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Events
Seminar Day 1 03 | Seminar Day 2 03 | Seminar Day 3: Contexts 04 | Dissection 04 | Seminar Day 4 05 | Research Seminar Series 05
'Seminar Day 3: Contexts'
Friday 14th May 2004
Multifunction Room, Level 1, Graduate Centre, Uni. of Melb.
Organised by: Angelo Pietrobon
This 2003 seminar focused on critical
questions surrounding creativity and its place in research.
Exploring how theoretical research affects creative work and how
creative work affects theory. It also looked at the possibilities
of how your work can be understood by those outside the field you
are working in. This seminar was to complement The SCA Postgraduate
Annual Creative Salon to be held in the second semester where
postgraduates can make a presentation of any creative work that they
are producing for their research.
The following transcripts are listed in alphabetical order and are not that of presentation on the day. Note they
are transcripts and so are not full papers. These are offered here in the spirit of sharing the ideas and promoting feedback and
so are not all fully annotated. Please feel free to email the presenters directly, through their supervisors, the SCA, or
email us (SCAtharsis). They and are published here as per the Creative Commons License agreement:
 Ricci-Jane Adams: 'David Ireland: Australia's Own Magical Realist'
Abstract:
"To speak of Ireland's work is to speak of a flow, of perpetual spillages, of limits, of trangressions that enable reassessments and new beginnings." Tim Richards
The writing of Australian writer and Miles Franklin award winner David Ireland is closely related to the genre of magical realism, and in my argument exists within the tenets of this genre.
I believe if Ireland had been writing in any country, other than Australia, a magical realist study of his writing, alongside the likes of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, would have been
made when he was first published. Why Australia does not have a tradition of magical realist literary criticism when we do have magical realist writers is not an easily answered question. However, I believe it
is related to the Austrlaian cultural search for identity and place on the world literary stage. A magical realist investigation of Ireland's writing sheds light on this and in many ways clarifies issues
that have perplexed previous theorists of his work.
David Carlin: '"Beyond the Pale": Trauma, Narrative and Ethics'
Abstract:
This paper presents fragments of the memoir I am writing for my PhD thesis, placed in the context of the academic investigation I am pursuing in the accompanying dissertation. The memoir can be seen
as a story of the past haunting the present through the voices of a chain of traumas. Trauma, as understood by psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell, constitutes an interruption of identity, a breach in the defenses of the
subject which obscures their capacity for self-recognition. What are the relations, then, between trauma and narrative, if narrative is a primary way in which we make sense of our being in the world (Ricouer)? And what are the
ethical questions around the attempted translation of trauma into narrative, or representation of trauma through narrative?
Christy Dena: 'New Media Methodologies, applied'
Abstract:
I have observed that within the new media ecology there are currently three research approaches:
developing media specific poetics for digital works only (e.g. ludology for computer games);
revising and development of traditional discourses and media through consideration of new media works
within the same media thread (eg: internet movies for film studies); applying to all works --
traditional and new media — a new media filter. The last, a ‘new media approach’ is a spectrum of
conscious application to theoretical and practical investigation. The researcher can utilise
methodologies developed in response to the use and influence of electronic technologies and can
apply new media design principles and poetics to criticism of traditional works whilst the artist
can apply new media design and poetics to traditional media. This presentation will outline the
new media methodologies I am utilising in my thesis.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Sarah French: 'Memory and Female Subjectivity in Postmodern Performance'
Abstract:
This paper will examine the intersection of feminist politics and the themes of memory and female subjectivity in recent Australian postmodern theatre. It draws inspiration from
Jeannette Malkin's recent book Memory Theatre and Postmodern Drama (1999), a critical study that addresses the preoccupation with memory characteristic of so many postmodern performances. Malkin argues that the dissolution of the unified
subject within postmodern culture has resulted in the disembodiment of personal memory. The subject of postmodern drama, she suggests "cannot be the source of memory; [for] memory works through
these figures, but never originates in them." (1999:7).
This pervasive notion within postmodern theatre -- that memory originates (or is displaced) somehere outside the body of the subject -- has serious consequences for a feminist politics of representation. Feminists have long argued that personal
memory plays an important role in the restaging of history and the realization of closeted experiences, as well as in the construction (and politicised reclamation) of female subjectivity. Through a critique of three Australian feminist performances that
specifically address the issue of loss of memory and subjectivity in a postmodern world, this paper asks if personal memory remains significant, or viable in the contemprary representation of female subjects. These
performances, entitled Remember (1993), Infectious (1998), and The Inhabited Woman (2003) are distincly postmodern in form and stand in contrast to the tradition of naturalism that remains prominent in Australian theatre, offering
some of the most innovative dramatic work in this country's recent theatre history.
Each of the three performances identifies the body of the female subject as the source of both personal and cultural memories while entertaining different outcomes on the theme of memory; from the representation of the female subject whose external body is healed
through her internal experiences of dreams, memories and fantasies (Remember), to the impossibility of reclaiming memory and identity whent he body has become fragmented and 'infected' by capitalism (Infectious), to the re-inscription of
cultural memories of women that constitute our understanding of the construction of the feminine in western culture (The Inhabited Woman). These contrasting depictions will allow for an analysis
of how the theme of memory might best be represented in the theatre in order to reclaim a place for female subjectivity within postmodern culture.
Francesca Haig: 'Reconciling Truth claims of Narrative History -- Introduction to Postgrad Work'
This paper will constitute a brief introduction to my PhD thesis. Addressing the question of how literture reconciles postmodern cynicism about the truth claims of narrative history with the need to engage
meaningfully with the past. An examination of novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces suggests that postmodern literature uses the body as a site,
both literal and figurative, for the inscription of history. While this strategy powerfully expresses engagement with history as lived experience, it also raises questions of essentialism and the
problematice notion that the body exists somehow outside of discourse. Images of mapping (mapping the body, mapping space, and mapping history) will also be discussed. My thesis aims to explore these questions in relation to gender
and race, using a range of theorists, including Linda Hutcheon and Walter Bejamin.
Olga Lorenzo: 'The Mirror, Shame, Creativity and the Authorial Self'
Abstract:
Artistic endeavour, according to Julia Kristeva, is rooted in the abject and is also a means of
purifying or, in some sense, transcending the abject (Kristeva, 1982). Winnicott said that much clinical
writing was autobiographical and represented an attempt to extend or complete the writer’s analysis
(Broucek, Shame and the Self, 1991, p xiii). This presentation will look at whether a fictional work
can be viewed as a distorted mirror of the authorial self. Exploring the act of writing shame,
it examines how the writer is affected by exposing the self to outside scrutiny.
[The following paper is not online as yet]
Josh Nelson: 'Strategies of Representational Privilege in The Last Samurai and The Passion of the Christ'
Abstract:
This paper will explore the representation of the 'wounded' white male subject as depicted within The Last Samurai and The Passion of the Christ. Focusing upon
the interplay of racial and gender ideologies, I will examine the way in which these films repeatedly resituate the white male subject as the site of privilege and dominance
in opposition to gendered, ethnic and cultural otherness. Significantly, each film's employment of the iconic wounded male as a vehicle for gender politics suggests two distinct ideologies. While, The Last
Samurai focuses on the rehabilitation of the white male to assert 'his' cultural ascendancy, The Passion of the Christ adopts a
masochistic position in order to redraw traditional binary oppositions. Furthermore, the kind of hysteric response to the perceived 'loss of power' of the dominant representational
paradigm (hence the 'wounded male') implicit in these films can be situated wihin a broader, more recent trend towards conservative representations of masculinity.
To open these PDF documents you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. Download it for free if you do not have it.
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Helpful Hint #2:
As a postgrad at the SCA you are allocated online hosting of a personalised
webpage. This is intended as a one-page overview of your academic profile and can
be easily stored in your personal folder on the School's server for uploading
by the IT Co-orindator. Such a page on the university web is an excellent way for people
who search the web for you or on topics you are researching to find your page, it offers a great opportunity for
making yourself known, and faciliates feedback from interested parties. See Dennis Claringbold
for details on how to set this up: 8344-8384, Rm: A220, d.claringbold@unimelb.edu.au
Helpful Hint #1:
Did you know that as a MCA and PhD
researcher you are allocated $300 and $500 respectively every year for buying books,
conference fees, purchasing art materials, whatever?! Ask your supervisor for details.
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