the researcher in their work: natural passions

I really need to get on and do some work, but I did want to write a tiny bit about how our own interests and passions motivate our research. So, for example, I’m a keen lindy hopper, and this lead (eventually) to my writing about lindy hoppers.
This point was brought to my attention in class last week when a student blushed and declared embarassment for his passion for an ‘uncool’ film star. I took this as a neat opportunity to talk about people like Matt Hills and Jenkins and other fan studies doods, pointing out the idea that much of audience studies research – fan studies in particular – begins with the author’s own interets. In the simplest terms, our attention is caught because we give a shit about the topic. And is kept because we’re passionate about the things and people we are writing about. So being dismissive of someone’s interests simply because they’re ‘low brow’ isn’t terribly productive.
But I do think it’s a strength to write from what you know, or rather, from what you care about. Whether you’re writing about a favourite telly program or about women and capitalism. I feel that bias is a strength, if only because it serves as sufficient motivation to get us through a massive research project like a PhD or a book.
I don’t have time to go on into detail about this, but there’s a chunk of lit talking about the ethical and methodological issues which attend writing from ‘inside’ the community you’re studying.
Some of the most interesting is from dance studies. Check out this nice quote:

I am an anthropologist, but I am also a dancer and I begin my investigation of gender in ballet by using my dance experiences as a case study… I adopt this approach because it allows me to shift between my memories and comments as a dancer and my analysis as an anthropologist, in a sense using autobiography as fieldwork data.
The researcher…is an essential component of all research. …It is important to take account of the fact that I (the researchers/interviewer) was an active agent in the research setting, attempting to make sense of and contributing to the dancers’ discussions about an activity that is not bound by verbal language. I would contend that my intervention in the … process was enabling rather than, as an objectivist approach would argue, a hindrance to the research. … the idea inherent in an objectivist framework that the researcher is an invisible being who drops into and reveals the practices and ways of others (the researched) becomes redundant, in favour of a reflexivity of accounts. …this does not mean that the project should be full of ‘soul searching’ or ‘navel gazing’. It entails, rather, that the researcher reveal or uncover his/her grounds for speaking; that he/she should be reflexive on the context, methods and procedures adopted and at the same time, enable the voices of the researched to speak (35 – 76).

(Novack, Cynthia J. “Ballet, Gender and Cultural Power.” Dance, Gender and Culture. Ed. Helen Thomas. London: Macmillan, 1993. 34-48).
I’ve written in greater detail about this in my thesis, combining fan studies stuff and dance studies stuff, with an emphasis on feminist and African American writers in the latter. In fact, a significant portion of my argument throughout my work is devoted to the notion of participation in discourse, where dance is discourse, and participation is not only important, but non-verbal.
…ok, I have to run. I’ll see if I can write more later…

oh yeah

And I had my paper approved for the CSAA conference (read about it here). I didn’t unfortunately, score the bursary/grant thingy. Which means that it’ll be next to impossible for me to get to the conference to give the paper. Got no money for airfares, no money for conference registration, no money, no money, o.
The scholarship ends on the 19th, which is ok, as the thesis is totally done (did I mention that? I’d like to say there’s been some quiet triumph in our house ever since, but The Squeeze says it’s more the fact that there’s been a significant increase in shouting, carousing and declarative one-stanze (one-line) songs about how great the Ham is). But it does mean that I now, officially, have no income.
Oh, no, wait. I’m tutoring like total tutoring stooge instead. I am taking sixty million classes in a media studies subject (best not to name it, as the little darlings are a wee bit internet savvy, and google will get me in trouble… note to self: do not mention thesis topic ever again in class), so I almost have enough money to cover my PT tickets.
There are some good bits of this, and some crap.
Good:
I love teaching. I think it’s a power thing. I goddamn LOVE being in front of an audience, and I LOVE to talk, so it’s all good. But I have been practicing Shutting Up this semester, which is hard, but rewarding: we have dialogues rather than monologues.
I love teaching media stuff: who doesn’t have something to say about telly or books or magazines or the internet?
I learn a lot. Ask me about CD next time we meet. Your brain will be blown.
It gets me out of the house.
Bad
It costs a lot to get there.
I can’t ride my bike and I miss it.
I’m overworked and exploited.
I’m really really tired.
Anyway, I’d like to go to the conference, but can’t afford it. Looks like academia is for rich kids, huh?

tell me place and geography aren’t important here

There’s been a bit of talk about Helen Garner around the traps recently:

I wrote this comment in the latter:

(dogpossum on 3 August 2006 at 1:29 pm)
Nice post, Weathergirl.
I remember reading all Garner’s work when I was an undergrad – I fell in love with her style. In those pre-GST days I had enough cash to splurge on books whenever I liked.
TFS almost lost me for her, but I changed my mind… no, wait, I think I was just distracted by other authors (C.J.Cherryh, most probably – nothing like a little hardcore SF by a woman writer to get things in perspective)…
When I first moved to Melbourne I’d pretend I was recognising places from Monkey Grip (though I was finding it easier to recognise places in Brisbane in the Nick Earls books I was reading, probably because I was busy enjoying be Away From Brisbane at the time). And Garner’s pieces in the Age about ordinary Melbourne stuff helped me feel at home in my new city (what can I say – I’m a stooge).
I don’t find it difficult to enjoy the way Garner puts words together, and yet also have some trouble with the ideas behind the words. Frankly, a nicely written bit of opinion is far more likely to convince me to consider a topic than something difficult or clunky… I like the line about energy, and the thought that nasty bits of writing can inspire us to do great thinking and writing and talking ourselves. I mean, that seems to define feminsim for me: being inspired to think and write and talk and act by nasty bits of writing and ideology-in-action.
As for Garner herself… I met her once at a party, and knew her daughter through Uni, but that’s all I can say. I wouldn’t pretend to know her through her writing – just as I wouldn’t expect to know a blogger through their blog, or a singer through their songs. But I might admit to vague feelings or unsubstantiated impressions.

And had this response:

(weathergirl on 3 August 2006 at 1:33 pm)
Dogpossum, thanks for contributing! I read a tiny bit of Alice Garner’s PhD thesis (something about holiday imagery on French beaches), which I think she then published as a book. She inherited her mother’s writing talent.
But please don’t mention Nick Earls on my beat. I like to think this is about interesting literature.

I did start writing a response to the response, but I ended up feeling like an idiot. Some things are best written on your own blog (especially when they stray into true blogging territory: long and boring). So here it is:
I feel like I’m dragging the discussion off into irrelevent territory, but one of the things I liked about Garner (and Nick Earls, John Birmingham and Shane Maloney*, actually), is/was the way they write about cities and construct/represent ideas of community and place. I choose those three because of their accessibility, their popularity. I choose those three in particular because I was reading them before, during and after my move from Brisbane to Melbourne, in book and newspaper-column form (the latter is a reference to Garner’s spots in The Age). I think that in that period of moving to a city where I knew perhaps 3 people, away from family and friends, I was busy making new social and professional networks – making this new city home (I want to reference the space/place thing, but I don’t have the brain right now).
I was interested in the way these authors use lots of specific references to local landmarks and people to create a feeling of ‘knowing the city’, or more usefully, ‘knowing the community’ in which their stories are based. It’s an interesting idea, especially when you take into account things like Garner’s decidedly middle (or upper?) class experiences in Melbourne today, compared to the Monkey Grip days, Earls’ Brisbane of the 80s, Birmingham’s Brisbane of the late 80s and early 90s. These are quite definitely experiences of a city inflected by class, gender, sex(uality), education, market forces, etc etc etc. Yet they are all represented as ‘common sense’ or ‘normal’ or ‘familiar’, particularly in the case of Garner’s work (which seems to rest so firmly on the strength of ‘common sense’ or ‘diary-esque’ writing as a tool to convince. I, for one, am a little sceptical of Garner’s (occasionaly quite irritating) use of ‘oh, this is just what I think, and I’m probably wrong, but…’ arguments. Can you spell passive aggressive?).
But I’m interested in the way, while reading these people at that time, I could say ‘hey, I know that place’, or more scarily (esp in the case of Birmingham), ‘I know those people!’, and found that so comforting.
This is the sort of thing that comes up all the time in discussions about Garner’s work (and in this thread above) – the idea of ‘journal-diaryistic’ writing and ‘journalism’: levels of ‘real’ and ‘true’ and so on. I think it’s worth my pointing out, at this point, that I take Earls and Maloney as writing with as ‘diary-esque’ a style as Garner, largely in response to the incredible detail about ‘real’ places in their work. While Garner writes using her ‘real’ (and autobiogaphical) emotions as a bit of a blunt object in the ‘reality’ stakes, Earls and Maloney use ‘reality of place’ in much the same way.
That I could point to a building or street in Melbourne and say “that’s where Helen went swimming or rode her bike or saw a band” or think “I remember that shopping centre in the Queen Street Mall”, was kind of comforting for a person alone in a new city. It certainly shaped the way I thought about my place within my current and past home-cities. Nothing new for ‘the media’: kind of the point, really, constructing consensual notions of place and community**.
But I do think that it’s a key part of Garner’s work, and there have been quite a few comments already [in the LP thread] about the way she uses phrases like “Any woman who has left home for university could fill in the gaps”: inviting us, explicitly to identify with Garner (or her characters), as if it was a natural and inevitable thing.
Isn’t that interesting, that the language of domesticity (and Garner is all about domestic spaces) and ‘home cities’ and ‘the familiar’ is such a useful tool for convincing us that the author’s point is ‘just common sense’? That an ’emotional honesty’ in writing is somehow more relevant or convincing than an objective account?
You can see why, at this point, I hesitated to post this comment on LP.
But my attention was caught by the way Weather Girl dismissed Nick Earls as ‘uninteresting’ work. Sure, he’s no great literary talent, but some time was spent in that LP thread making similar observations about Garner – she’s no great literary talent. But many of the commenters in that thread (and most of whom were women – perhaps just an indication of LP’s reader/commenter -ship) declared an affinity or affection for Garner based on her use of the personal and the invitingness of her lovely prose.
I’d argue that Earls has similar appeal – the use of the personal, and an inviting style (in his case, though, the invitation was to share the joke, rather than marvel at a lovely turn of phrase). With Maloney, the appeal lay in the minutiae of everyday life in Brunswick/Coburg/Melbourne (my new home suburb), and of local politics (which fascinated a girl who’d just completed an MA on women in Qld politics). In addition, I’d argue that they’re very Australian writers (though from different age/social groups), and I like to read in the vernacular.
Though we must keep in mind the fact that Garner’s books have stuck around, while Earls feels a bit stuck in that ‘grunge fiction’ moment – do people still read him, or is it just me? Maloney, on the other hand, has made his mark on the pop culture landscape, especially with the television programs based on his work.
I know that I’m a little biased, but isn’t this bias kind of the point? I was attracted by the invitation to share the everyday lives and everyday experiences of these authors’ lives, and that made me feel ‘at home’ in a new city. I certainly wasn’t ‘sucked in’ to believing that this was in any way a ‘true’ story I was being told. But that was part of the appeal: I was reading one person’s interpretation and experience of a city, and that very subjectivity was part of it’s appeal. It invited comparison with my own experience, and a dialogue with the text.
I should note: I was so interested by The First Stone when it came out that I did a pgrad essay project on the topic, exploring the newspaper responses to the book, and to their representations of ‘feminism’. This was a sort of test-run for my eventual MA project.
…and all of this has strayed quite a bit from the love/hate/niggle-fest that began in the original articles on Garner and her writing, but, well, like I said: blog.
*It’s worth checking out the ‘official’ Shane Maloney site and noting the background image of the site: Melway maps of Brunswick.
Tell me place and geography aren’t important here?
**I’m paraphrasing old school Stuart Hall there
–EDIT: fixed the dodgy link up there at the top – sorry everyone–

i want a big shouting man and an analogue mouse

bigjoeturner.jpg
I just can’t get enough of this man’s shouting voice.
We’re listening to that album I mentioned here. It’s far too late for such exciting music, but we like to live dangerously.
I should go to bed. The Squeeze is watching some old skool computer nerd peep action: The Mother of all Demos (you can read about it here on wikipedia).
The Squeeze likes to read about old computer stuff. The other day he went to see a talk about the first computer mouse:

“The first computer mouse and other terrific tales of technology!”
The Stork Hotel Café, 504 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
Who says the history of computing is boring? Experience the droll delights of Information Age nostalgia in a raucously profound evening of low-tech storytelling with your host School of Business Information Technology academic John Lenarcic in conversation with Museum Victoria curator David Demant.

He had a lovely time. I went to see Super Dood Returns and had a lovely time.
When I make up the bed in the back room, I usually find at least two books about olden days computers (today I found the phone that I lost yesterday), the remote for the imac, and some sort of cord for the computer. And usually a belt and a pair of pajama pants. He must own at least a million books about computer history. I’ve read a few of them – ones about macs, or ebay or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or other stuff. It’s mostly dull, and written by semi-literate journalists, but The Squeeze is a big fat sponge for computer knowledge (and hardware – he’s a bit borg I think. All technology is belong to him, and will be assimilated. Resistance is futile).
But this demo on google movies is pretty impressive – this dood Douglas Englebart invented a mouse in 1968, and demonstrates it in this film. That’s some awesome shit – we didn’t start using them til the 90s. And this guy is there, in a black and white film, with his massive quiff and black horn-rimmed glasses, demonstrating some scarily advanced technology.
The Squeeze is about to pass out with delight. When he stumbled onto the film moments ago, he declared: “I didn’t think this existed!”
That and the Big Joe Turner shouting action – this little freckler is going to expire from delight.
I, however, am going to pass out from exhaustion.

now he’ll do that pathetic sighing thing whenever the letter ‘f’ is uttered, or we see someone in a beret

Ampersand duck has made me sound really interesting over here. I think I’d like to make friends with those people. Then eat all their food and run off into the night, cackling… well, maybe waddle off into the afternoon.
Look over here at stack. Stacks of slacks. No, stacks of books, really (funny how you meet more booknerds on the internet than in bookshops, huh? Guess it’s a wordy* thing).
And you must, in the spirit of all things cute (and in honour of The Squeeze, who loves this shit), go look here to see more of this sort of action:
berret.gif
(stolen from here)
…I shouldn’t have let him know about that. Now he’ll do that pathetic sighing thing whenever the letter ‘f’ is uttered, or we see someone in a beret.
*worder? wordsmith? wordnerd? werd!

Joe Turner’s Boss of the Blues


There’s a reason they call these doods shouters.
The second of my amazingly quick-to-arrive CDs from Caiman (less than 2 weeks from Europe), I’m sucking up Big Joe Turner’s Boss of the Blues.
The super-jazz-nerds amongst you are no doubt thrilling to the thought of Freddie Greene playing on this 1956 recording. The rest of you should just settle in and enjoy… take care to get a firm grip on the sofa, lest Turner blows you away.
I’ve not had that much experience with Joe Turner. I have bunches of his stuff with people like Basie, and I’m pretty fond of most of it, but this is the first proper Big Joe Turner album I’ve bought. I like it. It’s uncompromising. I like those shouters – I love Dinah Washington especially. I like the thought that most of them started singing in church, and all that shouting is about Jesus. But Jesus dancing with his skirt up round his hips, on a table, dancing the crazy-I’m-dancing!-I’m-dancing!-like-a-fool type of dancing.
There’s lots on this album for DJing, from saucy blues to jumpy lindy, but our favourites in this house are the boogie woogie bits – that version of Roll ’em Pete makes you want to run around like a fool*. Sometimes the quality is kind of fagged** by Turner’s volume. But that’s kind of cool. Like feedback on a Nirvana album in 1992.
*funnily enough, I was just listening to my ‘lindy music’ on shuffle and came across another version of that song that I really, really like and wish I had more opportunities to play for dancers (from Basie’s Breakfast Dance and BBQ). It clocks in at 230bpm, so it’s kind of not all that playable most of the time. It starts: “Well I got a gal, she lives up on the hill” and continues…
**using this term the way my dad would – meaning ‘tired’ or totally buggered from overwork.

Alberta Hunter’s Downhearted Blues

While I fear I’ll die of old age before my order from raisedonrecords (via Amazon) comes, I’ve received both my recent acquisitions form caiman.com via amazon (they rock – Caiman are always really quick to deliver and no hassle to deal with). The first was Alberta Hunter’s Downhearted Blues, a live recording by one of my favourite artists. You can read about her over on allmusic, but I think the phrase ‘dirty lesbian nanna’ pretty much sums it up. This album is fun – you can hear that nanna working the crowd. Not so much for DJing, but it’s certainly worth listening to, and heaps of fun.

not in any way i’d like to advertise

Every now and then there comes along a bit of music that gets inside you (to pilfer a metaphor) and makes you want to move your body.
As a DJ for dancers, I’d like that bit of music to come along more frequently. And to bring its friends. While you usually have to hunt them down, sometimes you come across these lovely things hiding in your collection, probably inside a crappy black and white CD cover for something you bought second hand. Sometimes they’re hiding in massive collected works collection on your hard drive (probably in the huge and wonderful Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings Ellington – I promise I’ll get through the remaining ten of twenty-four discs soon).
Right now I’m just sucking up Oscar Peterson’s Bluesology At The Concertgebouw [live]. It has everything late swinging jazz should – saucy bass action, unbelievable piano, chunking guitar (that’s Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, respectively), kind of growly unintelligible muttering from the Oscar at the piano… did I mention this was a live recording? You can hear the audience digging the thing these excellent musicians have going on. You can hear Oscar mumbling along to his piano (and we can assume Clark Terry’s vocals on Mumbles (check it on this album if you’re interested) were inspired by this sort of action). You can just feel these seasoned musicians really working with each other, bouncing musical ideas around far beyond the ordinary length of a pop song. It goes for a massive nine minutes twenty-two – far too long for DJing to most lindy hoppers, but oh-baby, if I ever find just the right crowd…
They’d have to be a group of mellow lindy hoppers, heavy on the groove, happy to work with one partner for the equivalent of three songs (luckily at an easy 120bpm – which, for the uninitiated, is still more than two steps a second, but considered ‘baby tempo’ by lindy hoppers). And they’d better appreciate this gem…
As a DJ, as I’ve said, you’re continually on the look out for the right songs. Some DJs swap music just for the right three minutes. Morally high horse types like myself spurn this fannish exchange and have spent ridiculous sums buying a ridiculous number of albums for just that one perfect song. And while I’ve come back to those albums to rediscover the other great songs overshadowed by That One, I’ve also shoved the CD into the bookcase, or failed to catalogue the rest of it into my play lists. Lost and gone forever. itunes and emusic are your friend in these sorts of situations – I’d never buy a whole City Rhythm Orchestra album, but I’m very happy with the version of Blues in Hoss’s Flat (check that one on this album” – are you getting an idea of the sorts of uses lindy DJs make of Amazon, yet?) I bought from itunes the other day.
This version of Bluesology ends with applause for at least twenty-two seconds, until the musicians bring on the next song (When Lights are Low, incidentally, and almost as good). The very best songs for dancing are usually live – or carry some of the improvisation and creative team work that makes jazz so great for dancing. For lindy hoppers, improvisation is the reason we dance – we learn the basic steps so we can get to the made up bits. And of course, it’s so’s we can do what we hear in the music with our bodies. When it’s a live recording, you can hear the crowd and musicians really making something wonderful together. To call it a conversation is too easy or too simple. Every partner dancer knows it’s not like talking – it’s a much faster and more efficient way of communicating with someone. With lots of someones.
I think that’s the sort of thing that the best DJs aim for – recreating that relationship between musicians and dancers. As a musician, you choose the notes and how you play them to work with the other musicians and the audience and possibly the dancers to make for the nicest possible bit of group work. As a DJ, though, you’re choosing and combining songs for the same effect. The same principles of improvisation and spontaneity apply. You’re still responding and contributing to your dance partner – it’s just that you have hundreds of dance partners, and you can’t get your hands on them to get connection.
So when you find just the right song – the sort of song that makes you want to leap up off your chair – you’re not just scoring something nice to listen to or enjoy on your own. You’re finding something that’ll help you get it going on with as many people as possible. All at once.
The only frustration, the only irritation with sharing the most excellent songs with dancers is that you can’t dance yourself… well, not in any way you’d like to advertise…

“Emma Dawson: Left out of debate by convoluted speaking”

Is this headline more than a comment on Emma Dawson feeling excluded, or the Left’s irrelevence to public discourse?
In recent days there’s been an ongoing discussion about this article in the Australian by Emma Dawson. My responses to both the original article and the responding discussion on the CSAA list have been mixed. In that article, Dawson discusses her personal response to a notice for the Everyday Multiculturalism conference to be held at Macquarie Uni in Sydney in September.
First, my response to Dawson’s article was a little different to some of the comments on the CSAA list. While I did feel a little uncomfortable with the way Dawson’s critique of academic terminology, in the context of the Australian served as a critique of ‘the left’, I’m not sure this was how she intended her words be read. My first instinct was ‘oh, she’s not comfortable with acka talk.’ That she positioned herself as a Phd candidate encouraged me to sympathise with her, reading her feelings of exclusion as a result, perhaps of her inexperience with academia.
Listening to this ABC podcast on media ownership legislation in Canada today, my memory was jogged in regards to where I’d heard of Dawson before. I remembered this story on the ABC’s Media Report on the introduction of advertising on public broadcasters, featuring Dawson as a special guest discussing SBS in light of her Phd reseach and experience with the station. I remember thinking that Dawson was one of the ‘good guys’.
I decided to follow up some of my feelings about her article and CSAA discussion by reading up on Dawson a little further. I discovered that she’s written for the New Matilda, a lefty online magazine, and that she’s doing work on SBS, and had worked at SBS as a journalist.
With this in mind, I’m leaning towards the suspicion that Dawson’s article on lefty academic talk was perhaps read in context, by many on the CSAA list (and beyond), taken as one point in a series of critiques of lefty ideology and discourse, rather than as a distinct piece discussing the intimidating and off-putting nature of academic talk. This is not an unlikely response – the Australian opinion pages are rife with lefty/academic bashing these days.
This fascinates me as an example of the ways in which we take context – the newspaper in which an article is positioned, the recent articles on a similar topic, using similar terms and ‘buzz words’ (or making similar selections from a shared interpretive repertoire, to reference Potter and Wetherall), even the placement of an article on a page (or screen), in relation to other pieces – in our readings of meaning and ideological ‘intention’. In fact, this stuff fascinated me so much I wrote my MA on similar stuff.
Setting aside those issues of form and text and context which appeal to my critical discourse analysis side, perhaps it’s worth engaging with the issues Dawson actually raises in her piece – her opinion piece?
Perhaps Dawson was encouraging lefty academics to engage more thoroughly with everyday discourse by using everyday discourse?
As some posters to the CSAA list noted, that’s not such a bad idea. And yet, on the other hand, as others responded (and I myself feel), sometimes we need to use big words. Sometimes we need to get together and use big words. And academic conferences seem the most appropriate place for this sort of talk. After all, we wouldn’t expect a doctor to abandon the technical terms of their profession to discuss medical matters with their peers at a conference, would we?
Dawson, however, seems justified in expecting a conference on ‘everyday multiculturalisms’ to use everyday language. It’s unfortunate that the ‘everyday language’ of academia can be so impenetrable. Speaking as a (just about to submit) Phd candidate with quite a few years as a postgraduate researcher under my belt, I do actually think that it is a little naïve for a postgrad to expect an academic conference to use un-academic discourse. I mean, these are complex issues that we are dealing with, and at times we need complex language and conceptual tools to put them together or take them apart.
I wonder, though, if Dawson is a journalism student, rather than a cultural studies student, and has perhaps run into one of the most irritating stumbling blocks in world of ‘media studies’? I remember a one-day conference I attended in Brisbane in the early days of my MA (1998? 1999?) called Media Wars where I first ran into Keith Windshuttle, and was infuriated by his nasty attacks on my (then and now) hero Graybags Turner – it wasn’t the nicest introduction to the tensions between journalism and cultural studies. Though my impression that journalism (as the old kid on the block) seemed particularly threatened by media and cultural studies remains (or perhaps that was just Windshuttle’s problem with Turner… threatened by his gentle manner? His friendliness? Or perhaps his stone-washed jeans?*). It seems to me that there are many journalists and journalism academics who have a great deal of trouble with the methods and language of cultural studies. Not trouble in that they don’t understand it or aren’t capable of understanding it, but trouble in that it signifies a profound deviation from traditional quantifiable approaches to the media that sits so uneasily with many workers in the field.
So perhaps Dawson was thinking that a conference titled ‘Everyday multiculturalism’, would be using the everyday language of an academic discipline with which she was familiar? And when she read the call for papers, felt uncertain of her ability to participate in the discourse (though I do think she has a great deal to offer the discussions, particularly in regards to multicultural television). She wrote:

The call for papers started like this: “Papers … will engage with the quotidian dimensions of living with diversity. Quotidian diversity has variously been described as togetherness-in-difference (Ang 2000), and inhabiting difference (Hage 1998). We take the term to mean those perspectives on cultural diversity which recognise the embodied or inhabited nature of living with cultural difference.”
The elite intellectual language discouraged me from proposing a paper, and the very idea was firmly quashed by the suggestion that: “Papers which take an embodied approach, such as through frameworks such as affect or Bourdieu’s habitus are also particularly welcome.”
I am a PhD student in the field and have published several (admittedly non-academic) articles on cultural diversity. However, this sort of gobbledygook leaves me cold.

And then she wrote:

Lest I be sternly rebuked by fellow students and researchers, let me make it clear that I fully support rigorous scholarship and will vigorously defend the right of academics to contribute to the intellectual development of the human race at the most theoretical level. The apparently abstract and often obscure work by researchers in social sciences and cultural studies is essential to the development of ideas.

Followed by:

But this is a conference entitled Everyday Multiculturalisms, and one of its stated aims is to reflect on last December’s riots in Sydney’s Cronulla shire. There’s nothing particularly “everyday” about the language used to invite participation. Nor is there much focus on creating work that resonates beyond intellectual circles.

(all quotes from the article referenced above).
I think Dawson makes a point. The sort of hard-core academic language in the call for papers is hardly in the vernacular of the un-university world.
But I do suspect that Dawson wrote with very little knowledge of the planning behind the conference, and that she wrote quickly without exploring the conference in any great detail (understandable for a journalist writing to a deadline).
Take this comment from Ien Ang in her post to the CSAA list:

It is a pity that Emma Dawson had chosen to single out Amanda Wise’s call-for-papers text to make her points. Ironically, Amanda is one of the few people amongst us who has consistently engaged beyond academia in her work, either through public discussion or through collaborations with government or community groups. I therefore completely understand that she is upset.

(Ien Ang, email to CSAA list RE: Another attack on CS, sent: 29 July 2006 2:58:38 PM)
To explain, Wise raised the issue on the list with this email:

Any CSAA-ers want to write a letter defending us?
Another anti-left, anti-theory attack in today’s Australian, attacking the ‘Everyday Multiculturalism’ conference we are holding here at Macquarie University which a number of you are presenting at.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19933096-7583,00.html
Cheers
Amanda

(Wise, to the CSAA list, Another attack on CS in the Oz, sent: 28 July 2006 11:11:28 AM)
I can imagine Wise’s frustration and upsetness, reading Dawson’s critique in the paper. As someone who’s in the middle of organising a massive event for my peers, there’s nothing as frustrating as mis-informed, negative criticism of your efforts when you’re working as hard as you can, not only to plan an excellent event, but to make that event as accessible and inclusive as you can. I can imagine it’s particularly trying for Wise, who’s working to produce a conference that will bring people together to discuss and workshop ideas to reduce injustice and exclusion and so on. Her email to the list was, I think, not only an interesting poke to a fairly quiet group of readers, but more importantly, a “Goddamn! Surely I don’t suck that much?” call for emotional and professional support from her peers.
Indeed, she writes:

Thanks for all this input. I was furious this morning, but have calmed down substantially! Softly, softly, I promise.
I think Greg (and others) make important points. I’ll synthesise these arguments and write to her and something for the oz. Indeed; I might just invite her to give her a paper!
Its always the problem writing about the ‘everyday’ as you’ve all pointed out.
Another point to be made is that ED is quite patronising towards non-academics. We have lots of non-academics coming to this conference. They come in droves because they enjoy the stimulation of hearing fresh ideas which are theoretically informed. They are quite capable of understanding the work we present. Indeed, we deliberately pitched the conference CFP at attracting ‘grounded’ work; esp based on ethnographic and/or interview based approaches – so it’s a conference full of accessible work.
But as Greg says; theory or otherwise, we have a perfect right as academics to congregate and discuss academic ideas in an academic forum. It is quite a separate question as to whether and how we subsequently communicate those ideas to the wider public.
Many of the speakers at our conference (including myself) are engaged in public debate through the media; through consulting with local, state and federal govt; through working community groups. We are quite capable of working at different registers. Ien Ang and Greg Nobles work (who are keynotes at the conf) is a case in point.
Thanks for the input. Lets see if the oz publishes my rebuttal op ed. I Hope you’re all ok if I quote some of your emails
Cheers
Amanda

(RE: [csaa-forum] Another attack on CS in the Oz Sent: 28 July 2006 2:27:08 PM)
That Wise did respond so defensively is not only an indication of her own feelings as the event organiser, but of cultural studies’ researchers’ familiarity with such comments from the main stream media – “God, why don’t they understand how important my work is?” And while that might sound like a fairly snarky comment on my part, it’s a feeling that I sometimes have to stifle: why is it that we have to continually justify our work in terms that feel so limited and simplistic, when we’re working on ideas and relations that are so complex, and really do require such big words and ideas?
That’s the sort of question that various academics in our field continue to ask ourselves. Laknath Jayasinghe pointed out in their email:

In fact, this is something that Graeme Turner alluded to in a paper he delivered in 1999, arguing that–apart from the academic stuff we do–we should be doing more work in the ‘public sphere’, the broad public sphere, that is. I take my cue from him. I believe that we should build academic bridges, not remain on separate islands. The mass media here in Oz, from both my professional and academic experience, are open to articles and letters that take new and exciting ideas to the public–from all political positions. Of course, language must be modified and the ideas recrafted and tailored to the audience; very few allusions to Bhabha, Butler or Bourdieu here!

(Re: [csaa-forum] Another attack on CS in the Oz, sent: 28 July 2006 1:07:37 PM)
Graybags himself wrote, only minutes later:

For what it’s worth, I share Mark’s reading of it. There are real differences between attacks such as this one and that provided by Windschuttle. I think this person genuinely wanted to be informed by the conference and found that its language was alienating – and therefore suggested that maybe this is something we should think about if we want our work to have a social function. Given the topic of the conference, and its objectives, that’s not an unreasonable position. It is damaging to have it published in the Australian, and it may well be the case that its inclusion is motivated by rather less sympathetic considerations than its author’s, but we need to think carefully about this kind of stuff, take it one piece at a time, avoid characterising it as motivated by a particular pathology or orientation, and be alert to the possibility that they may actually have a genuine point with which we can engage.
A response could well admit the distance created by such language, while nonetheless defending the need for people to work through these issues in their own way and at the highest level, and suggest that while the context of the topic might be the everyday, the capacity to deal with these problems so as to fully understand them is quite clearly not something that is part of the everyday life of most people. That is where academics come in.
It might also be useful to take the lead from this piece and consider if there could be some more publicly accessible outcome from the conference that even a columnist for the Australian would not find alienating, but would find informative.
And, finally, given the regularity with which this kind of issue is raised – particularly by those writing in the Australian—it is probably helpful to be reconciled to the fact this comes with the territory of working in a critical discipline and we are always going to be called to account by those outside it. I think we can wear that responsibility.
Cheers
Graeme

(RE: [csaa-forum] Another attack on CS in the Oz. Sent: 28 July 2006 1:08:57 PM)
I won’t quote the emails sent by ‘Mark’ and ‘Greg’ (and others), but you get the point.
So, I think, at the end of a couple of days posting, I’m left with the following conclusions:

  • It’s crap to have your hard (community-focused) work slagged off in a very public and influential forum by someone who doesn’t appeared to have researched it properly
  • Cultural studies talk is fairly exclusive, and makes the uninitiated or unfamiliar feel dumb and excluded
  • While the previous might be the case, complex ideas need complex language tools, and then forums for their practice
  • Perhaps cultural studies researchers and writers need to do a bit of work on producing accessible descriptions of their work and ideas for the general public?

I’m not really sure how I feel about that last point. On the one hand, I do feel, very strongly, that there’s no point doing all this research if we can’t share it with everyone – not just other cultural studies stooges. Nancy Fraser has said most of the things I’d like to say about public discourse and access and exclusiory practices. She’s also made a point about feminism and theory – that we need pragmatic feminist theory to make positive feminist change in the world. I personally feel, that if we are to see more of the work and ideas of cultural studies represented in the mainstream media beyond those of a few (somewhat scary and not terribly representative) voices, we need to get scribbling.
Yet I can’t help but think: Dawson herself sounds like she’s doing the sort of work we should dig. But when she wrote what was, in itself, a fairly ‘harmless’ comment on the terms of discursive participation, she earned a serve from the Gang. Really, how useful or possible is the ‘accurate’ representation of the diversity and depth of ideas and research in cultural studies in the mainstream media?
*This was in the days before stone wash made a comeback – in that interim period between fashions.
==EDIT: Here’s the first bloggage on the topic that I could find (even after scanning the CS stooge network): Tseen comments on Ivory Towers and the Everyday. I have a great deal of respect for Tseen and her work, so I might change me mind on this some time soon…==

Smallville v Sunnydale

In the video shop* the other day, I picked up the first disc in the first season of Smallville.
I have to admit, I was inspired by my recent (and pleasant) experience with Superman Returns [insert insanely effusive gushing over the Alien Beauty that is the noo soops], and I’m not sure I’ll stick with it (though I’m up to disc 2), and we do have plenty of Buffy and Angel to watch)…
Yeah, so anyway.
Smallville. I’ve been struck by the similarities between Buffy and Smallville. This is, no doubt, an illustration of the influence of Buffy on the genre I’m sure my supes would call ‘teen supernatural’ or something similar. I know there’s been lots written about self-reflexivity and polyvocal texts ‘n all – all lain to varying degrees at the door of Joss Whedon – but I think that Buffy had a more interesting influence on Smallville (or perhaps, that we can see similar tropes across this genre?).
Ok, now before I go any further, please do remember that this is a three-seconds-worth-of-thinking theory, in a post I’ll probably publish as soon as I finish it, without re-reading (eek)…
Ok, so here’s the thing I’d not realised about Smallville (what with never having watched it before):
In Buffy, particularly in the first 4 seasons, while Buffy was in High School (or was it 3 seasons?), the program was very much a story about teenagers, doing teen things, mostly in high school. Everyone knew there was something ‘kind of weird’ about Sunnydale, but nobody really took issue with it. Certainly, no one ever moved away. The city’s proximity to the/a hellmouth justified all manner of strange and supernatural dealings, from girls who turned invisible to substitute teachers who were actually giant praying mantuses(i?).
Similarly, in Smallville all manner of strange things in the town are ‘explained’ by the presence of bits of meteorite which fell to Earth with Kal-El’s space ship, way back there (in 1989 – god, it scares me that 1989 constitutes ye olde days in teenland today. I was 15 in 1989 and had already read every decent SF book known to familykind and secondhandshopdom). This is an interesting twist – it gives a little ‘consistency’ to the paranormalness of the town, with this paranormalness being something only Chloe seems to consciously recognise, despite the fact that there are at least a wall’s worth of weirdness for her to seek out in local (and national) magazines, newspapers and other media. The whole meteorite thing also gives Clark something to feel guilty about. And guilt seems to be the S-Boy’s stock in trade… maybe it’s something for him to sublimate later on? Heck, I wish I was hip to psychoanalisis. I just know there’s something I’m missing, what with all the father-son relationship action going down in Smallville.
All this interests me. While I don’t buy that either Sunnydale or Smallville is actually in the ‘country’ (we all know Sunnydale is actually an outer suburb of LA – the Geelong or Ipswich of the city of Angelus, and sure as shit no one in Smallsville sports a Kansas accent…I think ?), I’m kind of caught by the idea that not only do terrible things happen more frequently in rural communities, but that rural communities also produce fiesty female characters**.
One other thing about the supernatural in Smallville that reminds me of Sunnydale is the way that ‘super villians’ are usually teenagers, or people in the teenage world – female students with envy issues, football coaches who need some anger management advice. Again, much has been written (and spoken) about the ways in which the monsters in Buffy represent the monstrous… or mundane in teenagerdom, but it seems Smallville is attempting the same sort of work. Far less effectively, of course, and with terribly inferior dialogue.
In a similar vein, please do read this discussion of race and class in Joss Whedon’s work (from Feminist SF and discovered by Kate – strength to her for the moving thing). It’s mighty interesting.
Now, I’d been thinking to myself, ‘yeah, sure Whedon is neat, but, Self, should I be all yay! go! about another white guy writing for me, rather than a sister doing it for herself, television-writing-wise?’. In other words, I’d had reservations about the wholehearted and uncompromised passion for Joss Whedon which others seem to evince. I had had issues with the race thing. And that’s been kind of exaggerated by Smallville, where Clark’s buddy Peter is black, he has other not-white friends, and Lana Lang has this Eurasian*** thing going on.
And in a third ‘why Smallville is a bit like Sunnydale’ point, I’ve been thinking about something prompted by these comments from Wikipedia:

Technology in Buffyverse has been shown to be advanced enough to produce such an advanced robot as April

(in the I Was Made to Love You April the robot girlfriend episode from season 3)

In the Buffyverse there seems to be some extraordinarily advanced technology available to some. For example, robots are living among the ordinary citizens of the Buffyverse: in the Internet (“I, Robot… You, Jane”), produced by people decades ago (“Ted”), produced by youngsters today (“I Was Made to Love You”), and even used by dark powers (“Lineage”).

(Buffyverse article in wikipedia).
That wikipedia article on the Buffyverse discusses the ways in which the world of Buffy is not like the ‘real world’ (and we could make all sorts of interesting segues into more talk about teenagers and the Teen World, but we won’t), and technology seems one of those points. I’ve waxed lyrical (and slightly manically) on the issue of technology in Buffy before, so I won’t go into it again, but it’s worth mentioning that this matter was called to mind while watching Smallville for two real reasons:
1) Chloe (Clark’s fiesty sidekick) is the technology person, what with all her digital cameras and computers (macs, no less) and things (despite Lex’s best efforts) and
2) the ease with which the Sunnydale people accept robots (particularly the scoobies – and I do like the way the gang unanimously agree that April is a robot – why can they accept robots when they are usually so cynical and wise to the ridiculousness of life on the hellmouth?…look, I know it’s a joke. But.) reminds me of the way the Smallville people seem cool with the whole ‘meteorites destroyed my town’ thing. That, and the 12 years of strange, meteorite-related events. In this ‘verse, not only are Smallville and Metropolis real places, African American kids mixing happily with white kids with no hint of racial tension at the high school and teachers set on fire with no police investigations, but no one really seems to mind that kids turn into giant insects and girls shape change to rob banks.
Oh my, it’s late (all of 11:08! My, how the world changes!), so I’m not sure I can write more. But if you have watched both these programs, do chime in.
Oh, and: everyone’s had a doppleganger in Buffy – Buffy, Willow, Xander – who’s anyone. What does that mean?
And, and: was I the only one who wondered what class Clark was reading Neitzche for in high school? And Lana with a great Russian work of lit? Hmmmm.
*soon to be the only-DVDs shop
** I’m talking Chloe, not the ever-irritating Lana Lang here.
***Well, maybe. But probably not.
[promise I’ll fix the typos and add links later when I’m less tired and have more battery power on the lappy]