[csaa-forum] RE: Jon M re. ECR (and so it goes)

[Jonathan MARSHALL]

Dear colleagues

Like several so called "ECRs" I initially watched these postings with some bemusement, considering but initially deciding against posting. As list-subscribers may recall, it seems to me a bit like the same old, same old. The recent debate is, I would suggest, yet another version of the apparently endless paroxysm of self-justificatory CS statements which try, yet again, to define just what CS is. Let me therefore state my position re. CS clearly from the start. I would hope that CS, as an inter-disciplinary formation with some but far from universal institutional manifestations, is a sufficiently catholic church to encompass all of the opinions and career paths which have been detailed so far. Although I concede that it is always advisable to re-consider one's practice and research, one's relation to other academics, and so on, given the continued pressures on the humanities and CS both in Aust and internationally, it still strikes me as odd if not less than ideal that During and Turner might wish to expend so much time arguing between each other. Despite their manifest disagreements, surely they --- and I and all of the rest of us --- can at least provisionally accept that we share more in common than that which we disagree about and that our energies might best be directed at university directors, number crunchers, politicians, policy makers and so on with whom we must constantly battle for legitimacy.

The term ECR has a very specific meaning to the ARC, and refers to how recently one submitted one's thesis. It is not (at least officially) a case of age and I know of recipients of ECR ARC grants who are older than myself (35, for the record) whom it would be impolite of me to name on list. Like those artists who are described as "emerging" by the Aust Council, I consider the term to be invidious at best. I have been publishing academically since 1995 and publishing material informed by my academic practice in journals like "RealTime Australia" since 1992. The only thing that is "early" about my career is that I have only recently been appointed to a full time academic position. I therefore only accept the term because it allows me access to ARC monies. Rather, according to the precise terms of university salaries and promotion, I would consider myself a "junior" academic. I have also known, both in the late 1980s and since, "juniors" who were in the 50s or more. It is not a question of age.

As far as the kind of terms of reference which Turner and During have been providing us with, I would concede along with other posters, that things have changed since the 1990s when Australian CS entered a certain degree of public ascendancy, institutional reality, and so on. This is however, I would suggest, a question of public perception more than anything else. The catholicism of CS continues to be both its greatest strength and weakness. No sooner did the new CS departments emerge than their boundaries seemed to become particularly frayed and the very fact that myself and others on list subscribe to this mail out (I did much of my undergrad and all of my postgrad in history) would seem to indicate that this is something CS continues to struggle with --- which is, I would suggest, a good thing. It is therefore not the case that During, Turner et al can really speak for CS as a whole anymore, which was not really the case initially anyway.

For what its worth though, During's critical writings on theory continue to inform the "core" part of my own research into the performative culture of medical history (by the way, if one of the figures we might agree sets the basis for CS is Butler, then it is I hope obvious I fit into CS on this basis alone, despite my affiliations with the history discipline). Turner's work on the other hand has been vital for some of my "secondary" teaching work, notably with regard to Australian media and its relation to historical or historiographic materials. I myself moreover consider all this work I conduct and the materials which I draw upon for it to be "political" and I would not agree with During's apparent assertion that CS has been somewhat depoliticised of late.

I could go on at some length, but I am getting the feeling that this discussion might already have run most of its useful course. I would however like to add that I disagree with the recent suggestion that postgrad research fellows have much to lose by intervening into debates such as these. I would in fact claim quite the contrary. Unlike those with a heavy teaching load, postgrads often have predominantly research positions (which is the case with me at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) and so have rather more time to intervene in these debates than many others. Moreover, as "ECRs" it is indeed behoven on us to cut our teeth by wrestling the big names of the discipline/s to the ground and establishing our own approaches and/or credentials. For my part, certainly what I wish to bring to WAAPA and the invidiously named creative arts faculty of the Faculty of Creative Industries here (very sic.) --- and perhaps, if Im lucky, to suggest that this might also be worth considering to CS as a whole --- is that aesthetic practice and reflection should draw heavily upon the resources and insights offered by historical scholarship. Contextual meanings and interactions such as form the basis of CS can only be fully explicated by looking at how such meanings evolved and became sedimented within cultural and institutional patterns. Darnton's work remains a model for me in this regard.

In closing therefore, might I suggest that the melancholy insights offered by the CS critique of societies both contemporary and historic might be best developed if we do not fall too heavily under the sign of Saturn, and avoided the temptation to eat our own children. On the contrary, I would endorse the adherence to Marx suggested on line here and suggest that a form of CS class solidary might be the best way to go. Vive la revolution.

Dr Jonathan Marshall

Research Fellow,

WAAPA, Edith Cowan Uni

 

 

 

 

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: early career academics and cult stud (Joshua Green)
   2. cult-studied ECRs (Glen Fuller)
   3. Re: Cultural studies in Australia (Mark Gibson)
   4. Conformist and lacking critical force (John Grech)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 14:59:27 +1000
From: Joshua Green <jb.green at qut.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] early career academics and cult stud
To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
Message-ID: <4312962F.3080107 at qut.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Anna, it is precisely your sort of experience that intrigued me.  Coming
from a media studies background, my undergraduate training occured
without much regard to 'cultural studies' at all, either formally or
personally.  Now working within the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT I
have somehow found myself either exposed to or thinking about cultural
studies a whole lot more.  All the while I'm not really sure if I've
ever 'done' cultural studies or whether I might be in some way
practicing it now as I'm not entirely sure what it means any more to
work within a single discipline and whether arguments about these sorts
of distinctions are useful.   It appears to me now, however,
particularly in Queensland, that creative industries is a discipline
engaged in a dialogue with Australian cultural studies.  One of our
orignial intentions in posting Simon's quote as a provocation for the
September event was to start to consider what this dialogue might
produce for young academics, those of us who may not be sure exactly
what we've trained in or what disciplines such as cultural studies or CI
may offer.  I suppose we thought we might prod this dialogue along.   At
the same time we thought we'd make an opportunity, as Melissa has said
previously, to have some sort of debate about the future of cultural
studies that isn't overshadowed by the senior figures, I suppose taking
advantage of new confusions such as yours and mine.

Joshua Green

anna poletti wrote:

>I'm going to have a bash at responding to the original post, and offer a
>rumination on what it might mean to do cultural studies in an Australian
>institution at the moment from my perspective as an 'early career academic'.
>
>To be honest, I'm not even sure if I'm 'doing' cultural studies, or have
>ever done it, given that I've never attended an Australian university which
>actually has a cultural studies dept or defined cult stud stream. I did a
>wonderful buffet style BA at La Trobe, which included a good smattering of
>challenging teaching in gender studies, philosophy and the English dept.
>Suvendrini Perera nearly blew my head off with an exceptionally rigorous
>course on representations of Asia in Australian literature. Chris Palmer
>taught a great subject on postmodernism through science fiction. I graduated
>with honours in English, with an accompanying major in Philosophy. There was
>no mention of cultural studies as a discipline throughout my undergrad -
>which ended in 2002.
>
>I've been a PhD candidate in the School of Language and Media (perhaps
>that's cultural studies?) at the University of Newcastle for nearly four
>years, and am about to submit a thesis which is part empirical research into
>a little theorised site of Australian life writing (zine culture) and part
>close reading of how those texts deploy narrative, materiality and specific,
>idiosyncratic modes of textual distribution. This research has been
>conducted within the context of the English program, and under the primary
>supervision of a publisher/researcher dedicated to Australian literature. My
>peers in the dept. at Newcastle are predominantly creative writing
>postgrads, and researchers working on established genres and fields such as
>poetry, published novels and film. Perhaps in response to this, I've styled
>myself as an autobiography researcher. Although this doesn't seem to quite
>fit with how any of supervisors think of the project. Last year I delivered
>a paper on my work at an international autobiography conference which was
>dominated by Australians. I didn't find any talk of Australian cultural
>studies there either.
>
>I _think_ I'm about to have my first definable (and defined) moment of
>cultural studies next week, when I give a guest lecture in a course on
>Australian Popular Culture at my university. The lecture is to be on
>Australian zine culture and notions of the cultural underground, and to be
>honest, I'm finding it really difficult to write.
>
>I'm hesitant to draw any conclusions from this little narrative I've posted
>here; except to say that development of my career (and I am most
>definitively an 'early career academic', with few teaching opportunities,
>under the pressure of four year candidature, and attached to a financially
>troubled institution who will cut me loose upon submission) seems to have
>been shaped by factors other than cultural studies. Yet the distinct lack of
>a discrete 'field' where my research really 'fits' leads to me feel some
>affiliation with it, hence my lurking subscription to this list.
>
>It's difficult then, for me to contribute to a discussion regarding the
>status of Australian Cultural Studies, and given that I am a recent graduate
>and current research student, I suspect that my alienation from any sense of
>that field may not be unique. I do wonder whether only certain institutions
>are producing and developing 'cultural studies thinkers', and whether one's
>'coming to cultural studies' is partly a matter of early-development fate,
>when your path is to an extent set on your form for university application,
>and disciplines and fields of study are almost irrelevant for those
>approaching a BA.
>
>Anna Poletti.
>
>   
>
>Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________
>
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>
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>
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>
> 
>


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:21:17 +1000 (EST)
From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller at uws.edu.au>
Subject: [csaa-forum] cult-studied ECRs
To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
Message-ID: <200508290621.j7T6LHlw009740 at cooper.uws.edu.au>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

I want to engage with a single dimension of Mel, Jean and Josh's
original post -- the 'early career' part -- through a series of
questions and rhetorical flurries.

Firstly, the supposition that 'early career' researchers are going to
respond is ambitious. Only those with the authority of sedimented
legitimacy (tenured profs) or with the frivolous naivety of non-career
marginalia (postgrads) will bother responding to your provocative call
for comments. One group doesn't have anything to lose yet, while the
other group determines, in part, who loses and who doesn't. Those with
the most to lose are the non-established, precarious workers of post-
phd academia. Rock the boat? Not in the seductive mist of the
performance-based, outcomes-funded, technical school of immaterial
trades. Maybe this is just the performative rhetorics of boat-rocking?
Who has the bloody time anyway...? (not me! Sorry supers! eeek) Those
people who should be voicing their own situations on this issue are
probably not even on this list.

Secondly, weren't most people in the cultural studies-strain of the
humanities flung outwards by the cultural centrifuge of the hegemonic
order? Perhaps an irrepressible slow-burn rage? A feeling of social
disjunction? Of not belonging? A shared desire in the uneasiness of not
belonging (through choice or not) to a system or Establishment that we
find rotten/uncomfortable/dis-tasteful? I don't know. What is the point
of being an academic if one is doing it to have a 'career'? Don't
careers happen by accident within the critically-engaged humanities?

The constitutive labour of 'early career' (or 'career', for that
matter) implies a calculated engagement with the necessary conditions
of future employment prospects. When do you have a 'career' in an era
of non-tenured academic positions? Isn't a 'career' a form of
trajectory that is back-filled from cessation (retirement)? Or perhaps
we are seeing a contemporary variation of Oliver-Twistian precarious
labour: "Please sir, I like to have a secure job?" "Secure!" Is there a
threshold of status and reputation reflected in the number of
publications (roughly the Bourdieu/neo-liberal outcomes-based model)?
Or when you have learnt the skills of meeting the right people, saying
the right things, reading the right books and so on, in a processual
machinic-mode of a disciplined 'careerist subjectivity' (During's
example, and the libidinal-political economy of 'schmoozing')? Maybe
you can get away with just doing enough in each category to satisfy the
respective (perceived) requirements to facilitate the extension of the
career ladder (extended from the societal attic built by the government
so all the good academics can hide in the shadows squawking at each
other about the current situation like demented
crows, 'farrrrrk' 'farrrrrk')? Someone tell me I am wrong, please, but
doesn't this demand technologies of the self that continually mediate
between the 'what-is' and the future ('what-is', and certainly not the
potentiality of 'not-yet') with the eye on the prize of employment,
rather than something else, like a fidelity towards critical
engagement. Sublimation into the management-based oligarchies of
academia (perhaps, postgrads, we are all training to be right-wing NSW
Labor politicians?). Maybe it is just a silly issue of semantics with
the word 'career'...?

However, hasn't Ien Ang discussed, at a number of events, the necessary
strategy of doing just enough to facilitate participation in
the 'system', thus enabling the creation of a relatively autonomous
space for cultural research? Surely the powers that be intuit they need
an incorporated or captured antagonism for the maintenance and exercise
of power (ala errr, Paris VIII); if this is what is happening, can't
this work to the advantage of those who seek to critically engage with
the contemporary? I meet, but mostly witness senior academics who are
working their respective butts off to create a space for younger (and
not-so-much-younger) academics (postgrads and the mythical ECRs) all
the time through securing funding streams and structural policy-based
engagement. So isn't it a problem of not being able to see
the 'multitude' for the 'grammar'?


--
PhD Candidate
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney

Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 17:29:31 +0800
From: Mark Gibson <M.Gibson at murdoch.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] Cultural studies in Australia
To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
Message-ID: <a0623090abf3874894fbc@[134.115.83.65]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

I agree with most of what has been said in response to Simon. The
major problem for me is his automatic conjunction of
'abstract/philosophical' and 'political'. There are many cases where
these look to me more like opposites.

But it seems to me that Simon does perform a service in asking what
has become of a certain early 1990s formation of Australian cultural
studies. There was an intensity there which would lead one to expect
an ongoing 'project'. I think most who were involved in it hoped and
believed that this is what it would be. But in fact, by the end of
the 1990s, there was a considerable fragmentation and dissipation of
the energies of that moment. It is easy to explain things away
through contingent factors -- people got opportunities overseas etc.
-- but I'm not sure that accounts cumulatively for the phenomenon.
Why didn't it hold together better?

There are obvious ways, of course, of seeing this as a microcosm of a
wider shift in Oz cultural politics. For that reason alone, it should
be of interest.

I love Mel's line about the difficult of speaking of the present and
the future 'when we are constantly forced to mime in the shadows cast
by senior colleagues'. But I think some reckoning with the past may
actually be important to us ECRs (glad to be able to say I am still
just one). Perhaps this is a rather 'Murdoch' perspective, but as one
who has struggled up in the institution which perhaps most closely
followed the 'boom-dissipation' pattern, I have usually been less
worried by having to find a place amongst a battle of the titans than
by the vacuum following their departure. The succession thing is
something the exec of the CSAA also discussed a number of times when
Alan McKee was president. It was very noticeable for a period that
many senior figures had disengaged from the scene.

A bit of turnover and renewal is, of course, a good thing. The loss
or withdrawal of one leaves spaces for others. But some patterns of
renewal are better than others. I'm reminded of some cricket
commentators the other night talking about what happened to the West
Indies (worrying that something similar might happen to Australia).
It's all very well having (or being) fresh new talent, but it can be
a difficult and disheartening road for them if they don't find
themselves in healthy ecology of mixed experiences and ages. I would
personally like to hear a little more from the 1991 veterans, not
less -- at least if not simply in self-justificatory mode.

-- Mg


>I'm glad we've got some much needed clarification from Graeme. I've
>been reading this thread with some bemusement. I'd thought we got
>well beyond the monoliths of Politics and Theory. I'm also wondering
>at what and who gets called Australian and the construction of
>memory around that conf at Nepean where the CSAA got formed, and
>which was in fact my first visit to Australia. More amusingly it was
>where John H and Tony B and Meahgan M all met for the first time -
>so it wasn't exactly well formed cadres who were battling it out
>then.
>
>Just to remind Simon, since being in Australia I have published
>Outside Belongings - pretty queer -, Carnal Appetites - fairly
>deleuzian, and Blush - affect theory. More importantly, I find the
>American mode of Theory tiresome perhaps because it does not have to
>deal with coal face realities of politics rather than Politics in
>way that Australian CS types have to.
>
>That's my 2 cents worth.
>best,
>Elspeth.
>
>Professor Graeme Turner wrote:
>
>>I wasn't planning to get involved in this; I regard Simon's
>>dismissive comment about Australian cultural studies as a polemical
>>move, really, more to do with positioning than analysis. For what
>>it's worth, it is not an entirely new account and I have never
>>accepted it as completely convincing -- even during the mid-1990s,
>>which is when it was first articulated and when there was more
>>reason to assent to it than now.
>>
>>But, reading Simon's own post has dragged me in. I am afraid I
>>can't let this personal comment go without responding:
>>'neither of them [Hartley and Turner] (I think they'd agree)are
>>involved in the more theoretical...critical, politically engaged
>>strands of the rield'.
>>Que? Makes me wonder, just what I have been doing lately? For the
>>record, (and I'm sure John Hartley can answer for himself) I most
>>emphatically (perhaps even indignantly) do not agree. Indeed, I
>>think the last four or five years have been among my most
>>critically and politically engaged. Maybe because much of that
>>engagement has been face to face with politicians, bureaucrats etc
>>-- in addition to the normal academic channels--it doesn't count.
>>Maybe Simon just hasn't read any of my published work in recent
>>years; personally disappointing, but not necessarily surprising.
>>Whatever the reason, this characterisation of my activities in our
>>field is simply wrong.
>>Graeme Turner
>>
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: Simon During <simond at jhu.edu>
>>Date: Saturday, August 27, 2005 8:30 am
>>Subject: [csaa-forum] Cultural studies in Australia
>>
>>>Hi y'all:
>>>Could I just say that as far as I am concerned it's great to see that quote
>>>from my book serve as the beginning of a discussion about creative
>>>industries and cultural studies etc.. But if anyone wants to get a
>>>realsense of where it stands on issues like populism,  Hartley,
>>>creativeindustries, the cultural studies discipline etc they
>>>probably need to read
>>>the whole thing through. And I don't think people will find it coming from
>>>where they'd anticipate if all they've read is those few sentences
>>>(whichisn't all it gets to say about cultural studies in Australia
>>>either?andwhile I am at it let me give a plug here and now for The
>>>Cultural Studies
>>>Review which obviously belongs to a whole other world than the one
>>>gesturedat in those remarks.).  By the by: Cultural Studies: a
>>>critical introduction
>>>was written as a textbook, not an introductory one, with a very strict word
>>>limit and it's a bit unusual in that it doesn't so much try neutrally to
>>>explain stuff to students and readers as to engage them head on.
>>>But maybe I can try to move the discussion forward in a slightly
>>>differentdirection.  I remember going to the first CSAA meeting, I
>>>don't recall the
>>>exact year (1991?) but I think it was held at the campus of Western Sydney.
>>>Pretty much everyone who had been involved in getting the field going in
>>>Australia were there, and at its centre was the group of people who had done
>>>most to get it off the ground and who were recognised as having made the
>>>strongest intellectual contributions up to that point: people like
>>>MeaghanMorris, John Frow, Tony Bennett, Graeme Turner, Stephen
>>>Muecke, John
>>>Hartley....  And as soon as I recall that event I begin to wonder about what
>>>has happened to all those people and about the kinds of work they do now. Am
>>>I right in saying that, while all are still academically active, only John
>>>and Graeme work today in anything like mainstream cultural studies in
>>>Australia, and neither of them (I think they'd agree) are involved in the
>>>more theoretical (or philisophical), critical, politically engaged
>>>strandsof the field?  Does that matter?  Is it a sign of anything?
>>>If so, what's
>>>it a sign of?
>>>Simon
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________
>>>
>>>csaa-forum
>>>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>>>
>>>www.csaa.asn.au
>>>
>>>change your subscription details at
>>>http://lists.cdu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/csaa-forum
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>_______________________________________
>>
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>>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>>
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>>
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>>
>
>
>--
>
>/Elspeth Probyn FAHA/
>
>/Professor of Gender Studies/
>
>/The University of Sydney A 14/
>
>/NSW 2006, Australia/
>
>/Tel: +61 2 9351 7389/
>
>/Fax: +61 2 9352 5336/
>
>/Mobile: 0412 548 762/
>
>_______________________________________
>
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>discussion list of the cultural studies association of australasia
>
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>
>change your subscription details at
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--

Dr Mark Gibson
School of Media Communication and Culture
Murdoch University
South Street, Murdoch
Western Australia 6150

Editor, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/10304312.html

Director, Centre for Everyday Life

tel:   61-8-9360 2951
         0439 695 703
fax:  61-8-9360 6570
email:  M.Gibson at murdoch.edu.au


------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:45:48 +0200
From: John Grech <John.M.Grech at student.uts.edu.au>
Subject: [csaa-forum] Conformist and lacking critical force
To: csaa-forum <csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au>
Message-ID: <a06020410bf390d39030d@[10.0.1.3]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello Anna, Melissa, Jean et al,

Thanks for your post Anna, it sort of got the conversation back to
where it started for me, sending me back to Melissa's original post
in an effort to try to make sense of this and related threads. While
I find the contributions by Graeme Turner Stephen Muecke, Eslpeth
Probyn, Stephanie Donald, and Simon During really interesting, I do
not feel able to enter into that debate any further than to say that,
in my view, it reflects some of transnational divides that I see in
the Western academic world, particularly those that exist between the
US, to some extent Europe (although I note that no cultural studies
people living/working in the UK have entered this discussion), and
Australia. I must say that, with all respect to Simon During, I agree
with Stephen's comment that there is a certain disconnected
ambivalence towards 'down under' by others living in the Northern
hemisphere, an ambivalance that shows itself in a lack of knowledge
and direct experience of the state of affairs in Australian cultural
studies. From what I see, there is still a distinctive but subtle
cultural arrogance in the Northern Hemisphere towards the antipodes
but that's another story ...

However it is really Anna's recent post that has prompted me to write
this email, and try to make my own contribution to this debate. I
will commence to do so by addressing some of the things that Anna
raises.

In contrast to you, Anna, I have completed an MA and now a Ph D in a
faculty (Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS) that at least
constantly refers to and even has helped to shape and define cultural
studies in Australia over the decades that the discipline has existed
there. However, my undergraduate studies and my first post graduate
work (a Grad. Dip) were in the Visual Arts (Sydney College of the
Arts, Sydney University). One of the reasons I opted to go to UTS to
do my MA was precisely because, although the institution that I had
first grown my academic wings had a reputation for a highly
theoretical and philosophical orientation in the course of studies. I
personally found this to be superficial and generally lacking in
thoroughness and sophistication. So I decided to go to UTS where I
found people actually knew what they were talking about.

All that is to say that, after two degrees, I finally feel I have
reached a point that I identify most strongly with cultural studies,
and feel that I am an early career cultural studies person, even
though I have been in the game for quite a long time. Also, unlike
Anna, I have over a decade of casual teaching experience at just
about every University within the broader Sydney region. Ironically,
however, I came to the point of identification with cultural studies
after spending four years living in Holland, and working towards my
PhD as an international associate at the University of Amsterdam's
School for Cultural Analysis. Here I should add that, with all
respect for Mieke Bal and others at ASCA, Cultural Analysis is *NOT*
the same as cultural studies, and, in reference to an earlier post
this year by Geert Lovink, the sorts of cultureel wetenschap that
takes place in Holland and in Germany, which does indeed have a
history of nearly two hundred years, is *NOT* cultural studies either.

Although I did an MA in a faculty which I believe has produced some
of the finest cultural studies work in Australia, and I had, as if by
infusion, begun practicing cultural studies while producing the
thesis (a non traditional thesis incorporating a gallery exhibition,
a performance piece that was presented at the CSAA conference in
Melbourne one year, and a text), I actually started to pinpoint the
disciplinary parameters of cultural studies  from a wonderful book by
John Storey called Cultural Studies and the Study of Popular Culture:
Theories and Methods. From Storey I learned that, as Simon During
correctly states, Marx is indeed a very important figure in cultural
studies, as are people like Walter Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Roland
Barthes, Stuart Hall, as well as Ien Ang and Meaghan Morris, and a
great many others. However, like a lot of people, I find Marxist
analyses, particularly those produced or are inheritors of ideas
generated in the 60s and 70s not always appropriate in describing the
realities of the world today. Having said that, please dont get me
wrong, I think Marx produced what is arguably the most insightfull
analyses of capitalism ever, and to the extent that capitalism,
albeit in its modified manifestations, is still a basic conditioning
factor in the world in which we live, a Marxist critique remains
essential, although it also needs to remain concurrent with the way
capitalism works in the world now.

Well so much for the background, now on to the questions posed by
Melissa's email.

- disciplinarity: what it means (practically, ethically,
conceptually) to do "media and cultural studies" within the CI
paradigm

I cant really talk about the "Creative Industries paradigm" because I
have not lived in Australia since 2000 and am not familiar with it
but, from what I gather, it is a catch-phrase, a slogan if you like,
that tries to indicate and identify something in terms of the
political rhetoricof the last decade. Such a phrase, I suspect, seeks
to position creative work that has long been in existence in the
discursive landscape created by Howard and his cronies, and Pauline
Hanson (Pauline who ...?). Now given the political agenda of the last
10 or 15 years in particular, and the name "Creative Industries", I
would say that the term refers to the latest attempt at
industrialisation, and hence commodification, of the creative
endeavour. As such, it would appear (and I am only guessing here)
that it tries to identify and indicate something that is going on and
that has been going on for a long time, and which has an important
role to play in the on-going affairs of human society today, even in
the age of global capital. I have nothing against such rhetorical
manouvers, really, in fact I see it as a necessity given that not to
do so, and to remain located in political discourses that are seeped
in a by-gone era is, in today's rapidly moving world of free-floating
signifiers, to become irrelavent. I might be wrong about this
assessment, and those who know more about Creative Industries might
like to correct me on that.
As regards disciplinarity, I believe that, generally, throughout the
world, there appears to have been a closing of ranks in the
intellectual disciplines over the last decade, and to the extent that
cultural studies, the cultural studies that I know about and identify
with, is genuinely inter- and multi- disciplinary, cultural studies
is struggling today to maintain its place amongst the old world
disciplines like Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Literature,
History, Art History, Anthropology, and so on. I guess people who
identify with those areas will take objection to this, but I think
there is a case to be made that cultural studies, and inter- and
multi-disciplinarity generally, has come under increasing pressure
from the longer established Faculties and disciplines of academe for
quite some time now. This is happening in the US, the UK, and greater
Europe, as well as in Australia.
What this means practically is that it is more difficult to do
cultural studies at the moment. Ethically, it means that one is faced
with either declariing what you are doing and face the prospect of
being rejected or at least heavily scrutinised for that job or
research funding application, or you try to disguise your work as
something else. Depending on whether you decide to call your self
cultural studies or not can however have a dramatic impact on the way
you concieve your work. For this reason that I still call my work
cultural studies.


- opportunities for and the politics of academic labour for RHD
students and Early Career Researchers in the context of the shift
from individualistic "humanities" research to project/team-based
approaches

I am not sure what is meant by RHD, but Early Career Researchers,
well, unless things have changed an awful lot since I was in
Australia, then an early career researcher is still someone within 5
years of finishing their Ph D. However, as a result of a conversation
with a friend recently, I have some doubts about whether this
continues to be the case because, as I am now in my 40s, she
recommended that I lie about my age in applying for jobs. So early
career researcher may in theory refer to anyone who has recently
finished a PhD, irrespective of age, but in practice, it may be that
one needs ideally to be somewhere in the late 20s to mid 30s. Well
hopefully I am wrong about this because I am facing a life of
unemployment otherwise.
Turning to the main point however, I think the move to working in
groups is a good one because it means that one can work much more
easily in a context. In the Physical Sciences, this practice has been
going on for a long time, and there are already well documented
issues about this way of working. The most significant, for early
researchers, is that their position in the research team needs to be
credited and regarded equally with those of the project leaders. In
Science, often what happens though is that the Project Leaders,
usually big name scientists who put their name to the grant
application, also put their names to research produced by lowly
researchers whose names appear somewhere at the end of the Credits
line. There are serious problems with this model, therefore, that
should be addressed before researchers in the Humanities adopt this
approach (or is it too late already?). Furthermore, I think there
must also remain space for individual research, no matter what field
or discipline one works in, although this kind of research is also
the most lonely and can also be the most frustratiing, in terms of
communicating your findings to anyone else, no matter how important
your work is or could be to the rest of humanity.
As far as project work is concerned, I personally have always worked
in this way, whether as a visual artist, a cultural producer, or a
cultural studies researcher. A project is a nice way of putting an
envelope around a field of study, and should not mean that once it is
finished, each project does not have on-going repercussions on the
work of a researcher or artist. Its just that the name of the project
changes, and with the the specific focus can shift somewhat onto new
ground. But knowledge gained in earlier projects accumulates, in my
experience, and each project I have ever executed has grown and
developed according to the histories of the earlier works.


- the changing research culture of Australian universities,
especially the perceived incommensurability between "pragmatic" and
"critical" approaches as evidenced in the following quotation:

This conflict between 'pragmatic' and 'ciritical' approaches is not
new. It has been around as long as I can remember. Within an
Australian context, it often was used to make us work within the
limits and boundaries of the establishment, in contradistinction with
critically engaging those limits and boundaries and trying to do a
'paradigm shift' on them. Australians have a myth about themselves as
being a 'pragmatic' people. This comes partly from Anglo-American
philosophical discourses where utilitarianism is seen as inherently
more useful and real than so-called idealistic and critical
discourses of Continental Philosophy are. I think it would be more
useful to forget about this catagory and remember that, in a genuine
cultural studies context, a critical approach is in every sense of
the word a 'pragmatic' intervention, even if its just a way of
articulating something. Some of the most effective critical
interventions in cultural studies can takes place through a pragmatic
intervention in the language people use to think about something. The
Dutch are another people who think of themselves as being pragmatic,
but, unlike many Australians, they can often make use of different
schools of thought and approaches to everyday problems. Again, I
think Australian cultural studies researchers generally benefit from
looking further afield, and by that I am not at all suggesting
Holland should be seen as exemplary - far from it - but there are
benefits from looking at and trying to adopt and adapt approaches and
methods found in other places and disciplines. This is, after all,
one of the features of cultural studies, and, as I can recall from
the cultural studies environments I have been associated with in
Australia, many cultural studies practitioners there do this quite
well. Still there is always scope for exploration.


In finishing off, I would like to add that, as someone who believes I
am doing cultural studies, stronger and better than ever these days,
and speaking as someone who is, still, I believe, an early career
researcher in cultural studies, I dont think the work I am doing is
either conformist or lacking in critical force. In fact, I strongly
believe what I am doing now is more critical and non-conformist than
ever before. What I would suggest is that we do live in a period in
which there is a strong conservative re-emergence, both politically
and in the academic world generally. That makes it more difficult to
produce genuinely critical, challenging work that has both the power
and force to make people think again about the way things are done. I
like to think that the fact that I have always struggled to find
permanent employment or solidify a place in the fields of my
endeavour testifies to the critical force and lack of conformism that
work has. I have chosen to work in the way that I do because not to
do so threatens the conceptual viability of my projects.
Nevertheless, such decisions are made inspite of being aware of the
potential costs to one's 'career' prospects. In other words, as your
questions seek to find out, this can also be regarded to amount to an
ethical stance. So please, before claiming that all cultural studies
lacks critical force or is basically conformist, keep in mind those
suffering individuals who haven't been fortunate to end up in a post
doc somewhere, or even a junior  lecturing position, but have to
endure singular, impoverished, isolation in realising their work. And
please, lets have some respect for the endeavours of those whose
non-conformism has not made it possible for them to find a stable
platform in the world from which to promote and circulate their ideas.

Well now if anyone's managed to take to time to read this entire
post, there's a good chance you might be under-/unemployed, cos
anyone who is working these days seems to really struggle to find the
time to properly engage with others for a longer bout of writing.
This, it seems to me, is one area where Australian and UK cultural
studies academics in particular have suffered greatly from attacks
from conservatives, particularly in relation to their counterparts in
mainland Europe, although its slowly changing there also. Still there
is a lot to be said for making quick, short, interventions in the
world - a kind of hiku cultural studies. If anyone has any
suggestions or wishes to share their ideas about how to do that
without losing the depth of one's critical engagement in what they
want to say, then please, lets start another conversation about how
to do this. I could really learn something from that.

cheers

john grech

--

*****************
John Grech
Artist & Writer
*****************

On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>

Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>

On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html

"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************
On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>

Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>

On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html

"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************

--

*****************
John Grech
Artist & Writer
*****************

On-line Projects:
Interempty Space : The Global City <http://www.jgrech.dds.nl>

Sharkfeed
<http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/25402/20020806/www.abc.net.au/sharkfeed/index.htm>

On-line Writing:
"Beyond the Binary: New Media and the Extended Body"
Mediatopia on-line exhibition and symposium
http://www.mediatopia.net/grech.html

"Empty Space and the City: The Reoccupation of Berlin"
Radical History Review
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/radical_history_review/v083/83.1grech.html
********************
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