Faking it for real

Jean Baudrillard suggests that the supremacy of the simulacra is a modern development, reality a construction of the U.S. His argument, given the U.S. penchant for breaking and remaking the world in its own image (it is, in the language of Baudrillard, both iconoclast and iconolater), is strong. However, writers, artists, and philosophers have been pondering the reign of illusion for millennia. Plato described the world as a place of simulations that left us wanting. For Shakespeare, the world was a stage of fools; the play was that of an idiot. Goya presented the world as a dream of reason that gave birth to the monsters he painted. Borges (like Shakespeare and also perhaps Goya and Plato) was obsessed with what he refers to in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" as the "atrocious or banal" idea that reality, as we know it (which is, of course, the only perspective of it that we can have), is fake. The three books under review here, Ian Miller's Faking It, Penny Cousineau-Levine's Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination, and Paul Matthew St Pierre's A Portrait of the Artist as Australian: L'Oeuvre bizarre de Barry Humphries, can be considered additions to the oeuvre fascinated and troubled by what Borges calls the "phantasmagorias" of our world

From crystals to pixels: new technology in the documentary work of John Hughes

Film technology, in the broadest sense, embraces a vast array of knowledge, skills, tools, and systems. These include the codes and conventions of screen representation at the centre of much screen scholarship. The electro-mechanical tools of filmmaking are less often the focus of academic study than these codes and conventions, but they are central to them and to the daily work of artists and educators in the field of screen production. This paper traces the scope and significance of technical change, for independent film making, over the past four decades. Melbourne documentary filmmaker John Hughes provides a varied and expansive oeuvre through which to arrange an historical equipment list.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

Exploratory surgery of the female psyche

The thesis explores the visual narrative concerning a journey of empowerment for women. To enable the journey to advance the inquiry is directed into two areas. The first area is female gender, which is argued to be socially constructed and implicit in the marginalisation of women in western society. The second area is ‘feminine authority’, which is gained by developing an understanding and acceptance of the characteristics which have historically been considered as belonging to the feminine. Granting these characteristics agency would recognise their authority and assist in the elevation of the female to a position of equality in western society. Beginning from a feminist position, the research supported the belief that the female is marginalised in western society. It also confirmed the notion that empowerment and authority can be attained by women if they actively pursue the following; • Explore their own psychology beyond the existing socially constructed gender roles. • Develop an understanding of their feminine self by applying Jung's theories on individuation and archetypes. • Expose the underlying patriarchal influence in western epistemology and science by challenging existing deeply held cultural and scientific beliefs and by actively contributing as feminists to the areas of epistemology and science. Archetypal myths of the ‘feminine’ have developed from an androcentric position. They enforce and perpetuate gender imbalance which contributes to the disenfranchisement of women in western society, ‘Individuation’ is a process in which a person explores aspects of themselves to bring forth parts of their unconscious into their conscious mind in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of themselves. As a consequence the consciousness develops closer links with archetypal memories which assists the exploration. The ‘true feminine’ is the feminine not restricted or defined by the dominant androcentric view. Knowledge of the feminine empowers women to address the marginalisation of the female in western society and assists in the process of gaining female authority. This enquiry also investigated the four stages of female psychological development with regard to patriarchal influences. Of particular importance is the second stage of psychological development where the female identifies with historically perceived inferior characteristics of the female. This is when she rejects her connections with the primacy of female power and her deep connections with nature which were inherited from archaic times. It is at this stage that she absorbs the myths associated with western patriarchal society which effectively disempower her. Western epistemology, with its emphasis on ‘objective’ investigation and empiricism contributes to the support for and promotion of ‘inferior’ female gender. This type of investigation is brought into question when areas of research into primates and human evolutionary theory is shown to develop from an androcentric view. Western knowledge has associations with power and justice and power is commonly associated with dominance. Regard for ‘truth’ and ‘absolute’ can be viewed as key elements in the support for knowledge and its associations with power. Knowledge has historically maintained suppression of individual experience which promotes a universalised account. This suppression of beliefs other than the dominant authority maintains the existing dominant social structure. Foucault's view of the genderised or inscribed body alerts us to areas where dominance, resistance and power play a part in maximising masculine power and control. Gender becomes an instrument of power within the existing patriarchal structure. Gender, knowledge and power are identified as areas obstructing female empowerment. Part 3 of this exegesis examines the imagery which embodies the visual narrative. Particularly, the harlequin image, its historical background and connections with ancient mythology including reference to Jungian psychology. The harlequin image is developed sequentially in the earlier black and white drawings on paper. These drawings contained a female figure which was often placed in juxtaposition with a Venus or goddess image, reference was also made to ‘eve’ and the ‘siren’. These elements provided the framework which enabled the harlequin image to emerge and evolve. The narrative developed with an understanding of the ‘feminine’ aspects of the psyche which resulted in the harlequin acquiring the elevated authority of a goddess. The Harlequin evolved from my need for symbolic representation of the female psyche. It represents contradiction and dualism. It is a composition of opposites, reflects masculine and feminine traits, the dark and light of the conscious and unconscious mind, it houses both comic and sinister elements, is a trickster and menace. The costume, colours and patterns are expressive elements conducive to fragmentation and layering within the composition of the paintings. Jung examined the harlequin in Picasso's paintings. He concluded that as Picasso drew on his inner experiences the harlequin became important as a symbol; it was a pictorial representation from the unconscious psyche. It travelled freely from the conscious to the unconscious and represented the masculine and feminine, chthonian and apollonian. The final painting in the series, a triptych, completes the narrative and stands alone as a salutatory work. It unites the series by combining existing compositional devices and technique while making reference to imagery from previous works, ‘The Three Graces Victorious’, expresses the authority of the feminine. It completes a victorious stage of a journey where the harlequin is empowered by archaic memories and knowledge of the psyche. The feminine is hailed, elevated and venerated. Other elements which assist in expressing the visual narrative are; colour, technique and influence. Colour is explored and its use as an emotive devise in expressionism. Paul Klee's writing on the use of colour and it's symbolic meaning and Julia Kristeva's investigation on colour from a psychoanalytic and semiotic view are also discussed. To indicate influences and connections within my oeuvre, reference is also made to the following: Jasper Johns' for his use of imagery in his ‘Four Seasons’ series with it's reference to a journey of maturation and Louise Bourgeois' work which deals with issues of gender, memories and past journeys. Although ‘The Three Graces Victorious’; the concluding painting for the investigation is celebratory and represents a finality to the thesis, it points to further areas that impede feminine development and need future examination. Reference is made to a continuation of the exploratory journey by plotting the Harlequin/Goddesses future directions. Although the Harlequin/Goddess is empowered with newly acquired authority, her future journey does not need to be bound by mathematics or limited by rationality. She does not require power to dominate or gender structures to subjugate, but requires limitless boundaries and contexts. The Harlequin/Goddess's future journey is not fixed.

The eye of the Beckettian present

In this article, we take up M‟s closing question from Play, arguing that it is the central phenomenological conundrum in much of Beckett‟s stage and screen work. The question we bring to Beckett‟s oeuvre is: what is the relationship between perception and presence, consciousness and corporeality? To answer „yes‟ to M‟s question – to be is as much as being seen – is to render the body not utterly useless, but periphery, or secondary, merely the flesh of perception. Beckett famously remarked that, in his increasing sense of minimalism, in his desire to „say the least necessary‟, his final work would be a blank piece of paper. In Beckett, does the body suffer the same fate as language?

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.

A just judgement? Considerations on Ronald Srigley’s Camus’ Critique of Modernity

This paper responds critically to Ronald Srigley’s groundbreaking 2011 study Albert Camus’ Critique of Modernity. Srigley’s book reasserts Camus’ credentials as a deeply serious thinker, whose literary and philosophical oeuvre was dedicated to rethinking modernity on the basis of critical reassessments of theWest’s entire premodern heritage. Yet we challenge whether Camus was ever, even in his final writings, so uncompromisingly anti-modern as Srigley contends. Srigley’s attempt to present Camus as committed to a return to the Greeks, on the basis of a total critique of modernity as deleteriously post-Christian, forces him to occlude important distinctions in Camus’ thought: those between unity and totality, rebellion and revolution. By contrast, we compare Camus’ defence of modern rebellion with Blumenberg’s argument in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: finding justification for this rebellion in the deep problem faced by Christian theology of resolving the ‘problem of evil’. Finally, we suggest that Srigley overplays the extent of Camus’ ‘Hellenic’ critique of the Christian heritage (notably its ethical commitment to protecting the weak), in contrast to Christian theodicy and eschatology, which serve to rationalize avoidable suffering.

Transcendental Priority and Deleuzian Normativity. A reply to James Williams

I am grateful that someone whose work I greatly admire could be the philosopher to so eloquently and succinctly cut to the heart of the problem that I posed in the previous issue of Deleuze Studies. James Williams' critical reply leaves me, prima facie, confronted by a stark alternative: either I have misunderstood Deleuze, or I have illustrated problems and lacunae in Deleuze. I will suggest, however, that this is a false alternative, and that Williams' and my divergent accounts of The Logic of Sense – and even Deleuze's oeuvre as a whole – is better understood as a situation of ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’, and hence that my interpretation of Deleuze isn't wrong, but necessarily iconoclastic.