John Shaw Neilson : 'something of a mystic'

Competing post-Federation representations of mysticism as bold or passive, masculine or effeminate, dogmatic or independent, Australian or foreign, drove the shifting critical notions of this era culminating in the generalist designations of John Shaw Neilson (1872–1942) as Australia’s all-purpose mystical poet. Neilson is a mystical poet; yet the basis for this has been subject to a number of distortions from Neilson’s time until the late 1990s. This article examines how an understanding of both Western Christian mysticism and its often erroneous critical applications in Australia might inform new studies of the mystical Neilson.

Into the mystic - bereaved parents, love and spontaneous creativity

 An inter-subjective and creative exploration of spontaneous creative activities engaged in by parents after the death of a child, this thesis produces new and revealing insights into how bereaved parents respond to their grief through symbolically representing and expressing their love for the child who has died.

Maistre avec de Sade: Zizek contra de maistre

It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave

Postmodernist-feminism and education : a textual performance

This dissertation is performed as a self-reflexive postmodernist-feminist text that is rather like a work in progress. The relationship between feminismS and postmodernismS is investigated to reveal some of the possibilities that might result from their conjunction, whilst some critical disjunctions which may need to be bridged are recognised. Throughout this dissertation, I have explored how, as well as challenging traditional paradigms of gender, postmodernist-feminism acts to challenge traditional views of meaning, knowledge and text, and, further, how this challenge opens up possibilities for all those entrapped by the paradigms of power, whether outside or Inside. When 'reality' and 'knowledge' are revealed as constructions (not unlike fiction), new possibilities of/for postmodernist-feminist multilinearity emerge. This text practises, then, what I have nominated as three important areas of postmodernist-feminism: jouissance (pleasure and playfulness as in feminist poetics); bricolage (making the text work as a one-off); and deconstruction (an admission that the text is neither seamless nor AUTHORitative). In doing so, it emphasises the practice of what Roland Barthes calls 'writerly-reading', in which the reader is revealed as having power over the text according to the way(s) s/he enters it. In this praxis I suggest that the writer may also abdicate AUTHORity over the text by what I have called 'readerly-writing'. Taking up Gregory Ulmer's challenge to construct a 'mystory', it is my story of my journey as a woman, parent, writer mid teacher who is becoming a certified scholar. My lifelong practical interest in education thus reaches a theoretical self-understanding in this text, which is itself a praxis. Thus I introduce the practice of a non-seamless horizontality in which reflections and stories show themselves to be temporal and cultural constructions. The implications of this for school/educational experiences are central to this praxis.

Sub-surface geology of the Kerang District, Murray Basin, Southeast Australia

The subsurface geology of the Kerang District was examined. The stratigraphic relationships between the Cenozoic western marine and eastern non-marine provinces of the Riverine Plain of the Murray Basin are now far better understood. A new three-fold subdivision of the Renmark Group, including the new Mystic Park Formation, is proposed.

The gift of absence

This thesis explores the different readings of sublimation offered by Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein from the perspective of clinical work and with an emphasis on clinical cases. The distinction Lacan draws between maternal and feminine jouissance is pivotal in explaining the differences in their work.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park : an architectural consignation

Like many major urban developments designed by modernist architects. Kenzo Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is considered by some to be founded upon tabula rasa- a blank site and/or architectural approach unconstrained by historic and aesthetic precedents. Tabula rasa is associated with a tendency to 'forget' or repress the past in order to opportunistically move on with the future. Constructed near 'ground zero' - on the site of just part of the established urban environment obliterated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945- the tabula rasa here, however, is not achieved simply due to a conscious or critical urban design decision to move away from past urban forms and practices but through an unforseen trauma. This paper questions the application of an unqualified label of tabula rasa to Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Focusing on Tange's writing about the Peace Park - a 1954 article entitled "Hiroshima Plan 1946-1953" in particular - and reflecting on the repeated architectural returns of Kenzo Tange and Associates to the site, this paper raises Freud's "Mystic Writing Pad" as an alternative model. It argues for a more complex consideration of the memory-work of Tange's written practice and the light it may bring to a reconsideration of this foundational architectural project within his oeuvre.

Abjection, affect and othering through art

In keeping within a new materialist approach, this paper involves a transversal encounter with, Kristeva’s thinking on abjection. She says of abjection, that it is a primer of culture, because as a process it is fundamental to the constitution of identity and the renewal of meaning through an expansion of language. Here, I will argue that abjection is also a primer of affect and is the operation through which affects are given valency: either negative or positive, which in turn articulate modalities of othering as oscillations between the empathetic and ethical, or repellent and adversarial derived from an instinctual movement towards what is enabling and away from that which present threst or danger to the organism. I argue further, that it is the notion of jouissance and positive affect that distinguishes Kristeva’s account of cultural production from other thinkers such as Freud, and that this has significant implications for understanding the dynamics of othering or the kinds of relationality made possible through language.