[csaa-forum] CULTURAL DIVERSITY & COMMUNICATION RESEARCH GROUP COLLOQUIUM (May 11, University of Technology Sydney)

[Timothy Laurie]

CULTURAL DIVERSITY & COMMUNICATION RESEARCH GROUP COLLOQUIUM
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | University of Technology Sydney
3 pm – 5 pm, Friday May 11th 2018, Room CB.10.03.440

SPEAKERS: GILBERT CALUYA (UoM), MUKESH YADAV (UTS) & SHANNON FOSTER (UTS)

Dr. Gilbert Caluya
Lecturer, Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne: ‘Dogs of War: The Intimate Politics of Canine Security’

This exploratory paper traces the figure of the dog in various instances (texts, events and happenings) of war and conflict in order to explore how feelings of intimacy are articulated to questions of security and violence in the extended War on Terror. This is not a comprehensive review of how dogs are used in war and conflict, nor an overview of welfare and safety issues in relation dog handling, although it will touch upon these in the considering issues of intimacy and security. Instead, this talk focuses on how various but specific instances (whether local, transnational, translocal) when considered together, can help us understand how the canine figure is implicated in conjoining the domains of intimacy and security in the contemporary landscape of war.

Dr. Gilbert Caluya is a special guest at this colloquium. He was a recipient of the ARC DECRA Fellowship and the University of Sydney Medal. He has worked previously in the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding and the Centre for Globalisation and Postcolonialism at the University of South Australia as well as the Gender and Cultural Studies Department of the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the cultural politics of intimacy and the cultural study of everyday security.


Mukesh Yadav
PhD Candidate, School of Communication, UTS: ‘Muslim genealogies and the cultural production of communities’

Contrary to what has been a dominant understanding on genealogies, a myth of social origin rooted in a fancy imagination of the past, genealogies provide indirect or partial reference to common collective experience. This paper shows how groups from different socio-economic backgrounds historically produced the different kinds of genealogies which condition their present status without fully understanding why and how. In doing so, the main focus in this paper is on a set of two Muslims groups, the Meos and the Jogis, who largely drew on the Itihasa-purana tradition of Hindu mythologies to trace their genealogies after the Hindu gods namely Rama, Krisha (two avatars of Vishnu) and Shiva. In the Jajmani (patron-client) system, the Jogis (a landless group) were dependent on the Meo peasants. The genealogies of these two groups are rooted in the warrior ( the Meo one) and the ascetic (the Jogi one) traditions respectively. As Nietzsche suggests in his work On the Genealogy of Morals, that genealogies which often work to promote a sort of moralistic truth should be seen as an objective sequence which reflects and encodes structures of power and domination. Since the Meos are historically a powerful group of peasants controlling the large chunks of land in Mewat (almost 90 percent of total lands), their genealogies endeavour to maintain a superior social status by putting forward the claim on warrior qualities. Thus, the paper shows the superiors desire to hold power in the world while the landless seeks to withdraw from material attachments—what Nietzsche calls a result of a decadent life which struggles for its own existence.


Shannon Foster
PhD Candidate, Centre for Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, UTS: ‘The Narinya (Living Dreaming) of the D'harawal people of Sydney’

This presentation is centred around the stories of my D'harawal father's experiences as a member of one of the last surviving Sydney-based Aboriginal/D'harawal families. Research has revealed how government assimilation policy and legislation has driven events in his life that he had believed were just happenstance, chance or fate. It's a confronting and gut wrenching moment when you see the recognition in your father's eyes that he has been played like a pawn in the government pursuit of his people's extinction. The initial findings of this research has not only uncovered the deliberate acts of assimilation and genocide of the Australian government but also, and most importantly, the resistance and survival of D'harawal culture.

NOTE: After the event, guests are welcome to the launch for the book ‘The tastes and politics of intercultural food in Australia’ by Dr. Sukhmani Khorana (University of Woolongong), at the Rooftop Garden, 107 Redfern Street.

Contact: Tim Laurie (timothy.laurie at uts.edu.au) and Bhuva Narayan (Bhuva.Narayan at uts.edu.au)
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