[csaa-forum] re: Magpie studies, etc

[Liz Jacka]

Dear colleagues

I just have to join in here.  What all this misses is a new generation 
of students (many at UTS) who don't identify themselves as "Cultural 
Studies" and probably don't subscribe to this list , cos it it too 
passe.  They effortlessly do publishing, poetry, new media, 
"ficto-criticism" (awful word), and from within a very theoretically 
informed perspective, but with the theory worn lightly and perhaps even 
treated in a magpie fashion.  There's a huge world of that out there.  
Some of it was present at a day on culture and creativity (another 
over-worked word) that I organised at UTS in August. On that day one 
very interesting mixed media person, Mitchell Whitelaw, talked about 
creative micro-cultures.  This new terrain has not been mapped as a 
whole, probably because it is too diverse and ever-changing.

Liz Jacka


On 27/10/2004, at 12:03 AM, Adrian Martin wrote:

> Thanks to everybody who has so far joined in this fascinating 
> discussion of crossovers between cultural studies and other stuff. I 
> am not trying to be overly nostalgic about 'the scene 20 years ago' - 
> because often the life of a freelance writer, then as now, ain't a lot 
> of fun - and I totally welcome responses like Felicity's indicating 
> that new 'magpies' are rising up everywhere (but let's name names, 
> please, don't keep them a secret!). That said, I too very much share 
> the concerns articulated in some recent posts in this thread about how 
> something does feel like it has changed since then and now. The 
> significant date is surely around 1990, when Cultural Studies 
> departments and courses start calling themselves such, and a certain 
> territorial status-anxiety about establishing 'professionalisation' 
> and 'institutionalisation' of the 'field' sets in. Hence all the 
> histories/genealogies of Cultural Studies departments, journals, 
> textbooks, conferences, etc. I do think an AWFUL lot of 'prehistory' 
> gets devalued and actively ignored/suppressed the moment this happens. 
> If I can be forgiven a moment of immodesty - since I am my own best 
> example to hand! - I left university teaching in 1992 and became a 
> weekly film reviewer in THE AGE by 1995, but in-between I wrote, for 
> what it's worth, a book that I consider 100% 'Australian Cultural 
> Studies' (PHANTASMS) - and yet I have never been asked to speak at any 
> official cultural studies event or contribute to a certified academic 
> journal in the field. And there are MANY people like me! I wonder how 
> many students, these days, in the era of quick-to-hand Internet 
> research, are pointed in the direction of '80s and '90s magazines like 
> ART AND TEXT, TENSION, ON THE BEACH, FROGGER, STUFFING and so many 
> others that once defined a certain kind of 'militant dilettante' 
> activity in the yet-to-be-named area of Australian cultural studies. 
> (You can't even get a decent book-anthology of this stuff!) It's only 
> (to my knowledge) in the intro to the Frow-Morris AUSTRALIAN CULTURAL 
> STUDIES anthology, and in the work of people like our own redoubtable 
> Melissa G, that this kind of 'archive' gets unearthed and reactivated, 
> and connected to similar signs of life that have happened here since. 
> I am keen to hear more from everybody else on this topic ...
>
> Adrian
>
>
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>
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> discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>
> www.csaa.asn.au
>
>
Professor Liz Jacka
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
PO Box 123
NSW 2007
Australia
ph 61 2 9514 2311


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