ungar, Constructionist 91) This productive orientation towards health, creativity and meaning-making demonstrates the continued conceptual and existential relevance of resilience, and why it will remain a critical subject of inquiry now and into the future. Early Psychological Studies of Resilience Definitions of resilience vary considerably across disciplines and time, and according to the theoretical context or group under investigation (Harvey and Delfabro). During the 1970s and early 1980s, the developmental literature on resilience focused primarily on the “personal qualities” of “resilient children” exposed to adverse life circumstances (Garmezy Vulnerability; Masten; Rutter; Werner). From this narrow and largely individualistic viewpoint, resilience was defined as an innate “self-righting mechanism” (Werner and Smith 202). Writing from within the psychological tradition, Masten argued that the early research on resilience (Garmezy Vulnerability; Werner and Smith) regularly implied that resilient children were special or remarkable by virtue of their invulnerability to adversity. As research into resilience progressed, researchers began to acknowledge the ordinariness or everydayness of resilience-related phenomena. Furthermore, that “resilience may often derive from factors external to the child” (Luthar; Cicchetti and Becker 544). Besides the personal attributes of children, researchers within the psychological sciences also began to explore the effects of family dynamics and impacts of the broader social environment in the development of resilience. Rather than identifying which child, family or environmental factors were resilient or resilience producing, they turned their attention to how these underlying protective mechanisms facilitated positive resilience outcomes. As research evolved, resilience as an absolute or unchanging attribute made way for more relational and dynamic conceptualisations. As Luthar et al noted, “it became clear that positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity involves a developmental progression, such that new vulnerabilities and/or strengths often emerge with changing life circumstances” (543-44). Accordingly, resilience came to be viewed as a dynamic process, involving positive adaptations within contexts of adversity (Luthar et al. 543). Although closer to the operational definition of resilience argued for here, there remain a number of definitional concerns and theoretical limitations of the psychological approach; in particular, the limitation of positive adaptation to the context of significant adversity. In doing so, this definition fails to account for the subjective experience and culturally located understandings of ‘health’, ‘adversity’ and ‘adaptation’ so crucial to the formation of resilience. Our major criticism of the psychodynamic approach to resilience relates to the construction of a false dichotomy between “resilient” and “non-resilient” individuals. This dichotomy is perpetuated by psychological approaches that view resilience as a distinct construct, specific to “resilient” individuals. In combating this assumption, Ungar maintained that this bifurcation could be replaced by an understanding of mental health “as residing in all individuals even when significant impairment is present” (Thicker 352). We tend to agree. In terms of economic resilience, we must also be alert to similar false binaries that place the first and low-income world into simple, apposite positions of coping or not-coping, ‘having’ or ‘not-having’ resilience. There is evidence to indicate, for example, that emerging economies fared somewhat better than high-income nations during the global financial crisis (GFC). According to Frankel and Saravelos, several low-income nations attained better rates of gross domestic product GDP, though the impacts on the respective populations were found to be equally hard (Lane and Milesi-Ferretti). While the reasons for this are broad and complex, a study by Kose and Prasad found that a broad set of policy tools had been developed that allowed for greater flexibility in responding to the crisis. Positive Affect Despite Adversity An emphasis on deficit, suffering and pathology among marginalised populations such as refugees and young people has detracted from culturally located strengths. As Te Riele explained, marginalised young people residing in conditions of adversity are often identified within “at-risk” discourses. These social support frameworks have tended to highlight pathologies and antisocial behaviours rather than cultural competencies. This attitude towards marginalised “at risk” young people has been perpetuated by psychotherapeutic discourse that has tended to focus on the relief of suffering and treatment of individual pathologies (Davidson and Shahar). By focusing on pain avoidance and temporary relief, we may be missing opportunities to better understand the productive role of ‘negative’ affects and bodily sensations in alerting us to underlying conditions, in need of attention or change. A similar deficit approach is undertaken through education – particularly civics – where young people are treated as ‘citizens in waiting’ (Collin). From this perspective, citizenship is something that young people are expected to ‘grow into’, and until that point, are seen as lacking any political agency or ability to respond to adversity (Holdsworth). Although a certain amount of internal discomfort is required to promote change, Davidson and Shahar noted that clinical psychotherapists still “for the most part, envision an eventual state of happiness – both for our patients and for ourselves, described as free of tension, pain, disease, and suffering” (229). In challenging this assumption, they asked, But if desiring-production is essential to what makes us human, would we not expect happiness or health to involve the active, creative process of producing? How can one produce anything while sitting, standing, or lying still? (229) A number of studies exploring the affective experiences of migrants have contested the embedded psychological assumption that happiness or well-being “stands apart” from experiences of suffering (Crocker and Major; Fozdar and Torezani; Ruggireo and Taylor; Tsenkova, Love, Singer and Ryff). A concern for Ahmed is how much the turn to happiness or happiness turn “depends on the very distinction between good and bad feelings that presume bad feelings are backward and conservative and good feelings are forward and progressive” (Happiness 135). Highlighting the productive potential of unhappy affects, Ahmed suggested that the airing of unhappy affects in their various forms provides people with “an alternative set of imaginings of what might count as a good or at least better life” (Happiness 135). An interesting feature of refugee narratives is the paradoxical relationship between negative migration experiences and the reporting of a positive life outlook. In a study involving former Yugoslavian, Middle Eastern and African refugees, Fozdar and Torezani investigated the “apparent paradox between high-levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia in the labour market and everyday life” (30), and the reporting of positive wellbeing. The interaction between negative experiences of discrimination and reports of wellbeing suggested a counter-intuitive propensity among refugees to adapt to and make sense of their migration experiences in unique, resourceful and life-affirming ways. In a study of unaccompanied Sudanese youth living in the United States, Goodman reported that, “none of the participants displayed a sense of victimhood at the time of the interviews” (1182). Although individual narratives did reflect a sense of victimisation and helplessness relating to the enormity of past trauma, the young participants viewed themselves primarily as survivors and agents of their own future. Goodman further stated that the tone of the refugee testimonials was not bitter: “Instead, feelings of brotherliness, kindness, and hope prevailed” (1183). Such response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors indicate a similar resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from negative migration experiences and associated emotions. It is important to point out that demonstrations of resilience appear loosely proportional to the amount or intensity of adverse life events experienced. However, resilience is not expressed or employed uniformly among individuals or communities. Some respond in a resilient manner, while others collapse. On this point, an argument could be made that collapse and breakdown is a built-in aspect of resilience, and necessary for renewal and ongoing growth. Cultures of Resilience In a cross continental study of communities living and relying on waterways for their daily subsistence, Arvanitakis is involved in a broader research project aiming to understand why some cultures collapse and why others survive in the face of adversity. The research aims to look beyond systems of resilience, and proposes the term ‘cultures of resilience’ to describe the situated strategies of these communities for coping with a variety of human-induced environmental challenges. More specifically, the concept of ‘cultures of resilience’ assists in explaining the specific ways individuals and communities are responding to the many stresses and struggles associated with living on the ‘front-line’ of major waterways that are being impacted by large-scale, human-environment development and disasters. Among these diverse locations are Botany Bay (Australia), Sankhla Lake (Thailand), rural Bangladesh, the Ganges (India), and Chesapeake Bay (USA). These communities face very different challenges in a range of distinctive contexts. Within these settings, we have identified communities that are prospering despite the emerging challenges while others are in the midst of collapse and dispersion. In recognising the specific contexts of each of these communities, the researchers are working to uncover a common set of narratives of resilience and hope. We are not looking for the ’magic ingredient’ of resilience, but what kinds of strategies these communities have employed and what can they learn from each other. One example that is being pursued is a community of Thai rice farmers who have reinstated ceremonies to celebrate successful harvests by sharing in an indigenous rice species in the hope of promoting a shared sense of community. These were communities on the cusp of collapse brought on by changing economic and environmental climates, but who have reversed this trend by employing a series of culturally located practices. The vulnerability of these communities can be traced back to the 1960s ‘green revolution’ when they where encouraged by local government authorities to move to ‘white rice’ species to meet export markets. In the process they were forced to abandoned their indigenous rice varieties and abandon traditional seed saving practices (Shiva, Sengupta). Since then, the rice monocultures have been found to be vulnerable to the changing climate as well as other environmental influences. The above ceremonies allowed the farmers to re-discover the indigenous rice species and plant them alongside the ‘white rice’ for export creating a more robust harvest. The indigenous species are kept for local consumption and trade, while the ‘white rice’ is exported, giving the farmers access to both the international markets and income and the local informal economies. In addition, the indigenous rice acts as a form of ‘insurance’ against the vagaries of international trade (Shiva). Informants stated that the authorities that once encouraged them to abandon indigenous rice species and practices are now working with the communities to re-instigate these. This has created a partnership between the local government-funded research centres, government institutions and the farmers. A third element that the informants discussed was the everyday practices that prepare a community to face these challenges and allow it recover in partnership with government, including formal and informal communication channels. These everyday practices create a culture of reciprocity where the challenges of the community are seen to be those of the individual. This is not meant to romanticise these communities. In close proximity, there are also communities engulfed in despair. Such communities are overwhelmed with the various challenges described above of changing rural/urban settlement patterns, pollution and climate change, and seem to have lacked the cultural and social capital to respond. By contrasting the communities that have demonstrated resilience and those that have not been overwhelmed, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is no single 'magic' ingredient of resilience. What exist are various constituted factors that involve a combination of community agency, social capital, government assistance and structures of governance. The example of the rice farmers highlights three of these established practices: working across formal and informal economies; crossing localised and expert knowledge as well as the emergence of everyday practices that promote social capital. As such, while financial transactions occur that link even the smallest of communities to the global economy, there is also the everyday exchange of cultural practices, which is described elsewhere by Arvanitakis as 'the cultural commons': visions of hope, trust, shared intellect, and a sense of safety. Reflecting the refugee narratives citied above, these communities also report a positive life outlook, refusing to see themselves as victims. There is a propensity among members of these communities to adapt an outlook of hope and survival. Like the response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors, initial research is confirming a resilience-related capacity to interpret the various challenges that have been confronted, and see their survival as reason to hope. Future Visions, Hopeful Visions Hope is a crucial aspect of resilience, as it represents a present- and future-oriented mode of situated defence against adversity. The capacity to hope can increase one’s powers of action despite a complex range of adversities experienced in everyday life and during particularly difficult times. The term “hope” is commonly employed in a tokenistic way, as a “nice” rhetorical device in the mind-body-spirit or self-help literature or as a strategic instrument in increasingly empty domestic and international political vocabularies. With a few notable exceptions (Anderson; Bloch; Godfrey; Hage; Marcel; Parse; Zournazi), the concept of hope has received only modest attention from within sociology and cultural studies. Significant increases in the prevalence of war and disaster-affected populations makes qualitative research into the lived experience of hope a vital subject of academic interest. Parse observed among health care professionals a growing attention to “the lived experience of hope”, a phenomenon which has significant consequences for health and the quality of one’s life (vvi). Hope is an integral aspect of resilience as it can act as a mechanism for coping and defense in relation to adversity. Interestingly, it is during times of hardship and adversity that the phenomenological experience of hope seems to “kick in” or “switch on”. With similarities to the “taken-for-grantedness” of resilience in everyday life, Anderson observed that hope and hoping are taken-for-granted aspects of the affective fabric of everyday life in contemporary Western culture. Although the lived experience of hope, namely, hopefulness, is commonly conceptualised as a “future-oriented” state of mind, the affectivity of hope, in the present moment of hoping, has important implications in terms of resilience formation. The phrase, the “lived deferral of hope” is an idea that Wilson has developed elsewhere which hopefully brings together and holds in creative tension the two dominant perspectives on hope as a lived experience in the present and a deferred, future-oriented practice of hoping and hopefulness. Zournazi defined hope as a “basic human condition that involves belief and trust in the world” (12). She argued that the meaning of hope is “located in the act of living, the ordinary elements of everyday life” and not in “some future or ideal sense” (18). Furthermore, she proposed a more “everyday” hope which “is not based on threat or deferral of gratification”, but is related to joy “as another kind of contentment – the affirmation of life as it emerges and in the transitions and movements of our everyday lives and relationships” (150). While qualitative studies focusing on the everyday experience of hope have reinvigorated academic research on the concept of hope, our concept of “the lived deferral of hope” brings together Zournazi’s “everyday hope” and the future-oriented dimensions of hope and hoping practices, so important to the formation of resilience. Along similar lines to Ahmed’s (Happy Objects) suggestion that happiness “involves a specific kind of intentionality” that is “end-orientated”, practices of hope are also intentional and “end-orientated” (33). If objects of hope are a means to happiness, as Ahmed wrote, “in directing ourselves towards this or that [hope] object we are aiming somewhere else: toward a happiness that is presumed to follow” (Happy Objects 34), in other words, to a hope that is “not yet present”. It is the capacity to imagine alternative possibilities in the future that can help individuals and communities endure adverse experiences in the present and inspire confidence in the ongoingness of their existence. Although well-intentioned, Zournazi’s concept of an “everyday hope” seemingly ignores the fact that in contexts of daily threat, loss and death there is often a distinct lack of affirmative or affirmable things. In these contexts, the deferral of joy and gratification, located in the future acquisition of objects, outcomes or ideals, can be the only means of getting through particularly difficult events or circumstances. One might argue that hope in hopeless situations can be disabling; however, we contend that hope is always enabling to some degree, as it can facilitate alternative imaginings and temporary affective relief in even in the most hopeless situations. Hope bears similarity to resilience in terms of its facilities for coping and endurance. Likewise the formation and maintenance of hope can help individuals and communities endure and cope with adverse events or circumstances. The symbolic dimension of hope capacitates individuals and communities to endure the present without the hoped-for outcomes and to live with the uncertainty of their attainment. In the lives of refugees, for example, the imaginative dimension of hope is directly related to resilience in that it provides them with the ability to respond to adversity in productive and life-affirming ways. For Oliver, hope “provides continuity between the past and the present…giving power to find meaning in the worst adversity” (in Parse 16). In terms of making sense of the migration and resettlement experiences of refugees and other migrants, Lynch proposed a useful definition of hope as “the fundamental knowledge and feeling that there is a way out of difficulty, that things can work out” (32). As it pertains to everyday mobility and life routes, Parse considered hope to be “essential to one’s becoming” (32). She maintained that hope is a lived experience and “a way of propelling self toward envisioned possibilities in everyday encounters with the world” (p. 12). Expanding on her definition of the lived experience of hope, Parse stated, “Hope is anticipating possibilities through envisioning the not-yet in harmoniously living the comfort-discomfort of everydayness while unfolding a different perspective of an expanding view” (15). From Nietzsche’s “classically dark version of hope” (in Hage 11), Parse’s “positive” definition of hope as a propulsion to envisaged possibilities would in all likelihood be defined as “the worst of all evils, for it protracts the torment of man”. Hage correctly pointed out that both the positive and negative perspectives perceive hope “as a force that keeps us going in life” (11). Parse’s more optimistic vision of hope as propulsion to envisaged possibilities links nicely to what Arvanitakis described as an ‘active hope’. According to him, the idea of ‘active hope’ is not only a vision that a better world is possible, but also a sense of agency that our actions can make this happen. Conclusion As we move further into the 21st century, humankind will be faced with a series of traumas, many of which are as yet unimagined. To meet these challenges, we, as a global collective, will need to develop specific capacities and resources for coping, endurance, innovation, and hope, all of which are involved the formation of resilience (Wilson 269). Although the accumulation of resilience at an individual level is important, our continued existence, survival, and prosperity lie in the strength and collective will of many. As Wittgenstein wrote, the strength of a thread “resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres” (xcv). If resilience can be accumulated at the level of the individual, it follows that it can be accumulated as a form of capital at the local, national, and international levels in very real and meaningful ways. 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