Статті в журналах з теми "Multi-Lane trajectory"

Abstract With the development of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, it is possible to share information among multiple vehicles. However, the existing research on automated lane changes concentrates only on the single-vehicle lane change with self-detective information. Cooperative lane changes are still a new area with more complicated scenarios and can improve safety and lane-change efficiency. Therefore, a multi-vehicle cooperative automated lane-change maneuver based on V2V communication for scenarios of eight vehicles on three lanes was proposed. In these scenarios, same-direction and intersectant-direction cooperative lane changes were defined. The vehicle that made the cooperative decision obtained the information of surrounding vehicles that were used to cooperatively plan the trajectories, which was called cooperative trajectory planning. The cooperative safety spacing model was proposed to guarantee and improve the safety of all vehicles, and it essentially developed constraints for the trajectory-planning task. Trajectory planning was treated as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing safety, comfort, and lane-change efficiency under the constraints of vehicle dynamics and the aforementioned safety spacing model. Trajectory tracking based on a model predictive control method was designed to minimize tracking errors and control increments. Finally, to verify the validity of the proposed maneuver, an integrated simulation platform combining MATLAB/Simulink with CarSim was established. Moreover, a hardware-in-the-loop test bench was performed for further verification. The results indicated that the proposed multi-vehicle cooperative automated lane-change maneuver can achieve lane changes of multiple vehicles and increase lane-change efficiency while guaranteeing safety and comfort.

Autonomous lane changing, as a key module to realize high-level automatic driving, has important practical significance for improving the driving safety, comfort and commuting efficiency of vehicles. Traditional controllers have disadvantages such as weak scene adaptability and difficulty in balancing multi-objective optimization. In this paper, combined with the excellent self-learning ability of reinforcement learning, an interactive model predictive control algorithm is designed to realize the tracking control of the lane change trajectory. At the same time, two typical scenarios are verified by PreScan and Simulink, and the results show that the control algorithm can significantly improve the tracking accuracy and stability of the lane change trajectory.

Accurate trajectory prediction is an essential task in automated driving, which is achieved by sensing and analyzing the behavior of surrounding vehicles. Although plenty of research works have been invested in this field, it is still a challenging subject due to the environment’s complexity and the driving intention uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a joint learning architecture to incorporate the lane orientation, vehicle interaction, and driving intention in vehicle trajectory forecasting. This work employs a coordinate transform to encode the vehicle trajectory with lane orientation information, which is further incorporated into various interaction models to explore the mutual trajectory relations. Extracted features are applied in a dual-level stochastic choice learning to distinguish the trajectory modality at both the intention and motion levels. By collaborative learning of lane orientation, interaction, and intention, our approach can be applied to both highway and urban scenes. Experiments on the NGSIM, HighD, and Argoverse datasets demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a significant improvement in prediction accuracy compared with the baseline.

This paper presents a shared steering control framework for lane keeping and obstacle avoidance based on multi-objective model predictive control. One of the control objectives is to track the reference trajectory, which is updated continuously by the trajectory planning module; whereas the other is to track the driver’s current steering command, so as to consider the driver’s intention. By adding the two control objectives to the cost function of an MPC shared controller, a smooth combination of the commands of the driver and the automation can be achieved through the optimization. The authority of the driver and the automation is allocated by adjusting the weights of the objective terms in the cost function, which is determined by the proposed situation assessment method considering the longitudinal and lateral risks simultaneously. The results of the CarSim-Matlab/Simulink joint simulations show that the proposed shared controller can assist the driver to complete the tasks of lane keeping and obstacle avoidance smoothly while maintaining a good level of vehicle stability.

Crash risk identification and prediction are expected to play an important role in traffic accident prevention. However, most of the existing studies focus only on highways, not on multi-lane weaving areas. In this paper, a potential collision risk identification and conflict prediction model based on extending Time-to-Collision-Machine Learning (TTC-ML) for multi-lane weaving zone was proposed. The model can accurately learn various features, such as vehicle operation characteristics, risk and conflict distributions, and physical zoning characteristics in the weaving area. Specifically, TTC was used to capture the collision risk severity, and ML extracted vehicle trajectory features. After normalizing and dimensionality reduction of the vehicle trajectory dataset, Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, and Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) models were selected for traffic conflict prediction, and the experiments showed that the GBDT model outperforms two remaining models in terms of prediction accuracy, precision, false-positive rate (FPR) and Area Under Curve (AUC). The research findings of this paper help traffic management departments develop and optimize traffic control schemes, which can be applied to Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems (IVICS) dynamic warning.

The present study aims to understand the interaction between different vehicle classes using various vehicle attributes and thereby obtain useful parameters for modelling traffic flow under non-lane based heterogeneous traffic conditions. To achieve this, a separate coordinate system has been developed to extract relevant data from vehicle trajectories. Statistical analysis results show that bi-modal and multi-modal distributions are accurate in representing vehicle lateral placement behaviour. These distributions help in improving the accuracy of microscopic simulation models in predicting vehicle lateral placement on carriageway. Vehicles off-centeredness behaviour with their leaders have significant impact on safe longitudinal headways which results in increasing vehicular density and capacity of roadway. Another interesting finding is that frictional clearance distance between vehicles influence their passing speed. Analysis revealed that the passing speeds of the fast moving vehicles such as cars are greatly affected by the presence of slow moving vehicles. However, slow moving vehicles does not reduce their speeds in the presence of fast moving vehicles. It is also found that gap sizes accepted by different vehicle classes are distributed according to Weibull, lognormal and 3 parameter log logistic distributions. Based on empirical observations, the study proposed a modified lateral separation distance factor and frictional resistance factor to model the non-lane heterogeneous traffic flow at macro level. It is anticipated that the outcomes of this study would help in developing a new methodology for modelling non-lane based heterogeneous traffic.

In this work, we introduce a microscopic traffic flow model called Scalar Capacity Model (SCM) which can be used to study the formation of traffic on an airway link for autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as well as for the ground vehicles on the road. Given the 3D trajectory of UAV flights (as opposed to the 2D trajectory of ground vehicles), the main novelty in our model is to eliminate the commonly used notion of lanes and replace it with a notion of density and capacity of flow, but in such a way that individual vehicle motions can still be modeled. We name this a Density/Capacity View (DCV) of the link capacity and how vehicles utilize it versus the traditional One/Multi-Lane View (OMV). An interesting feature of this model is exhibiting both passing and blocking regimes (analogous to multi-lane or single-lane) depending on the set scalar parameter for capacity. We show the model has linear local (platoon) and asymptotic linear stability. Additionally, we perform numerical simulations and show evidence for non-linear stability. Our traffic flow model is represented by a nonlinear differential equation which we transform into a linear form. This makes our model analytically solvable in the blocking regime and piece-wise analytically solvable in the passing regime. Finally, a key advantage of using our model over an OMV model for representing UAV’s flights is the removal of the artificial restriction on passing via only adjacent lanes. This will result in an improved and more realistic traffic flow for UAVs.

Purpose This study aims to develop an automatic lane-change mechanism on highways for self-driving articulated trucks to improve traffic safety. Design/methodology/approach The authors proposed a novel safety lane-change path planning and tracking control method for articulated vehicles. A double-Gaussian distribution was introduced to deduce the lane-change trajectories of tractor and trailer coupling characteristics of intelligent vehicles and roads. With different steering and braking maneuvers, minimum safe distances were modeled and calculated. Considering safety and ergonomics, the authors invested multilevel self-driving modes that serve as the basis of decision-making for vehicle lane-change. Furthermore, a combined controller was designed by feedback linearization and single-point preview optimization to ensure the path tracking and robust stability. Specialized hardware in the loop simulation platform was built to verify the effectiveness of the designed method. Findings The numerical simulation results demonstrated the path-planning model feasibility and controller-combined decision mechanism effectiveness to self-driving trucks. The proposed trajectory model could provide safety lane-change path planning, and the designed controller could ensure good tracking and robust stability for the closed-loop nonlinear system. Originality/value This is a fundamental research of intelligent local path planning and automatic control for articulated vehicles. There are two main contributions: the first is a more quantifiable trajectory model for self-driving articulated vehicles, which provides the opportunity to adapt vehicle and scene changes. The second involves designing a feedback linearization controller, combined with a multi-objective decision-making mode, to improve the comprehensive performance of intelligent vehicles. This study provides a valuable reference to develop advanced driving assistant system and intelligent control systems for self-driving articulated vehicles.

With the rapid development of automated vehicles, there is currently a significant amount of automated driving research. Giving automated vehicles capabilities similar to those of experienced drivers will allow them to share the road harmoniously with manned vehicles, especially on two-lane urban curves. To represent the steering behavior of experienced drivers, a series of curve feature distances are proposed, which is determined by multi-regression. These series of curve feature distances are used to generate a trapezoidal steering angle model which imitates the steering behavior of the experienced test drivers. To verify the feasibility and human-likeness of the proposed trapezoidal steering angle model, the model is used with constant vehicle speed to plan a human-like trajectory which is tracked using model predictive control. The simulation results show that the proposed trapezoidal steering angle model is human-like and could be used to give automated vehicles human-like driving capability when driving on two-lane curves.

With the development of autonomous driving technology, the requirements for machine perception have increased significantly. In particular, camera-based lane detection plays an essential role in autonomous vehicle trajectory planning. However, lane detection is subject to high complexity, and it is sensitive to illumination variation, appearance, and age of lane marking. In addition, the sheer infinite number of test cases for highly automated vehicles requires an increasing portion of test and validation to be performed in simulation and X-in-the-loop testing. To model the complexity of camera-based lane detection, physical models are often used, which consider the optical properties of the imager as well as image processing itself. This complexity results in high efforts for the simulation in terms of modelling as well as computational costs. This paper presents a Phenomenological Lane Detection Model (PLDM) to simulate camera performance. The innovation of the approach is the modelling technique using Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), which is a class of Neural Network (NN). In order to prepare input data for our neural network model, massive driving tests have been performed on the M86 highway road in Hungary. The model’s inputs include vehicle dynamics signals (such as speed and acceleration, etc.). In addition, the difference between the reference output from the digital-twin map of the highway and camera lane detection results is considered as the target of the NN. The network consists of four hidden layers, and scaled conjugate gradient backpropagation is used for training the network. The results demonstrate that PLDM can sufficiently replicate camera detection performance in the simulation. The modelling approach improves the realism of camera sensor simulation as well as computational effort for X-in-the-loop applications and thereby supports safety validation of camera-based functionality in automated driving, which decreases the energy consumption of vehicles.

This paper develops a real-time traffic signal optimization algorithm in the presence of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). The proposed algorithm leverages information from connected vehicles (CVs) arriving at an intersection to identify naturally occurring platoons that consist of both CVs and non-CVs. Signal timings are then selected to optimize the sequence at which these platoons are allowed to discharge through the intersection to minimize total vehicle delay. Longitudinal trajectory guidance that explicitly accounts for vehicle acceleration and deceleration behavior is provided to the lead autonomous vehicle (AV) in any platoon to minimize the total number of stopping maneuvers performed by all vehicles. Simulation tests reveal that the proposed platoon-based algorithm provides superior computational savings (over 95%) compared with a previously developed algorithm that focuses on optimizing departure sequences of individual vehicles, with negligible changes in operational performance. The computational savings allow the platoon-based algorithm to accommodate intersections with four multi-lane approaches and left turns, whereas large computational costs limited the previous vehicle-based algorithm to only two single-lane approaches without conflicting left turns. Additional simulation tests of the platoon-based algorithm on these more realistic intersection configurations show that intersection performance increases as the penetration rate of CAVs in the vehicle fleet increases. However, the marginal benefits decrease rapidly after the fleet is composed of 40% CAVs.

A path-planning algorithm for automated road vehicles on multi-lane motorways is derived from the opportune formulation of an optimal control problem. In this framework, the objective function to be minimized contains appropriate respective terms to reflect: the goals of the vehicle advancement; passenger comfort; prevailing traffic rules (e.g., overtaking only from left); and the avoidance of obstacles (other moving vehicles) and of the vehicle departing from the road. Each term is coupled with a weighting factor that reflects its comparative importance. For the numerical solution of the optimal control problem, a very efficient feasible direction algorithm is used. To avoid local minima, a simplified dynamic programming algorithm is also conceived to deliver the initial guess trajectory for the optimal control algorithm. With low computation times, the approach is readily executable within a model-predictive control frame. The performance of the proposed algorithm is illustrated using two typical driving scenarios.

Autonomous Vehicle applications and Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) need scene understanding processes, allowing high-level systems to carry out decision. For such systems, the localization of a vehicle evolving in a structured dynamic environment constitutes a complex problem of crucial importance. However, the low accuracy of the global positioning system (GPS) system in urban environments makes its localization unreliable for further treatments. The combination of GPS data and additional sensors (WSS, IMU or Camera) can improve the localization precision. More and more, digital maps are also used in this process. Generally, these maps are customized or built for a specific application, asking high-cost to design and upgrade. In this paper, we propose a low-cost localization system based on camera, GPS and open map. Starting from the road marking, detected by a multi-kernel estimation method, a particle filter generates the samples taking advantage of lane markings to predict the most probable trajectory of the vehicle and the low-cost GPS position. Then, the accuracy of the localization is improved using an open map. This process was validated through several scenarios with a public database and our experimental platform.

Detector data can be used to construct cumulative flow curves, which in turn can be used to estimate the traffic state. However, this approach is subject to the cumulative error problem. Multiple studies propose to mitigate the cumulative error problem using probe trajectory data. These studies often assume “no overtaking” and thus that the cumulative flow is zero over probe trajectories. However, in multi-lane traffic this assumption is often violated. Therefore, we present an approach to estimate the change in cumulative flow along probe trajectories between detectors based on disaggregated detector data. The approach is tested with empirical data and in microsimulation. This shows that the approach is a clear improvement over assuming “no overtaking” in free-flow conditions. However, the benefits are not clear in varying traffic conditions. The approach can be applied in practice to mitigate the cumulative error problem and estimate the traffic state based on the resulting cumulative flow curves. As the performance of the approach depends on the changes in traffic conditions, it is suggested to use the probe speed observations between detectors to assign an uncertainty to the change in cumulative flow estimates. Furthermore, a potential option for future work is to use more elaborate schemes to estimate the probe relative flow between detectors, which may, for instance, combine probe speeds with estimates of the macroscopic states along the probe trajectory. If these macroscopic estimates are based on the cumulative flow curves at the detector locations, this would result in an iterative approach.

Rule-based traditional motion planning methods usually perform well with prior knowledge of the macro-scale environments but encounter challenges in unknown and uncertain environments. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is a solution that can effectively deal with micro-scale unknown and uncertain environments. Nevertheless, DRL is unstable and lacks interpretability. Therefore, it raises a new challenge: how to combine the effectiveness and overcome the drawbacks of the two methods while guaranteeing stability in uncertain environments. In this study, a multi-constraint and multi-scale motion planning method is proposed for automated driving with the use of constrained reinforcement learning (RL), named RLTT, and comprising RL, a topological reachability analysis used for vehicle path space (TPS), and a trajectory lane model (TLM). First, a dynamic model of vehicles is formulated; then, TLM is developed on the basis of the dynamic model, thus constraining RL action and state space. Second, macro-scale path planning is achieved through TPS, and in the micro-scale range, discrete routing points are achieved via RLTT. Third, the proposed motion planning method is designed by combining sophisticated rules, and a theoretical analysis is provided to guarantee the efficiency of our method. Finally, related experiments are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method; our method can reduce 19.9% of the distance cost in the experiments as compared to the traditional method. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can help mitigate the gap between data-driven and traditional methods, provide better performance for automated driving, and facilitate the use of RL methods in more fields.

This work introduces a new way to assess the condition of highways and classify them as congested or uncongested highways. This was done by recording a video and sorting the number of lane change orders instead of finding the traffic density, delay, and flow rate. Then extracting data from the video and performing a microscopic simulation for it to study the driver's behavior and create the statistical model. Thus, obtaining the mathematical relationships and coefficients that illustrate that process, after verifying the reliability and calibration of these variables. This research aims to facilitate the highway assessment process, as an alternative or supplementary method of highway evaluation by the Highway Capacity Manual 2010. It is adequate to record a video and count the number of vehicles that change their lanes and then compare them with the results that have been determined in the search to judge the highway is congested or not. The study area was achieved by choosing five segments of multilane arterial roads (six lanes divided) on the left coast of Mosul city. These segments were selected to be as similar as possible in the geometric configuration as well as like traffic flow. After that, cameras were installed according to criteria to record traffic movement and for a time not less than ten hours for each segment, and on the workdays for traffic movement. Then, the videos were uploaded using the Goodvision traffic data recognition program. These outputs were converted to be entered into the PTV-VISSIM traffic simulation program in addition to the other geometric information needed by the program to complete the analysis process and find traffic flow parameters. In the extraction process, the normal distribution and the uniform nature of the data representation of the observed event on the segments were examined using the Z-test and the K-S test, the results were normal and significant. Then the results were verified and the traffic parameters such as density and flow rate were checked to ensure the nature of the traffic flow. The process was also verified using the vehicle motion graphic representation method (Vehicle Trajectory), which is the initial examination to estimate the new variable. A new variable has been extracted, which is one of the traffic movement variables, which depends on the percentage of complete and proper lane change completion within the parameters imposed by the simulation program, it’s the Lane Change Occupancy factor (LnChOc.). Then the statistical model was derived using SPSS for the new variable. It describes traffic conditions on highways and the results are verified and calibrated in more than one way. It’s a simple statistical model was obtained to estimate the traffic movement from this variable and vice versa from the following equation:, Which gave results for critical traffic on multi-lane roads in the Mosul city as follows: - Ø Ø Ø

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) organizes connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in platoons to improve traffic flow and reduce fuel consumption. Platoon formation involves a very complex process, however, because lateral and longitudinal misbehavior of CAVs results in greater fuel consumption and risk of collision. This study aims to design optimal vehicle trajectories of CAVs during CACC platoon formation. First, a basic scenario and a destination-based protocol are described to determine vehicle sequence in the platoon. A space-time lattice based model is then formulated to construct vehicle trajectories considering boundary conditions of kinematic limits, vehicle-following safety, and lane-changing rules. The objective is to optimize the vehicle sequence and fuel consumption simultaneously. A two-phase algorithm is proposed to solve this model, where the first phase is a heuristic algorithm that determines vehicle sequence and in the second phase dynamic programming is adapted to optimize fuel consumption based on the determined sequence. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model in designing CAV trajectories, extensive experimental tests have been conducted in this study. Results show that the proposed model and algorithm can effectively optimize CAV sequence in the platoon based on their destinations. After optimization, CAV fuel consumption was reduced by 42%, 46%, and 43%, respectively, in three different tested scenarios.

Lane-changing (LC) problem may cause serious accidents or create a painful traffic jam at multi-lane roads. Existing LC simulation model was created with some limitations (less fitted, without velocity and acceleration profiles, high curvature) by using well known trajectory curve such as Hyperbolic Tangent Curve (HTC), Sine-Based Curve (SC), Polynomial Curve (PC). In this study, a new parametric curve had been proposed by using curvilinear coordinate system and fitted against Next Generation Simulation (NGSIM) real dataset. Further, new profiles of velocity and acceleration were designed using the proposed LC trajectory curve. The curvature of proposed model was zero-based curvature both at LC starting and ending points. This proposed curvature was compared with two models such as HTC and SC. The average root-mean-square-error of proposed model decreased with 1.84% for left LC and 15.48% for right LC compared to HTC model and 1.74% for left LC and 15.60% for right LC compared to SC model. Similarly, the proposed model for velocity and acceleration profiles improved significantly from PC model. The proposed parametric curve solves the gap and collision points of LC vehicle with a front vehicle and rear vehicle at target lane and can be used in real LC path planning.

AbstractPredicting the states of the surrounding traffic is one of the major problems in automated driving. Maneuvers such as lane change, merge, and exit management could pose challenges in the absence of intervehicular communications and can benefit from driver behavior prediction. Predicting the motion of surrounding vehicles and trajectory planning need to be computationally efficient for real-time implementation. The main goal of this paper is to develop a fast algorithm that predicts the future states of the neighboring vehicles. The proposed workflow employs Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) along with an on-policy learning technique for fast trajectory planning in multi-lane highway traffic scenarios. Also, for the inclusion of behavioral aspects, cognitive hierarchy and level-K game theories are utilized to predict the reaction and decision of the surrounding drivers. Simulation case studies demonstrate that our proposed approach is real-time implementable and can often avoid collision in difficult simulated confrontations.

Traditional models of vehicle dynamics engineered from physical principles are usually simplified and assumed, resulting in the model cannot accurately reflect the actual dynamic characteristics of the vehicle under some working conditions, affecting the control accuracy and even safety. In view of this, inspired by the single-track model, this paper uses the data-driven methods to establish a new high-performance time-delay feedback neural network vehicle dynamics model. The feedback connection of a network can describe complex dynamics. The multi-time-step input of the state and control can include highly nonlinear and strong coupling characteristics of a vehicle. The test results of modeling accuracy show that the proposed model can achieve higher vehicle dynamics prediction accuracy than nonlinear vehicle model. Different from the traditional vehicle dynamics model, the proposed model has long-term memory cells, which can implicitly predict coefficient of friction and can be applied to different road conditions. Then, the trajectory tracking control algorithm is designed based on the proposed vehicle model. According to the steady-state steering assumption, the feedforward front wheel steering angle is calculated, and the steady-state sideslip angle is integrated into the steering feedback according to the reference path to realize the reference trajectory tracking control. Finally, Simulink/CarSim is used to conduct the simulation analysis under the double lane change conditions to evaluate the proposed control algorithm. The analysis results show that the control algorithm based on the proposed model can achieve an accurate tracking control effect of a vehicle at medium and high speeds, providing high-accuracy track tracking and good lateral stability of intelligent vehicles.

To improve the directional performance of articulated heavy vehicles (AHV), three previewed points driver model and LQR active trailer steering (ATS) strategy are proposed and examined using closed-loop driver/vehicle dynamics simulation. Firstly, a simplified linear three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) yaw plane model for AHV is established and validated. Secondly, based on the multi-point preview-predictor following strategy, the weighted-average error of three previewed points of the tractor is defined as the final lateral previewed displacement error. According to the assumption of constant yaw rate and the trajectory prediction of AHV, and three previewed points driver model has been configured, it’s path-following performance is verified. Thirdly, instead of using the idea of minimization, a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller is proposed based on the linear 3-DOF yaw plane model of AHV to make the control variables to keep following the desired responses. Through joint simulations using MATLAB/Simulink and TruckSim, the effectiveness of the built-in driver model, three-previewed point driver model and three-previewed point driver model + LQR ATS control methods on improving vehicle orientation performance were compared and analyzed through closed-loop driver/vehicle dynamics simulations. The significant effectiveness of the proposed method in improving maneuverability and stability is verified through low-speed 360° trajectory tracking tests and high-speed double lane change maneuver simulations. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform is used to further verify the effectiveness of the designed strategy.

AbstractDue to the roadside unit can not fully achieve seamless coverage and the dynamic change of network topology in vehicular networks, problems such as the interruption of vehicle service, poor stability of communication link, and high network delay will be caused. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a codirectional multilane adaptive message return (CMAMR) strategy based on edge computing. Firstly, we establish a CMAMR communication model. Then, according to the movement trajectory of the receiving node, we propose a single-hop and a multi-hop message return link strategy. The former combines the single-hop link quality and node location information to construct a node selection function to assist the head node in selecting an optimal forwarding node to form a single-hop message return link. The latter assists the RSU to select the optimal multi-hop message return link in the same lane by establishing a link adaptive quality evaluation function, thus improving the user’s quality of server. The simulation results show that the link network delay of the CMAMR strategy is 14.6%, 42.86%, and 38.47% lower than those of the random with forwarding progress (RFP), most forward with fixed radius (MFR), and traditional vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle cooperative communication (TVCC) message return strategies, respectively; correspondingly, the link reliability is at least 9.13% higher for the CMAMR strategy.

Introduction: Doctor Who's “Wilderness Years”1989 saw the cancellation of the BBC's long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who (1965 -). The 1990s were largely bereft of original Doctor Who television content, leading fans to characterise that decade as the “wilderness years” for the franchise (McNaughton 194). From another perspective, though, the 1990s was an unprecedented time of production for Doctor Who media. From 1991 to 1997, Virgin Publishing was licensed by the BBC's merchandising division to publish a series of original Doctor Who novels, which they produced and marketed as a continuation of the television series (Gulyas 46). This series of novels, Doctor Who: The New Adventures (commonly referred to as “the Virgin New Adventures” by fans) proved popular enough to support a monthly release schedule, and from 1994 onwards, a secondary "Missing Adventures" series.Despite their central role in the 1990s, however, many fans have argued that the Doctor Who novels format makes them either less "canonical" than the television series, or completely "apocryphal" (Gulyas 48). This fits with a general trend in transmedia properties, where print-based expansions or spin-offs are generally considered less official or authentic than those that are screen-based (Hills 223). This article argues that the openness of the series to contributions from fan writers – and also some of the techniques and approaches prioritised in fan fiction - resulted in the Virgin range of Doctor Who novels having an unusually significant impact on the development and evolution of the franchise as a whole when compared to the print-based transmedia extensions of other popular series’. The article also argues that the tonal and stylistic influence of the New Adventures novels on the revived Doctor Who television series offers an interesting counter-example to the usually strict hierarchies of content that are implied in Henry Jenkins's influential model of transmedia storytelling. Transmedia StorytellingJenkins uses the term “transmedia storytelling” to describe the ways in which media franchises frequently expand beyond the format they originate with, potentially encompassing television series, films, games, toys, comics and more (Jenkins “Transmedia 202”). In discussing this paradigm, Jenkins notes the ways in which contemporary productions increasingly prioritise “integration and coordination” between the different forms of media (Jenkins Convergence Culture 105). As Jenkins argues, “most discussions of transmedia place a high emphasis on continuity – assuming that transmedia requires a high level of coordination and creative control and that all of the pieces have to cohere into a consistent narrative or world” (Jenkins “Transmedia 202”). Due to this increased emphasis on continuity, the ability to decide which media will be considered as “canonical” within the story-world of the franchise becomes an important one. Where previously questions of canon had been largely confined to fan discussions, debates and interpretive readings of media texts (Jenkins Textual Poachers 102-104), the proprietors of franchises in a transmedia economy have an interest in proactively defining and policing the canon. Designating a particular piece of media as a “canonical” expansion or spinoff of its parent text can be a useful marketing tool, as it creates the expectation that it will provide an important contribution. Correspondingly, declaring that a particular set of media texts is no longer canonical can make the franchise more accessible and allow the authors of new material more creative freedom (Proctor and Freeman 238-9).While Jenkins argues that a reliance on “one single source or ur-text” (“Transmedia 101”) is counter to the spirit of transmedia storytelling, Pillai notes that his emphasis on cohesiveness across diverse media tends to implicitly prioritise the parent text over its various offshoots (103-4). As the parent text establishes continuity and canon, any transmedia supplements are obligated to remain consistent with it, but this is often a one-sided and hierarchical relationship. For example, in the Star Wars transmedia franchise, the film series is considered crucial in establishing the canon; and transmedia supplements are obliged to remain consistent with it in order to be recognised as authentic. The filmmakers, however, are largely free to ignore or contradict the contributions of spin-off books.Hills notes that the components of transmedia franchises are often arranged into “transmedial hierarchies” (223), where screen-based media like films, television series and video games are assigned dominance over print-based productions like comics and novels. This hierarchy means that print-based works typically have a less secure place within the canon of transmedia franchises, despite often contributing a disproportionately large quantity of narratives and concepts (Guynes 143). Using the Star Wars Expanded Universe as an example, he notes a tendency whereby “franchise novels” are generally considered as disposable, and are easily erased or decanonised despite significantly long, carefully interwoven and coordinated periods of storytelling (143-5). Doctor Who as a Transmedia FranchiseWhile questions of canon are frequently debated and discussed among Doctor Who fans, it is less easy to make absolutist distinctions between canonical and apocryphal texts in Doctor Who than it is in other popular transmedia franchises. Unlike comparable transmedia productions, Doctor Who has traditionally lacked a singular authority over questions of canon and consistency in the manner that Jenkins argues for in his implicitly hierarchical conception of transmedia storytelling (Convergence Culture 106). Where franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or The X-Files have been guided by creator-figures who either exert direct control over their various iterations or oblige them to remain broadly consistent with their original vision, Doctor Who has generally avoided this focus; creative control has passed between various showrunners and production teams, who have been largely free to establish their own style and tone.Furthermore, the franchise has traditionally favoured a largely self-contained and episodic style of storytelling; and different storylines and periods from its long history often contradict one another. For these reasons, Booth suggests that the largely retroactive attempts on the part of fans and critics to read the entire series as the type of transmedia production that Jenkins advocates for (i.e. an internally consistent narrative of connected stories) are counter-productive. He argues that Doctor Who is perhaps best understood not as a continuing series but as a long-running anthology, where largely autonomous stories and serials can be grouped into distinct “periods” of resemblance in terms of style and subject matter (198-206).As Britton argues, when appreciating Doctor Who as franchise, there is no particular need to assign primary importance to the parent media. Since its first season in 1965, the Doctor Who television series has been regularly supplemented by other media in the form of comics, annuals, films, stage-plays, audio-dramas, and novelisations. Britton maintains that as the transmedia works follow the same loosely connected, episodic structure as the television series, they operate as equally valid or equally disposable components within its metanarrative (1-9). Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell argues that given the accommodating nature of the show’s time-travel premise (which can easily accommodate the inconsistencies that Jenkins argues should be avoided in transmedia storytelling), and in the absence of a singular revered creator-figure or authority, absolutist pronouncements on canon from any source are unnecessary and exclusionary, either delegitimising texts that the audience may value, or insisting on familiarity with a particular text in order for an experience of the media to be considered “legitimate”. The Transmedia Legacy of the Virgin New AdventuresAs the Virgin Doctor Who novels are not necessarily diminished by either their lack of a clear canonical status or their placement as a print work within a screen-focused property, they can arguably be understood as constituting their own distinct “period” of Doctor Who in the manner defined by Booth. This claim is supported by the ways in which the New Adventures distinguish themselves from the typically secondary or supplemental transmedia extensions of most other television franchises.In contrast with the one-sided and hierarchical relationship that typically exists between the parent text and its transmedia extensions (Pillai 103-4), the New Adventures range did not attempt to signal their authenticity through stylistic and narrative consistency with their source material. Virgin had already published a long series of novelisations of story serials from the original television series under its children’s imprint, Target, but from their inception the New Adventures were aimed at a more mature audience. The editor of the range, Peter Darvill-Evans, observed that by the 1990s, Doctor Who’s dedicated fan base largely consisted of adults who had grown up with the series in the 1970s and 1980s rather than the children that both the television series and the novelisations had traditionally targeted (Perryman 23). The New Adventures were initially marketed as being “too broad and deep for the small screen” (Gulyas 46), positioning them as an improvement or evolution rather than an attempt to imitate the parent media or to compensate for its absence.By comparison, most other 1990s print-based supplements to popular screen franchises tended to closely mimic the style, tone and storytelling structure of their source material. For example, the Star Wars "Expanded Universe" series of novels (which began in 1991) were subject to strict editorial oversight to ensure they remained consistent with the films and were initially marketed as "film-like events" as a way of emphasising their equivalence to the original media (Proctor and Freeman 226). The Virgin New Adventures were also distinctive due to their open submission policy (which actively encouraged submissions from fan writers who had not previously achieved conventional commercial publication) alongside work from "professional" authors (Perryman 24). This policy began because Darvill-Evans noted the ability, high motivation and deep understanding of Doctor Who possessed by fan writers (Bishop) and it proved essential in establishing the more mature approach that the series was aiming for. After three indifferently received novels from professional authors, the first work from a fan author, Paul Cornell’s Timewyrm: Revelation (1991) became highly popular, due to its more grounded, serious and complex exploration of the character of the Doctor and their human companion. Following the success of Cornell’s novel, the series began to establish its own distinctive tone, emphasising gritty urban settings, character development and interpersonal drama, and the exploration of moral ambiguities and social and political issues that would have not been permissible in the original television series (Gulyas 46-8).Works by previously unpublished fan authors came to dominate the range to such an extent that the New Adventures has been described as “licensing professionally produced fan fiction” (Perryman 23). This trajectory established the New Adventures as an unusual hybrid text, combining the sanction of an official license with the usually unofficial phenomenon of fan custodianship. The cancellation of a television series (as experienced by Doctor Who in 1989) often allows its fan community to take custodianship of it in a variety of ways (McNoughton 194). While a series is being broadcast, fans are often constructed as elite but essentially ”powerless” readers, whose interpretations and desires can easily be contradicted or ignored by the series creators (Tulloch and Jenkins 141). With cancellation and a diminishing mass audience, fans become the custodians of the series and its memory. Their interpretations can no longer be overwritten, and they become the principle market for official merchandise and transmedia extensions (McNoughton 194-6).Also, fans can explore and fulfil their desires for the narrative direction and tone of the series, through the “cottage industries” of fan-created merchandise (196) and “gift economies” of fan fiction (Flegal and Roth 258), without being impeded or overruled by official developments in the parent media. This movement towards fan custodianship and production became more visible during the 1990s, as digital technology allowed for rapid communication, connection and exchange (Coppa 53). The Virgin New Adventures range arguably operated as a meeting point between officially sanctioned commercial spin-off media and the fan-centric industries of production that work to prolong the life and memory of a cancelled television series. Indeed, the direct inclusion of fan authors and the techniques and approaches associated with fan fiction likely helped to establish the deeper, more mature interpretation of Doctor Who offered by the New Adventures.As Stein and Busse observe, a recurring feature of fan fiction has been a focus on exploring the inner lives of the characters from its source media, and adding depth and complexity to their relationships (196-8). Furthermore, the successful New Adventures fan authors tended to offer support and encouragement to each other via their informal networks, which affected the development of the series as a transmedia production (Perryman 24). Flegal and Roth note that in contrast to often solitary and individualistic forms of “professional” and “literary” writing, the composition of fan fiction emerges out of collegial, supportive and reciprocal communities (265-8). The meeting point that the Virgin New Adventures provided between professional writing practice and the attitudes and approaches common to the types of fan fiction that were becoming more prominent in the nineties (Coppa 53-5) helped to shape the evolution of Doctor Who as a franchise.Where previous Doctor Who stories (regardless of the media or medium) had been largely isolated from each other, the informal fan networks that connected the New Adventures authors allowed and encouraged them to collaborate more closely, ensuring consistency between the instalments and plotting out multi-volume story-arcs and character development. Where the Star Wars Expanded Universe series of novels ensured consistency through extensive and often intrusive top-down editorial control (Proctor and Freeman 226-7), the New Adventures developed this consistency through horizontal relationships between authors. While Doctor Who has always been a transmedia franchise, the Virgin New Adventures may be the first point where it began to fully engage with the possibilities of the coordinated and consistent transmedia storytelling discussed by Jenkins (Perryman 24-6). It is notable that this largely developed out of the collaborative and reciprocal relationships common to communities of fan-creators rather than through the singular and centralised control that Jenkins advocates.While the Virgin range of Doctor Who novels ended long before the revival of the television series in 2005, its influence on the style, tone and subject matter of the new series has been noted. As Perryman argues, the emphasis on more cohesive story-arcs and character development between episodes has been inherited from the New Adventures (24). The 2005 series also followed the Virgin novels in presenting the Doctor’s companions with detailed backgrounds and having their relationships shift and evolve, rather than remaining static like they did in the original series. The more distinctly urban focus of the new series was also likely shaped by the success of the New Adventures (Haslop 217); its well-publicised emphasis on inclusiveness and diversity was likewise prefigured by the Virgin novels, which were the first Doctor Who media to include non-Anglo and LGBQT companions (McKee "How to tell the difference" 181-2). It is highly unusual for a print-based transmedia extension to have this level of impact. Indeed, one of the most visible and profitable transmedia initiatives that began in the 1990s, the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (which like the New Adventures was presented as an officially sanctioned continuation of the original media), was unceremoniously decanonised in 2014, and the interpretations of Star Wars characters and themes that it had developed over more than a decade of storytelling were almost entirely disregarded by the new films (Proctor and Freeman 235-7). The comparably large influence that the New Adventures had on the development of its franchise indicates the success of its fan-centric approach in developing a more relationship-driven and character-focused interpretation of its parent media.The influence of the New Adventures is also felt more directly through the continuing careers of its authors. A number of the fan writers who achieved their first commercial publication with the New Adventures (e.g. Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts, Mark Gatiss) went on to write scripts for the new series. The first showrunner, Russell T. Davies, was the author of the later novels, Damaged Goods (1997), and the second, Steven Moffat, had been an active member of Doctor Who fan communities that discussed and promoted the Virgin books (Bishop). As the former New Adventures author Kate Orman notes, this movement from writing usually secondary franchise novels to working on and having authority over the parent media is almost unheard of (McKee “Interview with Kate Orman” 138), and speaks to the success of the combination of fan authorship and official licensing and support found in the New Adventures. As Hadas notes, the chief difference between the new series of Doctor Who and its classic version is that former and long-term fans of the series are now directly involved in its production, thus complicating Tullouch and Jenkin’s assessment of Doctor Who fans as a “powerless elite” (141). ConclusionThe continuing influence of the nineties New Adventures novels can still be detected in the contemporary series. These novels operate with regard to the themes, preoccupations and styles of storytelling that this range pioneered within the Doctor Who franchise, and which developed directly out of its innovative and unusual strategy of giving official sanction and editorial support to typically obscured and subcultural modes of fan writing. The reductive and exclusionary question of canon can be avoided when considering the above novels. These transmedia productions are important to the evolution and development of the media franchise as a whole. In this respect, the Virgin New Adventures operate as their own distinctive, legitimate and influential "period" within Doctor Who, demonstrating the creative potential of an approach to transmedia storytelling that deemphasises strict hierarchies of content and control and can readily include the contributions of fan producers.ReferencesBishop, David. “Four Writers, One Discussion: Andy Lane, Paul Cornell, Steven Moffat and David Bishop.” Time Space Visualiser 43 (March 1995). 1 Nov. 2018 <http://doctorwho.org.nz/archive/tsv43/onediscussion.html>.Booth, Paul. “Periodising Doctor Who.” Science Fiction Film and Television 7.2 (2014). 195-215.Britton, Piers D. TARDISbound: Navigating the Universes of Doctor Who. London: I.B. Tauris and Company, 2011.Coppa, Francesca. “A Brief History of Media Fandom.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Eds. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. Jefferson NC: McFarland and Company, 2009. 41-59.Cornell, Paul. “Canonicity in Doctor Who”. PaulConell.com. 10 Feb. 2007. 30 Nov. 2018 <https://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who/>.Doctor Who. British Broadcasting Corporation, 1965 to present.Flegal, Monica, and Jenny Roth. “Writing a New Text: the Role of Cyberculture in Fanfiction Writers’ Transition to ‘Legitimate’ Publishing.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 10.2 (2016): 253-270.Gulyas, Aaron. “Don’t Call It a Comeback.” Doctor Who in Time and Space: Essays on Themes, Characters, History and Fandom, 1963-2012. Ed. Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan. Jefferson NC: McFarland and Company, 2013. 44-63.Guynes, Sean. “Publishing the New Jedi Order: Media Industries Collaboration and the Franchise Novel.” Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. Eds. Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2017. 143-154.Hadas, Leora. “Running the Asylum? Doctor Who’s Ascended Fan-Showrunners.” Deletion. 23 June 2014. 30 Nov. 2018 <http://www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-5/running-asylum-doctor-whos-ascended-fan-showrunners/>.Haslop, Craig. “Bringing Doctor Who Back for the Masses: Regenerating Cult, Commodifying Class.” Science Fiction Film and Television 9.2 (2016): 209-297.Hills, Matt. “From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as a Crossover/Hierarchical Space.” Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling. Eds. Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2017. 213-224.Jenkins III, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. 1992.———. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006.———. “Transmedia Storytelling 101.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 22 Mar. 2007. 30 Nov. 2018 <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html>.———. “Transmedia Storytelling 202: Further Reflections.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 1 Aug. 2011. 30 Nov. 2018 <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html>.McKee, Alan. "How to Tell the Difference between Production and Consumption: A Case Study in Doctor Who Fandom." Cult Television. Eds. Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Richard M. Pearson. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2004: 167-186.———. “Interview with Kate Orman: Dr Who Author.” Continuum 19.1 (2005): 127-139. McNaughton, Douglas. “Regeneration of a Brand: The Fan Audience and the 2005 Doctor Who Revival.” Ruminations, Peregrinations, and Regenerations: A Critical Approach to Doctor Who. Ed. Christopher J. Hansen. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 192-208.Perryman, Neil. “Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in ‘Transmedia Storytelling’.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14.1 (2008): 21-39.Pillai, Nicolas. “’What Am I Looking at, Mulder?’ Licensed Comics and the Freedoms of Transmedia Storytelling.” Science Fiction Film and Television 6.1 (2013): 101-117.Porter, Lynnette. The Doctor Who Franchise: American Influence, Fan Culture, and the Spinoffs. Jefferson NC: McFarland and Company, 2018.Procter, William, and Matthew Freeman. “’The First Step into a Smaller World’: The Transmedia Economy of Star Wars.” Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology. Ed. Mark J.P. Wolf. New York: Routledge. 2016. 223-245.Stein, Louisa, and Kristina Busse. “Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context.” Popular Communication 7.4 (2009): 192-207.Tullouch, John, and Henry Jenkins III. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Star Trek and Doctor Who. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Introduction How do we measure intimacy? What are its impacts on our social, political and personal lives? Can we claim a politics to our intimate lives that escapes the normative confines of archaic institutions, while making social justice claims for relationship recognition? Negotiating some of these disparate questions requires us to think more broadly in contemporary public debates on equality and relationship recognition. Specifically, by outlining the impacts of the popular "gay marriage" debate, this paper examines the impacts of queer theory in association with public policy and community lobbying for relationship equality. Much of the debate remains polarised: eliminating discrimination is counterposed to religious or reproductive narratives that suggest such recognition undermines the value of the "natural" heterosexual family. Introducing queer theory into advocacy that oscillates between rights and reproduction problematises indexing intimacy against normative ideas of monogamy and family. While the arguments circulated by academics, lawyers, politicians and activists have disparate political and ethical impacts, when taken together, they continue to define marriage as a public regulation of intimacy and citizenship. Citizenship, measured in democratic participation and choice, however, can only be realised through reflexive politics that value difference. Encouraging critical dialogue across disparate areas of the marriage equality debate will have a significant impact on how we make ethical claims for recognising intimacy. (Re)defining Marriage In legislative terms, marriage remains the most fundamental means through which the relationship between citizenship and intimacy is crystallised in Australia. For example, in 2004 the Federal Liberal Government in Australia passed a legislative amendment to the Marriage Act 1961 and expressly defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. By issuing a public legislative amendment, the Government intended to privilege monogamous (in this case understood as heterosexual) intimacy by precluding same-sex or polygamous marriage. Such an exercise had rhetorical rather than legal significance, as common law principles had previously defined the scope of marriage in gender specific terms for decades (Graycar and Millbank 41). Marriage as an institution, however, is not a universal or a-historical discourse limited to legal or political constructs. Socialist feminist critiques of marriage in the 1950s conceptualised the legal and gender specific constructs in marriage as a patriarchal contract designed to regulate female bodies (Hannam 146). However, Angela McRobbie notes that within a post-feminist context, these historical realities of gendered subjugation, reproduction or domesticity have been "disarticulated" (26). Marriage has become a more democratic and self-reflexive expression of intimacy for women. David Shumway elaborates this idea and argues that this shift has emerged in a context of "social solidarity" within a consumer environment of social fragmentation (23). What this implies is that marriage now evokes a range of cultural choices, consumer practices and affective trends that are incommensurable to a singular legal or historical term of reference. Debating the Politics of Intimacy and Citizenship In order to reflect on this shifting relationship between choice, citizenship and marriage as a concept, it is necessary to highlight that marriage extends beyond private articulations of love. It is a ritualised performance of heterosexual individual (or coupled) citizenship as it entrenches economic and civil rights and responsibilities. The private becomes public. Current neo-liberal approaches to same-sex marriage focus on these symbolic and economic questions of how recognising intimacy is tied to equality. In a legal and political context, marriage is defined in s5 Marriage Act as "the union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life." While the Act does not imbue marriage with religious or procreative significance, such a gender dichotomous definition prevents same-sex and gender diverse partners from entering into marriage. For Morris Kaplan, this is a problem because "full equality for lesbian and gay citizens requires access to the legal and social recognition of our intimate associations" (201). Advocates and activists define the quest for equal citizenship by engaging with current religious dogma that situates marriage within a field of reproduction, whereby same-sex marriage is seen to rupture the traditional rubric of monogamous kinship and the biological processes of "gender complementarity" (Australian Christian Lobby 1). Liberal equality arguments reject such conservative assertions on the basis that desire, sexuality and intimacy are innate features of human existence and hence always already implicated in public spheres (Kaplan 202). Thus, legal visibility or state recognition becomes crucial to sustaining practices of intimacy. Problematising the broader social impact of a civil rights approach through the perspective of queer theory, the private/public distinctions that delineate citizenship and intimacy become more difficult to negotiate. Equality and queer theory arguments on same-sex marriage are difficult to reconcile, primarily because they signify the different psychic and cultural investments in the monogamous couple. Butler asserts that idealisations of the couple in legal discourse relates to norms surrounding community, family and nationhood (Undoing 116). This structured circulation of sexual norms reifies the hetero-normative forms of relationships that ought to be recognised (and are desired) by the state. Butler also interrogates this logic of marriage, as a heterosexual norm, and suggests it has the capacity to confine rather than liberate subjects (Undoing 118-20). The author's argument relies upon Michel Foucault's notion of power and subjection, where the subject is not an autonomous individual (as conceived in neo liberal discourses) but a site of disciplined discursive production (Trouble 63). Butler positions the heterosexuality of marriage as a "cultural and symbolic foundation" that renders forms of kinship, monogamy, parenting and community intelligible (Undoing 118). In this sense, marriage can be a problematic articulation of state interests, particularly in terms of perpetuating domesticity, economic mobility and the heterosexual family. As former Australian Prime Minister John Howard opines: Marriage is … one of the bedrock institutions of our society … marriage, as we understand it in our society, is about children … providing for the survival of the species. (qtd. in Wade) Howard's politicisation of marriage suggests that it remains crucial to the preservation of the nuclear family. In doing so, the statement also exemplifies homophobic anxieties towards non-normative kinship relations "outside the family". The Prime Ministers' words characterise marriage as a framework which privileges hegemonic ideas of monogamy, biological reproduction and gender dichotomy. Butler responds to these homophobic terms by alluding to the discursive function of a "heterosexual matrix" which codes and produces dichotomous sexes, genders and (hetero)sexual desires (Trouble 36). By refusing to accept the binary neo-liberal discourse in which one is either for or against gay marriage, Butler asserts that by prioritising marriage, the individual accepts the discursive terms of recognition and legitimacy in subjectifying what counts as love (Undoing 115). What this author's argument implies is that by recuperating marital norms, the individual is not liberated, but rather participates in the discursive "trap" and succumbs to the terms of a heterosexual matrix (Trouble 56). In contradistinction to Howard's political rhetoric, engaging with Foucault's broader theoretical work on sexuality and friendship can influence how we frame the possibilities of intimacy beyond parochial narratives of conjugal relationships. Foucault emphasises that countercultural intimacies rely on desires that are relegated to the margins of mainstream (hetero)sexual culture. For example, the transformational aesthetics in practices such as sadomasochism or queer polyamorous relationships exist due to certain prohibitions in respect to sex (Foucault, History (1) 38, and "Sex" 169). Foucault notes how forms of resistance that transgress mainstream norms produce new experiences of pleasure. Being "queer" (though Foucault does not use this word) becomes identified with new modes of living, rather than a static identity (Essential 138). Extending Foucault, Butler argues that positioning queer intimacies within a field of state recognition risks normalising relationships in terms of heterosexual norms whilst foreclosing the possibilities of new modes of affection. Jasbir Puar argues that queer subjects continue to feature on the peripheries of moral and legal citizenship when their practices of intimacy fail to conform to the socio-political dyadic ideal of matrimony, fidelity and reproduction (22-28). Puar and Butler's reluctance to embrace marriage becomes clearer through an examination of the obiter dicta in the recent American jurisprudence where the proscription on same-sex marriage was overturned in California: To the extent proponents seek to encourage a norm that sexual activity occur within marriage to ensure that reproduction occur within stable households, Proposition 8 discourages that norm because it requires some sexual activity and child-bearing and child-rearing to occur outside marriage. (Perry vs Schwarzenegger 128) By connecting the discourse of matrimony and sex with citizenship, the court reifies the value of marriage as an institution of the family, which should be extended to same-sex couples. Therefore, by locating the family in reproductive heterosexual terms, the court forecloses other modes of recognition or rights for those who are in non-monogamous relationships or choose not to reproduce. The legal reasoning in the case evinces the ways in which intimate citizenship or legitimate kinship is understood in highly parochial terms. As Kane Race elaborates, the suturing of domesticity and nationhood, with the rhetoric that "reproduction occur within stable households", frames heterosexual nuclear bonds as the means to legitimate sexual relations (98). By privileging a familial kinship aesthetic to marriage, the state implicitly disregards recognising the value of intimacy in non-nuclear communities or families (Race 100). Australia, however, unlike most foreign nations, has a dual model of relationship recognition. De facto relationships are virtually indistinguishable from marriage in terms of the rights and entitlements couples are able to access. Very recently, the amendments made by the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth) has ensured same-sex couples have been included under Federal definitions of de facto relationships, thereby granting same-sex couples the same material rights and entitlements as heterosexual married couples. While comprehensive de facto recognition operates uniquely in Australia, it is still necessary to question the impact of jurisprudence that considers only marriage provides the legitimate structure for raising children. As Laurent Berlant suggests, those who seek alternative "love plots" are denied the legal and cultural spaces to realise them ("Love" 479). Berlant's critique emphasises how current "progressive" legal approaches to same-sex relationships rely on a monogamous (heterosexual) trajectory of the "love plot" which marginalises those who are in divorced, single, polyamorous or multi-parent situations. For example, in the National Year of Action, a series of marriage equality rallies held across Australia over 2010, non-conjugal forms of intimacy were inadvertently sidelined in order to make a claim for relationship recognition. In a letter to the Sydney Star Observer, a reader laments: As a gay man, I cannot understand why gay people would want to engage in a heterosexual ritual called marriage … Why do gay couples want to buy into this ridiculous notion is beyond belief. The laws need to be changed so that gays are treated equal under the law, but this is not to be confused with marriage as these are two separate issues... (Michael 2) Marriage marks a privileged position of citizenship and consumption, to which all other gay and lesbian rights claims are tangential. Moreover, as this letter to the Sydney Star Observer implies, by claiming sexual citizenship through the rubric of marriage, discussions about other campaigns for legislative equality are effectively foreclosed. Melissa Gregg expands on such a problematic, noting that the legal responses to equality reiterate a normative relationship between sexuality and power, where only couples that subscribe to dyadic, marriage-like relationships are offered entitlements by the state (4). Correspondingly, much of the public activism around marriage equality in Australia seeks to achieve its impact for equality (reforming the Marriage Act) by positioning intimacy in terms of state legitimacy. Butler and Warner argue that when speaking of legitimacy a relation to what is legitimate is implied. Lisa Bower corroborates this, asserting "legal discourse creates norms which universalise particular modes of living…while suppressing other practices and identities" (267). What Butler's and Bower's arguments reveal is that legitimacy is obtained through the extension of marriage to homosexual couples. For example, Andrew Barr, the current Labor Party Education Minister in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), noted that "saying no to civil unions is to say that some relationships are more legitimate than others" (quoted in "Legal Ceremonies"). Ironically, such a statement privileges civil unions by rendering them as the normative basis on which to grant legal recognition. Elizabeth Povinelli argues the performance of dyadic intimacy becomes the means to assert legal and social sovereignty (112). Therefore, as Jenni Millbank warns, marriage, or even distinctive forms of civil unions, if taken alone, can entrench inequalities for those who choose not to participate in these forms of recognition (8). Grassroots mobilisation and political lobbying strategies around marriage equality activism can have the unintentional impact, however, of obscuring peripheral forms of intimacy and subsequently repudiating those who contest the movement towards marriage. Warner argues that those who choose to marry derive pride from their monogamous commitment and "family" oriented practice, a privilege afforded through marital citizenship (82). Conversely, individuals and couples who deviate from the "normal" (read: socially palatable) intimate citizen, such as promiscuous or polyamorous subjects, are rendered shameful or pitiful. This political discourse illustrates that there is a strong impetus in the marriage equality movement to legitimate "homosexual love" because it mimics the norms of monogamy, stability, continuity and family by only seeking to substitute the sex of the "other" partner. Thus, civil rights discourse maintains the privileged political economy of marriage as it involves reproduction (even if it is not biological), mainstream social roles and monogamous sex. By defining social membership and future life in terms of a heterosexual life-narrative, same-sex couples become wedded to the idea of matrimony as the basis for sustainable intimacy and citizenship (Berlant and Warner 557). Warner is critical of recuperating discourses that privilege marriage as the ideal form of intimacy. This is particularly concerning when diverse erotic and intimate communities, which are irreducible to normative forms of citizenship, are subject to erasure. Que(e)rying the Future of Ethics and Politics By connecting liberal equality arguments with Butler and Warner's work on queer ethics, there is hesitation towards privileging marriage as the ultimate form of intimacy. Moreover, Butler stresses the importance of a transformative practice of queer intimacy: It is crucial…that we maintain a critical and transformative relation to the norms that govern what will not count as intelligible and recognisable alliance and kinship. (Undoing 117) Here the author attempts to negotiate the complex terrain of queer citizenship and ethics. On one hand, it is necessary to be made visible in order to engage in political activism and be afforded rights within a state discourse. Simultaneously, on the other hand, there is a need to transform the prevailing hetero-normative rhetoric of romantic love in order to prevent pathologising bodies or rendering certain forms of intimacy as aberrant or deviant because, as Warner notes, they do not conform to our perception of what we understand to be normal or morally desirable. Foucault's work on the aesthetics of the self offers a possible transformational practice which avoids the risks Warner and Butler mention because it eludes the "normative determinations" of moralities and publics, whilst engaging in an "ethical stylization" (qtd. in Race 144). Whilst Foucault's work does not explicitly address the question of marriage, his work on friendship gestures to the significance of affective bonds. Queer kinship has the potential to produce new ethics, where bodies do not become subjects of desires, but rather act as agents of pleasure. Negotiating the intersection between active citizenship and transformative intimacy requires rethinking the politics of recognition and normalisation. Warner is quite ambivalent as to the potential of appropriating marriage for gays and lesbians, despite the historical dynamism of marriage. Rather than acting as a progressive mechanism for rights, it is an institution that operates by refusing to recognise other relations (Warner 129). However, as Alexander Duttmann notes, recognition is more complex and a paradoxical means of relation and identification. It involves a process in which the majority neutralises the difference of the (minority) Other in order to assimilate it (27). However, in the process of recognition, the Other which is validated, then transforms the position of the majority, by altering the terms by which recognition is granted. Marriage no longer simply confers recognition for heterosexual couples to engage in reproduction (Secomb 133). While some queer couples may subscribe to a monogamous relationship structure, these relationships necessarily trouble conservative politics. The lamentations of the Australian Christian Lobby regarding the "fundamental (anatomical) gender complementarity" of same-sex marriage reflect this by recognising the broader social transformation that will occur (and already does with many heterosexual marriages) by displacing the association between marriage, procreation and parenting (5). Correspondingly, Foucault's work assists in broadening the debate on relationship recognition by transforming our understanding of choice and ethics in terms of "queer friendship." He describes it as a practice that resists the normative public distinction between romantic and platonic affection and produces new aesthetics for sexual and non-sexual intimacy (Foucault, Essential 170). Linnell Secomb argues that this "double potential" alluded to in Foucault and Duttman's work, has the capacity to neutralise difference as Warner fears (133). However, it can also transform dominant narratives of sexual citizenship, as enabling marriage equality will impact on how we imagine traditional heterosexual or patriarchal "plots" to intimacy (Berlant, "Intimacy" 286). Conclusion Making an informed impact into public debates on marriage equality requires charting the locus of sexuality, intimacy and citizenship. Negotiating academic discourses, social and community activism, with broader institutions and norms presents political and social challenges when thinking about the sorts of intimacy that should be recognised by the state. The civil right to marriage, irrespective of the sex or gender of one's partner, reflects a crucial shift towards important democratic participation of non-heterosexual citizens. However, it is important to note that the value of such intimacy cannot be indexed against a single measure of legal reform. While Butler and Warner present considered indictments on the normalisation of queer intimacy through marriage, such arguments do not account for the impacts of que(e)rying cultural norms and practices through social and political change. Marriage is not a singular or a-historical construction reducible to state recognition. Moreover, in a secular democracy, marriage should be one of many forms of diverse relationship recognition open to same-sex and gender diverse couples. In order to expand the impact of social and legal claims for recognition, it is productive to rethink the complex nature of recognition, ritual and aesthetics within marriage. In doing so, we can begin to transform the possibilities for articulating intimate citizenship in plural democracies. References Australian Christian Lobby. "Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009." Deakin: ACL, 2009. Australian Government. "Sec. 5." Marriage Act of 1961 (Cth). 1961. ———. Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws - General Reform) Act 2008 (Cth). 2008. Bell, David, and John Binnie. The Sexual Citizen: Queer Politics and Beyond. Oxford: Polity P, 2000. Berlant, Lauren. "Intimacy: A Special Issue." Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 281-88. ———. "Love, a Queer Feeling." Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis. Eds. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001:432-52. Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. "Sex in Public." Ed. Lauren Berlant. Intimacy. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2000: 311-30. Bower, Lisa. "Queer Problems/Straight Solutions: The Limits of a Politics of 'Official Recognition'" Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 267-91. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Duttmann, Alexander. Between Cultures: Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition. London: Verso, 2000. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality (1): The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1977. ———. "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity." Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. London: Allen Lange/Penguin, 1984. 163-74. ———. Essential Works of Foucault: 1954-1984: Ethics, Vol. 1. London: Penguin, 2000. Graycar, Reg, and Jenni Millbank. "From Functional Families to Spinster Sisters: Australia's Distinctive Path to Relationship Recognition." Journal of Law and Policy 24. 2007: 1-44. Gregg, Melissa. "Normal Homes." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 27 Aug. 2007 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/02-gregg.php›. Hannam, Jane. Feminism. London and New York: Pearson Education, 2007. Kaplan, Morris. "Intimacy and Equality: The Question of Lesbian and Gay Marriage." Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories. Ed. Shane Phelan. London and New York: Routledge, 1997: 201-30. "Legal Ceremonies for Same-Sex Couples." ABC Online 11 Nov. 2009. 13 Dec. 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739661.htm›. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London and New York: Sage, 2008. Michael. "Why Marriage?" Letter to the Editor. Sydney Star Observer 1031 (20 July 2010): 2. Millbank, Jenni. "Recognition of Lesbian and Gay Families in Australian Law - Part One: Couples." Federal Law Review 34 (2008): 1-44. Perry v. Schwarzenegger. 3: 09 CV 02292. United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 2010. Povinelli, Elizabeth. Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy and Carnality. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Race, Kane. Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2009. Secomb, Linnell. Philosophy and Love. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007. Shumway, David. Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy and the Marriage Crisis. New York: New York UP, 2003. Wade, Matt. "PM Joins Opposition against Gay Marriage as Cleric's Election Stalls." The Sydney Morning Herald 6 Aug. 2003. Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.