Occupy this: a dialogic dérive.

This dialogue is the text-based component of an evolving performative multi-media lecture. By re-reading Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, in relation to the global Occupy movement and the rise of social media, we ask: in what ways does the proliferation of digital imagery enable and limit this recent form of political activism? By subjectively responding to selective quotations from Debord's writing, we link the triumvirate of global capitalism, public space and digital technology, producing commentary on the displacement imposed by contemporary 'spectacular' technologies, the networked 'technical image' and the politics of public space

Section Introduction: When are you most like your self?

What is the ‘self’? Is it a category of identity, a state of being, an object of contemplation? Is the self another name for soul, psyche, spirit, mind or body? And what gives us our ‘sense of self’? DNA? Ideology? God? These vexed questions continue to occupy the minds of scholars and artists in a variety of disciplines and creative practices, for the ‘self’ is a key term of distinction — one that confers us with a unique sense of identity

“Un Geste Suffit”? Unpacking the Inconvenient Truths about Al Gore’s Celebrity Activism

The present work interrogates Al Gore’s persona as a climate change activist with reference to a process we describe by the neologism “personification”: the act of constructing/presenting a public persona in order to cultivate impressions that enable public figures to consolidate authoritative reputations. The formation of such a commanding persona requires the circulation of three forms of symbolic capital: cultural, celebrity, and reputational capital as well as the performance of overtly theatrical strategies calculated to establish an empathetic relationship between performer and audience. In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore released the award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. This film subsequently functioned as a catalyst for various forms of climate change activism. This paper unpacks the contradictory ideological and cultural work performed by the film with reference to what we describe as un geste suffit; that is, those gestures that merely perform individual agency in order to connect the formulation of personal ethical identity to communal forms of political activism like environmentalism. Through a close reading of the presentation of Gore’s persona in the film itself, and research which tracks the reception and political efficacy of the film, the paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship on the politics of environmental/scientific communication. Finally, we locate our reading of Gore’s film within a contemporary context by making reference to the way An Inconvenient Truth is both resistant to and complicit with the environmental policies of the Trump administration

'Even the Ghost was more than one person': Hauntology and Authenticity in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There

If the opening sequence of a film is a microscopic 'event' that achieves far more than setting the tone and whetting the appetite for what we are about to see, then Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is exemplary. This paper works its way through the conceptually dense and intricately woven textual layers of the film's opening to stage a three-way dialogue between Haynes, Bob Dylan and Jacques Derrida: three mavericks who defy simple categorisation, by transgressing the boundaries of their respective fields (song writing, cinema and philosophy). By introducing Derrida's deconstructive logic of hauntology as a strategy for reading Haynes' biopic on Dylan, the figure of the ghost is called upon to situate the quest for an identity's authenticity as a perennial, irresolvable problem in song, cinema and philosophy. Belonging to a time that is neither past nor present, a place that is neither here nor there, the ghost offers the perfect medium to join Haynes, Dylan and Derrida in (re)thinking identity in terms that respond to a call (in the name of art, justice and truth, among other things) that is not based on an unyielding conception of authenticity

Performance studies as a discipline?: a Foucauldian approach to theory and practice

Deposited with permission of the author. © 1993 Glenn D'cruzThis thesis has three major purposes: firstly, to describe and analyse the institutional power/knowledge relations operating in the constitution of the academic ‘discipline’ of performance/theatre studies. I deploy Michel Foucault’s conceptions of ‘discursive formation’, ‘discursive practice’, and ‘power/knowledge’; in an attempt to demonstrate the ways in which the academy distinctively articulates the discipline. The second purpose of the thesis is to map and critique specific conceptions of the ‘discipline’s’ epistemological profile, through an examination of the discursive practice of theatre at the University of Melbourne from the mid-fifties to the present. Third, I go on to prioritize a specific performance oriented articulation of the field’s epistemological profile, based on an interdisciplinary pedagogy. I describe the techniques, methods and theoretical justifications for such an articulation of the discipline by offering a critical account of The Killing Eye project - a multi-media performance which deals with the topic of serial murder - which was initiated in the context of a third year performance studies course. I conclude with an analysis of the academy’s institutional enablements and constraints in the areas of theatre practice and pedagogy

"Representing" Anglo-Indians: a genealogical study

Deposited with permission of the author © Dr. Glenn D'CruzThis dissertation examines how historians, writers, colonial administrators, social scientists and immigration officials represented Anglo-Indians between 1850 and 1998.Traditionally, Anglo-Indians have sought to correct perceived distortions or misinterpretations of their community by disputing the accuracy of deprecatory stereotypes produced by ‘prejudicial’; writers. While the need to contest disparaging representations is not in dispute here, the present study finds its own point of departure by questioning the possibility of (re)presenting an undistorted Anglo-Indian identity. (For complete abstract open document

NEW MEDIA DRAMATURGY: PERFORMANCE, MEDIA AND NEW-MATERIALISM

NEW MEDIA DRAMATURGY: PERFORMANCE, MEDIA AND NEW-MATERIALIS

Hauntological Dramaturgy Affects, Archives, Ethics

The book develops the concept of hauntological dramaturgy by engaging with a series of performances that commemorate, celebrate, investigate, and sometimes seek justice for the dead