Category Archives: thesis

I take time out to focus my eyes.
I’m having trouble staying focussed on these nasty chapter rewrites. I certainly can’t divide the text up into individual words any more – it’s just one blob of known-by-heart text now, and I can no longer (if I ever could) tell what’s crap and what’s not. I am relying entirely on the Supes’ scribbledy comments, praying she knows what she’s doing. The bits where she says ‘rewrite this’ or ‘need to make this clearer’ almost make me cry. Creative work is kind of beyond me right now. I’m not even sure I know what the thesis is about any more, let alone what each chapter is about.
I am definitely No Good at introductions. Each one has been so scribbled over it looks like a nest of black jellyfish squabbling over fountain pen. I just suck at this part. I’m still not entirely sure about what I should actually be doing. Because I’m just following directions now (it seemed the best idea, especially after I was instructed to edit the same section at least 3 times, crossing back and forth over the same lines, editing, reverting, editing and reverting again), I’m not actually learning anything. I do feel a bit like a real dummy.
But it’s not a sad thing – it’s kind of nice to just stop thinking (critically or otherwise) and just be told what to do. I think I want one of those menial jobs where you do repetitive tasks over and over again. Maybe I should work at McDonalds, or do a *deleted* dance class.
I’m not sure if I should be making things shorter and crisper, or longer and artier. I’m pretty sure some parts were to be longer and artier, but some parts which I had made artier are now to be reverted to crisper forms. Sigh.
And why is it that I only seem to know about 20 words, now? Surely there are more words out there in the english language?
Look, I’ll just go back to Doing As I’m Told for now, then when I’ve finished each individual chapter’s overall edit, I’ll go on and actually write (for about the zillionth time) The Introduction again (formerly Chapter One the literature review and The Introduction. And formerly-to-that Capter one: the Introduction). Can you feel my pain?
Frankly, I have no idea, at all, whatsoever, about what I’m doing, what I should do, and what counts as ‘good stuff’ or not.
Double sigh.
Where’s the good goddamn chocolate? WHERE? I’m not normally the sort of barbie who fusses over things like chocolate – you know the type. They have posters or tshirts that say things like ‘i love chocolate’. I like the stuff, but heck, there are other, more important things in my (gastronomic) life.
But right now, I just feel that it would be appropriate.

Man. What a relief.
I’ve produced a full, next-to-final draft of the thesis (a week ahead of schedule, mind you), and will be sending it off to the Supes this week. Then we meet next week to discuss any final changes. It should be fine, though, as we’re really only looking at writing style and typos and stuff now. Though I’m having trouble writing the conclusion. I just can’t seem to do it. Frankly, I’m looking forward to a big long break from the thing.
After we meet, the Supes is away for a few weeks, so I’ll do dumb stuff like the bibliography (which is annoying as I’m dealing with so many online/digital references. Books are so much easier to deal with), layout, etc. Which always sounds like easy stuff, but always takes far longer than you’d ever expect.
Then, once she’s back, I guess I give it back to her, she does the final read-through, then it’s off to be printed and to get its temporary binding. Yay!
Then I sit around and wait. Well, actually, then I tutor my arse off in second semester, desperately trying to get enough money to live on while I also:
a) write articles and get them published
b) do my share of planning for MLX6 in November
c) fuss.
Then I get it all back from marking, and submit it for permanent binding. Because it will be perfect and require no further editing.*
I don’t doubt that this will coincide with the MLX. Because that is the way my life runs – it never rains but it pours.
Ok, I’m barely literate now. I think I’ll go do something entirely low-brain, like sewing or dancing or walking or something…
*for those of you not In The Trade, this is a joke – I’ve not heard or more than maybe 2 people who’ve not had to do any edits or corrections. Most people get only minor corrections. If you get major ones…well. Either your Supes sucks or you didn’t listen to your Supes.

My ongoing (and steadily increasing) thesis anxiety has had a number of clear effects:

• Muscle tension, tension headaches and a sore right hip.
• Irrational and yet themed snack-craving: layered wafer biscuits. Potato crisps. Indian sweets (thankyou, Brunswick Street @ 11.45pm).
• Strange dreams about house-hunting.
• Ob-con Buffy and Angel viewing. I think I like the structure. I know it’ll go on and on and on for ages, and I know what’s going to happen. No surprises. No completion or submission… hm. Maybe I should be watching The Simpsons or Neighbours instead?
• A strange new interest in soccer (anything but editing I guess).
• Napping. Excessive napping. 4 hours last weekend, 2 today. Between 11 and 1 today I was face-down in the matress, breathing through two nostrils worth of seasonal rhinitis. The Squeeze chose to assume The Position (prone, that is) on the couch between 4 and 6 this evening. If we could synchronise our naps our relationship would reach new heights. Or depths.
• Cleaning. Yes, our house is clean. And there are no baskets of laundry waiting my attention in the loungeroom. The toilet is safe.

If you’re interested, I’ve actually got very little left to do on the thesis. So I’ll be done within the allocated time (4 years at my uni, but 3.5 years worth of funding from The Man. I’ll be done in 3.5). I know this makes me a freak. But it’s my fourth thesis (hons, MA, aborted PhD) so I should be pretty good at it by now. The Supes reckons I could be done in a fortnight. This pronouncement obviously prompted today’s Nap.
I have to write an introduction, rewrite Chapter One (formerly “Chapter One: Introduction” now “Chapter One: the Ill-defined But Probably a ‘literature review’ But Under Another Name”, rewrite the introductions to each chapter and redo my conclusion. Actually all very possible in two weeks for Thesis Demon. But I’m not really sure how I feel about this. I finally understand how I’m supposed to redo the introductions, so that will go quickly. But conclusion? I actually feel like I have no idea how it’s supposed to look. So I’ll try and we’ll see.
While I spent a delightful hour perusing the CAE (Centre for Adult Education) booklet today, planning language courses, pattern making courses, etc (yes, I am a big fat learning sponge), giddy with the thought of newly-won academic liberty, I’m also thinking about travelling. Goddess knows there’s very little actual work out there, beyond sessional teaching and exploitative short-term contracts. Hell, I might as well take up DJing full-time if I want exploitation. With a side order of industrial deafness.
I am suffering from separation anxiety already. Which is probably why I’m wondering what it would be like to have a baby. If there’s one thing three theses (and thirteen years at uni) has taught me, it’s how to handle long-term creative projects.

Ok, so I’m hitting another period of crazy productivity. Look out supervisor.
Today I finished off redraft5.2 of chapters 2 and 3. I had had some concerns about chapter 2, but I think I fixed it, even though it meant cutting out a sweeeeet section on the relationship between jazz and dance in the 20s and 30s.
That was really just a long-winded way of my describing the way improvisation is contained within social/community structures in African American vernacular culture. I’m using this as a way of describing how the introduction of new ideas and ideology and self-expression/representation (‘difference’) is managed by community/social/discursive structures in African American vernacular dance in a productive and creative way. In contrast, contemporary swing dance culture in Melbourne marginalises difference by discouraging improvisation, innovation and the representation of self by the emphasis on formal classes, rote-learning and routines. The bit I’m really interested in is how media figures in all this – how do AV media do this? How does DJing do this? And of course, what role do dance schools play in this? Finally, how does this sort of marginalising of difference work as a capitalist tactic, particularly in developing a market for commodified dance (ie classes)?
That’s my thesis right there.
But I do take time out in each chapter to look at resistance to and transgression of this marginalisation of difference. In chapter 3 I look at how women might do feminist work in partner dancing by doing ‘black’ switches; leading; solo dancing. In chapter 4 I consider… well, I’m not sure yet. I’ll get back to you. Anyhoo, I read this resistance as the utilisation of African American dance discourse themes/tactics/practices (eg improvisation) by contemporary swing dancers. Which is neat, because Af-Am dance was all about resistance, particularly in the pre-emancipation era and on into the 20s and 30s.
So it’s all going nicely. Tomorrow I wrestle with chapter 4 (AV media), then I meet with the supes on Thursday. I’d actually like to leave that meeting til the following Thursday… I’ll see what I can do.
Friday I will try to do chapter 5, but I don’t know – I have to DJ on Thursday so who knows how productive I’ll be on Friday. Anyway, I’ll finish off chapters 5 and 6 by the end of next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back through and make it all hang together. Chapters 2 and 3 are totally tight – the bestest best friends. Who knows what 4, 5 and 6 are doing. And the conclusion? I doubt it’s go anybody’s back, at the moment. But I trust 1 is ok. Just rough-edged and not really smoothing the way for the rest of the homies.
The Squeeze dreads these periods of insane, obsessively-compulsive productivity. Mostly because they’re followed by the inevitable crash as I wind myself tighter and tighter, tiring myself out with longer and longer hours. Hopefully I’ll get through redraft 5.2 before then.

It’s so cold in my room that the paper is steaming as it comes out of the printer.
Ah, I do so love the smell of freshly printed next-to-last redrafts.

If I do put the schools chapter last, I think I’ll use it in the following way:
I begin with Afro-American vernacular dance because contemporary swing dance culture itself ‘begins’ with af-am v dance. The ‘original swing era’ is a powerful myth in swing culture. It is used to justify many cultural and social practices, beginning with actually dancing itself – learning to dance swing dances is seen as a way of ‘reviving’ dances from this ‘original swing era’. The idea that these dances need reviving implies that they are in some way ‘dead’ or otherwise incapacitated. Literature discussing vernacular dances makes the point that they are continually changing and responding to cultural and social context as cultural discourse. For a particular dance step or dance style to be danced, it must retain relevance. In other words, dances ‘go out of style’ because they no longer appeal or embody the needs and interests of dancers. This is quite often related to changes in musical form – swing dances like the lindy hop were replaced by dances which were better ‘suited’ to the successive musical forms, and to the needs of successive generations of dancers.
The point is also made in much of the literature dealing with Afro-American vernacular dance, that particular moves or movements are not always wholly lost. The cross-generational nature of vernacular dance – it occurs in ordinary, everyday, cross-generational community spaces rather than in segregated ‘youth’ or other spaces – means that dance steps are more likely to move between generations than in generationally-segregated dance traditions.
The lindy hop, then is not ‘dead’ – it is still present in the movements and bodies of Afro-American dances today.
To declare that it is dead is to make an ideological statement about creative and cultural form. It is an act of power. It is also shifting the dance form out of Afro-American vernacular dance discourse and into middle class, urban youth culture. This shift is achieved through the use of a range of communications technology – media – and through institutional mediation of dance-discourse (schools or studios). This shift – this cultural transmission – is inflected by power and ideology and wider social relations. The ‘revival’ of swing dances in non-Afro-American communities is an embodiment of relationships between white-dominated middle class, mainstream discourse in the USA, Australia, Europe (and ethnically congruent groups in Korea, Singapore and Japan), etc and Afro-American people today.
The thesis, then, will begin with Afro-American vernacular dance, positioning lindy hop and other swing dances within a tradition of vernacular dance and identifying the cultural social uses and forms of dance in this context. Particular themes in Afro-American vernacular dance are identified in this initial chapter, and then attended to in later chapters. This thesis reads swing dancing as an Afro-American vernacular dance form which has been transmitted to another culture – another time and space and group of people. This approach is an attempt to question the centrality of white, middle class heterosexual cultural in Australian discourse. It is also an attempt to assess the processes of hegemony in the appropriation of a black dance form for a white community.
This first chapter also positions dance as cultural discourse – as a series of texts and positionings and relationships guided by ideology and instutitions – the ideas and beliefs of individuals and groups. It suggests that swing dance culture today – the embodied practices of contemporary swing dance communities – carry evidence of the ideological and social practice of its participants. The primary concern of this thesis is with the role of media in these practices.
Afro-American vernacular dance – though inflected by various media technologies such as radio, film and recorded music – is centered on face to face interaction – embodied practice.
Contemporary swing dance culture is far more heavily informed by media technology.
The second chapter pursues this point, noting the ways in which contemporary swing dance culture is mediated both by communications technology, and by insitutional bodies – the dance school or studio specificially.
This chapter also introduces the ways in which contemporary swing dance culture is a localised global community of interest. Afro-American vernacular dance is a product of African diaspora, carrying within it an embodied history of African culture, slavery in America, emancipation, oppression and finally movements towards cultural autonomy and freedom. Each decendent of that original African diaspora – each Africanist society – is unique and inflects cultural form in unique ways. There are distinctions to be made within the ‘Afro-American’ community, across time and geography – local distinctions.
Contemporary swing dance culture is a localised ‘global’ community. The community is not necessarily one of ethnic or genetic heritage – it is one of interest and cultural form. The links between local communities are maintained by travel and by media use and practice.
The second chapter introduces the notion of a community of dancers which is heavily mediated.
The third chapter begins an analysis of the forms of this mediation in contemporary swing dance culture. It examines the uses of Audio-Visual media in three periods in contemporary swing dance culture – the original ‘revivalist’ era of the 1980s, the rise of significant local communities in the 1990s, and the development of a locally inflected global community of dancers in the 2000s. The first period is characterised by the use of archival film in the revival of swing dances – footage of dancers from the ‘original swing era’. The second period is noted for the rise of videos produced by local communities and individuals in the promotion (and commodification) of local teachers and events. Specificially, commemorative videos for camps and exchanges and instructional videos. The third era, however, is characterised by the massive increase in AV media production, disemination and consumption in swing communities around the world made possible by the development of digital AV media technology. Here, dancers not only download and view clips filmed in other communities, they also film themselves and members of their own community to upload and share with the wider international swing dance community.
These three periods are broadly read as correlating with the face to face dance themes of immitation and impersonation; improvisation and innovation; and a later combination of the two, as dancers have increased access to both archival footage and images of contemporary dancers in their embodied dance practices, which they then film and disseminate.
The fourth chapter explores DJing in contemporary swing dance culture. The rise of DJs as a distinct role and identity in local communities is an indication of that community’s age and development of cultural form and practice. DJs not only make extensive use of digital media in their embodied practice – playing music for dancers – they are also making great use of digitial media in their acquisition, research and discussion of music online. Swing DJs have also developed an international community of interest which complements their face to face practices in their local community.
This chapter reads DJing in terms of impersonation and immitation in DJ’s choice of music and DJing style (specifically, in their intensely ‘recreationist’ ideology), yet also sees them as innovating and improvising in both their online and face to face practices. DJing in swing culture is seen not only as the ability to recreate musical moments from the past, but also as being capable of responding to the immediate needs and demands of the dancers on the floor before them.
Both AV media and DJing practice in swing dance culture are mediated by their relationship to – or place within – various discourses wihtin local and global communities. The final chapter explores the local Melbourne swing dance community as one which has increasingly become the preserve of one major institution – a dance school. This school not only manages the face to face events at which DJs work but also discursively manages the music DJs play and dancers’ responses to this music. This discourse is not only embodied in dance classes and at events, but also exists online in newsletters, websites and other ‘official’ discursive texts and forms. Schools also produce official AV media – videos and DVDs – though their management of ‘unofficial’ digital media is more complex.
The final chapter of this thesis explores the role of the swing dance school in contemporary Melbourne swing dance culture, and the ways in which it mediates embodied dance practice within this community. This chapter explores the commodification of dance – through classes and performances – and the twin imperatives of creating and sustaining a market which motivate schools’ social and cultural activities. Swing dance schools justify their activities with the revivalist myth that they are ‘recreating’ and ‘reviving’ a vanished art form and cultural practice. This notion is used to justify the commodification of dance, and the management of face to face practice in ways which impede the development of a contemporary vernacular dance culture in Melbourne.
This chapter is concerned with the ways in which pedagogy – as practice and ethos – is utilised in the commodification of cultural practice, and in the mediation of discourse.
This chapter sees dance schools as emphasising immitation and impersonation rather than innovation and improvisation in both teaching and discursive practice, and discouraging alternative forms of learning and acquiring knowledge which deconstruct challenge institutional heirarchies of knowledge and – consequently – power.
The thesis closes with this chapter as an examination of a local swing dance community where institutional discourse attempts to manage a local dance discourse in an increasingly globalised – or internationally networked community. Changes in this school’s internal practices and discursive practices are read as responses to these community changes which attempt to reposition dance as a commodity – a product to be bought and sold – rather than as a process of cultural production or a discourse which can be made or created or participated in beyond the bounds of institutional discourse or practice.