Journal articles on the topic 'Self-determination, National Australia'

As globalization accelerates, transnational pressures play an increasingly important role in political culture. Cultural linkages created by migration can be sustained and reproduced, allowing migrant groupings to maintain a role as movers for social change. Such linkages open up possibilities for mutual engagement or dialogue across the external-internal boundaries of national statehood. These issues are illustrated by the relatively small East Timorese refugee community living in Australia, which has forged a distinctive diasporic identity and has successfully invoked a transnational sphere of politics around issues of self-determination, human rights and multiculturalism. In tandem, many non-Timorese have questioned Australian commitment to these principles within Australia as well as in relation to East Timor. This process of transnational contestation leads to the emergence of cross-national communities of conscience, and points to the possibility of multicultural interaction beyond national borders.

The National Indigenous Television (NITV) service was launched in July 2007. NITV's public service broadcasting model has arrived after two decades of successful community-based enterprise. Indigenous groups, guided by policies of self-determination, developed a robust grassroots media system based on community ownership and regional collaboration. The arrival of NITV raised important questions for the sector. Can locally sourced content provide the levels of leadership and national unity achieved by public service media during the broadcast era? How can Indigenous media play a greater role in the Australian public sphere? Can locally controlled media offer national narratives? Where does industry development begin and end? As the Indigenous media sector faces up to these issues, two distinct approaches are emerging. One presents a unified picture of Indigenous Australia; the other enables diverse groups to tell their own stories. This paper examines the tensions and possibilities of the new Indigenous media landscape by looking back at the self-determination governance model of the past.

Strategies for indigenous self-determination have emerged at unique junctures in national and global geopolitical arenas, challenging the formal hegemony of the nation-state with claims to land rights, sovereignty and self-governance. These movements are reflected qualitatively, in a variety of social, political, and cultural forms, including popular music in Australia. An analysis of the ‘cultural apparatus’, recordings, and popular performance events of indigenous musicians reveals the construction of ‘arenas of empowerment’ at a variety of geographical scales, within which genuine spaces of Aboriginal self-determination and self-expression can exist. Although these spaces often remain contested, new indigenous musical networks continue to emerge, simultaneously inscribing Aboriginal music into the Australian soundscape, and beginning to challenge normative geopolitical doctrines. The emergence of a vibrant Aboriginal popular music scene therefore requires a rethinking of Australian music, and appeals for greater recognition of Aboriginal artists' sophisticated geopolitical strategies.

This paper reviews the literature on alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, and national and local policy issues for indigenous people in four developed countries (United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The growth of domestic self-determination and self-management policies within these countries has had an impact on the relationships between these groups and their national governments, which raises a number of questions regarding the influence of national alcohol policies on indigenous citizens. National “native” policies as well as discriminatory alcohol prohibitions have had long-standing effects, influencing indigenous responses to contemporary interventions in alcohol misuse. While national alcohol policies have had mixed impact, indigenous groups have focused on their own attempts at control, which emphasize local controls over supply; these are particularly prevalent in the far north of Canada and in Australia. Local control policies have been well evaluated in Australia, providing an evidence-based grounding for further interventions.

The aim of comparative studies in education is to improve our understanding of our own problems of education at the national level. In the words of Phillip E. Jones (1973:24), “Comparative education can lead us to understanding, sympathy and tolerance”. More than that, it is hoped that it can lead to improved circumstances for Australia’s most disadvantaged minority group – the Aborigines.The Aborigines were the first people to have a social system in Australia. That system, however, has undergone dramatic change in the last 200 years at the hands of ‘white’ migrants. Changes in educational policy in Australia have been largely a reaction to what the ruling majority has regarded as the ‘Aboriginal problem’. Schooling for Aborigines thus moved, early this century, from an era of mission schools and reserves to ‘formal’ schooling which was introduced in the 1960’s. Policies then shifted in turn from ‘assimilation’ to ‘integrationism’ to ‘self-determination’ and self-government’ for the Aborigines.

This paper revisits the controversy of Judge Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan's recusal from theSouth West Africacases using new information from the National Archives in Australia, India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, including an unpublished manuscript written by the Australian judge and the Court's President Sir Percy Spender. Sir Percy's manuscript, which addresses the “recusal” controversy and the 1966 Decision, raises uncomfortable questions about the politics of international law within the Court in the 1960s. In many ways, Judge Zafrulla's struggle with Sir Percy at the ICJ can be analogized to the struggle of non-European peoples to self-determination. The internal “legal” struggle within the Court paralleled the larger “political” struggle outside the Court. Zafrulla would win the struggle, however, when as President of the Court during the 1971 Advisory Opinion onNamibiahe would contribute to decolonization, a possibility he foresaw when he was forced to recuse himself.

As the world journeys towards the endemic phase that follows a pandemic, public health authorities are reviewing the efficacy of COVID-19 pandemic responses. The responses by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia have been heralded across the globe as an exemplary demonstration of how self-determination can achieve optimal health outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Despite this success, the impacts of pandemic stressors and public health responses on immediate and long-term mental health and wellbeing require examination. In December 2021, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing leaders and allies (N = 50) attended a virtual roundtable to determine the key issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities, and the actions required to address these issues. Roundtable attendees critically reviewed how the rapidly evolving pandemic context has impacted Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB). This paper presents an overview of this national collaborative consultation process, and a summary of the key issues and actions identified. These results build on evidence from other roundtables held in Australia during 2020, and the emerging consensus across the globe that Indigenous self-determination remains essential to Indigenous SEWB, especially during and following a pandemic.

People with disabilities comprise 19% of the Australian population. Normalisation, human rights, community-based rehabilitation and mutual obligation policies are consistent. All require broadly conceptualised services which develop the potential and capacities of people with disabilities, to enable their self-determination and social integration. There is commitment to a national platform of standards for health and environment protection. Regionally pooled funding and separate management streams for accommodation and services for the aged would facilitate coordinated and transparent management of all accommodation, health and disability funds. Elected government representatives and universities appear well placed to assist the broad, regionally planned approach to resolving community health problems which area health service managers and others have commenced.

Culturally safe and responsive interventions that acknowledge Aboriginal models of selfhood are needed. Such interventions empower Aboriginal peoples and communities by increasing self-determination over individual and community social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB). In response to this need, the National Empowerment Project developed the Cultural, Social, and Emotional Wellbeing Program (CSEWB). The CSEWB aims to strengthen SEWB and cultural identity and subsequently reduce psychological distress in Aboriginal peoples. An Aboriginal Participatory Action Research approach ensured community ownership and engagement. Seven research questions and a culturally modified adaption of the Most Significant Change technique informed a thematic analysis of the evaluation content. Aboriginal adults (n = 49; 53% ≥50 years, 66% female, 34% male) from three Western Australian urban communities participated in the program evaluation workshops. Participants reported the benefits of enhanced SEWB and reduced psychological distress. This research reaffirms the need for culturally safe programs that acknowledge social determinants of health and are guided by the SEWB framework. Long-term commitment from the government is needed to support such programs.

Since March 2020 in Australia, there has been decisive national, and state and territory policy as well as community led action involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as information about COVID-19 arose. This has resulted in, what could only be framed as a success story in self-determination. However, there continues to be issues with the quality of data used for the surveillance and reporting of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during the pandemic. This article discusses some of the important events in pandemic planning regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and how this relates to surveillance and monitoring in the emerging and ongoing threat of COVID-19 within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The authors also identify some of the data considerations required in the future to monitor and address public health.

Politics of globalization demands that all countries of the world should open their borders for free movement of goods and services in a competitive market economy. The emerging anti-migration laws in Europe, America, and Australia, portrays another picture. Proponents think, borders should be open because of the equal liberty of all,1 and the universality of human dignity and rights.2 Opponents argue for border restrictions on the basis of national sovereignty, national interests, and the right to self-determination of sovereign communities.3 The two camps believe that the subject of migration, the human person, is an individual, who is rational, autonomous, self-conscious and a self-propelling being. What divides them is the view that human beings have the right to exclude others from their properties and territories, hence supporting border restrictions. On the other hand, human beings have the social responsibilities to include others to share the properties and territories belonging to them, thus supporting open border policies. This paper hypothesizes that, for a better understanding of international relations, we must go beyond the individualistic understanding of the human person and the open borders discourse. African philosophy, which seems to offer a better alternative, opines that the human person is an individual and a socially corporate being that is intrinsically different from others, yet essentially related to others. This individual needs a conducive social and personal atmosphere to prosper, which can only be created in their own countries.

Purpose This paper aims to report on the findings of a qualitative study that explored the views of 53 service providers assisting Indigenous young people (known in Australia as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth) transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach was adopted involving semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 53 representatives of state and territory government departments, non-government organisation service providers and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations (ACCOs) across Australia. The project was designed to gain the perspectives of those working within the system and their views on how it interacts with Indigenous care leavers. Interview questions aimed to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of the leaving care support systems available to this cohort, as well as the key challenges facing service providers in supporting them. Finally, the study aimed to make recommendations for policy development in this area and identify potential best practice service responses. Findings The study found that the OOHC service systems continue to fail Indigenous care leavers, their families and communities. Study findings revealed that Indigenous care-leavers face substantial challenges and that the support systems for those leaving OOHC are often culturally insensitive and ineffective. Many Indigenous OOHC leavers lacked the supports they needed to develop safe and ongoing relationships with their traditional Country, family and communities. To promote more positive transitions and outcomes, effective practice responses were identified, including culturally safe programmes and proportional funding for ACCOs to advance greater self-determination. Originality/value This research is the first national study in Australia to examine the specific transition from care pathways and experiences of Indigenous young people. The findings add to the limited existing knowledge on Indigenous care leavers globally and should inform practice and policy innovations with this cohort in Australia and beyond.

The National Empowerment Project is an innovative Aboriginal-led community empowerment project that has worked with eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia over the period 2012–13. The aim of the Project was to develop, deliver and evaluate a program to: (1) promote positive social and emotional well-being to increase resilience and reduce the high reported rates of psychological distress and suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; and (2) empower communities to take action to address the social determinants that contribute to psychological distress, suicide and self-harm. Using a participatory action research approach, the communities were supported to identify the risk factors challenging individuals, families and communities, as well as strategies to strengthen protective factors against these challenges. Data gathered during Stage 1 were used to develop a 12-month program to promote social and emotional well-being and build resilience within each community. A common framework, based on the social and emotional well-being concept, was used to support each community to target community-identified protective factors and strategies to strengthen individual, family and community social and emotional well-being. Strengthening the role of culture is critical to this approach and marks an important difference between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous mental health promotion and prevention activities, including suicide prevention. It has significant implications for policy makers and service providers and is showing positive impact through the translation of research into practice, for example through the development of a locally run empowerment program that aims to address the social determinants of health and their ongoing negative impact on individuals, families and communities. It also provides a framework in which to develop and strengthen culture, connectedness and foster self-determination, through better-informed policy based on community-level holistic responses and solutions as opposed to an exclusive focus on single-issue deficit approaches.

Part 1 of this article explored the relevance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia, particularly the key principles of self-determination and free, prior and informed consent; how the international human rights framework applies in Australia; and Australia’s lack of compliance with it. Part One concluded by discussing the Uluru Statement from the Heart, presented to all the people of Australia in 2017, and how it marked a turning point in the struggle for recognition by Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Part 2 explores recent developments since the release of the Uluru Statement, especially at sub-national levels, in relation to treaty and truth-telling. It draws some comparisons with Canada and New Zealand, discusses the concept of coexistence, and presents a set of Foundational Principles for Parity and Coexistence between two culturally distinct systems of land ownership, use and tenure.

This is the first of two articles exploring the international human rights framework as it relates to Indigenous peoples’ land rights and interests, with a focus on Australia. Over the past 30 years, the international community has increasingly recognised that special attention needs to be paid to the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, as they are among the world’s most marginalised peoples. For a long time, the Indigenous peoples of the world have used the international human rights system to tackle discrimination and abuses of their rights, and the United Nations has increasingly become a place for them to voice their concerns. In Australia, there has been a long-running debate about the lack of recognition of the First Peoples in Australia’s Constitution. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are increasingly demanding that the full suite of international human rights norms and standards are applicable to their affairs and to dealings with them, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This first article discusses the international human rights framework as it relates to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. The second article will take a closer look at how the land rights and interests of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are being recognised at the national and state jurisdictional levels within Australia, with reference to recent comparable actions in Canada and New Zealand.

Abstract Background The aim of this work was to develop a National Evaluation Framework to facilitate the standardization of delivery, quality, reporting, and evaluation of diabetes education and support programs delivered throughout Australia through the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS). The NDSS is funded by the Australian Government, and provides access to diabetes information, education, support, and subsidized product across diverse settings in each state and territory of Australia through seven independent service-providers. This article reports the approach undertaken to develop the Framework. Methods A participatory approach was undertaken, focused on adopting nationally consistent outcomes and indicators, nominating objectives and measurement tools, specifying evaluation processes, and developing quality standards. Existing programs were classified based on related, overarching indicators enabling the adoption of a tiered system of evaluation. Results Two outcomes (i.e., improved clinical, reduced cost) and four indicators (i.e., improved knowledge and understanding, self-management, self-determination, psychosocial adjustment) were adopted from the Eigenmann and Colagiuri national consensus position statement for diabetes education. This allowed for the identification of objectives (i.e., improved empowerment, reduced distress, autonomy supportive program delivery, consumer satisfaction) and related measurement instruments. Programs were categorized as comprehensive, topic-specific, or basic education, with comprehensive programs allocated to receive the highest-level of evaluation. Eight quality standards were developed, with existing programs tested against those standards. Based on the results of testing, two comprehensive (OzDAFNE for people with type 1 diabetes, DESMOND for people with type 2 diabetes), and eight topic-specific (CarbSmart, ShopSmart, MonitorSmart, FootSmart, MedSmart, Living with Insulin, Insulin Pump Workshop, Ready Set Go – Let’s Move) structured diabetes self-management education and support programs were nominated for national delivery. Conclusions The National Evaluation Framework has facilitated consistency of program quality, delivery, and evaluation of programs delivered by multiple service providers across diverse contexts. The Framework could be applied by other service providers who facilitate multiple diabetes education and support programs and could be adapted for use in other chronic disease populations where education and support are indicated.

Care staff in residential aged care facilities (nursing homes) in Australia are obligated, under the Australian National Framework for Action on Dementia 2015–2019, to support residents to exercise choice and make decisions. Research indicates, however, that care staff are often given little guidance regarding which residents’ decisions should be supported or how to make decisions on their behalf. This lack of guidance can result in a denial of residents’ rights and inconsistent treatment by staff, placing residents’ wellbeing at risk. Through providing an analysis of the responses of staff at RACFs in Victoria and Queensland to two case scenarios, this study seeks to provide some understanding of the difficulties staff face in supporting residents’ self-determination and their own need for greater organisational support.

During the late twentieth century, Australia started to recognize the rights of the Aboriginal people. Indigenous claims for self-determination revolved around struggles to maintain a distinct cultural identity in strategies to own and govern traditional lands within the wider political system. While these fundamental challenges pervaded indigenous affairs, contemporary popular music by Aboriginal artists became increasingly important as a means of mediating viewpoints and agendas of the Australian national consciousness. It provided an artistic platform for indigenous performers to express a concerted resistance to colonial influences and sovereignty. As such, this study aims to examine the meaning and significance of musical recordings that reflect Aboriginal identity and place in a popular culture. It adopts an ethnomusicological approach in which music is explored not only in terms of its content, but also in terms of its social, economic, and political contexts. This paper is organized into three case studies of different Aboriginal rock groups: Bleckbala Mujik, Warumpi Band, and Yothu Yindi. Through these studies, the prevalent use of Aboriginal popular music is discerned as an accessible and compelling mechanism to elicit public awareness about the contemporary indigenous struggles through negotiations of power and representations of place.

Purpose Australia appears to be encountering a crisis in the protection of certain heritage places, despite its strong reputation in heritage conservation built up since the 1970s. Consequently, this paper examines changes to national cultural heritage management policy over the last few decades to understand more about this crisis. Design/methodology/approach Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage) was selected as the key focus. This paper applies a cultural heritage management framework tested first in Hong Kong to measure Australian paradigm change over 45 years. Findings It found the 1990s shift away from the provision of independent technical advice on national heritage policy has had a major impact. This shift is based on a change in ethos away from the earlier Whitlam/National Estate broader vision of heritage responsibilities towards a narrower more conservative one at the national level. Also, it found that studies and policymaking should allow for Indigenous voices. More Indigenous input in heritage policy formulation at all levels of government would further decolonise Indigenous heritage governance to deal justly with Indigenous Australians and their heritage. Research limitations/implications Resources did not allow for comparative studies of the non-Indigenous (historic) and natural heritage as part of the current study. Practical implications The study also included a consultation paper and an online conference presentation that have raised questions about the efficacy of current national policy on Indigenous places, on which a national conversation is urgently needed. The recent review of the National Heritage Strategy by the Australian Commonwealth Government based some of its proposed options on those listed in the consultation paper to initiate this conversation in a limited way. Social implications One finding is that attention to heritage policy and protection must be ongoing at all levels of government and inclusive of First People's human rights, particularly those concerning their heritage. In regard to Australia, most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents in this study would like to see targeted funding return for more than just iconic Indigenous places and for the creation of a more independent heritage body that allows them more self-determination in the care of their heritage. Originality/value The paper's value is that it investigates the Australian Heritage Commission's impact in the development of Australian cultural heritage management and associated national policy. Also, it provides insights for other postcolonial or New World settler societies dealing with the same issues or any decision-makers considering establishing a national independent body to oversee heritage protection and policymaking.

Background: Healthy and sustainable food systems underpin the well-being of Indigenous peoples. Increasingly governments are taking action to improve diets via population-wide policies. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People states that Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in all decisions that affect them. We analysed Australian national food and nutrition policy processes to determine: (i) the participation of Aboriginal organisations, (ii) the issues raised in Aboriginal organisations’ policy submissions, and (iii) the extent to which Aboriginal organisations’ recommendations were addressed in final policy documents. Methods: Political economy and cultural safety lenses informed the study design. We analysed publicly-available documents for Australian population-wide food and nutrition policy consultations occurring 2008-2018. Data sources were policy documents, committee reports, terms of reference and consultation submissions. The submissions made by Aboriginal organisations were thematically analysed and key policy recommendations extracted. We examined the extent to which key recommendations made by Aboriginal organisations were included in the subsequent policy documents. Results: Five food and nutrition policy processes received submissions from Aboriginal organisations. Key themes centred on self-determination, culturally-appropriate approaches to health, and the need to address food insecurity and social determinants of health. These messages were underrepresented in final policy documents, and Aboriginal people were not included in any committees overseeing policy development processes. Conclusion: This analysis suggests that very few Aboriginal organisations have participated in Australian population-wide food and nutrition policy processes and that these policy development processes are culturally unsafe. In order to operationalise First Nations peoples’ right to self-determination, alternative mechanisms are required to redress the power imbalances preventing the full participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in population-wide food and nutrition policy decisions. This means reflecting on deeply embedded institutional structures and the normative assumptions upon which they rest.

Illegitimacy is a multifaceted concept, powerful because it has the ability to define both itself and its antithesis; what it is not. The first three definitions of the word “illegitimate” in the Oxford English Dictionary – to use an illegitimate academic source – begin with that negative: “illegitimate” is “not legitimate’, ‘not in accordance with or authorised by law”, “not born in lawful wedlock”. In fact, the OED offers eight different usages of the term “illegitimate”, all of which rely on the negation or absence of the legitimate counterpart to provide a definition. In other words, something can only be illegitimate in the sense of being outside the law, if a law exists. A child can only be considered illegitimate, “not born in lawful wedlock” if the concept of “lawful wedlock” exists.Not only individual but national identity can be constructed by defining what – or who – has a legitimate reason to be a part of that collective identity, and who does not. The extent to which the early years of Australian colonial history was defined by its punitive function can be mapped by an early usage of the term “illegitimate” as a means of defining the free settlers of Australia. In an odd reversal of conventional associations of “illegitimate”, the “illegitimates” of Australia were not convicts. They were people who had not been sent there for legitimate – (legal) reasons and who therefore did not fit into the depiction of Australia as a penal colony. The definition invites us to consider the relationship between Australia and Britain in those early years, when Australia provided Britain with a means of constructing itself as a “legitimate” society by functioning as a location where undesirable elements could be identified and excluded. The “illegitimates” of Australia challenged Australia’s function of rendering Britain a “legitimate” society. As a sense of what is “illegitimate” in a particular context is codified and disseminated, a corresponding sense of what is “legitimate” is also created, whether in the context of the family, the law, academia, or the nation. As individuals and groups label and marginalise what is considered unwanted, dangerous, superfluous or in other ways unsatisfactory in a society, the norms that are implicitly accepted become visible. Rather as the medical practice of diagnosis by exclusion enables a particular condition to be identified because other potential conditions have been ruled out, attempts to “rule out” forms of procreation, immigration, physical types, even forms of performance as illegitimate enable a legitimate counterpart to be formed and identified. Borrowing a thought from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, legitimates are all alike and formed within the rules; the illegitimates are illegitimate in a variety of ways. The OED lists “illegitimate” as a noun or adjective; the word’s primary function is to define a status or to describe something. Less commonly, it can be used as a verb; to “illegitimate” someone is to bastardise them, to render them no longer legitimate, to confer and confirm their illegitimate status. Although this has most commonly been used in terms of a change in parents’ marital status (for example Queen Elizabeth I of England was bastardised by having her parents’ marriage declared invalid; as had been also the case with her older half-sister, Mary) illegitimisation as a means of marginalising and excluding continues. In October 2014, Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison introduced legislation designed to retrospectively declare that children born in Australia to parents that have been designated “unlawful maritime arrivals” should inherit that marginalised status (Mosendz, Brooke). The denial of “birthright citizenship”, as it is sometimes called, to these infants illegitimises them in terms of their nationality, cutting them away from the national “family”. Likewise the calls to remove Australian nationality from individuals engaging in prohibited terrorist activities uses a strategy of illegitimisation to exclude them from the Australian community. No longer Australian, such people become “national bastards”.The punitive elements associated with illegitimacy are not the only part of the story, however. Rather than being simply a one-way process of identification and exclusion, the illegitimate can also be a vital source of generating new forms of cultural production. The bastard has a way of pushing back, resisting efforts at marginalisation. The papers in this issue of M/C consider the multifarious ways in which the illegitimate refuses to conform to its normative role of defining and obeying boundaries, fighting back from where it has been placed as being beyond the law. As previously mentioned, the OED lists eight possible usages of “illegitimate”. Serendipitously, the contributions to this issue of M/C address each one of them, in different ways. The feature article for this issue, by Katie Ellis, addresses the illegitimisation inherent in how we perceive disability. With a profusion of bastards to choose from in the Game of Thrones narratives, Ellis has chosen to focus on the elements of physical abnormality that confer illegitimate status. From the other characters’ treatment of the dwarf Tyrion Lannister, and other disabled figures within the story, Ellis is able to explore the marginalisation of disability, both as depicted by George R. R. Martin and experienced within the contemporary Australian community. Several contributions address the concept of the illegitimate from its meaning of outside the law, unauthorised or unwarranted. Anne Aly’s paper “Illegitimate: When Moderate Muslims Speak Out” sensitively addresses the illegitimate position to which many Muslims in Australia feel themselves relegated. As she argues, attempting to avoid being regarded as “apologists for Islam” yet simultaneously expected to act as a unifying voice for what is in fact a highly fragmented cultural mix, places such individuals in an insupportable, “illegitimate” position. Anne Aly also joins Lelia Green in exploring the rhetorical strategies used by various Australian governments to illegitimate specific cohorts of would-be Australian migrants. “Bastard immigrants: asylum seekers who arrive by boat and the illegitimate fear of the other” discusses attempts to designate certain asylum seekers as illegitimate intruders into the national family of Australia in the context of the ending of the White Australia policy and the growth of multicultural Australia. Both papers highlight the punitive impact of illegitimisation on particular segments of society and invite recognition of the unlawfulness, or illegitimacy, of the processes themselves that have been used to create such illegitimacy.Illegitimate processes and incorrect inferences, and the illegitimisation of an organisation through media representation which ignores a range of legitimate perspectives are the subject of Ashley Donkin’s work on the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program (NSCSWP). As Donkin notes, this has been a highly controversial topic in Australia, and her research identifies the inadequacies and prejudices that, she argues, contributed to an illegitimate representation of the programme in the Australian media. Without arguing for or against the NSCSWP, Donkin’s research exposes the extent of prejudiced reporting in the Australian media and its capacity to illegitimise programmes (or, indeed, individuals). Interesting here, and not entirely irrelevant (although not directly addressed in Donkin’s paper), is the notion of prejudice as being an opinion formed or promulgated prior to considering the equitable, just or judicial/judged position. Analogous to the way in which the illegitimate is outside the law, the prejudiced only falls within the law through luck, rather than judgement, since ill-advised opinion has guided its formation. Helen Vella Bonavita explores why illegitimacy is perceived as evil or threatening, looking to anthropologists Mary Douglas and Edmund Leach. Using Shakespeare’s Henry V as a case study, Vella Bonavita argues that illegitimacy is one of the preeminent metaphors used in literature and in current political discourses to articulate fears of loss of national as well as personal identity. As Vella Bonavita notes, as well as being a pollutant that the centre attempts to cast to the margins, the illegitimate can also be a potent threat, a powerful figure occupying an undeniable position, threatening the overturning of the established order. The OED’s definition of illegitimate as “one whose position is viewed in some way as illegitimate” is the perspective taken by Crystal Abidin and Herawaty Abbas. In her work “I also Melayu OK”, Abidin explores the difficult world of the bi-racial person in multi-ethnic Singapore. Through a series of interviews, Abbas describes the strategies by which individuals, particularly Malay-Chinese individuals, emphasise or de-emphasise particular linguistic or cultural behaviours in order to overcome their ambivalent cultural position and construct their own desired socially legitimate identity. Abidin’s positive perspective nonetheless evokes its shadow side, the spectre of the anti-miscegenation laws of a range of racist times and societies (but particularly Apartheid South Africa), and those societies’ attempts to outlaw any legitimisation of relationships, and children, that the law-makers wished to prohibit. The paper also resonates with the experience of relationships across sectarian divides and the parlous circumstances of Protestant –Catholic marriages and families during the 1970s in the north of Ireland, or of previously-acceptable Serbo-Croatian unions during the disintegration of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Herawaty Abbas and Brooke Collins-Gearing reflect on the process of academic self-determination and self-construction in “Dancing with an illegitimate feminism: a female Buginese scholar's voice in Australian Academia”. Abbas and Collins-Gearing address the research journey from the point of view of a female Buginese PhD candidate and an Indigenous Australian supervisor. With both candidate and supervisor coming from traditionally marginalised backgrounds in the context of Western academia, Abbas and Collins-Gearing chart a story of empowerment, of finding a new legitimacy in dialogue with conventional academic norms rather than conforming to them. Three contributions address the illegitimate in the context of the illegitimate child, moving from traditional associations of shame and unmarried pregnancy, to two creative pieces which, like Abidin, Abbas and Collins-Gearing, chart the transformative process that re-constructs the illegitimate space into an opportunity to form a new identity and the acceptance, and even embrace, of the previously de-legitimising authorities. Gardiner’s work, “It is almost as if there were a written script: child murder, concealment of birth and the unmarried mother in Western Australia” references two women whose stories, although situated almost two hundred years apart in time, follow a similarly-structured tale of pregnancy, shame and infant death. Kim Coull and Sue Bond in “Secret Fatalities and Liminalities” and “Heavy Baggage and the Adoptee” respectively, provide their own stories of illuminative engagement with an illegitimate position and the process of self-fashioning, while also revisiting the argument of the illegitimate as the liminal, a perspective previously advanced by Vella Bonavita’s piece. The creative potential of the illegitimate condition is the focus of the final three pieces of this issue. Bruno Starrs’s “Hyperlinking History and the Illegitimate Imagination” discusses forms of creative writing only made possible by the new media. Historic metafiction, the phrase coined by Linda Hutcheon to reflect the practice of inserting fictional characters into historical situations, is hardly a new phenomenon, but Starrs notes how the possibilities offered by e-publishing enable the creation of a new level of metafiction. Hyperlinks to external sources enable the author to engage the reader in viewing the book both as a work of fiction and as self-conscious commentary on its own fictionality. Renata Morais’ work on different media terminologies in “I say nanomedia, You say nano-media: il/legitimacy, interdisciplinarity and the anthropocene” also considers the creative possibilities engendered by interdisciplinary connections between science and culture. Her choice of the word “anthropocene,” denoting the geological period when humanity began to have a significant impact on the world’s ecosystems, itself reflects the process whereby an idea that began in the margins gains force and legitimacy. From an informal and descriptive term, the International Commission on Stratigraphy have recently formed a working group to investigate whether the “Anthropocene” should be formally adopted as the name for the new epoch (Sample).The final piece in this issue, Katie Lavers’ “Illegitimate Circus”, again traces the evolution of a theatrical form, satisfyingly returning in spirit if not in the written word to some of the experiences imagined by George R. R. Martin for his character Tyrion Lannister. “Illegitimate drama” was originally theatre which relied more on spectacle than on literary quality, according to the OED. Looking at the evolution of modern circus from Astley’s Amphitheatre through to the Cirque du Soleil spectaculars, Lavers’ article demonstrates that the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate is not one whereby the illegitimate conforms to the norms of the legitimate and thereby becomes legitimate itself, but rather where the initial space created by the designation of illegitimate offers the opportunity for a new form of art. Like Starrs’ hyperlinked fiction, or the illegitimate narrators of Coull or Bond’s work, the illegitimate art form does not need to reject those elements that originally constituted it as “illegitimate” in order to win approval or establish itself. The “illegitimate”, then, is not a fixed condition. Rather, it is a status defined according to a particular time and place, and which is frequently transitional and transformative; a condition in which concepts (and indeed, people) can evolve independently of established norms and practices. Whereas the term “illegitimate” has traditionally carried with it shameful, dark and indeed punitive overtones, the papers collected in this issue demonstrate that this need not be so, and that the illegitimate, possibly more than the legitimate, enlightens and has much to offer.ReferencesMosendz, Polly. “When a Baby Born in Australia Isn’t Australian”. The Atlantic 16 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/when-a-baby-born-in-australia-isnt-australian/381549/›Baskin, Brooke. “Asylum Seeker Baby Ferouz Born in Australia Denied Refugee Status by Court”. The Courier Mail 15 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/asylum-seeker-baby-ferouz-born-in-australia-denied-refugee-status-by-court/story-fnihsrf2-1227091626528›.Sample, Ian. “Anthropocene: Is This the New Epoch of Humans?” The Guardian 16 Oct. 2014. 25 Oct. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/16/-sp-scientists-gather-talks-rename-human-age-anthropocene-holocene›.

Background: Current global challenges are generating extensive social disruption and uncertainty that have the potential to undermine the mental health, wellbeing, and futures of young people. The scale and complexity of challenges call for engagement with systems science-based decision analytic tools that can capture the dynamics and interrelationships between physical, social, economic, and health systems, and support effective national and regional responses. At the outset of the pandemic mental health-related systems models were developed for the Australian context, however, the extent to which findings are generalisable across diverse regions remains unknown. This study aims to explore the context dependency of systems modelling insights.Methods: This study will employ a comparative case study design, applying participatory system dynamics modelling across eight diverse regions of Australia to answer three primary research questions: (i) Will current regional differences in key youth mental health outcomes be exacerbated in forward projections due to the social and economic impacts of COVID-19?; (ii) What combination of social policies and health system strengthening initiatives will deliver the greatest impacts within each region?; (iii) To what extent are optimal strategic responses consistent across the diverse regions? We provide a detailed technical blueprint as a potential springboard for more timely construction and deployment of systems models in international contexts to facilitate a broader examination of the question of generalisability and inform investments in the mental health and wellbeing of young people in the post COVID-19 recovery.Discussion: Computer simulation is known as the third pillar of science (after theory and experiment). Simulation allows researchers and decision makers to move beyond what can be manipulated within the scale, time, and ethical limits of the experimental approach. Such learning when achieved collectively, has the potential to enhance regional self-determination, help move beyond incremental adjustments to the status quo, and catalyze transformational change. This research seeks to advance efforts to establish regional decision support infrastructure and empower communities to effectively respond. In addition, this research seeks to move towards an understanding of the extent to which systems modelling insights may be relevant to the global mental health response by encouraging researchers to use, challenge, and advance the existing work for scientific and societal progress.

IntroductionFilmed during a 1955 family trip from Perth to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Keith Adams’s Northern Safari showed to packed houses across Australia, and in some overseas locations, across three decades. Essentially a home movie, initially accompanied by live commentary and subsequently by a homemade sound track, it tapped into audiences’ sense of Australia’s north as a place of adventure. In the film Adams interacts with the animals of northern Australia (often by killing them), and while by 1971 the violence apparent in the film was attracting criticism in letters to newspapers, the film remained popular through to the mid-1980s, and was later shown on television in Australia and the United States (Cowan 2; Adams, Crocodile Safari Man 261). A DVD is at present available for purchase from the website of the same name (Northern Safari). Adams and his supporters credited the film’s success to the rugged and adventurous landscape of northern Australia (Northeast vii), characterised by dangerous animals, including venomous spiders, sharks and crocodiles (see Adams, “Aussie”; “Crocodile”). The notion of Australia’s north as a place of rugged adventure was not born with Adams’s film, and that film was certainly not the last production to exploit the region and its wildlife as a source of excitement. Rather, Northern Safari belongs to a long list of adventure narratives whose hunting exploits have helped define the north of Australian as a distinct region and contrast it with the temperate south where most Australians make their lives.This article explores the connection between adventure in Australia’s north and the large animals of the region. Adams’s film capitalised on popular interest in natural history, but his film is only one link in a chain of representations of the Australian north as a place of dangerous and charismatic megafauna. While over time interest shifted from being largely concentrated on the presence of buffalo in the Northern Territory to a fascination with the saltwater crocodiles found more widely in northern Australia that interest in dangerous prey animals is significant to Australia’s northern imaginary.The Northern Safari before AdamsNorthern Australia gained a reputation for rugged, masculine adventure long before the arrival there of Adams and his cameras. That reputation was closely associated with the animals of the north, and it is generally the dangerous species that have inspired popular accounts of the region. Linda Thompson has recognised that before the release of the film Crocodile Dundee in 1986 crocodiles “received significant and sensational (although sporadic) media attention across Australia—attention that created associations of danger, mystery, and abnormality” (118). While Thompson went on to argue that in the wake of Crocodile Dundee the saltwater crocodile became a widely recognised symbol of Australia (for both Australians and non-Australians) it is perhaps more pertinent to consider the place of animals in creating a notion of the Australian north.Adams’s extended and international success (he showed his film profitably in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand as well as throughout Australia) suggests that the landscape and wildlife of northern Australia holds a fascination for a wide audience (Adams, Crocodile Safari Man 169-261). Certainly northern Australia, and its wild beasts, had established a reputation for adventure earlier, particularly in the periods following the world wars. Perhaps crocodiles were not the most significant of the north’s charismatic megafauna in the first half of the twentieth century, but their presence was a source of excitement well before the 1980s, and they were not the only animals in the north to attract attention: the Northern Territory’s buffalo had long acted as a drawcard for adventure seekers.Carl Warburton’s popular book Buffaloes was typical in linking Australians’ experiences of war with the Australian north and the pursuit of adventure, generally in the form of dangerous big game. War and hunting have long been linked as both are expressions of masculine valour in physically dangerous circumstances (Brennan “Imperial” 44-46). That link is made very clear in Warbuton’s account when he begins it on the beach at Gallipoli as he and his comrades discuss their plans for the future. After Warburton announces his determination not to return from war to work in a bank, he and a friend determine that they will go to either Brazil or the Northern Territory to seek adventure (2). Back in Sydney, a coin flip determines their “compass was set for the unknown north” (5).As the title of his book suggests, the game pursued by Warburton and his mate were buffaloes, as buffalo hides were fetching high prices when he set out for the north. In his writing Warburton was keen to establish his reputation as an adventurer and his descriptions of the dangers of buffalo hunting used the animals to establish the adventurous credentials of northern Australia. Warburton noted of the buffalo that: “Alone of all wild animals he will attack unprovoked, and in single combat is more than a match for a tiger. It is the pleasant pastime of some Indian princes to stage such combats for the entertainment of their guests” (62-63). Thereby, he linked Arnhem Land to India, a place that had long held a reputation as a site of adventurous hunting for the rulers of the British Empire (Brennan “Africa” 399). Later Warburton reinforced those credentials by noting: “there is no more dangerous animal in the world than a wounded buffalo bull” (126). While buffalo might have provided the headline act, crocodiles also featured in the interwar northern imaginary. Warburton recorded: “I had always determined to have a crack at the crocodiles for the sport of it.” He duly set about sating this desire (222-3).Buffalo had been hunted commercially in the Northern Territory since 1886 and Warburton was not the first to publicise the adventurous hunting available in northern Australia (Clinch 21-23). He had been drawn north after reading “of the exploits of two crack buffalo shooters, Fred Smith and Paddy Cahill” (Warburton 6). Such accounts of buffalo, and also of crocodiles, were common newspaper fodder in the first half of the twentieth century. Even earlier, explorers’ accounts had drawn attention to the animal excitement of northern Australia. For example, John Lort Stokes had noted ‘alligators’ as one of the many interesting animals inhabiting the region (418). Thus, from the nineteenth century Australia’s north had popularly linked together remoteness, adventure, and large animals; it was unsurprising that Warburton in turn acted as inspiration to later adventure-hunters in northern Australia. In 1954 he was mentioned in a newspaper story about two English migrants who had come to Australia to shoot crocodiles on Cape York with “their ambitions fed by the books of men such as Ion Idriess, Carl Warburton, Frank Clune and others” (Gay 15).The Development of Northern ‘Adventure’ TourismNot all who sought adventure in northern Australia were as independent as Adams. Cynthia Nolan’s account of travel through outback Australia in the late 1940s noted the increasing tourist infrastructure available, particularly in her account of Alice Springs (27-28, 45). She also recorded the significance of big game in the lure of the north. At the start of her journey she met a man seeking his fortune crocodile shooting (16), later encountered buffalo shooters (82), and recorded the locals’ hilarity while recounting a visit by a city-based big game hunter who arrived with an elephant gun. According to her informants: “No, he didn’t shoot any buffaloes, but he had his picture taken posing behind every animal that dropped. He’d arrange himself in a crouch, gun at the ready, and take self-exposure shots of himself and trophy” (85-86). Earlier, organised tours of the Northern Territory included buffalo shooter camps in their itineraries (when access was available), making clear the continuing significance of dangerous game to the northern imaginary (Cole, Hell 207). Even as Adams was pursuing his independent path north, tourist infrastructure was bringing the northern Australian safari experience within reach for those with little experience but sufficient funds to secure the provision of equipment, vehicles and expert advice. The Australian Crocodile Shooters’ Club, founded in 1950, predated Northern Safari, but it tapped into the same interest in the potential of northern Australia to offer adventure. It clearly associated that adventure with big game hunting and the club’s success depended on its marketing of the adventurous north to Australia’s urban population (Brennan “Africa” 403-06). Similarly, the safari camps which developed in the Northern Territory, starting with Nourlangie in 1959, promoted the adventure available in Australia’s north to those who sought to visit without necessarily roughing it. The degree of luxury that was on offer initially is questionable, but the notion of Australia’s north as a big game hunting destination supported the development of an Australian safari industry (Berzins 177-80, Brennan “Africa” 407-09). Safari entrepreneur Allan Stewart has eagerly testified to the broad appeal of the safari experience in 1960s Australia, claiming his clientele included accountants, barristers, barmaids, brokers, bankers, salesmen, journalists, actors, students, nursing sisters, doctors, clergymen, soldiers, pilots, yachtsmen, racing drivers, company directors, housewives, precocious children, air hostesses, policemen and jockeys (18).Later Additions to the Imaginary of the Northern SafariAdams’s film was made in 1955, and its subject of adventurous travel and hunting in northern Australia was taken up by a number of books during the 1960s as publishers kept the link between large game and the adventurous north alive. New Zealand author Barry Crump contributed a fictionalised account of his time hunting crocodiles in northern Australia in Gulf, first published in 1964. Crump displayed his trademark humour throughout his book, and made a running joke of the ‘best professional crocodile-shooters’ that he encountered in pubs throughout northern Australia (28-29). Certainly, the possibility of adventure and the chance to make a living as a professional hunter lured men to the north. Among those who came was Australian journalist Keith Willey who in 1966 published an account of his time crocodile hunting. Willey promoted the north as a site of adventure and rugged masculinity. On the very first page of his book he established his credentials by advising that “Hunting crocodiles is a hard trade; hard, dirty and dangerous; but mostly hard” (1). Although Willey’s book reveals that he did not make his fortune crocodile hunting he evidently revelled in its adventurous mystique and his book was sufficiently successful to be republished by Rigby in 1977. The association between the Australian north, the hunting of large animals, and adventure continued to thrive.These 1960s crocodile publications represent a period when crocodile hunting replaced buffalo hunting as a commercial enterprise in northern Australia. In the immediate post-war period crocodile skins increased in value as traditional sources became unreliable, and interest in professional hunting increased. As had been the case with Warburton, the north promised adventure to men unwilling to return to domesticity after their experiences of war (Brennan, “Crocodile” 1). This part of the northern imaginary was directly discussed by another crocodile hunting author. Gunther Bahnemann spent some time crocodile hunting in Australia before moving his operation north to poach crocodiles in Dutch New Guinea. Bahnemann had participated in the Second World War and in his book he was clear about his unwillingness to settle for a humdrum life, instead choosing crocodile hunting for his profession. As he described it: “We risked our lives to make quick money, but not easy money; yet I believe that the allure of adventure was the main motive of our expedition. It seems so now, when I think back to it” (8).In the tradition of Adams, Malcolm Douglas released his documentary film Across the Top in 1968, which was subsequently serialised for television. From around this time, television was becoming an increasingly popular medium and means of reinforcing the connection between the Australian outback and adventure. The animals of northern Australia played a role in setting the region apart from the rest of the continent. The 1970s and 1980s saw a boom in programs that presented the outback, including the north, as a source of interest and national pride. In this period Harry Butler presented In the Wild, while the Leyland brothers (Mike and Mal) created their iconic and highly popular Ask the Leyland Brothers (and similar productions) which ran to over 150 episodes between 1976 and 1980. In the cinema, Alby Mangels’s series of World Safari movies included Australia in his wide-ranging adventures. While these documentaries of outback Australia traded on the same sense of adventure and fascination with Australia’s wildlife that had promoted Northern Safari, the element of big game hunting was muted.That link was reforged in the 1980s and 1990s. Crocodile Dundee was an extremely successful movie and it again placed interactions with charismatic megafauna at the heart of the northern Australian experience (Thompson 124). The success of the film reinvigorated depictions of northern Australia as a place to encounter dangerous beasts. Capitalising on the film’s success Crump’s book was republished as Crocodile Country in 1990, and Tom Cole’s memoirs of his time in northern Australia, including his work buffalo shooting and crocodile hunting, were first published in 1986, 1988, and 1992 (and reprinted multiple times). However, Steve Irwin is probably the best known of northern Australia’s ‘crocodile hunters’, despite his Australia Zoo lying outside the crocodile’s natural range, and despite being a conservationist opposed to killing crocodiles. Irwin’s chosen moniker is ironic, given his often-stated love for the species and his commitment to preserving crocodile lives through relocating (when necessary, to captivity) rather than killing problem animals. He first appeared on Australian television in 1996, and continued to appear regularly until his death in 2006.Tourism Australia used both Hogan and Irwin for promotional purposes. While Thompson argues that at this time the significance of the crocodile was broadened to encompass Australia more generally, the examples of crocodile marketing that she lists relate to the Northern Territory, with a brief mention of Far North Queensland and the crocodile remained a signifier of northern adventure (Thompson 125-27). The depiction of Irwin as a ‘crocodile hunter’ despite his commitment to saving crocodile lives marked a larger shift that had already begun within the safari. While the title ‘safari’ retained its popularity in the late twentieth century it had come to be applied generally to organised adventurous travel with a view to seeing and capturing images of animals, rather than exclusively identifying hunting expeditions.ConclusionThe extraordinary success of Adams’s film was based on a widespread understanding of northern Australia as a type of adventure playground, populated by fascinating dangerous beasts. That imaginary was exploited but not created by Adams. It had been in existence since the nineteenth century, was particularly evident during the buffalo and crocodile hunting bubbles after the world wars, and boomed again with the popularity of the fictional Mick Dundee and the real Steve Irwin, for both of whom interacting with the charismatic megafauna of the north was central to their characters. The excitement surrounding large game still influences visions of northern Australia. At present there is no particularly striking northern bushman media personage, but the large animals of the north still regularly provoke discussion. The north’s safari camps continue to do business, trading on the availability of large game (particularly buffalo, banteng, pigs, and samba) and northern Australia’s crocodiles have established themselves as a significant source of interest among international big game hunters. Australia’s politicians regularly debate the possibility of legalising a limited crocodile safari in Australia, based on the culling of problem animals, and that debate highlights a continuing sense of Australia’s north as a place apart from the more settled, civilised south of the continent.ReferencesAdams, Keith. ’Aussie Bites.’ Australian Screen 2017. <https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/northern-safari/clip2/>.———. ‘Crocodile Hunting.’ Australian Screen 2017. <https://aso.gov.au/titles/documentaries/northern-safari/clip3/>.———. Crocodile Safari Man: My Tasmanian Childhood in the Great Depression & 50 Years of Desert Safari to the Gulf of Carpentaria 1949-1999. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2000.Bahnemann, Gunther. New Guinea Crocodile Poacher. 2nd ed. London: The Adventurers Club, 1965.Berzins, Baiba. Australia’s Northern Secret: Tourism in the Northern Territory, 1920s to 1980s. Sydney: Baiba Berzins, 2007.Brennan, Claire. "’An Africa on Your Own Front Door Step’: The Development of an Australian Safari.” Journal of Australian Studies 39.3 (2015): 396-410.———. “Crocodile Hunting.” Queensland Historical Atlas (2013): 1-3.———. "Imperial Game: A History of Hunting, Society, Exotic Species and the Environment in New Zealand and Victoria 1840-1901." Dissertation. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2005.Clinch, M.A. “Home on the Range: The Role of the Buffalo in the Northern Territory, 1824–1920.” Northern Perspective 11.2 (1988): 16-27.Cole, Tom. Crocodiles and Other Characters. Chippendale, NSW: Sun Australia, 1992.———. Hell West and Crooked. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1990.———. Riding the Wildman Plains: The Letters and Diaries of Tom Cole 1923-1943. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 1992.———. Spears & Smoke Signals: Exciting True Tales by a Buffalo & Croc Shooter. Casuarina, NT: Adventure Pub., 1986.Cowan, Adam. Letter. “A Feeling of Disgust.” Canberra Times 12 Mar. 1971: 2.Crocodile Dundee. Dir. Peter Faiman. Paramount Pictures, 1986.Crump, Barry. Gulf. Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1964.Gay, Edward. “Adventure. Tally-ho after Cape York Crocodiles.” The World’s News (Sydney), 27 Feb. 1954: 15.Nolan, Cynthia. Outback. London: Methuen & Co, 1962.Northeast, Brian. Preface. Crocodile Safari Man: My Tasmanian Childhood in the Great Depression & 50 Years of Desert Safari to the Gulf of Carpentaria 1949-1999. By Keith Adams. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 2000. vi-viii.Northern Safari. Dir. Keith Adams. Keith Adams, 1956.Northern Safari. n.d. <http://northernsafari.com/>.Stewart, Allan. The Green Eyes Are Buffaloes. Melbourne: Lansdown, 1969.Stokes, John Lort. Discoveries in Australia: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea. London: T. and W. Boone, 1846.Thompson, Linda. “’You Call That a Knife?’ The Crocodile as a Symbol of Australia”. New Voices, New Visions: Challenging Australian Identities and Legacies. Eds. Catriona Elder and Keith Moore. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2012: 118-134.Warburton, Carl. Buffaloes: Adventure and Discovery in Arnhem Land. Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd, 1934.Willey, Keith. Crocodile Hunt. Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1966.

Australia in Maps is a compilation of cartography taken from the collection of over 600,000 maps held at the Australian National Library. Included in this collection are military maps, coastal maps and modern-day maps for tourists. The map of the eastern coast of ‘New Holland’ drawn by James Cook when he ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770 is included. Also published is Eddie Koiki Mabo’s map drawn on a hole-punched piece of paper showing traditional land holdings in the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait. This map became a key document in Eddie Mabo’s fight for native title recognition, a fight which became the precursor to native title rights as they are known today. The inclusion of these two drawings in a collection of maps defining Australia as a country illustrates the dichotomies and contradictions which exist in a colonial nation. It is now fifteen years since the Native Title Act 1994 (Commonwealth) was developed in response to the Mabo cases in order to recognise Indigenous customary law and traditional relationships to the land over certain (restricted) parts of Australia. It is 220 years since the First Fleet arrived and Indigenous land was (and remains) illegally possessed through the process of colonisation (Moreton-Robinson Australia). Questions surrounding ‘country’ – who owns it, has rights to use it, to live on it, to develop or protect it – are still contested and contentious today. In part, this contention arises out of the radically different conceptions of ‘country’ held by, in its simplest sense, Indigenous nations and colonisers. For Indigenous Australians the land has a spiritual significance that I, as a non-Indigenous person, cannot properly understand as a result of the different ways in which relationships to land are made available. The ways of understanding the world through which my identity as a non-Indigenous person are made intelligible, by contrast, see ‘country’ as there to be ‘developed’ and exploited. Within colonial logic, discourses of development and the productive use of resources function as what Wetherell and Potter term “rhetorically self-sufficient” in that they are principles which are considered to be beyond question (177). As Vincent Tucker states; “The myth of development is elevated to the status of natural law, objective reality and evolutionary necessity. In the process all other world views are devalued and dismissed as ‘primitive’, ‘backward’, ‘irrational’ or ‘naïve’” (1). It was this precise way of thinking which was able to justify colonisation in the first place. Australia was seen as terra nullius; an empty and un-developed land not recognized as inhabited. Indigenous people were incorrectly perceived as individuals who did not use the land in an efficient manner, rather than as individual nations who engaged with the land in ways that were not intelligible to the colonial eye. This paper considers the tensions inherent in definitions of ‘country’ and the way these tensions are played out through native title claims as white, colonial Australia attempts to recognise (and limit) Indigenous rights to land. It examines such tensions as they appear in the media as an example of how native title issues are made intelligible to the non-Indigenous general public who may otherwise have little knowledge or experience of native title issues. It has been well-documented that the news media play an important role in further disseminating those discourses which dominate in a society, and therefore frequently supports the interests of those in positions of power (Fowler; Hall et. al.). As Stuart Hall argues, this means that the media often reproduces a conservative status quo which in many cases is simply reflective of the positions held by other powerful institutions in society, in this case government, and mining and other commercial interests. This has been found to be the case in past analysis of media coverage of native title, such as work completed by Meadows (which found that media coverage of native title issues focused largely on non-Indigenous perspectives) and Hartley and McKee (who found that media coverage of native title negotiations frequently focused on bureaucratic issues rather than the rights of Indigenous peoples to oppose ‘developments’ on their land). This paper aims to build on this work, and to map the way in which native title, an ongoing issue for many Indigenous groups, figures in a mainstream newspaper at a time when there has not been much mainstream public interest in the process. In order to do this, this paper considered articles which appeared in Australia’s only national newspaper – The Australian – over the six months preceding the start of July 2008. Several main themes ran through these articles, examples of which are provided in the relevant sections. These included: economic interests in native title issues, discourses of white ownership and control of the land, and rhetorical devices which reinforced the battle-like nature of native title negotiations rather than emphasised the rights of Indigenous Australians to their lands. Native Title: Some Definitions and Some Problems The concept of native title itself can be a difficult one to grasp and therefore a brief definition is called for here. According to the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) website (www.nntt.gov.au), native title is the recognition by Australian law that some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs. The native title rights and interests held by particular Indigenous people will depend on both their traditional laws and customs and what interests are held by others in the area concerned. Generally speaking, native title must give way to the rights held by others. Native title is therefore recognised as existing on the basis of certain laws and customs which have been maintained over an area of land despite the disruption caused by colonisation. As such, if native title is to be recognised over an area of country, Indigenous communities have to argue that their cultures and connection with the land have survived colonisation. As the Maori Land Court Chief Judge Joe Williams argues: In Australia the surviving title approach […] requires the Indigenous community to prove in a court or tribunal that colonisation caused them no material injury. This is necessary because, the greater the injury, the smaller the surviving bundle of rights. Communities who were forced off their land lose it. Those whose traditions and languages were beaten out of them at state sponsored mission schools lose all of the resources owned within the matrix of that language and those traditions. This is a perverse result. In reality, of course, colonisation was the greatest calamity in the history of these people on this land. Surviving title asks aboriginal people to pretend that it was not. To prove in court that colonisation caused them no material injury. Communities who were forced off their land are the same communities who are more likely to lose it. As found in previous research (Meadows), these inherent difficulties of the native title process were widely overlooked in recent media reports of native title issues published in The Australian. Due to recent suggestions made by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin for changes to be made to the native title system, The Australian did include reports on the need to ensure that traditional owners share the economic profits of the mining boom. This was seen in an article by Karvelas and Murphy entitled “Labor to Overhaul Native Title Law”. The article states that: Fifteen years after the passage of the historic Mabo legislation, the Rudd Government has flagged sweeping changes to native title to ensure the benefits of the mining boom flow to Aboriginal communities and are not locked up in trusts or frittered away. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, delivering the third annual Eddie Mabo Lecture in Townsville, said yesterday that native title legislation was too complex and had failed to deliver money to remote Aboriginal communities, despite lucrative agreements with mining companies. (1) Whilst this passage appears supportive of Indigenous Australians in that it argues for their right to share in economic gains made through ‘developments’ on their country, the use of phrases such as ‘frittered away’ imply that Indigenous Australians have made poor use of their ‘lucrative agreements’, and therefore require further intervention in their lives in order to better manage their financial situations. Such an argument further implies that the fact that many remote Indigenous communities continue to live in poverty is the fault of Indigenous Australians’ mismanagement of funds from native title agreements rather than from governmental neglect, thereby locating the blame once more in the hands of Indigenous people rather than in a colonial system of dispossession and regulation. Whilst the extract does continue to state that native title legislation is too complex and has ‘failed to deliver money to remote Aboriginal communities’, the article does not go on to consider other areas in which native title is failing Indigenous people, such as reporting the protection of sacred and ceremonial sites, and provisions for Indigenous peoples to be consulted about developments on their land to which they may be opposed. Whilst native title agreements with companies may contain provisions for these issues, it is rare that there is any regulation for whether or not these provisions are met after an agreement is made (Faircheallaigh). These issues almost never appeared in the media which instead focused on the economic benefits (or lack thereof) stemming from the land rather than the sovereign rights of traditional owners to their country. There are many other difficulties inherent in the native title legislation for Indigenous peoples. It is worth discussing some of these difficulties as they provide an image of the ways in which ‘country’ is conceived of at the intersection of a Western legal system attempting to encompass Indigenous relations to land. The first of these difficulties relates to the way in which Indigenous people are required to delineate the boundaries of the country which they are claiming. Applications for native title over an area of land require strict outlining of boundaries for land under consideration, in accordance with a Western system of mapping country. The creation of such boundaries requires Indigenous peoples to define their country in Western terms rather than Indigenous ones, and in many cases proves quite difficult as areas of traditional lands may be unavailable to claim (Neate). Such differences in understandings of country mean that “for Indigenous peoples, the recognition of their indigenous title, should it be afforded, may bear little resemblance to, or reflect minimally on, their own conceptualisation of their relations to country” (Glaskin 67). Instead, existing as it does within a Western legal system and subject to Western determinations, native title forces Indigenous people to define themselves and their land within white conceptions of country (Moreton-Robinson Possessive). In fact, the entire concept of native title has been criticized by many Indigenous commentators as a denial of Indigenous sovereignty over the land, with the result of the Mabo case meaning that “Indigenous people did not lose their native title rights but were stripped of their sovereign rights to manage their own affairs, to live according to their own laws, and to own and control the resources on their lands” (Falk and Martin 38). As such, Falk and Martin argue that The Native Title Act amounts to a complete denial of Aboriginal sovereignty so that Indigenous people are forced to live under a colonial regime which is able to control and regulate their lives and access to country. This is commented upon by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, who writes that: What Indigenous people have been given, by way of white benevolence, is a white-constructed from of ‘Indigenous’ proprietary rights that are not epistemologically and ontologically grounded in Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty. Indigenous land ownership, under these legislative regimes, amounts to little more than a mode of land tenure that enables a circumscribed form of autonomy and governance with minimum control and ownership of resources, on or below the ground, thus entrenching economic dependence on the nation state. (Moreton-Robinson Sovereign Subjects 4) The native title laws in place in Australia restrict Indigenous peoples to existing within white frameworks of knowledge. Within the space of The Native Title Act there is no room for recognition of Indigenous sovereignty whereby Indigenous peoples can make decisions for themselves and control their own lands (Falk and Martin). These tensions within definitions of ‘country’ and sovereignty over land were reflected in the media articles examined, primarily in terms of the way in which ‘country’ was related to and used. This was evident in an article entitled “An Economic Vision” with a tag-line “Native Title Reforms offer Communities a Fresh Start”: Central to such a success story is the determination of indigenous people to help themselves. Such a business-like, forward-thinking approach is also evident in Kimberley Land Council executive director Wayne Bergmann's negotiations with some of the world's biggest resource companies […] With at least 45 per cent of Kimberley land subject to native title, Mr Bergmann, a qualified lawyer, is acutely aware of the royalties and employment potential. Communities are also benefitting from the largesse of Australia’s richest man, miner Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, whose job training courses and other initiatives are designed to help the local people, in his words, become “wonderful participating Australians.” (15) Again, this article focuses on the economic benefits to be made from native title agreements with mining companies rather than other concerns with the use of Indigenous areas of country. The use of the quote from Forrest serves to imply that Indigenous peoples are not “wonderful participating Australians” unless they are able to contribute in an economic sense, and overlooks many contributions made by Indigenous peoples in other areas such as environmental protection. Such definitions also measure ‘success’ in Western terms rather than Indigenous ones and force Indigenous peoples into a relationship to country based on Western notions of resource extraction and profit rather than Indigenous notions of custodianship and sustainability. This construction of Indigenous economic involvement as only rendered valid on particular terms echoes findings from previous work on constructions of Indigenous people in the media, such as that by LeCouteur, Rapley and Augoustinos. Theorising ‘Country’ The examples provided above illustrate the fact that the rhetoric and dichotomies of ‘country’ are at the very heart of the native title process. The process of recognising Indigenous rights to land through native title invites the question of how ‘country’ is conceived in the first place. Goodall writes that there are tensions within definitions of ‘country’ which indicate the ongoing presence of Indigenous people’s connections to their land despite colonisation. She writes that the word ‘country’: may seem a self-evident description of rural economy and society, with associations of middle-class gentility as well as being the antonym of the city. Yet in Australia there is another dimension altogether. Aboriginal land-owners traditionally identify themselves by the name of the land for which they were the custodians. These lands are often called, in today’s Aboriginal English, their ‘country’. This gives the word a tense and resonating echo each time it is used to describe rural-settler society and land. (162) Yet the distinctions usually drawn between those defined as ‘country’ people or ‘locals’ and the traditional Indigenous people of the area suggest that, as Schlunke states, in many cases Indigenous people are “too local to be ‘local’” (43). In other words, if white belonging and rights to an area of country are to be normalised, the prior claims of traditional owners are not able to be considered. As such, Indigenous belonging becomes too confronting as it disrupts the ways in which other ‘country’ people relate to their land as legitimately theirs. In the media, constructions of ‘country’ frequently fell within a colonial definition of country which overlooked Indigenous peoples. In many of these articles land was normatively constructed as belonging to the crown or the state. This was evidenced in phrases such as, “The proceedings [of the Noongar native title claim over the South Western corner of Australia] have been watched closely by other states in the expectation they might encounter similar claims over their capital cities” (Buckley-Carr 2). Use of the word their implies that the states (which are divisions of land created by colonisation) have prior claim to ‘their’ capital cities and that they rightfully belong to the government rather than to traditional owners. Such definitions of ‘country’ reflect European rather than Indigenous notions of boundaries and possession. This is also reflected in media reports of native title in the widespread use of European names for areas of land and landmarks as opposed to their traditional Indigenous names. When the media reported on a native title claim over an area of land the European name for the country was used rather than, for example, the Indigenous name followed by a geographical description of where that land is situated. Customs such as this reflect a country which is still bound up in European definitions of land rather than Indigenous ones (Goodall 167; Schlunke 47-48), and also indicate that the media is reporting for a white audience rather than for an Indigenous one whom it would affect the most. Native title debates have also “shown the depth of belief within much of rural and regional Australia that rural space is most rightfully agricultural space” (Lockie 27). This construction of rural Australia is reflective of the broader national imagining of the country as a nation (Anderson), in which Australia is considered rich in resources from which to derive profit. Within these discourses the future of the nation is seen as lying in the ‘development’ of natural resources. As such, native title agreements with industry have often been depicted in the media as obstacles to be overcome by companies rather than a way of allowing Indigenous people control over their own lands. This often appears in the media in the form of metaphors of ‘war’ for agreements for use of Indigenous land, such as development being “frustrated” by native title (Bromby) and companies being “embattled” by native title issues (Wilson). Such metaphors illustrate the adversarial nature of native title claims both for recognition of the land in the first place and often in subsequent dealings with resource companies. This was also seen in reports of company progress which would include native title claims in a list of other factors affecting stock prices (such as weak drilling results and the price of metals), as if Indigenous claims to land were just another hurdle to profit-making (“Pilbara Lures”). Conclusion As far as the native title process is concerned, the answers to the questions considered at the start of this paper remain within Western definitions. Native title exists firmly within a Western system of law which requires Indigenous people to define and depict their land within non-Indigenous definitions and understandings of ‘country’. These debates are also frequently played out in the media in ways which reflect colonial values of using and harvesting country rather than Indigenous ones of protecting it. The media rarely consider the complexities of a system which requires Indigenous peoples to conceive of their land through boundaries and definitions not congruent with their own understandings. The issues surrounding native title draw attention to the need for alternative definitions of ‘country’ to enter the mainstream Australian consciousness. These need to encompass Indigenous understandings of ‘country’ and to acknowledge the violence of Australia’s colonial history. Similarly, the concept of native title needs to reflect Indigenous notions of country and allow traditional owners to define their land for themselves. In order to achieve these goals and overcome some of the obstacles to recognising Indigenous sovereignty over Australia the media needs to play a part in reorienting concepts of country from only those definitions which fit within a white framework of experiencing the world and prioritise Indigenous relations and experiences of country. If discourses of resource extraction were replaced with discourses of sustainability, if discourses of economic gains were replaced with respect for the land, and if discourses of white control over Indigenous lives in the form of native title reform were replaced with discourses of Indigenous sovereignty, then perhaps some ground could be made to creating an Australia which is not still in the process of colonising and denying the rights of its First Nations peoples. The tensions which exist in definitions and understandings of ‘country’ echo the tensions which exist in Australia’s historical narratives and memories. The denied knowledge of the violence of colonisation and the rights of Indigenous peoples to remain on their land all haunt a native title system which requires Indigenous Australians to minimise the effect this violence had on their lives, their families and communities and their values and customs. As Katrina Schlunke writes when she confronts the realisation that her family’s land could be the same land on which Indigenous people were massacred: “The irony of fears of losing one’s backyard to a Native Title claim are achingly rich. Isn’t something already lost to the idea of ‘Freehold Title’ when you live over unremembered graves? What is free? What are you to hold?” (151). If the rights of Indigenous Australians to their country are truly to be recognised, mainstream Australia needs to seriously consider such questions and whether or not the concept of ‘native title’ as it exists today is able to answer them. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Damien Riggs and Andrew Gorman-Murray for all their help and support with this paper, and Braden Schiller for his encouragement and help with proof-reading. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their insightful comments. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. 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Goodall, Heather. “Telling Country: Memory, Modernity and Narratives in Rural Australia.” History Workshop Journal 47 (1999): 161-190. Hall, Stuart, Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the state, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978. Hartley, John, and Alan McKee. The Indigenous Public Sphere: The Reporting and Reception of Aboriginal Issues in the Australian Media. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Karvelas, Patricia and Padraic Murphy. “Labor to Overhaul Native Title Laws.” The Australian, 22 May 2008: 1. LeCouteur, Amanda, Mark Rapley and Martha Augoustinos. “This Very Difficult Debate about Wik: Stake, Voice and the Management of Category Membership in Race Politics.” British Journal of Social Psychology 40 (2001): 35-57. Lockie, Stewart. “Crisis and Conflict: Shifting Discourses of Rural and Regional Australia.” Land of Discontent: The Dynamics of Change in Rural and Regional Australia. Ed. Bill Pritchard and Phil McManus. Kensington: UNSW P, 2000. 14-32. Meadows, Michael. “Deals and Victories: Newspaper Coverage of Native Title in Australia and Canada.” Australian Journalism Review 22.1 (2000): 81-105. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “I still call Australia Home: Aboriginal Belonging and Place in a White Postcolonising Nation.” Uprooting/Regrounding: Questions of Home and Migration. Eds. S Ahmed et.al. Oxford: Berg, 2003. 23-40. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “The Possessive Logic of Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta Decision.” Borderlands e-Journal 3.2 (2004). 20 June 2008. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm Morteton-Robinson, Aileen. Ed. Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters. Allen and Unwin, 2007. Neate, Graham. “Mapping Landscapes of the Mind: A Cadastral Conundrum in the Native Title Era.” Conference on Land Tenure and Cadastral Infrastructures for Sustainable Development, Melbourne, Australia (1999). 20 July 2008. http://www.sli.unimelb.edu.au/UNConf99/sessions/session5/neate.pdf O’Connor, Maura. Australia in Maps: Great Maps in Australia’s History from the National Library’s Collection. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2007. “Pilbara Lures Explorer with Promise of Metal Riches.” The Australian. 28 May 2008: Finance 2. Schlunke, Katrina. Bluff Rock: An Autobiography of a Massacre. Fremantle: Curtin U Books, 2005. “The National Native Title Tribunal.” Exactly What is Native Title? 29 July 2008. http://www.nntt.gov.au/What-Is-Native-Title/Pages/What-is-Native-Title.aspx The National Native Title Tribunal Fact Sheet. What is Native Title? 29 July 2008. http://www.nntt.gov.au Path; Publications-And-Research; Publications; Fact Sheets. Tucker, Vincent. “The Myth of Development: A Critique of Eurocentric Discourse.” Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm. Ed. Ronaldo Munck, Denis O'Hearn. Zed Books, 1999. 1-26. Wetherell, Margaret, and Jonathan Potter. Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Williams, Joe. “Confessions of a Native Title Judge: Reflections on the Role of Transitional Justice in the Transformation of Indigeneity.” Land, Rights, Laws: Issues of Native Title 3, (2008). 20 July 2008. http://ntru.aiatsis.gov.au/publications/issue_papers.html Wilson, Nigel. “Go with the Flow.” The Australian, 29 March 2008: 1.

We ask you now, reader, to put your mind, as a citizen of the Australian Commonwealth, to the facts presented in these pages. We ask you to study the problem, in the way that we present the case, from the Aborigines’ point of view. We do not ask for your charity; we do not ask you to study us as scientific-freaks. Above all, we do not ask for your “protection”. No, thanks! We have had 150 years of that! We ask only for justice, decency, and fair play. (Patten and Ferguson 3-4) Jack Patten and William Ferguson’s above declaration on “Plain Speaking” in Aborigines Claim Citizenship Rights! A Statement of the Case for the Aborigines Progressive Association (1938), outlining Aboriginal Australians view of colonisation and the call for Aboriginal self-determinacy, will be my guiding framework in writing this paper. I ask you to study the problem, as it is presented, from the viewpoint of an Indigenous woman who seeks to understand how “sorry” has been uttered in political domains as a word divorced from the moral freight attached to a history of “degrading, humiliating and exterminating” Aboriginal Australians (Patten and Ferguson 11). I wish to argue that the Opposition leader’s utterance of “sorry” in his 13 February 2008 “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament” was an indicator of the insidious ways in which colonisation has treated Aboriginal Australians as less than, not equal to, white Australians and to examine the ways in which this particular utterance of the word “sorry” is built on longstanding colonial frameworks that position ‘the Aborigine’ as peripheral in the representation of a national identity – a national identity that, as shown by the transcript of the apology, continues to romanticise settler values and ignore Indigenous rights. Nelson’s address tries to disassociate the word “sorry” from any moral attachment. The basis of his address is on constructing a national identity where all injustices are equal. In offering this apology, let us not create one injustice in our attempts to address another. (Nelson) All sorrys are equal, but some are more equal than others. Listening to Nelson’s address, words resembling those of Orwell’s ran through my head. The word “sorry” in relation to Indigenous Australians has taken on cultural, political, educational and economic proportions. The previous government’s refusal to utter the word was attached to the ways in which formations of rhetorically self-sufficient arguments of practicality, equality and justice “functioned to sustain and legitimate existing inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia” (Augoustinos, LeCouteur and Soyland 105). How then, I wondered as I nervously waited for Nelson to begin apologising, would he transform this inherited collective discursive practice of legitimised racism that upheld mainstream Australia’s social reality? The need for an apology, and the history of political refusal to give it, is not a simple classification of one event, one moment in history. The ‘act’ of removing children is not a singular, one-off event. The need to do, the justification and rationalisation of the doing and what that means now, the having done, as well as the impact on those that were left behind, those that were taken, those that were born after, are all bound up in this particular “sorry”. Given that reluctance of the previous government to admit injustices were done and still exist, this utterance of the word “sorry” from the leader of the opposition precariously sat between freely offering it and reluctantly giving it. The above quote from Nelson, and its central concern of not performing any injustice towards mainstream Australia (“let us not” [my italics]) very definitely defines this sorry in relation to one particular injustice (the removing of Indigenous children) which therefore ignores the surrounding and complicit colonialist and racist attitudes, policies and practices that both institutionalised and perpetuated racism against Australia’s Indigenous peoples. This comment also clearly articulates the opposition’s concern that mainstream Australia not be offended by this act of offering the word “sorry”. Nelson’s address and the ways that it constructs what this “sorry” is for, what it isn’t for, and who it is for, continues to uphold and legitimate existing inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. From the very start of Nelson’s “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament”, two specific clarifications were emphasised: the “sorry” was directed at a limited time period in history; and that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. Nelson defines this distinction: “two cultures; one ancient, proud and celebrating its deep bond with this land for some 50,000 years. The other, no less proud, arrived here with little more than visionary hope deeply rooted in gritty determination to build an Australian nation.” This cultural division maintains colonising discourses that define and label, legitimate and exclude groups and communities. It draws from the binary oppositions of self and other, white and black, civilised and primitive. It maintains a divide between the two predominant ideas of history that this country struggles with and it silences those in that space in between, ignoring for example, the effects of colonisation and miscegenation in blurring the lines between ‘primitive’ and ‘civilised’. Although acknowledging that Indigenous Australians inhabited this land for a good few thousand decades before the proud, gritty, determined visionaries of a couple of hundred years ago, the “sorry” that is to be uttered is only in relation to “the first seven decades of the 20th century”. Nelson establishes from the outset that any forthcoming apology, on behalf of “us” – read as non-Indigenous Anglo-Australians – in reference to ‘them’ – “those Aboriginal people forcibly removed” – is only valid for the “period within which these events occurred [which] was one that defined and shaped Australia”. My reading of this sectioning of a period in Australia’s history is that while recognising that certain colonising actions were unjust, specifically in this instance the removal of Indigenous children, this period of time is also seen as influential and significant to the growth of the country. What this does is to allow the important colonial enterprise to subsume the unjust actions by the colonisers by other important colonial actions. Explicit in Nelson’s address is that this particular time frame saw the nation of Australia reach the heights of achievements and is a triumphant period – an approach which extends beyond taking the highs with the lows, and the good with the bad, towards overshadowing any minor ‘unfortunate’ mistakes that might have been made, ‘occasionally’, along the way. Throughout the address, there are continual reminders to the listeners that the “us” should not be placed at a disadvantage in the act of saying “sorry”: to do so would be to create injustice, whereas this “sorry” is strictly about attempting to “address another”. By sectioning off a specific period in the history of colonised Australia, the assumption is that all that happened before 1910 and all that happened after 1970 are “sorry” free. This not only ignores the lead up to the official policy of removal, how it was sanctioned and the aftermath of removal as outlined in The Bringing Them Home Report (1997); it also prevents Indigenous concepts of time from playing a legitimate and recognised role in the construct of both history and society. Aboriginal time is cyclical and moves around important events: those events that are most significant to an individual are held closer than those that are insignificant or mundane. Aleksendar Janca and Clothilde Bullen state that “time is perceived in relation to the socially sanctioned importance of events and is most often identified by stages in life or historic relevance of events” (41). The speech attempts to distinguish between moments and acts in history: firmly placing the act of removing children in a past society and as only one act of injustice amongst many acts of triumph. “Our generation does not own these actions, nor should it feel guilt for what was done in many, but not all cases, with the best of intentions” (Nelson). What was done is still being felt by Indigenous Australians today. And by differentiating between those that committed these actions and “our generation”, the address relies on a linear idea of time, to distance any wrongdoing from present day white Australians. What I struggle with here is that those wrongdoings continue to be felt according to Indigenous concepts of time and therefore these acts are not in a far away past but very much felt in the present. The need to not own these actions further entrenches the idea of separateness between Indigenous Australia and non-Indigenous Australia. The fear of being guilty or at blame evokes notions of wrong and right and this address is at pains not to do that – not to lay blame or evoke shame. Nelson’s address is relying on a national identity that has historically silenced and marginalised Indigenous Australians. If there is no blame to be accepted, if there is no attached shame to be acknowledged (“great pride, but occasionally shame” (Nelson)) and dealt with, then national identity is implicitly one of “discovery”, peaceful settlement and progress. Where are the Aboriginal perspectives of history in this idea of a national identity – then and now? And does this mean that colonialism happened and is now over? State and territory actions upon, against and in exclusion of Indigenous Australians are not actions that can be positioned as past discriminations; they continue today and are a direct result of those that preceded them. Throughout his address, Nelson emphasises the progressiveness of “today” and how that owes its success to the “past”: “In doing so, we reach from within ourselves to our past, those whose lives connect us to it and in deep understanding of its importance to our future”. By relying on a dichotomous approach – us and them, white and black, past and present – Nelson emphasises the distance between this generation of Australia and any momentary unjust actions in the past. The belief is that time moves on – away from the past and towards the future. That advancement, progression and civilisation are linear movements, all heading towards a more enlightened state. “We will be at our best today – and every day – if we pause to place ourselves in the shoes of others, imbued with the imaginative capacity to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect”. But where is the recognition that today’s experiences, the results of what has been created by the past, are also attached to the need to offer an apology? Nelson’s “we” (Anglo-Australians) are being asked to stop and think about how “they” (Aborigines) might see things differently to the mainstream norm. The implication here also is that “they” – members of the Stolen Generations – must be prepared to understand the position white Australia is coming from, and acknowledge the good that white Australia has achieved. Anglo-Australian pride and achievement is reinforced throughout the address as the basis on which our national identity is understood. Ignoring its exclusion and silencing of the Indigenous Australians to whom his “sorry” is directed, Nelson perpetuates this ideology here in his address: “In brutally harsh conditions, from the small number of early British settlers our non Indigenous ancestors have given us a nation the envy of any in the world”. This gift of a nation where there was none before disregards the acts of invasion, segregation, protection and assimilation that characterise the colonisation of this nation. It also reverts to romanticised settler notions of triumph over great adversities – a notion that could just as easily be attached to Indigenous Australians yet Nelson specifically addresses “our non Indigenous ancestors”. He does add “But Aboriginal Australians made involuntary sacrifices, different but no less important, to make possible the economic and social development of our modern [my emphasis] Australia.” Indigenous Australians certainly made voluntary sacrifices, similar to and different from those made by non Indigenous Australians (Indigenous Australians also went to both World Wars and fought for this nation) and a great deal of “our modern” country’s economic success was achieved on the backs of Blackfellas (Taylor 9). But “involuntary sacrifices” is surely a contradiction in terms, either intellectually shoddy or breathtakingly disingenuous. To make a sacrifice is to do it voluntarily, to give something up for a greater good. “Involuntary sacrifices”, like “collateral damage” and other calculatedly cold-blooded euphemisms, conveniently covers up the question of who was doing what to whom – of who was sacrificed, and by whom. In the attempt to construct a basis of equal contribution between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, as well as equal acts of struggle and triumphing, Nelson’s account of history and nation building draws from the positioning of the oppressors but tries to suppress any notion of racial oppression. It maintains the separateness of Indigenous experiences of colonisation from the colonisers themselves. His reiteration that these occasional acts of unjustness came from benevolent and charitable white Australians privileges non-Indigenous ways of knowing and doing over Indigenous ones and attempts to present them as untainted and innate as opposed to repressive, discriminatory and racist. We honour those in our past who have suffered and all those who have made sacrifices for us by the way we live our lives and shape our nation. Today we recommit to do so – as one people. (Nelson) The political need to identify as “one people” drives assimilation policies (the attitude at the very heart of removing Aboriginal children on the basis that they were Aboriginal and needed to be absorbed into one society of whites). By honouring everyone, and therefore taking the focus off any act of unjustness by non-Indigenous peoples on Indigenous peoples, Nelson’s narrative again upholds an idea of contemporary national identity that has not only romanticised the past but ignores the inequalities of the present day. He spends a good few hundred words reminding his listeners that white Australia deserves to maintain its hard won position. And there is no doubt he is talking to white Australia – his focus is on Western constructs of patriotism and success. He reverts to settler/colonial discourse to uphold ideas of equity and access: These generations considered their responsibilities to their country and one another more important than their rights. They did not buy something until they had saved up for it and values were always more important than value. Living in considerably more difficult times, they had dreams for our nation but little money. Theirs was a mesh of values enshrined in God, King and Country and the belief in something greater than yourself. Neglectful indifference to all they achieved while seeing their actions in the separations only, through the values of our comfortable, modern Australia, will be to diminish ourselves. In “the separations only…” highlights Nelson’s colonial logic, which compartmentalises time, space, people and events and tries to disconnect one colonial act from another. The ideology, attitudes and policies that allowed the taking of Indigenous children were not separate from all other colonial and colonising acts and processes. The desire for a White Australia, a clear cut policy which was in existence at the same time as protection, removal and assimilation policies, cannot be disassociated from either the taking of children or the creation of this “comfortable, modern Australia” today. “Neglectful indifference to all they achieved” could aptly be applied to Indigenous peoples throughout Australian history – pre and post invasion. Where is the active acknowledgment of the denial of Indigenous rights so that “these generations [of non-Indigenous Australians could] consider their responsibilities to their country and one another more important than their rights”? Nelson adheres to the colonialist national narrative to focus on the “positive”, which Patrick Wolfe has argued in his critique of settler colonialism, is an attempt to mask disruptive moments that reveal the scope of state and national power over Aboriginal Australians (33). After consistently reinforcing the colonial/settler narrative, Nelson’s address moves on to insert Indigenous Australians into a well-defined and confined space within a specific chapter of that narrative. His perfunctory overview of the first seven decades of the 20th century alludes to Protection Boards and Reserves, assimilation policies and Christianisation, all underlined with white benevolence. Having established the innocent, inherently humane and decent motivations of “white families”, he resorts to appropriating Indigenous people’s stories and experiences. In the retelling of these stories, two prominent themes in Nelson’s text become apparent. White fellas were only trying to help the poor Blackfella back then, and one need only glance at Aboriginal communities today to see that white fellas are only trying to help the poor Blackfella again. It is reasonably argued that removal from squalor led to better lives – children fed, housed and educated for an adult world of [sic] which they could not have imagined. However, from my life as a family doctor and knowing the impact of my own father’s removal from his unmarried teenaged mother, not knowing who you are is the source of deep, scarring sorrows the real meaning of which can be known only to those who have endured it. No one should bring a sense of moral superiority to this debate in seeking to diminish the view that good was being sought to be done. (Nelson) A sense of moral superiority is what motivates colonisation: it is what motivated the enforced removal of children. The reference to “removal from squalor” is somewhat reminiscent of the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act. Act No. 25, 1909, section 11(1) which states: The board may, in accordance with and subject to the provisions of the Apprentices Act, 1901, by indenture bind or cause to be bound the child of any aborigine, or the neglected child of any person apparently having an admixture of aboriginal blood in his veins, to be apprenticed to any master, and may collect and institute proceedings for the recovery of any wages payable under such indenture, and may expend the same as the board may think fit in the interest of the child. Every child so apprenticed shall be under the supervision of the board, or of such person that may be authorised in that behalf by the regulations. (144) Neglect was often defined as simply being Aboriginal. The representation that being removed would lead to a better life relies on Western attitudes about society and culture. It dismisses any notion of Indigenous rights to be Indigenous and defines a better life according to how white society views it. Throughout most of the 1900s, Aboriginal children that were removed to experience this better life were trained in positions of servants. Nelson’s inclusion of his own personal experience as a non Indigenous Australian who has experienced loss and sorrow sustains his textual purpose to reduce human experiences to a common ground, an equal footing – to make all injustices equal. And he finishes the paragraph off with the subtle reminder that this “sorry” is only for “those” Aboriginal Australians that were removed in the first seven decades of last century. After retelling the experience of one Indigenous person as told to the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, he retells the experience of an Indigenous woman as told to a non-Indigenous man. The appropriate protocols concerning the re-using of Indigenous knowledge and intellectual copyright appeared to be absent in this address. Not only does the individual remain unacknowledged but the potential for misappropriating Indigenous experiences for non Indigenous purposes is apparent. The insertion of the story dismisses the importance of the original act of telling, and the significance of the unspeakable through decades of silence. Felman presents the complexities of the survivor’s tale: “the victim’s story has to overcome not just the silence of the dead but the indelible coercive power of the oppressor’s terrifying, brutal silencing of the surviving, and the inherent speechless silence of the living in the face of an unthinkable, unknowable, ungraspable event” (227). In telling this story Nelson unravelled the foundation of equality he had attempted to resurrect. And his indication towards current happenings in the Northern Territory only served to further highlight the inequities that Indigenous peoples continue to face, resist and surpass. Nelson’s statement that “separation was then, and remains today, a painful but necessary part of public policy in the protection of children” is another reminder of the “indelible coercive power of the oppressor’s terrifying” potential to repeat history. The final unmasking of the hypocritical and contested nature of Nelson’s national ideology and narrative is in his telling of the “facts” – the statistics concerning Indigenous life expectancy, Indigenous infant mortality rates, “diabetes, kidney disease, hospitalisation of women from assault, imprisonment, overcrowding, educational underperformance and unemployment”. These statistics are a result not of what Nelson terms “existential aimlessness” (immediately preceding paragraph) but of colonisation – theft of land, oppression, abuse, discrimination, and lack of any rights whether citizenship or Aboriginal. These contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples are the direct linear result of the last two hundred years of white nation building. The address is concluded with mention of Neville Bonner, portrayed here as the perfect example of what reading, writing, expressing yourself with dignity and treating people with decency and courtesy can achieve. Bonner is presented as the ‘ideal’ Blackfella, a product of the assimilation period: he could read and write and was dignified, decent and courteous (and, coincidentally, Liberal). The inclusion of this reference to Bonner in the address may hint at the “My best friend is an Aborigine” syndrome (Heiss 71), but it also provides a discursive example to the listener of the ways in which ‘equalness’ is suggested, assumed, privileged or denied. It is a reminder, in the same vein of Patten and Ferguson’s fights for rights, that what is equal has always been apparent to the colonised. Your present official attitude is one of prejudice and misunderstanding … we are no more dirty, lazy stupid, criminal, or immoral than yourselves. Also, your slanders against our race are a moral lie, told to throw all the blame for your troubles on to us. You, who originally conquered us by guns against our spears, now rely on superiority of numbers to support your false claims of moral and intellectual superiority. After 150 years, we ask you to review the situation and give us a fair deal – a New Deal for Aborigines. The cards have been stacked against us, and we now ask you to play the game like decent Australians. Remember, we do not ask for charity, we ask for justice. Nelson quotes Bonner’s words that “[unjust hardships] can only be changed when people of non Aboriginal extraction are prepared to listen, to hear what Aboriginal people are saying and then work with us to achieve those ends”. The need for non-Indigenous Australians to listen, to be shaken out of their complacent equalness appears to have gone unheard. Fiumara, in her philosophy of listening, states: “at this point the opportunity is offered for becoming aware that the compulsion to win is due less to the intrinsic difficulty of the situation than to inhibitions induced by a non-listening language that prevents us from seeing that which would otherwise be clear” (198). It is this compulsion to win, or to at least not be seen to be losing that contributes to the unequalness of this particular “sorry” and the need to construct an equal footing. This particular utterance of sorry does not come from an acknowledged place of difference and its attached history of colonisation; instead it strives to create a foundation based on a lack of anyone being positioned on the high moral ground. It is an irony that pervades the address considering it was the coloniser’s belief in his/her moral superiority that took the first child to begin with. Nelson’s address attempts to construct the utterance of “sorry”, and its intended meaning in this specific context, on ‘equal’ ground: his representation is that we are all Australians, “us” and ‘them’ combined, “we” all suffered and made sacrifices; “we” all deserve respect and equal acknowledgment of the contribution “we” all made to this “enviable” nation. And therein lies the unequalness, the inequality, the injustice, of this particular “sorry”. This particular “sorry” is born from and maintains the structures, policies, discourses and language that led to the taking of Indigenous children in the first place. In his attempt to create a “sorry” that drew equally from the “charitable” as well as the “misjudged” deeds of white Australia, Nelson’s “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament” increased the experiences of inequality. Chow writes that in the politics of admittance the equal depends on “acceptance by permission … and yet, being ‘admitted’ is never simply a matter of possessing the right permit, for validation and acknowledgment must also be present for admittance to be complete” (36-37). References Augoustinos, Martha, Amanda LeCouteur, and John Soyland. “Self-Sufficient Arguments in Political Rhetoric: Constructing Reconciliation and Apologizing to the Stolen Generations.” Discourse and Society 13.1 (2002): 105-142.Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997.Aborigines Protection Act 1909: An Act to Provide for the Protection and Care of Aborigines; To Repeal the Supply of Liquors Aborigines Prevention Act; To Amend the Vagrancy Act, 1902, and the Police Offences (Amendment) Act, 1908; And for Purposes Consequent Thereon or Incidental Thereto. Assented to 20 Dec. 1909. Digital Collections: Books and Serial, National Library of Australia. 24 Mar. 2008 < http://www.nla.gov.au/apps/cdview?pi=nla.aus-vn71409-9x-s1-v >.Chow, Rey. “The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation and the Formation of Community in Frantz Fanon.” In Anthony C. Alessandrini, ed. Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, 1999. 34-56.Felman, Shoshana. “Theaters of Justice: Arendt in Jerusalem, the Eichmann Trial and the Redefinition of Legal Meaning in the Wake of the Holocaust.” Critical Inquiry 27.2 (2001): 201-238.Fiumara, Gemma Corradi. The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.Heiss, Anita. I’m Not a Racist But… UK: Salt Publishing, 2007.Janca, Aleksandar, and Clothilde Bullen. “Aboriginal Concept of Time and Its Mental Health Implications.” Australian Psychiatry 11 (Supplement 2003): 40-44.Nelson, Brendan. “We Are Sorry – Address to Parliament.” 14 Feb. 2008 < http://www.liberal.org.au/info/news/detail/20080213_ WearesorryAddresstoParliament.php >.Patten, Jack, and William Ferguson. Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! A Statement for the Aborigines Progressive Association. Sydney: The Publicist, 1938.Taylor, Martin, and James Francis. Bludgers in Grass Castles: Native Title and the Unpaid Debts of the Pastoral Industry. Chippendale: Resistance Books, 1997.William, Ross. “‘Why Should I Feel Guilty?’ Reflections on the Workings of White-Aboriginal Relations.” Australian Psychologist 35.2 (2000): 136-142.Wolfe, Patrick. Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event. London and New York: Cassell, 1999.

All history of this area and the general talk and all of that is that 1973 was a turning point and the Aquarius Festival is credited with having turned this region around in so many ways, but I think that is a myth ... and I have to honour the truth; and the truth is that old Dicke Donelly came and did a Welcome to Country the night before the festival. (Joseph in Joseph and Hanley)In 1973 the Australian Union of Students (AUS) held the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival in a small, rural New South Wales town called Nimbin. The festival was seen as the peak expression of Australian counterculture and is attributed to creating the “Rainbow Region”, an area with a concentration of alternative life stylers in Northern NSW (Derrett 28). While the Aquarius Festival is recognised as a founding historical and countercultural event, the unique and important relationships established with Indigenous people at this time are generally less well known. This article investigates claims that the 1973 Aquarius Festival was “the first event in Australian history that sought permission for the use of the land from the Traditional Owners” (Joseph and Hanley). The diverse international, national and local conditions that coalesced at the Aquarius Festival suggest a fertile environment was created for reconciliatory bonds to develop. Often dismissed as a “tree hugging, soap dodging movement,” the counterculture was radically politicised having sprung from the 1960s social revolutions when the world witnessed mass demonstrations that confronted war, racism, sexism and capitalism. Primarily a youth movement, it was characterised by flamboyant dress, music, drugs and mass gatherings with universities forming the epicentre and white, middle class youth leading the charge. As their ideals of changing the world were frustrated by lack of systematic change, many decided to disengage and a migration to rural settings occurred (Jacob; Munro-Clarke; Newton). In the search for alternatives, the counterculture assimilated many spiritual practices, such as Eastern traditions and mysticism, which were previously obscure to the Western world. This practice of spiritual syncretism can be represented as a direct resistance to the hegemony of the dominant Western culture (Stell). As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order. A recurring feature of this countercultural ‘back to the land’ migration was not only an empathetic awareness of the injustices of colonial past, but also a genuine desire to learn from the Indigenous people of the land. Indigenous people were generally perceived as genuine opposers of Westernisation, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal and communal, thus encompassing the primary values to which the counterculture was aspiring (Smith). Cultures converged. One, a youth culture rebelling from its parent culture; the other, ancient cultures reeling from the historical conquest by the youths’ own ancestors. Such cultural intersections are rich with complex scenarios and politics. As a result, often naïve, but well-intended relations were established with Native Americans, various South American Indigenous peoples, New Zealand Maori and, as this article demonstrates, the Original People of Australia (Smith; Newton; Barr-Melej; Zolov). The 1960s protest era fostered the formation of groups aiming to address a variety of issues, and at times many supported each other. Jennifer Clarke says it was the Civil Rights movement that provided the first models of dissent by formulating a “method, ideology and language of protest” as African Americans stood up and shouted prior to other movements (2). The issue of racial empowerment was not lost on Australia’s Indigenous population. Clarke writes that during the 1960s, encouraged by events overseas and buoyed by national organisation, Aborigines “slowly embarked on a political awakening, demanded freedom from the trappings of colonialism and responded to the effects of oppression at worst and neglect at best” (4). Activism of the 1960s had the “profoundly productive effect of providing Aborigines with the confidence to assert their racial identity” (159). Many Indigenous youth were compelled by the zeitgeist to address their people’s issues, fulfilling Charlie Perkins’s intentions of inspiring in Indigenous peoples a will to resist (Perkins). Enjoying new freedoms of movement out of missions, due to the 1967 Constitutional change and the practical implementation of the assimilation policy, up to 32,000 Indigenous youth moved to Redfern, Sydney between 1967 and 1972 (Foley, “An Evening With”). Gary Foley reports that a dynamic new Black Power Movement emerged but the important difference between this new younger group and the older Indigenous leaders of the day was the diverse range of contemporary influences. Taking its mantra from the Black Panther movement in America, though having more in common with the equivalent Native American Red Power movement, the Black Power Movement acknowledged many other international struggles for independence as equally inspiring (Foley, “An Evening”). People joined together for grassroots resistance, formed anti-hierarchical collectives and established solidarities between varied groups who previously would have had little to do with each other. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was directly aligned with “back to the land” philosophies. The intention was to provide a place and a reason for gathering to “facilitate exchanges on survival techniques” and to experience “living in harmony with the natural environment.” without being destructive to the land (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Early documents in the archives, however, reveal no apparent interest in Australia’s Indigenous people, referring more to “silken Arabian tents, mediaeval banners, circus, jugglers and clowns, peace pipes, maypole and magic circles” (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Obliterated from the social landscape and minimally referred to in the Australian education system, Indigenous people were “off the radar” to the majority mindset, and the Australian counterculture similarly was slow to appreciate Indigenous culture. Like mainstream Australia, the local counterculture movement largely perceived the “race” issue as something occurring in other countries, igniting the phrase “in your own backyard” which became a catchcry of Indigenous activists (Foley, “Whiteness and Blackness”) With no mention of any Indigenous interest, it seems likely that the decision to engage grew from the emerging climate of Indigenous activism in Australia. Frustrated by student protestors who seemed oblivious to local racial issues, focusing instead on popular international injustices, Indigenous activists accused them of hypocrisy. Aquarius Festival directors, found themselves open to similar accusations when public announcements elicited a range of responses. Once committed to the location of Nimbin, directors Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen began a tour of Australian universities to promote the upcoming event. While at the annual conference of AUS in January 1973 at Monash University, Dunstan met Indigenous activist Gary Foley: Gary witnessed the presentation of Johnny Allen and myself at the Aquarius Foundation session and our jubilation that we had agreement from the village residents to not only allow, but also to collaborate in the production of the Festival. After our presentation which won unanimous support, it was Gary who confronted me with the question “have you asked permission from local Aboriginal folk?” This threw me into confusion because we had seen no Aboriginals in Nimbin. (Dunstan, e-mail) Such a challenge came at a time when the historical climate was etched with political activism, not only within the student movement, but more importantly with Indigenous activists’ recent demonstrations, such as the installation in 1972 of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. As representatives of the counterculture movement, which was characterised by its inclinations towards consciousness-raising, AUS organisers were ethically obliged to respond appropriately to the questions about Indigenous permission and involvement in the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin. In addition to this political pressure, organisers in Nimbin began hearing stories of the area being cursed or taboo for women. This most likely originated from the tradition of Nimbin Rocks, a rocky outcrop one kilometre from Nimbin, as a place where only certain men could go. Jennifer Hoff explains that many major rock formations were immensely sacred places and were treated with great caution and respect. Only a few Elders and custodians could visit these places and many such locations were also forbidden for women. Ceremonies were conducted at places like Nimbin Rocks to ensure the wellbeing of all tribespeople. Stories of the Nimbin curse began to spread and most likely captivated a counterculture interested in mysticism. As organisers had hoped that news of the festival would spread on the “lips of the counterculture,” they were alarmed to hear how “fast the bad news of this curse was travelling” (Dunstan, e-mail). A diplomatic issue escalated with further challenges from the Black Power community when organisers discovered that word had spread to Sydney’s Indigenous community in Redfern. Organisers faced a hostile reaction to their alleged cultural insensitivity and were plagued by negative publicity with accusations the AUS were “violating sacred ground” (Janice Newton 62). Faced with such bad press, Dunstan was determined to repair what was becoming a public relations disaster. It seemed once prompted to the path, a sense of moral responsibility prevailed amongst the organisers and they took the unprecedented step of reaching out to Australia’s Indigenous people. Dunstan claimed that an expedition was made to the local Woodenbong mission to consult with Elder, Uncle Lyle Roberts. To connect with local people required crossing the great social divide present in that era of Australia’s history. Amy Nethery described how from the nineteenth century to the 1960s, a “system of reserves, missions and other institutions isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people” (9). She explains that the people were incarcerated as a solution to perceived social problems. For Foley, “the widespread genocidal activity of early “settlement” gave way to a policy of containment” (Foley, “Australia and the Holocaust”). Conditions on missions were notoriously bad with alcoholism, extreme poverty, violence, serious health issues and depression common. Of particular concern to mission administrators was the perceived need to keep Indigenous people separate from the non-indigenous population. Dunstan described the mission he visited as having “bad vibes.” He found it difficult to communicate with the elderly man, and was not sure if he understood Dunstan’s quest, as his “responses came as disjointed raves about Jesus and saving grace” (Dunstan, e-mail). Uncle Lyle, he claimed, did not respond affirmatively or negatively to the suggestion that Nimbin was cursed, and so Dunstan left assuming it was not true. Other organisers began to believe the curse and worried that female festival goers might get sick or worse, die. This interpretation reflected, as Vanessa Bible argues, a general Eurocentric misunderstanding of the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the land. Paul Joseph admits they were naïve whites coming into a place with very little understanding, “we didn’t know if we needed a witch doctor or what we needed but we knew we needed something from the Aborigines to lift the spell!”(Joseph and Hanley). Joseph, one of the first “hippies” who moved to the area, had joined forces with AUS organisers. He said, “it just felt right” to get Indigenous involvement and recounted how organisers made another trip to Woodenbong Mission to find Dickee (Richard) Donnelly, a Song Man, who was very happy to be invited. Whether the curse was valid or not it proved to be productive in further instigating respectful action. Perhaps feeling out of their depth, the organisers initiated another strategy to engage with Australian Indigenous people. A call out was sent through the AUS network to diversify the cultural input and it was recommended they engage the services of South African artist, Bauxhau Stone. Timing aligned well as in 1972 Australia had voted in a new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Whitlam brought about significant political changes, many in response to socialist protests that left a buoyancy in the air for the counterculturalist movement. He made prodigious political changes in support of Indigenous people, including creating the Aboriginal Arts Board as part of the Australian Council of the Arts (ACA). As the ACA were already funding activities for the Aquarius Festival, organisers were successful in gaining two additional grants specifically for Indigenous participation (Farnham). As a result We were able to hire […] representatives, a couple of Kalahari bushmen. ‘Cause we were so dumb, we didn’t think we could speak to the black people, you know what I mean, we thought we would be rejected, or whatever, so for us to really reach out, we needed somebody black to go and talk to them, or so we thought, and it was remarkable. This one Bau, a remarkable fellow really, great artist, great character, he went all over Australia. He went to Pitjantjatjara, Yirrkala and we arranged buses and tents when they got here. We had a very large contingent of Aboriginal people come to the Aquarius Festival, thanks to Whitlam. (Joseph in Joseph and Henley) It was under the aegis of these government grants that Bauxhau Stone conducted his work. Stone embodied a nexus of contemporary issues. Acutely aware of the international movement for racial equality and its relevance to Australia, where conditions were “really appalling”, Stone set out to transform Australian race relations by engaging with the alternative arts movement (Stone). While his white Australian contemporaries may have been unaccustomed to dealing with the Indigenous racial issue, Stone was actively engaged and thus well suited to act as a cultural envoy for the Aquarius Festival. He visited several local missions, inviting people to attend and notifying them of ceremonies being conducted by respected Elders. Nimbin was then the site of the Aquarius Lifestyle and Celebration Festival, a two week gathering of alternative cultures, technologies and youth. It innovatively demonstrated its diversity of influences, attracted people from all over the world and was the first time that the general public really witnessed Australia’s counterculture (Derrett 224). As markers of cultural life, counterculture festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were as iconic as the era itself and many around the world drew on the unique Indigenous heritage of their settings in some form or another (Partridge; Perone; Broadley and Jones; Zolov). The social phenomenon of coming together to experience, celebrate and foster a sense of unity was triggered by protests, music and a simple, yet deep desire to reconnect with each other. Festivals provided an environment where the negative social pressures of race, gender, class and mores (such as clothes) were suspended and held the potential “for personal and social transformation” (St John 167). With the expressed intent to “take matters into our own hands” and try to develop alternative, innovative ways of doing things with collective participation, the Aquarius Festival thus became an optimal space for reinvigorating ancient and Indigenous ways (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). With philosophies that venerated collectivism, tribalism, connecting with the earth, and the use of ritual, the Indigenous presence at the Aquarius Festival gave attendees the opportunity to experience these values. To connect authentically with Nimbin’s landscape, forming bonds with the Traditional Owners was essential. Participants were very fortunate to have the presence of the last known initiated men of the area, Uncle Lyle Roberts and Uncle Dickee Donnely. These Elders represented the last vestiges of an ancient culture and conducted innovative ceremonies, song, teachings and created a sacred fire for the new youth they encountered in their land. They welcomed the young people and were very happy for their presence, believing it represented a revolutionary shift (Wedd; King; John Roberts; Cecil Roberts). Images 1 and 2: Ceremony and talks conducted at the Aquarius Festival (people unknown). Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Paul White. The festival thus provided an important platform for the regeneration of cultural and spiritual practices. John Roberts, nephew of Uncle Lyle, recalled being surprised by the reaction of festival participants to his uncle: “He was happy and then he started to sing. And my God … I couldn’t get near him! There was this big ring of hippies around him. They were about twenty deep!” Sharing to an enthusiastic, captive audience had a positive effect and gave the non-indigenous a direct Indigenous encounter (Cecil Roberts; King; Oshlak). Estimates of the number of Indigenous people in attendance vary, with the main organisers suggesting 800 to 1000 and participants suggesting 200 to 400 (Stone; Wedd; Oshlak: Joseph; King; Cecil Roberts). As the Festival lasted over a two week period, many came and left within that time and estimates are at best reliant on memory, engagement and perspectives. With an estimated total attendance at the Festival between 5000 and 10,000, either number of Indigenous attendees is symbolic and a significant symbolic statistic for Indigenous and non-indigenous to be together on mutual ground in Australia in 1973. Images 3-5: Performers from Yirrkala Dance Group, brought to the festival by Stone with funding from the Federal Government. Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Dr Ian Cameron. For Indigenous people, the event provided an important occasion to reconnect with their own people, to share their culture with enthusiastic recipients, as well as the chance to experience diverse aspects of the counterculture. Though the northern NSW region has a history of diverse cultural migration of Italian and Indian families, the majority of non-indigenous and Indigenous people had limited interaction with cosmopolitan influences (Kijas 20). Thus Nimbin was a conservative region and many Christianised Indigenous people were also conservative in their outlook. The Aquarius Festival changed that as the Indigenous people experienced the wide-ranging cultural elements of the alternative movement. The festival epitomised countercultural tendencies towards flamboyant fashion and hairstyles, architectural design, fantastical art, circus performance, Asian clothes and religious products, vegetarian food and nudity. Exposure to this bohemian culture would have surely led to “mind expansion and consciousness raising,” explicit aims adhered to by the movement (Roszak). Performers and participants from Africa, America and India also gave attending Indigenous Australians the opportunity to interact with non-European cultures. Many people interviewed for this paper indicated that Indigenous people’s reception of this festival experience was joyous. For Australia’s early counterculture, interest in Indigenous Australia was limited and for organisers of the AUS Aquarius Festival, it was not originally on the agenda. The counterculture in the USA and New Zealand had already started to engage with their Indigenous people some years earlier. However due to the Aquarius Festival’s origins in the student movement and its solidarities with the international Indigenous activist movement, they were forced to shift their priorities. The coincidental selection of a significant spiritual location at Nimbin to hold the festival brought up additional challenges and countercultural intrigue with mystical powers and a desire to connect authentically to the land, further prompted action. Essentially, it was the voices of empowered Indigenous activists, like Gary Foley, which in fact triggered the reaching out to Indigenous involvement. While the counterculture organisers were ultimately receptive and did act with unprecedented respect, credit must be given to Indigenous activists. The activist’s role is to trigger action and challenge thinking and in this case, it was ultimately productive. Therefore the Indigenous people were not merely passive recipients of beneficiary goodwill, but active instigators of appropriate cultural exchange. After the 1973 festival many attendees decided to stay in Nimbin to purchase land collectively and a community was born. Relationships established with local Indigenous people developed further. Upon visiting Nimbin now, one will see a vibrant visual display of Indigenous and psychedelic themed art, a central park with an open fire tended by local custodians and other Indigenous community members, an Aboriginal Centre whose rent is paid for by local shopkeepers, and various expressions of a fusion of counterculture and Indigenous art, music and dance. While it appears that reconciliation became the aspiration for mainstream society in the 1990s, Nimbin’s early counterculture history had Indigenous reconciliation at its very foundation. The efforts made by organisers of the 1973 Aquarius Festival stand as one of very few examples in Australian history where non-indigenous Australians have respectfully sought to learn from Indigenous people and to assimilate their cultural practices. It also stands as an example for the world, of reconciliation, based on hippie ideals of peace and love. They encouraged the hippies moving up here, even when they came out for Aquarius, old Uncle Lyle and Richard Donnelly, they came out and they blessed the mob out here, it was like the hairy people had come back, with the Nimbin, cause the Nimbynji is the little hairy people, so the hairy people came back (Jerome). References Barr-Melej, Patrick. “Siloísmo and the Self in Allende’s Chile: Youth, 'Total Revolution,' and the Roots of the Humanist Movement.” Hispanic American Historical Review 86.4 (Nov. 2006): 747-784. Bible, Vanessa. Aquarius Rising: Terania Creek and the Australian Forest Protest Movement. BA (Honours) Thesis. University of New England, Armidale, 2010. Broadley, Colin, and Judith Jones, eds. Nambassa: A New Direction. Auckland: Reed, 1979. Bryant, Gordon M. Parliament of Australia. Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. 1 May 1973. Australian Union of Students. Records of the AUS, 1934-1991. National Library of Australia MS ACC GB 1992.0505. Cameron, Ian. “Aquarius Festival Photographs.” 1973. Clarke, Jennifer. Aborigines and Activism: Race, Aborigines and the Coming of the Sixties to Australia. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2008. Derrett, Ross. Regional Festivals: Nourishing Community Resilience: The Nature and Role of Cultural Festivals in Northern Rivers NSW Communities. PhD Thesis. Southern Cross University, Lismore, 2008. Dunstan, Graeme. “A Survival Festival May 1973.” 1 Aug. 1972. Pamphlet. MS 6945/1. Nimbin Aquarius Festival Archives. National Library of Australia, Canberra. ---. E-mail to author, 11 July 2012. ---. “The Aquarius Festival.” Aquarius Rainbow Region. n.d. Farnham, Ken. Acting Executive Officer, Aboriginal Council for the Arts. 19 June 1973. Letter. MS ACC GB 1992.0505. Australian Union of Students. Records of the AUS, 1934-1991. National Library of Australia, Canberra. Foley, Gary. “Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective (1997).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_8.html›. ---. “Whiteness and Blackness in the Koori Struggle for Self-Determination (1999).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_9.html›. ---. “Black Power in Redfern 1968-1972 (2001).” The Koori History Website. n.d. 20 May 2013 ‹http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_1.html›. ---. “An Evening with Legendary Aboriginal Activist Gary Foley.” Conference Session. Marxism 2012 “Revolution in the Air”, Melbourne, Mar. 2012. Hoff, Jennifer. Bundjalung Jugun: Bundjalung Country. Lismore: Richmond River Historical Society, 2006. Jacob, Jeffrey. New Pioneers: The Back-to-the-Land Movement and the Search for a Sustainable Future. Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 1997. Jerome, Burri. Interview. 31 July 2012. Joseph, Paul. Interview. 7 Aug. 2012. Joseph, Paul, and Brendan ‘Mookx’ Hanley. Interview by Rob Willis. 14 Aug. 2010. Audiofile, Session 2 of 3. nla.oh-vn4978025. Rob Willis Folklore Collection. National Library of Australia, Canberra. Kijas, Johanna, Caravans and Communes: Stories of Settling in the Tweed 1970s & 1980s. Murwillumbah: Tweed Shire Council, 2011. King, Vivienne (Aunty Viv). Interview. 1 Aug. 2012. Munro-Clarke, Margaret. Communes of Rural Australia: The Movement Since 1970. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986. Nethery, Amy. “Aboriginal Reserves: ‘A Modern-Day Concentration Camp’: Using History to Make Sense of Australian Immigration Detention Centres.” Does History Matter? Making and Debating Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Policy in Australia and New Zealand. Eds. Klaus Neumann and Gwenda Tavan. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2009. 4. Newton, Janice. “Aborigines, Tribes and the Counterculture.” Social Analysis 23 (1988): 53-71. Newton, John. The Double Rainbow: James K Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2009. Offord, Baden. “Mapping the Rainbow Region: Fields of Belonging and Sites of Confluence.” Transformations 2 (March 2002): 1-5. Oshlak, Al. Interview. 27 Mar. 2013. Partridge, Christopher. “The Spiritual and the Revolutionary: Alternative Spirituality, British Free Festivals, and the Emergence of Rave Culture.” Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7 (2006): 3-5. Perkins, Charlie. “Charlie Perkins on 1965 Freedom Ride.” Youtube, 13 Oct. 2009. Perone, James E. Woodstock: An Encyclopedia of the Music and Art Fair. Greenwood: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. Roberts, John. Interview. 1 Aug. 2012. Roberts, Cecil. Interview. 6 Aug. 2012. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. New York: University of California Press,1969. 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This essay explores the ways in which Indigenous issues were framed, amplified and subverted in the national discourse in the lead up to the 2016 federal election. An examination of key theories on minority group representation and participation in democratic process provides the framework through which channels for Indigenous self-determination on key political issues in the Australian context are examined.

Abstract The international policy trend towards personalised budgets, which is designed to offer people with disabilities purchasing power to choose services that suit them, is exemplified in the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This article examines how the ‘purchasing power’ afforded to service users through individualised budgets impacts on social work practice and the choice and self-determination of NDIS service users. Social workers’ views were sought on the alignment between the NDIS principles of choice and control and social work principles of participation and self-determination and how their social work practice has changed in order to facilitate client access to supports through NDIS budgets and meaningful participation in decision-making. A survey was completed by forty-five social workers, and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with five of these participants. The findings identify how social workers have responded to the shortfalls of the NDIS by the following: interpreting information for clients; assisting service users to navigate complex service provision systems; supporting clients through goal setting, decision-making and implementation of action plans; and adopting case management approaches. The incorporation of social work services into the NDIS service model is proposed in order to facilitate meaningful choice and self-determination associated with purchasing power.

Integrity is fundamental to everyone involved in education – students, parents, teachers, lecturers, administrators and future employers, as well as the general public. It is hardly surprising therefore, that research on educational integrity continues to gather momentum, as evidenced by the growing number of conferences and seminars on this subject around the world. I am very pleased to report that while student cheating and plagiarism continue to be topics of interest, practitioners and researchers are also exploring the broader, social context and the changing, globalised and increasingly commercialised nature of education itself. The current issue of the International Journal for Educational Integrity is introduced by William Astore's Plenary Address from the Annual International Center for Academic Integrity Conference, held at Washington University in St Louis, Illinois in October this year. Astore spoke boldly to conference delegates of the 'wider dimensions of academic integrity', using anecdotes from his own experience as a military instructor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and as a history professor at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He convincingly argued that systemic breaches of integrity are far more harmful than individual lapses such as student cheating because they compromise the institution as a whole. In his Address, Astore was openly critical of the marketisation of higher education, a topic which was also explored at the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity: Creating an Inclusive Approach, held in September at the University of Wollongong in NSW, Australia. The four best refereed papers from the Asia-Pacific Conference are included in this issue of the IJEI. Kim awyer from the University of Melbourne, and Jackie Johnson and Mark Holub from the University of Western ustralia, provide a candid analysis of the decline in academic standards and integrity in Australian higher education. This paper provides a thorough overview of recent changes in Australian higher education. As Richard Davis commented in his review, "Critics of the modern university face an uphill task. Accused of advocating old, inefficient ways and lamenting a decadent past, they are easily silenced by self-satisfied colleagues enjoying their large research grants and consultancies. Some critics can do little more than condemn local personalities. All would be well if the vice-chancellor was less authoritarian or the university council less mean in its refusal of salary increases. The strength of the current paper lies in its remorseless analysis of the system which developed inexorably from the government's determination to educate more students while cutting its higher education costs. The 'new' corporate market-based university replaced the 'old' university dedicated to the ideals of free enquiry and education as an end in itself". Moving from the broad educational context to specific practices, the next four papers in this issue investigate issues of learning, teaching, assessment and adjudication. Clair Hughes from the University of Queensland addresses an apparent shortfall in Australian universities' implementation of 'Graduate Attributes' (GA), including the GA relating to ethical conduct. Hughes maintains that to authentically operationalise GAs, much more is needed than simply mapping specific attributes against existing programs and courses. Hughes argues for a whole of programme approach, the explicit inclusion of ethics in course teaching and assessment plans, and provides specific examples of how this may be achieved. Jon Yorke, Kathryn Lawson and Graham McMahon from Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, ask how those who adjudicate breaches of academic integrity can reliably determine 'intent' in cases of plagiarism. The authors draw on a desktop study of institutional policies and procedures in 20 universities from Australia, US, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and the UK to analyse the way that 'intent' is defined and determined. Their findings indicate that despite the espoused significance of 'intent' in determining outcomes for alleged academic misconduct in many policies, there is inconsistency in the way that it is treated. The authors provide a preliminary series of 'probability factors' which might be used to determine 'intent' and call for further research in this little explored aspect of academic integrity. Grace McCarthy and Ann Rogerson from the University of Wollongong in NSW, Australia, share the results of a trial at the Sydney Business School where 61 international students were encouraged to use 'originality reports' provided by the software program Turnitin to assess the originality of their own work and thus avoid inadvertent plagiarism. In conjunction with hands-on support from teaching staff, students were permitted to submit as many drafts as necessary to Turnitin, with the result that all final submissions had a text match of 5% or less. As a consequence of the positive results of the trial, the use of Turnitin as a drafting mechanism, coupled with an extensive program of embedded support and supplementary workshops, has now been mandated for all subjects. The authors share further qualitative and quantitative data to support their thesis that "the use of text-matching software can be a powerful aid to help students improve their writing and to help academic staff identify potential plagiarism". The final paper in this issue is the only one not previously presented at one of the international conferences on academic integrity held during 2009. Mary Davis and Jude Carroll from Oxford Brookes University, using data collected over three years from cohorts of international students in the UK, also explore the role of text-matching software in plagiarism education, with a focus on the importance of formative feedback through tutorial intervention. As one part of an overall educative approach, students worked hand in hand with their tutors to read and interpret the Originality Reports of ungraded drafts of assignments prior to final submission. Students were also surveyed at the end of the module to ascertain their perceptions of the value of using Turnitin in this way. The data indicated that the approach taken at Oxford Brookes University resulted in reductions in the amount of plagiarism, over-reliance on sources, citations errors and insufficient paraphrasing. This study provides an example of best practice in the educational use of text-matching software and provides a potential counter to those who are concerned that the sole function of such software is to police and punish students. I hope that you enjoy this issue of the International Journal for Educational Integrity, and invite you to submit a paper for review directly to me at tracey.bretag@unisa.edu.au or respond to the Call for Papers for Volume 6(2) below. Tracey Bretag, IJEI Editor December 2009 Call for papers, Volume 6(2) 2010 Special issue of IJEI on 'digital technologies and educational integrity' Edited by Chris Moore and Ruth Walker This special issue seeks articles that address the impact of digital technologies on educational integrity. Many different terms have emerged in an attempt to capture the shifting terrain of media and users in various networked environments: 'social', 'participatory', 'user-generated' or simply 'new' media. Common to the online and interactive spaces of Web2.0 is the challenge of technologies and practices that are capable of changing the way we teach, learn, and share knowledge. How can we best engage and support students and colleagues coming to terms with the dynamics of these technologies and the development of new literacies? We are particularly interested in innovative research from scholars in cultural and media studies and/or the scholarship of teaching and learning, and welcome interest from the other disciplinary researchers, who might consider a broad range of questions about digital technologies that critically unpack the conversation about education integrity that goes beyond preoccupation with plagiarism and research ethics. Critical voices of concern, examples of best practice and consideration of the perceived impact of digital technology on institutional boundaries are keenly sought as is research exploring the collaborative approaches to social and participatory media that challenge conceptions about authorial identity and scholarly writing practices. Research examining the development of new literacies that celebrate the appropriation, adaptation and transformation of source material would fit well within the scope of this special issue. Abstract due date: 31 March 2010 Full paper deadline: 1 July 2010 Special issue release date: December 2010 Send all enquiries and 500 word abstract to the guest editors at ruth_walker@uow.edu.au With thanks to our reviewers in 2009: Kate Andre, University of South Australia Peter Bowden, University of Sydney Kylie Brass, University of Western Sydney Deborah Churchman, University of South Australia Geoffrey Crisp, University of Adelaide Richard Davis, University of Tasmania John Dearn, Australian National University Fiona Duggan Lawrence B. Ebert Teddi Fishman, Clemson University Neera Handa, University of Western Sydney Beverley Kokkin, University of South Australia Margaret Lightbody, University of Adelaide Nancy Matchett, University of Colorado Paul Moore, University of Wollongong Gerry Mullins, University of Adelaide Nicholas Proctor, University of South Australia Wendy Sutherland-Smith, Monash University Daniel Wueste, Clemson University

Introduction In 2017, 250 Indigenous delegates from across the country convened at the National Constitution Convention at Uluru to discuss a strategy towards the implementation of constitutional reform and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Referendum Council). Informed by community consultations arising out of 12 regional dialogues conducted by the government appointed Referendum Council, the resulting Uluru Statement from the Heart was unlike any constitutional reform previously proposed (Appleby & Synot). Within the Statement, the delegation outlined that to build a more equitable and reconciled nation, an enshrined Voice to Parliament was needed. Such a voice would embed Indigenous participation in parliamentary dialogues and debates while facilitating further discussion pertaining to truth telling and negotiating a Treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The reforms proposed are based on the collective input of Indigenous communities that were expressed in good faith during the consultation process. Arising out of a government appointed and funded initiative that directly sought Indigenous perspectives on constitutional reform, the trust and good faith invested by Indigenous people was quickly shut down when the Prime Minster, Malcolm Turnbull, rejected the reforms without parliamentary debate or taking them to the people via a referendum (Wahlquist Indigenous Voice Proposal; Appleby and McKinnon). In this article, we argue that through its dismissal the government treated the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a passing phase or mere “thought bubble” that was envisioned to disappear as quickly as it emerged. The Uluru Statement is a gift to the nation. One that genuinely offers new ways of envisioning and enacting reconciliation through equitable relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Indigenous voices lie at the heart of reconciliation but require constitutional enshrinement to ensure that Indigenous peoples and cultures are represented across all levels of government. Filter Bubbles of Distortion Constitutional change is often spoken of by politicians, its critics, and within the media as something unachievable. For example, in 2017, before even reading the accompanying report, MP Barnaby Joyce (in Fergus) publicly denounced the Uluru Statement as “unwinnable” and not “saleable”. He stated that “if you overreach in politics and ask for something that will not be supported by the Australian people such as another chamber in politics or something that sort of sits above or beside the Senate, that idea just won't fly”. Criticisms such as these are laced with paternalistic rhetoric that suggests its potential defeat at a referendum would be counterproductive and “self-defeating”, meaning that the proposed changes should be rejected for a more digestible version, ultimately saving the movement from itself. While efforts to communicate the necessity of the proposed reforms continues, presumptions that it does not have public support is simply unfounded. The Centre for Governance and Public Policy shows that 71 per cent of the public support constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. Furthermore, an online survey conducted by Cox Inall Ridgeway found that the majority of those surveyed supported constitutional reform to curb racism; remove section 25 and references to race; establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament; and formally recognise Indigenous peoples through a statement of acknowledgment (Referendum Council). In fact, public support for constitutional reform is growing, with Reconciliation Australia’s reconciliation barometer survey showing an increase from 77 per cent in 2018 to 88 per cent in 2020 (Reconciliation Australia). Media – whether news, social, databases, or search engines – undoubtedly shape the lens through which people come to encounter and understand the world. The information a person receives can be the result of what Eli Pariser has described as “filter bubbles”, in which digital algorithms determine what perspectives, outlooks, and sources of information are considered important, and those that are readily accessible. Misinformation towards constitutional reform, such as that commonly circulated within mainstream and social media and propelled by high profile voices, further creates what neuroscientist Don Vaughn calls “reinforcement bubbles” (Rose Gould). This propagates particular views and stunts informed debate. Despite public support, the reforms proposed in the Uluru Statement continue to be distorted within public and political discourses, with the media used as a means to spread misinformation that equates an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to the establishment of a new “third chamber” (Wahlquist ‘Barnaby’; Karp). In a 2018 interview, PM Scott Morrison suggested that advocates and commentators in favour of constitutional reform were engaging in spin by claiming that a Voice did not function as a third chamber (Prime Minister of Australia). Morrison claimed, “people can dress it up any way they like but I think two chambers is enough”. After a decade of consultative work, eight government reports and inquiries, and countless publications and commentaries, the Uluru Statement continues to be played down as if it were a mere thought bubble, a convoluted work in progress that is in need of refinement. In the same interview, Morrison went on to say that the proposal as it stands now is “unworkable”. Throughout the ongoing movement towards constitutional reform, extensive effort has been invested into ensuring that the reforms proposed are achievable and practical. The Uluru Statement from the Heart represents the culmination of decades of work and proposes clear, concise, and relatively minimal constitutional changes that would translate to potentially significant outcomes for Indigenous Australians (Fredericks & Bradfield). International examples demonstrate how such reforms can translate into parliamentary and governing structures. The Treaty of Waitangi (Palmer) for example seeks to inform Māori and Pākehā (non-Maori) relationships in New Zealand/Aotearoa, whilst designated “Māori Seats” ensure Indigenous representation in parliament (Webster & Cheyne). More recently, 17 of 155 seats were reserved for Indigenous delegates as Chile re-writes its own constitution (Bartlett; Reuters). Indigenous communities and its leaders are more than aware of the necessity of working within the realms of possibility and the need to exhibit caution when presenting such reforms to the public. An expert panel on constitutional reform (Dodson 73), before the conception of the Uluru Statement, acknowledged this, stating “any proposal relating to constitutional recognition of the sovereign status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would be highly contested by many Australians, and likely to jeopardise broad public support for the Panel’s recommendations”. As outlined in the Joint Select Committee’s final report on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Referendum Council), the Voice to parliament would have no veto powers over parliamentary votes or decisions. It operates as a non-binding advisory body that remains external to parliamentary processes. Peak organisations such as the Law Council of Australia (Dolar) reiterate the fact that the proposed reforms are for a voice to Parliament rather than a voice in Parliament. Although not binding, the Voice should not be dismissed as symbolic or something that may be easily circumvented. Its effectiveness lies in its ability to place parliament in a position where they are forced to confront and address Indigenous questions, concerns, opinions, and suggestions within debates before decisions are made. Bursting the ‘Self-Referential Bubble’ Indigenous affairs continue to be one of the few areas where a rhetoric of bipartisan agreement is continuously referenced by both major parties. Disagreement, debate, and conflict is often avoided as governments seek to portray an image of unity, and in doing so, circumvent accusations of turning Indigenous peoples into the subjects of political point scoring. Within parliamentary debates, there is an understandable reservation and discomfort associated with discussions about what is often seen as an Indigenous “other” (Moreton-Robinson) and the policies that a predominantly white government enact over their lives. Yet, it is through rigorous, open, and informed debate that policies may be developed, challenged, and reformed. Although bipartisanship can portray an image of a united front in addressing a so-called “Indigenous problem”, it also stunts the conception of effective and culturally responsive policy. In other words, it often overlooks Indigenous voices. Whilst education and cultural competency plays a significant role within the reconciliation process, the most pressing obstacle is not necessarily non-Indigenous people’s inability to fully comprehend Indigenous lives and socio-cultural understandings. Even within an ideal world where non-Indigenous peoples attain a thorough understanding of Indigenous cultures, they will never truly comprehend what it means to be Indigenous (Fanon; de Sousa Santos). For non-Indigenous peoples, accepting one’s own limitations in fully comprehending Indigenous ontologies – and avoiding filling such gaps with one’s own interpretations and preconceptions – is a necessary component of decolonisation and the movement towards reconciliation (Grosfoguel; Mignolo). As parliament continues to be dominated by non-Indigenous representatives, structural changes are necessary to ensure that Indigenous voices are adequality represented. The structural reforms not only empower Indigenous voices through their inclusion within the parliamentary process but alleviates some of the pressures that arise out of non-Indigenous people having to make decisions in attempts to solve so-called Indigenous “problems”. Government response to constitutional reform, however, is ridden with symbolic piecemeal offerings that equate recognition to a form of acknowledgment without the structural changes necessary to protect and enshrine Indigenous Voices and parliamentary participation. Davis and her colleagues (Davis et al. “The Uluru Statement”) note how the Referendum Council’s recommendations were rejected by the then minister of Indigenous affairs Nigel Scullion on account that it privileged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices. They note that, until the Referendum Council's report, the nation had no real assessment of what communities wanted. Yet by all accounts, the government had spent too much time talking to elites who have regular access to them and purport to speak on the mob's behalf. If he [Scullion] got the sense constitutional symbolism and minimalism was going to fly, then it says a lot about the self-referential bubble in which the Canberra elites live. The Uluru Statement from the Heart stands as testament to Indigenous people’s refusal to be the passive recipients of the decisions of the non-Indigenous political elite. As suggested, “symbolism and minimalism was not going to fly”. Ken Wyatt, Scullion’s replacement, reiterated the importance of co-design, the limitations of government bureaucracy, and the necessity of moving beyond the “Canberra bubble”. Wyatt stated that the Voice is saying clearly that government and the bureaucracy does not know best. It can not be a Canberra-designed approach in the bubble of Canberra. We have to co-design with Aboriginal communities in the same way that we do with state and territory governments and the corporate sector. The Voice would be the mechanism through which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interests and perspectives may be strategically placed within parliamentary dialogues. Despite accusations of it operating as a “third chamber”, Indigenous representatives have no interest in functioning in a similar manner to a political party. The language associated with our current parliamentary system demonstrates the constrictive nature of political debate. Ministers are expected to “toe the party line”, “crossing the floor” is presented as an act of defiance, and members must be granted permission to enter a “conscience vote”. An Indigenous Voice to Parliament would be an advisory body that works alongside, but remains external to political ideologies. Their priority is to seek and implement the best outcome for their communities. Negotiations would be fluid, with no floor to cross, whilst a conscience vote would be reflected in every perspective gifted to the parliament. In the 2020 Australia and the World Annual Lecture, Pat Turner described the Voice’s co-design process as convoluted and a continuing example of the government’s neglect to hear and respond to Indigenous peoples’ interests. In the address, Turner points to the Coalition of the Peaks as an exemplar of how co-design negotiations may be facilitated by and through organisations entirely formed and run by Indigenous peoples. The Coalition of the Peaks comprises of fifty Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled peak organisations and was established to address concerns relating to closing the gap targets. As Indigenous peak organisations are accountable to their membership and reliant on government funding, some have questioned whether they are appropriate representative bodies; cautioning that they could potentially compromise the Voice as a community-centric body free from political interference. While there is some debate over which Indigenous representatives should facilitate the co-design of a treaty and Makarrata (truth-telling), there remains a unanimous call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament that may lead negotiations and secure its place within decision-making processes. Makarrata, Garma, and the Bubbling of New Possibilities An Indigenous Voice to Parliament can be seen as the bubbling spring that provides the source for greater growth and further reform. The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for a three-staged approach comprising of establishing an Indigenous Voice, followed by Treaty, and then Truth-Telling. This sequence has been criticised by some who prioritise Truth and Treaty as the foundation for reform and reconciliation. Their argument is based on the notion that Indigenous Sovereignty must first be acknowledged in Parliament through an agreement-making process and signing of a Treaty. While the Uluru Statement has never lost sight of treaty, the agreement-making process must begin with the acknowledgment of Indigenous people’s inherent right to participate in the conversation. This very basic and foundational right is yet to be acknowledged within Australia’s constitution. The Uluru Statement sets the Voice as its first priority as the Voice establishes the structural foundation on which the conversation pertaining to treaty may take place. It is through the Voice that a Makarrata Commission can be formed and Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples may “come together after a struggle” – the translation of the word’s Yolngu origins (Gaykamangu; Pearson). Only then may we engage in truth telling and forge new paths towards agreement-making and treaty. This however raises the question as to how a Voice to Parliament may look and what outcomes it aims to achieve. As discussed in the previous section, it is a question that is often distorted by disinformation and conjecture within public, political, and news-media discourses. In order to unpack what a Voice to Parliament may entail, we turn to another Yolngu word, Garma. Garma refers to an epistemic and ontological positioning in which knowledge is attained from a point where differences converge and new insights arise. For Yolngu people, Garma is the place where salt and fresh water intersect within the sea. Fresh and Salt water are the embodiments of two Yolngu clans, the Dhuwa and Yirritja, with Garma referring to the point where the knowledge and laws of each clan come into contact, seeking harmonious balance. When the ebb and flow of the tides are in balance, it causes the water to foam and bubble taking on new form and representing innovative ideas and possibilities. Yolngu embrace this phenomenon as an epistemology that teaches responsibility and obligations towards the care of Country. It acknowledges the autonomy of others and finds a space where all may mutually benefit. When the properties of either water type, or the knowledge belonging a single clan dominates, ecological, social, political, and cosmological balance is overthrown. Raymattja Marika-Munungguritj (5) describes Garma as a dynamic interaction of knowledge traditions. Fresh water from the land, bubbling up in fresh water springs to make waterholes, and salt water from the sea are interacting with each other with the energy of the tide and the energy of the bubbling spring. When the tide is high the water rises to its full. When the tide goes out the water reduces its capacity. In the same way Milngurr ebbs and flows. In this way the Dhuwa and Yirritja sides of Yolngu life work together. And in this way Balanda and Yolngu traditions can work together. There must be balance, if not either one will be stronger and will harm the other. The Ganma Theory is Yirritja, the Milngurr Theory is Dhuwa. Like the current push for constitutional change and its rejection of symbolic reforms, Indigenous peoples have demanded real-action and “not just talk” (Synott “The Uluru statement”). In doing so, they implored that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be involved in all decision-making processes, for they are most knowledgeable of their community’s needs and the most effective methods of service delivery and policy. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly expressed this mandate, which is also legislated under international law through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Coming together after a struggle does not mean that conflict and disagreement between and amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities will cease. In fact, in alignment with political theories such as agonism and pluralism, coming together within a democratic system necessitates a constructive and responsive embrace of different, competing, and in some cases incommensurable views. A Voice to Parliament will operate in a manner where Indigenous perspectives and truths, as well as disagreements, may be included within negotiations and debates (Larkin & Galloway). Governments and non-Indigenous representatives will no longer speak for or on behalf of Indigenous peoples, for an Indigenous body will enact its own autonomous voice. Indigenous input therefore will not be reduced to reactionary responses and calls for reforms after the damage of mismanagement and policy failure has been caused. Indigenous voices will be permanently documented within parliamentary records and governments forced to respond to the agendas that Indigenous peoples set. Collectively, this amounts to greater participation within the democratic process and facilitates a space where “salt water” and the “bubbling springs” of fresh water may meet, mitigating the risk of harm, and bringing forth new possibilities. Conclusion When salt and fresh water combine during Garma, it begins to take on new form, eventually materialising as foam. Appearing as a singular solid object from afar, foam is but a cluster of interlocking bubbles that gain increased stability and equilibrium through sticking together. When a bubble stands alone, or a person remains within a figurative bubble that is isolated from its surroundings and other ways of knowing, doing, and being, its vulnerabilities and insecurities are exposed. Similarly, when one bubble bursts the collective cluster becomes weaker and unstable. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a vision conceived and presented by Indigenous peoples in good faith. It offers a path forward for not only Indigenous peoples and their future generations but the entire nation (Synott “Constitutional Reform”). It is a gift and an invitation “to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”. Through calling for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, a Makarrata Commission, and seeking Truth, Indigenous advocates for constitutional reform are looking to secure their own foothold and self-determination. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than a “thought bubble”, for it is the culmination of Indigenous people’s diverse lived experiences, outlooks, perspectives, and priorities. When the delegates met at Uluru in 2017, the thoughts, experiences, memories, and hopes of Indigenous peoples converged in a manner that created a unified front and collectively called for Voice, Treaty, and Truth. 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Each community’s title deed carries the indelible blood stains of our ancestors. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 2)IntroductionAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term coalition comes from the Latin coalescere or ‘coalesce’, meaning “come or bring together to form one mass or whole”. Coalesce refers to the unity affirmed as something grows: co – “together”, alesce – “to grow up”. While coalition is commonly associated with formalised alliances and political strategy in the name of self-interest and common goals, this paper will draw as well on the broader etymological understanding of coalition as “growing together” in order to discuss the Australian government’s recent changes to land rights legislation, the 2007 Emergency Intervention into the Northern Territory, and its decision to use Indigenous land in the Northern Territory as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. What unites these distinct cases is the role of the Australian nation-state in asserting its sovereign right to decide, something Giorgio Agamben notes is the primary indicator of sovereign right and power (Agamben). As Fiona McAllan has argued in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention: “Various forces that had been coalescing and captivating the moral, imaginary centre were now contributing to a spectacular enactment of a sovereign rescue mission” (par. 18). Different visions of “growing together”, and different coalitional strategies, are played out in public debate and policy formation. This paper will argue that each of these cases represents an alliance between successive, oppositional governments - and the nourishment of neoliberal imperatives - over and against the interests of some of the Indigenous communities, especially with relation to land rights. A critical stance is taken in relation to the alterations to land rights laws over the past five years and with the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, hereinafter referred to as the Intervention, firstly by the Howard Liberal Coalition Government and later continued, in what Anthony Lambert has usefully termed a “postcoalitional” fashion, by the Rudd Labor Government. By this, Lambert refers to the manner in which dominant relations of power continue despite the apparent collapse of old political coalitions and even in the face of seemingly progressive symbolic and material change. It is not the intention of this paper to locate Indigenous people in opposition to models of economic development aligned with neoliberalism. There are examples of productive relations between Indigenous communities and mining companies, in which Indigenous people retain control over decision-making and utilise Land Council’s to negotiate effectively. Major mining company Rio Tinto, for example, initiated an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Policy platform in the mid-1990s (Rio Tinto). Moreover, there are diverse perspectives within the Indigenous community regarding social and economic reform governed by neoliberal agendas as well as government initiatives such as the Intervention, motivated by a concern for the abuse of children, as outlined in The Little Children Are Sacred Report (Wild & Anderson; hereinafter Little Children). Indeed, there is no agreement on whether or not the Intervention had anything to do with land rights. On the one hand, Noel Pearson has strongly opposed this assertion: “I've got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a 'land grab'. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children's neglect and abuse" (ABC). Marcia Langton has agreed with this stating that “There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous” (Langton). Patrick Dodson on the other hand, has argued that yes, of course, the children remain the highest priority, but that this “is undermined by the Government's heavy-handed authoritarian intervention and its ideological and deceptive land reform agenda” (Dodson). WhitenessOne way to frame this issue is to look at it through the lens of critical race and whiteness theory. Is it possible that the interests of whiteness are at play in the coalitions of corporate/private enterprise and political interests in the Northern Territory, in the coupling of social conservatism and economic rationalism? Using this framework allows us to identify the partial interests at play and the implications of this for discussions in Australia around sovereignty and self-determination, as well as providing a discursive framework through which to understand how these coalitional interests represent a specific understanding of progress, growth and development. Whiteness theory takes an empirically informed stance in order to critique the operation of unequal power relations and discriminatory practices imbued in racialised structures. Whiteness and critical race theory take the twin interests of racial privileging and racial discrimination and discuss their historical and on-going relevance for law, philosophy, representation, media, politics and policy. Foregrounding contemporary analysis in whiteness studies is the central role of race in the development of the Australian nation, most evident in the dispossession and destruction of Indigenous lands, cultures and lives, which occurred initially prior to Federation, as well as following. Cheryl Harris’s landmark paper “Whiteness as Property” argues, in the context of the US, that “the origins of property rights ... are rooted in racial domination” and that the “interaction between conceptions of race and property ... played a critical role in establishing and maintaining racial and economic subordination” (Harris 1716).Reiterating the logic of racial inferiority and the assumption of a lack of rationality and civility, Indigenous people were named in the Australian Constitution as “flora and fauna” – which was not overturned until a national referendum in 1967. This, coupled with the logic of terra nullius represents the racist foundational logic of Australian statehood. As is well known, terra nullius declared that the land belonged to no-one, denying Indigenous people property rights over land. Whiteness, Moreton-Robinson contends, “is constitutive of the epistemology of the West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and has material effects in everyday life” (Whiteness 75).In addition to analysing racial power structures, critical race theory has presented studies into the link between race, whiteness and neoliberalism. Roberts and Mahtami argue that it is not just that neoliberalism has racialised effects, rather that neoliberalism and its underlying philosophy is “fundamentally raced and produces racialized bodies” (248; also see Goldberg Threat). The effect of the free market on state sovereignty has been hotly debated too. Aihwa Ong contends that neoliberalism produces particular relationships between the state and non-state corporations, as well as determining the role of individuals within the body-politic. Ong specifies:Market-driven logic induces the co-ordination of political policies with the corporate interests, so that developmental discussions favour the fragmentation of the national space into various contiguous zones, and promote the differential regulation of the populations who can be connected to or disconnected from global circuits of capital. (Ong, Neoliberalism 77)So how is whiteness relevant to a discussion of land reform, and to the changes to land rights passed along with Intervention legislation in 2007? Irene Watson cites the former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, who opposed the progressive individual with what he termed the “failed collective.” Watson asserts that in the debates around land leasing and the Intervention, “Aboriginal law and traditional roles and responsibilities for caring and belonging to country are transformed into the cause for community violence” (Sovereign Spaces 34). The effects of this, I will argue, are twofold and move beyond a moral or social agenda in the strictest sense of the terms: firstly to promote, and make more accessible, the possibility of private and government coalitions in relation to Indigenous lands, and secondly, to reinforce the sovereignty of the state, recognised in the capacity to make decisions. It is here that the explicit reiteration of what Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls “white possession” is clearly evidenced (The Possessive Logic). Sovereign Interventions In the Northern Territory 50% of land is owned by Indigenous people under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (ALRA) (NT). This law gives Indigenous people control, mediated via land councils, over their lands. It is the contention of this paper that the rights enabled through this law have been eroded in recent times in the coalescing interests of government and private enterprise via, broadly, land rights reform measures. In August 2007 the government passed a number of laws that overturned aspects of the Racial Discrimination Act 197 5(RDA), including the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. Ostensibly these laws were a response to evidence of alarming levels of child abuse in remote Indigenous communities, which has been compiled in the special report Little Children, co-chaired by Rex Wild QC and Patricia Anderson. This report argued that urgent but culturally appropriate strategies were required in order to assist the local communities in tackling the issues. The recommendations of the report did not include military intervention, and instead prioritised the need to support and work in dialogue with local Indigenous people and organisations who were already attempting, with extremely limited resources, to challenge the problem. Specifically it stated that:The thrust of our recommendations, which are designed to advise the NT government on how it can help support communities to effectively prevent and tackle child sexual abuse, is for there to be consultation with, and ownership by the local communities, of these solutions. (Wild & Anderson 23) Instead, the Federal Coalition government, with support from the opposition Labor Party, initiated a large scale intervention, which included the deployment of the military, to install order and assist medical personnel to carry out compulsory health checks on minors. The intervention affected 73 communities with populations of over 200 Aboriginal men, women and children (Altman, Neo-Paternalism 8). The reality of high levels of domestic and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities requires urgent and diligent attention, but it is not the space of this paper to unpack the media spectacle or the politically determined response to these serious issues, or the considered and careful reports such as the one cited above. While the report specifies the need for local solutions and local control of the process and decision-making, the Federal Liberal Coalition government’s intervention, and the current Labor government’s faithfulness to these, has been centralised and external, imposed upon communities. Rebecca Stringer argues that the Trojan horse thesis indicates what is at stake in this Intervention, while also pinpointing its main weakness. That is, the counter-intuitive links its architects make between addressing child sexual abuse and re-litigating Indigenous land tenure and governance arrangements in a manner that undermines Aboriginal sovereignty and further opens Aboriginal lands to private interests among the mining, nuclear power, tourism, property development and labour brokerage industries. (par. 8)Alongside welfare quarantining for all Indigenous people, was a decision by parliament to overturn the “permit system”, a legal protocol provided by the ALRA and in place so as to enable Indigenous peoples the right to refuse and grant entry to strangers wanting to access their lands. To place this in a broader context of land rights reform, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 2006, created the possibility of 99 year individual leases, at the expense of communal ownership. The legislation operates as a way of individualising the land arrangements in remote Indigenous communities by opening communal land up as private plots able to be bought by Aboriginal people or any other interested party. Indeed, according to Leon Terrill, land reform in Australia over the past 10 years reflects an attempt to return control of decision-making to government bureaucracy, even as governments have downplayed this aspect. Terrill argues that Township Leasing (enabled via the 2006 legislation), takes “wholesale decision-making about land use” away from Traditional Owners and instead places it in the hands of a government entity called the Executive Director of Township Leasing (3). With the passage of legislation around the Intervention, five year leases were created to enable the Commonwealth “administrative control” over the communities affected (Terrill 3). Finally, under the current changes it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of Aboriginal people will be able to access individual land leasing. Moreover, the argument has been presented that these reforms reflect a broader project aimed at replacing communal land ownership arrangements. This agenda has been justified at a rhetorical level via the demonization of communal land ownership arrangements. Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin, researchers at the rightwing think-tank, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), released a report entitled A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities, in which they argue that there is a direct casual link between communal ownership and economic underdevelopment: “Communal ownership of land, royalties and other resources is the principle cause of the lack of economic development in remote areas” (in Norberry & Gardiner-Garden 8). In 2005, then Prime Minister, John Howard, publicly introduced the government’s ambition to alter the structure of Indigenous land arrangements, couching his agenda in the language of “equal opportunity”. I believe there’s a case for reviewing the whole issue of Aboriginal land title in the sense of looking more towards private recognition …, I’m talking about giving them the same opportunities as the rest of their fellow Australians. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 1)Scholars of critical race theory have argued that the language of equality, usually tied to liberalism (though not always) masks racial inequality and even results in “camouflaged racism” (Davis 61). David Theo Goldberg notes that, “the racial status-quo - racial exclusions and privileges favouring for the most part middle - and upper class whites - is maintained by formalising equality through states of legal and administrative science” (Racial State 222). While Howard and his coalition of supporters have associated communal title with disadvantage and called for the equality to be found in individual leases (Dodson), Altman has argued that there is no logical link between forms of communal land ownership and incidences of sexual abuse, and indeed, the government’s use of sexual abuse disingenuously disguises it’s imperative to alter the land ownership arrangements: “Given the proposed changes to the ALRA are in no way associated with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities […] there is therefore no pressing urgency to pass the amendments.” (Altman National Emergency, 3) In the case of the Intervention, land rights reforms have affected the continued dispossession of Indigenous people in the interests of “commercial development” (Altman Neo-Paternalism 8). In light of this it can be argued that what is occurring conforms to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson has highlighted as the “possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty” (Possessive Logic). White sovereignty, under the banner of benevolent paternalism overturns the authority it has conceded to local Indigenous communities. This is realised via township leases, five year leases, housing leases and other measures, stripping them of the right to refuse the government and private enterprise entry into their lands (effectively the right of control and decision-making), and opening them up to, as Stringer argues, a range of commercial and government interests. Future Concerns and Concluding NotesThe etymological root of coalition is coalesce, inferring the broad ambition to “grow together”. In the issues outlined above, growing together is dominated by neoliberal interests, or what Stringer has termed “assimilatory neoliberation”. The issue extends beyond a social and economic assimilationism project and into a political and legal “land grab”, because, as Ong notes, the neoliberal agenda aligns itself with the nation-state. This coalitional arrangement of neoliberal and governmental interests reiterates “white possession” (Moreton-Robinson, The Possessive Logic). This is evidenced in the position of the current Labor government decision to uphold the nomination of Muckaty as a radioactive waste repository site in Australia (Stokes). In 2007, the Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated Muckaty Station to be the site for waste disposal. This decision cannot be read outside the context of Maralinga, in the South Australian desert, a site where experiments involving nuclear technology were conducted in the 1960s. As John Keane recounts, the Australian government permitted the British government to conduct tests, dispossessing the local Aboriginal group, the Tjarutja, and employing a single patrol officer “the job of monitoring the movements of the Aborigines and quarantining them in settlements” (Keane). Situated within this historical colonial context, in 2006, under a John Howard led Liberal Coalition, the government passed the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA), a law which effectively overrode the rulings of the Northern Territory government in relation decisions regarding nuclear waste disposal, as well as overriding the rights of traditional Aboriginal owners and the validity of sacred sites. The Australian Labor government has sought to alter the CRWMA in order to reinstate the importance of following due process in the nomination process of land. However, it left the proposed site of Muckaty as confirmed, and the new bill, titled National Radioactive Waste Management retains many of the same characteristics of the Howard government legislation. In 2010, 57 traditional owners from Muckaty and surrounding areas signed a petition stating their opposition to the disposal site (the case is currently in the Federal Court). At a time when nuclear power has come back onto the radar as a possible solution to the energy crisis and climate change, questions concerning the investments of government and its loyalties should be asked. As Malcolm Knox has written “the nuclear industry has become evangelical about the dangers of global warming” (Knox). While nuclear is a “cleaner” energy than coal, until better methods are designed for processing its waste, larger amounts of it will be produced, requiring lands that can hold it for the desired timeframes. For Australia, this demands attention to the politics and ethics of waste disposal. Such an issue is already being played out, before nuclear has even been signed off as a solution to climate change, with the need to find a disposal site to accommodate already existing uranium exported to Europe and destined to return as waste to Australia in 2014. The decision to go ahead with Muckaty against the wishes of the voices of local Indigenous people may open the way for the co-opting of a discourse of environmentalism by political and business groups to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to climate change. During the 2010 Australian election, Greens Leader Bob Brown played upon the word coalition to suggest that the Liberal National Party were in COALition with the mining industry over the proposed Mining Tax – the Liberal Coalition opposed any mining tax (Brown). Here Brown highlights the alliance of political agendas and business or corporate interests quite succinctly. Like Brown’s COALition, will government (of either major party) form a coalition with the nuclear power stakeholders?This paper has attempted to bring to light what Dodson has identified as “an alliance of established conservative forces...with more recent and strident ideological thinking associated with free market economics and notions of individual responsibility” and the implications of this alliance for land rights (Dodson). It is important to ask critical questions about the vision of “growing together” being promoted via the coalition of conservative, neoliberal, private and government interests.Acknowledgements Many thanks to the reviewers of this article for their useful suggestions. 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Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 75-97.Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Rio Tinto. "Rio Tinto Aboriginal Policy and Programme Briefing Note." June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.aboriginalfund.riotinto.com/common/pdf/Aboriginal%20Policy%20and%20Programs%20-%20June%202007.pdf>. Roberts, David J., and Mielle Mahtami. “Neoliberalising Race, Racing Neoliberalism: Placing 'Race' in Neoliberal Discourses.” Antipode 42.2 (2010): 248-257. Stringer, Rebecca. “A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention.” borderlands ejournal 6.2 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/stringer_intervention.htm>.Stokes, Dianne. "Muckaty." n.d. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.timbonham.com/slideshows/Muckaty/>. Terrill, Leon. “Indigenous Land Reform: What Is the Real Aim of Land Reform?” Edited version of a presentation provided at the 2010 National Native Title Conference, 2010. Watson, Irene. “Sovereign Spaces, Caring for Country and the Homeless Position of Aboriginal Peoples.” South Atlantic Quarterly 108.1 (2009): 27-51. Watson, Nicole. “Howard’s End: The Real Agenda behind the Proposed Review of Indigenous Land Titles.” Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 9.4 (2005). ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/2005/64.html>.Wild, R., and P. Anderson. Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarie: The Little Children Are Sacred. Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Northern Territory: Northern Territory Government, 2007.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marcus Clarke famously described the Australian outback as displaying a “Weird Melancholy” (qtd. in Gelder 116). The strange sights, sounds, and experiences of Australia’s rural locations made them ripe for the development of the European genre of the Gothic in a new location, a mutation which has continued over the past two centuries. But what does it mean for Australia’s Gothic landscapes to be associated with the affective qualities of the melancholy? And more particularly, how and why does this Gothic effect (and affect) appear in the most accessible Gothic media of the twenty-first century, the television series? Two recent Australian television adaptations, Wake in Fright (2017, dir. Kriv Stenders) and Mystery Road (2018, dir. Rachel Perkins) provoke us to ask the question: how does their pictorial representation of the Australian outback and its inhabitants overtly express rage and its close ties to melancholia, shame and violence? More particularly, I argue that in both series this rage is turned inwards rather than outwards; rage is turned into melancholy and thus to self-destruction – which constructs an allegory for the malaise of our contemporary nation. However, here the two series differ. While Wake in Fright posits this as a never-ending narrative, in a true Freudian model of melancholics who fail to resolve or attend to their trauma, Mystery Road is more positive in its positioning, allowing the themes of apology and recognition to appear, both necessary for reparation and forward movement.Steven Bruhm has argued that a psychoanalytic model of trauma has become the “best [way to] understand the contemporary Gothic and why we crave it” (268), because the repressions and repetitions of trauma offer a means of playing out the anxieties of our contemporary nation, its fraught histories, its conceptualisations of identity, and its fears for the future. Indeed, as Bruhm states, it is precisely because of the way in which “the Gothic continually confronts us with real, historical traumas that we in the west have created” that they “also continue to control how we think about ourselves as a nation” (271). Jerrold E. Hogle agrees, noting that “Gothic fiction has always begun with trauma” (72). But it is not only that Gothic narratives are best understood as traumatic narratives; rather, Hogle posits that the Gothic is uniquely situated as a genre for dealing with the trauma of our personal and national histories because it enables us to approach the contradictions and conflicts of traumatic experience:I find that the best of the post-9/11 uses of Gothic in fiction achieve that purpose for attentive readers by using the conflicted un-naturalness basic to the Gothic itself to help us concurrently grasp and conceal how profoundly conflicted we are about the most immediate and pervasive cultural “woundings” of our western world as it has come to be. (75)Hogle’s point is critical for its attention to the different ways trauma can be dealt with in texts and by readers, returning in part to Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia: where mourning is the ‘healthy’ process of working through or narrativising trauma. However, melancholia coalesces into a denial or repression of the traumatic event, and thus, as Freud suggests, its unresolved status reappears during nightmares and flashbacks, for example (Rall 171). Hogle’s praise for the Gothic, however, lies in its ability to move away from that binary, to “concurrently grasp and conceal” trauma: in other words, to respond simultaneously with mourning and with melancholy.Hogle adds to this classic perspective of melancholia through careful attention to the way in which rage inflects these affective responses. Under a psychoanalytic model, rage can be seen “as an infantile response to separation and loss” (Kahane 127). The emotional free-rein of rage, Claire Kahane points out, “disempowers us as subjects, making us subject to its regressive vicissitudes” (127; original emphasis). In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler explicates this in more detail, making clear that this disempowerment, this inability to clearly express oneself, is what leads to melancholia. Melancholia, then, can be seen as a loss or repression of the identifiable cause of the original rage: this overwhelming emotion has masked its original target. “Insofar as grief remains unspeakable”, Butler posits, “the rage over the loss can redouble by virtue of remaining unavowed. And if that very rage over loss is publicly proscribed, the melancholic effects of such a proscription can achieve suicidal proportions” (212). The only way to “survive” rage in this mutated form of melancholia is to create what Butler terms “collective institutions for grieving”; these enablethe reassembling of community, the reworking of kinship, the reweaving of sustaining relations. And insofar as they involve the publicisation and dramatisation of death, they call to be read as life-affirming rejoinders to the dire psychic consequences of a grieving process culturally thwarted and proscribed. (212-13)Butler’s reading thus aligns with Hogle’s, suggesting that it is in our careful attendance to the horrific experience of grief (however difficult) that we could navigate towards something like resolution – not a simplified narrative of working through, to be sure, but a more ethical recognition of the trauma which diverts it from its repressive impossibilities. To further the argument, it is only by transforming melancholic rage into outrage, to respond with an affect that puts shame to work, that rage will become politically effective. So, outrage is “a socialised and mediated form of rage … directed toward identifiable and bounded others in the external world” (Kahane 127-28). Melancholia and shame might then be seen to be directly opposed to one another: the former a failure of rage, the latter its socially productive incarnation.The Australian Gothic and its repetition of a “Weird Melancholy” exhibit this affective model. Ken Gelder has emphasised the historical coincidences: since Australia was colonised around the same time as the emergence of the Gothic as a genre (115), it has always been infused with what he terms a “colonial melancholia” (119). In contemporary Gothic narratives, this is presented through the repetition of the trauma of loss and injustice, so that the colonial “history of brutal violence and exploitation” (121) is played out, over and over again, desperate for resolution. Indeed, Gelder goes so far as to claim that this is the primary fuel for the Gothic as it manifests in Australian literature and film, arguing that since it is “built upon its dispossession and killings of Aboriginal people and its foundational systems of punishment and incarceration, the colonial scene … continues to shadow Australian cultural production and helps to keep the Australian Gothic very much alive” (121).That these two recent television series depict the ways in which rage and outrage appear in a primal ‘colonial scene’ which fixes the Australian Gothic within a political narrative. Both Wake in Fright and Mystery Road are television adaptations of earlier works. Wake in Fright is adapted from Kenneth Cook’s novel of the same name (1961), and its film adaptation (1971, dir. Ted Kotcheff). Mystery Road is a continuation of the film narrative of the same name (2013, dir. Ivan Sen), and its sequel, Goldstone (2016, dir. Ivan Sen). Both narratives illustrate the shift – where the films were first viewed by a high-culture audience attracted to arthouse cinema and modernist fiction – to the re-makes that are viewed in the domestic space of the television screen and/or other devices. Likewise, the television productions were not seen as single episodes, but also linked to each network’s online on-demand streaming viewers, significantly broadening the audience for both works. In this respect, these series both domesticate and democratise the Gothic. The televised series become situated publicly, recalling the broad scale popularity of the Gothic genre, what Helen Wheatley terms “the most domestic of genres on the most domestic of media” (25). In fact, Deborah Cartmell argues that “adaptation is, indeed, the art form of democracy … a ‘freeing’ of a text from the confined territory of its author and of its readers” (8; emphasis added). Likewise, André Bazin echoes this notion that the adaptation is a kind of “digest” of the original work, “a literature that has been made more accessible through cinematic adaptation” (26; emphasis added). In this way, adaptations serve to ‘democratise’ their concerns, focussing these narratives and their themes as more publically accessible, and thus provoking the potential for a broader cultural discussion. Wake in FrightWake in Fright describes the depraved long weekend of schoolteacher John Grant, who is stuck in the rural town of Bundinyabba (“The Yabba”) after he loses all of his money in an ill-advised game of “Two Up.” Modernising the concerns of the original film, in this adaptation John is further endangered by a debt to local loan sharks, and troubled by his frequent flashbacks to his lost lover. The narrative does display drug- and alcohol-induced rage in its infamous pig-shooting (originally roo-shooting) scene, as well as the cold and threatening rage of the loan shark who suspects she will not be paid, both of which are depicted as a specifically white aggression. Overall, its primary depiction of rage is directed inward, rather than outward, and in this way becomes narrowed down to emphasise a more individual, traumatic shame. That is, John’s petulant rage after his girlfriend’s rejection of his marriage proposal manifests in his determination to stolidly drink alone while she swims in the ocean. When she drowns while he is drunk and incapable to rescue her, his inaction becomes the primary source of his shame and exacerbates his self-focused, but repressed rage. The subsequent cycles of drinking (residents of The Yabba only drink beer, and plenty of it) and gambling (as he loses over and over at Two-Up) constitute a repetition of his original trauma over her drowning, and trigger the release of his repressed rage. While accompanying some locals during their drunken pig-shooting expedition, his rage finds an outlet, resulting in the death of his new acquaintance, Doc Tydon. Like John, Doc is the victim of a self-focused rage and shame at the death of his young child and the abdication of his responsibilities as the town’s doctor. Both John and Doc depict the collapse of authority and social order in the “Weird Melancholy” of the outback (Rayner 27), but this “subversion of the stereotype of capable, confident Australian masculinity” (37) and the decay of community and social structure remains static. However, the series does not push forward towards a moral outcome or a suggestion of better actions to inspire the viewer. Even his desperate suicide attempt, what he envisions as the only ‘ethical’ way out of his nightmare, ends in failure and is covered up by the local police. The narrative becomes circular: for John is returned to The Yabba every time he tries to leave, and even in the final scene he is back in Tiboonda, returned to where he started, standing at the front of his classroom. But importantly, this cycle mimics John’s cycle of unresolved shame, suggests an inability to ‘wake’ from this nightmare of repetition, with no acknowledgement of his individual history and his complicity in the traumatic events. Although John has outlived his suicide attempt, this does not validate his survival as a rebirth. Rather, John’s refusal of responsibility and the accompanying complicity of local authorities suggests the inevitability of further self-damaging rage, shame, and violence. Outback NoirBoth Wake in Fright and Mystery Road have been described as “outback noir” (Dolgopolov 12), combining characteristics of the Gothic, the Western, and film noir in their depictions of suffering and the realisation (or abdication) of justice. Greg Dolgopolov explains that while traditional “film noir explores the moral trauma of crime on its protagonists, who are often escaping personal suffering or harrowing incidents from their pasts” (12), these examples of Australian (outback) noir are primarily concerned with “ancestral trauma – that of both Indigenous and settler. Outback noir challenges official versions of events that glide over historical massacres and current injustices” (12-13).Wake in Fright’s focus on John’s personal suffering even as his crimes could become allegories for national trauma, aligns this story with traditional film noir. Mystery Road is caught up with a more collectivised form of trauma, and with the ‘colonialism’ of outback noir means this adaptation is more effective in locating self-rage and melancholia as integral to social and cultural dilemmas of contemporary Australia. Each series takes a different path to the treatment of race relations in Australia within a small and isolated rural context. Wake in Fright chooses to ignore this historical context, setting up the cycle of John’s repression of trauma as an individual fate, and he is trapped to repeat it. On the other hand, Mystery Road, just like its cinematic precursors (Mystery Road and Goldstone), deals with race as a specific theme. Mystery Road’s nod to the noir and the Western is emphasised by the character of Detective Jay Swan: “a lone gunslinger attempting to uphold law and order” (Ward 111), he swaggers around the small township in his cowboy hat, jeans, and boots, stoically searching for clues to the disappearance of two local teenagers. Since Swan is himself Aboriginal, this transforms the representation of authority and its failures depicted in Wake in Fright. While the police in Wake in Fright uphold the law only when convenient to their own goals, and further, to undertake criminal activities themselves, in Mystery Road the authority figures – Jay himself, and his counterpart, Senior Sergeant Emma James, are prominent in the community and dedicated to the pursuit of justice. It is highly significant that this sense of justice reaches beyond the present situation. Emma’s family, the Ballantynes, have been prominent landowners and farmers in the region for over one hundred years, and have always prided themselves on their benevolence towards the local Indigenous population. However, when Emma discovers that her great-grandfather was responsible for the massacre of several young Aboriginal men at the local waterhole, she is overcome by shame. In her horrified tears we see how the legacy of trauma, ever present for the Aboriginal population, is brought home to Emma herself. As the figurehead for justice in the town, Emma is determined to label the murders accurately as a “crime” which must “be answered.” In this acknowledgement and her subsequent apology to Dot, she finds some release from this ancient shame.The only Aboriginal characters in Wake in Fright are marginal to the narrative – taxi drivers who remain peripheral to the traumas within the small town, and thus remain positioned as innocent bystanders to its depravity. However, Mystery Road is careful to avoid such reductionist binaries. Just as Emma discovers the truth about her own family’s violence, Uncle Keith, the current Aboriginal patriarch, is exposed as a sexual predator. In both cases the men, leaders in the past and the present, consider themselves as ‘righteous’ in order to mask their enraged and violent behaviour. The moral issue here is more than a simplistic exposition on race, rather it demonstrates that complexity surrounds those who achieve power. When Dot ultimately ‘inherits’ responsibility for the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission this indicates that Mystery Road concludes with two female figures of authority, both looking out for the welfare of the community as a whole. Likewise, they are involved in seeking the young woman, Shevorne, who becomes the focus of abuse and grief, and her daughter. Although Jay is ultimately responsible for solving the crime at the heart of the series, Mystery Road strives to position futurity and responsibility in the hands of its female characters and their shared sense of community.In conclusion, both television adaptations of classic movies located in Australian outback noir have problematised rage within two vastly different contexts. The adaptations Wake in Fright and Mystery Road do share similar themes and concerns in their responses to past traumas and how that shapes Gothic representation of the outback in present day Australia. However, it is in their treatment of rage, shame, and violence that they diverge. Wake in Fright’s failure to convert rage beyond melancholia means that it fails to offer any hope of resolution, only an ongoing cycle of shame and violence. But rage, as a driver for injustice, can evolve into something more positive. In Mystery Road, the anger of both individuals and the community as a whole moves beyond good/bad and black/white stereotypes of outrage towards a more productive form of shame. In doing so, rage itself can elicit a new model for a more responsible contemporary Australian Gothic narrative.References Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” Film Adaptation. 1948. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2000. 19-27.Bruhm, Steven. “The Contemporary Gothic: Why We Need It.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Jerrold E. Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 259-76.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge, 1993.Cartmell, Deborah. “100+ Years of Adaptations, or, Adaptation as the Art Form of Democracy.” A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. Ed. Deborah Cartmell. Chichester: Blackwell, 2012. 1-13.Dolgopolov, Greg. “Balancing Acts: Ivan Sen’s Goldstone and ‘Outback Noir.’” Metro 190 (2016): 8-13.Gelder, Ken. “Australian Gothic.” The Routledge Companion to Gothic. Eds. Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy. London: Routledge, 2007. 115-23.Hogle, Jerrold E. “History, Trauma and the Gothic in Contemporary Western Fictions.” The Gothic World. Eds. Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend. London: Routledge, 2014. 72-81.Kahane, Claire. “The Aesthetic Politics of Rage.” States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social Change. Eds. Renée R. Curry and Terry L. Allison. New York: New York UP, 1996. 126-45.Perkins, Rachel, dir. Mystery Road. ABC, 2018.Rall, Denise N. “‘Shock and Awe’ and Memory: The Evocation(s) of Trauma in post-9/11 Artworks.” Memory and the Wars on Terror: Australian and British Perspectives. Eds. Jessica Gildersleeve and Richard Gehrmann. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 163-82.Rayner, Jonathan. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.Stenders, Kriv, dir. Wake in Fright. Roadshow Entertainment, 2017.Ward, Sarah. “Shadows of a Sunburnt Country: Mystery Road, the Western and the Conflicts of Contemporary Australia.” Screen Education 81 (2016): 110-15.Wheatley, Helen. “Haunted Houses, Hidden Rooms: Women, Domesticity and the Gothic Adaptation on Television.” Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives. Eds. Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. 149-65.

IntroductionFestivals, according to Chris Gibson and John Connell, are like “glue”, temporarily sticking together various stakeholders, economic transactions, and networks (9). Australia’s First Nations peoples see festivals as an opportunity to display cultural vitality (Henry 586), and to challenge a history which has rendered them absent (587). The 2017 Australia Council for the Arts Showcasing Creativity report indicates that performing arts by First Nations peoples are under-represented in Australia’s mainstream venues and festivals (1). Large Aboriginal cultural festivals have long thrived in Australia’s northern half, but have been under-developed in the south. Each regional happening develops a cultural landscape connected to a long and intimate relationship with the natural environment.The Far South East coast and mountainous hinterland of New South Wales is rich in pristine landscapes that ground the Yuin and Monaro Nations to Country as the Monaroo Bobberrer Gadu (Peoples of the Mountains and the Sea). This article highlights cross-sector interaction between Koori and mainstream organisations in producing the Giiyong (Guy-Yoong/Welcoming) Festival. This, the first large festival to be held within the Yuin Nation, took place on Aboriginal-owned land at Jigamy, via Eden, on 22 September 2018. Emerging regional artists joined national headline acts, most notably No Fixed Address (one of the earliest Aboriginal bands to break into the Australian mainstream music industry), and hip-hop artist Baker Boy (Danzal Baker, Young Australian of the Year 2019). The festival followed five years of sustained community preparation by South East Arts in association with Grow the Music, Twofold Aboriginal Corporation, the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council, and its Elders. We offer dual understandings of the Giiyong Festival: the viewpoints of a male Yuin Elder wedded to an Australian woman of European descent. We acknowledge, and rely upon, key information, statistics, and photographs provided by the staff of South East Arts including Andrew Gray (General Manager), Jasmin Williams (Aboriginal Creative and Cultural Engagement Officer and Giiyong Festival Project Manager), and Kate Howarth (Screen Industry Development Officer). We are also grateful to Wiradjuri woman Alison Simpson (Program Manager at Twofold Aboriginal Corporation) for valuable feedback. As community leaders from First Nations and non-First Nations backgrounds, Simpson and Williams complement each other’s talents for empowering Indigenous communities. They plan a 2020 follow-up event on the basis of the huge success of the 2018 festival.The case study is informed by our personal involvement with community. Since the general population barely comprehends the number and diversity of Australia’s Indigenous ‘nations’, the burgeoning Indigenous festival movement encourages First Nations and non-First Nations peoples alike to openly and confidently refer to the places they live in according to Indigenous names, practices, histories, and knowledge. Consequently, in the mental image of a map of the island-continent, the straight lines and names of state borders fade as the colours of the Indigenous ‘Countries’ (represented by David Horton’s wall map of 1996) come to the foreground. We reason that, in terms of ‘regionality,’ the festival’s expressions of “the agency of country” (Slater 141) differ vastly from the centre-periphery structure and logic of the Australian colony. There is no fixed centre to the mutual exchange of knowledge, culture, and experience in Aboriginal Australia. The broader implication of this article is that Indigenous cultural festivals allow First Nations peoples cultures—in moments of time—to assume precedence, that is to ‘stitch’ back together the notion of a continent made up of hundreds of countries, as against the exploitative structure of ‘hub and region’ colonial Australia.Festival Concepts and ContextsHoward Becker observed that cultural production results from an interplay between the person of the artist and a multitude of support personnel whose work is not frequently studied: “It is through this network of cooperation that the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be” (1). In assisting arts and culture throughout the Bega Valley, Eurobodalla, and Snowy Monaro, South East Arts delivers positive achievements in the Aboriginal arts and cultural sector. Their outcomes are significant in the light of the dispossession, segregation, and discrimination experienced by Aboriginal Australians. Michael Young, assisted by Indigenous authors Ellen Mundy and Debbie Mundy, recorded how Delegate Reserve residents relocating to the coast were faced with having their lives controlled by a Wallaga Lake Reserve manager or with life on the fringes of the towns in shacks (2–3). But as discovered in the records, “their retention of traditional beliefs, values and customs, reveal that the accommodation they were forced to make with the Europeans did not mean they had surrendered. The proof of this is the persistence of their belief in the value of their culture” (3–4). The goal of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation is to create an inclusive place where Aboriginal people of the Twofold Bay Region can be proud of their heritage, connect with the local economy, and create a real future for their children. When Simpson told Williams of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation’s and Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council’s dream of housing a large cultural festival at Jigamy, Williams rigorously consulted local Indigenous organisations to build a shared sense of community ownership of the event. She promoted the festival as “a rare opportunity in our region to learn about Aboriginal culture and have access to a huge program of Aboriginal musicians, dancers, visual artists, authors, academics, storytellers, cooks, poets, creative producers, and films” (McKnight).‘Uncle Ossie’ Cruse of Eden envisaged that the welcoming event would enliven the longstanding caring and sharing ethos of the Yuin-Monaro people. Uncle Ossie was instrumental in establishing Jigamy’s majestic Monaroo Bobberrer Gudu Keeping Place with the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council in 1994. Built brick by brick by Indigenous workers, it is a centre for the teaching and celebration of Aboriginal culture, and for the preservation of artefacts. It represents the local community's determination to find their own solutions for “bridging the gap” by creating education and employment opportunities. The centre is also the gateway to the Bundian Way, the first Aboriginal pathway to be listed on the NSW State Heritage Register. Festival Lead-Up EventsEden’s Indigenous students learn a revived South Coast language at Primary and Secondary School. In 2015, Uncle Ossie vitally informed their input into The Black Ducks, a hip-hop song filmed in Eden by Desert Pea Media. A notable event boosting Koori musical socialisation was a Giiyong Grow the Music spectacle performed at Jigamy on 28 October 2017. Grow the Music—co-founded by Lizzy Rutten and Emily White—specialises in mentoring Indigenous artists in remote areas using digital recording equipment. Eden Marine High School students co-directed the film Scars as part of a programme of events with South East Arts and the Giiyong Festival 2018. The Eden Place Project and Campbell Page also create links between in- and out-of-school activities. Eden’s Indigenous students thus perform confidently at NAIDOC Week celebrations and at various festivals. Preparation and PersonnelAn early decision was made to allow free entry to the Giiyong Festival in order to attract a maximum number of Indigenous families. The prospect necessitated in-kind support from Twofold Aboriginal Corporation staff. They galvanised over 100 volunteers to enhance the unique features of Jigamy, while Uncle Ossie slashed fields of bushes to prepare copious parking space. The festival site was spatially focused around two large stages dedicated to the memory of two strong supporters of cultural creativity: Aunty Doris Kirby, and Aunty Liddy Stewart (Image 1). Image 1: Uncle Ossie Cruse Welcomes Festival-Goers to Country on the Aunty Liddy Stewart Stage. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Cultural festivals are peaceful weapons in a continuing ontological political contest (Slater 144). In a panel discussion, Uncle Ossie explained and defended the Makarrata: the call for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution.Williams also contracted artists with a view to capturing the past and present achievements of Aboriginal music. Apart from her brilliant centrepiece acts No Fixed Address and Baker Boy, she attracted Pitjantjatjara singer Frank Yamma (Image 2), Yorta Yorta singer/songwriter Benny Walker, the Central Desert Docker River Band, and Jessie Lloyd’s nostalgic Mission Songs Project. These stellar acts were joined by Wallaga Lake performers Robbie Bundle, Warren Foster, and Alison Walker as well as Nathan Lygon (Eden), Chelsy Atkins (Pambula), Gabadoo (Bermagui), and Drifting Doolgahls (Nowra). Stage presentations were technologically transformed by the live broadcast of acts on large screens surrounding the platforms. Image 2: Singer-Songwriter Frank Yamma Performs at Giiyong Festival 2018. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Giiyong Music and Dance Music and dance form the staple components of Indigenous festivals: a reflection on the cultural strength of ancient ceremony. Hundreds of Yuin-Monaro people once attended great corroborees on Mumbulla Mountain (Horton 1235), and oral history recorded by Janet Mathews evidences ceremonies at Fishy Flats, Eden, in the 1850s. Today’s highly regarded community musicians and dancers perform the social arrangements of direct communication, sometimes including their children on stage as apprentices. But artists are still negotiating the power structures through which they experience belonging and detachment in the representation of their musical identity.Youth gain positive identities from participating alongside national headline acts—a form of learning that propels talented individuals into performing careers. The One Mob Dreaming Choir of Koori students from three local schools were a popular feature (Image 3), as were Eden Marine student soloists Nikai Stewart, and Nikea Brooks. Grow the Music in particular has enabled these youngsters to exhibit the roots of their culture in a deep and touching way that contributes to their life-long learning and development. Image 3: The One Mob Dreaming Choir, Directed by Corinne Gibbons (L) and Chelsy Atkins (R). Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts. Brydie-Leigh Bartleet describes how discourses of pride emerge when Indigenous Australian youth participate in hip-hop. At the Giiyong Festival the relationship between musical expression, cultural representation, and political positioning shone through the songs of Baker Boy and Gabadoo (Image 4). Channelling emotions into song, they led young audiences to engage with contemporary themes of Indigeneity. The drones launched above the carpark established a numerical figure close on 6,000 attendees, a third of whom were Indigenous. Extra teenagers arrived in time for Baker Boy’s evening performance (Williams), revealing the typical youthful audience composition associated with the hip-hop craze (Image 5).Image 4: Bermagui Resident Gabadoo Performs Hip-Hop at the Giiyong Festival. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Image 5: A Youthful Audience Enjoys Baker Boy’s Giiyong Festival Performance. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Wallaga Lake’s traditional Gulaga Dancers were joined by Bermagui’s Gadhu Dancers, Eden’s Duurunu Miru Dancers, and Narooma’s Djaadjawan Dancers. Sharon Mason founded Djaadjawan Dancers in 2015. Their cultural practice connects to the environment and Mingagia (Mother Earth). At their festival tent, dancers explained how they gather natural resources from Walbanja Country to hand-make traditional dance outfits, accessories, and craft. They collect nuts, seeds, and bark from the bush, body paint from ancient ochre pits, shells from beaches, and bird feathers from fresh roadkill. Duurunu Miru dancer/didjeriduist Nathan Lygon elaborates on the functions of the Far South East Coast dance performance tradition:Dance provides us with a platform, an opportunity to share our stories, our culture, and our way of being. It demonstrates a beautiful positivity—a feeling of connection, celebration, and inclusion. The community needs it. And our young people need a ‘space’ in which they can grow into the knowledge and practices of their culture. The festival also helped the wider community to learn more about these dimensions. (n.p.)While music and dance were at the heart of the festival, other traditional skills were included, for example the exhibitions mounted inside the Keeping Place featured a large number of visual artists. Traditional bush cooking took place near Lake Pambula, and yarn-ups, poetry, and readings were featured throughout the day. Cultural demonstrations in the Bunaan Ring (the Yuin name for a corroboree circle) included ‘Gum Leaf Playing.’ Robin Ryan explained how the Yuin’s use of cultural elements to entertain settlers (Cameron 79) led to the formation of the Wallaga Lake Gum Leaf Band. As the local custodian of this unique musical practice, Uncle Ossie performed items and conducted a workshop for numerous adults and children. Festival Feedback and Future PlanningThe Giiyong Festival gained huge Indigenous cultural capital. Feedback gleaned from artists, sponsors, supporters, volunteers, and audiences reflected on how—from the moment the day began—the spirit of so many performers and consumers gathered in one place took over. The festival’s success depended on its reception, for as Myers suggests: “It is the audience who create the response to performance and if the right chemistry is achieved the performers react and excel in their presentation” (59). The Bega District News, of 24 September 2018, described the “incredibly beautiful event” (n.p.), while Simpson enthused to the authors:I believe that the amount of people who came through the gates to attend the Giiyong Festival was a testament to the wider need and want for Aboriginal culture. Having almost double the population of Eden attend also highlights that this event was long overdue. (n.p.)Williams reported that the whole festival was “a giant exercise in the breaking down of walls. Some signed contracts for the first time, and all met their contracts professionally. National artists Baker Boy and No Fixed Address now keep in touch with us regularly” (Williams). Williams also expressed her delight that local artists are performing further afield this year, and that an awareness, recognition, and economic impact has been created for Jigamy, the Giiyong Festival, and Eden respectively:We believe that not only celebrating, but elevating these artists and Aboriginal culture, is one of the most important things South East Arts can do for the overall arts sector in the region. This work benefits artists, the economy and cultural tourism of the region. Most importantly it feeds our collective spirit, educates us, and creates a much richer place to live. (Giiyong Festival Report 1)Howarth received 150 responses to her post-event survey. All respondents felt welcome, included, and willing to attend another festival. One commented, “not even one piece of rubbish on the ground.” Vanessa Milton, ABC Open Producer for South East NSW, wrote: “Down to the tiniest detail it was so obvious that you understood the community, the audience, the performers and how to bring everyone together. What a coup to pull off this event, and what a gift to our region” (Giiyong Festival Report 4).The total running cost for the event was $257,533, including $209,606 in government grants from local, state, and federal agencies. Major donor Create NSW Regional Partnerships funded over $100,000, and State Aboriginal Affairs gave $6,000. Key corporate sponsors included Bendigo Bank, Snowy Hydro and Waterway Constructions, Local Land Services Bega, and the Eden Fisherman’s Club. Funding covered artists’ fees, staging, the hiring of toilets, and multiple generators, including delivery costs. South East Arts were satisfied with the funding amount: each time a new donation arrived they were able to invite more performers (Giiyong Festival Report 2; Gray; Williams). South East Arts now need to prove they have the leadership capacity, financial self-sufficiency, and material resources to produce another festival. They are planning 2020 will be similar to 2018, provided Twofold Aboriginal Corporation can provide extra support. Since South East Arts exists to service a wider area of NSW, they envisage that by 2024, they would hand over the festival to Twofold Aboriginal Corporation (Gray; Williams). Forthcoming festivals will not rotate around other venues because the Giiyong concept was developed Indigenously at Jigamy, and “Jigamy has the vibe” (Williams). Uncle Ossie insists that the Yuin-Monaro feel comfortable being connected to Country that once had a traditional campsite on the east side. Evaluation and ConclusionAlthough ostensibly intended for entertainment, large Aboriginal festivals significantly benefit the educational, political, and socio-economic landscape of contemporary Indigenous life. The cultural outpourings and dissemination of knowledges at the 2018 Giiyong Festival testified to the resilience of the Yuin-Monaro people. In contributing to the processes of Reconciliation and Recognition, the event privileged the performing arts as a peaceful—yet powerful truth-telling means—for dealing with the state. Performers representing the cultures of far-flung ancestral lands contributed to the reimagining of a First Nations people’s map representing hundreds of 'Countries.’It would be beneficial for the Far South East region to perpetuate the Giiyong Festival. It energised all those involved. But it took years of preparation and a vast network of cooperating people to create the feeling which made the 2018 festival unique. Uncle Ossie now sees aspects of the old sharing culture of his people springing back to life to mould the quality of life for families. Furthermore, the popular arts cultures are enhancing the quality of life for Eden youth. As the cross-sector efforts of stakeholders and volunteers so amply proved, a family-friendly, drug and alcohol-free event of the magnitude of the Giiyong Festival injects new growth into an Aboriginal arts industry designed for the future creative landscape of the whole South East region. AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Andrew Gray and Jasmin Williams for supplying a copy of the 2018 Giiyong Festival Report. We appreciated prompt responses to queries from Jasmin Williams, and from our editor Rachel Franks. We are humbly indebted to our two reviewers for their expert direction.ReferencesAustralian Government. Showcasing Creativity: Programming and Presenting First Nations Performing Arts. Australia Council for the Arts Report, 8 Mar. 2017. 20 May 2019 <https://tnn.org.au/2017/03/showcasing-creativity-programming-and-presenting-first-nations-performing-arts-australia-council/>.Bartleet, Brydie-Leigh. “‘Pride in Self, Pride in Community, Pride in Culture’: The Role of Stylin’ Up in Fostering Indigenous Community and Identity.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. New York: Routledge, 2014.Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008.Brown, Bill. “The Monaroo Bubberer [Bobberer] Gudu Keeping Place: A Symbol of Aboriginal Self-determination.” ABC South East NSW, 9 Jul. 2015. 20 May 2019 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/07/09/4270480.htm>.Cameron, Stuart. "An Investigation of the History of the Aborigines of the Far South Coast of NSW in the 19th Century." PhD Thesis. Canberra: Australian National U, 1987. Desert Pea Media. The Black Ducks “People of the Mountains and the Sea.” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbJNHAdbkg>.“Festival Fanfare.” Eden Magnet 28 June 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <edenmagnet.com.au>.Gibson, Chris, and John Connell. Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.Gray, Andrew. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Henry, Rosita. “Festivals.” The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Eds. Syvia Kleinert and Margot Neale. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 586–87.Horton, David R. “Yuin.” Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Ed. David R. Horton. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994.———. Aboriginal Australia Wall Map Compiled by David Horton. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996.Lygon, Nathan. Personal Communication, 20 May 2019.Mathews, Janet. Albert Thomas Mentions the Leaf Bands That Used to Play in the Old Days. Cassette recorded at Wreck Bay, NSW on 9 July 1964 for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (AIATSIS). LAA1013. McKnight, Albert. “Giiyong Festival the First of Its Kind in Yuin Nation.” Bega District News 17 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5649214/giiyong-festival-the-first-of-its-kind-in-yuin-nation/?cs=7523#slide=2>. ———. “Giiyong Festival Celebrates Diverse, Enduring Cultures.” Bega District News 24 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5662590/giiyong-festival-celebrates-diverse-enduring-cultures-photos-videos/>.Myers, Doug. “The Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts.” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (1989): 59–62.Simpson, Alison. Personal Communication, 9 Apr. 2019.Slater, Lisa. “Sovereign Bodies: Australian Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Flourishing Lifeworlds.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. London: Ashgate, 2014. 131–46.South East Arts. "Giiyong Festival Report." Bega: South East Arts, 2018.———. Giiyong Grow the Music. Poster for Event Produced on Saturday, 28 Oct. 2017. Bega: South East Arts, 2017.Williams, Jasmin. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Young, Michael, with Ellen, and Debbie Mundy. The Aboriginal People of the Monaro: A Documentary History. Sydney: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2000.

Introduction Sydney, Australia has experienced a sustained period of building and infrastructure development. There are hundreds of kilometres of bitumen and rail currently being laid. There are significant building projects in large central sites such as Darling Harbour and Barangaroo on the famous Harbour foreshore. The period of development has offered an unprecedented opportunity for the New South Wales (NSW) State Government to arrest the attention of the Sydney public through kilometres of construction hoarding. This opportunity has not been missed, with the public display of a new logo, complete with pithy slogan, on and around all manner of government projects and activities since September 2015. NSW is “making it happen” according to the logo being displayed. At first glance it is a proactive, simple and concise slogan that, according to the NSW Government brand guidelines, has a wide remit to be used for projects that relate to construction, economic growth, improved services, and major events. However, when viewed through the lens of public, expert, and media research into Sydney infrastructure development it can also be read as a message derived from reactive politics. This paper elucidates turning points in the history of the last decade of infrastructure building in NSW through qualitative primary research into media, public, and practice led discourse. Ultimately, through the prism of Colin Hay’s investigation into political disengagement, I question whether the current build-at-any-cost mentality and its mantra “making it happen” is in the long-term interest of the NSW constituency or the short-term interest of a political party or whether, more broadly, it reflects a crisis of identity for today’s political class. The Non-Launch of the New Logo Image 1: An ABC Sydney Tweet. Image credit: ABC Sydney. There is scant evidence of a specific launch of the logo. Michael Koziol states that to call it an unveiling, “might be a misnomer, given the stealth with which the design has started to make appearances on banners, barriers [see: Image 1, above] and briefing papers” (online). The logo has a wide range of applications. The NSW Government brand guidelines specify that the logo be used “on all projects, programs and announcements that focus on economic growth and confidence in investing in NSW” as well as “infrastructure for the future and smarter services” (30). The section of the guidelines relating to the “making it happen” logo begins with a full-colour, full-page photograph of the Barangaroo building development on Sydney Harbour—complete with nine towering cranes clearly visible across the project/page. The guidelines specifically mention infrastructure, housing projects, and major developments upfront in the section denoted to appropriate logo applications (31). This is a logo that the government clearly intends to use around its major projects to highlight the amount of building currently underway in NSW.In the first week of the logo’s release journalist Elle Hunt asks an unnamed government spokesperson for a definition of “it” in “making it happen.” The spokesperson states, “just a buzz around the state in terms of economic growth and infrastructure […] the premier [the now retired Mike Baird] has used the phrase several times this week in media conferences and it feels like we are making it happen.” Words like “buzz,” “feels like” and the ubiquitous “it” echo the infamous courtroom scene summation of Dennis Denuto from the 1997 Australian film The Castle that have deeply penetrated the Australian psyche and lexicon. Denuto (played by actor Tiriel Mora) is acting as a solicitor for Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) in fighting the compulsory acquisition of the Kerrigan family property. In concluding an address to the court, Denuto states, “In summing up, it’s the constitution, it’s Mabo, it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the Vibe and, no that’s it, it’s the vibe. I rest my case.” All fun and irony (the reason for the house acquisition that inspired Denuto’s now famous speech was an airport infrastructure expansion project) aside, we can assume from the brand guidelines as well as the Hunt article that the intended meaning of “making it happen” is fluid and diffuse rather than fixed and specific. With this article I question why the government would choose to express this diffuse message to the public?Purpose, Scope, Method and ResearchTo explore this question I intertwine empirical research with a close critique of Colin Hay’s thesis on the problematisation of political decision-making—specifically the proliferation of certain tenets of public choice theory. My empirical research is a study of news media, public, and expert discourse and its impact on the success or otherwise of major rail infrastructure projects in Sydney. One case study project, initially announced as the North West Rail Line (NWR) and recently rebadged as the Sydney Metro Northwest (see: http://www.sydneymetro.info/northwest/project-overview), is at the forefront of the infrastructure building that the government is looking to highlight with “making it happen.” A comparison case study is the failed Sydney City Metro (SCM) project that preceded the NWR as the major Sydney rail infrastructure endeavour. I have written in greater detail on the scope of this research elsewhere (see: Richardson, “Curatorial”; “Upheaval”; “Hinterland”). In short, my empirical secondary research involved a study of print news media from 2010 to 2016 spanning Sydney’s two daily papers the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and the Daily Telegraph (TELE). My qualitative research was conducted in 2013. The public qualitative research consisted of a survey, interviews, and focus groups involving 149 participants from across Sydney. The primary expert research consisted of 30 qualitative interviews with experts from politics, the news media and communications practice, as well as project delivery professions such as architecture and planning, project management, engineering, project finance and legal. Respondents were drawn from both the public and private sectors. My analysis of this research is undertaken in a manner similar to what Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke term a “thematic discourse analysis” (81). The intention is to examine “the ways in which events, realities, meanings and experiences and so on are the effects of a range of discourses operating within society.” A “theme” captures “something important about the data in relation to the research question,” and represents, “some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set.” Thematic analysis therefore, “involves the searching across a data set—be that a number of interviews or focus groups, or a range of texts—to find repeated patterns of meaning” (80-86).Governing Sydney: A Legacy of Inability, Broken Promises, and Failure The SCM was abandoned in February 2010. The project’s abandonment had long been foreshadowed in the news media (Anonymous, Future). In the days preceding and following the announcement, news media articles focussed almost exclusively on the ineptitude and wastefulness of a government that would again fail to deliver transport it had promised and invested in (Cratchley; Teutsch & Benns; Anonymous, Taxation). Immediately following the decision, the peak industry body, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, asserted, “this decision shreds the credibility of the government in delivering projects and will likely make it much harder to attract investment and skills to deliver new infrastructure” (Anonymous, Taxation). The reported ineptitude of the then Labor Government of NSW and the industry fallout surrounding the decision were clearly established as the main news media angles. My print media research found coverage to be overwhelmingly and consistently negative. 70% of the articles studied were negatively inclined. Furthermore, approximately one-quarter featured statements pertaining directly to government paralysis and inability to deliver infrastructure.My public, expert, and media research revealed a number of “repeated patterns of meaning,” which Braun and Clarke describe as themes (86). There are three themes that are particularly pertinent to my investigation here. To describe the first theme I have used the statement, an inability of government to successfully deliver projects. The theme is closely tied to the two other interrelated themes—for one I use the statement, a legacy of failure to implement projects successfully—for the other I use a cycle of broken promises to describe the mounting number of announcements on projects that government then fails to deliver. Some of the more relevant comments, on this matter, collected throughout my research appear below.A former Sydney radio announcer, now a major project community consultation advisor, asserts that a “legacy issue” exists with regards to the poor performance of government over time. Through the SCM failure, which she asserts was “a perfectly sound idea,” the NSW Government came to represent “lost opportunities” resulting in a “massive erosion of public trust.” This sentiment was broadly mirrored across the public and industry expert research I conducted. For example, a public respondent states, “repeated public transport failures through the past 20 years has lowered my belief in future projects being successful.” And, a former director general of NSW planning asserts that because of the repeated project failures culminating in the demise of the SCM, “everybody is now so cynical”.Today under the “making it happen” banner, the major Sydney rail transport project investment is to the northwest of Sydney. There was a change of government in 2011 and the NWR was a key election promise for the incoming Premier at the time, Barry O’Farrell. The NWR project, (now renamed Sydney Metro Northwest as well as extended with new stages through the city to Sydney’s Southwest) remains ongoing and in many respects it appears that Sydney may have turned a corner with major infrastructure construction finally underway. Paradoxically though, the NWR project received far less support than the SCM from the majority of the 30 experts I interviewed. The most common theme from expert respondents (including a number working on the project) is that it is not the most urgent transport priority for Sydney but was instead a political decision. As a communications manager for a large Australian infrastructure provider states: “The NWR was an election promise, it wasn’t a decision based on whether the public wanted that rail link or not”. And, the aforementioned former director general of NSW planning mirrors this sentiment when she contends that the NWR is not a priority and “totally political”.My research findings strongly indicate that the failure of the SCM is in fact a vitally important catalyst for the implementation of the NWR. In other words, I assert that the formulation of the NWR has been influenced by the dominant themes that portray the abilities of government in a negative light—themes strengthened and amplified due to the failure of the SCM. Therefore, I assert that the NWR symbolises a desperate government determined to reverse these themes even if it means adopting a build at any cost mentality. As a respondent who specialises in infrastructure finance for one of Australia’s largest banks, states: “I think in politics there are certain promises that people attempt to keep and I think Barry O’Farrell has made it very clear that he is going to make sure those [NWR] tunnel boring machines are on the ground. So that’s going to happen rain, hail or shine”. Hating Politics My empirical research clearly elucidates the three themes I term an inability of government to successfully deliver projects, a legacy of failure and a cycle of broken promises. These intertwining themes are firmly embedded and strengthening. They also portray government in a negative light. I assert that the NWR, as a determined attempt to reverse these themes (irrespective of the cost), indicates a government at best reactive in its decision making and at worst desperate to reverse public and media perception.The negativity facing the NSW government seems extreme. However, in the context of Colin Hay’s work, the situation is perhaps more inevitable than surprising. In Why We Hate Politics (2007), Hay charts the history of public disengagement with western politics. He does this largely by arguing the considerable influence of problematic key tenets of public choice theory that permeate the discourse of most western democracies, including Australia. They are tenets that normalise depoliticisation and cast a lengthy shadow over the behaviour and motivations of politicians and bureaucrats. Public choice can be defined as the economic study of nonmarket decision-making, or, simply the application of economics to political science. The basic behavioral postulate of public choice, as for economics, is that man is an egoistic, rational, utility maximizer. (Mueller 395)Originating from rational choice theory generally and spurred by Kenneth Arrow’s investigations into rational choice and social policy more specifically, the basic premise of public choice is a privileging of individual values above rational collective choice in social policy development (Arrow; Dunleavy; Hauptman; Mueller). Hay asserts that public choice evolved as a theory throughout the 1960s and 70s in order to conceptualise a more market-orientated alternative to the influential theory of welfare economics. Both were formulated in response to a need for intervention and regulation of markets to correct their “natural tendency to failure” (95). In many ways public choice was a reaction to the “idealized depiction of the state” that welfare economics was seen to be propagating. Instead a “more sanguine and realistic view of the […] imperfect state, it was argued, would lead to a rather safer set of inferences about the need for state intervention” (96). Hay asserts that in effect by challenging the motivations of elected officials and public servants, public choice theory “assumed the worst”, branding all parties self-interested and declaring the state inefficient and ineffective in the delivery of public goods (96). Although, as Hay admits, public choice advocates perhaps provided “a healthy cynicism about both the motivations and the capabilities of politicians and public officials,” the theory was overly simplistic, overstated and unproven. Furthermore, when market woes became real rather than theoretical with crippling stagflation in the 1970s, public choice readily identify “villains” at the heart of the problem and the media and public leapt on it (Hay 109). An academic theory was thrust into mainstream discourse. Two results key to the investigations of this paper were 1) a perception of politics “synonymous with the blind pursuit of individual self interest” and 2) the demystification of the “public service ethos” (Hay 108-12). Hay concludes that instead the long-term result has been a conception of politicians and the bureaucracy that is “increasingly synonymous with duplicity, greed, corruption, interference and inefficiency” (160).Deciphering “Making It Happen” More than three decades on, echoes of public choice theory abound in my empirical research into NSW infrastructure building. In particular they are clearly evident in the three themes I term an inability of government to successfully deliver projects, a legacy of failure and a cycle of broken promises. Within this context, what then can we decipher from the pithy, ubiquitous slogan on a government logo? Of course, in one sense “making it happen” could be interpreted as a further attempt to reverse these three themes. The brand guidelines provide the following description of the logo: “the tone is confident, progressive, friendly, trustworthy, active, consistent, getting on with the job, achieving deadlines—“making it happen” (30). Indeed, this description seems the antithesis of perceptions of government identified in my primary research as well as the dogma of public choice theory. There is certainly expert evidence that one of the centrepieces of the government’s push to demonstrate that it is “making it happen”, the NWR, is a flawed project that represents a political decision. Therefore, it is hard not to be cynical and consider the government self-interested and shortsighted in its approach to building and development. If we were to adopt this view then it would be tempting to dismiss the new logo as political, reactive, and entirely self-serving. Further, with the worrying evidence of a ‘build at any cost’ mentality that may lead to wasted taxpayer funds and developments that future generations may judge harshly. As the principal of an national architectural practice states:politicians feel they have to get something done and getting something done is more important than the quality of what might be done because producing something of quality takes time […] it needs to have the support of a lot of people—it needs to be well thought through […] if you want to leap into some trite solution for something just to get something done, at the end of the day you’ll probably end up with something that doesn’t suit the taxpayers very well at all but that’s just the way politics is.In this context, the logo and its mantra could come to represent irreparable long-term damage to Sydney. That said, what if the cynics (this author included) tried to silence the public choice rhetoric that has become so ingrained? What if we reflect for a moment on the effects of our criticism – namely, the further perpetuation and deeper embedding of the cycle of broken promises, the legacy of failure and ineptitude? As Hay states, “if we look hard enough, we are likely to find plenty of behaviour consistent with such pessimistic assumptions. Moreover, the more we look the more we will reinforce that increasingly intuitive tendency” (160). What if we instead consider that by continuing to adopt the mantra of a political cynic, we are in effect perpetuating an overly simplistic, unsubstantiated theory that has cleverly affected us so profoundly? When confronted by the hundreds of kilometres of construction hoarding across Sydney, I am struck by the flippancy of “making it happen.” The vast expanse of hoarding itself symbolises that things are evidently “happening.” However, my research suggests these things could be other things with potential to deliver better public benefits. There is a conundrum here though—publicly expressing pessimism weakens further the utility of politicians and the bureaucracy and exacerbates the problems. Such is the self-fulfilling nature of public choice. ConclusionHay argues that rather than expecting politics and politicians to change, it is our expectations of what government can achieve that we need to modify. Hay asserts that although there is overwhelming evidence that we hate politics more now than at any stage in the past, he does not believe that, “today’s breed of politicians are any more sinful than their predecessors.” Instead he contends that it is more likely that “we have simply got into the habit of viewing them, and their conduct, in such terms” (160). The ramifications of such thinking ultimately, according to Hay, means a breakdown in “trust” that greatly hampers the “co-operation,” so important to politics (161). He implores us to remember “that politics can be more than the pursuit of individual utility, and that the depiction of politics in such terms is both a distortion and a denial of the capacity for public deliberation and the provision of collective goods” (162). What then if we give the NSW Government the benefit of the doubt and believe that the current building boom (including the decision to build the NWR) was not entirely self-serving but a line drawn in the sand with the determination to tackle a problem that is far greater than just that of Sydney’s transport or any other single policy or project problem—the ongoing issue of the spiralling reputation and identity of government decision-makers and perhaps even democracy generally as public choice ideals proliferate in western democracies like that of Australia’s most populous state. As a partner in a national architectural and planning practice states: I think in NSW in particular there has been such an under investment in infrastructure and so few of the promises have been kept […]. Who cares if NWR is right or not? If they actually build it they’ll be the first government in 25 years to do anything.ReferencesABC Sydney. “Confirmed. This is the new logo and phrase for #NSW getting its first outing. What do you think of it?” Twitter. 1 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <https://twitter.com/abcsydney/status/638909482697777152>.Arrow, Kenneth, J. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley, 1951.Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2006): 77-101. The Castle. Dir. Rob Sitch. Working Dog, 1997.Cratchley, Drew. “Builders Want Compo If Sydney Metro Axed.” Sydney Morning Herald 12 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/builders-want-compo-if-sydney-metro-axed-20100212-nwn2.html>.Dunleavy, Patrick. Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Hauptmann, Emily. Putting Choice before Democracy: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory. Albany, New York: State U of New York P, 1996.Hay, Colin. Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.Hunt, Elle. “New South Wales’ New Logo and Slogan Slips By Unnoticed – Almost.” The Guardian Australian Edition 10 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/blog/2015/sep/10/new-south-wales-new-logo-and-slogan-slips-by-unnoticed-almost>.Koziol, Michael. “‘Making It Happen’: NSW Gets a New Logo. Make Sure You Don’t Breach Its Publishing Guidelines.” Sydney Morning Herald 11 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/making-it-happen-nsw-gets-a-new-logo-make-sure-you-dont-breach-its-publishing-guidelines-20150911-gjk6z0.html>.Mueller, Dennis C. “Public Choice: A Survey.” Journal of Economic Literature 14 (1976): 395-433.“The NSW Government Branding Style Guide.” Sydney: NSW Government, 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <http://www.advertising.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/downloads/page/nsw_government_branding_guide.pdf>.Perry, Jenny. “Future of Sydney Metro Remains Uncertain.” Rail Express 3 Feb. 2010. 25 Apr. 2017 <https://www.railexpress.com.au/future-of-sydney-metro-remains-uncertain/>.Richardson, Nicholas. “Political Upheaval in Australia: Media, Foucault and Shocking Policy.” ANZCA Conference Proceedings 2015, eds. D. Paterno, M. Bourk, and D. Matheson.———. “A Curatorial Turn in Policy Development? Managing the Changing Nature of Policymaking Subject to Mediatisation” M/C Journal 18.4 (2015).———. “The Hinterland of Power: Rethinking Mediatised Messy Policy.” PhD Thesis. University of Western Sydney, 2015.“Taxpayers Will Compensate Axed Metro Losers: Keneally.” Sydney Morning Herald 21 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/taxpayers-will-compensate-axed-metro-losers-keneally-20100221-on6h.html>. Teutsch, Danielle, and Matthew Benns. “Call for Inquiry over $500m Poured into Doomed Metro.” Sydney Morning Herald 21 Mar. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/call-for-inquiry-over-500m-poured-into-doomed-Metro-20100320-qn7b.html>.“Train Ready to Leave: Will Politicians Get on Board?” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/train-ready-to-leave-will-politicians-get-on-board-20100212-nxfk.html>.

Seose säilitamine päritolumaa ja -kultuuriga on diasporaaühiskondadele üldomane tunnusjoon, kuid eri etnilise ja poliitilise taustaga diasporaad realiseerivad seda erinevalt. Võõrsil elavate eestlaste kokkukuuluvustunnet on aidanud süvendada kultuurifestivalid. Artikkel analüüsib festivaliformaati, mida nimetatakse eesti päevadeks. Fookuses on 1983. aastal Göteborgis Estivali nimemärgi all toimunud eesti päevade idee ja selle teostamisega seotud probleemid. Sündmus oli eriline, kuna esmakordselt pärast Teise maailmasõda püüti festivali raames kokku tuua kodu- ja eksiileestlasi. Uurimus põhineb Hain Rebase poolt Eesti Kultuuriloolisele Arhiivile annetatud dokumentidel ning ajakirjandusel. Maintaining of relations with the country of origin is generally characteristic to diaspora societies. However, diasporas of different ethnic and political backgrounds may carry these relations out in different ways.Estonians who live outside Estonia have a long-standing tradition of organising cultural festivals—this ensures the cultural continuity for different diaspora generations and unites new immigrants with the exiles from WWII. My article gives a short overview of such festivals, which are called Estonian Days, focussing on the idea and organisational problems of the Estonian Days held in Gothenburg in 1983 under the title of Estival. This was a special event as the organisers attempted, for the first time after WWII, to bring together the Estonians from the homeland and from the diaspora. My research is based on the collection of Hain Rebas’ materials held at the Estonian Cultural History Archive and on the materials published in the press.The Estonian Days have a long history. They were first held on the West Coast of the USA in 1953, then in Australia in 1954. In Canada, the tradition was launched in 1957 and in Sweden, in 1968. Modelled on the regional festivals, the global format was soon created in North America—the Worldwide Estonian Days were held in Toronto in 1972; later, the global festival was called Esto. The traditions of both the regional Estonian Days and the Estos are still alive and now, they draw together the diaspora and resident Estonians.Prior to Estonia’s regaining of independence, the Estonian Days were a cultural and political event of the Estonian diaspora society and both of these aspects were of equal importance. The program of Estonian Days contains micro song festivals, sports competitions, art exhibitions, literary events as well as discussion evenings and conferences on political themes. A manifestation was held in the public city space where well-known politicians gave speeches demanding the recognition of the Estonians’ right for self-determination and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Estonia.At the Estonian Days in Sweden in 1968, the discussion about communicating on the institutional level with the Estonians in the homeland became heated, opinions fell to both pro and contra. Organisers of Estival ‘83 decided to take a step forward from the discussions and to invite the Mixed Choir of the Estonian Radio Broadcasting to participate in the festival. Estonian choral singing tradition was a highly appreciated component of national culture both at home and in exile. The organisers of Estival saw choral singing as a potential for uniting all the Estonians. At a meeting of exile Estonian organisations, the chairman of the Estival board Hain Rebas explained that the Estonians in Sweden should manifest national solidarity with the Estonians in the home country, who make up 90% of all the Estonians. Inviting of an Estonian choir to the Estival should have a positive effect on the identity of all Estonians.The organisers wished to have the former president of the USA, Jimmy Carter, as the keynote speaker at the political manifestation, and in case if he refused to come, there should be some other spokesman of democratic values (e.g., the member of the European Parliament Otto von Habsburg, the Chief Secretary of the Amnesty International Thomas Hammerberg or the Prime Minister of Sweden Olaf Palme).The organisers of the Estival planned to have at one and the same event a singing choir from Soviet Estonia and a top politician representing some democratic state. If this plan had been realised, it would have meant the public opposition of two different ideologies. In archival documents and print media, it emerged that this idea caused criticism and controversy in the exile society. Some exile politicians were sure that the festival would cause a scandal. Despite criticism, the organisers sent invitations to both the politicians and the mixed choir of Estonian Radio. None of the politicians was able to come to the Estival for different reasons. However, several of them recognised the cultural achievements and political aspirations of the exile Estonians and wished them success for the future. The mixed choir of Estonian Radio also did not arrive at the festival, but they did not clarify the reasons that had made them turn down the invitation.The Estonian State Academic Male Choir (RAM) was, in 1967, the first Estonian choir to visit Sweden after WWII. The exile society was not engaged in organising the RAM’s concerts but according to newspapers, they made up a large part of the audience. The concerts took place under the supervision of the Union for Developing Cultural Relations with Estonians Abroad (VEKSA, active from 1960–1991) in the framework of the Swedish and Soviet Union’s joint project. Cultural communication of the Soviet Estonia with the Estonians abroad was allowed only through this organisation. Performance of the mixed choir of Estonian Radio in the way as the organisers of the Estival ‘83 had planned would have created an entirely new situation in the cultural communication. It would have meant the establishing of direct contacts between the exile society and the Soviet Estonian choir (the organisers did not contact VEKSA). The real-life political situation actually ruled the plan out already at the very beginning. If we look at it from the side of Soviet Estonia, it was clear that no musician could tour abroad without the support of VEKSA. If we look at it from the viewpoint of the exile society, it was known that a number of influential exile figures did not favour the development of relations on the institutional level with the occupied homeland because it could indicate the political recognition of the occupation. The mixed choir of Estonian Radio, which belonged to the state broadcasting company and was financed by the state, could be treated as an institution. Thus, the plans of the organisers of the Estival faced all at once a number of problems which could not be solved in the political context of the early 1980s.A breakthrough in the direct cultural communication between the resident and exile Estonians occurred at the Worldwide Estonian Days in Melbourne in 1988 where 150 people from Estonia participated in the festival. The RAM Boys’ Choir was among the participants. The Australian Estonian newspapers wrote about the lessening of the gulf between the two halves and stressed the task of the Estonians of the Free World of supporting cultural communication and the striving for freedom of the Estonians in the homeland.The importance of the Estival ‘83 in the long process of uniting the Estonians of the diaspora and the homeland has been overshadowed by Esto ‘88. Despite the attempts at achieving a more global dimension through the political manifestation and at strengthening the Estonians’ feeling of unity through choir music, Estival still remained a regional event of the Estonians in Sweden. However, both of these festivals clearly demonstrate that, first, culture and politics are closely intertwined and second, the exile society purposefully applied the symbiosis of culture and politics in the restoration of such kind of Estonia with which the Estonians all over the world would be able to identify without any conflicts.

In this article I discuss a story told by the South Australian Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal elder, Aunty Hilda Wilson (nee Varcoe), about the time when, at not quite sixteen, she was sent from the Point Pearce Aboriginal Station to work in the Adelaide Hills, some 500 kilometres away, as a housekeeper for “one of Adelaide’s leading doctors”. Her secondment was part of a widespread practice in early and mid-twentieth century Australia of placing young Aboriginal women “of marriageable age” from missions and government reserves into domestic service. Consciously deploying Indigenous storytelling practices as pedagogy, Hilda Wilson recounted this episode in a number of distinct ways during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Across these iterations, each building on the other, she exhibited a personal resilience in her subjectivity, embedded in Indigenous knowledge systems of relationality, kin and work, which informed her agency and determination in a challenging situation in which she was both caring for a white socially-privileged family of five, while simultaneously grappling with the injustices of a state system of segregated indentured labour. Kirmayer and colleagues propose that “notions of resilience emerging from developmental psychology and psychiatry in recent years address the distinctive cultures, geographic and social settings, and histories of adversity of indigenous peoples”. Resilience is understood here as an ability to actively engage with traumatic change, involving the capacity to absorb stress and to transform in order to cope with it (Luthar et al.). Further to this, in an Indigenous context, Marion Kickett has found the capacity for resilience to be supported by three key factors: family connections, culture and belonging as well as notions of identity and history. In exploring the layers of this autobiographical story, I employ this extended psychological notion of resilience in both a domestic ambit as well as the broader social context for Indigenous people surviving a system of external domination. Additionally I consider the resilience Aunty Hilda demonstrates at a pivotal interlude between girlhood and womanhood within the trajectory of her overall long and productive life, and within an intergenerational history of resistance and accommodation. What is especially important about her storytelling is its refusal to be contained by the imaginary of the settler nation and its generic Aboriginal-female subject. She refuses victimhood while at the same time illuminating the mechanisms of injustice, hinting also at possibilities for alternative and more equitable relationships of family and work across cultural divides. Considered through this prism, resilience is, I suggest, also a quality firmly connected to ideas of Aboriginal cultural-sovereignty and standpoint and to, what Victoria Grieves has identified as, the Aboriginal knowledge value of sharing (25, 28, 45). Storytelling as Pedagogy The story I discuss was verbally recounted in a manner that Westphalen describes as “a continuation of Dreaming Stories”, functioning to educate and connect people and country (13-14). As MacGill et al. note, “the critical and transformative aspects of decolonising pedagogies emerge from storytelling and involve the gift of narrative and the enactment of reciprocity that occurs between the listener and the storyteller.” Hilda told me that as a child she was taught not to ask questions when listening to the stories of an Elder, and her own children were raised in this manner. Hilda's oldest daughter described this as a process involving patience, intrigue and surprise (Elva Wanganeen). Narratives unfold through nuance and repetition in a complexity of layers that can generate multiple levels of meaning over time. Circularity and recursivity underlie this pedagogy through which mnemonic devices are built so that stories become re-membered and inscribed on the body of the listener. When a perceived level of knowledge-transference has occurred, a narrator may elect to elaborate further, adding another detail that will often transform the story’s social, cultural, moral or political context. Such carefully chosen additional detail, however, might re-contextualise all that has gone before. As well as being embodied, stories are also emplaced, and thus most appropriately told in the Country where events occurred. (Here I use the Aboriginal English term “Country” which encompasses home, clan estate, and the powerful complex of spiritual, animate and inanimate forces that bind people and place.) Hilda Wilson’s following account of her first job as a housekeeper for “one of Adelaide’s leading doctors”, Dr Frank Swann, provides an illustration of how she expertly uses traditional narrative forms of incrementally structured knowledge transmission within a cross-cultural setting to tell a story that expresses practices of resilience as resistance and transformation at its core. A “White Doctor” Story: The First Layer Aunty Hilda first told me this story when we were winding along the South Eastern Freeway through the Adelaide hills between Murray Bridge and Mount Barker, in 1997, on our way home to Adelaide from a trip to Camp Coorong, the Ngarrindjeri cultural education centre co-founded by her granddaughter. She was then 86 years old. Ahead of us, the profile of Mt Lofty rose out of the plains and into view. The highest peak in the Mount Lofty ranges, Yurrebilla, as it is known to Kaurna Aboriginal people, or Mt Lofty, has been an affluent enclave of white settlement for Adelaide’s moneyed elite since early colonial times. Being in place, or in view of place, provided the appropriate opportunity for her to tell me the story. It belongs to a group of stories that during our initial period of working together changed little over time until one day two years later she an added contextual detail which turned it inside out. Hilda described the doctor’s spacious hill-top residence, and her responsibilities of caring for Dr Swann’s invalid wife (“an hysteric who couldn't do anything for herself”), their twin teenage boys (who attended private college in the city) along with another son and younger daughter living at home (pers. com. Hilda Wilson). Recalling the exhilaration of looking down over the sparkling lights of Adelaide at night from this position of apparent “privilege” on the summit, she related this undeniably as a success story, justifiably taking great pride in her achievements as a teenager, capable of stepping into the place of the non-Indigenous doctor's wife in running the large and demanding household. Successfully undertaking a wide range of duties employed in the care of a family, including the disabled mother, she is an active participant crucial to the lives of all in the household, including to the work of the doctor and the twin boys in private education. Hilda recalled that Mrs Swann was unable to eat without her assistance. As the oldest daughter of a large family Hilda had previously assisted in caring for her younger siblings. Told in this way, her account collapses social distinctions, delineating a shared social and physical space, drawing its analytic frame from an Indigenous ethos of subjectivity, relationality, reciprocity and care. Moreover Hilda’s narrative of domestic service demonstrates an assertion of agency that resists colonial and patriarchal hegemony and inverts the master/mistress-servant relationship, one she firmly eschews in favour of the self-affirming role of the lady of the house. (It stands in contrast to the abuse found in other accounts for example Read, Tucker, Kartinyeri. Often the key difference was a continuity of family connections and ongoing family support.) Indeed the home transformed into a largely feminised and cross-culturalised space in which she had considerable agency and responsibility when the doctor was absent. Hilda told me this story several times in much the same way during our frequent encounters over the next two years. Each telling revealed further details that fleshed a perspective gained from what Patricia Hill Collins terms an “epistemic privilege” via her “outsider-within status” of working within a white household, lending an understanding of its social mechanisms (12-15). She also stressed the extent of her duty of care in upholding the family’s well-being, despite the work at times being too burdensome. The Second Version: Coming to Terms with Intersecting Oppressions Later, as our relationship developed and deepened, when I began to record her life-narrative as part of my doctoral work, she added an unexpected detail that altered its context completely: It was all right except I slept outside in a tin shed and it was very cold at night. Mount Lofty, by far the coldest part of Adelaide, frequently experiences winter maximum temperatures of two or three degrees and often light snowfalls. This skilful reframing draws on Indigenous storytelling pedagogy and is expressly used to invite reflexivity, opening questions that move the listener from the personal to the public realm in which domestic service and the hegemony of the home are pivotal in coming to terms with the overlapping historical oppressions of class, gender, race and nation. Suddenly we witness her subjectivity starkly shift from one self-defined and allied with an equal power relationship – or even of dependency reversal cast as “de-facto doctor's wife” – to one diminished by inequity and power imbalance in the outsider-defined role of “mistreated servant”. The latter was signalled by the dramatic addition of a single signifying detail as a decoding device to a deeper layer of meaning. In this parallel stratum of the story, Hilda purposefully brings into relief the politics in which “the private domain of women's housework intersected with the public domain of governmental social engineering policies” (Haskins 4). As Aileen Moreton-Robinson points out, what for White Australia was cheap labour and a civilising mission, for Indigenous women constituted stolen children and slavery. Protection and then assimilation were government policies under which Indigenous women grew up. (96) Hilda was sent away from her family to work in 1927 by the universally-feared Sister Pearl McKenzie, a nurse who too-zealously (Katinyeri, Ngarrindjeri Calling, 23) oversaw the Chief Protector’s policies of “training” Aboriginal children from the South Australian missions in white homes once they reached fourteen (Haebich, 316—20). Indeed many prominent Adelaide hills’ families benefited from Aboriginal labour under this arrangement. Hilda explained her struggle with the immense cultural dislocation that removal into domestic service entailed, a removal her grandfather William Rankine had travelled from Raukkan to Government House to protest against less than a decade earlier (The Register December 21, 1923). This additional layer of story also illuminates Hilda’s capacity for resilience and persistence in finding a way forward through the challenge of her circumstances (Luthar et al.), drawing on her family networks and sense of personhood (Kickett). Hilda related that her father visited her at Mount Lofty twice, though briefly, on his way to shearing jobs in the south-east of the state. “He said it was no good me living like this,” she stated. Through his active intervention, reinforcement was requested and another teenager from Point Pearce, Hilda’s future husband’s cousin, Annie Sansbury, soon arrived to share the workload. But, Hilda explained, the onerous expectations coupled with the cultural segregation of retiring to the tin shed quickly became too much for Annie, who stayed only three months, leaving Hilda coping again alone, until her father applied additional pressure for a more suitable placement to be found for his daughter. In her next position, working for the family of a racehorse trainer, Hilda contentedly shared the bedroom with the small boy for whom she cared, and not long after returned to Point Pearce where she married Robert Wilson and began a family of her own. Gendered Resilience across Cultural Divides Hilda explicitly speaks into these spaces to educate me, because all but a few white women involved have remained silent about their complicity with state sanctioned practices which exploited Indigenous labour and removed children from their families through the policies of protection and assimilation. For Indigenous women, speaking out was often fraught with the danger of a deeper removal from family and Country, even of disappearance. Victoria Haskins writes extensively of two cases in New South Wales where young Aboriginal women whose protests concerning their brutal treatment at the hands of white employers, resulted in their wrongful and prolonged committal to mental health and other institutions (147-52, 228-39). In the indentured service of Indigenous women it is possible to see oppression operating through Eurocentric ideologies of race, class and gender, in which Indigenous women were assumed to take on, through displacement, the more oppressed role of white women in pre-second world war non-Aboriginal Australian society. The troubling silent shadow-figure of the “doctor’s wife” indeed provides a haunting symbol of - and also a forceful rebellion against – the docile upper middle-class white femininity of the inter-war era. Susan Bordo has argued that that “the hysteric” is archetypal of a discourse of ‘pathology as embodied protest’ in which the body may […] be viewed as a surface on which conventional constructions of femininity are exposed starkly to view in extreme or hyperliteral form. (20) Mrs Swann’s vulnerability contrasts markedly with the strength Hilda expresses in coping with a large family, emanating from a history of equitable gender relations characteristic of Ngarrindjeri society (Bell). The intersection of race and gender, as Marcia Langton contends “continues to require deconstruction to allow us to decolonise our consciousness” (54). From Hilda’s brief description one grasps a relationship resonant with that between the protagonists in Tracy Moffat's Night Cries, (a response to the overt maternalism in the film Jedda) in which the white mother finds herself utterly reliant on her “adopted” Aboriginal daughter at the end of her life (46-7). Resilience and Survival The different versions of story Hilda deploys, provide a pedagogical basis to understanding the broader socio-political framework of her overall life narrative in which an ability to draw on the cultural continuity of the past to transform the future forms an underlying dynamic. This demonstrated capacity to meet the challenging conditions thrown up by the settler-colonial state has its foundations in the connectivity and cultural strength sustained generationally in her family. Resilience moves from being individually to socially determined, as in Kickett’s model. During the onslaught of dispossession, following South Australia’s 1836 colonial invasion, Ngarrindjeri were left near-starving and decimated from introduced diseases. Pullume (c1808-1888), the rupuli (elected leader of the Ngarrindjeri Tendi, or parliament), Hilda’s third generation great-grandfather, decisively steered his people through the traumatic changes, eventually negotiating a middle-path after the Point McLeay Mission was established on Ngarrindjeri country in 1859 (Jenkin, 59). Pullume’s granddaughter, the accomplished, independent-thinking Ellen Sumner (1842—1925), played an influential educative role during Hilda’s youth. Like other Ngarrindjeri women in her lineage, Ellen Sumner was skilled in putari practice (female doctor) and midwifery culture that extended to a duty of care concerning women and children (teaching her “what to do and what not to do”), which I suggest is something Hilda herself drew from when working with the Swann family. Hilda’s mother and aunties continued aspects of the putari tradition, attending births and giving instruction to women in the community (Bell, 171, Hughes Grandmother, 52-4). As mentioned earlier, when the South Australian government moved to introduce The Training of Children Act (SA) Hilda’s maternal grandfather William Rankine campaigned vigorously against this, taking a petition to the SA Governor in December 1923 (Haebich, 315-19). As with Aunty Hilda, William Rankine used storytelling as a method to draw public attention to the inequities of his times in an interview with The Register which drew on his life-narrative (Hughes, My Grandmother, 61). Hilda’s father Wilfred Varcoe, a Barngarrla-Wirrungu man, almost a thousand kilometres away from his Poonindie birthplace, resisted assimilation by actively pursuing traditional knowledge networks using his mobility as a highly sought after shearer to link up with related Elders in the shearing camps, (and as we saw to inspect the conditions his daughter was working under at Mt Lofty). The period Hilda spent as a servant to white families to be trained in white ways was in fact only a brief interlude in a long life in which family connections, culture and belonging (Kickett) served as the backbone of her resilience and resistance. On returning to the Point Pearce Mission, Hilda successfully raised a large family and activated a range of community initiatives that fostered well-being. In the 1960s she moved to Adelaide, initially as the sole provider of her family (her husband later followed), to give her younger children better educational opportunities. Working with Aunty Gladys Elphick OBE through the Council of Aboriginal Women, she played a foundational role in assisting other Aboriginal women establish their families in the city (Mattingly et al., 154, Fisher). In Adelaide, Aunty Hilda became an influential, much loved Elder, living in good health to the age of ninety-six years. The ability to survive changing circumstances, to extend care over and over to her children and Elders along with qualities of leadership, determination, agency and resilience have passed down through her family, several of whom have become successful in public life. These include her great-grandson and former AFL football player, Michael O’Loughlin, her great-nephew Adam Goodes and her-grand-daughter, the cultural weaver Aunty Ellen Trevorrow. Arguably, resilience contributes to physical as well as cultural longevity, through caring for the self and others. Conclusion This story demonstrates how sociocultural dimensions of resilience are contextualised in practices of everyday lives. We see this in the way that Aunty Hilda Wilson’s self-narrated story resolutely defies attempts to know, subjugate and categorise, operating instead in accord with distinctively Aboriginal expressions of gender and kinship relations that constitute an Aboriginal sovereignty. Her storytelling activates a revision of collective history in ways that valorise Indigenous identity (Kirmayer et al.). Her narrative of agency and personal achievement, one that has sustained her through life, interacts with the larger narrative of state-endorsed exploitation, diffusing its power and exposing it to wider moral scrutiny. Resilience in this context is inextricably entwined with practices of cultural survival and resistance developed in response to the introduction of government policies and the encroachment of settlers and their world. We see resilience too operating across Hilda Wilson’s family history, and throughout her long life. The agency and strategies displayed suggest alternative realities and imagine other, usually more equitable, possible worlds. References Bell, Diane. Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World That Is, Was and Will Be. Melbourne: Spinifex, 1998. Bordo, Susan. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity.” Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory. Eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury. New York: Columbia UP, 1997. 90-110. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge, 2000. Fisher, Elizabeth M. "Elphick, Gladys (1904–1988)." Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 29 Sep. 2013. ‹http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/elphick-gladys-12460/text22411>. Grieves, Victoria. Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy, The Basis of Aboriginal Social and Emotional Wellbeing, Melbourne University: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, 2009. Haebich, Anna. Broken Circles: The Fragmenting of Indigenous Families. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Press, 2000. Haskins, Victoria. My One Bright Spot. London: Palgrave, 2005. Hughes, Karen. "My Grandmother on the Other Side of the Lake." PhD thesis, Department of Australian Studies and Department of History, Flinders University. Adelaide, 2009. ———. “Microhistories and Things That Matter.” Australian Feminist Studies 27.73 (2012): 269-278. ———. “I’d Grown Up as a Child amongst Natives.” Outskirts: Feminisms along the Edge 28 (2013). 29 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-28/karen-hughes>. Jenkin, Graham. Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri. Adelaide: Rigby, 1979. Kartinyeri, Doris. Kick the Tin. Melbourne: Spinifex, 2000. Kartinyeri, Doreen. My Ngarrindjeri Calling, Adelaide: Wakefield, 2007. Kickett, Marion. “Examination of How a Culturally Appropriate Definition of Resilience Affects the Physical and Mental Health of Aboriginal People.” PhD thesis, Curtin University, 2012. Kirmayer, L.J., S. Dandeneau, E. Marshall, M.K. Phillips, K. Jenssen Williamson. “Rethinking Resilience from Indigenous Perspectives.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 56.2 (2011): 84-91. Luthar, S., D. Cicchetti, and B. Becker. “The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work.” Child Development 71.3 (2000): 543-62. MacGill, Bindi, Julie Mathews, Ellen Trevorrow, Alice Abdulla, and Deb Rankine. “Ecology, Ontology, and Pedagogy at Camp Coorong,” M/C Journal 15.3 (2012). Mattingly, Christobel, and Ken Hampton. Survival in Our Own Land, Adelaide: Wakefield, 1988. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Talkin’ Up to the White Woman. St Lucia: UQP, 2000. Night Cries, A Rural Tragedy. Dir. Tracy Moffatt. Chili Films, 1990. Read, Peter. A Rape of the Soul So Profound. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Tucker, Margaret. If Everyone Cared. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1977. Wanganeen, Elva. Personal Communication, 2000. Westphalen, Linda. An Anthropological and Literary Study of Two Aboriginal Women's Life Histories: The Impacts of Enforced Child Removal and Policies of Assimilation. New York: Mellen Press, 2011.

Phillip Noyce is one of Australia’s most prominent film makers—a successful feature film director with both iconic Australian narratives and many a Hollywood blockbuster under his belt. Still, his beginnings were quite humble and far from his role today when he grew up in the midst of the counterculture of the late sixties. Millions of young people his age joined the various ‘movements’ of the day after experiences that changed their lives—mostly music but also drugs or fashion. The counterculture was a turbulent time in Sydney artistic circles as elsewhere. Everything looked possible, you simply had to “Do It!”—and Noyce did. He dived head-on into these times and with a voracious appetite for its many aspects—film, theatre, rallies, music, art and politics in general. In fact he often was the driving force behind such activities. Noyce described his personal epiphany occurring in 1968: A few months before I was due to graduate from high school, […] I saw a poster on a telegraph pole advertising American 'underground' movies. There was a mesmerising, beautiful blue-coloured drawing on the poster that I later discovered had been designed by an Australian filmmaker called David Perry. The word 'underground' conjured up all sorts of delights to an eighteen-year-old in the late Sixties: in an era of censorship it promised erotica, perhaps; in an era of drug-taking it promised some clandestine place where marijuana, or even something stronger, might be consumed; in an era of confrontation between conservative parents and their affluent post-war baby-boomer children, it promised a place where one could get together with other like-minded youth and plan to undermine the establishment, which at that time seemed to be the aim of just about everyone aged under 30. (Petzke 8) What the poster referred to was a new, highly different type of film. In the US these films were usually called “underground”. This term originates from film critic Manny Farber who used it in his 1957 essay Underground Films. Farber used the label for films whose directors today would be associated with independent and art house feature films. More directly, film historian Lewis Jacobs referred to experimental films when he used the words “film which for most of its life has led an underground existence” (8). The term is used interchangeably with New American Cinema. It was based on a New York group—the Film-Makers’ Co-operative—that started in 1960 with mostly low-budget filmmakers under the guidance of Jonas Mekas. When in 1962 the group was formally organised as a means for new, improved ways of distributing their works, experimental filmmakers were the dominant faction. They were filmmakers working in a more artistic vein, slightly influenced by the European Avant-garde of the 1920s and by attempts in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In film history, this era is also known as the Third Avant-garde. In their First Statement of the New American Cinema Group, the group drew connections to both the British Free Cinema and the French Nouvelle Vague. They also claimed that contemporary cinema was “morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, temperamentally boring” (80). An all-encompassing definition of Underground Film never was available. Sheldon Renan lists some of the problems: There are underground films in which there is no movement and films in which there is nothing but movement. There are films about people and films about light. There are short, short underground films and long, long underground films. There are some that have been banned, and there is one that was nominated for an Academy Award. There are sexy films and sexless films, political films and poetical films, film epigrams and film epics … underground film is nothing less than an explosion of cinematic styles, forms and directions. (Renan 17) No wonder that propelled by frequent serious articles in the press—notably Jonas Mekas in the Village Voice—and regular screenings at other venues like the Film-makers’ Cinemathèque and the Gallery of Modern Art in New York, these films proved increasingly popular in the United States and almost immediately spread like bush fires around the world. So in early September 1968 Noyce joined a sold-out crowd at the Union Theatre in Sydney, watching 17 shorts assembled by Ubu Films, the premier experimental and underground film collective in 1960s Australia (Milesago). And on that night his whole attitude to art, his whole attitude to movies—in fact, his whole life—changed. He remembered: I left the cinema that night thinking, "I’m gonna make movies like that. I can do it." Here was a style of cinema that seemed to speak to me. It was immediate, it was direct, it was personal, and it wasn’t industrial. It was executed for personal expression, not for profit; it was individual as opposed to corporate, it was stylistically free; it seemed to require very little expenditure, innovation being the key note. It was a completely un-Hollywood-like aesthetic; it was operating on a visceral level that was often non-linear and was akin to the psychedelic images that were in vogue at the time—whether it was in music, in art or just in the patterns on your multi-coloured shirt. These movies spoke to me. (Petzke 9) Generally speaking, therefore, these films were the equivalent of counterculture in the area of film. Theodore Roszak railed against “technocracy” and underground films were just the opposite, often almost do-it-yourself in production and distribution. They were objecting to middle-class culture and values. And like counterculture they aimed at doing away with repression and to depict a utopian lifestyle feeling at ease with each imaginable form of liberality (Doggett 469). Underground films transgressed any Hollywood rule and convention in content, form and technique. Mobile hand-held cameras, narrow-gauge or outright home movies, shaky and wobbly, rapid cutting, out of focus, non-narrative, disparate continuity—you name it. This type of experimental film was used to express the individual consciousness of the “maker”—no longer calling themselves directors—a cinematic equivalent of the first person in literature. Just as in modern visual art, both the material and the process of making became part of these artworks. Music often was a dominant factor, particularly Eastern influences or the new Beat Music that was virtually non-existent in feature films. Drug experiences were reflected in imagery and structure. Some of the first comings-out of gay men can be found as well as films that were shown at the appropriately named “Wet Dreams Festival” in Amsterdam. Noyce commented: I worked out that the leading lights in this Ubu Films seemed to be three guys — Aggy Read, Albie Thoms and David Perry […They] all had beards and […] seemed to come from the basement of a terrace house in Redfern. Watching those movies that night, picking up all this information, I was immediately seized by three great ambitions. First of all, I wanted to grow a beard; secondly, I wanted to live in a terrace house in the inner city; and thirdly, I wanted to be a filmmaker. (Ubu Films) Noyce soon discovered there were a lot of people like him who wanted to make short films for personal expression, but also as a form of nationalism. They wanted to make Australian movies. Noyce remembered: “Aggy, Albie and David encouraged everyone to go and make a film for themselves” (Petzke 11). This was easy enough to do as these films—not only in Australia—were often made for next to nothing and did not require any prior education or training. And the target audience group existed in a subculture of people willing to pay money even for extreme entertainment as long as it was advertised in an appealing way—which meant: in the way of the rampaging Zeitgeist. Noyce—smitten by the virus—would from then on regularly attend the weekly meetings organised by the young filmmakers. And in line with Jerry Rubin’s contemporary adage “Do it!” he would immediately embark on a string of films with enthusiasm and determination—qualities soon to become his trademark. All his films were experimental in nature, shot on 16mm and were so well received that Albie Thoms was convinced that Noyce had a great career ahead of him as an experimental filmmaker. Truly alternative was Noyce’s way to finally finance Better to Reign in Hell, his first film, made at age 18 and with a total budget of $600. Noyce said on reflection: I had approached some friends and told them that if they invested in my film, they could have an acting role. Unfortunately, the guy whose dad had the most money — he was a doctor’s son — was also maybe the worst actor that was ever put in front of a camera. But he had invested four hundred dollars, so I had to give him the lead. (Petzke 13) The title was taken from Milton’s poem Paradise Lost (“better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”). It was a film very much inspired by the images, montage and narrative techniques of the underground movies watched at Ubu. Essentially the film is about a young man’s obsession with a woman he sees repeatedly in advertising and the hallucinogenic dreams he has about her. Despite its later reputation, the film was relatively mundane. Being shot in black and white, it lacks the typical psychedelic ingredients of the time and is more reminiscent of the surrealistic precursors to underground film. Some contempt for the prevailing consumer society is thrown in for good measure. In the film, “A youth is persecuted by the haunting reappearance of a girl’s image in various commercial outlets. He finds escape from this commercial brainwashing only in his own confused sexual hallucinations” (Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative). But despite this advertising, so convincingly capturing the “hint! hint!” mood of the time, Noyce’s first film isn’t really outstanding even in terms of experimental film. Noyce continued to make short experimental films. There was not even the pretence of a story in any of them. He was just experimenting with his gear and finding his own way to use the techniques of the underground cinema. Megan was made at Sydney University Law School to be projected as part of the law students’ revue. It was a three-minute silent film that featured a woman called Megan, who he had a crush on. Intersection was 2 minutes 44 seconds in length and shot in the middle of a five-way or four-way intersection in North Sydney. The camera was walked into the intersection and spun around in a continuous circle from the beginning of the roll of film to the end. It was an experiment with disorientation and possibly a comment about urban development. Memories was a seven-minute short in colour about childhood and the bush, accompanied by a smell-track created in the cinema by burning eucalyptus leaves. Sun lasted 90 seconds in colour and examined the pulsating winter sun by way of 100 single frame shots. And finally, Home was a one-and-a-half-minute single frame camera exploration of the filmmaker’s home, inside and out, including its inhabitants and pets. As a true experimental filmmaker, Noyce had a deep interest in technical aspects. It was recommended that Sun “be projected through a special five image lens”, Memories and Intersection with “an anamorphic lens” (Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative). The double projection for Better to Reign in Hell and the two screens required for Good Afternoon, as well as the addition of the smell of burning leaves in Memories, were inroads into the subgenre of so-called Expanded Cinema. As filmmaking in those days was not an isolated enterprise but an integral part of the all-encompassing Counterculture, Noyce followed suit and became more and more involved and politiced. He started becoming a driving force of the movement. Besides selling Ubu News, he organised film screenings. He also wrote film articles for both Honi Soit and National U, the Sydney University and Canberra University newspapers—articles more opinionated than sophisticated. He was also involved in Ubu’s Underground Festival held in August and in other activities of the time, particularly anti-war protests. When Ubu Films went out of business after the lack of audience interest in Thoms’s long Marinetti film in 1969, Aggy Read suggested that Ubu be reinvented as a co-operative for tax reasons and because they might benefit from their stock of 250 Australian and foreign films. On 28 May 1970 the reinvention began at the first general meeting of the Sydney Filmmakers Cooperative where Noyce volunteered and was elected their part-time manager. He transferred the 250 prints to his parents’ home in Wahroonga where he was still living he said he “used to sit there day after day just screening those movies for myself” (Petzke 18). The Sydney University Film Society screened feature films to students at lunchtime. Noyce soon discovered they had money nobody was spending and equipment no one was using, which seemed to be made especially for him. In the university cinema he would often screen his own and other shorts from the Co-op’s library. The entry fee was 50 cents. He remembered: “If I handed out the leaflets in the morning, particularly concentrating on the fact that these films were uncensored and a little risqué, then usually there would be 600 people in the cinema […] One or two screenings per semester would usually give me all the pocket money I needed to live” (Petzke 19). Libertine and risqué films were obviously popular as they were hard to come by. Noyce said: We suffered the worst censorship of almost any Western country in the world, even worse than South Africa. Books would be seized by customs officers at the airports and when ships docked. Customs would be looking for Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We were very censored in literature and films and plays, and my film [Better to Reign in Hell] was banned from export. I tried to send it to a film festival in Holland and it was denied an export permit, but because it had been shot in Australia, until someone in the audience complained it could still be screened locally. (Castaway's Choice) No wonder clashes with the law happened frequently and were worn like medals of honour in those days of fighting the system, proving that one was fighting in the front line against the conservative values of law and order. Noyce encountered three brushes with the law. The first occurred when selling Ubu Films’ alternative culture newspaper Ubu News, Australia’s first underground newspaper (Milesago). One of the issues contained an advertisement—a small drawing—for Levi’s jeans, showing a guy trying to put his Levis on his head, so that his penis was showing. That was judged by the police to be obscene. Noyce was found guilty and given a suspended sentence for publishing an indecent publication. There had been another incident including Phil’s Pill, his own publication of six or eight issues. After one day reprinting some erotic poems from The Penguin Collection of Erotic Poetry he was found guilty and released on a good behaviour bond without a conviction being recorded. For the sake of historical truth it should be remembered, though, that provocation was a genuine part of the game. How else could one seriously advertise Better to Reign in Hell as “a sex-fantasy film which includes a daring rape scene”—and be surprised when the police came in after screening this “pornographic film” (Stratton 202) at the Newcastle Law Students Ball? The Newcastle incident also throws light on the fact that Noyce organised screenings wherever possible, constantly driving prints and projectors around in his Mini Minor. Likewise, he is remembered as having been extremely helpful in trying to encourage other people with their own ideas—anyone could make films and could make them about anything they liked. He helped Jan Chapman, a fellow student who became his (first) wife in December 1971, to shoot and edit Just a Little Note, a documentary about a moratorium march and a guerrilla theatre group run by their friend George Shevtsov. Noyce also helped on I Happened to Be a Girl, a documentary about four women, friends of Chapman. There is no denying that being a filmmaker was a hobby, a full-time job and an obsessive religion for Noyce. He was on the organising committee of the First Australian Filmmakers’ Festival in August 1971. He performed in the agit-prop acting troupe run by George Shevtsov (later depicted in Renegades) that featured prominently at one of Sydney’s rock festival that year. In the latter part of 1971 and early 1972 he worked on Good Afternoon, a documentary about the Combined Universities’ Aquarius Arts Festival in Canberra, which arguably was the first major manifestation of counterculture in Australia. For this the Aquarius Foundation—the cultural arm of the Australian Union of Students—had contracted him. This became a two-screen movie à la Woodstock. Together with Thoms, Read and Ian Stocks, in 1972 he participated in cataloguing the complete set of films in distribution by the Co-op (see Sydney Filmmakers Cooperative). As can be seen, Noyce was at home in many manifestations of the Sydney counterculture. His own films had slowly become more politicised and bent towards documentary. He even started a newsreel that he used to screen at the Filmmakers’ Cooperative Cinema with a live commentary. One in 1971, Springboks Protest, was about the demonstrations at the Sydney Cricket Ground against the South African rugby tour. There were more but Noyce doesn’t remember them and no prints seem to have survived. Renegades was a diary film; a combination of poetic images and reportage on the street demonstrations. Noyce’s experimental films had been met with interest in the—limited—audience and among publications. His more political films and particularly Good Afternoon, however, reached out to a much wider audience, now including even the undogmatic left and hard-core documentarists of the times. In exchange, and for the first time, there were opposing reactions—but as always a great discussion at the Filmmakers’ Cinema, the main venue for independent productions. This cinema began with those initial screenings at Sydney University in the union room next to the Union Theatre. But once the Experimental Film Fund started operating in 1970, more and more films were submitted for the screenings and consequently a new venue was needed. Albie Thoms started a forum in the Yellow House in Kings Cross in May 1970. Next came—at least briefly—a restaurant in Glebe before the Co-op took over a space on the top floor of the socialist Third World Bookshop in Goulburn Street that was a firetrap. Bob Gould, the owner, was convinced that by first passing through his bookshop the audience would buy his books on the way upstairs. Sundays for him were otherwise dead from a commercial point of view. Noyce recollected that: The audience at this Filmmakers’ Cinema were mightily enthusiastic about seeing themselves up on the screen. And there was always a great discussion. So, generally the screenings were a huge success, with many full houses. The screenings grew from once a week, to three times on Sunday, to all weekend, and then seven days a week at several locations. One program could play in three different illegal cinemas around the city. (Petzke 26) A filmmakers’ cinema also started in Melbourne and the groups of filmmakers would visit each other and screen their respective films. But especially after the election of the Whitlam Labor government in December 1972 there was a shift in interest from risqué underground films to the concept of Australian Cinema. The audience started coming now for a dose of Australian culture. Funding of all kind was soon freely available and with such a fund the film co-op was able to set up a really good licensed cinema in St. Peters Lane in Darlinghurst, running seven days a week. But, Noyce said, “the move to St. Peters Lane was sort of the end of an era, because initially the cinema was self-funded, but once it became government sponsored everything changed” (Petzke 29). With money now readily available, egotism set in and the prevailing “we”-feeling rather quickly dissipated. But by the time of this move and the resulting developments, everything for Noyce had already changed again. He had been accepted into the first intake of the Interim Australian Film & TV School, another one of the nation-awareness-building projects of the Whitlam government. He was on his “long march through the institutions”—as this was frequently called throughout Europe—that would bring him to documentaries, TV and eventually even Hollywood (and return). Noyce didn’t linger once the alternative scene started fading away. Everything those few, wild years in the counterculture had taught him also put him right on track to become one of the major players in Hollywood. He never looked back—but he remembers fondly…References Castaway’s Choice. Radio broadcast by KCRW. 1990. Doggett, Peter. There’s a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of ’60s Counter-Culture. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007. Farber, Manny. “Underground Films.” Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies. Ed. Manny Farber. New York: Da Capo, 1998. 12–24. Jacobs, Lewis. “Morning for the Experimental Film”. Film Culture 19 (1959): 6–9. Milesago. “Ubu Films”. n.d. 26 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.milesago.com/visual/ubu.htm›. New American Cinema Group. “First Statement of the New American Cinema Group.” Film Culture Reader. Ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York: Praeger, 1970. 73–75. Petzke, Ingo. Phillip Noyce: Backroads to Hollywood. Sydney: Pan McMillan, 2004. Renan, Sheldon. The Underground Film: An Introduction to Its Development in America. London: Studio Vista, 1968. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of Counter Culture. New York: Anchor, 1969. Stratton, David. The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1980. Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative. Film Catalogue. Sydney: Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative, 1972. Ubu Films. Unreleased five-minute video for the promotion of Mudie, Peter. Ubu Films: Sydney Underground Movies 1965-1970. Sydney: UNSW Press, 1997.

Our thesis is that the city’s ambience is now an unstable dialectic in which we are watchers and watched, mirrored and refracted in a landscape of iPhone auteurs, eTags, CCTV and sousveillance. Embrace ambience! Invoking Benjamin’s spirit, this article does not seek to limit understanding through restriction to a particular theme or theoretical construct (Buck-Morss 253). Instead, it offers snapshots of interactions at the dawn of the postmodern city. That bricolage also engages how people appropriate, manipulate, disrupt and divert urban spaces and strategies of power in their everyday life. Ambient information can both liberate and disenfranchise the individual. This article asks whether our era’s dialectics result in a new personhood or merely restate the traditional spectacle of ‘bright lights, big city’. Does the virtualized city result in ambient anomie and satiation or in surprise, autonomy and serendipity? (Gumpert 36) Since the steam age, ambience has been characterised in terms of urban sound, particularly the alienation attributable to the individual’s experience as a passive receptor of a cacophony of sounds – now soft, now loud, random and recurrent–from the hubbub of crowds, the crash and grind of traffic, the noise of industrial processes and domestic activity, factory whistles, fire alarms, radio, television and gramophones (Merchant 111; Thompson 6). In the age of the internet, personal devices such as digital cameras and iPhones, and urban informatics such as CCTV networks and e-Tags, ambience is interactivity, monitoring and signalling across multiple media, rather than just sound. It is an interactivity in which watchers observe the watched observing them and the watched reshape the fabric of virtualized cities merely by traversing urban precincts (Hillier 295; De Certeau 163). It is also about pervasive although unevenly distributed monitoring of individuals, using sensors that are remote to the individual (for example cameras or tag-readers mounted above highways) or are borne by the individual (for example mobile phones or badges that systematically report the location to a parent, employer or sex offender register) (Holmes 176; Savitch 130). That monitoring reflects what Doel and Clark characterized as a pervasive sense of ambient fear in the postmodern city, albeit fear that like much contemporary anxiety is misplaced–you are more at risk from intimates than from strangers, from car accidents than terrorists or stalkers–and that is ahistorical (Doel 13; Scheingold 33). Finally, it is about cooption, with individuals signalling their identity through ambient advertising: wearing tshirts, sweatshirts, caps and other apparel that display iconic faces such as Obama and Monroe or that embody corporate imagery such as the Nike ‘Swoosh’, Coca-Cola ‘Ribbon’, Linux Penguin and Hello Kitty feline (Sayre 82; Maynard 97). In the postmodern global village much advertising is ambient, rather than merely delivered to a device or fixed on a billboard. Australian cities are now seas of information, phantasmagoric environments in which the ambient noise encountered by residents and visitors comprises corporate signage, intelligent traffic signs, displays at public transport nodes, shop-window video screens displaying us watching them, and a plethora of personal devices showing everything from the weather to snaps of people in the street or neighborhood satellite maps. They are environments through which people traverse both as persons and abstractions, virtual presences on volatile digital maps and in online social networks. Spectacle, Anomie or Personhood The spectacular city of modernity is a meme of communication, cultural and urban development theory. It is spectacular in the sense that of large, artificial, even sublime. It is also spectacular because it is built around the gaze, whether the vistas of Hausmann’s boulevards, the towers of Manhattan and Chicago, the shopfront ‘sea of light’ and advertising pillars noted by visitors to Weimar Berlin or the neon ‘neo-baroque’ of Las Vegas (Schivelbusch 114; Fritzsche 164; Ndalianis 535). In the year 2010 it aspires to 2020 vision, a panoptic and panspectric gaze on the part of governors and governed alike (Kullenberg 38). In contrast to the timelessness of Heidegger’s hut and the ‘fixity’ of rural backwaters, spectacular cities are volatile domains where all that is solid continues to melt into air with the aid of jackhammers and the latest ‘new media’ potentially result in a hypereality that make it difficult to determine what is real and what is not (Wark 22; Berman 19). The spectacular city embodies a dialectic. It is anomic because it induces an alienation in the spectator, a fatigue attributable to media satiation and to a sense of being a mere cog in a wheel, a disempowered and readily-replaceable entity that is denied personhood–recognition as an autonomous individual–through subjection to a Fordist and post-Fordist industrial discipline or the more insidious imprisonment of being ‘a housewife’, one ant in a very large ant hill (Dyer-Witheford 58). People, however, are not automatons: they experience media, modernity and urbanism in different ways. The same attributes that erode the selfhood of some people enhance the autonomy and personhood of others. The spectacular city, now a matrix of digits, information flows and opportunities, is a realm in which people can subvert expectations and find scope for self-fulfillment, whether by wearing a hoodie that defeats CCTV or by using digital technologies to find and associate with other members of stigmatized affinity groups. One person’s anomie is another’s opportunity. Ambience and Virtualisation Eighty years after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis forecast a cyber-sociality, digital technologies are resulting in a ‘virtualisation’ of social interactions and cities. In post-modern cityscapes, the space of flows comprises an increasing number of electronic exchanges through physically disjointed places (Castells 2002). Virtualisation involves supplementation or replacement of face-to-face contact with hypersocial communication via new media, including SMS, email, blogging and Facebook. In 2010 your friends (or your boss or a bully) may always be just a few keystrokes away, irrespective of whether it is raining outside, there is a public transport strike or the car is in for repairs (Hassan 69; Baron 215). Virtualisation also involves an abstraction of bodies and physical movements, with the information that represents individual identities or vehicles traversing the virtual spaces comprised of CCTV networks (where viewers never encounter the person or crowd face to face), rail ticketing systems and road management systems (x e-Tag passed by this tag reader, y camera logged a specific vehicle onto a database using automated number-plate recognition software) (Wood 93; Lyon 253). Surveillant Cities Pervasive anxiety is a permanent and recurrent feature of urban experience. Often navigated by an urgency to control perceived disorder, both physically and through cultivated dominant theory (early twentieth century gendered discourses to push women back into the private sphere; ethno-racial closure and control in the Black Metropolis of 1940s Chicago), history is punctuated by attempts to dissolve public debate and infringe minority freedoms (Wilson 1991). In the Post-modern city unprecedented technological capacity generates a totalizing media vector whose plausible by-product is the perception of an ambient menace (Wark 3). Concurrent faith in technology as a cost-effective mechanism for public management (policing, traffic, planning, revenue generation) has resulted in emergence of the surveillant city. It is both a social and architectural fabric whose infrastructure is dotted with sensors and whose people assume that they will be monitored by private/public sector entities and directed by interactive traffic management systems – from electronic speed signs and congestion indicators through to rail schedule displays –leveraging data collected through those sensors. The fabric embodies tensions between governance (at its crudest, enforcement of law by police and their surrogates in private security services) and the soft cage of digital governmentality, with people being disciplined through knowledge that they are being watched and that the observation may be shared with others in an official or non-official shaming (Parenti 51; Staples 41). Encounters with a railway station CCTV might thus result in exhibition of the individual in court or on broadcast television, whether in nightly news or in a ‘reality tv’ crime expose built around ‘most wanted’ footage (Jermyn 109). Misbehaviour by a partner might merely result in scrutiny of mobile phone bills or web browser histories (which illicit content has the partner consumed, which parts of cyberspace has been visited), followed by a visit to the family court. It might instead result in digital viligilantism, with private offences being named and shamed on electronic walls across the global village, such as Facebook. iPhone Auteurism Activists have responded to pervasive surveillance by turning the cameras on ‘the watchers’ in an exercise of ‘sousveillance’ (Bennett 13; Huey 158). That mirroring might involve the meticulous documentation, often using the same geospatial tools deployed by public/private security agents, of the location of closed circuit television cameras and other surveillance devices. One outcome is the production of maps identifying who is watching and where that watching is taking place. As a corollary, people with anxieties about being surveilled, with a taste for street theatre or a receptiveness to a new form of urban adventure have used those maps to traverse cities via routes along which they cannot be identified by cameras, tags and other tools of the panoptic sort, or to simply adopt masks at particular locations. In 2020 can anyone aspire to be a protagonist in V for Vendetta? (iSee) Mirroring might take more visceral forms, with protestors for example increasingly making a practice of capturing images of police and private security services dealing with marches, riots and pickets. The advent of 3G mobile phones with a still/video image capability and ongoing ‘dematerialisation’ of traditional video cameras (ie progressively cheaper, lighter, more robust, less visible) means that those engaged in political action can document interaction with authority. So can passers-by. That ambient imaging, turning the public gaze on power and thereby potentially redefining the ‘public’ (given that in Australia the community has been embodied by the state and discourse has been mediated by state-sanctioned media), poses challenges for media scholars and exponents of an invigorated civil society in which we are looking together – and looking at each other – rather than bowling alone. One challenge for consumers in construing ambient media is trust. Can we believe what we see, particularly when few audiences have forensic skills and intermediaries such as commercial broadcasters may privilege immediacy (the ‘breaking news’ snippet from participants) over context and verification. Social critics such as Baudelaire and Benjamin exalt the flaneur, the free spirit who gazed on the street, a street that was as much a spectacle as the theatre and as vibrant as the circus. In 2010 the same technologies that empower citizen journalism and foster a succession of velvet revolutions feed flaneurs whose streetwalking doesn’t extend beyond a keyboard and a modem. The US and UK have thus seen emergence of gawker services, with new media entrepreneurs attempting to build sustainable businesses by encouraging fans to report the location of celebrities (and ideally provide images of those encounters) for the delectation of people who are web surfing or receiving a tweet (Burns 24). In the age of ambient cameras, where the media are everywhere and nowhere (and micro-stock photoservices challenge agencies such as Magnum), everyone can join the paparazzi. Anyone can deploy that ambient surveillance to become a stalker. The enthusiasm with which fans publish sightings of celebrities will presumably facilitate attacks on bodies rather than images. Information may want to be free but so, inconveniently, do iconoclasts and practitioners of participatory panopticism (Dodge 431; Dennis 348). Rhetoric about ‘citizen journalism’ has been co-opted by ‘old media’, with national broadcasters and commercial enterprises soliciting still images and video from non-professionals, whether for free or on a commercial basis. It is a world where ‘journalists’ are everywhere and where responsibility resides uncertainly at the editorial desk, able to reject or accept offerings from people with cameras but without the industrial discipline formerly exercised through professional training and adherence to formal codes of practice. It is thus unsurprising that South Australia’s Government, echoed by some peers, has mooted anti-gawker legislation aimed at would-be auteurs who impede emergency services by stopping their cars to take photos of bushfires, road accidents or other disasters. The flipside of that iPhone auteurism is anxiety about the public gaze, expressed through moral panics regarding street photography and sexting. Apart from a handful of exceptions (notably photography in the Sydney Opera House precinct, in the immediate vicinity of defence facilities and in some national parks), Australian law does not prohibit ‘street photography’ which includes photographs or videos of streetscapes or public places. Despite periodic assertions that it is a criminal offence to take photographs of people–particularly minors–without permission from an official, parent/guardian or individual there is no general restriction on ambient photography in public spaces. Moral panics about photographs of children (or adults) on beaches or in the street reflect an ambient anxiety in which danger is associated with strangers and strangers are everywhere (Marr 7; Bauman 93). That conceptualisation is one that would delight people who are wholly innocent of Judith Butler or Andrea Dworkin, in which the gaze (ever pervasive, ever powerful) is tantamount to a violation. The reality is more prosaic: most child sex offences involve intimates, rather than the ‘monstrous other’ with the telephoto lens or collection of nastiness on his iPod (Cossins 435; Ingebretsen 190). Recognition of that reality is important in considering moves that would egregiously restrict legitimate photography in public spaces or happy snaps made by doting relatives. An ambient image–unposed, unpremeditated, uncoerced–of an intimate may empower both authors and subjects when little is solid and memory is fleeting. The same caution might usefully be applied in considering alarms about sexting, ie creation using mobile phones (and access by phone or computer monitor) of intimate images of teenagers by teenagers. Australian governments have moved to emulate their US peers, treating such photography as a criminal offence that can be conceptualized as child pornography and addressed through permanent inclusion in sex offender registers. Lifelong stigmatisation is inappropriate in dealing with naïve or brash 12 and 16 year olds who have been exchanging intimate images without an awareness of legal frameworks or an understanding of consequences (Shafron-Perez 432). Cameras may be everywhere among the e-generation but legal knowledge, like the future, is unevenly distributed. Digital Handcuffs Generations prior to 2008 lost themselves in the streets, gaining individuality or personhood by escaping the surveillance inherent in living at home, being observed by neighbours or simply surrounded by colleagues. Streets offered anonymity and autonomy (Simmel 1903), one reason why heterodox sexuality has traditionally been negotiated in parks and other beats and on kerbs where sex workers ply their trade (Dalton 375). Recent decades have seen a privatisation of those public spaces, with urban planning and digital technologies imposing a new governmentality on hitherto ambient ‘deviance’ and on voyeuristic-exhibitionist practice such as heterosexual ‘dogging’ (Bell 387). That governmentality has been enforced through mechanisms such as replacement of traditional public toilets with ‘pods’ that are conveniently maintained by global service providers such as Veolia (the unromantic but profitable rump of former media & sewers conglomerate Vivendi) and function as billboards for advertising groups such as JC Decaux. Faces encountered in the vicinity of the twenty-first century pissoir are thus likely to be those of supermodels selling yoghurt, low interest loans or sportsgear – the same faces sighted at other venues across the nation and across the globe. Visiting ‘the mens’ gives new meaning to the word ambience when you are more likely to encounter Louis Vuitton and a CCTV camera than George Michael. George’s face, or that of Madonna, Barack Obama, Kevin 07 or Homer Simpson, might instead be sighted on the tshirts or hoodies mentioned above. George’s music might also be borne on the bodies of people you see in the park, on the street, or in the bus. This is the age of ambient performance, taken out of concert halls and virtualised on iPods, Walkmen and other personal devices, music at the demand of the consumer rather than as rationed by concert managers (Bull 85). The cost of that ambience, liberation of performance from time and space constraints, may be a Weberian disenchantment (Steiner 434). Technology has also removed anonymity by offering digital handcuffs to employees, partners, friends and children. The same mobile phones used in the past to offer excuses or otherwise disguise the bearer’s movement may now be tied to an observer through location services that plot the person’s movement across Google Maps or the geospatial information of similar services. That tracking is an extension into the private realm of the identification we now take for granted when using taxis or logistics services, with corporate Australia for example investing in systems that allow accurate determination of where a shipment is located (on Sydney Harbour Bridge? the loading dock? accompanying the truck driver on unauthorized visits to the pub?) and a forecast of when it will arrive (Monmonier 76). Such technologies are being used on a smaller scale to enforce digital Fordism among the binary proletariat in corporate buildings and campuses, with ‘smart badges’ and biometric gateways logging an individual’s movement across institutional terrain (so many minutes in the conference room, so many minutes in the bathroom or lingering among the faux rainforest near the Vice Chancellery) (Bolt). Bright Lights, Blog City It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least by right-thinking Foucauldians, that modernity is a matter of coercion and anomie as all that is solid melts into air. If we are living in an age of hypersocialisation and hypercapitalism – movies and friends on tap, along with the panoptic sorting by marketers and pervasive scrutiny by both the ‘information state’ and public audiences (the million people or one person reading your blog) that is an inevitable accompaniment of the digital cornucopia–we might ask whether everyone is or should be unhappy. This article began by highlighting traditional responses to the bright lights, brashness and excitement of the big city. One conclusion might be that in 2010 not much has changed. Some people experience ambient information as liberating; others as threatening, productive of physical danger or of a more insidious anomie in which personal identity is blurred by an ineluctable electro-smog. There is disagreement about the professionalism (for which read ethics and inhibitions) of ‘citizen media’ and about a culture in which, as in the 1920s, audiences believe that they ‘own the image’ embodying the celebrity or public malefactor. Digital technologies allow you to navigate through the urban maze and allow officials, marketers or the hostile to track you. Those same technologies allow you to subvert both the governmentality and governance. You are free: Be ambient! References Baron, Naomi. Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Bauman, Zygmunt. 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Cities in a Time of Terror: Space, Territory and Local Resilience. Armonk: Sharpe, 2008. Scheingold, Stuart. The Politics of Street Crime: Criminal Process and Cultural Obsession. Philadephia: Temple UP, 1992. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1995. Shafron-Perez, Sharon. “Average Teenager or Sex Offender: Solutions to the Legal Dilemma Caused by Sexting.” John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law 26.3 (2009): 431-487. Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Individuality and Social Forms. Ed. Donald Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1971. Staples, William. Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Steiner, George. George Steiner: A Reader. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Thompson, Emily. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America. 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In Australian universities, many courses provide lecture notes as a standard learning resource; however, captions and transcripts of these lectures are not usually provided unless requested by a student through dedicated disability support officers (Worthington). As a result, to date their use has been limited. However, while the requirement for—and benefits of—captioned online lectures for students with disabilities is widely recognised, these captions or transcripts might also represent further opportunity for a personalised approach to learning for the mainstream student population (Podszebka et al.; Griffin). This article reports findings of research assessing the usefulness of captioned recorded lectures as a mainstream learning tool to determine their usefulness in enhancing inclusivity and learning outcomes for the disabled, international, and broader student population.Literature ReviewCaptions have been found to be of benefit for a number of different groups considered at-risk. These include people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, those with other learning difficulties, and those from a non-English speaking background (NESB).For students who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, captions play a vital role in providing access to otherwise inaccessible audio content. Captions have been found to be superior to sign language interpreters, note takers, and lip reading (Stinson et al.; Maiorana-Basas and Pagliaro; Marschark et al.).The use of captions for students with a range of cognitive disabilities has also been shown to help with student comprehension of video-based instruction in a higher education context (Evmenova; Evmenova and Behrmann). This includes students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Knight et al.; Reagon et al.) and students with dyslexia (Alty et al.; Beacham and Alty). While, anecdotally, captions are also seen as of benefit for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Kent et al.), studies have proved inconclusive (Lewis and Brown).The third group of at-risk students identified as benefiting from captioning recorded lecture content are those from a NESB. The use of captions has been shown to increase vocabulary learning (Montero Perez, Peters, Clarebout, and Desmet; Montero Perez, Van Den Noortgate, and Desmet) and to assist with comprehension of presenters with accents or rapid speech (Borgaonkar, 2013).In addition to these three main groups of at-risk students, captions have also been demonstrated to increase the learning outcomes for older students (Pachman and Ke, 2012; Schmidt and Haydu, 1992). Captions also have demonstrable benefits for the broader student cohort beyond these at-risk groups (Podszebka et al.; Griffin). For example, a recent study found that the broader student population utilised lecture captions and transcripts in order to focus, retain information, and overcome poor audio quality (Linder). However, the same study revealed that students were largely unaware about the availability of captions and transcripts, nor how to access them.MethodologyIn 2016 students in the Curtin University unit Web Communications (an introductory unit for the Internet Communications major) and its complementary first year unit, Internet and Everyday Life, along with a second year unit, Web Media, were provided with access to closed captions for their online recorded lectures. The latter unit was added to the study serendipitously when its lectures were required to be captioned through a request from the Curtin Disability Office during the study period. Recordings and captions were created using the existing captioning system available through Curtin’s lecture recording platform—Echo360. As well as providing a written caption of what is being said during the lectures, this system also offers a sophisticated search functionality, as well as access to a total transcript of the lecture. The students were provided access to an online training module, developed specifically for this study, to explain the use of this system.Enrolled Curtin students, both on-campus and online, Open Universities Australia (OUA) students studying through Curtin online, teaching staff, and disability officers were then invited to participate in a survey and interviews. The study sought to gain insights into students’ use of both recorded lectures and captioned video at the time of the survey, and their anticipated future usage of these services (see Kent et al.).A total of 50 students—of 539 enrolled across the different instances of the three units—completed the survey. In addition, five follow-up interviews with students, teaching staff, and disability support staff were conducted once the surveys had been completed. Staff interviewed included tutors and unit coordinators who taught and supervised units in which the lecture captions were provided. The interviews assessed the awareness, use, and perceived validity of the captions system in the context of both learning and teaching.ResultsA number of different questions were asked regarding students’ demographics, their engagement with online unit materials, including recorded lectures, their awareness of Echo360’s lecture captions, as well as its additional features, their perceived value of online captions for their studies, and the future significance of captions in a university context.Of the 50 participants in the survey, only six identified themselves as a person with a disability—almost 90 per cent did not identify as disabled. Additionally, 45 of the 50 participants identified English as their primary language. Only one student identified as a person with both a disability and coming from a NESB.Engagement with Online Unit Materials and Recorded LecturesThe survey results provide insight into the ways in which participants interact with the Echo360 lecture system. Over 90 per cent of students had accessed the recorded lectures via the Echo360 system. While this might not seem notable at first, given such materials are essential elements of the units surveyed, the level of repeated engagement seen in these results is important because it indicates the extent to which students are revising the same material multiple times—a practice that captions are designed to facilitate and assist. For instance, one lecture was recorded per week for each unit surveyed, and most respondents (70 per cent) were viewing these lectures at least once or twice a week, while 10 per cent were viewing the lectures multiple times a week. Over half of the students surveyed reported viewing the same lecture more than once. Out these participants, 19 (or 73 per cent) had viewed a lecture twice and 23 per cent had viewed it three times or more. This illustrates that frequent revision is taking place, as students watch the same lecture repeatedly to absorb and clarify its contents. This frequency of repeated engagement with recorded unit materials—lectures in particular—indicates that students were making online engagement and revision a key element of their learning process.Awareness of the Echo360 Lecture Captions and Additional FeaturesHowever, while students were highly engaged with both the online learning material and the recorded lectures, there was less awareness of the availability of the captioning system—only 34 per cent of students indicated they were aware of having access to captions. The survey also asked students whether or not they had used additional features of the Echo360 captioning system such as the search function and downloadable lecture transcripts. Survey results confirm that these features were being used; however, responses indicated that only a minority of students using the captions system used these features, with 28 per cent using the search function and 33 per cent making use of the transcripts. These results can be seen as an indication that additional features were useful for revision, albeit for the minority of students who used them. A Curtin disability advisor noted in their interview that:transcripts are particularly useful in addition to captions as they allow the user to quickly skim the material rather than sit through a whole lecture. Transcripts also allow translation into other languages, highlighting text and other features that make the content more accessible.Teaching staff were positive about these features and suggested that providing transcripts saved time for tutors who are often approached to provide these to individual students:I typically receive requests for lecture transcripts at the commencement of each study period. In SP3 [during this study] I did not receive any requests.I feel that lecture transcripts would be particularly useful as this is the most common request I receive from students, especially those with disabilities.I think transcripts and keyword searching would likely be useful to many students who access lectures through recordings (or who access recordings even after attending the lecture in person).However, the one student who was interviewed preferred the keyword search feature, although they expressed interest in transcripts as well:I used the captions keyword search. I think I would like to use the lecture transcript as well but I did not use that in this unit.In summary, while not all students made use of Echo360’s additional features for captions, those who did access them did so frequently, indicating that these are potentially useful learning tools.Value of CaptionsOf the students who were aware of the captions, 63 per cent found them useful for engaging with the lecture material. According to one of the students:[captions] made a big difference to me in terms on understanding and retaining what was said in the lectures. I am not sure that many students would realise this unless they actually used the captions…I found it much easier to follow what was being said in the recorded lectures and I also found that they helped stay focussed and not become distracted from the lecture.It is notable that the improvements described above do not involve assistance with hearing or language issues, but the extent to which captions improve a more general learning experience. This participant identified themselves as a native English speaker with no disabilities, yet the captions still made a “big difference” in their ability to follow, understand, focus on, and retain information drawn from the lectures.However, while over 60 per cent of students who used the captions reported they found them useful, it was difficult to get more detailed feedback on precisely how and why. Only 52.6 per cent reported actually using them when accessing the lectures, and a relatively small number reported taking advantage of the search and transcripts features available through the Echo360 system. Exactly how they were being used and what role they play in student learning is therefore an area to pursue in future research, as it will assist in breaking down the benefits of captions for all learners.Teaching staff also reported the difficulty in assessing the full value of captions—one teacher interviewed explained that the impact of captions was hard to monitor quantitatively during regular teaching:it is difficult enough to track who listens to lectures at all, let alone who might be using the captions, or have found these helpful. I would like to think that not only those with hearing impairments, but also ESL students and even people who find listening to and taking in the recording difficult for other reasons, might have benefitted.Some teaching staff, however, did note positive feedback from students:one student has given me positive feedback via comments on the [discussion board].one has reported that it helps with retention and with times when speech is soft or garbled. I suspect it helps mediate my accent and pitch!While 60 per cent claiming captions were useful is a solid majority, it is notable that some participants skipped this question. As discussed above, survey answers indicate that this was because these 37 students did not think they had access to captions in their units.Future SignificanceOverall, these results indicate that while captions can provide a benefit to students’ engagement with online lecture learning material, there is a need for more direct and ongoing information sharing to ensure both students and teaching staff are fully aware of captions and how to use them. Technical issues—such as the time delay in captions being uploaded—potentially dissuade students from using this facility, so improving the speed and reliability of this tool could increase the number of learners keen to use it. All staff interviewed agreed that implementing captions for all lectures would be beneficial for everyone:any technology that can assist in making lectures more accessible is useful, particularly in OUA [online] courses.it would be a good example of Universal Design as it would make the lecture content more accessible for students with disabilities as well as students with other equity needs.YES—it benefits all students. I personally find that I understand and my attention is held more by captioned content.it certainly makes my role easier as it allows effective access to recorded lectures. Captioning allows full access as every word is accessible as opposed to note taking which is not verbatim.DiscussionThe results of this research indicate that captions—and their additional features—available through the Echo360 captions system are an aid to student learning. However, there are significant challenges to be addressed to make students aware of these features and their potential benefits.This study has shown that in a cohort of primarily English speaking students without disabilities, over 60 per cent found captions a useful addition to recorded lectures. This suggests that the implementation of captions for all recorded lectures would have widespread benefits for all learners, not only those with hearing or language difficulties. However, at present, only “eligible” students who approach the disability office would be considered for this service, usually students who are D/deaf or hard of hearing. Yet it can be argued that these benefits—and challenges—could also extend to other groups that are might traditionally have been seen to benefit from the use of captions such as students with other disabilities or those from a NESB.However, again, a lack of awareness of the training module meant that this potential cohort did not benefit from this trial. In this study, none of the students who identified as having a disability or coming from a NESB indicated that they had access to the training module. Further, five of the six students with disabilities reported that they did not have access to the captions system and, similarly, only two of the five NESB students. Despite these low numbers, all the students who were part of these two groups and who did access the captions system did find it useful.It can therefore be seen that the main challenge for teaching staff is to ensure all students are aware of captions and can access them easily. One option for reducing the need for training or further instructions might be having captions always ON by default. This means students could incorporate them into their study experience without having to take direct action or, equally, could simply choose to switch them off.There are also a few potential teething issues with implementing captions universally that need to be noted, as staff expressed some concerns regarding how this might alter the teaching and learning experience. For example:because the captioning is once-off, it means I can’t re-record the lectures where there was a failure in technology as the new versions would not be captioned.a bit cautious about the transcript as there may be problems with students copying that content and also with not viewing the lectures thinking the transcripts are sufficient.Despite these concerns, the survey results and interviews support the previous findings showing that lecture captions have the potential to benefit all learners, enhancing each student’s existing capabilities. As one staff member put it:in the main I just feel [captions are] important for accessibility and equity in general. Why should people have to request captions? Recorded lecture content should be available to all students, in whatever way they find it most easy (or possible) to engage.Follow-up from students at the end of the study further supported this. As one student noted in an email at the start of 2017:hi all, in one of my units last semester we were lucky enough to have captions on the recorded lectures. They were immensely helpful for a number of reasons. I really hope they might become available to us in this unit.ConclusionsWhen this project set out to investigate the ways diverse groups of students could utilise captioned lectures if they were offered it as a mainstream learning tool rather than a feature only disabled students could request, existing research suggested that many accommodations designed to assist students with disabilities actually benefit the entire cohort. The results of the survey confirmed this was also the case for captioning.However, currently, lecture captions are typically utilised in Australian higher education settings—including Curtin—only as an assistive technology for students with disabilities, particularly students who are D/deaf or hard of hearing. In these circumstances, the student must undertake a lengthy process months in advance to ensure timely access to essential captioned material. Mainstreaming the provision of captions and transcripts for online lectures would greatly increase the accessibility of online learning—removing these barriers allows education providers to harness the broad potential of captioning technology. Indeed, ensuring that captions were available “by default” would benefit the educational outcomes and self-determination of the wide range of students who could benefit from this technology.Lecture captioning and transcription is increasingly cost-effective, given technological developments in speech-to-text or automatic speech recognition software, and the increasing re-use of content across different iterations of a unit in online higher education courses. At the same time, international trends in online education—not least the rapidly evolving interpretations of international legislation—provide new incentives for educational providers to begin addressing accessibility shortcomings by incorporating captions and transcripts into the basic materials of a course.Finally, an understanding of the diverse benefits of lecture captions and transcripts needs to be shared widely amongst higher education providers, researchers, teaching staff, and students to ensure the potential of this technology is accessed and used effectively. Understanding who can benefit from captions, and how they benefit, is a necessary step in encouraging greater use of such technology, and thereby enhancing students’ learning opportunities.AcknowledgementsThis research was funded by the Curtin University Teaching Excellence Development Fund. Natalie Latter and Kai-ti Kao provided vital research assistance. 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Introduction A snapshot, not unlike countless photographs likely to be found in any number of family albums, shows two figures sitting on a park bench: an elderly and amiable looking man grins beneath the rim of a golf cap; a young boy of twelve smiles wide for the camera — a rather banal scene, captured on film. And yet, this seemingly innocent and unexceptional photograph was the site of a remarkable and wide ranging discourse — encompassing American conservatism, celebrity politics, and the end of the Cold War — as the image circulated around the globe during the weeklong state funeral of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States. Taken in 1997 by the young boy’s grandfather, Ukrainian immigrant Yakov Ravin, during a chance encounter with the former president, the snapshot is believed to be the last public photograph of Ronald Reagan. Published on the occasion of the president’s death, the photograph made “instant celebrities” of the boy, now a twenty-year-old college student, Rostik Denenburg and his grand dad. Throughout the week of Reagan’s funeral, the two joined a chorus of dignitaries, politicians, pundits, and “ordinary” Americans praising Ronald Reagan: “The Great Communicator,” the man who defeated Communism, the popular president who restored America’s confidence, strength, and prosperity. Yes, it was mourning in America again. And the whole world was watching. Not since Princess Diana’s sudden (and unexpected) death, have we witnessed an electronic hagiography of such global proportions. Unlike Diana’s funeral, however, Reagan’s farewell played out in distinctly partisan terms. As James Ridgeway (2004) noted, the Reagan state funeral was “not only face-saving for the current administration, but also perhaps a mask for the American military debacle in Iraq. Not to mention a gesture of America’s might in the ‘war on terror.’” With non-stop media coverage, the weeklong ceremonies provided a sorely needed shot in the arm to the Bush re-election campaign. Still, whilst the funeral proceedings and the attendant media coverage were undeniably excessive in their deification of the former president, the historical white wash was not nearly so vulgar as the antiseptic send off Richard Nixon received back in 1994. That is to say, the piety of the Nixon funeral was at once startling and galling to many who reviled the man (Lapham). By contrast, given Ronald Reagan’s disarming public persona, his uniquely cordial relationship with the national press corps, and most notably, his handler’s mastery of media management techniques, the Reagan idolatry was neither surprising nor unexpected. In this brief essay, I want to consider Reagan’s funeral, and his legacy, in relation to what cultural critics, referring to the production of celebrity, have described as “fame games” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall). Specifically, I draw on the concept of “flashpoints” — moments of media excess surrounding a particular personage — in consideration of the Reagan funeral. Throughout, I demonstrate how Reagan’s death and the attendant media coverage epitomize this distinctive feature of contemporary culture. Furthermore, I observe Reagan’s innovative approaches to electoral politics in the age of television. Here, I suggest that Reagan’s appropriation of the strategies and techniques associated with advertising, marketing and public relations were decisive, not merely in terms of his electoral success, but also in securing his lasting fame. I conclude with some thoughts on the implications of Reagan’s legacy on historical memory, contemporary politics, and what neoconservatives, the heirs of the Reagan Revolution, gleefully describe as the New American Century. The Magic Hour On the morning of 12 June 2004, the last day of the state funeral, world leaders eulogized Reagan, the statesmen, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Among the A-List political stars invited to speak were Margaret Thatcher, former president George H. W. Bush and, to borrow Arundhati Roi’s useful phrase, “Bush the Lesser.” Reagan’s one-time Cold War adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were also on hand, but did not have speaking parts. Former Reagan administration officials, Supreme Court justices, and congressional representatives from both sides of the aisle rounded out a guest list that read like a who’s who of the American political class. All told, Reagan’s weeklong sendoff was a state funeral at its most elaborate. It had it all—the flag draped coffin, the grieving widow, the riderless horse, and the procession of mourners winding their way through the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In this last regard, Reagan joined an elite group of seven presidents, including four who died by assassination — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy — to be honored by having his remains lie in state in the Rotunda. But just as the deceased president was product of the studio system, so too, the script for the Gipper’s swan song come straight out of Hollywood. Later that day, the Reagan entourage made one last transcontinental flight back to the presidential library in Simi Valley, California for a private funeral service at sunset. In Hollywood parlance, the “magic hour” refers to the quality of light at dusk. It is an ideal, but ephemeral time favored by cinematographers, when the sunlight takes on a golden glow lending grandeur, nostalgia, and oftentimes, a sense of closure to a scene. This was Ronald Reagan’s final moment in the sun: a fitting end for an actor of the silver screen, as well as for the president who mastered televisual politics. In a culture so thoroughly saturated with the image, even the death of a minor celebrity is an occasion to replay film clips, interviews, paparazzi photos and the like. Moreover, these “flashpoints” grow in intensity and frequency as promotional culture, technological innovation, and the proliferation of new media outlets shape contemporary media culture. They are both cause and consequence of these moments of media excess. And, as Turner, Bonner and Marshall observe, “That is their point. It is their disproportionate nature that makes them so important: the scale of their visibility, their overwhelmingly excessive demonstration of the power of the relationship between mass-mediated celebrities and the consumers of popular culture” (3-4). B-Movie actor, corporate spokesman, state governor and, finally, US president, Ronald Reagan left an extraordinary photographic record. Small wonder, then, that Reagan’s death was a “flashpoint” of the highest order: an orgy of images, a media spectacle waiting to happen. After all, Reagan appeared in over 50 films during his career in Hollywood. Publicity stills and clips from Reagan’s film career, including Knute Rockne, All American, the biopic that earned Reagan his nickname “the Gipper”, King’s Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo provided a surreal, yet welcome respite from television’s obsessive (some might say morbidly so) live coverage of Reagan’s remains making their way across country. Likewise, archival footage of Reagan’s political career — most notably, images of the 1981 assassination attempt; his quip “not to make age an issue” during the 1984 presidential debate; and his 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanding that Soviet President Gorbachev, “tear down this wall” — provided the raw materials for press coverage that thoroughly dominated the global mediascape. None of which is to suggest, however, that the sheer volume of Reagan’s photographic record is sufficient to account for the endless replay and reinterpretation of Reagan’s life story. If we are to fully comprehend Reagan’s fame, we must acknowledge his seminal engagement with promotional culture, “a professional articulation between the news and entertainment media and the sources of publicity and promotion” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall 5) in advancing an extraordinary political career. Hitting His Mark In a televised address supporting Barry Goldwater’s nomination for the presidency delivered at the 1964 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan firmly established his conservative credentials and, in so doing, launched one of the most remarkable and influential careers in American politics. Political scientist Gerard J. De Groot makes a compelling case that the strategy Reagan and his handlers developed in the 1966 California gubernatorial campaign would eventually win him the presidency. The centerpiece of this strategy was to depict the former actor as a political outsider. Crafting a persona he described as “citizen politician,” Reagan’s great appeal and enormous success lie in his uncanny ability to project an image founded on traditional American values of hard work, common sense and self-determination. Over the course of his political career, Reagan’s studied optimism and “no-nonsense” approach to public policy would resonate with an electorate weary of career politicians. Charming, persuasive, and seemingly “authentic,” Reagan ran gubernatorial and subsequent presidential campaigns that were distinctive in that they employed sophisticated public relations and marketing techniques heretofore unknown in the realm of electoral politics. The 1966 Reagan gubernatorial campaign took the then unprecedented step of employing an advertising firm, Los Angeles-based Spencer-Roberts, in shaping the candidate’s image. Leveraging their candidate’s ease before the camera, the Reagan team crafted a campaign founded upon a sophisticated grasp of the television industry, TV news routines, and the medium’s growing importance to electoral politics. For instance, in the days before the 1966 Republican primary, the Reagan team produced a five-minute film using images culled from his campaign appearances. Unlike his opponent, whose television spots were long-winded, amateurish and poorly scheduled pieces that interrupted popular programs, like Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Reagan’s short film aired in the early evening, between program segments (De Groot). Thus, while his opponent’s television spot alienated viewers, the Reagan team demonstrated a formidable appreciation not only for televisual style, but also, crucially, a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of television scheduling, audience preferences and viewing habits. Over the course of his political career, Reagan refined his media driven, media directed campaign strategy. An analysis of his 1980 presidential campaign reveals three dimensions of Reagan’s increasingly sophisticated media management strategy (Covington et al.). First, the Reagan campaign carefully controlled their candidate’s accessibility to the press. Reagan’s penchant for potentially damaging off-the-cuff remarks and factual errors led his advisors to limit journalists’ interactions with the candidate. Second, the character of Reagan’s public appearances, including photo opportunities and especially press conferences, grew more formal. Reagan’s interactions with the press corps were highly structured affairs designed to control which reporters were permitted to ask questions and to help the candidate anticipate questions and prepare responses in advance. Finally, the Reagan campaign sought to keep the candidate “on message.” That is to say, press releases, photo opportunities and campaign appearances focused on a single, consistent message. This approach, known as the Issue of the Day (IOD) media management strategy proved indispensable to advancing the administration’s goals and achieving its objectives. Not only was the IOD strategy remarkably effective in influencing press coverage of the Reagan White House, this coverage promoted an overwhelmingly positive image of the president. As the weeklong funeral amply demonstrated, Reagan was, and remains, one of the most popular presidents in modern American history. Reagan’s popular (and populist) appeal is instructive inasmuch as it illuminates the crucial distinction between “celebrity and its premodern antecedent, fame” observed by historian Charles L. Ponce de Leone (13). Whereas fame was traditionally bestowed upon those whose heroism and extraordinary achievements distinguished them from common people, celebrity is a defining feature of modernity, inasmuch as celebrity is “a direct outgrowth of developments that most of us regard as progressive: the spread of the market economy and the rise of democratic, individualistic values” (Ponce de Leone 14). On one hand, then, Reagan’s celebrity reflects his individualism, his resolute faith in the primacy of the market, and his defense of “traditional” (i.e. democratic) American values. On the other hand, by emphasizing his heroic, almost supernatural achievements, most notably his vanquishing of the “Evil Empire,” the Reagan mythology serves to lift him “far above the common rung of humanity” raising him to “the realm of the divine” (Ponce de Leone 14). Indeed, prior to his death, the Reagan faithful successfully lobbied Congress to create secular shrines to the standard bearer of American conservatism. For instance, in 1998, President Clinton signed a bill that officially rechristened one of the US capitol’s airports to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. More recently, conservatives working under the aegis of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project have called for the creation of even more visible totems to the Reagan Revolution, including replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profile on the dime with Reagan’s image and, more dramatically, inscribing Reagan in stone, alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore (Gordon). Therefore, Reagan’s enduring fame rests not only on the considerable symbolic capital associated with his visual record, but also, increasingly, upon material manifestations of American political culture. The High Stakes of Media Politics What are we to make of Reagan’s fame and its implications for America? To begin with, we must acknowledge Reagan’s enduring influence on modern electoral politics. Clearly, Reagan’s “citizen politician” was a media construct — the masterful orchestration of ideological content across the institutional structures of news, public relations and marketing. While some may suggest that Reagan’s success was an anomaly, a historical aberration, a host of politicians, and not a few celebrities — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger among them — emulate Reagan’s style and employ the media management strategies he pioneered. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the Reagan mythology that is so thoroughly bound up in his approach to media/politics does more to obscure, rather than illuminate the historical record. For instance, in her (video taped) remarks at the funeral service, Margaret Thatcher made the extraordinary claim — a central tenet of the Reagan Revolution — that Ronnie won the cold war “without firing a shot.” Such claims went unchallenged, at least in the establishment press, despite Reagan’s well-documented penchant for waging costly and protracted proxy wars in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America. Similarly, the Reagan hagiography failed to acknowledge the decisive role Gorbachev and his policies of “reform” and “openness” — Perestroika and Glasnost — played in the ending of the Cold War. Indeed, Reagan’s media managed populism flies in the face of what radical historian Howard Zinn might describe as a “people’s history” of the 1980s. That is to say, a broad cross-section of America — labor, racial and ethnic minorities, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists among them — rallied in vehement opposition to Reagan’s foreign and domestic policies. And yet, throughout the weeklong funeral, the divisiveness of the Reagan era went largely unnoted. In the Reagan mythology, then, popular demonstrations against an unprecedented military build up, the administration’s failure to acknowledge, let alone intervene in the AIDS epidemic, and the growing disparity between rich and poor that marked his tenure in office were, to borrow a phrase, relegated to the dustbin of history. In light of the upcoming US presidential election, we ought to weigh how Reagan’s celebrity squares with the historical record; and, equally important, how his legacy both shapes and reflects the realities we confront today. Whether we consider economic and tax policy, social services, electoral politics, international relations or the domestic culture wars, Reagan’s policies and practices continue to determine the state of the union and inform the content and character of American political discourse. Increasingly, American electoral politics turns on the pithy soundbite, the carefully orchestrated pseudo-event, and a campaign team’s unwavering ability to stay on message. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ronald Reagan’s unmistakable influence upon the current (and illegitimate) occupant of the White House. References Covington, Cary R., Kroeger, K., Richardson, G., and J. David Woodward. “Shaping a Candidate’s Image in the Press: Ronald Reagan and the 1980 Presidential Election.” Political Research Quarterly 46.4 (1993): 783-98. De Groot, Gerard J. “‘A Goddamed Electable Person’: The 1966 California Gubernatorial Campaign of Ronald Reagan.” History 82.267 (1997): 429-48. Gordon, Colin. “Replace FDR on the Dime with Reagan?” History News Network 15 December, 2003. http://hnn.us/articles/1853.html>. Lapham, Lewis H. “Morte de Nixon – Death of Richard Nixon – Editorial.” Harper’s Magazine (July 1994). http://www.harpers.org/MorteDeNixon.html>. Ponce de Leon, Charles L. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Ridgeway, James. “Bush Takes a Ride in Reagan’s Wake.” Village Voice (10 June 2004). http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/mondo5.php>. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Zinn, Howard. The Peoples’ History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Howley, Kevin. "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>. APA Style Howley, K. (Nov. 2004) "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>.

This article explores how fat women protesting challenges norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces. We use the term fat as a political reclamation; Fat Studies scholars and fat activists prefer the term fat, over the normative term “overweight” and the pathologising term “obese/obesity” (Lee and Pausé para 3). Who is and who isn’t fat, we suggest, is best left to self-determination, although it is generally accepted by fat activists that the term is most appropriately adopted by individuals who are unable to buy clothes in any store they choose. Using a tweet from conservative commentator Ann Coulter as a leaping-off point, we examine the narratives around women in the public sphere and explore how fat bodies might transgress further the norms set by society. The public representations of women in politics and protest are then are set in the context of ‘activist wisdom’ (Maddison and Scalmer) from two sides of the globe. Activist wisdom gives preference to the lived knowledge and experience of activists as tools to understand social movements. It seeks to draw theoretical implications from the practical actions of those on the ground. In centring the experiences of ourselves and other activists, we hope to expand existing understandings of body politics, gender, and political power in this piece. It is important in researching social movements to look both at the representations of protest and protestors in all forms of media as this is the ‘public face’ of movements, but also to examine the reflections of the individuals who collectively put their weight behind bringing social change.A few days after the 45th President of the United States was elected, people around the world spilled into the streets and participated in protests; precursors to the Women’s March which would take place the following January. Pictures of such marches were shared via social media, demonstrating the worldwide protest against the racism, misogyny, and overall oppressiveness, of the newly elected leader. Not everyone was supportive of these protests though; one such conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, shared this tweet: Image1: A tweet from Ann Coulter; the tweet contains a picture of a group of protestors, holding signs protesting Trump, white supremacy, and for the rights of immigrants. In front of the group, holding a megaphone is a woman. Below the picture, the text reads, “Without fat girls, there would be no protests”.Coulter continued on with two more tweets, sharing pictures of other girls protesting and suggesting that the protestors needed a diet programme. Kivan Bay (“Without Fat Girls”) suggested that perhaps Coulter was implying that skinny girls do not have time to protest because they are too busy doing skinny girl things, like buying jackets or trying on sweaters. Or perhaps Coulter was arguing that fat girls are too visible, too loud, and too big, to be taken seriously in their protests. These tweets provide a point of illustration for how fat women protesting challenge norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces While Coulter’s tweet was most likely intended as a hostile personal attack on political grounds, we find it useful in its foregrounding of gender, bodies and protest which we consider in this article, beginning with a review of fat girls’ role in social justice movements.Across the world, we can point to fat women who engage in activism related to body politics and more. Australian fat filmmaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater makes documentaries, such as Aquaporko! and Nothing to Lose, that queer fat embodiment and confronts body norms. Newly elected Ontario MPP Jill Andrew has been fighting for equal rights for queer people and fat people in Canada for decades. Nigerian Latasha Ngwube founded About That Curvy Life, Africa’s leading body positive and empowerment site, and has organised plus-size fashion show events at Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week in Nigeria in 2016 and the Glitz Africa Fashion Week in Ghana in 2017. Fat women have been putting their bodies on the line for the rights of others to live, work, and love. American Heather Heyer was protesting the hate that white nationalists represent and the danger they posed to her friends, family, and neighbours when she died at a rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in late 2017 (Caron). When Heyer was killed by one of those white nationalists, they declared that she was fat, and therefore her body size was lauded loudly as justification for her death (Bay, “How Nazis Use”; Spangler).Fat women protesting is not new. For example, the Fat Underground was a group of “radical fat feminist women”, who split off from the more conservative NAAFA (National Association to Aid Fat Americans) in the 1970s (Simic 18). The group educated the public about weight science, harassed weight-loss companies, and disrupted academic seminars on obesity. The Fat Underground made their first public appearance at a Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles, taking over the stage at the public event to accuse the medical profession of murdering Cass Elliot, the lead singer of the folk music group, The Mamas and the Papas (Dean and Buss). In 1973, the Fat Underground produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto. This Manifesto began by declaring that they believed “that fat people are full entitled to human respect and recognition” (Freespirit and Aldebaran 341).Women have long been disavowed, or discouraged, from participating in the public sphere (Ginzberg; van Acker) or seen as “intruders or outsiders to the tough world of politics” (van Acker 118). The feminist slogan the personal is political was intended to shed light on the role that women needed to play in the public spheres of education, employment, and government (Caha 22). Across the world, the acceptance of women within the public sphere has been varied due to cultural, political, and religious, preferences and restrictions (Agenda Feminist Media Collective). Limited acceptance of women in the public sphere has historically been granted by those ‘anointed’ by a male family member or patron (Fountaine 47).Anti-feminists are quick to disavow women being in public spaces, preferring to assign them the role as helpmeet to male political elite. As Schlafly (in Rowland 30) notes: “A Positive Woman cannot defeat a man in a wrestling or boxing match, but she can motivate him, inspire him, encourage him, teach him, restrain him, reward him, and have power over him that he can never achieve over her with all his muscle.” This idea of women working behind the scenes has been very strong in New Zealand where the ‘sternly worded’ letter is favoured over street protest. An acceptable route for women’s activism was working within existing political institutions (Grey), with activity being ‘hidden’ inside government offices such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Schuster, 23). But women’s movement organisations that engage in even the mildest form of disruptive protest are decried (Grey; van Acker).One way women have been accepted into public space is as the moral guardians or change agents of the entire political realm (Bliss; Ginzberg; van Acker; Ledwith). From the early suffrage movements both political actors and media representations highlighted women were more principled and conciliatory than men, and in many cases had a moral compass based on restraint. Cartoons showed women in the suffrage movement ‘sweeping up’ and ‘cleaning house’ (Sheppard 123). Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were celebrated for protesting against the demon drink and anti-pornography campaigners like Patricia Bartlett were seen as acceptable voices of moral reason (Moynihan). And as Cunnison and Stageman (in Ledwith 193) note, women bring a “culture of femininity to trade unions … an alternative culture, derived from the particularity of their lives as women and experiences of caring and subordination”. This role of moral guardian often derived from women as ‘mothers’, responsible for the physical and moral well-being of the nation.The body itself has been a sight of protest for women including fights for bodily autonomy in their medical decisions, reproductive justice, and to live lives free from physical and sexual abuse, have long been met with criticisms of being unladylike or inappropriate. Early examples decried in NZ include the women’s clothing movement which formed part of the suffrage movement. In the second half of the 20th century it was the freedom trash can protests that started the myth of ‘women burning their bras’ which defied acceptable feminine norms (Sawer and Grey). Recent examples of women protesting for body rights include #MeToo and Time’s Up. Both movements protest the lack of bodily autonomy women can assert when men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies for their entertainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And both movements have received considerable backlash by those who suggest it is a witch hunt that might ensnare otherwise innocent men, or those who are worried that the real victims are white men who are being left behind (see Garber; Haussegger). Women who advocate for bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion, are often held up as morally irresponsible. As Archdeacon Bullock (cited in Smyth 55) asserted, “A woman should pay for her fun.”Many individuals believe that the stigma and discrimination fat people face are the consequences they sow from their own behaviours (Crandall 892); that fat people are fat because they have made poor decisions, being too indulgent with food and too lazy to exercise (Crandall 883). Therefore, fat people, like women, should have to pay for their fun. Fat women find themselves at this intersection, and are often judged more harshly for their weight than fat men (Tiggemann and Rothblum). Examining Coulter’s tweet with this perspective in mind, it can easily be read as an attempt to put fat girl protestors back into their place. It can also be read as a warning. Don’t go making too much noise or you may be labelled as fat. Presenting troublesome women as fat has a long history within political art and depictions. Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) was depicted as fat and ugly; she also reinforced an anti-suffragist position (Chenut 441). These images are effective because of our societal views on fatness (Kyrölä). Fatness is undesirable, unworthy of love and attention, and a representation of poor character, lack of willpower, and an absence of discipline (Murray 14; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 1).Fat women who protest transgress rules around body size, gender norms, and the appropriate place for women in society. Take as an example the experiences of one of the authors of this piece, Sandra Grey, who was thrust in to political limelight nationally with the Campaign for MMP (Grey and Fitzsimmons) and when elected as the President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union in 2011. Sandra is a trade union activist who breaches too many norms set for the “good woman protestor,” as well as the norms for being a “good fat woman”. She looms large on a stage – literally – and holds enough power in public protest to make a crowd of 7,000 people “jump to left”, chant, sing, and march. In response, some perceive Sandra less as a tactical and strategic leader of the union movement, and more as the “jolly fat woman” who entertains, MCs, and leads public events. Though even in this role, she has been criticised for being too loud, too much, too big.These criticisms are loudest when Sandra is alongside other fat female bodies. When posting on social media photos with fellow trade union members the comments often note the need of the group to “go on a diet”. The collective fatness also brings comments about “not wanting to fuck any of that group of fat cows”. There is something politically and socially dangerous about fat women en masse. This was behind the responses to Sandra’s first public appearance as the President of TEU when one of the male union members remarked “Clearly you have to be a fat dyke to run this union.” The four top elected and appointed positions in the TEU have been women for eight years now and both their fatness and perceived sexuality present as a threat in a once male-dominated space. Even when not numerically dominant, unions are public spaces dominated by a “masculine culture … underpinned by the undervaluation of ‘women’s worth’ and notions of womanhood ‘defined in domesticity’” (Cockburn in Kirton 273-4). Sandra’s experiences in public space show that the derision and methods of putting fat girls back in their place varies dependent on whether the challenge to power is posed by a single fat body with positional power and a group of fat bodies with collective power.Fat Girls Are the FutureOn the other side of the world, Tara Vilhjálmsdóttir is protesting to change the law in Iceland. Tara believes that fat people should be protected against discrimination in public and private settings. Using social media such as Facebook and Instagram, Tara takes her message, and her activism, to her thousands of followers (Keller, 434; Pausé, “Rebel Heart”). And through mainstream media, she pushes back on fatphobia rhetoric and applies pressure on the government to classify weight as a protected status under the law.After a lifetime of living “under the oppression of diet culture,” Tara began her activism in 2010 (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She had suffered real harm from diet culture, developing an eating disorder as a teen and being told through her treatment for it that her fears as a fat woman – that she had no future, that fat people experienced discrimination and stigma – were unfounded. But Tara’s lived experiences demonstrated fat stigma and discrimination were real.In 2012, she co-founded the Icelandic Association for Body Respect, which promotes body positivity and fights weight stigma in Iceland. The group uses a mixture of real life and online tools; organising petitions, running campaigns against the Icelandic version of The Biggest Loser, and campaigning for weight to be a protected class in the Icelandic constitution. The Association has increased the visibility of the dangers of diet culture and the harm of fat stigma. They laid the groundwork that led to changing the human rights policy for the city of Reykjavík; fat people cannot be discriminated against in employment settings within government jobs. As the city is one of the largest employers in the country, this was a large step forward for fat rights.Tara does receive her fair share of hate messages; she’s shared that she’s amazed at the lengths people will go to misunderstand what she is saying (Vilhjálmsdóttir). “This isn’t about hurt feelings; I’m not insulted [by fat stigma]. It’s about [fat stigma] affecting the livelihood of fat people and the structural discrimination they face” (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She collects the hateful comments she receives online through screenshots and shares them in an album on her page. She believes it is important to keep a repository to demonstrate to others that the hatred towards fat people is real. But the hate she receives only fuels her work more. As does the encouragement she receives from people, both in Iceland and abroad. And she is not alone; fat activists across the world are using Web 2.0 tools to change the conversation around fatness and demand civil rights for fat people (Pausé, “Rebel Heart”; Pausé, “Live to Tell").Using Web 2.0 tools as a way to protest and engage in activism is an example of oppositional technologics; a “political praxis of resistance being woven into low-tech, amateur, hybrid, alternative subcultural feminist networks” (Garrison 151). Fat activists use social media to engage in anti-assimilationist activism and build communities of practice online in ways that would not be possible in real life (Pausé, “Express Yourself” 1). This is especially useful for those whose protests sit at the intersections of oppressions (Keller 435; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 19). Online protests have the ability to travel the globe quickly, providing opportunities for connections between protests and spreading protests across the globe, such as SlutWalks in 2011-2012 (Schuster 19). And online spaces open up unlimited venues for women to participate more freely in protest than other forms (Harris 479; Schuster 16; Garrison 162).Whether online or offline, women are represented as dangerous in the political sphere when they act without male champions breaching norms of femininity, when their involvement challenges the role of woman as moral guardians, and when they make the body the site of protest. Women must ‘do politics’ politely, with utmost control, and of course caringly; that is they must play their ‘designated roles’. Whether or not you fit the gendered norms of political life affects how your protest is perceived through the media (van Acker). Coulter’s tweet loudly proclaimed that the fat ‘girls’ protesting the election of the 45th President of the United States were unworthy, out of control, and not worthy of attention (ironic, then, as her tweet caused considerable conversation about protest, fatness, and the reasons not to like the President-Elect). What the Coulter tweet demonstrates is that fat women are perceived as doubly-problematic in public space, both as fat and as women. They do not do politics in a way that is befitting womanhood – they are too visible and loud; they are not moral guardians of conservative values; and, their bodies challenge masculine power.ReferencesAgenda Feminist Media Collective. “Women in Society: Public Debate.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 10 (1991): 31-44.Bay, Kivan. “How Nazis Use Fat to Excuse Violence.” Medium, 7 Feb. 2018. 1 May 2018 <https://medium.com/@kivabay/how-nazis-use-fat-to-excuse-violence-b7da7d18fea8>.———. “Without Fat Girls, There Would Be No Protests.” Bullshit.ist, 13 Nov. 2016. 16 May 2018 <https://bullshit.ist/without-fat-girls-there-would-be-no-protests-e66690de539a>.Bliss, Katherine Elaine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. Penn State Press, 2010.Caha, Omer. 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Introduction The construction of meaning is specifically denoted by texts that are created and published by the mass media. To highlight how that meaning is constructed, we might take a communication research approach which then enables us to understand how mass media texts impact society. To undertake such an approach it is useful to reflect on two methods outlined by Adoni and Mane who suggest there are two communication research methodologies. “The first focuses on the social construction of reality as an important aspect of the relationship between culture and society. The second approach concentrates on the social construction of reality as one type of media effect.” (Adoni and Mane 323). Relying on Adoni and Mane’s second communication research approach and combining this with the practice of remix, we can begin to understand how practitioners construct a reality from the mass audience perspective and not the mass media’s construction. This aligns with the approach taken by the ABC Pool remix practitioners in that they are informed by the mass media’s construction of meaning, yet oppose their understanding of the text as the basis for their altered construction of meaning. The oppositional reading of the media text also aligns with Hall’s encoding/decoding theory, specifically the oppositional reading where audiences resist the dominant or preferred reading of the text (Long & Wall). If we align Deuze’s (Media Work) thinking to mass media that suggests we live in media as opposed to with media, the effects of the construction of reality have a major impact on how we construct our own lives. Until recently, that media and consequent meaning has been constructed by the mass media and broadcast into our living rooms, headphones, billboards and other public spaces where media resides. The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the affordances these information and communication technologies provide for the audience to talk back in new and innovative ways has challenged that traditional model of meaning construction. Now, instead of the mass media designing and disseminating meaning through our media consumption channels, the audience also has an opportunity to participate in this consumption and production process (Bruns; Jenkins; Shirky). “Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends,” according to (Knobel & Lankshear 22) where Lessig argues that digital remix is writing on a mass cultural practice scale (Remix). Remix within this paper is considered a practice that takes the affordances of the technology and couples that with the creative ability of the artists to create socially constructed meanings through new and inventive methods. In considering socially constructed meaning, it is useful to reflect on media dependency theory, which suggests the amount of subjective reality depends on direct experience with various phenomena and the exposure to the media in relation to those phenomena (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur). “According to the media dependency hypothesis, the degree of media contribution to the individual's construction of subjective reality is a function of one's direct experience with various phenomena and consequent dependence on the media for information about these phenomena” (Adoni and Mane 324). Remix requires a parent piece of media (the original meaning) to create a remixed child (the re-constructed meaning). There is a clear dependency relationship between the parent and child pieces of media in this arrangement, which realistically shapes how the child will be created. If this material is published in a non-institutional environment, the artist is more or less free to demonstrate what ever meaning they wish to express. However when this practice emerges from within an institutional environment, this raises concerns of the media production, namely is the media institution challenging the original meaning they placed on certain texts and are they endorsing the new socially constructed meaning provided by remix artists? Constructing new forms of meaning and challenging the preferred meaning of institutionally generated texts intrinsically connects remix to the act of online activism. Activism can be defined as “people and organisations that work to promote social or political changes” for the benefit of society (Jones 1). Scholars have noted the significance of online technologies to aid in the mobilisation of mass groups of individuals in protest. In light of the recent Arab Spring uprisings, González-Bailón et al. note “the number of events connecting social media with social unrest has multiplied, not only in the context of authoritarian regimes exemplified by the recent wave of upsurges across the Arab world but also in western liberal democracies, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis and changes to welfare policies” (para 1). Although the majority of work that is remixed on ABC Pool is not related to an authoritarian regime, it is representative of the frustrations many citizens have towards the inequality of distribution of wealth and power to a few privileged individuals. Remix as an online activism activity also explicitly demonstrates Hall’s oppositional reading of encoded texts. This paper will use media dependency theory as a lens to investigate how remix occurs outside of the institution to challenge the meanings created by authorities within the institutional setting, while challenging the mass media approach towards social discourse construction. To do this, the paper will focus on the case study of one remix artist, Main$treaM, who was an active participant within the institutional online community, ABC Pool. ABC Pool was a user created content space that ceased to operate during May 2013 from within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Pool project enabled users to publish their audio, video, photography and writing on a platform that was developed and resourced by the ABC. ABC Pool was open to everyone and was governed by the same editorial policies that regulated all media and activities across the ABC in relation to the ABC Charter (ABC Act 1983). ABC Pool also operated under a Creative Commons licensing regime which enabled media to flow across platforms, for example the Internet, radio and television, while providing attribution to the original author (generally under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license). Main$treaM was one active user that engaged in remix to pursue his creative direction but to also challenge the meanings of texts that had been created by the mass media. Max Prophet$ equals Ca$h for Comments Main$treaM had been active in Pool for several months when he began publishing his remixed works. His approach towards media and its production is especially important as his technique involved challenging the societal discourse that is accepted from traditional forms of media production and reappropriating them to reflect how an audience would reconstruct them, from their Deuzian lived in experience. Main$treaM can also be classified as an oppositional reader of text in regards to how he decodes the meaning within the message (Hall). His online activist approach is obvious in his self-described profile. Main$treaM’s profile on ABC Pool says: Making animations, music & loads of max prophet$ However, his profile on Discogs (Discogs is one of the largest online music databases, where users can contribute music information and data while locating collectables within the global marketplace) reveals the artist’s creative and political perspectives: Main$treaM started off wanting to piss people off. He loathed the studio recording industry professionals & Sound Production Mass Media Culture in general. How could it be that a TV Camera can record what you say in the street, then edit it into something YOU DID NOT SAY but take a little news sample off the TV & bam: "WE WILL SUE YOU" These days it makes me sick that hard breaks & media cut ups are trendy. Not sick enough to actually stop. Main$treaM’s approach is one that challenges the stereotypical rhetoric tropes of the mass media and is concerned with choosing a remix style that aligns with the media dependency theory. That is, he draws on the one perspective which is garnered by the traditional media figureheads and applies his lived in experience with those same societal discourses to provide a significantly different meaning (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). The tool he uses to operationalise this is the art of remix by taking multiple cultural artefacts to create new creative blends (Knobel & Lankshear). John Laws is a radio celebrity who has dominated the Australian media landscape for decades with his at times controversial ‘shock jock’ talk back radio program. He is right wing in his political alignment and has at times been the centre of controversial programming efforts that has riled Australian audiences, which also involved input from Australian media authorities. His political alignment coupled with his disregard for audience sensitivities makes Laws an ideal character for an activist remix artist such as Main$treaM to target. Main$treaM had taken comments that Laws had made, placed them out of context and remixed them to deliberately misrepresent Laws’s opinion. One track in particular, Max Prophet$, is a reaction to the controversial Cash for Comments scandal (Johnson). In this case, John Laws was accused of receiving remuneration from Toyota to endorse their products on his radio program without acknowledging this activity as advertising. Main$treaM, through one of his ABC Pool contributions Max Prophet$, selected various comments that Laws had made during his radio broadcasts, and remixed them in a format that had John Laws say he was indeed receiving large amounts of money from Toyota. His remix, in the tradition of Pauline Pantsdown, took Laws’s comments and connected them to say “That really is a terrific vehicle that Hilux Workmate, great name too isn’t it”, highlighting a clear endorsement of the Toyota product by the radio presenter. However, Main$treaM did not stop at proving his point with this one remix contribution. He also provided in addition to the Max Prophet$ contribution, many other controversial social commentary works, including Cock Cheek parts One and Two, Prickseye Picture of You and I, and Ca$h for Comment$. Each contribution focussed on a particular character trait that Laws had become known for, such as inviting input from his listeners and then hanging up on them when they provided commentary that was contrary to his opinion. “Did I call you or did you call me” was Main$treaM’s method of whimsically suggesting that Laws is a rude, right wing conservative. The public opinion within Australia of John Laws is split between support from the conservatives and disdain from the liberals. Main$treaM was attempting to provide a voice from within the liberal perspective that illuminates the public opinion of Laws. The public opinion of Laws is one cultural discourse that is difficult to define, and almost impossible to publish to the broader public. Remix, as Lessig suggests, provides the most suitable genre of mass cultural practice to interrogate both perspectives of someone as controversial as Laws, where ABC Pool provides the most suitable platform to publish remixed societal perspectives on contemporary controversial issues. However, as outlined earlier, ABC Pool is contained within the same regulatory framework as any other publication space of the ABC. Essentially by publishing this controversial work on an ABC platform is blurring the boundaries between the ABC providing a place to publish the material and the ABC endorsing the material. ABC Pool operated under a reactive mode of moderation which suggests that content can be published without any form of moderation but if it were flagged as inappropriate by another user or audience member it had to be investigated by the ABC Pool team. Main$treaM’s contemporary material contained confronting concepts, language and techniques and was flagged as inappropriate by an anonymous Pool user during 2011. In this instance, it becomes clear that remix within an institutional setting is a complicated activity to facilitate. By providing a Creative Commons licensing regime, the ABC Pool project is endorsing remix as an institutional activity, and given the ethos of ABC Pool to experiment with new and innovative ways of engaging the audience, remix is crucial to its operation. However given the complaints of the other users that Main$treaM’s material was inappropriate, the problem arose of how to manage contentious remix activity. Aligning with Jenkins’s convergent cultures and Bruns’s produsage theories which incorporates the audience into the production process, the ABC Pool project was required to promote remix as a suitable activity for its users. Remix as an online activist activity in turn attracted the societal dissent approach from remix artists, providing a problem of adhering to the rules and regulations of the ABC more broadly. In the immediacy of the complaint, a large proportion of Main$treaM’s material was temporarily unpublished from ABC Pool until the team could provide a suitable solution on how to solve the tensions. The Legal Consultation Process In an instance such as this, an ABC employee is required to consult the editorial policy people to seek their advice on the most appropriate approach on the problematic material. The ABC Editorial Policies representatives referenced the material in the then Section 9 of the Editorial Policies, which relates to user-generated content. After the consultation process, they could see no breach of the guidelines; however, given the obscene constitution of the material, they suggested the Pool team refer the material to ABC Legal, a process in the ABC known as ‘referring up’. ABC Legal had a team of media lawyers interrogate the material from a criminal law perspective. It is worth noting, in both departments, Legal and Editorial Policies, there was support for Main$treaM’s creative expression (Fieldnotes, 2011). However, both parties were approaching the material and acting in a risk management capacity to protect the integrity of the ABC brand. After receiving the approval of the editorial policy people, the ABC Pool team had to seek the advice from ABC Legal. After two weeks of investigation, ABC Legal returned the following recommendations for the Pool team: Ultimately, risk management is the deciding factor to determine if the material should be published or not, supported by a solid defense should the case go to court.There are three areas to be considered with Main$treaM’s content:CopyrightDefamatoryObscenityIn regards to copyright, it is OK to publish in this case because the works are covered by parody or satire as the pieces have a focussed angle, or subject (John Laws).Defamation is more complicated. Firstly, we have to establish if the usual person could identify the defamed person. If yes, we need to establish what imputations there are, i.e. homophobic tendencies, pedophilia, etc. For each imputation, we need to establish if there is a defense. Typical defenses are honest opinion, expressed as one’s view, or truth. Honest Opinion needs to have a base to relate it to and not just a rant – i.e. John Laws was caught in the Cash for Comments scandal but there is no evidence to suggest he is a pedophile (unless the artists knows a truth – which becomes complicated again).Obscenity comes under classification, and since Pool does not have a rating system in place, we cannot offer this as a way to avoid publishing. A standard example of this relates to a younger audience member having the same access to an obscene piece of content (as guided by Pool’s Guidelines Section 4.1 a and b).These rules are premised by how do I read it/hear it. This is how a jury of citizens will approach the same piece of content. Risk management is also present when we ask how will John Laws hear about it, and what will the community think about it.(Fieldnotes, 2011) The suggestions the legal team returned are significant in highlighting the position of a media institution that facilitates remix. What is relevant here is a public service media organisation is a specific type of media organisation that is responsible for facilitating increased citizenry through its activities (Cunningham). Martin builds on the work of Jacka and Hartley to highlight how the ABC should be encouraging ‘DIY citizenry’. She says the combination of the core Reithian values of educate, inform and entertain can be combined with new media technologies that enable a “semiotic self determination model” to construct a “national semiosis model” (Hartley 161). However, there is a clear misalignment between the values of the PSM and the remix artist. What was required was the presence of a cultural intermediary to assist in calibrating those values and engaging in a negotiation phase between the two stakeholders. A cultural intermediary is a human or non-human actor that is located between the production and consumption of cultural artifacts and aids in facilitating the negotiation space between different expertise disciplines. In this case, it was the role of the community manager to attempt to connect the two approaches and enable remix practice to continue under the auspices of the ABC. The ABC had shifted its approach towards some of the Main$treaM material, but given its regulatory framework was unable to facilitate all of his contributions. Unfortunately in this case, Main$treaM did not align with the requirements of the ABC, left the Pool community and did not continue his practice of remix within the ABC any further. Conclusion Remixed texts that are published on PSM platforms demonstrate high levels of dependency on existing mass media texts, aligning them with the approach of the media dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). Remixed texts are also cultural products of artists that live in media and not with media, as noted by Deuze (Media Industries, Work and Life) and are the result of mass cultural practice that manipulates the meaning of multiple cultural artefacts (Lessig). Remix as a form of online activism is also representative of Hall’s oppositional reading of texts which enable the practitioner to deepen their involvement within the social construction of reality (Adoni & Mane). Convergence cultures represent the audience’s ever-increasing desire to participate in the production of media and not merely consume it (Jenkins). The theoretical alignment of remix with these theories suggests remixed texts have a deeper and richer cultural representation than that of its institutionally produced parent text. However, collaboratively produced cultural artefacts via remix are problematised by the digital divide debate, specifically through the access of tools and knowledge for this practice. Lin terms this problem as ‘techno-elite’ where only certain individuals have access and knowledge and tools to engage in these types of cultural activities facilitated by PSM. Further, Carpentier challenges this type of participation by asking if we have access and can interact, are we really participating in a democratising activity, given the promises of online activism? Given that PSM is pursuing the concept of the audience as user, which positions the audience as a producer of content across online environments, facilitating the practice of remix should align with its core values to inform, educate and entertain (Martin). However as we have seen with the Main$treaM case, this is problematic when attempting to align the focus of a remix artist with that of PSM. In these instances the work of the cultural intermediary as the disciplinary expertise negotiator becomes critical to increase the societal representation within the production and consumption of cultural artefacts produced through the activity of remix. A public service broadcaster that is supportive of both institutionally produced texts, along with socially informed text production through remix, will be a rigorous media organisation that supports a better informed citizenry, or as Hartley suggests a self determined national semiosis model. References Adoni, Hanna, and Sherrill Mane. "Media and the Social Construction of Reality: Toward and Integration of Theory and Research." Communication Research 11.3 (1984): 323-40. Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, and DeFluer, Melvin. "A Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects." Communication Research 3 (1976): 3-21. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Carpentier, Nico. "The Concept of Participation. If They Have Access and Interact, Do They Really Participate?" Communication Management Quarterly 21 (2011): 13-36. Cunningham, Stuart. Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector. Creative Economy and Innovation Culture. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2013. Deuze, Mark. Media Work. London: Polity Press, 2007. Deuze, Mark. "Media Industries, Work and Life." European Journal of Communication 24 (2009): 467. Enli, Gunn Sara. "Redefining Public Service Broadcasting." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14.1 (2008): 105 - 20. González-Bailón, Sandra, et al. "The Dynamics of Protest Recruitment through an Online Network." Scientific Reports 1.197 (2011). Hall, Stuart. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Council of Europe Colloquy on "Training In The Critical Reading of Television Language". 1973. Hartley, John. "Communicative Democracy in a Redactional Society: The Future of Journalism Studies." Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 1.1 (2001): 39-48. Jacka, Liz. "'Good Democracy': The Role of Public Service Broadcasting." The Centre for Culture and History (2001). 2 Feb. 2013 < http://www.cmchnyu.org/pdfs/jacka.pdf >. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture - Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Johnson, Rob. Cash for Comment: The Seduction of Journo Culture. Media.Culture Series. Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000. Jones, Christopher. "Activism or Slacktivism? The Role of Social Media in Effecting Social Change." Research Paper. School of Engineering and Applied Science: University of Virginia, 2013. Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. "Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.1 (2008): 22-33. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin, 2008. 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Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bellanta, Melissa. "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>. APA Style Bellanta, M. (Apr. 2008) "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>.

Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924.

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture. Patrick Martin-Breen and J. Marty Anderies offer a colloquial definition of resilience as: Bouncing back after stress, enduring greater stress, and being less disturbed by a given amount of stress. … To be resilient is to withstand a large disturbance without, in the end, changing, disintegrating, or becoming permanently damaged; to return to normal quickly; and to distort less in the face of such stresses. (1182) Conversely, Glenn E. Richardson argues that resiliency is a ‘metatheory’ that can best be described as ‘growth or adaptation through disruption rather than to just recover or bounce back’ (1184). He argues that resiliency theory has progressed through several stages, from the recognition of characteristics of resilient individuals to an appreciation of the support structures required beyond the level of the individual. In her memoir Resilience, Ann Deveson describes resilience as a concept that people think they understand until they are called upon to define it. Deveson offers many definitions and examples of resilience throughout her book, beginning with stories about disability, people with disability and their experiences of changing levels of social inclusion and exclusion (632). She paints an evocative picture of a young mother whose five year old son has cerebral palsy giving evidence before a Royal Commission into Human Relationships during a period of significant social change involving the deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities: A few years earlier, this child with cerebral palsy would have been placed in an institution. His mother might not even have seen him. Now she had care of her child but the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. (632) During the 1980s a number of large institutions caring for people with developmental impairments and psychiatric illnesses were closed in favour of community care (Clear 652). Although giving an appearance of endorsing equality of disabled people in the community, the ‘hidden agenda’ of this initiative was to cut public expenditure on social services (Ellis 163). As a result, an undue burden fell to women who became primary carers with little support such as the woman Deveson remembers. She questions where this young mother mustered such ‘magnificent resilience’ when she had such little support: When he was born, she had been discharged from the hospital with her baby, a feeding formula and a tiny pink plate for the child’s cleft palate. The only advice she received was to come back later to have the plate refitted. Her general practitioner prescribed her sedatives for depression, and she and her husband found their own way to the Royal Blind society by asking a blind man they saw outside a supermarket. She had only learned accidentally from one of the nurses that her baby was blind. ‘He’s mentally retarded too,’ the nurse had added, almost as an afterthought. (632) Thus Deveson’s consideration of resilience includes both an individual’s response to what could be described as tragedy and the importance of social support and the drive to demand it. Despite her child’s impairment and the lack of community resources made available to her family to cope, this young woman was leading public discussion about the plight of people with disabilities and their families in the hopes the government would intervene to help improve the situation (Deveson 632). Indeed, when it comes to the experience of disability, resilience is implied and generally understood to mean an attribute of the individual. However, as resilience theory has progressed, resilience can no longer be considered as existing exclusively within the domain of an individual’s personal qualities. Environmental support structures are vital in fostering resilience (Wilkes). Despite resiliency theory moving on from the level of the individual, popular discourses of resiliency as an individual’s attribute continue to dominate disability. As such, some critical disability commentators have redefined resilience as a response to a disabling social world. My aim in this paper is to explore this discourse by engaging with ideas about disability and resilience that emerge in popular culture. Despite the changing social position of people with disabilities in the community, notions of resilience are often invoked to describe the experience of people with disability and attributes of successful (often considered ‘inspiring’) people with disability. I begin by offering a definition of resilience as it is bound up in notions of inspiration and usually applied to people with disabilities. The second part of the paper explores disability as a cultural signifier to comment on the ways in which disability offers cultural meanings that may work to reassure nondisabled people of their privileged position. Finally, the paper considers interpretations of disability as a personal tragedy before exploring the emergence of a disability culture that recognises the social and cultural oppression experienced by people with disabilities and reworks definitions of resilience as a response to that oppression. Defining Resilience: Good Outcomes in Spite of Serious Threats Disability is often invoked in stories about resilience. Gillian King, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith argue that a clear link exists between resilience and feeling that life is meaningful. They argue that the experiences of people with disabilities can offer a template for how to develop resilience and cope with life changes (King, Brown and Smith 633). According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, resilience is ‘the action or an act of rebounding or springing back’ (653). King et al add that several concepts are associated with resilience such as hardiness, a sense of coherence and learned optimism (633). Deveson, resilience ‘has come to mean an ability to confront adversity and still find hope and meaning in life’. She comments that it conjures up notions of heroism, endurance and determination (632). Each of these characteristics we might describe as inspirational. It is telling that both Deveson and King et al use people with disabilities as signifiers of resilience in practice. However, Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley argue that this definition of resilience has not necessarily been useful to people with disabilities and instead recommend a definition of resilience that Deveson only alludes to. For Runswick-Cole and Goodley resilience can be located in social processes. They argue that a thorough investigation of resilience in the lives of people with disabilities considers the broader social and cultural restrictions placed on top of impairments rather than simply individualising resilience as a character trait of people who can ‘overcome the odds’: An exploration of resilience in the lives of disabled people must, then, focus on what resources are available and who is accessing those resources. Crucially, in seeking to build resilience in the lives of disabled people, this can never simply be a matter of building individual capacity or family support, it must also be a case of challenging social, attitudinal and structural barriers which increase adversity in the lives of disabled people. (634) This is an alternative approach to disability that sees ‘the problem’ located in social structures and inaccessible environments. This so-called social model of disability is based on principles of empowerment and argues that able-bodied mainstream society disables people who have impairments through an inaccessible built environment and the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes. Disability Dustbins and Inspirational Cripples Arthur Frank, sociologist and author of The Wounded Storyteller, explains that ‘the human body, for all its resilience, is fragile; breakdown is built into it. Bodily predictability, if not the exception, should be regarded as exceptional; contingency ought to be accepted as normative’ (634). Frank argues that we do not want to admit that our bodies are unpredictable and could ‘break down’ at any moment. Those bodies that do break down therefore become representatives of many of the things [the able-bodied, normal world] most fear-tragedy, loss, dark and the unknown. Involuntarily we walk- or more often sit- in the valley of the shadow of death. Contact with us throws up in people's faces the fact of sickness and death in the world … A deformed and paralysed body attacks everyone's sense of well-being and invincibility. (Hunt 186) People with disabilities therefore become loaded cultural signifiers, as Tom Shakespeare argues in Cultural Representations of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal: ‘it is non-disabled people’s embodiment which is the issue: disabled people remind non-disabled people of their own vulnerability’ (139). As a result, people with disabilities are culturally othered. Several disability theorists have argued that this makes the non-disabled feel better about themselves and their tenuous privileged position (Barnes; Ellis; Kumari Campbell; Oliver, Goggin and Newell; Shakespeare). Disability, as a concept, is both everywhere and nowhere. Generally considered a medical experience or personal tragedy, the discipline of critical disability studies has emerged to question why disability is considered an inherently negative experience and if there is more to disability than a body that has something wrong with it. Fiona Kumari Campbell suggests ableism – ‘the network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species typical and therefore essential and fully human’ – is repeatedly performed in our culture. This cultural project is difficult to sustain because by their very nature all bodies are out of control. People with disability are an acute reminder of the temporariness of an able bodied ontology (650). In order to maintain this division and network of beliefs, the idea that disability is a personal tragedy rather than a set of social relations designed to exclude some bodies but not others is culturally reproduced through stereotypes such as the idea that people with disabilities who achieve both ordinary and extraordinary things are sources of inspiration. Resilience as a personal quality is implicated in this stereotype. In a powerful Ramp Up blog that was republished on the ABC’s Drum and the influential popular culture/mummy blogging site website Mamamia, Stella Young takes issues with the media’s framing of disability as inspirational: We all learn how to use the bodies we're born with, or learn to use them in an adjusted state, whether those bodies are considered disabled or not. So that image of the kid drawing a picture with the pencil held in her mouth instead of her hand? That's just the best way for her, in her body, to do it. For her, it's normal. I can't help but wonder whether the source of this strange assumption that living our lives takes some particular kind of courage is the news media, an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the way we think about disability. Most journalists seem utterly incapable of writing or talking about a person with a disability without using phrases like "overcoming disability", "brave", "suffers from", "defying the odds", "wheelchair bound" or, my personal favourite, "inspirational". If we even begin to question the way we're labelled, we slide immediately to the other end of the scale and become "bitter" and "ungrateful". We fail to be what people expect. (610) These phrases, that Young claims the media rely on to isolate people with disabilities, are synonyms for the qualities Deveson attributes to resilient individuals (632). As Beth Haller notes, although disabled activists and academics attempt to progress important political work, the news media continue to frame people with disability as courageous and inspirational simply for living their lives (216). By comparison, disability theorist Irving Zola describes rejecting his leg braces (symbolic of his professional status) electing instead to use a wheelchair: If we lived in a less healthiest, capitalist, and hierarchal society, which spent less time finding ways to exclude and disenfranchise people and more time finding ways to include and enhance the potentialities of everyone, then there wouldn’t have been so much for me to overcome. (654) Harilyn Russo agrees, and in her memoir Don’t Call Me Inspirational highlights the socially created barriers put in her way and the ways these are ignored in favour of individualising social disablement as something inspirational people ‘overcome’: I’ll tell you why I am inspirational: I put up with the barriers, the barricades, the bullshit you put between us to avoid confronting something—probably yourself—and still pay the rent on time and savor dark chocolate. Now that takes real courage. (651) Throughout her book, Russo seeks to ‘overcome disability prejudice’ rather than ‘overcome disability’. Russo establishes herself and her experiences as normal and every day while articulating the tedium she finds in being pigeon holed as inspirational. These authors are constructing a new way of thinking about disability. Michael Oliver first described this as the ‘social model of disability’ in 1981. He sought to overturn the pathologisation of disability by giving people ‘a way of applying the idea that it was society not people with impairments that should be the target for professional intervention and practice’ (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 634). Resilience: A Key Concept Fiona Kumari Campbell questions whether resilience is a useful concept in the context of disability and reflects on its use to obscure “the ‘real’ problem, namely disability oppression” (649). She interrogates traditional definitions of resilience as they draw on notions of good outcomes in spite of risk factors or experiences of severe trauma and calls for an understanding of the interactive and dynamic features of resilience as opposed to ‘individualised psychological attributes’. Thus, individualised notions of resilience as they are implicated in the cultural stories of inspirational people with disabilities are embedded within the ableist relations that Kumari Campbell seeks to expose. In Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience, Dan Goodley argues that resilience is a key concept that has repeatedly emerged throughout his research into disability and self-advocacy. He draws on the reflections of people with disabilities to offer a re-definition of resilience as a response to a disabling society that includes five interrelated aspects (648). First is resilience as contextual, which recognises resilience as the result of the contexts in which it emerges, including through relationships with others and the experience of disabling and enabling environments. Secondly, resilience complicates preconceived notions about people with disabilities such as the view that they are passive. Goodley’s third feature of resilience is optimism. He notes resistance toward oppression as a key characteristic of optimistic resilience. Goodley again considers the importance of interpersonal relationships and group identity when he argues that the fourth feature of resilience relies on people with disabilities forming relationships with each other and group identities to question their oppression. Finally, Goodley argues ‘resilience is indicative of disablement’ and suggests that people with disability must be resilient in everyday life because we live in a disabling society. Kumari Campbell posits that individualised notions of resilience are a ‘cop out’ designed to ‘distract and defuse the reality of people labouring under very difficult circumstances of which the solution is better access to quality services’. She is hopeful, like Goodley, that resilience can be redefined as a political project, and encourages people with disabilities to develop a critical consciousness and find a new sense of community through art, humour and peer support. Therefore, according to Kumari Campbell and Goodley, resilience can be redefined as a response to social disablement rather than bodily impairment. Disability Culture: Acts of Resilience in a Disabling Society Russo and Zola’s work is part of a disability culture that has emerged in response to narrow ways of understanding disability. Steven Brown emphasises the importance of experience and personal identity in his definition of disability culture: People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives and our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. (520) Brown’s definition of disability culture therefore draws on all five of Goodley’s features of resilience. Disability culture is contextual, complicating, optimistic, interpersonal and indicative of disablement. The forging of a group identity reveals the resilience of disability culture as contextual and interpersonal. The creation of art, music, literature and other cultural artefacts reveals resilience as optimistic. The notion that people with disabilities are proud of their identity complicates traditional understandings of disability as a personal tragedy. Brown’s emphasis on the common history of the oppression of people with disabilities, as it initiated the whole disability culture movement, is ‘indicative of disablement’. The bonds of resilience that create the disability cultural movement are a result of the social oppression of people with disabilities (Gill; Martin; Brown; Goodley). Conclusion Whereas people with disabilities going about their every day lives have often been considered inspirational and as possessing resilient qualities, a new disability culture is emerging that repositions the resilience of people with disabilities as a political response to social oppression. Drawing on Runswick-Cole and Goodley’s argument that individualising qualities of resilience in inspirational people with disabilities has not benefitted people with disabilities, this paper sought to reveal the importance of resilience as a response to social oppression. People with disabilities in their formation of a disability cultural movement are reworking and redefining resilience as a response to oppression. Throughout this paper I have drawn on the reflections of a number of people with disabilities to illustrate the emergence of a disability culture as it has begun the work of redefining resilience as a political project that “‘outs’ the problems that disabled people face and names and prioritises the concerns” (Kumari Campbell 649). As Goodley argues, people with disabilities have developed a politics of resilience ‘in the face of a disabling world’. References Barnes, Colin. “Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.” 1992. Brown, Steven. “What Is Disability Culture?” Disability Studies Quarterly 22.2 (2002). Clear, Mike. Promises, Promises: Disability and Terms of Inclusion. Leichhardt: Federation Press, 2000. Deveson, Ann. Resilience. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Ellis, Katie. Disabling Diversity: The Social Construction of Disability in 1990s Australian National Cinema. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008. Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Gill, Carol. “A Psychological View of Disability Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 1995). ———. "Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid." Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2005. Goodley, Dan. “Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience.” Journal of Intellectual Disabilities 9.4 (2005): 333-343. Haller, Beth. Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media. Louisville, KY: Avocado Press, 2010. Hunt, Paul. “A Critical Condition.” Stigma: The Experience of Disability. Ed. Paul Hunt. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966. King, Gillian, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith. “Resilience: Learning from People with Disabilities and the Turning Points in Their Lives.” Health Psychology. Ed. Barbara, Tinsley. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Kumari Campbell, Fiona. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. ———. “Out of the Shadows: Resilience and Living with Ableism Seminar.” The University of Dundee, 13 Sep. 2010. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. “Resilience: A Literature Review.” The Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. Martin, Douglas. Disability Culture: Eager to Bite the Hands That Would Feed Them. New York Times, 1997. Oliver, Mike. “Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice.” Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1996. Oxford English Dictionary. “resilience, n.” Oxford University Press. Richardson, G. E. “The Metatheory of Resilience and Resiliency,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3. (2002): 307-321. Rousso, Harilyn. "Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back." Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2013. Runswick-Cole, Katherine, and Dan Goodley. “Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7. 2 (2013): 67-78. Shakespeare, Tom. “Cultural Representation of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal?” Disability & Society 9.3 (1994): 283-299. Wilkes, Glenda. “Introduction – A Second Generation of Resilience Research.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3 (2002): 229-232. Young, Stella. “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration.” Ramp Up 2012. Zola, Irving. Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1982.

A Site for the Study of Ambience Deep in Melbourne’s subterranean belly lies a long, dark space dedicated to screen-based art. Built along disused train platforms, it’s even possible to hear the ghostly rumblings and clatter of trains passing alongside the length of the gallery on quiet days. Upon descending the single staircase leading into this dimly-lit space, visitors encounter a distinctive sensory immersion. A flicker of screens dapple the windowless vastness ahead, perhaps briefly highlighting entrances into smaller rooms or the faintly-outlined profiles of visitors. This space often houses time-based moving image artworks. The optical flicker and aural stirrings of adjacent works distract, luring visitors’ attention towards an elsewhere. Yet on other occasions, this gallery’s art is bounded by walls, private enclosures which absorb perceptions of time into the surrounding darkness. Some works lie dormant awaiting visitors’ intervention, while others rotate on endless loops, cycling by unheeded, at times creating an environment of visual and aural collision. A weak haze of daylight falls from above mid-way through the space, marking the gallery’s only exit – an escalator fitted with low glowing lights. This is a space of thematic and physical reinvention. Movable walls and a retractable mezzanine enable the 110 metre long, 15 metre wide and almost 10 metre high space to be reformed with each exhibition, as evidenced by the many exhibitions that this Screen Gallery has hosted since opening as a part of the Australian for the Moving Image (ACMI) in 2002. ACMI endured controversial beginnings over the public funds dedicated to its gallery, cinemas, public editing and games labs, TV production studio, and screen education programs. As media interrogation of ACMI’s role and purpose intensified, several pressing critical and public policy questions surfaced as to how visitors were engaging with and valuing this institution and its spaces. In this context, I undertook the first, in depth qualitative study of visitation to ACMI, so as to address these issues and also the dearth of supporting literature into museum visitation (beyond broad, quantitative analyses). Of particular interest was ACMI’s Screen Gallery, for it appeared to represent something experientially unique and historically distinctive as compared to museums and galleries of the past. I therefore undertook an ethnographic study of museum visitation to codify the expression of ACMI’s institutional remit in light of the modalities of its visitors’ experiences in the Gallery. This rich empirical material formed the basis of my study and also this article, an ethnography of the Screen Gallery’s ambience. My study was undertaken across two exhibitions, World without End and White Noise (2005). While WWE was thematically linear in its charting of the dawn of time, globalisation and apocalypse, visitor interaction was highly non-linear. The moving image was presented in a variety of forms and spaces, from the isolation of works in rooms, the cohabitation of the very large to very small in the gallery proper, to enclosures created by multiple screens, laser-triggered interactivity and even plastic bowls with which visitors could ‘capture’ projections of light. Where heterogeneity was embraced in WWE, WN offered a smoother and less rapturous environment. It presented works by artists regarded as leaders of recent practices in the abstraction of the moving image. Rather than recreating the free exploratory movement of WWE, the WN visitor was guided along one main corridor. Each work was situated in a room or space situated to the right-hand side of the passageway. This isolation created a deep sense of immersion and intimacy with each work. Low-level white noise was even played across the Gallery so as to absorb the aural ‘bleed’ from neighbouring works. For my study, I used qualitative ethnographic techniques to gather phenomenological material, namely longitudinal participant observation and interviews. The observations were conducted on a fortnightly basis for seven months. I typically spent two to three hours shadowing visitors as they moved through the Gallery, detailing patterns of interaction; from gross physical movement and speech, to the very subtle modalities of encounter: a faint smile, a hesitation, or lapsing into complete stillness. I specifically recruited visitors for interviews immediately after their visit so as to probe further into these phenomenological moments while their effects were still fresh. I also endeavoured to capture a wide cross-sample of responses by recruiting on the basis of age, gender and reason for visitation. Ten in-depth interviews (between 45 minutes and one hour) were undertaken, enquiring into the factors influencing impressions of the Gallery, such as previous museum and art experiences, and opinions about media art and technology. In this article, I particularly draw upon my interviews with Steven, Fleur, Heidi, Sean, Trevor and Mathew. These visitors’ commentaries were selected as they reflect upon the overall ambience of the Gallery–intimate recollections of moving through darkness and projections of light–rather than engagement with individual works. When referring to ambience, I borrow from Brian Eno’s 1978 manifesto of Ambient Music, as it offers a useful analogy for assessing the complexity within subtle aesthetic experiences, and more specifically, in a spatial environment generated by electronic means. An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint…Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it… Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think…Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting. (Eno, "Ambient Music")While Eno’s definition specifically discusses a listening space, it is comparable to the predominantly digital and visual gallery environment as it elicits similar states of attention, such as calm reflection, or even a peaceful emptying of thoughts. I propose that ACMI’s darkened Screen Gallery creates an exploratory space for such intimate, bodily, subjective experiences. I firstly locate this study within the genealogical context of visitor interaction in museum exhibition environments. We then follow the visitors through the Gallery. As the nuances of their journey are presented, I assess the significance of an alternate model for presenting art which encourages ‘active’ aesthetic experience by privileging ambiguity and subtlety–yet heightened interactivity–and is similar to the systemic complexity Eno accords his Ambient Music. Navigating Museums in the Past The first public museums appeared in the context of the emerging liberal democratic state as both a product and articulation of the early stages of modernity in the nineteenth century. Museum practitioners enforced boundaries by prescribing visitors’ routes architecturally, by presenting museum objects within firm knowledge categories, and by separating visitors from objects with glass cabinets. By making their objects publicly accessible and tightly governing visitors’ parameters of spatial interaction, museums could enforce a pedagogical regulation of moral codes, an expression of ‘governmentality’ which constituted the individual as both a subject and object of knowledge (Bennett "Birth", Culture; Hooper-Greenhill). The advent of high modernism in the mid-twentieth century enforced positivist doctrines through a firm direction of visitor movement, exemplified by Le Corbusier’s Musée à Croissance Illimitée (1939) and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York (1959) (Davey 36). In more recent stages of modernity, architecture has attempted to reconcile the singular authority imposed by a building’s design. Robert Venturi, a key theorist of post-modern architecture, argued that the museum’s pedagogical failure to achieve social and political reforms was due to the purist and universalist values expressed within modern architecture. He proposed that post-modern architecture could challenge aesthetic modernism with a playful hybridity which emphasises symbolism and sculptural forms in architecture, and expresses a more diverse set of pluralist ideologies. Examples might include Hans Hollein’s Abteiberg Museum (1972-1982), or the National Museum of Australia in Canberra (2001). Contemporary attempts to design museum interactions reflect the aspirations of the ‘new museum.’ They similarly address a pluralist agenda, but mediate increasingly individualised forms of participation though highly interactive technological interfaces (Message). Commenting about art galleries, Lev Manovich greets this shift with some pessimism. He argues that the high art of the ‘white cube’ gallery is now confronting its ‘ideological enemy’, the ‘black box’, a historically ‘lower’ art form of cinema theatre (10). He claims that the history of spatial experimentation in art galleries is being reversed as much moving image art has been exhibited using a video projection in a darkened room, thereby limiting visitor participation to earlier, static forms of engagement. However, he proposes that new technologies could have an important presence and role in cultural institutions as an ‘augmented space’, in which layers of data overlay physical space. He queries whether this could create new possibilities for spatial interaction, such that cultural institutions might play a progressive role in exploring new futures (14). The Screen Gallery at ACMI embodies the characteristics of the ‘new museum’ as far as it demands multiple modalities of participation in a technological environment. It could perhaps also be regarded an experimental ‘black box’ in that it houses multiple screens, yet, as we shall see, elicits participation unbefitting of a cinema. We therefore turn now to examine visitors’ observations of the Gallery’s design, thereby garnering the experiential significance of passage through a moving image art space. Descending into Darkness Descending the staircase into the Gallery is a process of proceeding into shadows. The blackened cavity (fig. 1) therefore looms ahead as a clear visceral departure from the bustle of Federation Square above (fig. 2), and the clean brightness of ACMI’s foyer (fig. 3). Figure 1: Descent into ACMI's Screen Gallery Figure 2: ACMI at Federation Square, Melbourne Figure 3: ACMI’s foyer One visitor, Fleur, described this passage as a sense of going “deep underground,” where the affective power of darkness overwhelmed other sensory details: “I can’t picture it in my mind – sort of where the gallery finishes… And it’s perfect, it’s dark, and it’s… quiet-ish.” Many visitors found that an entrance softened by shadows added a trace of suspense to the beginnings of their journey. Heidi described how, “because it’s dark and you can’t actually see the people walking about… it’s a little bit more mysterious.” Fleur similarly remarked that “you’re not quite sure what you’re going to meet when you go around. And there’s a certain anticipation.” Steven found that the ambiguity surrounding the conventions of procedure through Gallery was “quite interesting, that experience of being a little bit unsure of where you’re going or not being able to see.” He attributed feelings of disorientation to the way the deep shadows of the Gallery routinely obscured measurement of time: “it’s that darkness that makes it a place where it’s like a time sync… You could spend hours in there… You sort of lose track of time… The darkness kind of contributes to that.” Multiple Pathways The ambiguity of the Gallery compelled visitors to actively engage with the space by developing their own rules for procedure. For example, Sean described how darkness and minimal use of signage generated multiple possibilities for passage: “you kind of need to wander through and guide yourself. It’s fairly dark as well and there aren’t any signs saying ‘Come this way,’ and it was only by sort of accident we found some of the spaces down the very back. Because, it’s very dark… We could very well have missed that.” Katrina similarly explained how she developed a participatory journey through movement: “when you first walk in, it just feels like empty space, and not exactly sure what’s going on and what to look at… and you think nothing is going on, so you have to kind of walk around and get a feel for it.” Steven used this participatory movement to navigate. He remarked that “there’s a kind of basic ‘what’s next?’… When you got down you could see maybe about four works immediately... There’s a kind of choice about ‘this is the one I’ll pay attention to first’, or ‘look, there’s this other one over there – that looks interesting, I might go and come back to this’. So, there’s a kind of charting of the trip through the exhibition.” Therefore while ambiguous rules for procedure undermine traditional forms of interaction in the museum, they prompted visitors to draw upon their sensory perception to construct a self-guided and exploratory path of engagement. However, mystery and ambiguity can also complicate visitors’ sense of self determination. Fleur noted how crossing the threshold into a space without clear conventions for procedure could challenge some visitors: “you have to commit yourself to go into a space like that, and I think the first time, when you’re not sure what’s down there… I think people going there for the first time would probably… find it difficult.” Trevor found this to be the case, objecting that “the part that doesn’t work, is that it doesn’t work as a space that’s easy to get around.” These comments suggest that an ‘unintended consequence’ (Beck) of relaxing contemporary museum conventions to encourage greater visitor autonomy, can be the contrary effect of making navigation more difficult. Visitors struggling to negotiate these conditions may find themselves subject to what Daniel Palmer terms the ‘paradox of user control’, in which contemporary forms of choice prove to be illusory, as they inhibit an individual’s freedom through ‘soft’ forms of domination. The ambiguity created by the Gallery’s darkness therefore brings two disparate – if not contradictory – tendencies together, as concluded by Fleur: “The darkness is – it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage… You can’t sort of see each other as well, but there’s also a bit of freedom in that. In that it sort of goes both ways.” A Journey of Subtle Cues Several strategies to ameliorate disorienting navigation experiences were employed in the Screen Gallery, attempting to create new possibilities for meaningful interaction. Some reflect typical curatorial conventions, such as mounting didactic panels along walls and strategically placing staff as guides. However, visitors frequently eschewed these markers and were instead drawn powerfully to affective conventions, including the shadings of light and sound. Sean noted how small beacons of light at foot level were prominent features, as they illuminated the entrances to rooms and corridors: “That’s your over-whelming impression, because it’s dark and there’s just these feature spotlights… and they’re an interesting device, because they sort of lead your eye through the space as well, and say ‘oh that’s where the next event is, there’s a spotlight over there’.” The luminescence of artworks served a similar purpose, for within “the darkness, the boundaries are less visible, and… you’re drawn to the light, you know, you’re drawn to those screens.” He found that directional sound above artworks also created a comparable effect: “I was aware of the fact that things were quiet until you approached the right spot and obviously it’s where the sound was focussed.” These conventions reflect what Trini Castelli calls ‘soft design’, by which space is made cohesively sensual (Glibb in Mitchell 87-88). The Gallery uses light and sound to fashions this visceral ‘feeling’ of spatial continuity, a seamless ambience. Paul described how this had a pleasurable effect, where the “atmosphere of the space” created “a very nice place to be… Lots of low lighting.” Fleur similarly recalled lasting somatic impressions: “It’s a bit like a cave, I suppose… The atmosphere is so different… it’s warm, I find it quite a relaxing place to be, I find it quite calm…Yeah, it has that feeling of private space to it.” Soft design therefore tempers the spatial severity of museums past through this sensuous ‘participatory environment.’ Interaction with art therefore becomes, as Steven enthused, “an exhibition experience” where “it’s as much (for me) the experience of moving between works as attending to the work itself… That seems really prominent in the experience, that it’s not these kind of isolated, individual works, they’re in relation to each other.” Disruptions to this experiential continuity – what Eno had described as a ‘stimulus’ – were subject to harsh judgement. When asked why he preferred to stand against the back wall of a room, rather than take a seat on the chairs provided, Matthew protested that “the spotlight was on those frigging couches, who wants to sit there? That would’ve been horrible.” Visitors clearly expressed a preference towards a form of spatial interaction in which curatorial conventions heighten, rather than detract from, the immersive dynamic of the museum environment. They showed how the feelings of ambiguity and suspense which absorbed them in the Gallery’s entrance gradually began to dissipate. In their place, a preference arose for conventions which maintained the Gallery’s immersive continuity, and where cues such as focused sound and footlights had a calming effect, and created a cohesive sensual journey through the dark. The Ambience of Art Space Visitors’ comments acquire an additional significance when examined in light of Eno’s earlier definition of what he called Ambient Music. He suggested that even in relative stillness, there exists a capacity for active forms of listening which create a “space to think” and generate a “quiet interest.” In addition, and perhaps most importantly, these active forms of listening are augmented by the “atmospheric idiosyncrasies” which are derived from conditions of uncertainty. As I have shown, the darkened Screen Gallery obscures the rules for visitor participation and consequently elicits doubt and hesitation. Visitors must self-navigate and be guided by sensory perception, responding to the kinaesthetic touch of light on skin and the subtle drifts of sound to constructing a journey through the enveloping darkness. This spatial ambience can therefore be understood as the specific condition which make the Gallery a fertile site for new exchanges between visitors, artworks and curation within the museum. Arjun Mulder defines this kind of dynamism in architectural space as a form of systemic interactivity, the “default state of any living system,” in the way that any system can be considered interactive if it links into, and affects change upon another (Mulder 332). Therefore while museums have historically been spaces for interaction, they have not always been interactive spaces in the sense described by Mulder, where visitor participation and processes of exchange are heightened by the conditions of ambience, and can compel self-determined journeys of visitor enquiry and feelings of relaxation and immersion. ACMI’s Screen Gallery has therefore come to define its practices by heightening these forms of encounter, and elevating the affective possibilities for interacting with art. Traditional museum conventions have been challenged by playing with experiential dynamics. These practices create an ambience which is particular to the gallery, and historically unlike the experiential ecologies of preceding forms of museum, gallery or moving space, be it the white cube or a simple ‘black box’ room for video projections. This perhaps signifies a distinctive moment in the genealogy of the museum, indicating how one instance of an art environment’s ambience can become a rubric for new forms of visitor interaction. References Beck, Ulrich. “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization.” Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Eds. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. Cambridge: Politics, 1994. 1-55. Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London; New York: Routledge. 1995. ———. “Culture and Governmentality.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Eds. J.Z. Bratich, J. Packer, and C. McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 47-64. Davey, Peter. “Museums in an N-Dimensional World.” The Architectural Review 1242 (2000): 36-37. Eno, Brian. “Resonant Complexity.” Whole Earth Review (Summer 1994): 42-43. ———. “Ambient Music.” A Year with Swollen Appendices: The Diary of Brian Eno. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 293-297. Hooper-Greenhill, Eileen. “Museums and Education for the 21st Century.” Museum and Gallery Education. London: Leicester University Press, 1991. 187-193. Manovich, Lev. “The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada.” 27 April 2010 ‹http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/fuchs/modules/creative_technology/architecture/manovich_augmented_space.pdf›. Message, Kylie. “The New Museum.” Theory, Culture and Society: Special Issue on Problematizing Global Knowledge. Eds. Mike Featherstone, Couze Venn, and Ryan Bishop, John Phillips. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. 603-606. Mitchell, T. C. Redefining Designing: From Form to Experience. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993. Mulder, Arjun. “The Object of Interactivity.” NOX: Machining Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. 332-340. Palmer, Daniel. “The Paradox of User Control.” Melbourne Digital Art and Culture 2003 Conference Proceedings. Melbourne: RMIT, 2003. 167-172. Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966.

Saidin Salkić is a survivor of Bosnia’s 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Salkić was interviewed on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Radio National in July 2007. The interviewer asked Salkić to tell him about the genocide: “What can you remember about that?” (ABC Radio National). Salkić cited memories of the smell of his father’s jumper and of the flowers growing in his mother’s garden. The interviewer interrupted him, asking for a more chronological description of the events of the genocide itself. Salkić responded that it was not possible to answer the question in such a concise, easily archivable manner, that “you can’t really bundle your memories like that” (ABC Radio National).Listening to this interview, I sat waiting for a neat ‘survivor sound-bite’ that I could neatly insert into this paper. It didn’t happen. I turned off the radio thinking that I had learned nothing of the genocide that took place in Srebrenica. In listening to a survivor—an eye witness—there is a sense that he, of all people, should be able to tell the chronology, the facts of the event; of who did what to whom and why. Yet what is learned—what Salkić’s testimony-without-testimony spoke of and explained—is the most important thing: loss. This is the lacuna in testimony. What happens to the loss when we attempt to testify to it? What is then lost? Salkić’s memory is unarchivable in the normative sense, and his refusal to testify in the accepted way ruptures the process (not a necessarily deliberate refusal, but a refusal borne out of an inability and an impossibility of containing such an event through language). Loss eludes testimony and is also loss as the loss of testimony. It is impossible to fully testify to loss, and that is testimonial, or testimony’s trace.Using Derrida's theories around the archive and the cinder, this article examines what survives an event such as genocide, what is left and, crucially, what is missing, what is not recoverable. What happens to the loss when we attempt to testify to it, to salvage something of it? What is disrupted? What is instead recovered in its place?Derrida’s archive (Derrida, Archive Fever), responds to these gaps and losses. This archive is not, it would seem, about the archive at all. Instead, Derrida provides a departure from the examination of the structure and institution of the archive. As Carolyn Steedman puts it in her reading of Archive Fever, “it turned out not to be about the archival turn. It is about dust.” (Steedman ix) This “dust”, this prelude to the ash, to the cinder, is the search for what is not there, for what is barely visible but at the same time, viscous and residual; the dust which coats and conceals no matter how well you have wielded the duster. For Derrida the dust he has found in the archive is both a meditation on beginnings and on the “fever”. He reflects not on the archive, then, but on that which drives (and destroys) the archive. Derrida’s description of prayer is a way of approaching an understanding of how a memory such as Salkić’s—at once unarchivable, yet crucial to our comprehension of the event, might fit into an understanding of the archive. Derrida writes,“My way of praying, if I pray, is absolutely secret. Even if [I were] in a synagogue praying with others, I know that my own prayer would be silent and secret, and interrupting something in the community” (On Religion). Is it impossible to archive memories such as Salkić’s because his is an impenetrable recollection that disrupts the broader archive? Why do we desire that the archive archives? Why do we desire that the archive recovers, documents and makes public these excruciatingly private moments? The ultimate secret, private and silent moment of death is made loud and public in the archives of genocide. The tendency is to want archives to show the individual, the human being amongst the tangle of anonymous bodies with whom we can identify. But in laying their death and their life bare (indeed in laying their death and life bare through the act of showing their death and life), their privacy and secret is disclosed. Their final privacy in a public death. This is death that is made public through its interconnectedness to the other simultaneous deaths around it. This is also a death that, through its place in a broader history, becomes disconnected from the individual. Finally, it is also a death that has come about through the choice made by someone else that this is your moment and mode of death. I wish to look again at Derrida when he writes that his prayer, though silent and secret, is “interrupting something in the community” (On Religion). Salkić’s memory, too, interrupts. It causes a rupture in what an archive is perceived to be and remains unarchivable. It interrupts our process, yet it cannot be disregarded. Salkić’s memory of his parents is at first seemingly of minor importance in establishing an historical truth as to what occurred in Srebrenica, yet what he has remembered is the loss, the impossibility of remembering, of salvaging this event intact for another audience. If Salkić had presented a readily archivable memory of Srebrenica—a logical and coherent sound bite—would it have a place in the archive? Is such a memory recoverable? Would it be a memory and experience hidden by the formulaic style of historical memory? As it is, Salkić’s memory ruptures the archive. It reveals those dusty spots of the event that our duster cannot reach. It is this dust that removes our certainty, our hope in the archive as a provider of answers and as a clean receptacle for the truth (this whole truth). “Suspension of certainty is part of the prayer” (Derrida, On Religion). We must suspend our certainty in the archive and it is this uncertainty that drives us to keep looking, to keep asking, to keep collecting. To know that we cannot know. To know that we can never have a complete archive. Derrida speaks of the “hopelessness of prayer” (On Religion). The hopelessness of the archive lies in its inability to ever provide a complete or conclusive story and it is this hopelessness that is also driving the archive. I think that the archive should contain these dusty spots that reveal rather than conceal.Still we, the archivists of other people’s memories, fear inconclusivity and complication in the archive. We do not wish to suspend our certainty. Still we assume that through an archive we can fully hold an event. The interviewer will always interrupt Salkić’s memory, demanding the full account, the complete archive, as though such a thing were possible. Still our archive privileges and still then, our archive is hopeless. Other genocides are ignored even as they occur, filed still further back, yet the dust is not going anywhere. Even when it fully coats and conceals an event, the dust lends the event and its memories form and marks their non/presence.Maybe, then, the archive in its presumed weight is no more than a skin, “the glosses on the edge of the abyss” (Derrida, The Politics of Friendship 143), giving a thin layer of protection and concealment. It is the losses and exclusions (those scarred and phantom limbs) that urge us to look further. To know, then, the archive as Foucault’s “unstable assemblage of faults, fissures and heterogeneous layers” (146). So what, then? How do we reconcile ourselves with or even begin our recovery of the scarred and phantom limbs? (Do they even want to be found? Are they even there?) This is Derrida’s dilemma of “How to watch over something that one can, however, neither watch over, nor assimilate, nor internalise, nor categorise” (For What Tomorrow…A Dialogue 138).Yet these testimonies (such as Salkić’s) are disallowed. They rupture with their silence. The archive cannot contain such testimony. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why testimony cannot be codified. The silence, after all, cannot in itself offer any hint or clue towards a complete testimony. The silence cannot provide an archiving system into which Salkić’s memory might be deposited or neatly filed. Instead the silent cinder marks an acknowledgment of the difficulty of representation and of defining an experience by way of collectivity or of representing trauma in a coherent survivor sound-bite.These are the Derridean cinders of the event. The cinders are not the event—the originary sound or moment—itself. They are the ashes of this. To try and contain, conclude and comprehend the event itself through its ashes—through the bare artefacts it leaves behind—is to try to comprehend something that is ungraspable and unknowable. Derrida writes, “The cinder is not, is not what is. It remains from what is not, in order to recall the delicate, charred bottom of itself only non-being or non-presence” (Derrida, Cinders 39). Yet he continues, “Cinders remain. Cinder there is.”This is the fragility of the cinder, smothering and concealing the secret before it reaches us, translating it from language into unreadable ash. Was it ever really with us or on its way to meet us? This is “not some sort of conditional secret that could be revealed, but the secret that there is no secret, that there never was one, not even one” (Caputo 109). Turning to Salkić’s memories, I wonder if there is anything there other than an amnesiac or uncooperative guest/ghost? Maybe I wrote his words down incorrectly in my initial dismissal? Or maybe the memories are, in their incompleteness, in the interrupted gaps, telling us a secret? That there is none. That it is ineffable, not some secret waiting to be whispered, intact, in our ear. That nothing is fully recoverable from such an event and that it is the very unrecoverability that tells all that is important to know of the event. The fire has burned and consumed its beginnings and its event, leaving only ash, cinder, behind as a trace. As it is a cindered trace, it differs from other traces in its unchartability. It is not possible to follow the flyaway cinders back to an event as the cinders are not markers, but remains: “the body of which cinders is the trace has totally disappeared, it has totally lost its contours, its form, its colours, its natural determination” (Derrida, Points 391). In genocide, people have been killed, raped, disappeared, removed, displaced. The cinders that remain are unidentifiable and undetermined, but it is this presence of non-presence that remains. This is the invisible presence of the loss. Unlike a footprint, the cinder cannot be followed, cannot be recovered. It is a trace which “remains without remaining, which is neither present nor absent, which destroys itself, which is totally consumed, which is a remainder without remainder. That is, something which is not” (Derrida, Points 208). So what light can Derrida’s dusty cinder possibly shed on the archival responses to genocide? In its marking and coating of the various impossibilities and losses within the archive, the cinder makes certain aspects more visible. If not visible, then perhaps sensed as one senses smoke. Let us consider the romantic imagining of a library and the role that dust plays in such an imagining. The dust swirls around, leaving shiny absences while also settling heavily on certain shelves. This is a revealing dust, a dust which marks time, marking the losses and forgettings, rendering the absences and difficulties within the archive not so much wholly visible, as visible through their invisibility. This is the invisible smoke that fogs the glass and sneaks under the velvet rope. We invoke the call to never again (“and again, and again, and again” echoes Homi K Bhabha), we mark remembrance days, we watch trials from behind the glass in polite institutionalised silence, we remember only the dead and the time, we build memorials and establish courts, we write dissertations and publish our articles, we cram the impossible nothing – what we imagine to be empty space – full of language and debate. But what do these lives and losses mean? What depth and weight is in the emptiness, the silence, the secret? Cinders persist. Cinders mark the lacuna and the space for the silence and silenced. The cinder, the burned remains of language, provides no way of telling or testifying. The cinders, in marking the difficulty of representation, also mark the exclusion and loss of certain voices within the archive. To see the cinder as a provision of a lens through which to view absences is a fragile vision. Yet, within the cinder is an impression of a figure (the hints and remains of a burned moment; that which was but no longer is). In the cinder’s very presence, in its non-presence, this entails and implies an absence. The event “immediately incinerates itself, in front of your eyes: an impossible mission” (Derrida, Cinders 35). This impossible mission, though, contains a possibility in the gap, the space that is left. There is no longer the physical support of the form; we are left with a grey shapeless ash, as “everything is annihilated in the cinders” (Derrida, Points 391). While the event has totally lost the trace of itself in its incineration, what rises (dare I say phoenix-like) from the ash is the choking shapelessness of a loss. A loss that defies and confounds the archive. Yet how can the cinder, the ash marking the gaps, the silence, the ghostly secret, be incorporated into testimony and the testimonial gathering modes? Can such testimonies be codified? Agamben’s thoughts, through ‘Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive’ are crucial in this respect in contemplating the im/possibility of gaining a complete testimony and of the necessity of the lacuna in all testimony. Agamben writes of the absence of the complete witness to the event through analogy: “Just as in the expanding universe, the furthest galaxies move away from us at a speed greater than that of their light, which cannot reach us, such that the darkness we see in the sky is nothing but the invisibility of the light of unknown stars, so that the complete witness […] is the one we cannot see.” (161 – 162). It is precisely the one who cannot testify, who is silent and silenced, who is the complete witness. And it precisely because of this that the incorporation of the cinder—the act of pinning down the ash—is perhaps impossible to approach within the archive. I borrow here Primo Levi’s example cited by Agamben. Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz amongst other things, writes of a child in Auschwitz called Hurbinek who repeats the word mass-klo or perhaps matisklo to himself, but the meaning of the word remains secret. Levi writes of the child that, “nothing remains of him: he bears witness through these words of mine” (38). The word becomes the cinders of the lacuna represented in Levi’s archive—in his testimony. Agamben writes that, “this means that testimony is the disjunction between two impossibilities of bearing witness; it means that language, in order to bear witness, must give way to a non-language in order to show the impossibility of bearing witness” (39). In order to give this sound to the event—to see its shadow and hear its silence, we must remove our reliance on the “sun”—on having the remembering done for us through didactic monuments and museums. This brings to mind, in this impossible incorporation, the designated “Void Space” at the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin. The Jüdisches Museum in Berlin is something of a perfect archive. The “Void Space” is where the missing elements might be felt. Standing in the void, I felt something of the loss and the claustrophobia that is only possible in a large, dark, empty space shut in by a heavy handle-less door. However, if I had walked through the door and into this void without knowing what it was, I would most likely have backed out, thinking that I had made a mistake; that this space wasn’t part of the museum. Instead, it is a designated void. It is an incredibly effective and affective space, but it is still an ordered, designated, planned space. I can almost hear the planning meeting: “over here in the South Wing, that’s where we’ll put the loss.” Here, the cinder element, that missing part, is given space. Yet, in its provision here in this museum space, the ash is cooled. In its designation as such a space—its permanence and uniformity—something of the cinder is extinguished and its fragility is lost: “if you entrust it to paper, it is all the better to inflame you with” (Derrida, Cinders 53).The cinder should instead reconfigure the very structures of our responses; the way we consider the structure of the archive itself. The cinder marks the impossibility. It must be external to the current representation. It cannot be incorporated. Nothing can be built from the cinder; no Phoenix can rise from it, nothing recognisable in it or from it. To sanction it and offer it “space” would remove its purpose, strip it of its ashes, it “remains unpronounceable in order to make saying possible although it is nothing” (Derrida, Cinders 73).However, in these cinders and their draughts, we are left with crucial refutations. There is a something here that defies the archive, which defies the reductions and exclusions, which defies those attempts to “burn everything” (holos caustos), to destroy all through the act of genocide itself. This is a haunting. In the cinderless archive, in the interrupting and limiting of Salkić’s testimony, we “have gone so fast as to be unaware of its existence” (Derrida, The Politics of Friendship 194). We rush to conclude, comprehend and contain, and in our rush, we miss the patient cinder and we do not feel its haunting. However, should we show our own patience (the patience of a cinder), we would find the (necessarily) unending task of comprehending genocide, and find there something “troubling enough to become unforgettable to the point of obsession” (Derrida, The Politics of Friendship 194).This is the hope in and for the archive as a means of wrestling with the crises of response presented by genocide, and brings my call for openness and dialogue with and of the archive. The cinder recovered from the event, rather than being a philosophical whimsy, marks that which has been lost or silenced or forgotten through the archive in its current structure. The archive as it stands has become, to borrow Zournazi’s thoughts on hope, “self enclosed and the exchange becomes a kind of monologue, a type of depression and narcissism where territories are defended and the stakes raised are already known” (Zournazi 12). Cinders are the hope in the archive. They are also a dangerous, gamblers hope in which the outcomes remain unknown. They are that which has been burned, which can no longer exist in (or bear any resemblance to) the original form, but which persist nonetheless, disrupting the known entities of the archive with dust, the promise of a secret. A secret which can never be told, but that is hope. This is a hope which, as the unearthed remains of a skeleton described by Linda Marie Walker, haunts, just as a cinder might: “The remains, in their haunting, were giving, or opening, a space for thought and a dreaming of past presence.” Hope caught in a cinder, made airborne. Hope that is recovered intact from the event. Hope that these spaces and gaps in the archive, marked by the cinder, might not descend into either a hopeless disengagement nor a retreat into useless and futile rage in the face of genocide and its informing debates. Hope instead that the archive might be turned from a monologue of certainty into an engagement, an exchange, a constant uncertain questioning. A sense that there is no cool remove from genocide and that to attempt to contain it is to do damage to the memory. I end with a quote from Primo Levi in his short story on the element of carbon, which comes at the end of The Periodic Table. This atom of carbon that Levi attempts to describe, and of which “every verbal description must be inadequate” (227), is also the cinder. It is invisible to the eye, it is unpronounceable, but it coats everything. And without its presence we are and we have recovered nothing: “So it happens that every element says something to someone (something different to each) like the mountain valleys or beaches visited in youth. One must perhaps make an exception for carbon, because it says everything to everyone” (Levi 225).The dependence on and domination of archives which have at their core an aim of concluding, comprehending and containing an event, denies the necessary complexity and incomprehensibility of stories such as Salkic’s. There is a risk here of forgetting that such complex stories, such incomplete memories—like carbon itself—speak to the essence of what it is to be human and what it is to have lost. ReferencesABC Radio National. “Kasedevah Blues.” Life Matters. 26 July 2007.Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books, 2002.Bhabha, Homi K. “Keynote Speech: On Global Memory, Reflections on Barbaric Traditions.” Reimagining Asia Conference and Exhibition, Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Berlin, 14 March 2008.Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana Press, 1997.Derrida, Jacques and Elisabeth Roudinesco. For What Tomorrow: A Dialogue. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004.———. On Religion. Toronto: Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, 2002.———. The Politics of Friendship. London, New York: Verso, 1997.———. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.———. Points...Interviews, 1974-1994. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995.———. Cinders. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Ed. D. F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.Levi, Primo. The Periodic Table. London: Abacus Books, 1986.Walker, Linda Marie. “The Archaeology of Surfaces, or What Is Left Moment to Moment, or I Can’t Get over It.” An Archaeology of Surface(s). (2003). 20 Dec. 2007 ‹http://ensemble.va.com.au/lmw/surface/surfacenotes.html›.Zournazi, Mary. Hope: New Philosophies for Change. Australia: Pluto Press, 2002.

One of the greatest joys in watching Foxtel is to see all the crazy people who run talk shows. Judgement, ridicule and generalisations slip from their tongues like overcooked lamb off a bone. From Oprah to Rikki, from Jerry to Mother Love, the posterior of pop culture claims a world-wide audience. Recently, a new talk diva was added to the pay television stable. Dr Laura Schlessinger, the Mother of Morals, prowls the soundstage. attacking 'selfish acts' such as divorce, de facto relationships and voting Democrat. On April 11, 2001, a show aired in Australia that added a new demon to the decadence of the age. Dr Laura had been told that a disgusting video clip, called 'Rock DJ', had been televised at 2:30pm on MTV. Children could have been watching. The footage that so troubled our doyenne of daytime featured the British performer Robbie Williams not only stripping in front of disinterested women, but then removing skin, muscle and tissue in a desperate attempt to claim their gaze. This was too much for Dr Laura. She was horrified: her strident tone became piercing. She screeched, "this is si-ee-ck." . My paper is drawn to this sick masculinity, not to judge - but to laugh and theorise. Robbie Williams, the deity of levity, holds a pivotal role in theorising the contemporary 'crisis' of manhood. To paraphrase Austin Powers, Williams returned the ger to singer. But Williams also triumphed in a captivatingly original way. He is one of the few members of a boy band who created a successful solo career without regurgitating the middle of the road mantras of boys, girls, love, loss and whining about it. Williams' journey through post-war popular music, encompassing influences from both Sinatra and Sonique, forms a functional collage, rather than patchwork, of masculinity. He has been prepared to not only age in public, but to discuss the crevices and cracks in the facade. He strips, smokes, plays football, wears interesting underwear and drinks too much. My short paper trails behind this combustible masculinity, focussing on his sorties with both masculine modalities and the rock discourse. My words attack the gap between text and readership, beat and ear, music and men. The aim is to reveal how this 'sick masculinity' problematises the conservative rendering of men's crisis. Come follow me I'm an honorary Sean Connery, born '74 There's only one of me … Press be asking do I care for sodomy I don't know, yeah, probably I've been looking for serial monogamy Not some bird that looks like Billy Connolly But for now I'm down for ornithology Grab your binoculars, come follow me. 'Kids,' Robbie Williams Robbie Williams is a man for our age. Between dating supermodels and Geri 'Lost Spice' Halliwell [1], he has time to "love … his mum and a pint," (Ansen 85) but also subvert the Oasis cock(rock)tail by frocking up for a television appearance. Williams is important to theories of masculine representation. As a masculinity to think with, he creates popular culture with a history. In an era where Madonna practices yoga and wears cowboy boots, it is no surprise that by June 2000, Robbie Williams was voted the world's sexist man [2]. A few months later, in the October edition of Vogue, he posed in a British flag bikini. It is reassuring in an era where a 12 year old boy states that "You aren't a man until you shoot at something," (Issac in Mendel 19) that positive male role models exist who are prepared to both wear a frock and strip on national television. Reading Robbie Williams is like dipping into the most convincing but draining of intellectual texts. He is masculinity in motion, conveying foreignness, transgression and corruption, bartering in the polymorphous economies of sex, colonialism, race, gender and nation. His career has spanned the boy bands, try-hard rock, video star and hybrid pop performer. There are obvious resonances between the changes to Williams and alterations in masculinity. In 1988, Suzanne Moore described (the artist still known as) Prince as "the pimp of postmodernism." (165-166) Over a decade later, the simulacra has a new tour guide. Williams revels in the potency of representation. He rarely sings about love or romance, as was his sonic fodder in Take That. Instead, his performance is fixated on becoming a better man, glancing an analytical eye over other modes of masculinity. Notions of masculine crisis and sickness have punctuated this era. Men's studies is a boom area of cultural studies, dislodging the assumed structures of popular culture [3]. William Pollack's Real Boys has created a culture of changing expectations for men. The greater question arising from his concerns is why these problems, traumas and difficulties are emerging in our present. Pollack's argument is that boys and young men invest energy and time "disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings." (15) This masking is difficult to discern within dance and popular music. Through lyrics and dancing, videos and choreography, masculinity is revealed as convoluted, complex and fragmented. While rock music is legitimised by dominant ideologies, marginalised groups frequently use disempowered genres - like country, dance and rap genres - to present oppositional messages. These competing representations expose seamless interpretations of competent masculinity. Particular skills are necessary to rip the metaphoric pacifier out of the masculine mouth of popular culture. Patriarchal pop revels in the paradoxes of everyday life. Frequently these are nostalgic visions, which Kimmel described as a "retreat to a bygone era." (87) It is the recognition of a shared, simpler past that provides reinforcement to heteronormativity. Williams, as a gaffer tape masculinity, pulls apart the gaps and crevices in representation. Theorists must open the interpretative space encircling popular culture, disrupting normalising criteria. Multiple nodes of assessment allow a ranking of competent masculinity. From sport to business, drinking to sex, masculinity is transformed into a wired site of ranking, judgement and determination. Popular music swims in the spectacle of maleness. From David Lee Roth's skied splits to Eminem's beanie, young men are interpellated as subjects in patriarchy. Robbie Williams is a history lesson in post war masculinity. This nostalgia is conservative in nature. The ironic pastiche within his music videos features motor racing, heavy metal and Bond films. 'Rock DJ', the 'sick text' that vexed Doctor Laura, is Williams' most elaborate video. Set in a rollerdrome with female skaters encircling a central podium, the object of fascination and fetish is a male stripper. This strip is different though, as it disrupts the power held by men in phallocentralism. After being confronted by Williams' naked body, the observing women are both bored and disappointed at the lack-lustre deployment of masculine genitalia. After this display, Williams appears embarrassed, confused and humiliated. As Buchbinder realised, "No actual penis could every really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus." (49) To render this banal experience of male nudity ridiculous, Williams then proceeds to remove skin and muscle. He finally becomes an object of attraction for the female DJ only in skeletal form. By 'going all the way,' the strip confirms the predictability of masculinity and the ordinariness of the male body. For literate listeners though, a higher level of connotation is revealed. The song itself is based on Barry White's melody for 'It's ecstasy (when you lay down next to me).' Such intertextuality accesses the meta-racist excesses of a licentious black male sexuality. A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality. Williams' iconography and soundtrack is refreshing, emerging from an era of "men who cling … tightly to their illusions." (Faludi 14) When the ideological drapery is cut away, the male body is a major disappointment. Masculinity is an anxious performance. Fascinatingly, this deconstructive video has been demeaned through its labelling as pornography [4]. Oddly, a man who is prepared to - literally - shave the skin of masculinity is rendered offensive. Men's studies, like feminism, has been defrocking masculinity for some time. Robinson for example, expressed little sympathy for "whiny men jumping on the victimisation bandwagon or playing cowboys and Indians at warrior weekends and beating drums in sweat lodges." (6) By grating men's identity back to the body, the link between surface and depth - or identity and self - is forged. 'Rock DJ' attacks the new subjectivities of the male body by not only generating self-surveillance, but humour through the removal of clothes, skin and muscle. He continues this play with the symbols of masculine performance throughout the album Sing when you're winning. Featuring soccer photographs of players, coaches and fans, closer inspection of the images reveal that Robbie Williams is actually every character, in every role. His live show also enfolds diverse performances. Singing a version of 'My Way,' with cigarette in tow, he remixes Frank Sinatra into a replaying and recutting of masculine fabric. He follows one dominating masculinity with another: the Bond-inspired 'Millennium.' Some say that we are players Some say that we are pawns But we've been making money Since the day we were born Robbie Williams is comfortably located in a long history of post-Sinatra popular music. He mocks the rock ethos by combining guitars and drums with a gleaming brass section, hailing the lounge act of Dean Martin, while also using rap and dance samples. Although carrying fifty year's of crooner baggage, the spicy scent of homosexuality has also danced around Robbie Williams' career. Much of this ideology can be traced back to the Take That years. As Gary Barlow and Jason Orange commented at the time, Jason: So the rumour is we're all gay now are we? Gary: Am I gay? I am? Why? Oh good. Just as long as we know. Howard: Does anyone think I'm gay? Jason: No, you're the only one people think is straight. Howard: Why aren't I gay? What's wrong with me? Jason: It's because you're such a fine figure of macho manhood.(Kadis 17) For those not literate in the Take That discourse, it should come as no surprise that Howard was the TT equivalent of The Beatle's Ringo Starr or Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. Every boy band requires the ugly, shy member to make the others appear taller and more attractive. The inference of this dialogue is that the other members of the group are simply too handsome to be heterosexual. This ambiguous sexuality has followed Williams into his solo career, becoming fodder for those lads too unappealing to be homosexual: Oasis. Born to be mild I seem to spend my life Just waiting for the chorus 'Cause the verse is never nearly Good enough Robbie Williams "Singing for the lonely." Robbie Williams accesses a bigger, brighter and bolder future than Britpop. While the Gallagher brothers emulate and worship the icons of 1960s British music - from the Beatles' haircuts to the Stones' psychedelia - Williams' songs, videos and persona are chattering in a broader cultural field. From Noel Cowardesque allusions to the ordinariness of pub culture, Williams is much more than a pretty-boy singer. He has become an icon of English masculinity, enclosing all the complexity that these two terms convey. Williams' solo success from 1999-2001 occurred at the time of much parochial concern that British acts were not performing well in the American charts. It is bemusing to read Billboard over this period. The obvious quality of Britney Spears is seen to dwarf the mediocrity of British performers. The calibre of Fatboy Slim, carrying a smiley backpack stuffed with reflexive dance culture, is neither admitted nor discussed. It is becoming increasing strange to monitor the excessive fame of Williams in Britain, Europe, Asia and the Pacific when compared to his patchy career in the United States. Even some American magazines are trying to grasp the disparity. The swaggering king of Britpop sold a relatively measly 600,000 copies of his U.S. debut album, The ego has landed … Maybe Americans didn't appreciate his songs about being famous. (Ask Dr. Hip 72) In the first few years of the 2000s, it has been difficult to discuss a unified Anglo-American musical formation. Divergent discursive frameworks have emerged through this British evasion. There is no longer an agreed centre to the musical model. Throughout 1990s Britain, blackness jutted out of dance floor mixes, from reggae to dub, jazz and jungle. Plied with the coldness of techno was an almost too hot hip hop. Yet both were alternate trajectories to Cool Britannia. London once more became swinging, or as Vanity Fair declared, "the nerve centre of pop's most cohesive scene since the Pacific Northwest grunge explosion of 1991." (Kamp 102) Through Britpop, the clock turned back to the 1960s, a simpler time before race became 'a problem' for the nation. An affiliation was made between a New Labour, formed by the 1997 British election, and the rebirth of a Swinging London [5]. This style-driven empire supposedly - again - made London the centre of the world. Britpop was itself a misnaming. It was a strong sense of Englishness that permeated the lyrics, iconography and accent. Englishness requires a Britishness to invoke a sense of bigness and greatness. The contradictions and excesses of Blur, Oasis and Pulp resonate in the gap between centre and periphery, imperial core and colonised other. Slicing through the arrogance and anger of the Gallaghers is a yearning for colonial simplicity, when the pink portions of the map were the stable subjects of geography lessons, rather than the volatile embodiment of postcolonial theory. Simon Gikandi argues that "the central moments of English cultural identity were driven by doubts and disputes about the perimeters of the values that defined Englishness." (x) The reason that Britpop could not 'make it big' in the United States is because it was recycling an exhausted colonial dreaming. Two old Englands were duelling for ascendancy: the Oasis-inflected Manchester working class fought Blur-inspired London art school chic. This insular understanding of difference had serious social and cultural consequences. The only possible representation of white, British youth was a tabloidisation of Oasis's behaviour through swearing, drug excess and violence. Simon Reynolds realised that by returning to the three minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking parochial England with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly on the future. (members.aol.com/blissout/Britpop.html) Fortunately, another future had already happened. The beats per minute were pulsating with an urgent affirmation of change, hybridity and difference. Hip hop and techno mapped a careful cartography of race. While rock was colonialisation by other means, hip hop enacted a decolonial imperative. Electronic dance music provided a unique rendering of identity throughout the 1990s. It was a mode of musical communication that moved across national and linguistic boundaries, far beyond Britpop or Stateside rock music. While the Anglo American military alliance was matched and shadowed by postwar popular culture, Brit-pop signalled the end of this hegemonic formation. From this point, English pop and American rock would not sail as smoothly over the Atlantic. While 1995 was the year of Wonderwall, by 1996 the Britpop bubble corroded the faces of the Gallagher brothers. Oasis was unable to complete the American tour. Yet other cultural forces were already active. 1996 was also the year of Trainspotting, with "Born Slippy" being the soundtrack for a blissful journey under the radar. This was a cultural force that no longer required America as a reference point [6]. Robbie Williams was able to integrate the histories of Britpop and dance culture, instigating a complex dialogue between the two. Still, concern peppered music and entertainment journals that British performers were not accessing 'America.' As Sharon Swart stated Britpop acts, on the other hand, are finding it less easy to crack the U.S. market. The Spice Girls may have made some early headway, but fellow purveyors of pop, such as Robbie Williams, can't seem to get satisfaction from American fans. (35 British performers had numerous cultural forces working against them. Flat global sales, the strength of the sterling and the slow response to the new technological opportunities of DVD, all caused problems. While Britpop "cleaned house," (Boehm 89) it was uncertain which cultural formation would replace this colonising force. Because of the complex dialogues between the rock discourse and dance culture, time and space were unable to align into a unified market. American critics simply could not grasp Robbie Williams' history, motives or iconography. It's Robbie's world, we just buy tickets for it. Unless, of course you're American and you don't know jack about soccer. That's the first mistake Williams makes - if indeed one of his goals is to break big in the U.S. (and I can't believe someone so ambitious would settle for less.) … Americans, it seems, are most fascinated by British pop when it presents a mirror image of American pop. (Woods 98 There is little sense that an entirely different musical economy now circulates, where making it big in the United States is not the singular marker of credibility. Williams' demonstrates commitment to the international market, focussing on MTV Asia, MTV online, New Zealand and Australian audiences [7]. The Gallagher brothers spent much of the 1990s trying to be John Lennon. While Noel, at times, knocked at the door of rock legends through "Wonderwall," he snubbed Williams' penchant for pop glory, describing him as a "fat dancer." (Gallagher in Orecklin 101) Dancing should not be decried so summarily. It conveys subtle nodes of bodily knowledge about men, women, sex and desire. While men are validated for bodily movement through sport, women's dancing remains a performance of voyeuristic attention. Such a divide is highly repressive of men who dance, with gayness infiltrating the metaphoric masculine dancefloor [8]. Too often the binary of male and female is enmeshed into the divide of rock and dance. Actually, these categories slide elegantly over each other. The male pop singers are located in a significant semiotic space. Robbie Williams carries these contradictions and controversy. NO! Robbie didn't go on NME's cover in a 'desperate' attempt to seduce nine-year old knickerwetters … YES! He used to be teenybopper fodder. SO WHAT?! So did the Beatles the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc blah blah pseudohistoricalrockbollocks. NO! Making music that gurlz like is NOT a crime! (Wells 62) There remains an uncertainty in his performance of masculinity and at times, a deliberate ambivalence. He grafts subversiveness into a specific lineage of English pop music. The aim for critics of popular music is to find a way to create a rhythm of resistance, rather than melody of credible meanings. In summoning an archaeology of the archive, we begin to write a popular music history. Suzanne Moore asked why men should "be interested in a sexual politics based on the frightfully old-fashioned ideas of truth, identity and history?" (175) The reason is now obvious. Femininity is no longer alone on the simulacra. It is impossible to separate real men from the representations of masculinity that dress the corporeal form. Popular music is pivotal, not for collapsing the representation into the real, but for making the space between these states livable, and pleasurable. Like all semiotic sicknesses, the damaged, beaten and bandaged masculinity of contemporary music swaddles a healing pedagogic formation. Robbie Williams enables the writing of a critical history of post Anglo-American music [9]. Popular music captures such stories of place and identity. Significantly though, it also opens out spaces of knowing. There is an investment in rhythm that transgresses national histories of music. While Williams has produced albums, singles, video and endless newspaper copy, his most important revelations are volatile and ephemeral in their impact. He increases the popular cultural vocabulary of masculinity. [1] The fame of both Williams and Halliwell was at such a level that it was reported in the generally conservative, pages of Marketing. The piece was titled "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing, August 2000: 17. [2] For poll results, please refer to "Winners and Losers," Time International, Vol. 155, Issue 23, June 12, 2000, 9 [3] For a discussion of this growth in academic discourse on masculinity, please refer to Paul Smith's "Introduction," in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. [4] Steve Futterman described Rock DJ as the "least alluring porn video on MTV," in "The best and worst: honour roll," Entertainment Weekly 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. [5] Michael Bracewell stated that "pop provides an unofficial cartography of its host culture, charting the national mood, marking the crossroads between the major social trends and the tunnels of the zeitgeist," in "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman .(February 21 1997): 36. [6] It is important to make my point clear. The 'America' that I am summoning here is a popular cultural formation, which possesses little connection with the territory, institution or defence initiatives of the United States. Simon Frith made this distinction clear, when he stated that "the question becomes whether 'America' can continue to be the mythical locale of popular culture as it has been through most of this century. As I've suggested, there are reasons now to suppose that 'America' itself, as a pop cultural myth, no longer bears much resemblance to the USA as a real place even in the myth." This statement was made in "Anglo-America and its discontents," Cultural Studies 5 1991: 268. [7] To observe the scale of attention paid to the Asian and Pacific markets, please refer to http://robbiewilliams.com/july13scroll.html, http://robbiewilliams.com/july19scroll.html and http://robbiewilliams.com/july24scroll.html, accessed on March 3, 2001 [8] At its most naïve, J. Michael Bailey and Michael Oberschneider asked, "Why are gay men so motivated to dance? One hypothesis is that gay men dance in order to be feminine. In other words, gay men dance because women do. An alternative hypothesis is that gay men and women share a common factor in their emotional make-up that makes dancing especially enjoyable," from "Sexual orientation in professional dance," Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997). Such an interpretation is particularly ludicrous when considering the pre-rock and roll masculine dancing rituals in the jive, Charleston and jitterbug. Once more, the history of rock music is obscuring the history of dance both before the mid 1950s and after acid house. [9] Women, gay men and black communities through much of the twentieth century have used these popular spaces. For example, Lynne Segal, in Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990, stated that "through dancing, athletic and erotic performance, but most powerfully through music, Black men could express something about the body and its physicality, about emotions and their cosmic reach, rarely found in white culture - least of all in white male culture,": 191 References Ansen, D., Giles, J., Kroll, J., Gates, D. and Schoemer, K. "What's a handsome lad to do?" Newsweek 133.19 (May 10, 1999): 85. "Ask Dr. Hip." U.S. News and World Report 129.16 (October 23, 2000): 72. Bailey, J. Michael., and Oberschneider, Michael. "Sexual orientation in professional dance." Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997):expanded academic database [fulltext]. Boehm, E. "Pop will beat itself up." Variety 373.5 (December 14, 1998): 89. Bracewell, Michael. "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman.(February 21 1997): 36. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties .Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. Frith, Simon. "Anglo-America and its discontents." Cultural Studies. 5 1991. Futterman, Steve. "The best and worst: honour roll." Entertainment Weekly, 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. Gikandi, Simon. Maps of Englishness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Kadis, Alex. Take That: In private. London: Virgin Books, 1994. Kamp, D. "London Swings! Again!" Vanity Fair ( March 1997): 102. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press, 1996. Mendell, Adrienne. How men think. New York: Fawcett, 1996. Moore, Susan. "Getting a bit of the other - the pimps of postmodernism." In Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Male Order .London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1988. 165-175. Orecklin, Michele. "People." Time. 155.10 (March 13, 2000): 101. Pollack, William. Real boys. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1999. Reynolds, Simon. members.aol.com/blissout/britpop.html. Accessed on April 15, 2001. Robinson, David. No less a man. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1994. Segal, Lynne. Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990. Smith, Paul. "Introduction" in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. Swart, S. "U.K. Showbiz" Variety.(December 11-17, 2000): 35. Sexton, Paul and Masson, Gordon. "Tips for Brits who want U.S. success" Billboard .(September 9 2000): 1. Wells, Steven. "Angst." NME.(November 21 1998): 62. "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing.(August 2000): 17. Woods, S. "Robbie Williams Sing when you're winning" The Village Voice. 45.52. (January 2, 2001): 98.

What creative techniques of resistance are available to a female filmmaker when she is the victim of a violent event and filmed at her most vulnerable? This article uses an autoethnographic lens to discuss my experience of a serious car crash my family and I were inadvertently involved in due to police negligence and a criminal act. Employing Creative Analytical Practice (CAP) ethnography, a reflexive form of research which recognises that the creative process, producer and product are “deeply intertwined” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 930), I investigate how the crash’s violent affects crippled my agency, manifested in my creative praxis and catalysed my identification of latent forms of institutionalised violence in film culture, its discourse and pedagogy that also contributed to my inertia. The article maps my process of writing a feature length screenplay during the aftermath of the crash as I set out to articulate my story of survival and resistance. Using this narrative inquiry, in which we can “investigate how we construct the world, ourselves, and others, and how standard objectifying practices...unnecessarily limit us” (Richardson, “Writing: A Method” 924), I outline how I attempted to disrupt the entrenched power structures that exist in dominant narratives of violence in film and challenge my subjugated positioning as a woman within this canon. I describe my engagement with the deconstructionist practices of writing the body and militant feminist cinema, which suggest subversive opportunities for women’s self-determination by encouraging us to embrace our exiled positioning in dominant discourse through creative experimentation, and identify some of the possibilities and limitations of this for female agency. Drawing on CAP ethnography, existentialism, film feminism, and narrative reframing, I assert that these reconstructive practices are more effective for the creative enfranchisement of women by not relegating us to the periphery of social systems and cultural forms. Instead, they enable us to speak back to violent structures in a language that has greater social access, context and impact.My strong desire to tell screen stories lies in my belief that storytelling is a crucial evolutionary mechanism of resilience. Narratives do not simply represent the social world but also have the ability to change it by enabling us to “try to figure out how to live our lives meaningfully” (Ellis 760). This conviction has been directly influenced by my personal story of trauma and survival when myself, my siblings, and our respective life partners became involved in a major car crash. Two police officers attending to a drunken brawl in an inner city park had, in their haste, left the keys in the ignition of their vehicle. We were travelling across a major intersection when the police car, which had subsequently been stolen by a man involved in the brawl – a man who was wanted on parole, had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit, and was driving at speeds exceeding 110kms per hour - ran a red light and crossed our path, causing us to crash into his vehicle. From the impact, the small four-wheel drive we were travelling in was catapulted metres into the air, rolling numerous times before smashing head on into oncoming traffic. My heavily pregnant sister was driving our vehicle.The incident attracted national media attention and our story became a sensationalist spectacle. Each news station reported erroneous and conflicting information, one stating that my sister had lost her unborn daughter, another even going so far as to claim my sister had died in the crash. This tabloidised, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, culture of journalism, along with new digital technologies, encourages and facilitates the normalisation of violent acts, often inflicted on women. Moreover, in their pursuit of high-rating stories, news bodies motivate dehumanising acts of citizen journalism that see witnesses often inspired to film, rather than assist, victims involved in a violent event. Through a connection with someone working for a major news station, we discovered that leading news broadcasters had bought a tape shot by a group of men who call themselves the ‘Paparazzi of Perth’. These men were some of the first on the scene and began filming us from only a few metres away while we were still trapped upside down and unconscious in our vehicle. In the recording, the men are heard laughing and celebrating our tragedy as they realise the lucrative possibilities of the shocking imagery they are capturing as witnesses pull us out of the back of the car, and my pregnant sister incredibly frees herself from the wreckage by kicking out the window.As a female filmmaker, I saw the bitter irony of this event as the camera was now turned on me and my loved ones at our most vulnerable. In her discussion of the male gaze, a culturally sanctioned form of narrational violence against women that is ubiquitous in most mainstream media, Mulvey proposes that women are generally the passive image, trapped by the physical limits of the frame in a permanent state of powerlessness as our identity is reduced to her “to-be-looked-at-ness” (40). For a long period of time, the experience of performing the role of this commodified woman of a weaponised male gaze, along with the threat of annihilation associated with our near-death experience, immobilised my spirit. I felt I belonged “more to the dead than to the living” (Herman 34). When I eventually returned to my creative praxis, I decided to use scriptwriting as both my “mode of reasoning and a mode of representation” (Richardson, Writing Strategies 21), test whether I could work through my feelings of alienation and violation and reclaim my agency. This was a complex and harrowing task because my memories “lack[ed] verbal narrative and context” (Herman 38) and were deeply rooted in my body. Cixous confirms that for women, “writing and voice...are woven together” and “spring from the deepest layers of her psyche” (Moi 112). For many months, I struggled to write. I attempted to block out this violent ordeal and censor my self. I soon learnt, however, that my body could not be silenced and was slow to forget. As I tried to write around this experience, the trauma worked itself deeper inside of me, and my physical symptoms worsened, as did the quality of my writing.In the early version of the screenplay I found myself writing a female-centred film about violence, identity and death, using the fictional narrative to express the numbness I experienced. I wrote the female protagonist with detachment as though she were an object devoid of agency. Sartre claims that we make objects of others and of ourselves in an attempt to control the uncertainty of life and the ever-changing nature of humanity (242). Making something into an object is to deprive it of life (and death); it is our attempt to keep ourselves ‘safe’. While I recognise that the car crash’s reminder of my mortality was no doubt part of the reason why I rendered myself, and the script’s female protagonist, lifeless as agentic beings, I sensed that there were subtler operations of power and control behind my self-objectification and self-censorship, which deeply concerned me. What had influenced this dea(r)th of female agency in my creative imaginings? Why did I write my female character with such a red pen? Why did I seem so compelled to ‘kill’ her? I wanted to investigate my gender construction, the complex relationship between my scriptwriting praxis, and the context within which it is produced to discover whether I could write a different future for myself, and my female characters. Kiesinger supports “contextualizing our stories within the framework of a larger picture” (108), so as to remain open to the possibility that there might not be anything ‘wrong’ with us, per se, “but rather something very wrong with the dynamics that dominate the communicative system” (109) within which we operate: in the case of my creative praxis, the oppressive structures present in the culture of film and its pedagogy.Pulling FocusWomen are supposed to be the view and when the view talks back, it is uncomfortable.— Jane Campion (Filming Desire)It is a terrible thing to see that no one has ever taught us how to develop our vision as women neither in the history of arts nor in film schools.— Marie Mandy (Filming Desire)The democratisation of today’s media landscape through new technologies, the recent rise in female-run production companies (Zemler) in Hollywood, along with the ground-breaking #MeToo and Time’s Up movements has elevated the global consciousness of gender-based violence, and has seen the screen industry seek to redress its history of gender imbalance. While it is too early to assess the impact these developments may have on women’s standing in film, today the ‘celluloid ceiling’ still operates on multiple levels of indoctrination and control through a systemic pattern of exclusion for women that upholds the “nearly seamless dialogue among men in cinema” (Lauzen, Thumbs Down 2). Female filmmakers occupy a tenuous position of influence in the mainstream industry and things are not any better on the other side of the camera (Lauzen, The Celluloid Ceiling). For the most part, Hollywood’s male gaze and penchant for sexualising and (physically or figuratively) killing female characters, which normalises violence against women and is “almost inversely proportional to the liberation of women in society” (Mandy), continues to limit women to performing as the image rather than the agent on screen.Film funding bodies and censorship boards, mostly comprised of men, remain exceptionally averse to independent female filmmakers who go against the odds to tell their stories, which often violate taboos about femininity and radically redefine female agency through the construction of the female gaze: a narrational technique of resistance that enables reel woman to govern the point of view, imagery and action of the film (Smelik 51-52). This generally sees their films unjustly ghettoised through incongruent classification or censorship, and forced into independent or underground distribution (Sexton-Finck 165-182). Not only does censorship propose the idea that female agency is abject and dangerous and needs to be restrained, it prevents access to this important cinema by women that aims to counter the male gaze and “shield us from this type of violence” (Gillain 210). This form of ideological and institutional gatekeeping is not only enforced in the film industry, it is also insidiously (re)constituted in the epistemological construction of film discourse and pedagogy, which in their design, are still largely intrinsically gendered institutions, encoded with phallocentric signification that rejects a woman’s specificity and approach to knowledge. Drawing on my mutually informative roles as a former film student and experienced screen educator, I assert that most screen curricula in Australia still uphold entrenched androcentric norms that assume the male gaze and advocate popular cinema’s didactic three-act structure, which conditions our value systems to favour masculinity and men’s worldview. This restorative storytelling approach is argued to be fatally limiting to reel women (Smith 136; Dancyger and Rush 25) as it propagates the Enlightenment notion of a universal subjectivity, based on free will and reason, which neutralises the power structures of society (and film) and repudiates the influence of social positioning on our opportunity for agency. Moreover, through its omniscient consciousness, which seeks to efface the presence of a specific narrator, the three-act method disavows this policing of female agency and absolves any specific individual of responsibility for its structural violence (Dyer 98).By pulling focus on some of these problematic mechanisms in the hostile climate of the film industry and its spaces of learning for women, I became acutely aware of the more latent forms of violence that had conditioned my scriptwriting praxis, the ambivalence I felt towards my female identity, and my consequent gagging of the female character in the screenplay.Changing Lenses How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become?— Laurel Richardson (Fields of Play 1)In the beginning, there is an end. Don’t be afraid: it’s your death that is dying. Then: all the beginnings.— Helene Cixous (Cixous and Jensen 41)The discoveries I made during my process of CAP ethnography saw a strong feeling of dissidence arrive inside me. I vehemently wanted to write my way out of my subjugated state and release some of the anguish that my traumatised body was carrying around. I was drawn to militant feminist cinema and the French poststructuralist approach of ‘writing the body’ (l’ecriture feminine) given these deconstructive practices “create images and ideas that have the power to inspire to revolt against oppression and exploitation” (Moi 120). Feminist cinema’s visual treatise of writing the body through its departure from androcentric codes - its unformulaic approach to structure, plot, character and narration (De Lauretis 106) - revealed to me ways in which I could use the scriptwriting process to validate my debilitating experience of physical and psychic violence, decensor my self and move towards rejoining the living. Cixous affirms that, “by writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into…the ailing or dead figure” (Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa 880). It became clear to me that the persistent themes of death that manifested in the first draft of the script were not, as I first suspected, me ‘rehearsing to die’, or wanting to kill off the woman inside me. I was in fact “not driven towards death but by death” (Homer 89), the close proximity to my mortality, acting as a limit, was calling for a strengthening of my life force, a rebirth of my agency (Bettelheim 36). Mansfield acknowledges that death “offers us a freedom outside of the repression and logic that dominate our daily practices of keeping ourselves in order, within the lines” (87).I challenged myself to write the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unexplored and to allow myself to go to places in me that I had never before let speak by investigating my agency from a much more layered and critical perspective. This was both incredibly terrifying and liberating and enabled me to discard the agentic ‘corset’ I had previously worn in my creative praxis. Dancyger and Rush confirm that “one of the things that happens when we break out of the restorative three-act form is that the effaced narrator becomes increasingly visible and overt” (38). I experienced an invigorating feeling of empowerment through my appropriation of the female gaze in the screenplay which initially appeased some of the post-crash turmoil and general sense of injustice I was experiencing. However, I soon, found something toxic rising inside of me. Like the acrimonious feminist cinema I was immersed in – Raw (Ducournau), A Girl Walks Home at Night (Amirpour), Romance (Breillat), Trouble Every Day (Denis), Baise-Moi (Despentes and Thi), In My Skin (Van), Anatomy of Hell (Breillat) – the screenplay I had produced involved a female character turning the tables on men and using acts of revenge to satisfy her needs. Not only was I creating a highly dystopian world filled with explicit themes of suffering in the screenplay, I too existed in a displaced state of rage and ‘psychic nausea’ in my daily life (Baldick and Sartre). I became haunted by vivid flashbacks of the car crash as abject images, sounds and sensations played over and over in my mind and body like a horror movie on loop. I struggled to find the necessary clarity and counterbalance of stability required to successfully handle this type of experimentation.I do not wish to undermine the creative potential of deconstructive practices, such as writing the body and militant cinema, for female filmmakers. However, I believe my post-trauma sensitivity to visceral entrapment and spiritual violence magnifies some of the psychological and physiological risks involved. Deconstructive experimentation “happens much more easily in the realm of “texts” than in the world of human interaction” (hooks 22) and presents agentic limitations for women since it offers a “utopian vision of female creativity” (Moi 119) that is “devoid of reality...except in a poetic sense” (Moi 122). In jettisoning the restorative qualities of narrative film, new boundaries for women are inadvertently created through restricting us to “intellectual pleasure but rarely emotional pleasure” (Citron 51). Moreover, by reducing women’s agency to retaliation we are denied the opportunity for catharsis and transformation; something I desperately longed to experience in my injured state. Kaplan acknowledges this problem, arguing that female filmmakers need to move theoretically beyond deconstruction to reconstruction, “to manipulate the recognized, dominating discourses so as to begin to free ourselves through rather than beyond them (for what is there ‘beyond’?)” (Women and Film 141).A potent desire to regain a sense of connectedness and control pushed itself out from deep inside me. I yearned for a tonic to move myself and my female character to an active position, rather than a reactive one that merely repeats the victimising dynamic of mainstream film by appropriating a reversed (female) gaze and now makes women the violent victors (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 130). We have arrived at a point where we must destabilise the dominance-submission structure and “think about ways of transcending a polarity that has only brought us all pain” (Kaplan, Feminism and Film 135). I became determined to write a screen narrative that, while dealing with some of the harsh realities of humanity I had become exposed to, involved an existentialist movement towards catharsis and activity.ReframingWhen our stories break down or no longer serve us well, it is imperative that we examine the quality of the stories we are telling and actively reinvent our accounts in ways that permit us to live more fulfilling lives.— Christine Kiesinger (107)I’m frightened by life’s randomness, so I want to deal with it, make some sense of it by telling a film story. But it’s not without hope. I don’t believe in telling stories without some hope.— Susanne Bier (Thomas)Narrative reframing is underlined by the existentialist belief that our spiritual freedom is an artistic process of self-creation, dependent on our free will to organise the elements of our lives, many determined out of our control, into the subjective frame that is to be our experience of our selves and the world around us (107). As a filmmaker, I recognise the power of selective editing and composition. Narrative reframing’s demand for a rational assessment of “the degree to which we live our stories versus the degree to which our stories live us” (Kiesinger 109), helped me to understand how I could use these filmmaking skills to take a step back from my trauma so as to look at it objectively “as a text for study” (Ellis 108) and to exercise power over the creative-destructive forces it, and the deconstructive writing methods I had employed, produced. Richardson confirms the benefits of this practice, since narrative “is the universal way in which humans accommodate to finitude” (Writing Strategies 65).In the script’s development, I found my resilience lay in my capacity to imagine more positive alternatives for female agency. I focussed on writing a narrative that did not avoid life’s hardships and injustices, or require them to be “attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, and falsified” (Nietzsche and Hollingdale 68), yet still involved a life-affirming sentiment. With this in mind, I reintroduced the three-act structure in the revised script as its affectivity and therapeutic denouement enabled me to experience a sense of agentic catharsis that turned “nauseous thoughts into imaginations with which it is possible to live” (Nietzsche 52). Nevertheless, I remained vigilant not to lapse into didacticism; to allow my female character to be free to transgress social conventions surrounding women’s agency. Indebted to Kaplan’s writing on the cinematic gaze, I chose to take up what she identifies as a ‘mutual gaze’; an ethical framework that enabled me to privilege the female character’s perspective and autonomy with a neutral subject-subject gaze rather than the “subject-object kind that reduces one of the parties to the place of submission” (Feminism and Film 135). I incorporated the filmic technique of the point of view (POV) shot for key narrative moments as it allows an audience to literally view the world through a character’s eyes, as well as direct address, which involves the character looking back down the lens at the viewer (us); establishing the highest level of identification between the spectator and the subject on screen.The most pertinent illustration of these significant scriptwriting changes through my engagement with narrative reframing and feminist film theory, is in the reworking of my family’s car crash which became a pivotal turning point in the final draft. In the scene, I use POV and direct address to turn the weaponised gaze back around onto the ‘paparazzi’ who are filming the spectacle. When the central (pregnant) character frees herself from the wreckage, she notices these men filming her and we see the moment from her point of view as she looks at these men laughing and revelling in the commercial potential of their mediatised act. Switching between POV and direct address, the men soon notice they have been exposed as the woman looks back down the lens at them (us) with disbelief, reproaching them (us) for daring to film her in this traumatic moment. She holds her determined gaze while they glance awkwardly back at her, until their laughter dissipates, they stop recording and appear to recognise the culpability of their actions. With these techniques of mutual gazing, I set out to humanise and empower the female victim and neutralise the power dynamic: the woman is now also a viewing agent, and the men equally perform the role of the viewed. In this creative reframing, I hope to provide an antidote to filmic violence against and/or by women as this female character reclaims her (my) experience of survival without adhering to the culture of female passivity or ressentiment.This article has examined how a serious car crash, being filmed against my will in its aftermath and the attendant damages that prevailed from this experience, catalysed a critical change of direction in my scriptwriting. The victimising event helped me recognise the manifest and latent forms of violence against women that are normalised through everyday ideological and institutional systems in film and prevent us from performing as active agents in our creative praxis. There is a critical need for more inclusive modes of practice – across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy – that are cognisant and respectful of women’s specificity and our difference to the androcentric landscape of mainstream film. We need to continue to exert pressure on changing violent mechanisms that marginalise us and ghettoise our stories. As this article has demonstrated, working outside dominant forms can enable important emancipatory opportunities for women, however, this type or deconstruction also presents risks that generally leave us powerless in everyday spaces. While I advocate that female filmmakers should look to techniques of feminist cinema for an alternative lens, we must also work within popular film to critique and subvert it, and not deny women the pleasures and political advantages of its restorative structure. By enabling female filmmakers to (re)humanise woman though encouraging empathy and compassion, this affective storytelling form has the potential to counter violence against women and mobilise female agency. Equally, CAP ethnography and narrative reframing are critical discourses for the retrieval and actualisation of female filmmakers’ agency as they allow us to contextualise our stories of resistance and survival within the framework of a larger picture of violence to gain perspective on our subjective experiences and render them as significant, informative and useful to the lives of others. This enables us to move from the isolated margins of subcultural film and discourse to reclaim our stories at the centre.ReferencesA Girl Walks Home at Night. Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour. Say Ahh Productions, 2014.Anatomy of Hell. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Tartan Films, 2004. Baise-Moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. FilmFixx, 2000.Baldick, Robert, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 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