[csaa-forum] the sixties

[Catharine Lumby]

Stephen

Very interesting topic. Just to throw my hat in the ring I'm working on 
a book on Frank Moorhouse which will use him as a lens through which to 
think about the interconnections between the worlds of activism, 
journalism and literary writing with a particular focus on the 60s and 
70s. I'm  plodding along with it but will have a substantial first 
article/paper soon and would be happy to be contribute to any conference 
or special journal issue

Best
Catharine

Graham St John wrote:

> Good questions Stephen
>
> I've had an interest in how activisms from the 1990s onwards from 
> local environmentalism to alter-globalization have inheritied the 
> carnivalized politics of the past (e.g.  the history of radical 
> avant-garde movements and 1960s guerilla theatre) with the assistance 
> of new technologies (audio, visual, cyber). Festal hacktivism, 
> tactical frivolity, anarchist (un)masking practices and other 
> performances have intersected in the contemporary *protestival*, a 
> heuristic which is sufficient to comprehend those performative moments 
> simultaneously transgressive and progressive, against and for, by 
> which the marginal may take their grievances to the physical and 
> symbolic centres ('summits') of neo-liberalism, where alternative 
> logics and spectacles are performed, and 'another world' is lived.
>
> Amidst the summit sieges, autonomous convergences and other reflexive 
> events constituting transnational carnivalesque rituals, 
> politico-religious pilgrimage destinations, or spatial 
> reconfigurations critical to the renewed opposition to capitalism, it 
> is the increasingly ubiquitous Global Day of Action (for instance 
> seeking interventions in neo-liberalism, the war on terror, climate 
> change) which is of particular interest to me. Not only does this 
> research necessarily reference the historical inheritance for these 
> developments but it also necessarily draws on cultural studies 
> (including subcultural studies), performance studies and the study of 
> new social movements to make sense of it. 
>
> Graham St John
>
>
>
>
>
> At 9:18 AM +1000 6/4/07, Stephen Muecke wrote:
>
>> The Sixties Revisited
>
>>
>> There are many reasons for a renewed interest in the sixties. The 
>> worst reason is, of course, for superannuated baby-boomers to indulge 
>> in nostalgia, the best is for people born, say in the eighties, to 
>> analyse a period where there were real and effective languages of 
>> political contestation, which could be taken even to a national scale 
>> (Mai '68, the Cultural Revolution in China, student movements 
>> toppling the governments of Sth Korea and Thailand, national 
>> liberation movements against colonialism).
>
>>
>> In terms of culture there were radical forms of experimentation in 
>> everyday life, the birth of ecological movements, homosexuality was 
>> legalised, a stunning new visual style emerged in in iconography, 
>> fashion, fine arts and cinema. Popular music came of age in the USA 
>> and the UK, and there was a new cosmopolitanism of youth movements. 
>> In science and industry plastics emerged, the transistor made 
>> electronics portable, Man walked on the Moon, nuclear met 
>> counter-nuclear...
>
>>
>> Today, in repudiation of the sixties, the world seems engulfed by a 
>> neo-liberal market-driven culture which has narrowed the language of 
>> political analysis. Conservative opinion-makers are busy 
>> characterising the sixties as a time of looney left excess, a 
>> smokescreen perhaps for the excesses of global corporate capitalism 
>> today.
>
>>
>> Are the current forms of political and cultural activism derived from 
>> the sixties? Community-based localist or micro-activisms, 
>> autonomists, hackers and bloggers, ferals and sub-cultural communities?
>
>>
>> Serious research should determine how cultural and political analysis 
>> of this four-decade-old history can sort out continuities and 
>> discontinuities. Most world leaders grew up in the sixties, so the 
>> period still has a hold on their unconscious: Can they let it go? Can 
>> people in their twenties and thirties teach them to look at the 
>> present more clearly?
>
>>
>> The question I'd like to put to the List, perhaps with a view to a 
>> seminar, is who in Australia is working on the sixties (really the 
>> late 50s to the early 70s)? Who is prepared to work up a topic? There 
>> is the potential for interesting Asian links-see I/nter-Asia Cultural 
>> Studies/ issue of December last year, 'The Asian Sixties'.
>
>>
>> Stephen Muecke
>
>> Director, Transforming Cultures Centre
>
>> Humanities and Social Sciences
>
>> University of Technology, Sydney
>
>> Box 123 BROADWAY NSW 2007 Australia
>
>> Ph: +61 2 9514 1960
>
>> Fx: +612 9514 4344
>
>> mb 042 5261 232
>
>> http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/
>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________
>>
>> 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
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________
>
>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
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://bronzewing.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/attachments/20070605/250ae49c/attachment.html