Out of Time

A review of Sarah Sharma, In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2014)

Dirty Spaces: Communication and Contamination in Men’s Public Toilets

This paper examines the spatiality of men’s public toilets in Australia. It considers public toilets as cultural sites whose work involves not only the literal elimination of waste but also a form of cultural purification. Men’s public toilets are read as sites where heteronormative masculinity is defined, tested and policed. The essay draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of homosociality and on Mary Douglas’s conception of dirt as a destabilizing category. It treats the “dirtiness” of public toilets as a submerged metaphor within struggles over masculinity. The essay considers a range of data sources, including interviews, pop culture, the Internet and a novella

Aromatherapy Oils: Commodities, Materials, Essences

This article examines the essential oils that are the central tools of aromatherapy and uses them as a case study for different approaches to material culture. It considers the conceptual and political implications of thinking of essential oils as, in turn, commodities, materials and essences. I argue that both cultural studies and aromatherapy have something to learn from each other. Classic materialist approaches might do well to focus more attention on the material properties and effects of things. Aromatherapy, on the other hand, could benefit from the enriched political understanding associated with classic materialist critique. New materialist strains of cultural studies may also find the vibrancy of matter that underpins many CAM/New Age practices worthy of examination

Natural Histories: Gender, Race and Regional Consciousness on the Gold Coast

The paper offers a critique of monumental history-making with reference to the Gold Coast. It looks particularly at the place of Aboriginals and women in the development of regional consciousness

Female exposure and the protesting woman

Last year, while driving down Sydney's normally busy Parramatta Road on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I saw a young woman walking topless. As she went by a pub, several men leaned back on their barstools to watch her pass, but she walked matter-of-factly on. I realised I had never before seen a topless woman on a city street, except on a billboard, or at Mardi Gras. This essay is a study of the complexities of live female public nudity outside of its traditionally sanctioned erotic contexts (such as striptease). It canvasses instances in which women have used public nudity for both protest and celebration, and it argues that women who seek to use their naked bodies in protest and celebration face complexities and dilemmas that reveal the limits of what female nakedness can mean within a patriarchal hegemony. I am interested in the extent to which historical meanings of nakedness (including religious and mythological meanings) mayor may not provide a resource for bodily action. In particular, I note the persistence of a sacrificial logic at work in some protest forms, and the potential appeal of this logic to women. I conclude, though, by examining some instances in which women have eschewed this logic and publicly used their naked bodies in more joyful or celebratory ways