Journal articles: 'Neo-roman theory of free states' – Grafiati (2024)

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Free trade is part of neo-liberal economics, which is centred on the free market principles of limited government regulation and private sector competition. Free trade focuses on the elimination of trade barriers and tariffs. In Canada, the movement toward free trade began in 1985 with the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which encouraged free trade between the United States and Canada, and concluded with the 1988 federal election that sealed Canada’s fate within economic union with the United States. This article will combine a Neo-Marxist and Political Process Theory framework to address how during the period from 1985 to 1988, Canadian social movements adopted innovative tactics and mobilized against free trade to gain greater influence over trade policy. Keywords: free trade; social movements; Canada; United States; Auto Pact; United Steel Workers; Canadian Auto Workers, National Action Committee on the Status of Women; Council of Canadians; Macdonald Commission

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More than competitors, the United States and China are potential rivals. Why are the two greatest economies fighting a trade war when free markets and free trade have mainly shown to be beneficial? It might be the worry of losing influence in the global market and world politics from the standpoint of the United States. Using hegemonic stability theory as an analytical framework, this paper uses a Neo-Realistic method to study China's rise and China as a challenge to US hegemony. Without a doubt, the emergence of China as a major power is one of the most confusing occurrences in the international arena since the end of the Cold War. Similarly, it jeopardises the United States' strategic position. China's economic and technical might have cast doubt on US hegemony, and the Covid 19 pandemic has provided China with numerous opportunity to win the race. The global implications of China's surveillance technology is discussed in this study. More than competitors, the United States and China are potential rivals. Why are the two greatest economies fighting a trade war when free markets and free trade have mainly shown to be beneficial? It might be the worry of losing influence in the global market and world politics from the standpoint of the United States. Using hegemonic stability theory as an analytical framework, this paper uses a Neo-Realistic method to study China's rise and China as a challenge to US hegemony. Without a doubt, the emergence of China as a major power is one of the most confusing occurrences in the international arena since the end of the Cold War. Similarly, it jeopardises the United States' strategic position. China's economic and technical might have cast doubt on US hegemony, and the Covid 19 pandemic has provided China with numerous opportunity to win the race. The global implications of China's surveillance technology is discussed in this study.

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Liberal education came into recognition in Roman Empire, spread throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and has become a revolution in the United States in the last centuries. The term “liberal education” has roots in the Latin word for a free person (liber) and the artes liberales emerged historically as the education appropriate for free people. In the modern world, and especially in the United States after the American Revolution, liberal education drew on these roots to position itself as the best preparation for self-governance in a free democratic society. At Hoa Sen University, liberal education has been chosen as a way to develop students, alongside their professional preparation. In the search for best application options of liberal education, the author realized the connection between liberal education philosophy and Vygotsky’s educational approach, as known as the zone of proximal development. This article analyzes the perspectives of liberal education and its logical connection with Vygotsky’s theory of the zone of proximal development.

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Surveillance is often used as a tool in resilience strategies towards the threat posed by terrorist attacks and other serious crime. “Resilience” is a contested term with varying and ambiguous meaning in governmental, business and social discourses, and it is not clear how it relates to other terms that characterise processes or states of being. Resilience is often assumed to have positive connotations, but critics view it with great suspicion, regarding it as a neo-liberal governmental strategy. However, we argue that surveillance, introduced in the name of greater security, may itself erode social freedoms and public goods such as privacy, paradoxically requiring societal resilience, whether precautionary or in mitigation of the harms it causes to the public goods of free societies. This article develops new models and extends existing ones to describe resilience processes unfolding over time and in anticipation of, or in reaction to, adversities of different kinds and severity, and explores resilience both on the plane of abstract analysis and in the context of societal responses to mass surveillance. The article thus focuses upon surveillance as a special field for conceptual analysis and modelling of situations, and for evaluating contemporary developments in “surveillance societies”.

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In the article are analyzed the modern condition of the Russian juridical science. The author noted that the national jurisprudence must become free from the imitation the Roman-Germanic and Anglo-Saxon juridical values. The moral-political education of the lawyers and civil servants’ principles are disclosed in the work. As well as in connection with the development of the disintegration processes between the Slavic states in the end XX - in the early XXI centuries the great significance in the law study of our country acquires the task to revive the juridical slavistic. This part of the law’ theory is called upon to form the united law culture and the ideology of the law system, functioning in the Slavic countries.

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This article is dedicated to three interconnected concepts – “collective goods”, “free rider” and “hegemony” in the context of modern politics. We analyze three theoretical approaches to the problem of provision of collective goods by hegemonic states. These approaches are: neoliberal, (neo) realist and World-System Theory. Basing on these theoretical premises, we analyze the debate about free-ridng in the Western political discourse (especially among US allies) and we point out that particular interests of US can be disguised as “collective goods”. Basing on this, we analyze discussions about free-riding both in the Western world (among NATO and EU members) and among US allies in the Pacific region (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand). We point out that in fact US can use the concept of collective goods to push their own agenda. Than we move to popular in western political science idea that China is a global free rider – for instance in the sphere of sea lane security and global energy security. Basing on A. Kennedy works, we demonstrate that China in fact does not wish to make western powers pay the costs of collective goods. China is rather afraid that western powers will exploit his resources. This idea is supported with the evidence, gathered during in-depth interview with Chinese diplomats and foreign policy experts. Having said that, paper points out that mentioned cases mark the importance of the concept of trust. Trust is well-studied in the field of behavioral economics, but IR theory doesn`t usually takes the concept of trust into account. Also this paper raises a question about including historical and cultural topics in the theory of international relations. Basing on analysis of different ways to incorporate economic arguments in IR theory, authors point out that modern IR theory lacks economic argumentation. Paper concludes with the idea that IR theory should capitalize on behavioral economics. Acknowledgements. This paper is a part of MGIMO University research program no. 1921-01-02.

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The EU FDI Screening Regulation (the Regulation) is an interesting application of the ‘integration by stealth’ theory to the sphere of investment screening. The Regulation leads to integration in the sense that, for the first time, the Commission is granted a role in the process of investment screening within the EU. However, Commission involvement comes at the cost of simultaneously strengthening the hands of the Member State screening authorities, leading to a suboptimal policy outcome whereby neither the Commission nor the Member States may have at their disposal the necessary tools to screen investments quickly and thoroughly, as is required to maintain an open investment environment. The shortcomings of the Regulation are likely to trigger calls for further reform. To develop this argument, this article (1) legally examines the main features of the Regulation and (2) explores the interplay of the Regulation with EU free movement rules. The article explains how the Regulation is likely to contribute to an uptake in national screening decisions, but not to a concomitant increase in enforcement opportunities for the Commission or the Court of Justice of the EU. This creates an enforcement gap, which may put pressure on the existing free movement framework and may risk encouraging Member States to develop a national as opposed to a common EU conception of public security and order. European Union law, European integration, foreign direct investment screening, free movement of capital, freedom of establishment, investment liberalization, functionalism, neo-functionalism, Court of Justice of the European Union, common commercial policy, rule of law, judicial protection, enforcement

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The article analyzes three paradoxes of the theory of democracy, which testify to the crisis of this theory. The reasons for the aggravated paradoxical vision of democracy can be considered both contradictions in the very theory of democracy and contradictions in the political practice of democratic states. In accordance with the proposed author's approach to the analysis of the paradoxes of the theory of democracy, attention should be focused on the key problem for the social form of existence, the problem of the relationship between freedom, equality, and justice. The social exists as the intersection of the natural (necessary) and the conscious (free). Interests as motivators of behavior were placed in this "pause". The "superstructure" in the form of collective consciousness produces values ​​as regulators of behavior. And the balance of interests and values ​​becomes the main social problem, solved on the basis of the ratio of freedom and equality, which is assessed as fair or unfair. The latter is transferred to the specific embodiment of a just or unjust order in the person of the state. The socialist value of the state priority of "workers' equality" was devalued in the early 90s of the 20th century due to the obvious dissonance between the theory and practice of equality and the collapse of the state order that represented this value - the USSR. Therefore, in the modern world, democratic systems balance on a fluid balance of freedom and order in the form of neo-liberal or neo-conservative state policies. But the desovereignization of the state postulated in D. Rodrik's paradox, confirmed by other researchers, casts doubt on the effectiveness of this policy in the modern world. In order to comprehend the paradoxes of the theory of democracy, the author submits the following statements for consideration: 1. Democracy and the state are coexisting forms of social organization that can temporarily intersect and thus create the illusion of their consistent combination. The basis of this illusion was laid by the European interpretation of the direct democracy of antiquity. 2. Under the conditions of representative democracy, the illusion of a consistent combination of democracy and the state is stimulated through the propaganda mechanism of state self-identification of the population, based on a person's tendency to self-deceive and on the ideologies encouraged by the state that are relevant in a particular social system: nationalism, patriotism, socialism, liberalism, the rule of law. 3. It is necessary to recognize the existence in the conditions of a representative democracy of a “political class” that has a special economic and psychological motivation for behavior and therefore is interested in preserving and maintaining a special type of status (as a democratic variety of class) inequality, including through the propaganda of the ideological dogma of democracy.

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Critics' imagining of Victorian history has been profoundly influenced by Michel Foucault's groundbreaking genealogies. Yet Foucault's famous account of modern discipline is better suited to the history of the Continent than to nineteenth-century Britain, with its “liberal” disdain for state interference. Discipline and Punish offered a mid-1970s response to Marxist dilemmas and to the problems of twentieth-century welfare states. In the early 1980s, Foucault discerned the resurgence of liberal economic ideologies, including neo-Victorian beliefs in free trade, self-help, and laissez-faire. Foucault's later essays on today's neoliberal “governmentality” therefore provide better critical tools for the study of nineteenth-century Britain than does Discipline and Punish. Literature offers a key context for this reimagined history. Works by self-consciously progressive writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and John Stuart Mill elucidate a distinctive liberal quandary: the quest for a modern governing or “pastoral” agency that would be rational, all-embracing, and effective but also antibureaucratic, personalized, and liberatory.

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The purpose of the article is to identified the origin and essence of Western individualism. Methods of research. I used the methodology of post-nonclassical metaphysics of history, as well as the methods of epistemological polytheism and com parative. Results. The first sprouts of individualism can be detected in Greek poleis. It is the crisis of the polis system in Ancient Greece that predetermined the disappointment of the Greeks in the old collectivist ideals. Roman collectivism quite naturally got along with ideas about civil liberties and the dignity of an individual citizen. The idea of citizenship was brought to the theoretical perfection by moving it beyond the boundaries of city walls. The Christian ideal is not a self-sufficient person, but the community of believers. It is the weakening of the church’s position and the strengthening of the influence of Antiquity that led to the formation of the Western style of thinking, which became the basis of the new European civilizational project. John Locke rethought the Hobbesian «Roman» theory of the social contract, thereby laying the foundations of liberalism, and hence of individualism. However, radically changing the hierarchical society, even the shaken revolution and the restoration of the Stuarts, no theoretical work could not. But in the New World, free from class barriers, Locke’s ideas found a much more fertile soil. Conclusions. The Western version of individualism emerges as a civilizational ideal at the junction of two completely different paradigms — the Ancient (Greek and Roman) and the Christian. Being present in the «body» of the West, individualism could not access its code. The latter was guarded by numerous barriers, among which the Catholic collectivism and the class divisions of hierarchical society were the most powerful guards. In American society, security barriers were significantly weaker, which allowed individualism to develop in the United States. Then American individualism returned to Europe and is now perceived as an integral element of Western civilization.

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ABSTRACTRemaining at home in older age is generally considered a sign of independence and therefore an important achievement. More than five million Americans aged over 75 years live alone, a number that is destined to increase thanks to advances in longevity. Living alone can allow the expression of one's preferences, but it can also bring out hardships hardly visible to outsiders, especially in an individualistic society such as the United States of America that rewards self-sufficiency. According to the sociologist Rose, in neo-liberal societies citizens have a duty to be free, self-reliant and independent. In this paper, Rose's theory and the political economy perspective serve as frameworks by which to examine how discourses around independence are translated in the experiences of 22 older adults aged over 75 living at home alone in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Participant observation and 41 in-depth interviews from 2006 to 2010 illustrate how being independent can be an essential component of individual identities. The informants' narratives shed light on the impact of policies that facilitate or regulate the moral imperative of independence. The findings underline the need to assess how discourses around independence are translated in minority populations, to promote studies and initiatives on interdependence, and to encourage international comparisons on living alone in older age.

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This article discusses the projection high standard free trade cooperation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which attracts Indonesia to join under President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). It is analyzed predictively calculation of the situation that occurred if Indonesia was determined to join TPP in the future. This is analyzed using the concept of political communication, the concept of neoliberalism, and the critical theory of neomarxism, supported by qualitative research methods and data collection from secondary sources. Found evidence indicating the inability of Indonesia's competitiveness against majority member states of TPP. As a result, they have the potential to engage in exploitative, dependent, and monopoly relationships with Indonesia's economic and social if join TPP at this time. Therefore, it is recommended to reject TPP until Indonesia has the optimal competitiveness ability to refer to the effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity of the population, low poverty, high gross national income percapita, high value human development index, high value global competitive advantage, anti-corruption business bureaucracy, and adequate infrastructure. Keywords: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Indonesia, Neoliberalism, Neomarxism Abstrak Artikel ini membahas proyeksi kerja sama perdagangan bebas berstandar tinggi Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) yang menarik minat Indonesia dibawah kepemimpinan Presiden Joko Widodo (Jokowi) untuk bergabung di dalamnya. Ia dianalisis prediktif mengenai kalkulasi situasi yang terjadi apabila Indonesia nekat bergabung dalam TPP di masa depan. Ini dianalisa menggunakan konsep komunikasi politik, konsep neo-liberalisme, dan teori kritis neo-marxisme, didukung metode penelitian kualitatif dan pengumpulan data dari sumber sekunder. Ditemukan bukti-bukti yang mengindikasikan ketidakmampuan Indonesia bersaing dengan mayoritas negara-negara anggota TPP. Akibatnya, mereka berpotensi melakukan hubungan eksploitatif, ketergantungan, dan monopoli ekonomi dan sosial indonesia jika memutuskan bergabung dalam TPP saat ini. Oleh sebab itu, direkomendasikan untuk menolak TPP sampai Indonesia memiliki kemampuan daya saing optimal mengacu efektivitas, efisiensi, dan produktifitas populasi, kemiskinan rendah, pendapatan nasional perkapita tinggi, indeks pembangunan manusia tinggi, keunggulan nilai dalam menghadapi persaingan global, birokrasi bisnis anti-korupsi, dan infrastruktur yang memadai. Kata Kunci: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Indonesia, Neoliberalisme, Neomarxisme

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This article argues that Hayek employed a neo-Roman concept of liberty. It will show that Hayek’s definition of liberty conforms to that provided by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, respectively the chief theorist and leading historian of the neo-Roman concept. It will go on to demonstrate how the genealogy of liberty Hayek provides is also the same as that offered by Pettit and Skinner. This is important, as the neo-Roman concept is not regarded, either by Hayek or by neo-republicans led by Pettit, as a product of political theory. Instead it is viewed as underpinning a historical tradition. Hayek’s self-conscious association with this tradition reinforces the article’s prior claim that Hayek’s conceptual writing on liberty is neo-Roman. Finally, the article considers how the neo-Roman nature of Hayek’s work complicates the historical narrative and political claims the neo-republicans make for the neo-Roman concept. It concludes that it is open to use by another, very different, political tradition: free market liberalism.

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Three decades ago, John Langbein published an influential book on medieval and early modern judicial torture. Before Langbein, Enlightenment philosophers such as Beccaria and Voltaire had traditionally been credited with the final abolition of judicial torture in the leading European states during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Langbein dismissed the traditional explanation as a “fairy tale,” claiming that the use of torture had in fact declined in major European countries since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, well before its formal abolition. In the medieval statutory or Roman-canon theory of proof, judicial torture was originally designed to produce confessions in cases of serious crime in which “full proof” in the form of confession or two eyewitnesses was needed to convict. The argument that Langbein advanced is that the emerging new modes of punishment for serious crime, such as forced labor, transportation, and imprisonment, enabled European criminal courts to take full advantage of the medieval legal institution of extraordinary punishment, poena extraordinaria, which could be imposed without confession if the evidence was otherwise convincing. Extraordinary punishment was by definition something else than the ordinary punishment, usually less than capital punishment. In practice this meant milder punishment on less evidence. Langbein's pivotal point is that the rise of the extraordinary punishment rendered torture unnecessary in many cases, although it still remained legal. Causing a revolution in the law of proof, free judicial evaluation of evidence thus in fact developed alongside the old statutory theory of proof, which now lost its monopoly.

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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the protectionist conservatism influenced by colonialism, which exploited African countries for the prosperity of the colonizing countries, still has a high visibility in the Salonga National Park (PNS). If, in theory, the Central Africans seem to free themselves from the colonial powers on their land, in practice they are still there. The hostility of settlers who have become neo-colonists to the development of Central Africa remains intact, he adds (Ndinga, 2003). This reflects a "logic from above" that has disregarded local values. Yet, in the era of sustainable development and globalization, African protected areas appear to be essential tools for States to reposition themselves in a complex set of actors with the aim of capturing and using the new environmental rent (Giraut, Guyot, & Houssay-Holzschuch, 2003). This is a "bottom-up logic", placing people at the heart of all activities and aiming to reorganize their long-term relationships with the environment. From these two logics, a third "logic from the other side" emerges, reflecting a collective awareness of the fragility of the planet. The restoration of the rights of Africans in the various national frameworks constitutes a major challenge for the contemporary management of African protected areas. Because the protected areas inherited from the different colonial systems must accompany the change in management methods and the redefinition of their functions in order to better serve the local community in the long-term.

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The rise of empires can be elucidated by treating them as living organisms, and the celebrated Verhulst or Lotka–Volterra dynamics can be used to understand the growth mechanisms of empires. The fast growth can be expressed by an exponential function as in the case of Macedonian empire of the Alexander the Great whereas a sigmoidal growth can be expressed by power-law equation as in the case of Roman and Ottoman empires. The superpowers Russia and the USA follow somehow different mechanisms, Russia displays two different exponential growth behaviors whereas the USA follows two different power-law behaviors. They did not disturb and mobilize their social capacity much during the course of their rise. The decline and the collapse of an empire occur through a kind of fragmentation process, and the consequently formed small states become rather free in their behavior. The lands of the new states formed exhibit a hierarchical pattern, and the number of the states having an area smaller than the largest one can be given either by an exponential or power-law function. The exponential distribution pattern occurs when the states are quite free in their pursuits, but the power-law behavior occurs when they are under the pressure of an empire or a strong state in the region. The geological and geographical conditions also affect whether there occurs exponential or power-law behavior. The new unions formed such as the European Union and the Shanghai Cooperation increase the power-law exponent implying that they increase the stress in the international affairs. The viscoelastic behavior of the empires can be found from the scattering diagrams, and the storage [Formula: see text]and loss modulus [Formula: see text], and the associated work-like and heat-like terms can be determined in the sense of thermodynamics. The [Formula: see text] of Ottomans was larger than that of Romans implying that they confronted severe resistance during their expansion. The [Formula: see text] of Russia is also larger than that of the USA; in fact the USA did not face severe resistance as they had an overwhelming superiority over native Americans. The [Formula: see text] indicates solidity in the social structure and Romans, Ottomans, and Russians all have [Formula: see text] larger than [Formula: see text]. The [Formula: see text] is slightly larger than [Formula: see text] for the USA indicating that they have had a very flexible social structure. By the same token the ratio of the work-like term to the internal energy is larger for Ottomans than that of Romans, and larger for the USA than that of Russia. That means the fraction of the total energy allocated to improve the social capacity is larger for Romans than that of Ottomans, and is larger for Russians than that of the USA.

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The article deals with the research of axiological nature of the theory and practice of modern education. The problem is relevant in that education can be the key to solving the global problems of the modern world. The more popular the knowledge of people, their experience, abilities, skills, their professional and personal qualities in social development, the more important education is. Improvement and modernization of national education systems is becoming the leading direction of the sustainable development strategy of many states of the modern world. Consequently, the philosophical understanding of the educational process, in particular the definition of the values of education is relevant.The authors substantiate that, given the diversity of educational values, they can be divided into two main groups: the values of maintaining the existing order of things and the values of its transformation.In various worldview systems, the problem of the values of education is resolved in different ways. The article gives the basic ideas of representatives of such systems: classical realism, essentialism, perinalism, analytical philosophy, experimentalism, existentialism, neo-Freudianism.Analyzing the views of researchers, the authors of the article attribute free ideological self-determination to the cardinal values of education as the main mission, which provides the conditions for the free self-determination of each person in the worldview world to accept their own values in the form of life goals, main motives and interests, aspirations, needs, principles, etc.It is substantiated that the axiological guidelines of education should be associated primarily with the orientation of education towards the interests of the individual – a free, creative person, capable of self-realization. The mission of education is to find an individual approach to a person, to contribute to the realization of his personal potential, internal, unconscious, even irrational needs (otherwise this culturally unrealized potential can become destructive for both the individual and society). Thus, education should be aimed at the formation of fundamental foundations that will allow a person to solve worldview problems, make a moral, legal or ideological choice, navigate in the modern sociocultural situation.The authors emphasize that in a modern dynamic society, value-semantic variability and the influence of the accelerated development of education on the formation of social innovations are necessary. The dynamically changing conceptual field of modern educational practices, the desire and attempts to humanize education are favorable factors for the creation and implementation of the concept of modern education. The humanization of education is aimed at creating a sustainable and flexible value attitude to the world. The universal value horizon, the idea of universal values are not reflected in modern cultural practices. On the one hand, culture becomes value-oriented, its phenomena become subject to assessment, its values are structured and organized, on the other hand, obvious value pluralism, poly-paradigmalism, relativism and simplification of values as such.Thus, the analysis of theoretical studies on the value aspects of education, and the study of the possibilities that arise as a result of the humanization of education, allow us to state: only as a result of changes in the content of education in the context of its humanization it is possible to talk about the transition to understanding a specialist as a harmoniously developed personality, which is the ultimate purpose of education. The primary task is to eliminate the discrepancy between the generally accepted and declared values, on the one hand, and their implementation, primarily in the minds of participants in the educational process, on the other.

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PurposeThe aim of this paper is to evaluate contrasting ways of tackling self-employment in the informal sector. Conventionally, the participation of the self-employed in the informal sector has been viewed as a rational economic decision taken when the expected benefits outweigh the costs, and thus enforcement authorities have sought to change the benefit-to-cost ratio by increasing the punishments and chances of being caught. Recently, however, neo-institutional theory has viewed such endeavor as a product of a lack of vertical trust (in government) and horizontal trust (in others) and pursued trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance.Design/methodology/approachTo evaluate these contrasting policy approaches, data are reported from special Eurobarometer survey 92.1 conducted in 2019 across 28 European countries (the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom) involving over 27,565 interviews.FindingsUsing probit regression analysis, the finding is that the likelihood of participation in informal self-employment is not associated with the level of expected punishments and chances of being caught, but is significantly associated with the level of vertical and horizontal trust, with a greater likelihood of participation in informal self-employment when there is lower vertical and horizontal trust.Practical implicationsThe outcome is a call for state authorities to shift away from the use of repressive policy measures that increase the penalties and chances of being caught and toward trust-building strategies to nurture voluntary compliance. How this can be achieved is explored.Originality/valueEvidence is provided to justify a shift toward seeking trust-building strategies by state authorities to engender voluntary compliance among the self-employed operating in the informal sector in Europe.

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Summary This article argues for the usefulness of recent scholarship on democratic decay (especially in the disciplines of political science and constitutional law) for explaining the breakdown of Rome’s res publica during the 50s BCE, with a particular focus on Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die” (2018). Using “democracy” in the neo-republican sense of government free from domination, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how the actions and reactions of political actors can damage a political system without any intention to overthrow it. This article combines their insights with concepts from Christian Meier’s “Res Publica Amissa” (2nd edition 1980) to analyse Caesar’s first consulship in 59 BCE. After explaining how the theory can responsibly be applied, it closely examines the major events of the year, especially the contest over the agrarian law. Caesar’s actions throughout the year demonstrate Levitsky and Ziblatt’s warning signs for a potential authoritarian, as do those of the opposition. This analysis helps us more clearly understand just how the events of “the consulship of Julius and Caesar” (Suet. Iul. 20.2) contributed to Rome’s democratic decay in succeeding years. The article connects to much recent work on late-republican political institutions. It also helps make this dramatic period of Roman history comprehensible to political scientists by analysing it in their own theoretical terms.

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Abstract The article analyses how Ovid in the 10th letter of his Heroides experiments with the concept of a female voice within Roman literature. Ovid constructs Ariadne as a literary speaker against the background of (1) the Augustan elegiac tradition with its mostly male speakers, (2) the earlier phases of the Ariadne-myth in which Ariadne’s fate is determined by men (Theseus and Bacchus), and (3) the reception of this myth in Catullus’ famous ecphrasis in carmen 64. In the beginning of Heroides 10, Ovid shows how Ariadne develops consciousness of her own ability to speak. She develops from a heterodiegetic (epic) narrator to a hom*odiegetic (elegiac) speaker. In a second step, however, Ovid demonstrates that Ariadne is not only generally inexperienced in the field of literature, but that her attempt to re-shape her own story from a female perspective must necessarily fail. Her literary character cannot be separated from the previous (male) myth. At the end of the letter, she accepts her own literary immaturity when she asks Theseus to be the future narrator of her own fate. By showing that Ovid in his Ariadne-letter actually stages the failure of his protagonist’s attempt to free herself from a male literary tradition, I suggest that the Heroides should not be read as female literature, but as texts which reaffirm male dominance within Roman literary society.

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In his comment on the Pretorian edict the ancient Roman jurist Ulpian (+228) refers to a case where positive law (ius civile) and natural justice (aequitas naturalis) came into collision. A slave was manumitted in a will under the condition of paying 10 to the heir. Subsequently the owner of the slave made a second informal will (codicillus) where he manumitted the slave without mentioning any condition. After his masters dead the slave being ignorant of the second will paid 10. The question arose whether he could recover the money. The case was decided first by the elder Celsus who hold that the slave could not recover the money. On the contrary, the younger Celsus stated that the recovery of the money was possible. This latter jurist made his decision – as Ulpian stated – influenced by a feeling of natural justice. In the present paper we analyse the case will be also analysed from the perspective of theory of social acts developed by Adolf Reinach, one of the most outstanding members of the realistic branch of phenomenological school. Furthermore, a relationship is established between the present case and the Rescript of the Emperor Hadrian according to which a demand for operae could not be reinforced in case that the patronus was obliged to free the slave through a fideicommissum.

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SCIENCE UNDER FIRE: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America by Andrew Jewett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. 356 pages. Hardcover; $41.00. ISBN: 9780674987913. *John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White's role in fueling popular ideas about conflict between the primarily natural sciences and religion has been often studied. It is now well known that their claims were erroneous, prejudice laden (in Draper's case against Roman Catholicism), and part of broader efforts to align science with a liberal and rationalized Christianity. In Science under Fire, Boston College historian Andrew Jewett recounts a similarly important but lesser-known tale: twentieth-century criticism of the primarily human sciences as promoting politically charged, prejudice laden, and secular accounts of human nature. *Jewett is an intellectual historian who focuses on the interplay between the sciences and public life in the United States. Science under Fire follows up on his 2012 Science, Democracy, and the American University, which explored the role of science (or, more precisely, science-inspired thinking associated with the human sciences) as a shaper of American culture from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. As with that previous work, Science under Fire illustrates how science can be practiced as a form of culture building and leveraged for sociopolitical ends. While Science, Democracy, and the American University explored how various ideas about science came to displace the then-dominant Protestant understandings of morality in the late nineteenth century, Science under Fire considers how a variety of critics reacted to the growing influence of those sciences. *Throughout both historical periods, members of the public, politicians, and many social scientists did not view science as offering a neutral or unbiased account of the nature of humans and their behavior. Rather, they practiced, appropriated, and criticized various accounts in order to advance particular visions about how society should be organized. These visions were not primarily driven by scientific data but by philosophical precommitments, including some which led their proponents to deny the validity of the Protestant and humanist values which previously anchored American public life. So, Science under Fire addresses religious and politically conservative apprehension over "amoral" psychology and the teaching of evolution in schools. However, its story is much broader. The secular and religious liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, humanities scholars and social scientists all at times lamented the dehumanizing effects of technology or worried that scientists were unduly influenced by selfish motives. *Science under Fire begins with a twenty-three-page summary of the book's main themes. This is followed by two chapters that explain the cultural developments which fostered apprehension about science's role in society. By the 1920s, some thinkers were calling on Americans to adopt "modern" scientific modes of thought, in part by dismissing religion as a source of objective values (chap. 1). Their efforts were resisted by humanities scholars, Catholics, and liberal Protestants, who focused on lambasting naturalist approaches in psychology (e.g., by Freud and John Watson) as pseudoscientific and offering classical or religious values as a bulwark against the excesses of capitalism and consumerism (chap. 2). *In the 1930s and 40s, these critiques were given new impetus as worries arose over social scientists' role in shaping Roosevelt's New Deal as well as mental associations between amoral science and Japanese and German totalitarianism (chap. 3). Post-World War II fears over science grew to encompass concerns about "amoral" scientists such as B. F. Skinner, Benjamin Spock, and others engaging in "social engineering" by training children to value social conformity at the expense of traditional religious or humanist moral guidance (chap. 4). The increasingly vehement religious opposition to scientists' attempts to address questions of morality was partly driven by opposition to "atheist" communism and featured a broad coalition of Protestant and Catholic critics decrying the effects of "scientism" (chap. 5). *There was also a postwar resurgence in interest in the humanities, as well as efforts by thinkers such as C. P. Snow, to position the social sciences as a humanist bridge between "literary" and "scientific" cultures (chap. 6). In the United States, Snow's call for greater prominence for the sciences was challenged by New Right conservatives, who regarded it as dangerously opening the door for liberal academic social scientists to portray their ideologically charged views as objectively scientific. Their efforts included supporting conservative social scientists' research, intervening in academic politics and research funding, and, somewhat 'justifiably, 'complaining about the persecution of conservative scholars (chap. 7). *Nevertheless, postwar criticism of scientism was couched in flexible enough terms to appeal to politically and theologically diverse thinkers associated with various institutes and literary endeavors (chap. 8), ultimately including many in the iconoclastic New Left counterculture of the 1960s and 70s (chap. 9). By that time, movements critical of science included religious opposition to evolution and psychology; neoconservative criticism of the "welfare state"; and feminist, Black, and indigenous critiques of science as a tool for justifying an oppressive status quo (chap. 10). *In the Reaganite era, science was targeted by pluralist, postfoundationalist, poststructuralist, and postmodern thinkers; religious conservative challenges to evolution and "secularism" in science; tighter budgets and a downgrading of blue-sky research; and worries over the implications of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering (chap. 11). After a short evaluative conclusion, sixty-two pages of endnotes help flesh out Jewett's argument. *Science under Fire helps illuminate how science and religion have interacted as culture-shaping forces in American public life. Readers will learn how debates that are prima facie about science and religion are really about values and cultural authority, and will discover the origins of some of the assumptions and strategic moves that shape popular science-faith discourse. They will also be invited to enlarge their repertoire of science-faith thinkers (e.g., John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, B. F. Skinner) and topics (behaviorism, debates over Keynesian economics as a backdrop, and how science's value-free ideal was invented and leveraged). *Nevertheless, readers should be aware that Jewett's near-exclusive focus on sweeping intellectual tendencies and the social sciences (with occasional forays to reflect on genetic technology and the atomic bomb) means that Science under Fire is not an entirely balanced account of science, politics, and religion in America. Some chapters focus on major streams of thought to the point that the story of individual movements, thinkers, and their interactions with one another is lost. Fundamentalist and conservative evangelical reactions to scientism are treated relatively perfunctorily compared to liberal Christian responses (e.g., the Institute for Religion in an Age of Science is mentioned while the American Scientific Affiliation is not). A bias toward sociological explanations occasionally leads to a degree of mischaracterization. For example, Thomas Kuhn is mentioned only in connection with the 1960s counterculture, and the Vietnam-era Strategic Hamlet Program is characterized as an attempt to "make proper citizens out of Vietnamese peasants" rooted in modernization theory (p. 181), without mentioning it as a counterinsurgency strategy inspired by Britain's successful use of "New Villages" in the Malayan emergency. Finally, although most of the book is lucid, it is occasionally meandering, repetitive, and convoluted. This is particularly true for the introduction, which readers might consider skipping on the first read. *These criticisms are not meant to be dismissive. Science under Fire is a unique and uniquely important book. Those who are willing to mine its depths will be rewarded with a treasure trove of insight into the social and political factors that continue to shape conversations about science, technology, and faith in the United States today. *Reviewed by Stephen Contakes, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA 93108.

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THE END OF THE LAW? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience by David W. Opderbeck. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021. 260 pages. Paperback; $31.00. ISBN: 9781498223898. *"It's not you but your brain." As this powerful meme has begun to characterise our generation, we encounter children under neurological treatment for their behavioral/mental deficits and seniors losing their self-identity due to neurological degeneration. It is indeed evident that our mental experiences are bound to our brain states--yet are we really nothing else than our brain? Many intellectuals of our day argue so--our psyche is an epiphenomenon of our brain state, and so we have no free will. *Recent advances in neuroscience, especially with non-invasive neuroimaging techniques enabling scientists to "read out" one's decision ahead of a person being consciously aware of their own decision, have underpinned a new movement called neurolaw. According to neurolawyers, humans are no longer legally or morally accountable for their behaviors as science leaves no room for the existence of free will; consequently, law should be re-oriented from retribution to treatment of criminals. Indeed, neurolaw seeks "to explain and reform the legal system from the ground up based on neuroscience" (p. 2). Despite, or because of, its radicality, the neurolaw movement can be an attractive alternate to the legal tradition of Western civilization, which is rapidly losing its Greco-Roman/Christian foundations in law and ethics. It is also in line with the trend that our contemporaries increasingly seek justice through facts/science and empathy instead of transcendent values and rationality. *Although neurolawyers optimistically hope that this shift will lead our world from conflicts in subjective values/beliefs to facts of science, and from moral retribution to humane treatment of criminals, in this book Seton Hall University Law School Professor David Opderbeck carefully considers their optimism legally, philosophically, and theologically--and concludes that, with no place for transcendence, their optimism is misplaced. Neurolaw's reductionism loses not only the place of personal responsibility in law and jurisprudence, but loses a rich and complex understanding of human nature and relationality. Opderbeck argues that theology can defend the transcendence of law and human morality, without losing its integrity to science, by understanding the laws of nature as empowering nature to fulfill its telos--its divine purpose. This move is key to a unified epistemological view on science and law, such that human-made laws empower humans with freedom and personhood--physically, legally, and morally. Consequently, the author reframes positive law (i.e., human-made law) as calling humans to the divine law of love. *In the first three chapters, Opderbeck illustrates how Western law made the historical shift from its foundational transcendent values, through legal positivism, to neurolaw. Contrary to the contemporary jurisprudential trend, the four rudiments of Western law, i.e., Ancient Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Christian jurisprudence, commonly state that positive law has transcendent sources and is preceded by the ideal of law or universal moral principles (chap. 1). In contrast, today's Anglo-American legal scholarship, dominated by legal positivism and instrumentalism, removes transcendent grounds for law, replacing it with a hope that economics and science can guide the law by providing a measurement of "good" and predictions of its outcome (chap. 3). The current reductionist trends in neuroscience paint this picture with a greater hope by revealing detailed biological determinants of human behavior. *In chapters 4 and 5, Opderbeck provides a methodological basis for his analysis in the later chapters. He favors critical realism and fides et ratio approaches as they permit separate and yet complementary research in the two domains. He then demonstrates how together these can help to uncover the meaning of the law from the facts of paleoanthropology and sociobiology. Whereas sociobiologists such as David S. Wilson suggest that the contingent evolution of social orders in animals indicates that law is a construct with no transcendence, Opderbeck highlights the emergence of unique human cognitive abilities such as abstraction, language, and writing, which he argues enable the law to transcend the social orders observed in other species. *After showing that the facts of paleoanthropology and sociobiology can be interpreted differently from a materialist view, Opderbeck continues his philosophical criticism of the reductionism/materialism on which neurolaw is based (chap. 6). He points out that the fields of neuroscience and the philosophy of mind retain positivist assumptions. The author then identifies three problems in materialistic/reductionistic/positivist views of the law. First, reductionism cannot provide a coherent epistemological ground to make a truth statement since reason and consciousness are only illusory. Second, neurolaw proposes social engineering toward achieving behavioral normalcy in the population, but this leads to obscurity in value judgement--and, more seriously, to totalitarianism. Finally, materialism easily leads to nihilism. *Opderbeck's theological vision (and counterproposal to neurolaw) is uncovered in the last three chapters of the book. In chapter 7, he discusses the ontology of the human mind and free will. For this, he rejects the nonreductive physicalism of theologians such as Nancey Murphy and Robert van Gulick. He then finds more promising a neo-Aristotelian, teleological understanding of natural law as "powers and capacities" that emerge within nature (p. 173). These, rather than deterministic neurobiological rules, can be key to theological synthesis of science and law. To him, this view not only provides a plausible causal or explanatory framework but requires complementary room for transcendence: God's trinitarian, perichoretic transcendental love provides the telos for creation, and so the purpose of positive (human-made) law is to fulfill this transcendental telos through the "powers and capacities" of natural law *Opderbeck then assigns his last chapter to an applied problem, namely the problem of violence in the enforcement of law. Indeed, this issue appears to be one of the most important motivations for neurolawyers: neuroscience seeks to transform the means of law enforcement from retributive violence to more humane, neurological treatment. Nonetheless, through discussions of Pascal, Derrida, and Agamben, the author demonstrates that the law cannot bring justice without violent enforcement. Therefore, by forgoing divine transcendence it is impossible for neurolaw to overcome the problem of the violence of law. Opderbeck thereby puts forward the necessity of Christian teleology for an ultimate hope. Law is not a matter of deterministic rules but of love and life, and law is not of enforcement but empowering. What makes humans is not our capacity to make free choices but to be free to love and live; this is our telos. *The End of the Law? is a scholarly interdisciplinary book, which crosses over the philosophies of law, mind, science, and theology in order to challenge or re-orient the current dominance of legal/scientific positivism, reductionism, and physicalism among intellectual groups. This dense book suits those who are already exposed to philosophical analysis on some of these topics (or, for readers unfamiliar with some of this terrain, but willing to do some background reading). Despite the degree to which it engages questions in philosophy, the book ultimately seeks to re-orient the law around Trinitarian theology. As this will limit its plausibility in public legal spheres, I do wonder if the philosophical argument could have been further developed for those who do not hold to Trinitarian theology (or any theology). *As a neuroscientist I would add one further note. There is little interest within neuroscience today in the problem of free will. In fact, students are discouraged from studying the question, as it is considered an unsuitable subject for scientific investigation. Most of us stay "scientifically agnostic," although individual scientists have their own philosophies or perspectives. Given that neuroscience is still restricted to a deterministic regime, free will can only be falsifiable but not verifiable, because it is widely considered beyond the laws of nature. It is, therefore, not surprising that one finds only evidence against free will, which comes from the epistemological constraints of the discipline of neuroscience today. I strongly suggest that proponents of neurolaw scrutinize at what point neuroscience reaches its methodological limits before assuming a particular ontological interpretation of experimental results to be "neuroscientific" or even unfalsifiable. The neurolaw program appears to be built without adequate recognition of these interpretive limits within neuroscience, no doubt due to its positivist assumptions. Overall, in Opderbeck's book readers will encounter rich and complex discussions across different fields integrating law, science, and theology. Although Opderbeck writes from a Roman Catholic perspective, this book does not feel like an in-house discussion--his foundational arguments are rooted in classical Trinitarian metaphysics and Protestants willing to work through Opderbeck's conceptually dense discussions will find much of value in this work. *Reviewed by Kuwook Cha, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4.

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This article examines the contributions of modern schools of law and economics to the equality rights of workers with disabilities. While neo-classical law and economics generally advocates the supremacy of free markets to operate without government interference and legal regulation, many of the newer schools of law and economics offer highly creative solutions and dynamic approaches that may offer real hope to people with disabilities. The merits and weaknesses of the theories of these modern schools are discussed in light of the social model of disability. The schools are examined by drawing on examples from Canadian and American jurisprudence. Specifically, the extent to which the schools provide robust explanations for labour market policy is explored. The author argues that neo-institutional law and economics, feminist law and economics, and critical race theory law and economics hold out the most promise for understanding the implications of the social model of disability.

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<p class="MsoBodyText2" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This paper examines the sources of the resistance to liberalization in the United States and its effects on the political climate in which the WTO member nations continue to pursue liberalization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This analysis utilizes the findings of mainstream economic theory to argue that opposition to the WTO is rooted in rational economic decision-making. A majority-voting model is used to more formally illustrate that this rational decision making affects the composition of public opposition and results in a resistance to liberalization by a majority of the populace, even if a majority will benefit from the movement toward free trade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the theoretical analysis focusing on the importance of Trade Adjustment Assistance and continued multilateral liberalization through the WTO.</span></span></p>

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In her article, Jodi Dean formulates the hypothesis that we are witnesses to a regressive transformation of the capitalistic historical formation into something new, which can be tentatively called neo-feudalism. Capitalism is no longer valorizing itself, that is, reproducing its social conditions and fostering certain new conditions; it is becoming less oriented toward the organization of labor and more inclined to coercion and direct domination. A reflexivization of capitalism is taking place in its attitudes toward supremacy, and the latter is becoming more explicit. Dean indicates the four main tendencies of neo-feudalization: parcellation (fragmentation but reinforcement) of sovereignty; a new quasi-class hierarchy (an exponential increase in inequality); geographic polarization between megalopolises and the provinces or hinterlands (not only along the postcolonial North-South axis, but between hub cities and small cities within the developed countries); and increasing insecurity and apocalyptic fantasies (from which citizens shield themselves with drugs). This quartet of tendencies strikingly resembles the central features of the European Middle Ages, but this time they are taking quite different social and technological forms. Communicative capitalism makes citizens entirely dependent on the platforms where they are not merely free workers but also passive providers of data. If Dean’s hypothesis is correct, then such palliative means of struggle against inequality as democracy and free elections will not work any longer. The author for-mulates the alternative between communism and feudalism and claims that, in a neo-feudal situation, the struggle for communism would by familiar stages become easier as oppression and the prerequisites for communism become more evident.

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1. Guy Debord in the Land of the Long WeekendIt’s the weekend – leisure time. It’s the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the “total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production” in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily “treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.” But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of “political economy”: “the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the ‘perfected denial of man’.” (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the “perfected denial” of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.This Saturday The Weekend Australian runs an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson, defending ABC Radio National’s Stephen Crittenden, whose program The Religion Report has been axed. “Some of Crittenden’s finest half-hours have been devoted to Islam in Australia in the wake of September 11,” Pearson writes. “Again and again he’s confronted a left-of-centre audience that expected multi-cultural pieties with disturbing assertions.” Along the way in this admirable Crusade, Pearson notes that Crittenden has exposed “the Left’s recent tendency to ally itself with Islam.” According to Pearson, Crittenden has also thankfully given oxygen to claims by James Cook University’s Mervyn Bendle, the “fairly conservative academic whose work sometimes appears in [these] pages,” that “the discipline of critical terrorism studies has been captured by neo-Marxists of a postmodern bent” (30). Both of these points are well beyond misunderstanding or untested proposition. If Pearson means them sincerely he should be embarrassed and sacked. But of course he does not and will not be. These are deliberate lies, the confabulations of an eminent right-wing culture warrior whose job is to vilify minorities and intellectuals (Bendle escapes censure as an academic because he occasionally scribbles for the Murdoch press). It should be observed, too, how the patent absurdity of Pearson’s remarks reveals the extent to which he holds the intelligence of his readers in contempt. And he is not original in peddling these toxic wares.In their insightful—often hilarious—study of Australian opinion writers, The War on Democracy, Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler identify the left-academic-Islam nexus as the brain-child of former Treasurer-cum-memoirist Peter Costello. The germinal moment was “a speech to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005” concerning anti-Americanism in Australian schools. Lucy and Mickler argue that “it was only a matter of time” before a conservative politician or journalist took the plunge to link the left and terrorism, and Costello plunged brilliantly. He drew a mental map of the Great Chain of Being: left-wing academics taught teacher trainees to be anti-American; teacher trainees became teachers and taught kids to be anti-American; anti-Americanism morphs into anti-Westernism; anti-Westernism veers into terrorism (38). This is contempt for the reasoning capacity of the Australian people and, further still, contempt for any observable reality. Not for nothing was Costello generally perceived by the public as a politician whose very physiognomy radiated smugness and contempt.Recycling Costello, Christopher Pearson’s article subtly interpellates the reader as an ordinary, common-sense individual who instinctively feels what’s right and has no need to think too much—thinking too much is the prerogative of “neo-Marxists” and postmodernists. Ultimately, Pearson’s article is about channelling outrage: directing the down-to-earth passions of the Australian people against stock-in-trade culture-war hate figures. And in Pearson’s paranoid world, words like “neo-Marxist” and “postmodern” are devoid of historical or intellectual meaning. They are, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy repeatedly demonstrate, mere ciphers packed with the baggage of contempt for independent critical thought itself.Contempt is everywhere this weekend. The Weekend Australian’s colour magazine runs a feature story on Malcolm Turnbull: one of those familiar profiles designed to reveal the everyday human touch of the political classes. In this puff-piece, Jennifer Hewett finds Turnbull has “a restless passion for participating in public life” (20); that beneath “the aggressive political rhetoric […] behind the journalist turned lawyer turned banker turned politician turned would-be prime minister is a man who really enjoys that human interaction, however brief, with the many, many ordinary people he encounters” (16). Given all this energetic turning, it’s a wonder that Turnbull has time for human interactions at all. The distinction here of Turnbull and “many, many ordinary people” – the anonymous masses – surely runs counter to Hewett’s brief to personalise and quotidianise him. Likewise, those two key words, “however brief”, have an unfortunate, unintended effect. Presumably meant to conjure a picture of Turnbull’s hectic schedules and serial turnings, the words also convey the image of a patrician who begrudgingly knows one of the costs of a political career is that common flesh must be pressed—but as gingerly as possible.Hewett proceeds to disclose that Turnbull is “no conservative cultural warrior”, “onfounds stereotypes” and “hates labels” (like any baby-boomer rebel) and “has always read widely on political philosophy—his favourite is Edmund Burke”. He sees the “role of the state above all as enabling people to do their best” but knows that “the main game is the economy” and is “content to play mainstream gesture politics” (19). I am genuinely puzzled by this and imagine that my intelligence is being held in contempt once again. That the man of substance is given to populist gesturing is problematic enough; but that the Burke fan believes the state is about personal empowerment is just too much. Maybe Turnbull is a fan of Burke’s complex writings on the sublime and the beautiful—but no, Hewett avers, Turnbull is engaged by Burke’s “political philosophy”. So what is it in Burke that Turnbull finds to favour?Turnbull’s invocation of Edmund Burke is empty, gestural and contradictory. The comfortable notion that the state helps people to realise their potential is contravened by Burke’s view that the state functions so “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection… by a power out of themselves” (151). Nor does Burke believe that anyone of humble origins could or should rise to the top of the social heap: “The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person… the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule” (138).If Turnbull’s main game as a would-be statesman is the economy, Burke profoundly disagrees: “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection”—a sublime entity, not an economic manager (194). Burke understands, long before Antonio Gramsci or Louis Althusser, that individuals or social fractions must be made admirably “obedient” to the state “by consent or force” (195). Burke has a verdict on mainstream gesture politics too: “When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition [of the state] becomes low and base” (136).Is Malcolm Turnbull so contemptuous of the public that he assumes nobody will notice the gross discrepancies between his own ideals and what Burke stands for? His invocation of Burke is, indeed, “mainstream gesture politics”: on one level, “Burke” signifies nothing more than Turnbull’s performance of himself as a deep thinker. In this process, the real Edmund Burke is historically erased; reduced to the status of stage-prop in the theatrical production of Turnbull’s mass-mediated identity. “Edmund Burke” is re-invented as a term in an aesthetic repertoire.This transmutation of knowledge and history into mere cipher is the staple trick of culture-war discourse. Jennifer Hewett casts Turnbull as “no conservative culture warrior”, but he certainly shows a facility with culture-war rhetoric. And as much as Turnbull “confounds stereotypes” his verbal gesture to Edmund Burke entrenches a stereotype: at another level, the incantation “Edmund Burke” is implicitly meant to connect Turnbull with conservative tradition—in the exact way that John Howard regularly self-nominated as a “Burkean conservative”.This appeal to tradition effectively places “the people” in a power relation. Tradition has a sublimity that is bigger than us; it precedes us and will outlast us. Consequently, for a politician to claim that tradition has fashioned him, that he is welded to it or perhaps even owns it as part of his heritage, is to glibly imply an authority greater than that of “the many, many ordinary people”—Burke’s hair-dressers and tallow-chandlers—whose company he so briefly enjoys.In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).2. Jean Baudrillard, the Nazis and Public MemoryIn 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich’s Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe was on loan to Franco’s forces. On 26 April that year, the Condor Legion bombed the market-town of Guernica: the first deliberate attempt to obliterate an entire town from the air and the first experiment in what became known as “terror bombing”—the targeting of civilians. A legacy of this violence was Pablo Picasso’s monumental canvas Guernica – the best-known anti-war painting in art history.When US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on 5 February 2003 to make the case for war on Iraq, he stopped to face the press in the UN building’s lobby. The doorstop was globally televised, packaged as a moment of incredible significance: history in the making. It was also theatre: a moment in which history was staged as “event” and the real traces of history were carefully erased. Millions of viewers world-wide were undoubtedly unaware that the blue backdrop before which Powell stood was specifically designed to cover the full-scale tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica. This one-act, agitprop drama was a splendid example of politics as aesthetic action: a “performance” of history in the making which required the loss of actual historical memory enshrined in Guernica. Powell’s performance took its cues from the culture wars, which require the ceaseless erasure of history and public memory—on this occasion enacted on a breathtaking global, rather than national, scale.Inside the UN chamber, Powell’s performance was equally staged-crafted. As he brandished vials of ersatz anthrax, the power-point behind him (the theatrical set) showed artists’ impressions of imaginary mobile chemical weapons laboratories. Powell was playing lead role in a kind of populist, hyperreal production. It was Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernism, no less, as the media space in which Powell acted out the drama was not a secondary representation of reality but a reality of its own; the overheads of mobile weapons labs were simulacra, “models of a real without origins or reality”, pictures referring to nothing but themselves (2). In short, Powell’s performance was anchored in a “semiurgic” aesthetic; and it was a dreadful real-life enactment of Walter Benjamin’s maxim that “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (241).For Benjamin, “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate.” Fascism gave “these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.” In turn, this required “the introduction of aesthetics into politics”, the objective of which was “the production of ritual values” (241). Under Adolf Hitler’s Reich, people were able to express themselves but only via the rehearsal of officially produced ritual values: by their participation in the disquisition on what Germany meant and what it meant to be German, by the aesthetic regulation of their passions. As Frederic Spotts’ fine study Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals, this passionate disquisition permeated public and private life, through the artfully constructed total field of national narratives, myths, symbols and iconographies. And the ritualistic reiteration of national values in Nazi Germany hinged on two things: contempt and memory loss.By April 1945, as Berlin fell, Hitler’s contempt for the German people was at its apogee. Hitler ordered a scorched earth operation: the destruction of everything from factories to farms to food stores. The Russians would get nothing, the German people would perish. Albert Speer refused to implement the plan and remembered that “Until then… Germany and Hitler had been synonymous in my mind. But now I saw two entities opposed… A passionate love of one’s country… a leader who seemed to hate his people” (Sereny 472). But Hitler’s contempt for the German people was betrayed in the blusterous pages of Mein Kampf years earlier: “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous” (165). On the back of this belief, Hitler launched what today would be called a culture war, with its Jewish folk devils, loathsome Marxist intellectuals, incitement of popular passions, invented traditions, historical erasures and constant iteration of values.When Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer fled Fascism, landing in the United States, their view of capitalist democracy borrowed from Benjamin and anticipated both Baudrillard and Guy Debord. In their well-know essay on “The Culture Industry”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they applied Benjamin’s insight on mass self-expression and the maintenance of property relations and ritual values to American popular culture: “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves”, but the freedom to choose how to do so “proves to be the freedom to choose what is always the same”, manufactured by monopoly capital (161–162). Anticipating Baudrillard, they found a society in which “only the copy appears: in the movie theatre, the photograph; on the radio, the recording” (143). And anticipating Debord’s “perfected denial of man” they found a society where work and leisure were structured by the repetition-compulsion principles of capitalism: where people became consumers who appeared “s statistics on research organization charts” (123). “Culture” came to do people’s thinking for them: “Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown” (144).In this mass-mediated environment, a culture of repetitions, simulacra, billboards and flickering screens, Adorno and Horkheimer concluded that language lost its historical anchorages: “Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes” in precisely the same way that the illusory “free” expression of passions in Germany operated, where words were “debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community” (166).I know that the turf of the culture wars, the US and Australia, are not Fascist states; and I know that “the first one to mention the Nazis loses the argument”. I know, too, that there are obvious shortcomings in Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to popular culture and these have been widely criticised. However, I would suggest that there is a great deal of value still in Frankfurt School analyses of what we might call the “authoritarian popular” which can be applied to the conservative prosecution of populist culture wars today. Think, for example, how the concept of a “pseudo folk community” might well describe the earthy, common-sense public constructed and interpellated by right-wing culture warriors: America’s Joe Six-Pack, John Howard’s battlers or Kevin Rudd’s working families.In fact, Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations on language go to the heart of a contemporary culture war strategy. Words lose their history, becoming ciphers and “triggers” in a politicised lexicon. Later, Roland Barthes would write that this is a form of myth-making: “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things.” Barthes reasoned further that “Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types”, generating a “cultural logic” and an ideological re-ordering of the world (142). Types such as “neo-Marxist”, “postmodernist” and “Burkean conservative”.Surely, Benjamin’s assessment that Fascism gives “the people” the occasion to express itself, but only through “values”, describes the right’s pernicious incitement of the mythic “dispossessed mainstream” to reclaim its voice: to shout down the noisy minorities—the gays, greenies, blacks, feminists, multiculturalists and neo-Marxist postmodernists—who’ve apparently been running the show. Even more telling, Benjamin’s insight that the incitement to self-expression is connected to the maintenance of property relations, to economic power, is crucial to understanding the contemptuous conduct of culture wars.3. Jesus Dunked in Urine from Kansas to CronullaAmerican commentator Thomas Frank bases his study What’s the Matter with Kansas? on this very point. Subtitled How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank’s book is a striking analysis of the indexation of Chicago School free-market reform and the mobilisation of “explosive social issues—summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to pro-business policies”; but it is the “economic achievements” of free-market capitalism, “not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars” that are conservatism’s “greatest monuments.” Nevertheless, the culture wars are necessary as Chicago School economic thinking consigns American communities to the rust belt. The promise of “free-market miracles” fails ordinary Americans, Frank reasons, leaving them in “backlash” mode: angry, bewildered and broke. And in this context, culture wars are a convenient form of anger management: “Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred” by nationalist, populist moralism and free-market fundamentalism (5).When John Howard received the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award, on 6 March 2008, he gave a speech in Washington titled “Sharing Our Common Values”. The nub of the speech was Howard’s revelation that he understood the index of neo-liberal economics and culture wars precisely as Thomas Frank does. Howard told the AEI audience that under his prime ministership Australia had “pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy” and that this inevitably meant “dislocation for communities”. This “reform-dislocation” package needed the palliative of a culture war, with his government preaching the “consistency and reassurance” of “our nation’s traditional values… pride in her history”; his government “became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity which had been in progress for some years.” Howard’s boast that his government ended the “seminar” on national identity insinuates an important point. “Seminar” is a culture-war cipher for intellection, just as “pride” is code for passion; so Howard’s self-proclaimed achievement, in Terry Eagleton’s terms, was to valorise “the blood and the body” over “theoretical analysis”. This speaks stratospheric contempt: ordinary people have their identity fashioned for them; they need not think about it, only feel it deeply and passionately according to “ritual values”. Undoubtedly this paved the way to Cronulla.The rubric of Howard’s speech—“Sharing Our Common Values”—was both a homage to international neo-conservatism and a reminder that culture wars are a trans-national phenomenon. In his address, Howard said that in all his “years in politics” he had not heard a “more evocative political slogan” than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”—the rhetorical catch-cry for moral re-awakening that launched the culture wars. According to Lawrence Grossberg, America’s culture wars were predicated on the perception that the nation was afflicted by “a crisis of our lack of passion, of not caring enough about the values we hold… a crisis of nihilism which, while not restructuring our ideological beliefs, has undermined our ability to organise effective action on their behalf”; and this “New Right” alarmism “operates in the conjuncture of economics and popular culture” and “a popular struggle by which culture can lead politics” in the passionate pursuit of ritual values (31–2). When popular culture leads politics in this way we are in the zone of the image, myth and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “trigger words” that have lost their history. In this context, McKenzie Wark observes that “radical writers influenced by Marx will see the idea of culture as compensation for a fragmented and alienated life as a con. Guy Debord, perhaps the last of the great revolutionary thinkers of Europe, will call it “the spectacle”’ (20). Adorno and Horkheimer might well have called it “the authoritarian popular”. As Jonathan Charteris-Black’s work capably demonstrates, all politicians have their own idiolect: their personally coded language, preferred narratives and myths; their own vision of who “the people” might or should be that is conjured in their words. But the language of the culture wars is different. It is not a personal idiolect. It is a shared vocabulary, a networked vernacular, a pervasive trans-national aesthetic that pivots on the fact that words like “neo-Marxist”, “postmodern” and “Edmund Burke” have no historical or intellectual context or content: they exist as the ciphers of “values”. And the fact that culture warriors continually mouth them is a supreme act of contempt: it robs the public of its memory. And that’s why, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy so wittily argues, if there are any postmodernists left they’ll be on the right.Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and, later, Debord and Grossberg understood how the political activation of the popular constitutes a hegemonic project. The result is nothing short of persuading “the people” to collaborate in its own oppression. The activation of the popular is perfectly geared to an age where the main stage of political life is the mainstream media; an age in which, Charteris-Black notes, political classes assume the general antipathy of publics to social change and act on the principle that the most effective political messages are sold to “the people” by an appeal “to familiar experiences”—market populism (10). In her substantial study The Persuaders, Sally Young cites an Australian Labor Party survey, conducted by pollster Rod Cameron in the late 1970s, in which the party’s message machine was finely tuned to this populist position. The survey also dripped with contempt for ordinary people: their “Interest in political philosophy… is very low… They are essentially the products (and supporters) of mass market commercialism”. Young observes that this view of “the people” was the foundation of a new order of political advertising and the conduct of politics on the mass-media stage. Cameron’s profile of “ordinary people” went on to assert that they are fatally attracted to “a moderate leader who is strong… but can understand and represent their value system” (47): a prescription for populist discourse which begs the question of whether the values a politician or party represent via the media are ever really those of “the people”. More likely, people are hegemonised into a value system which they take to be theirs. Writing of the media side of the equation, David Salter raises the point that when media “moguls thunder about ‘the public interest’ what they really mean is ‘what we think the public is interested in”, which is quite another matter… Why this self-serving deception is still so sheepishly accepted by the same public it is so often used to violate remains a mystery” (40).Sally Young’s Persuaders retails a story that she sees as “symbolic” of the new world of mass-mediated political life. The story concerns Mark Latham and his “revolutionary” journeys to regional Australia to meet the people. “When a political leader who holds a public meeting is dubbed a ‘revolutionary’”, Young rightly observes, “something has gone seriously wrong”. She notes how Latham’s “use of old-fashioned ‘meet-and-greet’campaigning methods was seen as a breath of fresh air because it was unlike the type of packaged, stage-managed and media-dependent politics that have become the norm in Australia.” Except that it wasn’t. “A media pack of thirty journalists trailed Latham in a bus”, meaning, that he was not meeting the people at all (6–7). He was traducing the people as participants in a media spectacle, as his “meet and greet” was designed to fill the image-banks of print and electronic media. Even meeting the people becomes a media pseudo-event in which the people impersonate the people for the camera’s benefit; a spectacle as artfully deceitful as Colin Powell’s UN performance on Iraq.If the success of this kind of “self-serving deception” is a mystery to David Salter, it would not be so to the Frankfurt School. For them, an understanding of the processes of mass-mediated politics sits somewhere near the core of their analysis of the culture industries in the “democratic” world. I think the Frankfurt school should be restored to a more important role in the project of cultural studies. Apart from an aversion to jazz and other supposedly “elitist” heresies, thinkers like Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer and their progeny Debord have a functional claim to provide the theory for us to expose the machinations of the politics of contempt and its aesthetic ruses.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979. 120–167.Barthes Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1972. 109–58.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217–251.Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.Grossberg, Lawrence. “It’s a Sin: Politics, Post-Modernity and the Popular.” It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodern Politics & Culture. Eds. Tony Fry, Ann Curthoys and Paul Patton. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988. 6–71.Hewett, Jennifer. “The Opportunist.” The Weekend Australian Magazine. 25–26 October 2008. 16–22.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Pimlico, 1993.Howard, John. “Sharing Our Common Values.” Washington: Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute. 5 March 2008. ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,233328945-5014047,00html›.Lucy, Niall and Steve Mickler. The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006.Pearson, Christopher. “Pray for Sense to Prevail.” The Weekend Australian. 25–26 October 2008. 30.Salter, David. The Media We Deserve: Underachievement in the Fourth Estate. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Spotts, Frederic. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Pimlico, 2003.Wark, McKenzie. The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997.Young, Sally. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004.

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Figure 1 Recently I was walking down a street in The Mission district of San Francisco, which has a high proportion of the city’s Mexican population, when I was struck by a mural on the side of a shop. Vivid and colourful, the mural depicted a large Aztec face surrounded by lush jungle, aesthetically balanced by a carved stone face on the other end of the mural (Figure 1). It was not the beauty, size or colour of the artwork that most impressed me but the way it replicated art I had seen days before walking around Aztec ruins near Mexico City. The paintings I had seen at these pyramids were close to two thousand years old, and this mural, complete with ‘tags’, was created with spray-paint in (probably) the last few years. One was in the ‘traditional home’ of the Aztecs, Mexico, and the other in the Mexican neighbourhood of a neo-colonial American city. However, while one site was celebrating people long since dead, the other a vibrantly alive culture in the cityscape of San Francisco. The migrant, or the diasporic community, is central to many contemporary discussions on the effect of increased globalisation on human cultures and societies (Chambers ). This is not to suggest, however, that globalisation or its impact on human cultures is only a recent phenomenon. Such an assumption implies a sense of amnesia about the processes of migration and diaspora that both instigated, and developed from, processes such as colonisation. San Francisco’s Mexican community do not represent the colonised indigenous people of the United States (US), but they have been affected by a colonial history of their own and the neo-colonialism of the US through processes such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This rendering, while obviously reductionist, indicates the complex nature of the position of Mexican migrants in San Francisco, and the multiple places, events, histories, countries, politics and policies that shape their journey. The picture of an Aztec face, situated within a largely Mexican neighbourhood, fiercely facing San Francisco presents a number of questions around ideas of culture, hybridity and thirdspace that are connected to theories of complexity. The concept of complexity provides a rich framework through which to engage with themes of culture and hybridity, explored through this symbolic painted presence in the urban landscape. Engagement with complexity theories can illustrate the already present, albeit unarticulated, engagement with complexity in concepts such as cultural hybridity, as well as opening up new ways in which to engage with such ideas. In this paper, I seek to illustrate how complexity can develop concepts in humanities, allowing for a greater exploration and sense of adventure of what is and can be. I will explore the idea of culture and its complexity, and how it can be enriched by complexity. It is an exploration of what can be produced and is emerging rather than the (continued) search for the ‘real’ or an uncovering of bedrock ‘truth’ in social science. As a number of commentators have argued, this idea continues to persist in social science research, despite the apparent changes wrought by poststructuralist thought (Crang, “There Is Nothing”; Crang, “New Orthodoxy”; Lorimer). This article seeks to contribute to current dialogues regarding how theories of complexity might enrich social science research using the concept of culture. The limitations of paper size and breadth of topic shape this article as gesturing towards the possibilities of engaging with the notion of complexity in social science, explored using the symbol of a mural and its location within the Mission District of San Francisco. There are a number of theoretical positions that fall under the notion of complexity; these include chaos theory, catastrophe theory, mathematical complexity and fractals (Manson). From the 1970s, there has been an increasing acceptance and application of complexity theories into social science and popular knowledge, in particular from the late 1990s (Nowotny; Thrift; Manson; Urry, Global Complexity). In my discussion of complexity I am drawing on the translations of these ideas into the domain of social science. I am looking at the disjuncture between cause and effect and the concept of emergence (Thrift; Urry, Global Complexity). These concepts, I argue, can be used to develop areas in the social science such as post-colonial theory that may, at first, seem unrelated. As complexity theory is, well, so complex and really an umbrella term or a "scientific amalgam", it is important to clarify how these theories will be interpreted here (Thrift). Emergence, according to Urry, is the way in which things self-organise over time (Urry, “The Complexities” 33). To expand on this, emergence can be described as the process of self-organisation of things (human and non-human) to create a new entity, an assemblage (Urry, Global Complexity). A central idea of emergence is that complexity is more than ‘complicated’, more than simply the coming together of multiple entities or aspects. The relationship between its parts constitute a new set of entities that make the whole more than the sum of its parts (Urry, Global Complexity; Thrift). It is also the process though which new hybrid entities emerge from this assemblage of previously separate entities. To return to the mural, an analysis of this painting (based on the hypothesis that it has been created by the diaspora from Mexico in San Francisco) would suggest it has emerged through an assemblage of processes of migration, issues of cultural heritage, ideas of authentic tradition, resistance, social inequity, difference and (possibly) a shopkeepers desire for a nice wall. All the known (and unknown) elements, human and non-human, that have (hypothetically) influenced this murals creation do not simply fit together in an equation that automatically results in ‘graffiti art’. Instead it has emerged due to a unique coming together of elements, an assemblage, in a particular time and geographical location. The disjuncture between cause and effect highlighted in a complexity perspective is illustrated here as it is possible to see the process of colonisation of Mexico and the United States has started a chain of events that have lead to the creation of this mural. However, there is no direct line of cause and effect that the act of colonisation would lead to the construction of such a mural. While we can begin to unpack this process in hindsight, the emergent processes that have lead to its creation ensure that such an endeavour will not easily or ever produce a simple equation for its occurrence. Cultural Complexity Social science in many ways relies on the notion that things are not easily analysed, not simply quantifiable or knowable (Dwyer and Limb). The actual language of complexity, however, has generally been missing from such discussions. This absence has limited the ability or, perhaps more accurately, the willingness to articulate logically and rationally what it means to gesture to an unknowingness, to processes of which outcomes cannot be fully predicted or explained (Lorimer; Crang, “There Is Nothing”). It is perhaps only now that it has been ‘validated’ through scientific knowledge such as physics, that we can embrace these ideas explicitly in social science. Using the notion of culture I will illustrate how complexity has been part of social science before it was articulated as such, what complexity theory offers in relation to the social world and how it might be engaged in relation to theory such cultural hybridity. The concept of culture in social science has expanded from the notion of fixed, hom*ogenous ‘way of life’ in a specific geographic space, in early anthropological accounts, to a more complex processual view of culture (Ang, Not Speaking; Couldry). The work of Raymond Williams was seminal in the development of this idea of culture, which continues to be a central aspect of disciplines such as cultural geography and cultural studies (Anderson and Gale; Anderson et al.; Anderson; Ang, “Predicament”; Ang, Not Speaking). This work illustrates the complexities of culture as not only porous and shifting at its boundaries but also internally differentiated so that cultural coherence cannot be assumed (Anderson; Ang, “Predicament”). In terms of complexity theory, the entities that together form a ‘culture’ exist outside of the culture and can in turn work to destabilise and change the culture internally (DeLanda). While recognising that there have always been flows of people, trade and ideas around the world, it has been argued that the current epoch sees these flows at an unprecedented rate (Appadurai; Castells). The level of trans-national migration and movement of people, and the disruption of space and time created by processes of globalisation, further challenge conceptions of culture as fixed or hom*ogenous (Couldry). This expansion of the notion of culture has dual connotations for my reading of the mural. The mural depicts a ‘traditional’ image of Mexican culture before it was affected by contemporary globalisation, but this is being depicted from the position of a diasporic subject in downtown San Francisco. In the painting of this mural it is possible to see the tension between idealisations of more traditional conceptions of a fixed, hom*ogenous culture and the changes wrought on this culture by globalisation. The contrast of the painting’s subject and its location conveys the process of emergence of the (imagined) Mexican-American painter’s hybrid identity. Global Complexity These developments in cultural theory present a complex notion of culture, highlighting the influence of globalisation in creating this complexity. The interjection of complexity theory into social science more recently can enrich these readings of the complexity of cultural systems. It provides an overarching framework through which to organise and analyse concepts such as culture, but also can also connect this dynamic and processual ‘culture’ to a broader system of human and non-human entities. According to Urry, the global “comprises a set of emergent systems possessing properties and patterns that are often far from equilibrium. Complexity emphasises that there are diverse networked time-space paths, that there are often massive disproportionalities between cause and effects, and that unpredictable and yet irreversible patterns seem to characterise all social and physical systems.” (Urry, Global Complexity 8). A key notion of global complexity as discussed by Urry is that the ‘global’ is comprised and created through networks, drawing on the work of Appadurai and Castells. This coming together or connection of a multitude of varied human and non-human entities is seen to produce the emergence of things not connected to their cause, highlighting the disconnection between cause and effect. However, while it emphasises a disjuncture between cause and effect in terms of prediction, complexity theory has also been utilised to illustrate how things assemble together and from these things new things are made. Entities such as cultural hybridity can be seen as emerging from complex assemblages – time, place, people – from which unexpected, unpredictable entities emerge. The mural in San Francisco can be seen as one such entity. Thirdspace To complete gesture towards the use of complexity theory in research on culture, I would like to engage with the notion of thirdspace. This concept contributes to discussions of cultural complexity, as it seeks to describe the emergence of new hybrid forms created by the coming together of different cultural entities. The subject of the migrant, that I have sought to discuss in relation to the mural, is perhaps the epitome of the hybrid figure in the ‘in-between space’ as Ian Chambers has discussed. Chambers discusses the migrant as in-between home and the new country, and the processes of change that migrants undergo, taking on from the new but not letting go completely of the ‘old’, and so to become something different again. Homi Bhabha also discusses the idea of the hybrid, but presents the ‘in-between’ space as a product of the colonial encounter. Bhabha uses to the term ‘thirdspace’ to describe the hybridity that arises from the forced co-existence of groups with different histories, from different places, in a shared space. This creates a ‘thirdspace’ that is not of ‘One nor the Other but something else besides, in between” (Bhabha 219). It is this space of emergence that is simultaneously a space of unknowableness that is being presented by these theorists. The concept of thirdspace engenders an understanding of the complexity that social changes bring about as they facilitate or force the interaction of different groups. While complexity may mean that we do not know what the result is of such a coming together or intersection, the concept of a thirdspace allows us to see the intricacies of the complexity that is created illustrated by the case of the mural. A complexity framework also indicates to the assemblage of multiplicity of entities – human and non-human, material and immaterial – that these hybrid subjects have emerged from, enriching the possible field for social science enquiry. While the hybrid – human or non-human entity – is not simply a sum of its parts, or that which came together to produce it, it does provide pointers to follow in uncovering the intricacies of its make up. It is, however, also the unknowableness, the newness, produced that makes it more than a composite that injects both challenge and wonder into intellectual endeavor. Conclusion In attempting to draw common threads through these examples of cultural theory I wish to highlight how the notion of complexity supports theories such as hybridity that seek to outline rather than map certain social processes. The multiple and complex subjectivities and experiences that emerge from the colonial encounter, or process of migration do not lend themselves to easy counting or mapping. To dissect such experiences for greater understanding, to attempt to put it all together like a puzzle to find a true picture surely creates an incomplete picture. Beginning instead from a position of complexity does not deny the need to explore such processes but suggests different methods and different outcomes are sought. It gestures towards a different framework through which to understanding the world. The interjection of complexity theory into the social sciences offers a rich conceptual framework through which to re-look at and develop ideas already central to such research. As a mural on a wall in San Francisco connects to 2000 year old frescos on pyramids at the edge of Mexico City, so too does it speak to us of diaspora, hybridity, and the thirdspaces that arise post-colonially in a globalised world. The effect of these processes on ideas of culture, identity and place, the local and the global are all engaged and enhanced by complexity theories that present ideas of emergence. Urry argues that complexity breaks down any connection between cause and effect. It tells us of the unknowability of things, and so indicates that what we can map or frame within a research project or paper is always incomplete. It opens a space for wonder, for possibility, for change. It breaks down certainty and the idea that there is a process or reality that can be made known through social inquiry. Adopting this approach may seem like an abdication, suggesting a level of futility to research, a giving up or giving in. However, it can instead inspires us to look beyond what we assume is true or the obvious effect from a particular cause, to explore the complexity of the processes through which things come into being. It is this idea that I have attempted to gesture towards in considering the places, people, time and multiple other entities have assembled in the creation of a single piece of graffiti art. It is to say that the greatest value of complexity theory to social science research is perhaps not that it provides answers but that it gestures to (multiple) beginnings. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Jayde Cahir and my two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, for providing the funding to attend the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference in San Francisco. References Anderson, Kay. “Introduction.” Cultural Geographies. Eds. Kay Anderson and Fay Gale. 2nd ed. Australia: Addision Wesley Longman, 1999. 1-21. Anderson, Kay, et al. “A Rough Guide.” Handbook of Cultural Geography. Eds. Kay Anderson et al. London: Sage, 2003. 1-35. Anderson, Kay, and Fay Gale, eds. Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992. Ang, Ien. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. New York: Routledge, 2001. ———. “The Predicament of Diversity: Multiculturalism in Practice at the Art Museum.” ethnicities 5.3 (2005): 305-20. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Public Worlds, Volume 1. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 2004. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Chambers, Iain. Migrancy, Culture and Identity. London: Routledge, 1994. Couldry, Nick. Inside Culture: Re-Imagining the Method of Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2000. Crang, Mike. “Qualitative Methods: The New Orthodoxy?” Progress in Human Geography 26.2 (2002): 647-55. ———. “Qualitative Methods: There Is Nothing outside the Text?” Progress in Human Geography 29.2 (2005): 225-33. DeLanda, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London and New York: Continuum, 2006. Dwyer, Claire, and Melanie Limb. “Introduction: Doing Qualitative Research in Geography.” Qualitative Methodologies for Geographers: Issues and Debates. Eds. Claire Dwyer and Melanie Limb. London: Arnold, 2001. 1-22. Lorimer, Hayden. “Cultural Geography: The Busyness of Being ‘More-than-Representational’.” Progress in Human Geography 29.1 (2005): 83-94. Manson, Steven M. “Simplifying Complexity: A Review of Complexity Theory.” Geoforum 32 (2001): 405-14. Nowotny, Helga. “The Increase of Complexity and Its Reduction: Emergent Interfaces between the Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences.” Theory, Culture and Society 22.5 (2005): 15-31. Thrift, Nigel. “The Place of Complexity.” Theory, Culture and Society 16.3 (1999): 31-69. Urry, John. “The Complexities of the Global.” Theory, Culture and Society 22.5 (2005): 235-54. ———. Global Complexity. Oxford: Polity, 2003. Williams, Raymond. Culture. Glasgow: Fontanta Paperbacks, 1981. Citation reference for this article MLA Style James, Sarah. "Culture and Complexity: Graffiti on a San Francisco Streetscape." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/07-james.php>. APA Style James, S. (Jun. 2007) "Culture and Complexity: Graffiti on a San Francisco Streetscape," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/07-james.php>.

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There is a moment in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth devised to expose the sheer audacity of fossil fuel lobby groups in the United States. In their attempts to address significant scientific consensus and growing public concern over climate change, these groups are resorting to what Gore’s film suggests are grotesque distortions of fact. A particular example highlighted in the film is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CPE—a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil) “pro” energy industry advertisem*nt: “Carbon dioxide”, the ad states. “They call it pollution, we call it life.” While on the one hand employing rhetoric against the “inconvenient truth” that carbon dioxide emissions are ratcheting up the Earth’s temperature, these advertisem*nts also pose a question – though perhaps unintended – that is worth addressing. Where does life reside? This is not an issue of essentialism, but relates to the claims, materials and technologies through which life as a political object emerges. The danger of entertaining the vested interests of polluting industry in a discussion of climate change and its biopolitics is countered by an imperative to acknowledge the ways in which multiple positions in the climate change debate invoke and appeal to ‘life’ as the bottom line, or inviolable interest, of their political, social or economic work. In doing so, other questions come to the fore that a politics of climate change framed in terms of moral positions or competing values will tend to overlook. These questions concern the manifold practices of life that constitute the contemporary terrain of the political, and the actors and instruments put in this employ. Who speaks for life? And who or what produces it? Climate change as a matter of concern (Latour) has gathered and generated a host of experts, communities, narratives and technical devices all invested in the administration of life. It is, as Malcom Bull argues, “the paradigmatic issue of the new politics,” a politics which “draws people towards the public realm and makes life itself subject to the caprices of state and market” (2). This paper seeks to highlight the politics of life that have emerged around climate change as a public issue. It will argue that these politics appear in incremental and multiple ways that situate an array of actors and interests as active in both contesting and generating the terms of life: what life is and how we come to know it. This way of thinking about climate change debates opposes a prevalent moralistic framework that reads the practices and discourses of debate in terms of oppositional positions alone. While sympathies may flow in varying directions, especially when it comes to such a highly charged and massively consequential issue as climate change, there is little insight to be had from charging the CPE (for example) with manipulating consumers, or misrepresenting well-known facts. Where new and more productive understandings open up is in relation to the fields through which these gathering actors play out their claims to the project of life. These fields, from the state, to the corporation, to the domestic sphere, reveal a complex network of strategies and devices that seek to secure life in constantly renovated terms. Life Politics Biopolitical scholarship in the wake of Foucault has challenged life as a pre-given uncritical category, and sought to highlight the means through which it is put under question and constituted through varying and composing assemblages of practitioners and practices. Such work regards the project of human well-being as highly complex and technical, and has undertaken to document this empirically through close attention to the everyday ecologies in which humans are enmeshed. This is a political and theoretical project in itself, situating political processes in micro, as well as macro, registers, including daily life as a site of (self) management and governance. Rabinow and Rose refer to biopolitical circuits that draw together and inter-relate the multiple sites and scales operative in the administration of life. These involve not just technologies, rationalities and regimes of authority and control, but also politics “from below” in the form of rights claims and community formation and agitation (198). Active in these circuits, too, are corporate and non-state interests for whom the pursuit of maximising life’s qualities and capabilities has become a concern through which “market relations and shareholder value” are negotiated (Rabinow and Rose 211). As many biopolitical scholars argue, biopower—the strategies through which biopolitics are enacted—is characteristic of the “disciplinary neo-liberalism” that has come to define the modern state, and through which the conduct of conduct is practiced (Di Muzio 305). Foucault’s concept of governmentality describes the devolution of state-based disciplinarity and sovereignty to a host of non-state actors, rationalities and strategies of governing, including the self-managing subject, not in opposition to the state, but contributing to its form. According to Bratich, Packer and McCarthy, everyday life is thus “saturated with governmental techniques” (18) in which we are all enrolled. Unlike regimes of biopolitics identified with what Agamben terms “thanopolitics”—the exercise of biopower “which ultimately rests on the power of some to threaten the death of others” (Rabinow and Rose 198), such as the Nazi’s National Socialism and other eugenic campaigns—governmental arts in the service of “vitalist” biopolitics (Rose 1) are increasingly diffused amongst all those with an “interest” in sustaining life, from organisations to individuals. The integration of techniques of self-governance which ask the individual to work on themselves and their own dispositions with State functions has broadened the base by which life is governed, and foregrounded an unsettled terrain of life claims. Rose argues that medical science is at the forefront of these contemporary biopolitics, and to this effect “has […] been fully engaged in the ethical questions of how we should live—of what kinds of creatures we are, of the kinds of obligations that we have to ourselves and to others, of the kinds of techniques we can and should use to improve ourselves” (20). Asking individuals to self-identify through their medical histories and bodily specificities, medical cultures are also shaping new political arrangements, as communities connected by shared genetics or physical conditions, for instance, emerge, evolve and agitate according to the latest medical knowledge. Yet it is not just medicine that provokes ethical work and new political forms. The environment is a key site for life politics that entails a multi-faceted discourse of obligations and entitlements, across fields and scales of engagement. Calculating Environments In line with neo-liberal logic, environmental discourse concerned with ameliorating climate change has increasingly focused upon the individual as an agent of self-monitoring, to both facilitate government agendas at a distance, and to “self-fashion” in the mode of the autonomous subject, securing against external risks (Ong 501). Climate change is commonly represented as such a risk, to both human and non-human life. A recent letter published by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in two leading British medical journals, named climate change as the “biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century” (Morton). As I have argued elsewhere (Potter), security is central to dominant cultures of environmental governance in the West; these cultures tie sustainability goals to various and interrelated regimes of monitoring which attach to concepts of what Clark and Stevenson call “the good ecological citizen” (238). Citizenship is thus practiced through strategies of governmentality which call on individuals to invest not just in their own well-being, but in the broader project of life. Calculation is a primary technique through which modern environmental governance is enacted; calculative strategies are seen to mediate risk, according to Foucault, and consequently to “assure living” (Elden 575). Rationalised schemes for self-monitoring are proliferating under climate change and the project of environmentalism more broadly, something which critics of neo-liberalism have identified as symptomatic of the privatisation of politics that liberal governmentality has fostered. As we have seen in Australia, an evolving policy emphasis on individual practices and the domestic sphere as crucial sites of environmental action – for instance, the introduction of domestic water restrictions, and the phasing out of energy-inefficient light bulbs in the home—provides a leading discourse of ethico-political responsibility. The rise of carbon dioxide counting is symptomatic of this culture, and indicates the distributed fields of life management in contemporary governmentality. Carbon dioxide, as the CPE is keen to point out, is crucial to life, but it is also—in too large an amount—a force of destruction. Its management, in vitalist terms, is thus established as an effort to protect life in the face of death. The concept of “carbon footprinting” has been promoted by governments, NGOs, industry and individuals as a way of securing this goal, and a host of calculative techniques and strategies are employed to this end, across a spectrum of activities and contexts all framed in the interests of life. The footprinting measure seeks to secure living via self-policed limits, which also—in classic biopolitical form—shift previously private practices into a public realm of count-ability and accountability. The carbon footprint, like its associates the ecological footprint and the water footprint, has developed as a multi-faceted tool of citizenship beyond the traditional boundaries of the state. Suggesting an ecological conception of territory and of our relationships and responsibilities to this, the footprint, as a measure of resource use and emissions relative to the Earth’s capacities to absorb these, calculates and visualises the “specific qualities” (Elden 575) that, in a spatialised understanding of security, constitute and define this territory. The carbon footprint’s relatively simple remit of measuring carbon emissions per unit of assessment—be that the individual, the corporation, or the nation—belies the ways in which life is formatted and produced through its calculations. A tangled set of devices, practices and discourses is employed to make carbon and thus life calculable and manageable. Treading Lightly The old environmental adage to “tread lightly upon the Earth” has been literalised in the metaphor of the footprint, which attempts both to symbolise environmental practice and to directly translate data in order to meaningfully communicate necessary boundaries for our living. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2008 exemplifies the growing popularity of the footprint as a political and poetic hook: speaking in terms of our “ecological overshoot,” and the move from “ecological credit to ecological deficit”, the report urges an attendance to our “global footprint” which “now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 per cent” (1). Angela Crombie’s A Lighter Footprint, an instruction manual for sustainable living, is one of a host of media through which individuals are educated in modes of footprint calculation and management. She presents a range of techniques, including carbon offsetting, shifting to sustainable modes of transport, eating and buying differently, recycling and conserving water, to mediate our carbon dioxide output, and to “show […] politicians how easy it is” (13). Governments however, need no persuading from citizens that carbon calculation is an exercise to be harnessed. As governments around the world move (slowly) to address climate change, policies that instrumentalise carbon dioxide emission and reduction via an auditing of credits and deficits have come to the fore—for example, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Chicago Climate Exchange. In Australia, we have the currently-under-debate Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a part of which is the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) that will introduce a system of “carbon credits” and trading in a market-based model of supply and demand. This initiative will put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, and cap the amount of emissions any one polluter can produce without purchasing further credits. In readiness for the scheme, business initiatives are forming to take advantage of this new carbon market. Industries in carbon auditing and off-setting services are consolidating; hectares of trees, already active in the carbon sequestration market, are being cultivated as “carbon sinks” and key sites of compliance for polluters under the AETS. Governments are also planning to turn their tracts of forested public land into carbon credits worth billions of dollars (Arup 7). The attachment of emission measures to goods and services requires a range of calculative experts, and the implementation of new marketing and branding strategies, aimed at conveying the carbon “health” of a product. The introduction of “food mile” labelling (the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the transportation of the food from source to consumer) in certain supermarkets in the United Kingdom is an example of this. Carbon risk analysis and management programs are being introduced across businesses in readiness for the forthcoming “carbon economy”. As one flyer selling “a suite of carbon related services” explains, “early action will give you the edge in understanding and mitigating the risks, and puts you in a prime position to capitalise on the rewards” (MGI Business Solutions Worldwide). In addition, lobby groups are working to ensure exclusions from or the free allocation of permits within the proposed AETS, with degrees of compulsion applied to different industries – the Federal Government, for instance, will provide a $3.9 billion compensation package for the electric power sector when the AETS commences, to enable their “adjustment” to this carbon regime. Performing Life Noortje Mares provides a further means of thinking through the politics of life in the context of climate change by complicating the distinction between public and private interest. Her study of “green living experiments” describes the rise of carbon calculation in the home in recent years, and the implementation of technologies such as the smart electricity meter that provides a constantly updating display of data relating to amounts and cost of energy consumed and the carbon dioxide emitted in the routines of domestic life. Her research tracks the entry of these personal calculative regimes into public life via internet forums such as blogs, where individuals notate or discuss their experiences of pursing low-carbon lifestyles. On the one hand, these calculative practices of living and their public representation can be read as evidencing the pervasive neo-liberal governmentality at work in contemporary environmental practice, where individuals are encouraged to scrupulously monitor their domestic cultures. The rise of auditing as a technology of self, and more broadly as a technique of public accountability, has come under fire for its “immunity-granting role” (Charkiewicz 79), where internal audits become substituted for external compliance and regulation. Mares challenges this reading, however, by demonstrating the ways in which green living experiments “transform everyday material practices into practices of public involvement” that (118) don’t resolve or pin down relations between the individual, the non-human environment, and the social, or reveal a mappable flow of actions and effects between the public realm and the home. The empirical modes of publicity that these individuals employ, “the careful recording of measurements and the reliable descriptions of sensory observation, so as to enable ‘virtual witnessing’ by wider audiences”, open up to much more complex understandings than one of calculative self-discipline at work. As “instrument[s] of public involvement” (120), the experiments that Mares describe locate the politics of life in the embodied socio-material entanglements of the domestic sphere, in arrangements of humans and non-human technologies. Such arrangements, she suggests, are ontologically productive in that they introduce “not only new knowledge, but also new entities […] to society” (119), and as such these experiments and the modes of calculation they employ become active in the composition of reality. Recent work in economic sociology and cultural studies has similarly contended that calculation, far from either a naturalised or thoroughly abstract process, relies upon a host of devices, relations, and techniques: that is, as Gay Hawkins explains, calculative processes “have to be enacted” (108). Environmental governmentality in the service of securing life is a networked practice that draws in a host of actors, not a top-down imposition. The institution of carbon economies and carbon emissions as a new register of public accountability, brings alternative ways to calculate the world into being, and consequently re-calibrates life as it emerges from these heterogeneous arrangements. All That Gathers Latour writes that we come to know a matter of concern by all the things that gather around it (Latour). This includes the human, as well as the non-human actors, policies, practices and technologies that are put to work in the making of our realities. Climate change is routinely represented as a threat to life, with predicted (and occurring) species extinction, growing numbers of climate change refugees, dispossessed from uninhabitable lands, and the rise of diseases and extreme weather scenarios that put human life in peril. There is no doubt, of course, that climate change does mean death for some: indeed, there are thanopolitical overtones in inequitable relations between the fall-out of impacts from major polluting nations on poorer countries, or those much more susceptible to rising sea levels. Biosocial equity, as Bull points out, is a “matter of being equally alive and equally dead” (2). Yet in the biopolitical project of assuring living, life is burgeoning around the problem of climate change. The critique of neo-liberalism as a blanketing system that subjects all aspects of life to market logic, and in which the cynical techniques of industry seek to appropriate ethico-political stances for their own material ends, are insufficient responses to what is actually unfolding in the messy terrain of climate change and its biopolitics. What this paper has attempted to show is that there is no particular purchase on life that can be had by any one actor who gathers around this concern. Varying interests, ambitions, and intentions, without moral hierarchy, stake their claim in life as a constantly constituting site in which they participate, and from this perspective, the ways in which we understand life to be both produced and managed expand. This is to refuse either an opposition or a conflation between the market and nature, or the market and life. It is also to argue that we cannot essentialise human-ness in the climate change debate. For while human relations with animals, plants and weathers may make us what we are, so too do our relations with (in a much less romantic view) non-human things, technologies, schemes, and even markets—from carbon auditing services, to the label on a tin on the supermarket shelf. As these intersect and entangle, the project of life, in the new politics of climate change, is far from straightforward. References An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Village Roadshow, 2006. Arup, Tom. “Victoria Makes Enormous Carbon Stocktake in Bid for Offset Billions.” The Age 24 Sep. 2009: 7. Bratich, Jack Z., Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy. “Governing the Present.” Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Ed. Bratich, Packer and McCarthy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 3-21. Bull, Malcolm. “Globalization and Biopolitics.” New Left Review 45 (2007): 12 May 2009 . < http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2675 >. Charkiewicz, Ewa. “Corporations, the UN and Neo-liberal Bio-politics.” Development 48.1 (2005): 75-83. Clark, Nigel, and Nick Stevenson. “Care in a Time of Catastrophe: Citizenship, Community and the Ecological Imagination.” Journal of Human Rights 2.2 (2003): 235-246. Crombie, Angela. A Lighter Footprint: A Practical Guide to Minimising Your Impact on the Planet. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe, 2007. Di Muzio, Tim. “Governing Global Slums: The Biopolitics of Target 11.” Global Governance. 14.3 (2008): 305-326. Elden, Stuart. “Governmentality, Calculation and Territory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007): 562-580. Hawkins, Gay. The Ethics of Waste: How We Relate to Rubbish. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?: From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248. Mares, Noortje. “Testing Powers of Engagement: Green Living Experiments, the Ontological Turn and the Undoability and Involvement.” European Journal of Social Theory 12.1 (2009): 117-133. MGI Business Solutions Worldwide. “Carbon News.” Adelaide. 2 Aug. 2009. Ong, Aihwa. “Mutations in Citizenship.” Theory, Culture and Society 23.2-3 (2006): 499-505. Potter, Emily. “Footprints in the Mallee: Climate Change, Sustaining Communities, and the Nature of Place.” Landscapes and Learning: Place Studies in a Global World. Ed. Margaret Somerville, Kerith Power and Phoenix de Carteret. Sense Publishers. Forthcoming. Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” Biosocieties 1 (2006): 195-217. Rose, Nikolas. “The Politics of Life Itself.” Theory, Culture and Society 18.6 (2001): 1-30. World Wildlife Fund. Living Planet Report 2008. Switzerland, 2008.

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This paper will compare the metaphoric structuring of the ecological concept of resilience—with its roots in Holling's 1973 paper; with psychological concepts of resilience which followed from research—such as Werner, Bierman, and French and Garmezy and Streitman) published in the early 1970s. This metaphoric analysis will expose the difference between complex adaptive systems models of resilience in ecology and studies related to resilience in relation to climate change; compared with the individualism of linear equilibrium models of resilience which have dominated discussions of resilience in psychology and economics. By examining the ontological commitments of these competing metaphors, I will show that the individualistic concept of resilience which dominates psychological discussions of resilience is incompatible with the ontological commitments of ecological concepts of resilience. Because the ontological commitments of the concepts of ecological resilience on the one hand, and psychological resilience on the other, are so at odds with one another, it is important to be clear which concept of resilience is being evaluated for its adequacy as a concept. Having clearly distinguished these competing metaphors and their ontological commitments, this paper will show that it is the complex adaptive systems model of resilience from ecology, not the individualist concept of psychological resilience, that has been utilised by both the academic discussions of adaptation to climate change, and the operationalisation of the concept of resilience by social movements like the permaculture, ecovillage, and Transition Towns movements. Ontological Metaphors My analysis of ontological metaphors draws on insights from Kuhn's (114) account of gestalt perception in scientific paradigm shifts; the centrality of the role of concrete analogies in scientific reasoning (Masterman 77); and the theorisation of ontological metaphors in cognitive linguistics (Gärdenfors). Figure 1: Object Ontological commitments reflect the shared beliefs within a community about the sorts of things that exist. Our beliefs about what exists are shaped by our sensory and motor interactions with objects in the physical world. Physical objects have boundaries and surfaces that separate the object from not-the-object. Objects have insides and outsides, and can be described in terms of more-or-less fixed and stable “objective” properties. A prototypical example of an “object” is a “container”, like the example shown in Figure 1. Ontological metaphors allow us to conceive of “things” which are not objects as if they were objects by picking “out parts of our experience and treat them as [if they were] discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind” (Lakoff and Johnson 25). We use ontological metaphors when we imagine a boundary around a collection of things, such as the members of a team or trees in a forest, and conceive of them as being in a container (Langacker 191–97). We can then think of “things” like a team or forest as if they were a single entity. We can also understand processes and activities as if they were things with boundaries. Whether or not we characterise some aspect of our experience as a noun (a bounded entity) or as a verb (a process that occurs over time) is not determined by the nature of things in themselves, but by our understanding and interpretation of our experience (Langacker 233). In this paper I employ a technique that involves examining the details of “concrete images” from the source domains for metaphors employed in the social sciences to expose for analysis their ontological commitments (Harrison, “Politics” 215; Harrison, “Economics” 7). By examining the ontological metaphors that structure the resilience literature I will show how different conceptions of resilience reflect different beliefs and commitments about the sorts of “things” there are in the world, and hence how we can study and understand these “things.” Engineering Metaphors In his discussion of engineering resilience, Holling (“Engineering Vs. Ecological” 33) argues that this conception is the “foundation for economic theory”, and defined in terms of “resistance to disturbance and the speed of return to the equilibrium” or steady state of the system. Whereas Holling takes his original example of the use of the engineering concept of resilience from economics, Pendall, Foster, & Cowell (72), and Martin-Breen and Anderies (6) identify it as the concept of resilience that dominates the field of psychology. They take the stress loading of bridges to be the engineering source for the metaphor. Figure 2: Pogo stick animation (Source: Blacklemon 67, CC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif). In order to understand this metaphor, we need to examine the characteristics of the source domain for the metaphor. A bridge can be “under tension, compression or both forces at the same time [and] experiences what engineers define as stress” (Matthews 3). In order to resist these forces, bridges need to be constructed of material which “behave much like a spring” that “strains elastically (deforms temporarily and returns to its original shape after a load has been removed) under a given stress” (Gordon 52; cited in Matthews). The pogostick shown in Figure 2 illustrates how a spring returns to its original size and configuration once the load or stress is removed. WGBH Educational Foundation provides links to simple diagrams that illustrate the different stresses the three main designs of bridges are subject to, and if you compare Computers & Engineering's with Gibbs and Bourne's harmonic spring animation you can see how both a bridge under live load and the pogostick in Figure 2 oscillate just like an harmonic spring. Subject to the elastic limits of the material, the deformation of a spring is proportional to the stress or load applied. According to the “modern theory of elasticity [...] it [is] possible to deduce the relation between strain and stress for complex objects in terms of intrinsic properties of the materials it is made of” (“Hooke’s Law”). When psychological resilience is characterised in terms of “properties of individuals [that] are identified in isolation” (Martin-Breen and Anderies 12); and in terms of “behaviours and attributes [of individuals] that allow people to get along with one another and to succeed socially” (Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 72), they are reflecting this engineering focus on the properties of materials. Martin-Breen and Anderies (42) argue that “the Engineering Resilience framework” has been informed by ontological metaphors which treat “an ecosystem, person, city, government, bridge, [or] society” as if it were an object—“a unified whole”. Because this concept of resilience treats individuals as “objects,” it leads researchers to look for the properties or characteristics of the “materials” which individuals are “made of”, which are either elastic and allow them to “bounce” or “spring” back after stress; or are fragile and brittle and break under load. Similarly, the Designers Institute (DINZ), in its conference on “Our brittle society,” shows it is following the engineering resilience approach when it conceives of a city or society as an object which is made of materials which are either “strong and flexible” or “brittle and fragile”. While Holling characterises economic theory in terms of this engineering metaphor, it is in fact chemistry and the kinetic theory of gases that provides the source domain for the ontological metaphor which structures both static and dynamic equilibrium models within neo-classical economics (Smith and Foley; Mirowski). However, while springs are usually made out of metals, they can be made out of any “material [that] has the required combination of rigidity and elasticity,” such as plastic, and even wood (in a bow) (“Spring (device)”). Gas under pressure turns out to behave the same as other springs or elastic materials do under load. Because both the economic metaphor based on equilibrium theory of gases and the engineering analysis of bridges under load can both be subsumed under spring theory, we can treat both the economic (gas) metaphor and the engineering (bridge) metaphor as minor variations of a single overarching (spring) metaphor. Complex Systems Metaphors Holling (“Resilience & Stability” 13–15) critiques equilibrium models, arguing that non-deterministic, complex, non-equilibrium and multi-equilibrium ecological systems do not satisfy the conditions for application of equilibrium models. Holling argues that unlike the single equilibrium modelled by engineering resilience, complex adaptive systems (CAS) may have multi or no equilibrium states, and be non-linear and non-deterministic. Walker and Salt follow Holling by calling for recognition of the “dynamic complexity of the real world” (8), and that “these [real world] systems are complex adaptive systems” (11). Martin-Breen and Anderies (7) identify the key difference between “systems” and “complex adaptive systems” resilience as adaptive capacity, which like Walker and Salt (xiii), they define as the capacity to maintain function, even if system structures change or fail. The “engineering” concept of resilience focuses on the (elastic) properties of materials and uses language associated with elastic springs. This “spring” metaphor emphasises the property of individual components. In contrast, ecological concepts of resilience examine interactions between elements, and the state of the system in a multi-dimensional phase space. This systems approach shows that the complex behaviour of a system depends at least as much on the relationships between elements. These relationships can lead to “emergent” properties which cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts of the system. To explain these relationships and connections, ecologists and climate scientists use language and images associated with landscapes such as 2-D cross-sections and 3-D topology (Holling, “Resilience & Stability” 20; Pendall, Foster, and Cowell 74). Figure 3 is based on an image used by Walker, Holling, Carpenter and Kinzig (fig. 1b) to represent possible states of ecological systems. The “basins” in the image rely on our understanding of gravitational forces operating in a 3-D space to model “equilibrium” states in which the system, like the “ball” in the “basin”, will tend to settle. Figure 3: (based on Langston; in Walker et al. fig. 1b) – Tipping Point Bifurcation Wasdell (“Feedback” fig. 4) adapted this image to represent possible climate states and explain the concept of “tipping points” in complex systems. I have added the red balls (a, b, and c to replace the one black ball (b) in the original which represented the state of the system), the red lines which indicate the path of the ball/system, and the black x-y axis, in order to discuss the image. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) takes the left basin to represents “the variable, near-equilibrium, but contained dynamics of the [current] glacial/interglacial period”. As a result of rising GHG levels, the climate system absorbs more energy (mostly as heat). This energy can force the system into a different, hotter, state, less amenable to life as we know it. This is shown in Figure 3 by the system (represented as the red ball a) rising up the left basin (point b). From the perspective of the gravitational representation in Figure 3, the extra energy in the basin operates like the rotation in a Gravitron amusem*nt ride, where centrifugal force pushes riders up the sides of the ride. If there is enough energy added to the climate system it could rise up and jump over the ridge/tipping point separating the current climate state into the “hot earth” basin shown on the right. Once the system falls into the right basin, it may be stuck near point c, and due to reinforcing feedbacks have difficulty escaping this new “equilibrium” state. Figure 4 represents a 2-D cross-section of the 3-D landscape shown in Figure 3. This cross-section shows how rising temperature and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in a multi-equilibrium climate topology can lead to the climate crossing a tipping point and shifting from state a to state c. Figure 4: Topographic cross-section of possible climate states (derived from Wasdell, “Feedback” 26 CC). As Holling (“Resilience & Stability”) warns, a less “desirable” state, such as population collapse or extinction, may be more “resilient”, in the engineering sense, than a more desirable state. Wasdell (“Feedback Dynamics” slide 22) warns that the climate forcing as a result of human induced GHG emissions is in fact pushing the system “far away from equilibrium, passed the tipping point, and into the hot-earth scenario”. In previous episodes of extreme radiative forcing in the past, this “disturbance has then been amplified by powerful feedback dynamics not active in the near-equilibrium state [… and] have typically resulted in the loss of about 90% of life on earth.” An essential element of system dynamics is the existence of (delayed) reinforcing and balancing causal feedback loops, such as the ones illustrated in Figure 5. Figure 5: Pre/Predator model (Bellinger CC-BY-SA) In the case of Figure 5, the feedback loops illustrate the relationship between rabbit population increasing, then foxes feeding on the rabbits, keeping the rabbit population within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Fox predation prevents rabbit over-population and consequent starvation of rabbits. The reciprocal interaction of the elements of a system leads to unpredictable nonlinearity in “even seemingly simple systems” (“System Dynamics”). The climate system is subject to both positive and negative feedback loops. If the area of ice cover increases, more heat is reflected back into space, creating a positive feedback loop, reinforcing cooling. Whereas, as the arctic ice melts, as it is doing at present (Barber), heat previously reflected back into space is absorbed by now exposed water, increasing the rate of warming. Where negative feedback (system damping) dominates, the cup-shaped equilibrium is stable and system behaviour returns to base when subject to disturbance. [...]The impact of extreme events, however, indicates limits to the stable equilibrium. At one point cooling feedback loops overwhelmed the homeostasis, precipitating the "snowball earth" effect. […] Massive release of CO2 as a result of major volcanic activity […] set off positive feedback loops, precipitating runaway global warming and eliminating most life forms at the end of the Permian period. (Wasdell, “Topological”) Martin-Breen and Anderies (53–54), following Walker and Salt, identify four key factors for systems (ecological) resilience in nonlinear, non-deterministic (complex adaptive) systems: regulatory (balancing) feedback mechanisms, where increase in one element is kept in check by another element; modularity, where failure in one part of the system will not cascade into total systems failure; functional redundancy, where more than one element performs every essential function; and, self-organising capacity, rather than central control ensures the system continues without the need for “leadership”. Transition Towns as a Resilience Movement The Transition Town (TT) movement draws on systems modelling of both climate change and of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.). TT takes seriously Limits to Growth modelling that showed that without constraints in population and consumption the world faces systems collapse by the middle of this century. It recommends community action to build as much capacity as possible to “maintain existence of function”—Holling's (“Engineering vs. Ecological” 33) definition of ecological resilience—in the face of failing economic, political and environmental systems. The Transition Network provides a template for communities to follow to “rebuild resilience and reduce CO2 emissions”. Rob Hopkins, the movements founder, explicitly identifies ecological resilience as its central concept (Transition Handbook 6). The idea for the movement grew out of a project by (2nd year students) completed for Hopkins at the Kinsale Further Education College. According to Hopkins (“Kinsale”), this project was inspired by Holmgren’s Permaculture principles and Heinberg's book on adapting to life after peak oil. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is a design system for creating agricultural systems modelled on the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems (Mollison ix; Holmgren xix). Permaculture draws its scientific foundations from systems ecology (Holmgren xxv). Following CAS theory, Mollison (33) defines stability as “self-regulation”, rather than “climax” or a single equilibrium state, and recommends “diversity of beneficial functional connections” (32) rather than diversity of isolated elements. Permaculture understands resilience in the ecological, rather than the engineering sense. The Transition Handbook (17) “explores the issues of peak oil and climate change, and how when looked at together, we need to be focusing on the rebuilding of resilience as well as cutting carbon emissions. It argues that the focus of our lives will become increasingly local and small scale as we come to terms with the real implications of the energy crisis we are heading into.” The Transition Towns movement incorporate each of the four systems resilience factors, listed at the end of the previous section, into its template for building resilient communities (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 55–6). Many of its recommendations build “modularity” and “self-organising”, such as encouraging communities to build “local food systems, [and] local investment models”. Hopkins argues that in a “more localised system” feedback loops are tighter, and the “results of our actions are more obvious”. TT training exercises include awareness raising for sensitivity to networks of (actual or potential) ecological, social and economic relationships (Hopkins, Transition Handbook 60–1). TT promotes diversity of local production and economic activities in order to increase “diversity of functions” and “diversity of responses to challenges.” Heinberg (8) wrote the forward to the 2008 edition of the Transition Handbook, after speaking at a TotnesTransition Town meeting. Heinberg is now a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), which was established in 2003 to “provide […] the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century [… in] a world of resilient communities and re-localized economies that thrive within ecological bounds” (PCI, “About”), of the sort envisioned by the Limits to Growth model discussed in the previous section. Given the overlapping goals of PCI and Transition Towns, it is not surprising that Rob Hopkins is now a Fellow of PCI and regular contributor to Resilience, and there are close ties between the two organisations. Resilience, which until 2012 was published as the Energy Bulletin, is run by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI). Like Transition Towns, Resilience aims to build “community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. […] It has [its] roots in systems theory” (PCI, “About Resilience”). Resilience.org says it follows the interpretation of Resilience Alliance (RA) Program Director Brian Walker and science writer David Salt's (xiii) ecological definition of resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.“ Conclusion This paper has analysed the ontological metaphors structuring competing conceptions of resilience. The engineering resilience metaphor dominates in psychological resilience research, but is not adequate for understanding resilience in complex adaptive systems. Ecological resilience, on the other hand, dominates in environmental and climate change research, and is the model of resilience that has been incorporated into the global permaculture and Transition Towns movements. References 2nd year students. Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan. Kinsale, Cork, Ireland: Kinsale Further Education College, 2005. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/KinsaleEnergyDescentActionPlan.pdf>. Barber, Elizabeth. “Arctic Ice Continues to Thin, and Thin, European Satellite Reveals.” Christian Science Monitor 11 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0911/Arctic-ice-continues-to-thin-and-thin-European-satellite-reveals>. Bellinger, Gene. “Prey/Predator Model.” SystemsWiki 23 Nov. 2009. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://systemswiki.org/index.php?title=Prey/Predator_Model>. Blacklemon67. "Pogo Animation." Wikipedia 2007. 24 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pogoanim.gif>. Computers & Engineering. Bridge Trucks Animated Stress Plot 1. 2003. GIF file. SAP2000 Bridge Design. ‹http://www.comp-engineering.com/announce/bridge/demo/truck_1.gif>. DINZ. “Resilience Engineering: 'Our Brittle Society' - The Sustainability Society - May 18th 2012.” The Designers Institute. 2013. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.dinz.org.nz/Events/2012/May/47965>. Gärdenfors, Peter. “Cognitive Semantics and Image Schemas with Embodied Forces.” Embodiment in Cognition and Culture. Ed. John Michael Krois et al. John Benjamins Publishing, 2007. 57–76. 8 Nov. 2012 ‹http://oddelki.ff.uni-mb.si/filozofija/files/Festschrift/Dunjas_festschrift/gardenfors.pdf>. Garmezy, N, and S Streitman. “Children at Risk: The Search for the Antecedents of Schizophrenia. Part I. Conceptual Models and Research Methods.” Schizophrenia Bulletin 8 (1974): 14–90. NCBI PubMed 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/8/14.full.pdf>. Gibbs, Keith, and John Bourne. “The Helical Spring.” Schoolphysics 2013. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/animations/Helical_spring_shm/index.html>. Gordon, James Edward. Structures: Or, Why Things Don’t Fall Down. London: Plenum Press, 1978. Harrison, Karey. “Image Schemas and Political Ontology.” Communication, Cognition and Media: Political and Economic Discourse. Ed. Augusto Soares da Silva et al. Portugal: Aletheia, forthcoming. ———. “Ontological Commitments of Ethics and Economics.” Economic Thought 2.1 (2013): 1–19. 23 Apr. 2013 ‹http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/article/view/64>. Heinberg, Richard. Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-carbon World. New Society Publishers, 2004. Holling, Crawford Stanley. “Engineering Resilience versus Ecological Resilience.” Engineering within Ecological Constraints. Ed. Peter Schulze. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996. 31–44. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4919&page=31>. ———. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4.1 (1973): 1–23. 11 Aug. 2013 ‹http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/RP-73-003.pdf>. Holmgren, David. Permaculture: Principles & Pathways beyond Sustainability. Holmgren Design Services, 2002. Hopkins, Rob. “Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan (2005).” Transition Culture: an Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent. n.d. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://transitionculture.org/essential-info/pdf-downloads/kinsale-energy-descent-action-plan-2005/>. ———. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Green Books, 2008. Print. ———. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. Free edit version. ‹http://www.appropedia.org/Category:The_Transition_Handbook: Appropedia.org> 2010. 16 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/CSC2600/transition-handbook.pdf>. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1962. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1980. Langacker, Ronald W. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1987. Langston, Art. “Tipping Point” or Bifurcation Between Two Attractor Basins. 2004. 25 Sep. 2013. ‹http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/figure1.html>. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. Resilience: A Literature Review. Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. 8 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/resilience-literature-review>. Masterman, Margaret. “The Nature of a Paradigm.” Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Eds. Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave. Cambridge University Press, 1970. 59–89. Matthews, Theresa. “The Physics of Bridges.” Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. 2013. 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2001/5/01.05.08.x.html>. Meadows, Donella H. et al. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Universe Books, 1972. Mirowski, Philip. “From Mandelbrot to Chaos in Economic Theory.” Southern Economic Journal 57.2 (1990): 289–307. Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual. Tagari Publications, 1988. PCI. “About.” Post Carbon Institute. 16 July 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.postcarbon.org/about/>. ———. “About Resilience.org.” Resilience 16 July 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.resilience.org/about>. Pendall, Rolf, Kathryn A. Foster, and Margaret Cowell. “Resilience and Regions: Building Understanding of the Metaphor.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3.1 (2010): 71–84. 4 Aug. 2013 ‹http://cjres.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/1/71>. RA. “About RA.” Resilience Alliance 2013. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/about_ra>. Smith, Eric, and Duncan K. Foley. “Classical Thermodynamics and Economic General Equilibrium Theory.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 32.1 (2008): 7–65. Transition Network. “About Transition Network.” Transition Network. 2012. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.transitionnetwork.org/about>. Walker, B. H., and David Salt. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Island Press, 2006. Walker, Brian et al. “Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–Ecological Systems.” Ecology and Society 9.2 (2004): 5. Wasdell, David. “A Topological Approach.” The Feedback Crisis in Climate Change: The Meridian Report. n.d. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Global%20Dynamics/Feedback%20Crisis/frameset1.htm?p=3>. ———. “Beyond the Tipping Point: Positive Feedback and the Acceleration of Climate Change.” The Foundation for the Future, Humanity 3000 Workshop. Seattle, 2006. ‹http://www.meridian.org.uk/_PDFs/BeyondTippingPoint.pdf>. ———. “Feedback Dynamics and the Acceleration of Climate Change.” Winterthur, 2008. 16 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.crisis-forum.org.uk/events/Workshop1/Workshop1_presentations/wasdellpictures/wasdell_clubofrome.php>. Werner, Emmy E., Jessie M. Bierman, and Fern E. French. The Children of Kauai: A Longitudinal Study from the Prenatal Period to Age Ten. University of Hawaii Press, 1971.WGBH. “Bridge Basics.” Building Big. 2001. 14 Aug. 2013 ‹http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/basics.html>. Wikipedia contributors. “Gravitron.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 20 Sep. 2013. 25 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitron>. ———. “Hooke’s Law.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 8 Aug. 2013. 15 Aug. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke%27s_law>. ———. “Spring (device).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 9 Aug. 2013. 24 Sep. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_(device)>. ———. “System Dynamics.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia 9 Aug. 2013. 13 Aug. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics>.

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J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is appalled to learn that his lover is a victim of incest in Robert Towne and Roman Polanski’s definitive, yet subversive film Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). Similarly, Ethan Mars (Pascale Langdale), the hero of the electronic game Heavy Rain (David Cage, 2010), is equally devastated to find his child has been abducted. One a cinema classic of the detective genre, the other a sophisticated electronic game: both ground-breaking, both compelling, but delivered in contrasting media. So, what do Chinatown and Heavy Rain have in common from the writer’s point of view? Can the writer of games learn from the legacy of film storytelling yet find alternative rules for new media? This article attempts to answer these questions making reference to the two works above to illuminate the gap between games writing and traditional screenwriting scholarship.Western commercial cinema has evolved to place story centrally and Chinatown is an example of a story’s potential as film art and entertainment concurrently. Media convention derives from the lessons of previous relatable art forms such as pictorial art, literature and architecture in the case of film; board games and centuries of physical gaming in the case of games design. Therefore, the invention of new media such as online and electronic gaming relies, in part, on the rules of film. However, game play has reassessed screenwriting and its applicability to this new media rendering many of these rules redundant. If Marshall McLuhan’s adage “the medium is the message” is correct, then despite the reliance of one medium on the traditions of its predecessor, gaming is simply not cinema. This article considers writing for games as axiomatically unconventional and calls for radical reinventions of storytelling within the new media.In order to investigate games writing, I will first revisit some of the rules of cinematic construction as inherited from an original Aristotelian source (Cleary). These rules require: a single focussed protagonist driving the plot; a consistent story form with narrative drive or story engine; the writer to avoid the repeated dramatic beat and; a reassessment of thematic concerns for the new technology. We should also investigate game-centric terminology such as “immersion” and “agency” to see how electronic gaming as an essentially postmodern phenomenon reciprocates, yet contrasts to, its cinematic predecessor (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Must the maker of games subscribe to the filmmaker’s toolbox when the field is so very different? In order to answer this question, I will consider some concepts unique to games technology, firstly, the enduring debate known as ludology versus narratology. Gaming rhetoric since the late 1990s has questioned the efficacy of the traditional film narrative when adapted to game play. Players are still divided between the narratologists’ view, which holds that story within games is inevitable and the ludologists’ opinion, which suggests that traditional narrative has no place within the spatially orientated freedom of game play. Originally espousing the benefits of ludology, Janet H Murray argues that the essential formalism of gaming separates it from narrative, which Aarseth describes as representing “'colonialist' intrusions” on game play (46). Mimetic aspects inherited from narrative principles should remain incidental rather than forming an overarching hegemony within the game (Murray, "Last Word"). In this way, the ludologists suggest that game development has been undermined by the persistence of the narrative debate and Murray describes game studies as a “multi-dimensional, open-ended puzzle” worth solving on its own terms (indeed, cinema of attractions compelled viewers for thirty years before narrative cinema became dominant in the early twentieth century.Gaming history has proved this argument overblown and Murray herself questions the validity of this spurious debate within game play. She now includes the disclaimer that, ironically, most ludologists are trained in narratology and thus debate a “phantom of their own creation” (Murray, "Last Word"). This implies a contemporary opposition to ludology’s original meaning and impacts upon screenwriting principles in game making. Two further key concepts, which divide the medium of game entirely from the art of cinema are “immersion” and “agency” (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Murray likens immersion to the physical sensation of being “submerged in water” pointing out that players enjoy the psychologically immersive phenomenon of delving into an undiscovered reality (Murray, Hamlet 98). Although distinct from the passive experience of cinema viewing, this immersion is like the experience of leaving the ordinary world and diving into the special world as Christopher Vogler’s screenwriting theory suggests. The cinema audience is encouraged to immerse themselves in the new world of Gittes’s Chinatown from the comfort of their familiar one. Similarly, the light-hearted world of the summer home contrasts Heavy Rain’s decent into urban, neo-noir corruption. Contrary to its cinematic cousin, the immediacy and subjectivity of the new media experience is more tangible and controllable, which renders immersion in games more significant and brings us to the next gaming concept, agency.To describe agency, Murray uses the complex metaphor of participatory dance, with its predetermined structures, “social formulas” and limited opportunities to change the overall “plot” of the dance: “The slender story is designed to unfold in the same way no matter what individual audience members may do to join the fun” (Hamlet 126-27). In electronic gaming, time-honoured gaming traditions from chess and board games serve as worthy predecessors. In this way, sophisticated permutations of outcome based on the player’s choice create agency, which is “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Murray, Hamlet 126). Bearing this in mind, when narrative enters game play, a world of possibility opens up (Murray, Hamlet).So where do the old rules of cinema apply within gaming and where is the maker of games able to find alternatives based on their understanding of agency and immersion? McLuhan’s unconventional scholarship leads the way, by pointing out the alternativity of the newer media. I consider that the rules of cinematic construction are also often disregarded by the casual viewer/player, but of utmost importance to the professional screenwriter.Amongst these rules is the screenwriting convention of having a single protagonist. This is a being fuelled with desire and a clear, visually rendered, actively negotiated goal. This principle persists in cinema according to Aristotle’s precepts (Cleary). The protagonist is a single entity making decisions and taking actions, even if that entity is a collection of individuals acting as one (Dethridge). The exploits of this main character (facing an opposing force of antagonism) determine the path of the story and for that reason a clear, single-minded narrative line is echoed in a single story form (McKee). For example, the baffling depth of meaning in Chinatown still emanates from protagonist J.J. Gittes’s central determination: to solve the crime suggested by the Los Angeles water shortage. The audience’s ability to identify and empathise with Gittes is paramount when he discovers the awful perversion his love interest, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), has been subjected to. However, the world of Chinatown remains intriguing as a string of corruption is revealed though a detective plot fuelled by our hero’s steadfast need to know the truth. In this way, a single protagonist’s desire line creates a solid story form. Conversely, in computer games (and despite the insistence of Draconian screenwriting lecturers who insist on replicating cinematic rules) the effect of a multiple protagonist plot still allows for the essential immersion in an imaginative world. In Heavy Rain, for example, the search for clues through the eyes of several related characters including a hapless father, a hangdog, ageing detective and a hyper-athletic single mother still allows for immersion. The player/interactor’s actions still create agency even as they change avatars from scene to scene. The player also negotiates for mastery of their character’s actions in order to investigate their situation, facts and world. However, each time the player switches their character allegiance, they revert to square one of their potential identification with that character. Indeed, in Heavy Rain, the player keenly aware of the chilling effect generated by the father losing his child in a busy shopping mall, but then another avatar steps forward, then another and the player must learn about new and unfamiliar characters on a scene-by-scene basis. The accumulative identification with a hero like Chinatown’s Gittes, begins with an admiration for his streetwise charm, then strengthens through his unfolding disillusionment and is cemented with Polanski’s brilliant invention: the death of Evelyn Mulwray replete with its politico-sexual implications (Polanski). However, does this mean cinematic identification is superior to game play’s immersion and agency? McLuhan might argue it is not and that the question is meaningless given that the “message” of games is axiomatically different. Traditional screenwriting scholarship therefore falters in the new medium. Further, Heavy Rain’s multi-protagonist miasma conforms to a new breed of structure: the mosaic plot, which according to Murray mirrors the internet’s click and drag mentality. In this sense, a kaleidoscopic world opens in pockets of revelation before the player. This satisfies the interactor in a postmodernist sense: an essential equality of incoming information in random, nonlinear connections. Indeed electronic games of this nature are a triumph of postmodernism and of ludology’s influence on the narratologist’s perspective. Although a story form including clues and detection still drives the narrative, the mosaic realisation of character and situation (which in a film’s plot might seem meandering and nonsensical) is given life by the agency and immersion provided by gaming (Truby).Back in traditional screenwriting principles, there is still the need for a consistent and singular story form providing a constant narrative drive (McKee). As mentioned, this arises from the protagonist’s need. For example a revenge plot relies on the hero’s need for vengeance; a revelation plot like Chinatown hinges on detection. However, first time screenwriting students’ tendency to visualise a story based unconsciously on films they have previously seen (as a bricolage of character moments arranged loosely around a collection of received ideas) tends to undermine the potential effectiveness of their story form. This lack of singularity in filmic writing indicates a misunderstanding of story logic. This propensity in young screenwriters derives from a belief that if the rendered filmic experience means something to them, it will necessarily mean something to an audience. Not so: an abandoned story drive or replaced central character diminishes the audience’s enjoyment and even destroys suspension of disbelief. Consequently, the story becomes bland and confusing. On investigation, it appears the young screenwriter does not realise that they are playing out an idea in their head, which is essentially a bricolage in the postmodern sense. Although this might lead to some titillating visual displays it fails to engage the audience as the result of their participation in an emotional continuum (Hayward). In contradistinction to film, games thrive on such irregularities in story, assuming radically different effects. For example, in cinema, the emotional response of a mass audience is a major draw card: if the filmic story is an accumulation of cause and effect responses, which steadily drive the stakes up until resolution, then it is the emotional “cathexis” as by-product of conflict that the audience resonates with (Freud 75; Chekhov). Does this transfer to games? Do notions such as feeling and empathy actually figure in game play at all? Or is this simply an activity rewarding the interactor with agency in lieu of deeper, emotive experiences? This final question could be perceived as anti-gaming sentiment given that games such as Heavy Rain suggest just such an emotional by-product. Indeed, the mechanics of gaming have the ability to push the stakes even higher than their cinematic counterparts, creating more complex emotionality in the player. In this way, the intentional psychological malaise of Heavy Rain solicits even greater emotion from players due to their inherent act of will. Where cinema renders the audience emotional by virtue of its passivity, no such claim is possible in the game. For example, where in Chinatown, Gittes tortures his lover by repeatedly slapping her, in Heavy Rain the character must actively perform torture on themself in order to solve the mystery. Further, the potential for engagement is extended given there are fourteen possible endings to Heavy Rain. In this way, although the film viewer’s emotional response is tempered by guessing the singular outcome, the multiple endings of this electronic game prevent such prescience (films can have multiple endings, but game mechanics lend the new media more readily to this function, therefore, game books with dice-rolling options are a stronger precedent then cinema).Also effective for the construction of cinema is Aristotle’s warning that the repetition of story and expositional information without rising stakes or any qualification of meaning creates a sense of “dramatic stall” for the audience (Aristotle). This is known as a repeated dramatic story beat and it is the stumbling block of many first time screenwriters. The screenplay should be an inventive effort to overcome escalating obstacles and an accumulative cause and effect chain on the part of the protagonist (Truby). The modern screenwriter for film needs to recognise any repeated beat in their early drafting and delete or alter the repetitive material. What then are the implications of repeated dramatic beats for the game writer? The game form known as “first person shooter” (FPS) depends on the appearance of an eternally regenerating (indeed re-spawning) enemy. In an apocalyptic zombie shooter game, for example, many hordes of zombies die unequivocally without threatening the interactor’s intrigue. Presumably, the antagonists are not intended to pose intellectual opposition for the gamer. Rather, the putrefying zombies present themselves for the gamer’s pugilistic satisfaction, again and again. For the game, therefore, the repeated beat is a distinct advantage. They may come harder and faster, but they are still zombies to be dispatched and the stakes have not necessarily risen. Who cares if this is a succession of repeated beats? It is just good clean fun, right? This is where the ludologists hold sway: to impose principles such as non-repeated beats and rising stakes on the emergence of a world based on pure game play offers no consequence for the FPS game. Nevertheless, the problem is exacerbated in “role play games” (RPG) of which Heavy Rain is an example. Admittedly, the gamer derives effective horror as our hero negotiates his way amongst a sea of disassociated shoppers searching for his lost child. The very fact of gamer agency should abnegate the problem, but does not, it merely heightens the sense of existential hopelessness: turning face after face not finding the child he is searching for is a devastating experience exacerbated by active agency (as opposed to the accepting passivity of cinema spectatorship). The rising panic in the game and the repetition of the faces of impassive shoppers also supports the player’s ongoing disorientation. The iconic appearance of the gruff clown handing out balloons further heightens the panic the gamer/protagonist experiences here. These are examples of repeated beats, yet effective due to player agency. The shoppers only persist until the gamer masters the situation and is able to locate the missing child. Thus, it is the capacity of the gamer to circumvent such repetition, which actually propels the game forward. If the gamer is adept, they will overcome the situation easily; if they are inexperienced, the repetition will continue. So, why apply traditional narrative constrictions on game play within a narrative game?Another crucial aspect of story is theme, which in the young writer reflects a postmodernist fetishisation of plot over story. In fact, theme is one of the first concepts to be ignored when a film student puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) when designing their game. In this way, the themes students choose to ignore resurface despite their lack of conscious application of them. They write plot, and plot in abundance (imperative for the modern writer (Truby)), which the mosaic structure of games accommodates for seamlessly. However, plot is causative and postmodern interpretations do not necessarily require the work of art to “say” anything beyond the “message” trapped in the clichés of their chosen genre (McLuhan). In concentrating on plot, therefore, the young writer says what they are unaware they are saying. At its most innocuous level this creates cliché. At its worst, it erases history and celebrates an attitude of unexamined ignorance toward the written material (Hayward). In extreme cases, student writers of both media support fascism, celebrate female masochism, justify rape (with or without awareness), or create nihilistic and derivative art, which sensationalises violence to a degree not possible within film technology. This is ironic given that postmodernism is defined, in part, by a canny reaction to modernist generation of meaning and cynicism toward the technology of violence. In all this postmodernism, that illusive chestnut known as “originality” (a questionable imperative still haunting the conventional screenplay despite the postmodernist declamation that there is no such thing) should also be considered. Although the game writer can learn from the lessons of the screenwriter, the problems of game structure and expression are unique to the new medium and therefore alternative to film. Adhering to traditional understandings of screenwriting in games is counterproductive to the development of the form and demands new assessment. If gaming students are liberated from narratologist impositions of cinematic story structures, will this result in better or more thoughtful games? Further to the ludologists’ original protestation against the ““colonialist” intrusions” of narrative on game play, film writing must recede where appropriate (Aarseth). Then again, if a ludologist approach to game creation renders the student writer free of filmic dogma, why do they impose the same stories repetitively? What gain comes from ignoring the Aristotelian traditions of storytelling–especially as derived from screen culture? I suggest that storytelling, to echo McLuhan’s statement, must necessarily change with the new medium: the differences are illuminating. The younger, nonlinear form embodies the player as protagonist and therefore should not need to impose the single protagonist regime from film. Story engine has been replaced by player agency and game mechanics, which also allows for inventive usage of the repeated beat. Indeed, postmodern and ludological concerns embedded within mosaic plots almost entirely replace the need for any consistency of story form while still subverting the expectations of modernism? Genre rules are partly reinvented by the form and therefore genre conventions in gaming are still in their infancy. Indeed, the very amorality of nihilistic game designers opens a space for burgeoning post-postmodernist concerns regarding ethics and faith within art. In any case, the game designer may choose the lessons of film writing’s modernist legacy if story is to be effective within the new medium. However, as meaning derives from traditional form, it might be wiser to allow the new medium its own reinvention of writing rules. Given Heavy Rain’s considerable contribution to detective genre in game play by virtue of its applying story within new media, I anticipate further developments that might build on Chinatown’s legacy in the future of gaming, but on the game play’s own terms.ReferencesAarseth, Espen. Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 2004. Aristotle. Poetics. Australia: Penguin Classics, 1997.Chekhov, Michael. Lessons for the Professional Actor. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1985.Chinatown. Roman Polanski. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Cleary, Stephen. “'What Would Aristotle Do?' Ancient Wisdom for Modern Screenwriters.” Stephen Cleary Lecture Series, 1 May 2011. Melbourne, Vic.: Victorian College of the Arts.Dethridge, Lisa. Writing Your Screenplay. Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2003.Freud, Sigmund. “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Middlesex: Pelican, 1984. 65-97.Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2006.Heavy Rain. David Cage. Quantic Dream, 2010.McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. UK: Methuen, 1999. McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium Is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994. 1-18.Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Simon and Schuster / Free Press, 1997.Murray, Janet H. “The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies.” Keynote Address. DiGRA, Vancouver, 17 June 2005.Polanski, Roman, dir. DVD Commentary. Chinatown. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. London: Boxtree, 1996.

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Abstract:

Previous studies contend that Philippines is still a ‘collectivist’ society (Cf. Hofstede Center; Cukur et al. 2004:613-634). In this collectivist or community-oriented society, individualism is not something that is highly valued. Being ‘individualistic’ is often associated to being narcissistic, loner, asocial, selfish, etc. However, one may ask whether the youth in the Philippines are not spared from this insidious culture of individualism, notwithstanding the seemingly dominant collective and communitarian character of the society. Although the overwhelming poverty is still the main problem in the Philippines, where according to Wostyn (2010:26) “only the wonderland of movies gives some respite to their consciousness of suffering and oppression”, the Filipino youth of today are also exposed to the consumeristic values of the ‘city’ and are not spared from the contradictions and insecurities posed by the pluralistic society. They are citizens of an increasing social and cultural pluralism characteristic of many liberal societies. Is it possible that individualism may also exist within this culture, especially among the younger generation? Is individualism slowly creeping in as caused by their exposure and easy access to modern technology, to higher education, mobility, interactions with other cultures, etc. Would this individualistic tendency have any influence on their religious beliefs, especially their belief on salvation? What would be the implications and challenges of these findings to the families in the Philippines? These are the questions we wish to answer in this study. 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Abstract:

“The intellect must not only desire surreptitious delights; it must become completely free and celebrate Saturnalia.” (Nietzsche 6) Theory-jamming suggests an array of eclectic methods, deployed in response to emerging conditions, using traditional patterns to generate innovative moves, seeking harmony and syncopation, transparent about purpose and power, aiming for demonstrable certainties while aware of their own provisional fragility. In this paper, theory-jamming is suggested as an antidote for the confusion and disarray that typifies communication theory. Communication theory as the means to conceptualise the transmission of information and the negotiation of meaning has never been a stable entity. Entrenched divisions between ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ tendencies are played out within schools and emerging disciplines and across a range of scientific/humanist, quantitative/qualitative and political/cultural paradigms. “Of course, this is only the beginning of the mischief for there are many other polarities at play and a host of variations within polar contrasts” (Dervin, Shields and Song). This paper argues that the play of contending schools with little purchase on each other, or anything much, has turned meta-discourse about communication into an ontological spiral. Perhaps the only way to ride out this storm is to look towards communication practices that confront these issues and appreciate their theoretical underpinnings. From its roots in jazz and blues to its contemporary manifestations in rap and hip-hop and throughout the communication industries, the jam (or improvised reorganisation of traditional themes into new and striking patterns) confronts the ontological spiral in music, and life, by taking the flotsam flung out of the spiral to piece together the means to transcend the downward pull into the abyss. Many pretenders have a theory. Theory abounds: language theory, number theory, game theory, quantum theory, string theory, chaos theory, cyber-theory, queer theory, even conspiracy theory and, most poignantly, the putative theory of everything. But since Bertrand Russell’s unsustainable class of all classes, Gödel’s systemically unprovable propositions and Heisenberger’s uncertainty principle, the propensity for theories to fall into holes in themselves has been apparent. Nowhere is this more obvious than in communication theory where many schools contend without actually connecting to each other. From the 1930s, as the mass media formed, there have been administrative and critical tendencies at war in the communication arena. Some point to the origins of the split in the Institute of Social Research’s Radio Project where pragmatic sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld broke with Frankfurt School critical theorist, Theodor Adorno over the quality of data. Lazarsfeld was keen to produce results while Adorno complained the data over-simplified the relationship between mass media and audiences (Rogers). From this split grew the twin disciplines of mass communication (quantitative, liberal, commercial and lost in its obsession with the measurement of minor media effects) and cultural/media studies (qualitative, post-Marxist, radical and lost in simulacra of their own devising). The complexity of interactions between these two disciplines, with the same subject matter but very different ways of thinking about it, is the foundation of the ontological black hole in communication theory. As the disciplines have spread out across universities, professional organizations and publishers, they have been used and abused for ideological, institutional and personal purposes. By the summer of 1983, the split was documented in a special issue of the Journal of Communication titled “Ferment in the Field”. Further, professional courses in journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising and media production have complex relations with both theoretical wings, which need the student numbers and are adept at constructing and defending new boundaries. The 90s saw any number ‘wars’: Journalism vs Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies vs Cultural Policy Studies, Cultural Studies vs Public Relations, Public Relations vs Journalism. More recently, the study of new communication technologies has led to a profusion of nascent, neo-disciplines shadowing, mimicking and reacting with old communication studies: “Internet studies; New media studies; Digital media studies; Digital arts and culture studies; Cyberculture studies; Critical cyberculture studies; Networked culture studies; Informatics; Information science; Information society studies; Contemporary media studies” (Silver & Massanari 1). As this shower of cyberstudies spirals by, it is further warped by the split between the hard science of communication infrastructure in engineering and information technology and what the liberal arts have to offer. The early, heroic attempt to bridge this gap by Claude Shannon and, particularly, Warren Weaver was met with disdain by both sides. Weaver’s philosophical interpretation of Shannon’s mathematics, accommodating the interests of technology and of human communication together, is a useful example of how disparate ideas can connect productively. But how does a communications scholar find such connections? How can we find purchase amongst this avalanche of ideas and agendas? Where can we get the traction to move beyond twentieth century Balkanisation of communications theory to embrace the whole? An answer came to me while watching the Discovery Channel. A documentary on apes showed them leaping from branch to branch, settling on a swaying platform of leaves, eating and preening, then leaping into the void until they make another landing, settling again… until the next leap. They are looking for what is viable and never come to ground. Why are we concerned to ground theory which can only prove its own impossibility while disregarding the certainty of what is viable for now? I carried this uneasy insight for almost five years, until I read Nietzsche on the methods of the pre-Platonic philosophers: “Two wanderers stand in a wild forest brook flowing over rocks; the one leaps across using the stones of the brook, moving to and fro ever further… The other stands there helplessly at each moment. At first he must construct the footing that can support his heavy steps; when this does not work, no god helps him across the brook. Is it only boundless rash flight across great spaces? Is it only greater acceleration? No, it is with flights of fantasy, in continuous leaps from possibility to possibility taken as certainties; an ingenious notion shows them to him, and he conjectures that there are formally demonstrable certainties” (Nietzsche 26). Nietzsche’s advice to take the leap is salutary but theory must be more than jumping from one good idea to the next. What guidance do the practices of communication offer? Considering new forms that have developed since the 1930s, as communication theory went into meltdown, the significance of the jam is unavoidable. While the jam session began as improvised jazz and blues music for practice, fellowship and fun, it quickly became the forum for exploring new kinds of music arising from the deconstruction of the old and experimentation with technical, and ontological, possibilities. The jam arose as a spin-off of the dance music circuit in the 1930s. After the main, professional show was over, small groups would gather together in all-night dives for informal, spontaneous sessions of unrehearsed improvisation, playing for their own pleasure, “in accordance with their own esthetic [sic] standards” (Cameron 177). But the jam is much more than having a go. The improvisation occurs on standard melodies: “Theoretically …certain introductions, cadenzas, clichés and ensemble obbligati assume traditional associations (as) ‘folkways’… that are rarely written down but rather learned from hearing (“head jobs”)” (Cameron 178-9). From this platform of tradition, the artist must “imagine in advance the pattern which unfolds… select a part in the pattern appropriate to the occasion, instrument and personal abilities (then) produce startlingly distinctive sound patterns (that) rationalise the impossible.” The jam is founded on its very impossibility: “the jazz aesthetic is basically a paradox… traditionalism and the radical originality are irreconcilable” (Cameron 181). So how do we escape from this paradox, the same paradox that catches all communication theorists between the demands of the past and the impossibility of the future? “Experimentation is mandatory and formal rules become suspect because they too quickly stereotype and ossify” (Cameron 181). The jam seems to work because it offers the possibility of the impossible made real by the act of communication. This play between the possible and the impossible, the rumbling engine of narrative, is the dynamo of the jam. Theory-jamming seeks to activate just such a dynamo. Rather than having a group of players on their instruments, the communication theorist has access a range of theoretical riffs and moves that can be orchestrated to respond to the question in focus, to latest developments, to contradictions or blank spaces within theoretical terrains. The theory-jammer works to their own standards, turning ideas learned from others (‘head jobs’) into their own distinctive patterns, still reliant on traditional melody, harmony and syncopation but now bent, twisted and reorganised into an entirely new story. The practice of following old pathways to new destinations has a long tradition in the West as eclecticism, a Graeco-Roman, particularly Alexandrian, philosophical tradition from the first century BC to the end of the classical period. Typified by Potamo who “encouraged his pupils instead to learn from a variety of masters”, eclecticism sought the best from each school, “all that teaches righteousness combined, the complete eclectic unity” (Kelley 578). By selecting the best, most reasonable, most useful elements from existing philosophical beliefs, polymaths such as Cicero sought the harmonious solution of particular problems. We see something similar to eclecticism in the East in the practices of ‘wild fox zen’ which teaches liberation from conceptual fixation (Heine). The 20th century’s most interesting eclectic was probably Walter Benjamin whose method owes something to both scientific Marxism and the Jewish Kabbalah. His hero was the rag-picker who had the cunning to create life from refuse and detritus. Benjamin’s greatest work, the unfinished Arcades Project, sought to create history from the same. It is a collection of photos, ephemera and transcriptions from books and newspapers (Benjamin). The particularity of eclecticism may be contrasted with the claim to universality of syncretism, the reconciliation of disparate or opposing beliefs by melding together various schools of thought into a new orthodoxy. Theory-jammers are not looking for a final solution but rather they seek what will work on this problem now, to come to a provisional solution, always aware that other, better, further solutions may be ahead. Elements of the jam are apparent in other contemporary forms of communication. For example bricolage, the practice from art, culture and information systems, involves tinkering elements together by trial and error, in ways not originally planned. Pastiche, from literature to the movies, mimics style while creating a new message. In theatre and TV comedy, improvisation has become a style in itself. Theory-jamming has direct connections with brainstorming, the practice that originated in the advertising industry to generate new ideas and solutions by kicking around possibilities. Against the hyper-administration of modern life, as the disintegration of grand theory immobilises thinkers, theory-jamming provides the means to think new thoughts. As a political activist and communications practitioner in Australia over the last thirty years, I have always been bemused by the human propensity to factionalise. Rather than getting bogged down by positions, I have sought to use administrative structures to explore critical ideas, to marshal critical approaches into administrative apparatus, to weld together critical and administrative formations in ways useful to both sides, bust most importantly, in ways useful to human society and a healthy environment. I've been accused of selling-out by the critical camp and of being unrealistic by the administrative side. My response is that we have much more to learn by listening and adapting than we do by self-satisfied stasis. Five Theses on Theory-Jamming Eclecticism requires Ethnography: the eclectic is the ethnographer loose in their own mind. “The free spirit surveys things, and now for the first time mundane existence appears to it worthy of contemplation…” (Nietzsche 6). Enculturation and Enumeration need each other: qualitative and quantitative research work best when they work off each other. “Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game’s symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.” (Hesse) Ephemera and Esoterica tell us the most: the back-story is the real story as we stumble on the greatest truths as if by accident. “…the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection, sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse, as when you steer away from a goal in order to reach it more directly…” (Jameson 71). Experimentation beyond Empiricism: more than testing our sense of our sense data of the world. Communication theory extends from infra-red to ultraviolet, from silent to ultrasonic, from absolute zero to complete heat, from the sub-atomic to the inter-galactic. “That is the true characteristic of the philosophical drive: wonderment at that which lies before everyone.” (Nietzsche 6). Extravagance and Exuberance: don’t stop until you’ve got enough. Theory-jamming opens the possibility for a unified theory of communication that starts, not with a false narrative certainty, but with the gaps in communication: the distance between what we know and what we say, between what we say and what we write, between what we write and what others read back, between what others say and what we hear. References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2002. Cameron, W. B. “Sociological Notes on the Jam Session.” Social Forces 33 (Dec. 1954): 177–82. Dervin, B., P. Shields and M. Song. “More than Misunderstanding, Less than War.” Paper at International Communication Association annual meeting, New York City, NY, 2005. 5 Oct. 2006 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p13530_index.html>. “Ferment in the Field.” Journal of Communication 33.3 (1983). Heine, Steven. “Putting the ‘Fox’ Back in the ‘Wild Fox Koan’: The Intersection of Philosophical and Popular Religious Elements in The Ch’an/Zen Koan Tradition.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56.2 (Dec. 1996): 257-317. Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-90. Kelley, Donald R. “Eclecticism and the History of Ideas.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (Oct. 2001): 577-592 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Rogers, E. M. “The Empirical and the Critical Schools of Communication Research.” Communication Yearbook 5 (1982): 125-144. Shannon, C.E., and W. Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Silver, David, Adrienne Massanari. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: NYU P, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Dec. 2006) "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>.

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Each community’s title deed carries the indelible blood stains of our ancestors. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 2)IntroductionAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term coalition comes from the Latin coalescere or ‘coalesce’, meaning “come or bring together to form one mass or whole”. Coalesce refers to the unity affirmed as something grows: co – “together”, alesce – “to grow up”. While coalition is commonly associated with formalised alliances and political strategy in the name of self-interest and common goals, this paper will draw as well on the broader etymological understanding of coalition as “growing together” in order to discuss the Australian government’s recent changes to land rights legislation, the 2007 Emergency Intervention into the Northern Territory, and its decision to use Indigenous land in the Northern Territory as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. What unites these distinct cases is the role of the Australian nation-state in asserting its sovereign right to decide, something Giorgio Agamben notes is the primary indicator of sovereign right and power (Agamben). As Fiona McAllan has argued in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention: “Various forces that had been coalescing and captivating the moral, imaginary centre were now contributing to a spectacular enactment of a sovereign rescue mission” (par. 18). Different visions of “growing together”, and different coalitional strategies, are played out in public debate and policy formation. This paper will argue that each of these cases represents an alliance between successive, oppositional governments - and the nourishment of neoliberal imperatives - over and against the interests of some of the Indigenous communities, especially with relation to land rights. A critical stance is taken in relation to the alterations to land rights laws over the past five years and with the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, hereinafter referred to as the Intervention, firstly by the Howard Liberal Coalition Government and later continued, in what Anthony Lambert has usefully termed a “postcoalitional” fashion, by the Rudd Labor Government. By this, Lambert refers to the manner in which dominant relations of power continue despite the apparent collapse of old political coalitions and even in the face of seemingly progressive symbolic and material change. It is not the intention of this paper to locate Indigenous people in opposition to models of economic development aligned with neoliberalism. There are examples of productive relations between Indigenous communities and mining companies, in which Indigenous people retain control over decision-making and utilise Land Council’s to negotiate effectively. Major mining company Rio Tinto, for example, initiated an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Policy platform in the mid-1990s (Rio Tinto). Moreover, there are diverse perspectives within the Indigenous community regarding social and economic reform governed by neoliberal agendas as well as government initiatives such as the Intervention, motivated by a concern for the abuse of children, as outlined in The Little Children Are Sacred Report (Wild & Anderson; hereinafter Little Children). Indeed, there is no agreement on whether or not the Intervention had anything to do with land rights. On the one hand, Noel Pearson has strongly opposed this assertion: “I've got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a 'land grab'. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children's neglect and abuse" (ABC). Marcia Langton has agreed with this stating that “There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous” (Langton). Patrick Dodson on the other hand, has argued that yes, of course, the children remain the highest priority, but that this “is undermined by the Government's heavy-handed authoritarian intervention and its ideological and deceptive land reform agenda” (Dodson). WhitenessOne way to frame this issue is to look at it through the lens of critical race and whiteness theory. Is it possible that the interests of whiteness are at play in the coalitions of corporate/private enterprise and political interests in the Northern Territory, in the coupling of social conservatism and economic rationalism? Using this framework allows us to identify the partial interests at play and the implications of this for discussions in Australia around sovereignty and self-determination, as well as providing a discursive framework through which to understand how these coalitional interests represent a specific understanding of progress, growth and development. Whiteness theory takes an empirically informed stance in order to critique the operation of unequal power relations and discriminatory practices imbued in racialised structures. Whiteness and critical race theory take the twin interests of racial privileging and racial discrimination and discuss their historical and on-going relevance for law, philosophy, representation, media, politics and policy. Foregrounding contemporary analysis in whiteness studies is the central role of race in the development of the Australian nation, most evident in the dispossession and destruction of Indigenous lands, cultures and lives, which occurred initially prior to Federation, as well as following. Cheryl Harris’s landmark paper “Whiteness as Property” argues, in the context of the US, that “the origins of property rights ... are rooted in racial domination” and that the “interaction between conceptions of race and property ... played a critical role in establishing and maintaining racial and economic subordination” (Harris 1716).Reiterating the logic of racial inferiority and the assumption of a lack of rationality and civility, Indigenous people were named in the Australian Constitution as “flora and fauna” – which was not overturned until a national referendum in 1967. This, coupled with the logic of terra nullius represents the racist foundational logic of Australian statehood. As is well known, terra nullius declared that the land belonged to no-one, denying Indigenous people property rights over land. Whiteness, Moreton-Robinson contends, “is constitutive of the epistemology of the West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and has material effects in everyday life” (Whiteness 75).In addition to analysing racial power structures, critical race theory has presented studies into the link between race, whiteness and neoliberalism. Roberts and Mahtami argue that it is not just that neoliberalism has racialised effects, rather that neoliberalism and its underlying philosophy is “fundamentally raced and produces racialized bodies” (248; also see Goldberg Threat). The effect of the free market on state sovereignty has been hotly debated too. Aihwa Ong contends that neoliberalism produces particular relationships between the state and non-state corporations, as well as determining the role of individuals within the body-politic. Ong specifies:Market-driven logic induces the co-ordination of political policies with the corporate interests, so that developmental discussions favour the fragmentation of the national space into various contiguous zones, and promote the differential regulation of the populations who can be connected to or disconnected from global circuits of capital. (Ong, Neoliberalism 77)So how is whiteness relevant to a discussion of land reform, and to the changes to land rights passed along with Intervention legislation in 2007? Irene Watson cites the former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, who opposed the progressive individual with what he termed the “failed collective.” Watson asserts that in the debates around land leasing and the Intervention, “Aboriginal law and traditional roles and responsibilities for caring and belonging to country are transformed into the cause for community violence” (Sovereign Spaces 34). The effects of this, I will argue, are twofold and move beyond a moral or social agenda in the strictest sense of the terms: firstly to promote, and make more accessible, the possibility of private and government coalitions in relation to Indigenous lands, and secondly, to reinforce the sovereignty of the state, recognised in the capacity to make decisions. It is here that the explicit reiteration of what Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls “white possession” is clearly evidenced (The Possessive Logic). Sovereign Interventions In the Northern Territory 50% of land is owned by Indigenous people under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (ALRA) (NT). This law gives Indigenous people control, mediated via land councils, over their lands. It is the contention of this paper that the rights enabled through this law have been eroded in recent times in the coalescing interests of government and private enterprise via, broadly, land rights reform measures. In August 2007 the government passed a number of laws that overturned aspects of the Racial Discrimination Act 197 5(RDA), including the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. Ostensibly these laws were a response to evidence of alarming levels of child abuse in remote Indigenous communities, which has been compiled in the special report Little Children, co-chaired by Rex Wild QC and Patricia Anderson. This report argued that urgent but culturally appropriate strategies were required in order to assist the local communities in tackling the issues. The recommendations of the report did not include military intervention, and instead prioritised the need to support and work in dialogue with local Indigenous people and organisations who were already attempting, with extremely limited resources, to challenge the problem. Specifically it stated that:The thrust of our recommendations, which are designed to advise the NT government on how it can help support communities to effectively prevent and tackle child sexual abuse, is for there to be consultation with, and ownership by the local communities, of these solutions. (Wild & Anderson 23) Instead, the Federal Coalition government, with support from the opposition Labor Party, initiated a large scale intervention, which included the deployment of the military, to install order and assist medical personnel to carry out compulsory health checks on minors. The intervention affected 73 communities with populations of over 200 Aboriginal men, women and children (Altman, Neo-Paternalism 8). The reality of high levels of domestic and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities requires urgent and diligent attention, but it is not the space of this paper to unpack the media spectacle or the politically determined response to these serious issues, or the considered and careful reports such as the one cited above. While the report specifies the need for local solutions and local control of the process and decision-making, the Federal Liberal Coalition government’s intervention, and the current Labor government’s faithfulness to these, has been centralised and external, imposed upon communities. Rebecca Stringer argues that the Trojan horse thesis indicates what is at stake in this Intervention, while also pinpointing its main weakness. That is, the counter-intuitive links its architects make between addressing child sexual abuse and re-litigating Indigenous land tenure and governance arrangements in a manner that undermines Aboriginal sovereignty and further opens Aboriginal lands to private interests among the mining, nuclear power, tourism, property development and labour brokerage industries. (par. 8)Alongside welfare quarantining for all Indigenous people, was a decision by parliament to overturn the “permit system”, a legal protocol provided by the ALRA and in place so as to enable Indigenous peoples the right to refuse and grant entry to strangers wanting to access their lands. To place this in a broader context of land rights reform, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 2006, created the possibility of 99 year individual leases, at the expense of communal ownership. The legislation operates as a way of individualising the land arrangements in remote Indigenous communities by opening communal land up as private plots able to be bought by Aboriginal people or any other interested party. Indeed, according to Leon Terrill, land reform in Australia over the past 10 years reflects an attempt to return control of decision-making to government bureaucracy, even as governments have downplayed this aspect. Terrill argues that Township Leasing (enabled via the 2006 legislation), takes “wholesale decision-making about land use” away from Traditional Owners and instead places it in the hands of a government entity called the Executive Director of Township Leasing (3). With the passage of legislation around the Intervention, five year leases were created to enable the Commonwealth “administrative control” over the communities affected (Terrill 3). Finally, under the current changes it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of Aboriginal people will be able to access individual land leasing. Moreover, the argument has been presented that these reforms reflect a broader project aimed at replacing communal land ownership arrangements. This agenda has been justified at a rhetorical level via the demonization of communal land ownership arrangements. Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin, researchers at the rightwing think-tank, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), released a report entitled A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities, in which they argue that there is a direct casual link between communal ownership and economic underdevelopment: “Communal ownership of land, royalties and other resources is the principle cause of the lack of economic development in remote areas” (in Norberry & Gardiner-Garden 8). In 2005, then Prime Minister, John Howard, publicly introduced the government’s ambition to alter the structure of Indigenous land arrangements, couching his agenda in the language of “equal opportunity”. I believe there’s a case for reviewing the whole issue of Aboriginal land title in the sense of looking more towards private recognition …, I’m talking about giving them the same opportunities as the rest of their fellow Australians. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 1)Scholars of critical race theory have argued that the language of equality, usually tied to liberalism (though not always) masks racial inequality and even results in “camouflaged racism” (Davis 61). David Theo Goldberg notes that, “the racial status-quo - racial exclusions and privileges favouring for the most part middle - and upper class whites - is maintained by formalising equality through states of legal and administrative science” (Racial State 222). While Howard and his coalition of supporters have associated communal title with disadvantage and called for the equality to be found in individual leases (Dodson), Altman has argued that there is no logical link between forms of communal land ownership and incidences of sexual abuse, and indeed, the government’s use of sexual abuse disingenuously disguises it’s imperative to alter the land ownership arrangements: “Given the proposed changes to the ALRA are in no way associated with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities […] there is therefore no pressing urgency to pass the amendments.” (Altman National Emergency, 3) In the case of the Intervention, land rights reforms have affected the continued dispossession of Indigenous people in the interests of “commercial development” (Altman Neo-Paternalism 8). In light of this it can be argued that what is occurring conforms to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson has highlighted as the “possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty” (Possessive Logic). White sovereignty, under the banner of benevolent paternalism overturns the authority it has conceded to local Indigenous communities. This is realised via township leases, five year leases, housing leases and other measures, stripping them of the right to refuse the government and private enterprise entry into their lands (effectively the right of control and decision-making), and opening them up to, as Stringer argues, a range of commercial and government interests. Future Concerns and Concluding NotesThe etymological root of coalition is coalesce, inferring the broad ambition to “grow together”. In the issues outlined above, growing together is dominated by neoliberal interests, or what Stringer has termed “assimilatory neoliberation”. The issue extends beyond a social and economic assimilationism project and into a political and legal “land grab”, because, as Ong notes, the neoliberal agenda aligns itself with the nation-state. This coalitional arrangement of neoliberal and governmental interests reiterates “white possession” (Moreton-Robinson, The Possessive Logic). This is evidenced in the position of the current Labor government decision to uphold the nomination of Muckaty as a radioactive waste repository site in Australia (Stokes). In 2007, the Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated Muckaty Station to be the site for waste disposal. This decision cannot be read outside the context of Maralinga, in the South Australian desert, a site where experiments involving nuclear technology were conducted in the 1960s. As John Keane recounts, the Australian government permitted the British government to conduct tests, dispossessing the local Aboriginal group, the Tjarutja, and employing a single patrol officer “the job of monitoring the movements of the Aborigines and quarantining them in settlements” (Keane). Situated within this historical colonial context, in 2006, under a John Howard led Liberal Coalition, the government passed the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA), a law which effectively overrode the rulings of the Northern Territory government in relation decisions regarding nuclear waste disposal, as well as overriding the rights of traditional Aboriginal owners and the validity of sacred sites. The Australian Labor government has sought to alter the CRWMA in order to reinstate the importance of following due process in the nomination process of land. However, it left the proposed site of Muckaty as confirmed, and the new bill, titled National Radioactive Waste Management retains many of the same characteristics of the Howard government legislation. In 2010, 57 traditional owners from Muckaty and surrounding areas signed a petition stating their opposition to the disposal site (the case is currently in the Federal Court). At a time when nuclear power has come back onto the radar as a possible solution to the energy crisis and climate change, questions concerning the investments of government and its loyalties should be asked. As Malcolm Knox has written “the nuclear industry has become evangelical about the dangers of global warming” (Knox). While nuclear is a “cleaner” energy than coal, until better methods are designed for processing its waste, larger amounts of it will be produced, requiring lands that can hold it for the desired timeframes. For Australia, this demands attention to the politics and ethics of waste disposal. Such an issue is already being played out, before nuclear has even been signed off as a solution to climate change, with the need to find a disposal site to accommodate already existing uranium exported to Europe and destined to return as waste to Australia in 2014. The decision to go ahead with Muckaty against the wishes of the voices of local Indigenous people may open the way for the co-opting of a discourse of environmentalism by political and business groups to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to climate change. During the 2010 Australian election, Greens Leader Bob Brown played upon the word coalition to suggest that the Liberal National Party were in COALition with the mining industry over the proposed Mining Tax – the Liberal Coalition opposed any mining tax (Brown). Here Brown highlights the alliance of political agendas and business or corporate interests quite succinctly. Like Brown’s COALition, will government (of either major party) form a coalition with the nuclear power stakeholders?This paper has attempted to bring to light what Dodson has identified as “an alliance of established conservative forces...with more recent and strident ideological thinking associated with free market economics and notions of individual responsibility” and the implications of this alliance for land rights (Dodson). It is important to ask critical questions about the vision of “growing together” being promoted via the coalition of conservative, neoliberal, private and government interests.Acknowledgements Many thanks to the reviewers of this article for their useful suggestions. ReferencesAustralian Broadcasting Authority. “Noel Pearson Discusses the Issues Faced by Indigenous Communities.” Lateline 26 June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1962844.htm>. Agamben, Giorgio. hom*o Sacer. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998. Altman, Jon. “The ‘National Emergency’ and Land Rights Reform: Separating Fact from Fiction.” A Briefing Paper for Oxfam Australia, 2007. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.oxfam.org.au/resources/filestore/originals/OAus-EmergencyLandRights-0807.pdf>. Altman, Jon. “The Howard Government’s Northern Territory Intervention: Are Neo-Paternalism and Indigenous Development Compatible?” Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Topical Issue 16 (2007). 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://caepr.anu.edu.au/system/files/Publications/topical/Altman_AIATSIS.pdf>. Brown, Bob. “Senator Bob Brown National Pre-Election Press Club Address.” 2010. 18 Aug. 2010 ‹http://greens.org.au/content/senator-bob-brown-pre-election-national-press-club-address>. Davis, Angela. The Angela Davis Reader. Ed. J. James, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Dodson, Patrick. “An Entire Culture Is at Stake.” Opinion. The Age, 14 July 2007: 4. Goldberg, David Theo. The Racial State. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2002.———. The Threat of Race: Reflections on Neoliberalism. Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2008. Harris, Cheryl. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106.8 (1993): 1709-1795. Keane, John. “Maralinga’s Afterlife.” Feature Article. The Age, 11 May 2003. 24 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/11/1052280486255.html>. Knox, Malcolm. “Nuclear Dawn.” The Monthly 56 (May 2010). Lambert, Anthony. “Rainbow Blindness: Same-Sex Partnerships in Post-Coalitional Australia.” M/C Journal 13.6 (2010). Langton, Marcia. “It’s Time to Stop Playing Politics with Vulnerable Lives.” Opinion. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Nov. 2007: 2. McAllan, Fiona. “Customary Appropriations.” borderlands ejournal 6.3 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no3_2007/mcallan_appropriations.htm>. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “The Possessive Logic of Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta Decision.” borderlands e-journal 3.2 (2004). 1 Aug. 2007 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm>. ———. “Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation.” Whitening Race. Ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 75-89. Norberry, J., and J. Gardiner-Garden. Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006. Australian Parliamentary Library Bills Digest 158 (19 June 2006). Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 75-97.Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Rio Tinto. "Rio Tinto Aboriginal Policy and Programme Briefing Note." June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.aboriginalfund.riotinto.com/common/pdf/Aboriginal%20Policy%20and%20Programs%20-%20June%202007.pdf>. Roberts, David J., and Mielle Mahtami. “Neoliberalising Race, Racing Neoliberalism: Placing 'Race' in Neoliberal Discourses.” Antipode 42.2 (2010): 248-257. Stringer, Rebecca. “A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention.” borderlands ejournal 6.2 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/stringer_intervention.htm>.Stokes, Dianne. "Muckaty." n.d. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.timbonham.com/slideshows/Muckaty/>. Terrill, Leon. “Indigenous Land Reform: What Is the Real Aim of Land Reform?” Edited version of a presentation provided at the 2010 National Native Title Conference, 2010. Watson, Irene. “Sovereign Spaces, Caring for Country and the Homeless Position of Aboriginal Peoples.” South Atlantic Quarterly 108.1 (2009): 27-51. Watson, Nicole. “Howard’s End: The Real Agenda behind the Proposed Review of Indigenous Land Titles.” Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 9.4 (2005). ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/2005/64.html>.Wild, R., and P. Anderson. Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarie: The Little Children Are Sacred. Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Northern Territory: Northern Territory Government, 2007.

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Michael Watts of Purdue University reviews “Better Living through Economics” edited by John J. Siegfried. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Twelve papers and fourteen comments explore the fundamental contributions of economic research to important public policy decisions over the past half century. Papers discuss the evolution of emissions trading; better living through improved price indexes; economics and the Earned Income Tax Credit;….” Arthur J. Robson of Simon Fraser University reviews “The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences” by Herbert Gintis. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Explores how key concepts from the behavioral sciences can complement game theory in providing insights into human behavior. Discusses decision theory and human behavior; game theory--basic concepts; game theory and human behavior; rationalizability and common knowledge of rationality; extensive for….” Robert A. 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Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)Declaring War Soon after Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration described its new grand strategy: the “Global War on Terror”. This underpinned the subsequent counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the United States invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Media pundits quickly applied the Global War on Terror label to the Madrid, Bali and London bombings, to convey how Al Qaeda’s terrorism had gone transnational. Meanwhile, international relations scholars debated the extent to which September 11 had changed the international system (Brenner; Mann 303). American intellectuals adopted several variations of the Global War on Terror in what initially felt like a transitional period of US foreign policy (Burns). Walter Laqueur suggested Al Qaeda was engaged in a “cosmological” and perpetual war. Paul Berman likened Al Qaeda and militant Islam to the past ideological battles against communism and fascism (Heilbrunn 248). In a widely cited article, neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz suggested the United States faced “World War IV”, which had three interlocking drivers: Al Qaeda and trans-national terrorism; political Islam as the West’s existential enemy; and nuclear proliferation to ‘rogue’ countries and non-state actors (Friedman 3). Podhoretz’s tone reflected a revival of his earlier Cold War politics and critique of the New Left (Friedman 148-149; Halper and Clarke 56; Heilbrunn 210). These stances attracted widespread support. For instance, the United States Marine Corp recalibrated its mission to fight a long war against “World War IV-like” enemies. Yet these stances left the United States unprepared as the combat situations in Afghanistan and Iraq worsened (Ricks; Ferguson; Filkins). Neoconservative ideals for Iraq “regime change” to transform the Middle East failed to deal with other security problems such as Pakistan’s Musharraf regime (Dorrien 110; Halper and Clarke 210-211; Friedman 121, 223; Heilbrunn 252). The Manichean and open-ended framing became a self-fulfilling prophecy for insurgents, jihadists, and militias. The Bush Administration quietly abandoned the Global War on Terror in July 2005. Widespread support had given way to policymaker doubt. Why did so many intellectuals and strategists embrace the Global War on Terror as the best possible “grand strategy” perspective of a post-September 11 world? Why was there so little doubt of this worldview? This is a debate with roots as old as the Sceptics versus the Sophists. Explanations usually focus on the Bush Administration’s “Vulcans” war cabinet: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who later became Secretary of State (Mann xv-xvi). The “Vulcans” were named after the Roman god Vulcan because Rice’s hometown Birmingham, Alabama, had “a mammoth fifty-six foot statue . . . [in] homage to the city’s steel industry” (Mann x) and the name stuck. Alternatively, explanations focus on how neoconservative thinkers shaped the intellectual climate after September 11, in a receptive media climate. Biographers suggest that “neoconservatism had become an echo chamber” (Heilbrunn 242) with its own media outlets, pundits, and think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and Project for a New America. Neoconservatism briefly flourished in Washington DC until Iraq’s sectarian violence discredited the “Vulcans” and neoconservative strategists like Paul Wolfowitz (Friedman; Ferguson). The neoconservatives' combination of September 11’s aftermath with strongly argued historical analogies was initially convincing. They conferred with scholars such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington and Victor Davis Hanson to construct classicist historical narratives and to explain cultural differences. However, the history of the decade after September 11 also contains mis-steps and mistakes which make it a series of contingent decisions (Ferguson; Bergen). One way to analyse these contingent decisions is to pose “what if?” counterfactuals, or feasible alternatives to historical events (Lebow). For instance, what if September 11 had been a chemical and biological weapons attack? (Mann 317). Appendix 1 includes a range of alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events which occurred. Collectively, these counterfactuals suggest the role of agency, chance, luck, and the juxtaposition of better and worse outcomes. They pose challenges to the classicist interpretation adopted soon after September 11 to justify “World War IV” (Podhoretz). A ‘Two-Track’ Process for ‘World War IV’ After the September 11 attacks, I think an overlapping two-track process occurred with the “Vulcans” cabinet, neoconservative advisers, and two “echo chambers”: neoconservative think-tanks and the post-September 11 media. Crucially, Bush’s “Vulcans” war cabinet succeeded in gaining civilian control of the United States war decision process. Although successful in initiating the 2003 Iraq War this civilian control created a deeper crisis in US civil-military relations (Stevenson; Morgan). The “Vulcans” relied on “politicised” intelligence such as a United Kingdom intelligence report on Iraq’s weapons development program. The report enabled “a climate of undifferentiated fear to arise” because its public version did not distinguish between chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons (Halper and Clarke, 210). The cautious 2003 National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) report on Iraq was only released in a strongly edited form. For instance, the US Department of Energy had expressed doubts about claims that Iraq had approached Niger for uranium, and was using aluminium tubes for biological and chemical weapons development. Meanwhile, the post-September 11 media had become a second “echo chamber” (Halper and Clarke 194-196) which amplified neoconservative arguments. Berman, Laqueur, Podhoretz and others who framed the intellectual climate were “risk entrepreneurs” (Mueller 41-43) that supported the “World War IV” vision. The media also engaged in aggressive “flak” campaigns (Herman and Chomsky 26-28; Mueller 39-42) designed to limit debate and to stress foreign policy stances and themes which supported the Bush Administration. When former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey’s claimed that Al Qaeda had close connections to Iraqi intelligence, this was promoted in several books, including Michael Ledeen’s War Against The Terror Masters, Stephen Hayes’ The Connection, and Laurie Mylroie’s Bush v. The Beltway; and in partisan media such as Fox News, NewsMax, and The Weekly Standard who each attacked the US State Department and the CIA (Dorrien 183; Hayes; Ledeen; Mylroie; Heilbrunn 237, 243-244; Mann 310). This was the media “echo chamber” at work. The group Accuracy in Media also campaigned successfully to ensure that US cable providers did not give Al Jazeera English access to US audiences (Barker). Cosmopolitan ideals seemed incompatible with what the “flak” groups desired. The two-track process converged on two now infamous speeches. US President Bush’s State of the Union Address on 29 January 2002, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations on 5 February 2003. Bush’s speech included a line from neoconservative David Frumm about North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an “Axis of Evil” (Dorrien 158; Halper and Clarke 139-140; Mann 242, 317-321). Powell’s presentation to the United Nations included now-debunked threat assessments. In fact, Powell had altered the speech’s original draft by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was Cheney’s chief of staff (Dorrien 183-184). Powell claimed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons facilities, linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Institute for Science and International Security all strongly doubted this claim, as did international observers (Dorrien 184; Halper and Clarke 212-213; Mann 353-354). Yet this information was suppressed: attacked by “flak” or given little visible media coverage. Powell’s agenda included trying to rebuild an international coalition and to head off weather changes that would affect military operations in the Middle East (Mann 351). Both speeches used politicised variants of “weapons of mass destruction”, taken from the counterterrorism literature (Stern; Laqueur). Bush’s speech created an inflated geopolitical threat whilst Powell relied on flawed intelligence and scientific visuals to communicate a non-existent threat (Vogel). However, they had the intended effect on decision makers. US Under-Secretary of Defense, the neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, later revealed to Vanity Fair that “weapons of mass destruction” was selected as an issue that all potential stakeholders could agree on (Wilkie 69). Perhaps the only remaining outlet was satire: Armando Iannucci’s 2009 film In The Loop parodied the diplomatic politics surrounding Powell’s speech and the civil-military tensions on the Iraq War’s eve. In the short term the two track process worked in heading off doubt. The “Vulcans” blocked important information on pre-war Iraq intelligence from reaching the media and the general public (Prados). Alternatively, they ignored area specialists and other experts, such as when Coalition Provisional Authority’s L. Paul Bremer ignored the US State Department’s fifteen volume ‘Future of Iraq’ project (Ferguson). Public “flak” and “risk entrepreneurs” mobilised a range of motivations from grief and revenge to historical memory and identity politics. This combination of private and public processes meant that although doubts were expressed, they could be contained through the dual echo chambers of neoconservative policymaking and the post-September 11 media. These factors enabled the “Vulcans” to proceed with their “regime change” plans despite strong public opposition from anti-war protestors. Expressing DoubtsMany experts and institutions expressed doubt about specific claims the Bush Administration made to support the 2003 Iraq War. This doubt came from three different and sometimes overlapping groups. Subject matter experts such as the IAEA’s Mohamed El-Baradei and weapons development scientists countered the UK intelligence report and Powell’s UN speech. However, they did not get the media coverage warranted due to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics. Others could challenge misleading historical analogies between insurgent Iraq and Nazi Germany, and yet not change the broader outcomes (Benjamin). Independent journalists one group who gained new information during the 1990-91 Gulf War: some entered Iraq from Kuwait and documented a more humanitarian side of the war to journalists embedded with US military units (Uyarra). Finally, there were dissenters from bureaucratic and institutional processes. In some cases, all three overlapped. In their separate analyses of the post-September 11 debate on intelligence “failure”, Zegart and Jervis point to a range of analytic misperceptions and institutional problems. However, the intelligence community is separated from policymakers such as the “Vulcans”. Compartmentalisation due to the “need to know” principle also means that doubting analysts can be blocked from releasing information. Andrew Wilkie discovered this when he resigned from Australia’s Office for National Assessments (ONA) as a transnational issues analyst. Wilkie questioned the pre-war assessments in Powell’s United Nations speech that were used to justify the 2003 Iraq War. Wilkie was then attacked publicly by Australian Prime Minister John Howard. This overshadowed a more important fact: both Howard and Wilkie knew that due to Australian legislation, Wilkie could not publicly comment on ONA intelligence, despite the invitation to do so. This barrier also prevented other intelligence analysts from responding to the “Vulcans”, and to “flak” and “echo chamber” dynamics in the media and neoconservative think-tanks. Many analysts knew that the excerpts released from the 2003 NIE on Iraq was highly edited (Prados). For example, Australian agencies such as the ONA, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Department of Defence knew this (Wilkie 98). However, analysts are trained not to interfere with policymakers, even when there are significant civil-military irregularities. Military officials who spoke out about pre-war planning against the “Vulcans” and their neoconservative supporters were silenced (Ricks; Ferguson). Greenlight Capital’s hedge fund manager David Einhorn illustrates in a different context what might happen if analysts did comment. Einhorn gave a speech to the Ira Sohn Conference on 15 May 2002 debunking the management of Allied Capital. Einhorn’s “short-selling” led to retaliation from Allied Capital, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and growing evidence of potential fraud. If analysts adopted Einhorn’s tactics—combining rigorous analysis with targeted, public denunciation that is widely reported—then this may have short-circuited the “flak” and “echo chamber” effects prior to the 2003 Iraq War. The intelligence community usually tries to pre-empt such outcomes via contestation exercises and similar processes. This was the goal of the 2003 NIE on Iraq, despite the fact that the US Department of Energy which had the expertise was overruled by other agencies who expressed opinions not necessarily based on rigorous scientific and technical analysis (Prados; Vogel). In counterterrorism circles, similar disinformation arose about Aum Shinrikyo’s biological weapons research after its sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system on 20 March 1995 (Leitenberg). Disinformation also arose regarding nuclear weapons proliferation to non-state actors in the 1990s (Stern). Interestingly, several of the “Vulcans” and neoconservatives had been involved in an earlier controversial contestation exercise: Team B in 1976. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assembled three Team B groups in order to evaluate and forecast Soviet military capabilities. One group headed by historian Richard Pipes gave highly “alarmist” forecasts and then attacked a CIA NIE about the Soviets (Dorrien 50-56; Mueller 81). The neoconservatives adopted these same tactics to reframe the 2003 NIE from its position of caution, expressed by several intelligence agencies and experts, to belief that Iraq possessed a current, covert program to develop weapons of mass destruction (Prados). Alternatively, information may be leaked to the media to express doubt. “Non-attributable” background interviews to establishment journalists like Seymour Hersh and Bob Woodward achieved this. Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange has recently achieved notoriety due to US diplomatic cables from the SIPRNet network released from 28 November 2010 onwards. Supporters have favourably compared Assange to Daniel Ellsberg, the RAND researcher who leaked the Pentagon Papers (Ellsberg; Ehrlich and Goldsmith). Whilst Elsberg succeeded because a network of US national papers continued to print excerpts from the Pentagon Papers despite lawsuit threats, Assange relied in part on favourable coverage from the UK’s Guardian newspaper. However, suspected sources such as US Army soldier Bradley Manning are not protected whilst media outlets are relatively free to publish their scoops (Walt, ‘Woodward’). Assange’s publication of SIPRNet’s diplomatic cables will also likely mean greater restrictions on diplomatic and military intelligence (Walt, ‘Don’t Write’). Beyond ‘Doubt’ Iraq’s worsening security discredited many of the factors that had given the neoconservatives credibility. The post-September 11 media became increasingly more critical of the US military in Iraq (Ferguson) and cautious about the “echo chamber” of think-tanks and media outlets. Internet sites for Al Jazeera English, Al-Arabiya and other networks have enabled people to bypass “flak” and directly access these different viewpoints. Most damagingly, the non-discovery of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction discredited both the 2003 NIE on Iraq and Colin Powell’s United Nations presentation (Wilkie 104). Likewise, “risk entrepreneurs” who foresaw “World War IV” in 2002 and 2003 have now distanced themselves from these apocalyptic forecasts due to a series of mis-steps and mistakes by the Bush Administration and Al Qaeda’s over-calculation (Bergen). The emergence of sites such as Wikileaks, and networks like Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya, are a response to the politics of the past decade. They attempt to short-circuit past “echo chambers” through providing access to different sources and leaked data. The Global War on Terror framed the Bush Administration’s response to September 11 as a war (Kirk; Mueller 59). Whilst this prematurely closed off other possibilities, it has also unleashed a series of dynamics which have undermined the neoconservative agenda. The “classicist” history and historical analogies constructed to justify the “World War IV” scenario are just one of several potential frameworks. “Flak” organisations and media “echo chambers” are now challenged by well-financed and strategic alternatives such as Al Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya. Doubt is one defence against “risk entrepreneurs” who seek to promote a particular idea: doubt guards against uncritical adoption. Perhaps the enduring lesson of the post-September 11 debates, though, is that doubt alone is not enough. What is needed are individuals and institutions that understand the strategies which the neoconservatives and others have used, and who also have the soft power skills during crises to influence critical decision-makers to choose alternatives. Appendix 1: Counterfactuals Richard Ned Lebow uses “what if?” counterfactuals to examine alternative possibilities and “minimal rewrites” or slight variations on the historical events that occurred. The following counterfactuals suggest that the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror could have evolved very differently . . . or not occurred at all. Fact: The 2003 Iraq War and 2001 Afghanistan counterinsurgency shaped the Bush Administration’s post-September 11 grand strategy. Counterfactual #1: Al Gore decisively wins the 2000 U.S. election. Bush v. Gore never occurs. After the September 11 attacks, Gore focuses on international alliance-building and gains widespread diplomatic support rather than a neoconservative agenda. He authorises Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and works closely with the Musharraf regime in Pakistan to target Al Qaeda’s muhajideen. He ‘contains’ Saddam Hussein’s Iraq through measurement and signature, technical intelligence, and more stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Minimal Rewrite: United 93 crashes in Washington DC, killing senior members of the Gore Administration. Fact: U.S. Special Operations Forces failed to kill Osama bin Laden in late November and early December 2001 at Tora Bora. Counterfactual #2: U.S. Special Operations Forces kill Osama bin Laden in early December 2001 during skirmishes at Tora Bora. Ayman al-Zawahiri is critically wounded, captured, and imprisoned. The rest of Al Qaeda is scattered. Minimal Rewrite: Osama bin Laden’s death turns him into a self-mythologised hero for decades. Fact: The UK Blair Government supplied a 50-page intelligence dossier on Iraq’s weapons development program which the Bush Administration used to support its pre-war planning. Counterfactual #3: Rogue intelligence analysts debunk the UK Blair Government’s claims through a series of ‘targeted’ leaks to establishment news sources. Minimal Rewrite: The 50-page intelligence dossier is later discovered to be correct about Iraq’s weapons development program. Fact: The Bush Administration used the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate to “build its case” for “regime change” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Counterfactual #4: A joint investigation by The New York Times and The Washington Post rebuts U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United National Security Council, delivered on 5 February 2003. Minimal Rewrite: The Central Intelligence Agency’s whitepaper “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs” (October 2002) more accurately reflects the 2003 NIE’s cautious assessments. Fact: The Bush Administration relied on Ahmed Chalabi for its postwar estimates about Iraq’s reconstruction. Counterfactual #5: The Bush Administration ignores Chalabi’s advice and relies instead on the U.S. State Department’s 15 volume report “The Future of Iraq”. Minimal Rewrite: The Coalition Provisional Authority appoints Ahmed Chalabi to head an interim Iraqi government. Fact: L. Paul Bremer signed orders to disband Iraq’s Army and to De-Ba’athify Iraq’s new government. Counterfactual #6: Bremer keeps Iraq’s Army intact and uses it to impose security in Baghdad to prevent looting and to thwart insurgents. Rather than a De-Ba’athification policy, Bremer uses former Baath Party members to gather situational intelligence. Minimal Rewrite: Iraq’s Army refuses to disband and the De-Ba’athification policy uncovers several conspiracies to undermine the Coalition Provisional Authority. AcknowledgmentsThanks to Stephen McGrail for advice on science and technology analysis.References Barker, Greg. “War of Ideas”. PBS Frontline. Boston, MA: 2007. ‹http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/newswar/video1.html› Benjamin, Daniel. “Condi’s Phony History.” Slate 29 Aug. 2003. ‹http://www.slate.com/id/2087768/pagenum/all/›. Bergen, Peter L. The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al Qaeda. New York: The Free Press, 2011. Berman, Paul. Terror and Liberalism. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003. Brenner, William J. “In Search of Monsters: Realism and Progress in International Relations Theory after September 11.” Security Studies 15.3 (2006): 496-528. Burns, Alex. “The Worldflash of a Coming Future.” M/C Journal 6.2 (April 2003). ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php›. Dorrien, Gary. Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana. New York: Routledge, 2004. Ehrlich, Judith, and Goldsmith, Rick. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Berkley CA: Kovno Communications, 2009. Einhorn, David. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story. Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Ellison, Sarah. “The Man Who Spilled The Secrets.” Vanity Fair (Feb. 2011). ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102›. Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. New York: Viking, 2002. Ferguson, Charles. No End in Sight, New York: Representational Pictures, 2007. Filkins, Dexter. The Forever War. New York: Vintage Books, 2008. Friedman, Murray. The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005. Halper, Stefan, and Jonathan Clarke. America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. Hayes, Stephen F. The Connection: How Al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Heilbrunn, Jacob. They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. New York: Doubleday, 2008. Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Rev. ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. Iannucci, Armando. In The Loop. London: BBC Films, 2009. Jervis, Robert. Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War. Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 2010. Kirk, Michael. “The War behind Closed Doors.” PBS Frontline. Boston, MA: 2003. ‹http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/›. Laqueur, Walter. No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Continuum, 2003. Lebow, Richard Ned. Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations. Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 2010. Ledeen, Michael. The War against The Terror Masters. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Leitenberg, Milton. “Aum Shinrikyo's Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A Case Study in the Serial Propagation of Misinformation.” Terrorism and Political Violence 11.4 (1999): 149-158. Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. New York: Viking Penguin, 2004. Morgan, Matthew J. The American Military after 9/11: Society, State, and Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mueller, John. Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them. New York: The Free Press, 2009. Mylroie, Laurie. Bush v The Beltway: The Inside Battle over War in Iraq. New York: Regan Books, 2003. Nutt, Paul C. Why Decisions Fail. San Francisco: Berrett-Koelher, 2002. Podhoretz, Norman. “How to Win World War IV”. Commentary 113.2 (2002): 19-29. Prados, John. Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War. New York: The New Press, 2004. Ricks, Thomas. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Stern, Jessica. The Ultimate Terrorists. Boston, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Stevenson, Charles A. Warriors and Politicians: US Civil-Military Relations under Stress. New York: Routledge, 2006. Walt, Stephen M. “Should Bob Woodward Be Arrested?” Foreign Policy 10 Dec. 2010. ‹http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/10/more_wikileaks_double_standards›. Walt, Stephen M. “‘Don’t Write If You Can Talk...’: The Latest from WikiLeaks.” Foreign Policy 29 Nov. 2010. ‹http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/dont_write_if_you_can_talk_the_latest_from_wikileaks›. Wilkie, Andrew. Axis of Deceit. Melbourne: Black Ink Books, 2003. Uyarra, Esteban Manzanares. “War Feels like War”. London: BBC, 2003. Vogel, Kathleen M. “Iraqi Winnebagos™ of Death: Imagined and Realized Futures of US Bioweapons Threat Assessments.” Science and Public Policy 35.8 (2008): 561–573. Zegart, Amy. Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, 2007.

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Abstract:

IntroductionThe common origin of the adjective “corporeal” and the noun “corpse” in the Latin root corpus points to the value of mortuary practices for investigating how the human body is objectified. In post-mortem rituals, the body—formerly the manipulator of objects—becomes itself the object that is manipulated. Thus, these funerary rituals provide a type of double reflexivity, where the object and subject of manipulation can be used to reciprocally illuminate one another. To this extent, any consideration of corporeality can only benefit from a discussion of how the body is objectified through mortuary practices. This paper offers just such a discussion with respect to a selection of two contrasting mortuary practices, in the context of the prehistoric past and the Classical Era respectively. At the most general level, we are motivated by the same intellectual impulse that has stimulated expositions on corporeality, materiality, and incarnation in areas like phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 77–234), Marxism (Adorno 112–119), gender studies (Grosz vii–xvi), history (Laqueur 193–244), and theology (Henry 33–53). That is to say, our goal is to show that the body, far from being a transparent frame through which we encounter the world, is in fact a locus where historical, social, cultural, and psychological forces intersect. On this view, “the body vanishes as a biological entity and becomes an infinitely malleable and highly unstable culturally constructed product” (Shilling 78). However, for all that the cited paradigms offer culturally situated appreciations of corporeality; our particular intellectual framework will be provided by cognitive science. Two reasons impel us towards this methodological choice.In the first instance, the study of ritual has, after several decades of stagnation, been rewarded—even revolutionised—by the application of insights from the new sciences of the mind (Whitehouse 1–12; McCauley and Lawson 1–37). Thus, there are good reasons to think that ritual treatments of the body will refract historical and social forces through empirically attested tendencies in human cognition. In the present connection, this means that knowledge of these tendencies will reward any attempt to theorise the objectification of the body in mortuary rituals.In the second instance, because beliefs concerning the afterlife can never be definitively judged to be true or false, they give free expression to tendencies in cognition that are otherwise constrained by the need to reflect external realities accurately. To this extent, they grant direct access to the intuitive ideas and biases that shape how we think about the world. Already, this idea has been exploited to good effect in areas like the cognitive anthropology of religion, which explores how counterfactual beings like ghosts, spirits, and gods conform to (and deviate from) pre-reflective cognitive patterns (Atran 83–112; Barrett and Keil 219–224; Barrett and Reed 252–255; Boyer 876–886). Necessarily, this implies that targeting post-mortem treatments of the body will offer unmediated access to some of the conceptual schemes that inform thinking about human corporeality.At a more detailed level, the specific methodology we propose to use will be provided by conceptual blending theory—a framework developed by Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, and others to describe how structures from different areas of experience are creatively blended to form a new conceptual frame. In this system, a generic space provides the ground for coordinating two or more input spaces into a blended space that synthesises them into a single output. Here this would entail using natural or technological processes to structure mortuary practices in a way that satisfies various psychological needs.Take, for instance, W.B. Yeats’s famous claim that “Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart” (“Easter 1916” in Yeats 57-8). Here, the poet exploits a generic space—that of everyday objects and the effort involved in manipulating them—to coordinate an organic input from that taxonomy (the heart) with an inorganic input (a stone) to create the blended idea that too energetic a pursuit of an abstract ideal turns a person into an unfeeling object (the heart-as-stone). Although this particular example corresponds to a familiar rhetorical figure (the metaphor), the value of conceptual blending theory is that it cuts across distinctions of genre, media, language, and discourse level to provide a versatile framework for expressing how one area of human experience is related to another.As indicated, we will exploit this versatility to investigate two ways of objectifying the body through the examination of two contrasting mortuary practices—cremation and inhumation—against different cultural horizons. The first of these is the conceptualisation of the body as an object of a technical process, where the post-mortem cremation of the corpse is analogically correlated with the metallurgical refining of ore into base metal. Our area of focus here will be Bronze Age cremation practices. The second conceptual scheme we will investigate focuses on treatments of the body as a vegetable object; here, the relevant analogy likens the inhumation of the corpse to the planting of a seed in the soil from which future growth will come. This discussion will centre on the Classical Era. Burning: The Body as Manufactured ObjectThe Early and Middle Bronze Age in Western Europe (2500-1200 BCE) represented a period of change in funerary practices relative to the preceding Neolithic, exemplified by a move away from the use of Megalithic monuments, a proliferation of grave goods, and an increase in the use of cremation (Barrett 38-9; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Brück, Material Metaphors 308; Waddell, Bronze Age 141-149). Moreover, the Western European Bronze Age is characterised by a shift away from communal burial towards single interment (Barrett 32; Bradley 158-168). Equally, the Bronze Age in Western Europe provides us with evidence of an increased use of cist and pit cremation burials concentrated in low-lying areas (Woodman 254; Waddell, Prehistoric 16; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Bettencourt 103). This greater preference for lower-lying location appears to reflect a distinctive change in comparison to the distribution patterns of the Neolithic burials; these are often located on prominent, visible aspects of a landscape (Cooney and Grogan 53-61). These new Bronze Age burial practices appear to reflect a distancing in relation to the territories of the “old ancestors” typified by Megalithic monuments (Bettencourt 101-103). Crucially, the Bronze Age archaeological record provides us with evidence that indicates that cremation was becoming the dominant form of deposition of human remains throughout Central and Western Europe (Sørensen and Rebay 59-60).The activities associated with Bronze Age cremations such as the burning of the body and the fragmentation of the remains have often been considered as corporeal equivalents (or expressions) of the activities involved in metal (bronze) production (Brück, Death 84-86; Sørensen and Rebay 60–1; Rebay-Salisbury, Cremations 66-67). There are unequivocal similarities between the practices of cremation and contemporary bronze production technologies—particularly as both processes involve the transformation of material through the application of fire at temperatures between 700 ºC to 1000 ºC (Musgrove 272-276; Walker et al. 132; de Becdelievre et al. 222-223).We assert that the technologies that define the European Bronze Age—those involved in alloying copper and tin to produce bronze—offered a new conceptual frame that enabled the body to be objectified in new ways. The fundamental idea explored here is that the displacement of inhumation by cremation in the European Bronze Age was motivated by a cognitive shift, where new smelting technologies provided novel conceptual metaphors for thinking about age-old problems concerning human mortality and post-mortem survival. The increased use of cremation in the European Bronze Age contrasts with the archaeological record of the Near Eastern—where, despite the earlier emergence of metallurgy (3300–3000 BCE), we do not see a notable proliferation in the use of cremation in this region. Thus, mortuary practices (i.e. cremation) provide us with an insight into how Western European Bronze Age cultures mediated the body through changes in technological objects and processes.In the terminology of conceptual blending, the generic space in question centres on the technical manipulation of the material world. The first input space is associated with the anxiety attending mortality—specifically, the cessation of personal identity and the extinction of interpersonal relationships. The second input space represents the technical knowledge associated with bronze production; in particular, the extraction of ore from source material and its mixing with other metals to form an alloy. The blended space coordinates these inputs to objectify the human body as an object that is ritually transformed into a new but more durable substance via the cremation process. In this contention we use the archaeological record to draw a conceptual parallel between the emergence of bronze production technology—centring on transition of naturally occurring material to a new subsistence (bronze)—and the transitional nature of the cremation process.In this theoretical framework, treating the body as a mixture of substances that can be reduced to its constituents and transformed through technologies of cremation enabled Western European Bronze Age society to intervene in the natural process of putrefaction and transform the organic matter into something more permanent. This transformative aspect of the cremation is seen in the evidence we have for secondary burial practices involving the curation and circulation of cremated bones of deceased members of a group (Brück, Death 87-93). This evidence allows us to assert that cremated human remains and objects were considered products of the same transformation into a more permanent state via burning, fragmentation, dispersal, and curation. Sofaer (62-69) states that the living body is regarded as a person, but as soon as the transition to death is made, the body becomes an object; this is an “ontological shift in the perception of the body that assumes a sudden change in its qualities” (62).Moreover, some authors have proposed that the exchange of fragmented human remains was central to mortuary practices and was central in establishing and maintaining social relations (Brück, Death 76-88). It is suggested that in the Early Bronze Age the perceptions of the human body mirrored the perceptions of objects associated with the arrival of the new bronze technology (Brück, Death 88-92). This idea is more pronounced if we consider the emergence of bronze technology as the beginning of a period of capital intensification of natural resources. Through this connection, the Bronze Age can be regarded as the point at which a particular natural resource—in this case, copper—went through myriad intensive manufacturing stages, which are still present today (intensive extraction, production/manufacturing, and distribution). Unlike stone tool production, bronze production had the addition of fire as the explicit method of transformation (Brück, Death 88-92). Thus, such views maintain that the transition achieved by cremation—i.e. reducing the human remains to objects or tokens that could be exchanged and curated relatively soon after the death of the individual—is equivalent to the framework of commodification connected with bronze production.A sample of cremated remains from Castlehyde in County Cork, Ireland, provides us with an example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in a Western European context (McCarthy). This is chosen because it is a typical example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in the context of Western Europe; also, one of the authors (MG) has first-hand experience in the analysis of its associated remains. The Castlehyde cremation burial consisted of a rectangular, stone-lined cist (McCarthy). The cist contained cremated, calcined human remains, with the fragments generally ranging from a greyish white to white in colour; this indicates that the bones were subject to a temperature range of 700-900ºC. The organic content of bone was destroyed during the cremation process, leaving only the inorganic matrix (brittle bone which is, often, described as metallic in consistency—e.g. Gejvall 470-475). There is evidence that remains may have been circulated in a manner akin to valuable metal objects. First of all, the absence of long bones indicates that there may have been a practice of removing salient remains as curatable records of ancestral ties. Secondly, remains show traces of metal staining from objects that are no longer extant, which suggests that graves were subject to secondary burial practices involving the removal of metal objects and/or human bone. To this extent, we can discern that human remains were being processed, curated, and circulated in a similar manner to metal objects.Thus, there are remarkable similarities between the treatment of the human body in cremation and bronze metal production technologies in the European Bronze Age. On the one hand, the parallel between smelting and cremation allowed death to be understood as a process of transformation in which the individual was removed from processes of organic decay. On the other hand, the circulation of the transformed remains conferred a type of post-mortem survival on the deceased. In this way, cremation practices may have enabled Bronze Age society to symbolically overcome the existential anxiety concerning the loss of personhood and the breaking of human relationships through death. In relation to the former point, the resurgence of cremation in nineteenth century Europe provides us with an example of how the disposal of a human body can be contextualised in relation to socio-technological advancements. The (re)emergence of cremation in this period reflects the post-Enlightenment shift from an understanding of the world through religious beliefs to the use of rational, scientific approaches to examine the natural world, including the human body (and death). The controlled use of fire in the cremation process, as well as the architecture of crematories, reflected the industrial context of the period (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 16).With respect to the circulation of cremated remains, Smith suggests that Early Medieval Christian relics of individual bones or bone fragments reflect a reconceptualised continuation of pre-Christian practices (beginning in Christian areas of the Roman Empire). In this context, it is claimed, firstly, that the curation of bone relics and the use of mobile bone relics of important, saintly individuals provided an embodied connection between the sacred sphere and the earthly world; and secondly, that the use of individual bones or fragments of bone made the Christian message something portable, which could be used to reinforce individual or collective adherence to Christianity (Smith 143-167). Using the example of the Christian bone relics, we can thus propose that the curation and circulation of Bronze Age cremated material may have served a role similar to tools for focusing religiously oriented cognition. Burying: The Body as a Vegetable ObjectGiven that the designation “the Classical Era” nominates the entirety of the Graeco-Roman world (including the Near East and North Africa) from about 800 BCE to 600 CE, there were obviously no mortuary practices common to all cultures. Nevertheless, in both classical Greece and Rome, we have examples of periods when either cremation or inhumation was the principal funerary custom (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21).For instance, the ancient Homeric texts inform us that the ancient Greeks believed that “the spirit of the departed was sentient and still in the world of the living as long as the flesh was in existence […] and would rather have the body devoured by purifying fire than by dogs or worms” (Mylonas 484). However, the primary sources and archaeological record indicate that cremation practices declined in Athens circa 400 BCE (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 20). With respect to the Roman Empire, scholarly opinion argues that inhumation was the dominant funerary rite in the eastern part of the Empire (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 17-21; Morris 52). Complementing this, the archaeological and historical record indicates that inhumation became the primary rite throughout the Roman Empire in the first century CE. Inhumation was considered to be an essential rite in the context of an emerging belief that a peaceful afterlife was reflected by a peaceful burial in which bodily integrity was maintained (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21; Morris 52; Toynbee 41). The question that this poses is how these beliefs were framed in the broader discourses of Classical culture.In this regard, our claim is that the growth in inhumation was driven (at least in part) by the spread of a conceptual scheme, implicit in Greek fertility myths that objectify the body as a seed. The conceptual logic here is that the post-mortem continuation of personal identity is (symbolically) achieved by objectifying the body as a vegetable object that will re-grow from its own physical remains. Although the dominant metaphor here is vegetable, there is no doubt that the motivating concern of this mythological fabulation is human mortality. As Jon Davies notes, “the myths of Hades, Persephone and Demeter, of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Adonis and Aphrodite, of Selene and Endymion, of Herakles and Dionysus, are myths of death and rebirth, of journeys into and out of the underworld, of transactions and transformations between gods and humans” (128). Thus, such myths reveal important patterns in how the post-mortem fate of the body was conceptualised.In the terminology of mental mapping, the generic space relevant to inhumation contains knowledge pertaining to folk biology—specifically, pre-theoretical ideas concerning regeneration, survival, and mortality. The first input space attaches to human mortality; it departs from the anxiety associated with the seeming cessation of personal identity and dissolution of kin relationships subsequent to death. The second input space is the subset of knowledge concerning vegetable life, and how the immersion of seeds in the soil produces a new generation of plants with the passage of time. The blended space combines the two input spaces by way of the funerary script, which involves depositing the body in the soil with a view to securing its eventual rebirth by analogy with the sprouting of a planted seed.As indicated, the most important illustration of this conceptual pattern can be found in the fertility myths of ancient Greece. The Homeric Hymns, in particular, provide a number of narratives that trace out correspondences between vegetation cycles, human mortality, and inhumation, which inform ritual practice (Frazer 223–404; Carney 355–65; Sowa 121–44). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, for instance, charts how Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the dead, and taken to his underground kingdom. While searching for her missing daughter, Demeter, goddess of fertility, neglects the earth, causing widespread devastation. Matters are resolved when Zeus intervenes to restore Persephone to Demeter. However, having ingested part of Hades’s kingdom (a pomegranate seed), Persephone is obliged to spend half the year below ground with her captor and the other half above ground with her mother.The objectification of Persephone as both a seed and a corpse in this narrative is clearly signalled by her seasonal inhumation in Hades’ chthonic realm, which is at once both the soil and the grave. And, just as the planting of seeds in autumn ensures rebirth in spring, Persephone’s seasonal passage from the Kingdom of the Dead nominates the individual human life as just one season in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. A further signifying element is added by the ingestion of the pomegranate seed. This is evocative of her being inseminated by Hades; thus, the coordination of vegetation cycles with life and death is correlated with secondary transition—that from childhood to adulthood (Kerényi 119–183).In the examples given, we can see how the Homeric Hymn objectifies both the mortal and sexual destiny of the body in terms of thresholds derived from the vegetable world. Moreover, this mapping is not merely an intellectual exercise. Its emotional and social appeal is visible in the fact that the Eleusinian mysteries—which offered the ritual hom*ologue to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter—persisted from the Mycenaean period to 396 CE, one of the longest recorded durations for any ritual (Ferguson 254–9; Cosmopoulos 1–24). In sum, then, classical myth provided a precedent for treating the body as a vegetable object—most often, a seed—that would, in turn, have driven the move towards inhumation as an important mortuary practice. The result is to create a ritual form that makes key aspects of human experience intelligible by connecting them with cyclical processes like the seasons of the year, the harvesting of crops, and the intergenerational oscillation between the roles of parent and child. Indeed, this pattern remains visible in the germination metaphors and burial practices of contemporary religions such as Christianity, which draw heavily on the symbolism associated with mystery cults like that at Eleusis (Nock 177–213).ConclusionWe acknowledge that our examples offer a limited reflection of the ethnographic and archaeological data, and that they need to be expanded to a much greater degree if they are to be more than merely suggestive. Nevertheless, suggestiveness has its value, too, and we submit that the speculations explored here may well offer a useful starting point for a larger survey. In particular, they showcase how a recurring existential anxiety concerning death—involving the fear of loss of personal identity and kinship relations—is addressed by different ways of objectifying the body. Given that the body is not reducible to the objects with which it is identified, these objectifications can never be entirely successful in negotiating the boundary between life and death. In the words of Jon Davies, “there is simply no let-up in the efforts by human beings to transcend this boundary, no matter how poignantly each failure seemed to reinforce it” (128). For this reason, we can expect that the record will be replete with conceptual and cognitive schemes that mediate the experience of death.At a more general level, it should also be clear that our understanding of human corporeality is rewarded by the study of mortuary practices. No less than having a body is coextensive with being human, so too is dying, with the consequence that investigating the intersection of both areas is likely to reveal insights into issues of universal cultural concern. For this reason, we advocate the study of mortuary practices as an evolving record of how various cultures understand human corporeality by way of external objects.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor W. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems. Trans. Rolf Tiedemann. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Barrett, John C. “The Living, the Dead and the Ancestors: Neolithic and Bronze Age Mortuary Practices.” The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends. Eds. John. C. Barrett and Ian. A. Kinnes. 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History is not over and that includes media history. Jay Rosen (Zelizer & Allan 33) The media in their reporting on terrorism tend to be judgmental, inflammatory, and sensationalistic. — Susan D. Moeller (169) In short, we are directed in time, and our relation to the future is different than our relation to the past. All our questions are conditioned by this asymmetry, and all our answers to these questions are equally conditioned by it. Norbert Wiener (44) The Clash of Geopolitical Pundits America’s geo-strategic engagement with the world underwent a dramatic shift in the decade after the Cold War ended. United States military forces undertook a series of humanitarian interventions from northern Iraq (1991) and Somalia (1992) to NATO’s bombing campaign on Kosovo (1999). Wall Street financial speculators embraced market-oriented globalization and technology-based industries (Friedman 1999). Meanwhile the geo-strategic pundits debated several different scenarios at deeper layers of epistemology and macrohistory including the breakdown of nation-states (Kaplan), the ‘clash of civilizations’ along religiopolitical fault-lines (Huntington) and the fashionable ‘end of history’ thesis (f*ckuyama). Media theorists expressed this geo-strategic shift in reference to the ‘CNN Effect’: the power of real-time media ‘to provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to both global and national events’ (Robinson 2). This media ecology is often contrasted with ‘Gateholder’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent’ models. The ‘CNN Effect’ privileges humanitarian and non-government organisations whereas the latter models focus upon the conformist mind-sets and shared worldviews of government and policy decision-makers. The September 11 attacks generated an uncertain interdependency between the terrorists, government officials, and favourable media coverage. It provided a test case, as had the humanitarian interventions (Robinson 37) before it, to test the claim by proponents that the ‘CNN Effect’ had policy leverage during critical stress points. The attacks also revived a long-running debate in media circles about the risk factors of global media. McLuhan (1964) and Ballard (1990) had prophesied that the global media would pose a real-time challenge to decision-making processes and that its visual imagery would have unforeseen psychological effects on viewers. Wark (1994) noted that journalists who covered real-time events including the Wall Street crash (1987) and collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) were traumatised by their ‘virtual’ geographies. The ‘War on Terror’ as 21st Century Myth Three recent books explore how the 1990s humanitarian interventions and the September 11 attacks have remapped this ‘virtual’ territory with all too real consequences. Piers Robinson’s The CNN Effect (2002) critiques the theory and proposes the policy-media interaction model. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan’s anthology Journalism After September 11 (2002) examines how September 11 affected the journalists who covered it and the implications for news values. Sandra Silberstein’s War of Words (2002) uncovers how strategic language framed the U.S. response to September 11. Robinson provides the contextual background; Silberstein contributes the specifics; and Zelizer and Allan surface broader perspectives. These books offer insights into the social construction of the nebulous War on Terror and why certain images and trajectories were chosen at the expense of other possibilities. Silberstein locates this world-historical moment in the three-week transition between September 11’s aftermath and the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Descriptions like the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ framed the U.S. military response, provided a conceptual justification for the bombings, and also brought into being the geo-strategic context for other nations. The crucial element in this process was when U.S. President George W. Bush adopted a pedagogical style for his public speeches, underpinned by the illusions of communal symbols and shared meanings (Silberstein 6-8). Bush’s initial address to the nation on September 11 invoked the ambiguous pronoun ‘we’ to recreate ‘a unified nation, under God’ (Silberstein 4). The 1990s humanitarian interventions had frequently been debated in Daniel Hallin’s sphere of ‘legitimate controversy’; however the grammar used by Bush and his political advisers located the debate in the sphere of ‘consensus’. This brief period of enforced consensus was reinforced by the structural limitations of North American media outlets. September 11 combined ‘tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security’, Michael Schudson observed, and in the aftermath North American journalism shifted ‘toward a prose of solidarity rather than a prose of information’ (Zelizer & Allan 41). Debate about why America was hated did not go much beyond Bush’s explanation that ‘they hated our freedoms’ (Silberstein 14). Robert W. McChesney noted that alternatives to the ‘war’ paradigm were rarely mentioned in the mainstream media (Zelizer & Allan 93). A new myth for the 21st century had been unleashed. The Cycle of Integration Propaganda Journalistic prose masked the propaganda of social integration that atomised the individual within a larger collective (Ellul). The War on Terror was constructed by geopolitical pundits as a Manichean battle between ‘an “evil” them and a national us’ (Silberstein 47). But the national crisis made ‘us’ suddenly problematic. Resurgent patriotism focused on the American flag instead of Constitutional rights. Debates about military tribunals and the USA Patriot Act resurrected the dystopian fears of a surveillance society. New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani suddenly became a leadership icon and Time magazine awarded him Person of the Year (Silberstein 92). Guiliani suggested at the Concert for New York on 20 October 2001 that ‘New Yorkers and Americans have been united as never before’ (Silberstein 104). Even the series of Public Service Announcements created by the Ad Council and U.S. advertising agencies succeeded in blurring the lines between cultural tolerance, social inclusion, and social integration (Silberstein 108-16). In this climate the in-depth discussion of alternate options and informed dissent became thought-crimes. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America (2002), which singled out “blame America first” academics, ignited a firestorm of debate about educational curriculums, interpreting history, and the limits of academic freedom. Silberstein’s perceptive analysis surfaces how ACTA assumed moral authority and collective misunderstandings as justification for its interrogation of internal enemies. The errors she notes included presumed conclusions, hasty generalisations, bifurcated worldviews, and false analogies (Silberstein 133, 135, 139, 141). Op-ed columnists soon exposed ACTA’s gambit as a pre-packaged witch-hunt. But newscasters then channel-skipped into military metaphors as the Afghanistan campaign began. The weeks after the attacks New York City sidewalk traders moved incense and tourist photos to make way for World Trade Center memorabilia and anti-Osama shirts. Chevy and Ford morphed September 11 catchphrases (notably Todd Beamer’s last words “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93) and imagery into car advertising campaigns (Silberstein 124-5). American self-identity was finally reasserted in the face of a domestic recession through this wave of vulgar commercialism. The ‘Simulated’ Fall of Elite Journalism For Columbia University professor James Carey the ‘failure of journalism on September 11’ signaled the ‘collapse of the elites of American journalism’ (Zelizer & Allan 77). Carey traces the rise-and-fall of adversarial and investigative journalism from the Pentagon Papers and Watergate through the intermediation of the press to the myopic self-interest of the 1988 and 1992 Presidential campaigns. Carey’s framing echoes the earlier criticisms of Carl Bernstein and Hunter S. Thompson. However this critique overlooks several complexities. Piers Robinson cites Alison Preston’s insight that diplomacy, geopolitics and elite reportage defines itself through the sense of distance from its subjects. Robinson distinguished between two reportage types: distance framing ‘creates emotional distance’ between the viewers and victims whilst support framing accepts the ‘official policy’ (28). The upsurge in patriotism, the vulgar commercialism, and the mini-cycle of memorabilia and publishing all combined to enhance the support framing of the U.S. federal government. Empathy generated for September 11’s victims was tied to support of military intervention. However this closeness rapidly became the distance framing of the Afghanistan campaign. News coverage recycled the familiar visuals of in-progress bombings and Taliban barbarians. The alternative press, peace movements, and social activists then retaliated against this coverage by reinstating the support framing that revealed structural violence and gave voice to silenced minorities and victims. What really unfolded after September 11 was not the demise of journalism’s elite but rather the renegotiation of reportage boundaries and shared meanings. Journalists scoured the Internet for eyewitness accounts and to interview survivors (Zelizer & Allan 129). The same medium was used by others to spread conspiracy theories and viral rumors that numerology predicted the date September 11 or that the “face of Satan” could be seen in photographs of the World Trade Center (Zelizer & Allan 133). Karim H. Karim notes that the Jihad frame of an “Islamic Peril” was socially constructed by media outlets but then challenged by individual journalists who had learnt ‘to question the essentialist bases of her own socialization and placing herself in the Other’s shoes’ (Zelizer & Allan 112). Other journalists forgot that Jihad and McWorld were not separate but two intertwined worldviews that fed upon each other. The September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center also had deep symbolic resonances for American sociopolitical ideals that some journalists explored through analysis of myths and metaphors. The Rise of Strategic Geography However these renegotiated boundariesof new media, multiperspectival frames, and ‘layered’ depth approaches to issues analysiswere essentially minority reports. The rationalist mode of journalism was soon reasserted through normative appeals to strategic geography. The U.S. networks framed their documentaries on Islam and the Middle East in bluntly realpolitik terms. The documentary “Minefield: The United States and the Muslim World” (ABC, 11 October 2001) made explicit strategic assumptions of ‘the U.S. as “managing” the region’ and ‘a definite tinge of superiority’ (Silberstein 153). ABC and CNN stressed the similarities between the world’s major monotheistic religions and their scriptural doctrines. Both networks limited their coverage of critiques and dissent to internecine schisms within these traditions (Silberstein 158). CNN also created different coverage for its North American and international audiences. The BBC was more cautious in its September 11 coverage and more global in outlook. Three United Kingdom specials – Panorama (Clash of Cultures, BBC1, 21 October 2001), Question Time (Question Time Special, BBC1, 13 September 2001), and “War Without End” (War on Trial, Channel 4, 27 October 2001) – drew upon the British traditions of parliamentary assembly, expert panels, and legal trials as ways to explore the multiple dimensions of the ‘War on Terror’ (Zelizer & Allan 180). These latter debates weren’t value free: the programs sanctioned ‘a tightly controlled and hierarchical agora’ through different containment strategies (Zelizer & Allan 183). Program formats, selected experts and presenters, and editorial/on-screen graphics were factors that pre-empted the viewer’s experience and conclusions. The traditional emphasis of news values on the expert was renewed. These subtle forms of thought-control enabled policy-makers to inform the public whilst inoculating them against terrorist propaganda. However the ‘CNN Effect’ also had counter-offensive capabilities. Osama bin Laden’s videotaped sermons and the al-Jazeera network’s broadcasts undermined the psychological operations maxim that enemies must not gain access to the mindshare of domestic audiences. Ingrid Volkmer recounts how the Los Angeles based National Iranian Television Network used satellite broadcasts to criticize the Iranian leadership and spark public riots (Zelizer & Allan 242). These incidents hint at why the ‘War on Terror’ myth, now unleashed upon the world, may become far more destabilizing to the world system than previous conflicts. Risk Reportage and Mediated Trauma When media analysts were considering the ‘CNN Effect’ a group of social contract theorists including Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck were debating, simultaneously, the status of modernity and the ‘unbounded contours’ of globalization. Beck termed this new environment of escalating uncertainties and uninsurable dangers the ‘world risk society’ (Beck). Although they drew upon constructivist and realist traditions Beck and Giddens ‘did not place risk perception at the center of their analysis’ (Zelizer & Allan 203). Instead this was the role of journalist as ‘witness’ to Ballard-style ‘institutionalized disaster areas’. The terrorist attacks on September 11 materialized this risk and obliterated the journalistic norms of detachment and objectivity. The trauma ‘destabilizes a sense of self’ within individuals (Zelizer & Allan 205) and disrupts the image-generating capacity of collective societies. Barbie Zelizer found that the press selection of September 11 photos and witnesses re-enacted the ‘Holocaust aesthetic’ created when Allied Forces freed the Nazi internment camps in 1945 (Zelizer & Allan 55-7). The visceral nature of September 11 imagery inverted the trend, from the Gulf War to NATO’s Kosovo bombings, for news outlets to depict war in detached video-game imagery (Zelizer & Allan 253). Coverage of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Bali bombings (on 12 October 2002) followed a four-part pattern news cycle of assassinations and terrorism (Moeller 164-7). Moeller found that coverage moved from the initial event to a hunt for the perpetrators, public mourning, and finally, a sense of closure ‘when the media reassert the supremacy of the established political and social order’ (167). In both events the shock of the initial devastation was rapidly followed by the arrest of al Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah members, the creation and copying of the New York Times ‘Portraits of Grief’ template, and the mediation of trauma by a re-established moral order. News pundits had clearly studied the literature on bereavement and grief cycles (Kubler-Ross). However the neo-noir work culture of some outlets also fueled bitter disputes about how post-traumatic stress affected journalists themselves (Zelizer & Allan 253). Reconfiguring the Future After September 11 the geopolitical pundits, a reactive cycle of integration propaganda, pecking order shifts within journalism elites, strategic language, and mediated trauma all combined to bring a specific future into being. This outcome reflected the ‘media-state relationship’ in which coverage ‘still reflected policy preferences of parts of the U.S. elite foreign-policy-making community’ (Robinson 129). Although Internet media and non-elite analysts embraced Hallin’s ‘sphere of deviance’ there is no clear evidence yet that they have altered the opinions of policy-makers. The geopolitical segue from September 11 into the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq also has disturbing implications for the ‘CNN Effect’. Robinson found that its mythic reputation was overstated and tied to issues of policy certainty that the theory’s proponents often failed to examine. Media coverage molded a ‘domestic constituency ... for policy-makers to take action in Somalia’ (Robinson 62). He found greater support in ‘anecdotal evidence’ that the United Nations Security Council’s ‘safe area’ for Iraqi Kurds was driven by Turkey’s geo-strategic fears of ‘unwanted Kurdish refugees’ (Robinson 71). Media coverage did impact upon policy-makers to create Bosnian ‘safe areas’, however, ‘the Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq case studies’ showed that the ‘CNN Effect’ was unlikely as a key factor ‘when policy certainty exists’ (Robinson 118). The clear implication from Robinson’s studies is that empathy framing, humanitarian values, and searing visual imagery won’t be enough to challenge policy-makers. What remains to be done? Fortunately there are some possibilities that straddle the pragmatic, realpolitik and emancipatory approaches. Today’s activists and analysts are also aware of the dangers of ‘unfreedom’ and un-reflective dissent (Fromm). Peter Gabriel’s organisation Witness, which documents human rights abuses, is one benchmark of how to use real-time media and the video camera in an effective way. The domains of anthropology, negotiation studies, neuro-linguistics, and social psychology offer valuable lessons on techniques of non-coercive influence. The emancipatory tradition of futures studies offers a rich tradition of self-awareness exercises, institution rebuilding, and social imaging, offsets the pragmatic lure of normative scenarios. The final lesson from these books is that activists and analysts must co-adapt as the ‘War on Terror’ mutates into new and terrifying forms. Works Cited Amis, Martin. “Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian (18 Sep. 2001). 1 March 2001 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4259170,00.php>. Ballard, J.G. The Atrocity Exhibition (rev. ed.). Los Angeles: V/Search Publications, 1990. Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999. Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1941. f*ckuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Kaplan, Robert. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Random House, 2000. Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock, 1969. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999. Robinson, Piers. The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention. New York: Routledge, 2002. Silberstein, Sandra. War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948. Zelizer, Barbie, and Stuart Allan (eds.). Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex. "The Worldflash of a Coming Future" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (2003, Apr 23). The Worldflash of a Coming Future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>

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IntroductionFor over five years, Romanians have been using their bodies in public spaces to challenge politicians’ disregard for the average citizen. In a region low in standards of civic engagement, such as voter turnout and petition signing, Romanian people’s “citizenship of the streets” has stopped environmentally destructive mining in 2013, ousted a corrupt cabinet in 2015, and blocked legislation legalising abuse of public office in 2017 (Solnit 214). This article explores the democratic affordances of collective resistive walking, by focusing on Romania’s capital, Bucharest. I illustrate how walking in protest of political corruption cultivates a democratic public and reconfigures city spaces as spaces of democratic engagement, in the context of increased illiberalism in the region. I examine two sites of protest: the Parliament Palace and Victoriei Square. The former is a construction emblematic of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and symbol of an authoritarian regime, whose surrounding area protestors reclaim as a civic space. The latter—a central part of the city bustling with the life of cafes, museums, bike lanes, and nearby parks—hosts the Government and has become an iconic site for pro-democratic movements. Spaces of Democracy: The Performativity of Public Assemblies Democracies are active achievements, dependent not only on the solidity of institutions —e.g., a free press and a constitution—but on people’s ability and desire to communicate about issues of concern and to occupy public space. Communicative approaches to democratic theory, formulated as inquiries into the public sphere and the plurality and evolution of publics, often return to establish the significance of public spaces and of bodies in the maintenance of our “rhetorical democracies” (Hauser). Speech and assembly, voice and space are sides of the same coin. In John Dewey’s work, communication is the main “loyalty” of democracy: the heart and final guarantee of democracy is in free gatherings of neighbors on the street corner to discuss back and forth what is read in the uncensored news of the day, and in gatherings of friends in the living rooms of houses and apartments to converse freely with one another. (Dewey qtd. in Asen 197, emphasis added) Dewey asserts the centrality of communication in the same breath that he affirms the spatial infrastructure supporting it.Historically, Richard Sennett explains, Athenian democracy has been organised around two “spaces of democracy” where people assembled: the agora or town square and the theatre or Pnyx. While the theatre has endured as the symbol of democratic communication, with its ideal of concentrated attention on the argument of one speaker, Sennett illuminates the square as an equally important space, one without which deliberation in the Pnyx would be impossible. In the agora, citizens cultivate an ability to see, expect, and think through difference. In its open architecture and inclusiveness, Sennett explains, the agora affords the walker and dweller a public space to experience, in a quick, fragmentary, and embodied way, the differences and divergences in fellow citizens. Through visual scrutiny and embodied exposure, the square thus cultivates “an outlook favorable to discussion of differing views and conflicting interests”, useful for deliberation in the Pnyx, and the capacity to recognise strangers as part of the imagined democratic community (19). Also stressing the importance of spaces for assembly, Jürgen Habermas’s historical theorisation of the bourgeois public sphere moves the functions of the agora to the modern “third places” (Oldenburg) of the civic society emerging in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe: coffee houses, salons, and clubs. While Habermas’ conceptualization of a unified bourgeois public has been criticised for its class and gender exclusivism, and for its normative model of deliberation and consensus, such criticism has also opened paths of inquiry into the rhetorical pluralism of publics and into the democratic affordances of embodied performativity. Thus, unlike Habermas’s assumption of a single bourgeois public, work on twentieth and twenty-first century publics has attended to their wide variety in post-modern societies (e.g., Bruce; Butler; Delicath and DeLuca; Fraser; Harold and DeLuca; Hauser; Lewis; Mckinnon et al.; Pezzullo; Rai; Tabako). In contrast to the Habermasian close attention to verbal argumentation, such criticism prioritizes the embodied (performative, aesthetic, and material) ways in which publics manifest their attention to common issues. From suffragists to environmentalists and, most recently, anti-precarity movements across the globe, publics assemble and move through shared space, seeking to break hegemonies of media representation by creating media events of their own. In the process, Judith Butler explains, such embodied assemblies accomplish much more. They disrupt prevalent logics and dominant feelings of disposability, precarity, and anxiety, at the same time that they (re)constitute subjects and increasingly privatised spaces into citizens and public places of democracy, respectively. Butler proposes that to best understand recent protests we need to read collective assembly in the current political moment of “accelerating precarity” and responsibilisation (10). Globally, increasingly larger populations are exposed to economic insecurity and precarity through government withdrawal from labor protections and the diminishment of social services, to the profit of increasingly monopolistic business. A logic of self-investment and personal responsibility accompanies such structural changes, as people understand themselves as individual market actors in competition with other market actors rather than as citizens and community members (Brown). In this context, public assembly would enact an alternative, insisting on interdependency. Bodies, in such assemblies, signify both symbolically (their will to speak against power) and indexically. As Butler describes, “it is this body, and these bodies, that require employment, shelter, health care, and food, as well as a sense of a future that is not the future of unpayable debt” (10). Butler describes the function of these protests more fully:[P]lural enactments […] make manifest the understanding that a situation is shared, contesting the individualizing morality that makes a moral norm of economic self-sufficiency precisely […] when self-sufficiency is becoming increasingly unrealizable. Showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still, speech, and silence are all aspects of a sudden assembly, an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics […] [T]he bodies assembled ‘say’ we are not disposable, even if they stand silently. (18)Though Romania is not included in her account of contemporary protest movements, Butler’s theoretical account aptly describes both the structural and ideological conditions, and the performativity of Romanian protestors. In Romania, citizens have started to assemble in the streets against austerity measures (2012), environmental destruction (2013), fatal infrastructures (2015) and against the government’s corruption and attempts to undermine the Judiciary (from February 2017 onward). While, as scholars have argued (Olteanu and Beyerle; Gubernat and Rammelt), political corruption has gradually crystallised into the dominant and enduring framework for the assembled publics, post-communist corruption has been part and parcel of the neoliberalisation of Central and Eastern-European societies after the fall of communism. In the region, Leslie Holmes explains, former communist elites or the nomenklatura, have remained the majority political class after 1989. With political power and under the shelter of political immunity, nomenklatura politicians “were able to take ethically questionable advantage in various ways […] of the sell-off of previously state-owned enterprises” (Holmes 12). The process through which the established political class became owners of a previously state-owned economy is known as “nomenklatura privatization”, a common form of political corruption in the region, Holmes explains (12). Such practices were common knowledge among a cynical population through most of the 1990s and the 2000s. They were not broadly challenged in an ideological milieu attached, as Mihaela Miroiu, Isabela Preoteasa, and Jerzy Szacki argued, to extreme forms of liberalism and neoliberalism, ideologies perceived by people just coming out of communism as anti-ideology. Almost three decades since the fall of communism, in the face of unyielding levels of poverty (Zaharia; Marin), the decaying state of healthcare and education (Bilefsky; “Education”), and migration rates second only to war-torn Syria (Deletant), Romanian protestors have come to attribute the diminution of life in post-communism to the political corruption of the established political class (“Romania Corruption Report”; “Corruption Perceptions”). Following systematic attempts by the nomenklatura-heavy governing coalition to undermine the judiciary and institutionalise de facto corruption of public officials (Deletant), protestors have been returning to public spaces on a weekly basis, de-normalising the political cynicism and isolation serving the established political class. Mothers Walking: Resignifying Communist Spaces, Imagining the New DemosOn 11 July 2018, a protest of mothers was streamed live by Corruption Kills (Corupția ucide), a Facebook group started by activist Florin Bădiță after a deadly nightclub fire attributed to the corruption of public servants, in 2015 (Commander). Organized protests at the time pressured the Social-Democratic cabinet into resignation. Corruption Kills has remained a key activist platform, organising assemblies, streaming live from demonstrations, and sharing personal acts of dissent, thus extending the life of embodied assemblies. In the mothers’ protest video, women carrying babies in body-wraps and strollers walk across the intersection leading to the Parliament Palace, while police direct traffic and ensure their safety (“Civil Disobedience”). This was an unusual scene for many reasons. Walkers met at the entrance to the Parliament Palace, an area most emblematic of the former regime. Built by Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu and inspired by Kim Il-sung’s North Korean architecture, the current Parliament building and its surrounding plaza remain, in the words of Renata Salecl, “one of the most traumatic remnants of the communist regime” (90). The construction is the second largest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon, a size matching the ambitions of the dictator. It bears witness to the personal and cultural sacrifices the construction and its surrounded plaza required: the displacement of some 40,000 people from old neighbourhood Uranus, the death of reportedly thousands of workers, and the flattening of churches, monasteries, hospitals, schools (Parliament Palace). This arbitrary construction carved out of the old city remains a symbol of an authoritarian relation with the nation. As Salecl puts it, Ceaușescu’s project tried to realise the utopia of a new communist “centre” and created an artificial space as removed from the rest of the city as the leader himself was from the needs of his people. Twenty-nine years after the fall of communism, the plaza of the Parliament Palace remains as suspended from the life of the city as it was during the 1980s. The trees lining the boulevard have grown slightly and bike lanes are painted over decaying stones. Still, only few people walk by the neo-classical apartment buildings now discoloured and stained by weather and time. Salecl remarks on the panoptic experience of the Parliament Palace: “observed from the avenue, [the palace] appears to have no entrance; there are only numerous windows, which give the impression of an omnipresent gaze” (95). The building embodies, for Salecl, the logic of surveillance of the communist regime, which “created the impression of omnipresence” through a secret police that rallied members among regular citizens and inspired fear by striking randomly (95).Against this geography steeped in collective memories of fear and exposure to the gaze of the state, women turn their children’s bodies and their own into performances of resistance that draw on the rhetorical force of communist gender politics. Both motherhood and childhood were heavily regulated roles under Ceaușescu’s nationalist-socialist politics of forced birth, despite the official idealisation of both. Producing children for the nationalist-communist state was women’s mandated expression of citizenship. Declaring the foetus “the socialist property of the whole society”, in 1966 Ceaușescu criminalised abortion for women of reproductive ages who had fewer than four children, and, starting 1985, less than five children (Ceaușescu qtd. in Verdery). What followed was “a national tragedy”: illegal abortions became the leading cause of death for fertile women, children were abandoned into inhumane conditions in the infamous orphanages, and mothers experienced the everyday drama of caring for families in an economy of shortages (Kligman 364). The communist politicisation of natality during communist Romania exemplifies one of the worst manifestations of the political as biopolitical. The current maternal bodies and children’s bodies circulating in the communist-iconic plaza articulate past and present for Romanians, redeploying a traumatic collective memory to challenge increasingly authoritarian ambitions of the governing Social Democratic Party. The images of caring mothers walking in protest with their babies furthers the claims that anti-corruption publics have made in other venues: that the government, in their indifference and corruption, is driving millions of people, usually young, out of the country, in a braindrain of unprecedented proportions (Ursu; Deletant; #vavedemdinSibiu). In their determination to walk during the gruelling temperatures of mid-July, in their youth and their babies’ youth, the mothers’ walk performs the contrast between their generation of engaged, persistent, and caring citizens and the docile abused subject of a past indexed by the Ceaușescu-era architecture. In addition to performing a new caring imagined community (Anderson), women’s silent, resolute walk on the crosswalk turns a lifeless geography, heavy with the architectural traces of authoritarian history, into a public space that holds democratic protest. By inhabiting the cultural role of mothers, protestors disarmed state authorities: instead of the militarised gendarmerie usually policing protestors the Victoriei Square, only traffic police were called for the mothers’ protest. The police choreographed cars and people, as protestors walked across the intersection leading to the Parliament. Drivers, usually aggressive and insouciant, now moved in concert with the protestors. The mothers’ walk, immediately modeled by people in other cities (Cluj-Napoca), reconfigured a car-dominated geography and an unreliable, driver-friendly police, into a civic space that is struggling to facilitate the citizens’ peaceful disobedience. The walkers’ assembly thus begins to constitute the civic character of the plaza, collecting “the space itself […] the pavement and […] the architecture [to produce] the public character of that material environment” (Butler 71). It demonstrates the possibility of a new imagined community of caring and persistent citizens, one significantly different from the cynical, disconnected, and survivalist subjects that the nomenklatura politicians, nested in the Panoptic Parliament nearby, would prefer.Persisting in the Victoriei Square In addition to strenuous physical walking to reclaim city spaces, such as the mothers’ walking, the anti-corruption public also practices walking and gathering in less taxing environments. The Victoriei Square is such a place, a central plaza that connects major boulevards with large sidewalks, functional bike lanes, and old trees. The square is the architectural meeting point of old and new, where communist apartments meet late nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture, in a privileged neighbourhood of villas, museums, and foreign consulates. One of these 1930s constructions is the Government building, hosting the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Demonstrators gathered here during the major protests of 2015 and 2017, and have walked, stood, and wandered in the square almost weekly since (“Past Events”). On 24 June 2018, I arrive in the Victoriei Square to participate in the protest announced on social media by Corruption Kills. There is room to move, to pause, and rest. In some pockets, people assemble to pay attention to impromptu speakers who come onto a small platform to share their ideas. Occasionally someone starts chanting “We See You!” and “Down with Corruption!” and almost everyone joins the chant. A few young people circulate petitions. But there is little exultation in the group as a whole, shared mostly among those taking up the stage or waving flags. Throughout the square, groups of familiars stop to chat. Couples and families walk their bikes, strolling slowly through the crowds, seemingly heading to or coming from the nearby park on a summer evening. Small kids play together, drawing with chalk on the pavement, or greeting dogs while parents greet each other. Older children race one another, picking up on the sense of freedom and de-centred but still purposeful engagement. The openness of the space allows one to meander and observe all these groups, performing the function of the Ancient agora: making visible the strangers who are part of the polis. The overwhelming feeling is one of solidarity. This comes partly from the possibilities of collective agency and the feeling of comfortably taking up space and having your embodiment respected, otherwise hard to come by in other spaces of the city. Everyday walking in the streets of Romanian cities is usually an exercise in hypervigilant physical prowess and self-preserving numbness. You keep your eyes on the ground to not stumble on broken pavement. You watch ahead for unmarked construction work. You live with other people’s sweat on the hot buses. You hop among cars parked on sidewalks and listen keenly for when others may zoom by. In one of the last post-socialist states to join the European Union, living with generalised poverty means walking in cities where your senses must be dulled to manage the heat, the dust, the smells, and the waiting, irresponsive to beauty and to amiable sociality. The euphemistic vocabulary of neoliberalism may describe everyday walking through individualistic terms such as “grit” or “resilience.” And while people are called to effort, creativity, and endurance not needed in more functional states, what one experiences is the gradual diminution of one’s lives under a political regime where illiberalism keeps a citizen-serving democracy at bay. By contrast, the Victoriei Square holds bodies whose comfort in each other’s presence allow us to imagine a political community where survivalism, or what Lauren Berlant calls “lateral agency”, are no longer the norm. In “showing up, standing, breathing, moving, standing still […] an unforeseen form of political performativity that puts livable life at the forefront of politics” is enacted (Butler 18). In arriving to Victoriei Square repeatedly, Romanians demonstrate that there is room to breathe more easily, to engage with civility, and to trust the strangers in their country. They assert that they are not disposable, even if a neoliberal corrupt post-communist regime would have them otherwise.ConclusionBecoming a public, as Michael Warner proposes, is an ongoing process of attention to an issue, through the circulation of discourse and self-organisation with strangers. For the anti-corruption public of Romania’s past years, such ongoing work is accompanied by persistent, civil, embodied collective assembly, in an articulation of claims, bodies, and spaces that promotes a material agency that reconfigures the city and the imagined Romanian community into a more democratic one. The Romanian citizenship of the streets is particularly significant in the current geopolitical and ideological moment. In the region, increasing authoritarianism meets the alienating logics of neoliberalism, both trying to reduce citizens to disposable, self-reliant, and disconnected market actors. Populist autocrats—Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the Peace and Justice Party in Poland, and recently E.U.-penalized Victor Orban, in Hungary—are dismantling the system of checks and balances, and posing threats to a European Union already challenged by refugee debates and Donald Trump’s unreliable alliance against authoritarianism. In such a moment, the Romanian anti-corruption public performs within the geographies of their city solidarity and commitment to democracy, demonstrating an alternative to the submissive and disconnected subjects preferred by authoritarianism and neoliberalism.Author's NoteIn addition to the anonymous reviewers, the author would like to thank Mary Tuominen and Jesse Schlotterbeck for their helpful comments on this essay.ReferencesAnderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2016.Asen, Robert. “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.2 (2004): 189-211. 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Abstract:

IntroductionTransformation, claims McCracken, is the expression of consumer agency and individual freedom in which consumers, as “co-creators of culture,” are empowered to creatively construct new improved selves (xvi). No longer an “extraordinary event for extraordinary creatures,” transformation today is routine and accessible (McCracken xxi). Contemporary consumer culture encourages individuals to enact these transformations by turning to the market to purchase the resources they require to achieve their desired identity (Ellis et al. 179). This market model of transformation embraces the concept of the marketplace exchange where the one party satisfies the needs of the other in a mutually beneficial exchange relationship. For consumers, the market enables transformation through the purchase and consumption of the desired products and services which support identity building.Critics, however, argue that markets have less positive effects. While it is too simplistic to claim that markets manipulate consumers, marketing exchanges constitute an enduring shaping force on individuals and society (Laczniak and Murphy). Markets shape consumer identities by hom*ogenising them and suppressing their self-expressive capabilities (Kozinets 22). As producers become more powerful, “the market is transformed from a consumer-driven mechanism to a sphere where the producers assimilate consumers’ needs to their own through commercial activity” (Sassatelli 76) (my italics). Marketing and promotion have a persuasive influence and their role in the transformation process is a crucial element in understanding the consumer’s impetus to transform. Consumer identity is of course neither fully a “liberatory act” nor “wholly dictated by the market” (Ellis et al. 182), but there is a relationship between consumer autonomy and the dictates of the market which can be explored through focusing on the transformation of identity through the consumption of cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is an important site of enquiry as a social practice which “merges the attention given to the body by an individual person with the values and priorities of the consumer society” (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 490). The body, as Kathy Davis highlighted, has long been seen as a commodity which can be endlessly transformed (Davis, Reshaping the Female Body), and the market for cosmetic surgery is at the forefront of this commodification process (Aizura 305). What is new, however, is the increasing marketisation and commercialisation of the cosmetic surgery industry combined with rising consumerism in which surgical transformation can be purchased simply as a “lifestyle choice alongside fashion, fitness and therapy” (Elliott 7). In the cosmetic surgery market, “patients” are consumers. Rather than choosing cosmetic surgery in order to feel whole or normal, contemporary consumers see surgery as a grooming practice which is part of a body maintenance routine (Jones).As the cosmetic surgery market becomes progressively more competitive, it relies more and more on marketing and promotion for its survival. The intense rivalry between providers drives them, in some cases, to aggressive and often unethical promotional practices. In the related field of pharmaceuticals for example, marketers have been charged with explicitly manipulating social understanding of disease in order to increase profits (Brennan, Eagle, and Rice 17). Unlike TV make-over shows whose primary purpose is to entertain, or celebrity culture which influences indirectly through example, cosmetic surgery promotion sets out with intent to persuade consumers to choose surgical transformation. Cosmetic surgery is presented to consumers “through the neoliberal prism of choice,” encouraging women (mostly) to choose surgery as a self-improvement practice in order to “feel good or pamper herself” (Gurrieri, Brace-Govan, and Previte 534). In a promotional culture which valorises external values and ‘the new’ (Fatah 1), the cost, risk, and pain of surgery are downplayed as an increasing array of self-transformative possibilities are presented as consumption choices. This scenario sees the impetus to transform as driven as much by marketing imperatives as by consumers’ free choice. Indeed in mobilising the rhetoric of choice, the “autonomous” consumer, it seems, plays into the hands of the cosmetic surgery industry.This paper explores consumer transformation through cosmetic surgery by focusing on the tension between the rhetoric of consumer autonomy, freedom, and choice and that of the industry’s marketing and promotional practices in the United Kingdom (UK). I argue that while the consumer is an active player, expressing their freedom and agency in choosing self-transformation through surgery, that autonomy is influenced and constrained by the marketing and promotional practices of the industry. I focus on the inherent paradox in the discourse of transformation in consumer culture which advocates individual consumer freedom and creativity yet limits these freedoms to “acceptable” bodily forms constructed as the norm by promotional images of the cosmetic surgery industry. To paraphrase Susan Bordo, those promotions which espouse consumer choice and self-determination simultaneously eradicate individual difference and circ*mscribe choice (Unbearable Weight 250). Here I explore how ideals of autonomy, freedom, and choice are utilised to support consumer surgical transformation. Drawing on market research, professional publications, blogs and industry webpages used by UK consumers as they search for information, I demonstrate how marketing and promotion adopt these ideals to provide a visual reference and a language for consumer transformation, which has the effect of shaping and limiting consumer freedom and creativity. Consumer Transformation as Expression of Freedom Contemporary consumers need not be content just to admire the appearance of celebrities and film stars, but can actively engage in the creative construction of new improved selves through surgical transformation (McCracken). This transformation is often expressed by consumers as a liberatory act, as is illustrated by the women surveyed for a UK Department of Health report. As one respondent explains, “I think it’s just the fact that they can . . . and I think over the years, women have a battle with their bodies, as they change, different ages, they do, they struggle with trying to accept it over different years and the fact that you can, it’s like ‘wow, so what, it’s a bit of money, let’s just change ourselves’” (UK Department of Health 32). Even young consumers see cosmetic surgery as an easily available transformative option, such as this 16-year-old female research respondent who describes surgery as “Things that you don’t really need but you just feel you want to have them” (UK Department of Health 33). As these women attest, cosmetic surgery is seen as an increasingly normal and everyday practice. By rhetorically constructing the possibility of transformation as an expression of individual consumer empowerment (“wow, so what, it’s a bit of money, let’s just change ourselves”), they distance the practice “from negative associations with vanity” and oppression (Tait 131). This postmodern consumer is no dupe or victim but a “conscious subject who modifies their body as a project of identity” (Gibson 51) and for whom cosmetic surgery transformation is “the route to happiness and personal empowerment” (Tait 119). Surgical transformation is not a way to strive narcissistically after “an elusive beauty ideal” (Heyes 93). Instead, it is expressed as something they choose to do just for themselves—which Bordo calls the “for me” argument (“Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body”). In an increasingly visual culture, the accessibility and affordability of cosmetic surgery enable consumers, who are already accustomed to digitally editing their photographical images, to “edit” their physical bodies. This is candidly expressed by Singaporean blogger Ang Chiew Ting who writes, "When I learnt how to use Photoshop, the things that I edited about myself, those have now all been done in real life through plastic surgery. Whatever I wanted to change about my face, I have done." Yet, as I illustrate later, the emphasis on transformation as empowerment through exercising choice (“Whatever I wanted to change about my face, I have done"), plays into the hands of the industry as it “reproduces the logic of surgical industries” (Tait 121). In the politics of consumption, driven by neo-liberal ideologies, consumer choice is sovereign (Sassatelli 184), and it is in the ability to exercise choice, choosing surgery and taking responsibility for that choice, that agency and empowerment are expressed (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic). Blogger Stella Lee explains her decision as “I don't want to say I encourage plastic surgery, this is just my personal choice. It is like saying if I dye my hair purple then I want everyone to have purple hair too. It is simply just for me only. If you wish to do so, go ahead. If you're satisfied with what you have, go ahead.” This consumer is a “discerning and knowledgeable consumer” who researches information about potential surgical procedures and practitioners (Gimlin, “Imagining” 58) and embraces the ideology of self-determinism (Heyes). Consumers considering surgery may visit recommended doctors, research doctors online, and peruse beauty magazines (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic). Tatler magazine, for example, publishes an annual Beauty and Cosmetic Surgery Guide which celebrates “the newest, niftiest ways to reclaim your face and your figure” (Tatler nd). In taking responsibility for themselves, the contemporary consumer reflects the neoliberal agenda “that promotes empowerment through consumer choice and responsibility for self-care” (Leve, Rubin, and Pusic 131). Yet, consumer information on the suitability of surgery and alternative providers is often partial. As one research respondent recalled, “I just typed it into Google and then worked through whatever came up; you're trying to go for the names of companies that are a bit more reputable” (UK Department of Health 28). Internet searches most frequently identify promotional information from the surgery providers themselves including customer stories and testimonials, which seem informative in nature but which have persuasive intent to influence choice. Therefore although seemingly exerting agency by undertaking a process of search in order to make an informed choice, that choice is made within a promotional context that the consumer may not be fully aware exists.Consumer Transformation as Marketing ImperativeThe aim of marketing and promotion, as medicine meets consumerism, is to secure clients for cosmetic surgery (Mirivel). As a consequence, the discourse of cosmetic surgery is highly persuasive and commercially motivated, promoting the need for surgery by mobilising the existing ideological link between identity and physical appearance for commercial ends (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 489). Promotional strategies include drawing attention to possible deficiencies in appearance, creating opportunities for surgery by problematising normal bodily states, promising intangible benefits, and normalising surgery by positioning it within a consumerist vision of success. Consumer transformation can be driven by perceived lack, inadequacy, or deficit, where a part of the body or face does not stand up to scrutiny when compared to media images. Marketing and promotion draw attention to this lack and imply that any deficiency in appearance can be remedied by consumption practices such as the purchase of hair dye, make-up, or, more drastically, cosmetic surgery. As one research respondent considering surgery explains, “I think people want to look their best and media portrays ‘perfect’ looking people or they portray a certain image and then because it’s what you see all the time, it almost feels like if you don't look like that, then it’s wrong” (UK Department of Health 18). The influence of media on the impetus to transform is explored elsewhere (see Wegenstein), so is not addressed further here. However, the insecurity which results from such media images is further exploited by the marketing and promotional strategies adopted by cosmetic surgery providers in an increasingly competitive marketplace. This does not go unnoticed by consumers: as one research respondent noted, “They pick out your insecurities as a tactic for making you purchase stuff . . . it was supposed to be a free consultation but they definitely do pressure you into having stuff” (UK Department of Health 19). In this deficiency model of transformation, the cosmetic surgery consumer is insecure, lacking in power and volition, and convinced of her inadequacy. This is exacerbated by the promotional images of models featured on cosmetic surgery websites against which consumers evaluate their own looks in a process of social comparisons (Markey and Markey 210). This reflects Bernadette Wegenstein’s notion of the cosmetic gaze, a circular process whereby “the act of looking at our bodies and those of others is informed by the techniques, expectations, and strategies of bodily modification” (2). In comparing themselves with the transformed images on surgery websites, consumers are drawn into a process of comparison that tells them how they should look. At the same time as convincing consumers of their inadequacies, providers also tell consumers that they are in control and can act autonomously to transform themselves. For example, a TV advert for The Hospital Group which shows three smiling “transformed” customers claims “If you’re unhappy with your appearance you could change it. If it affects your confidence you could overcome it. If it makes you feel self-conscious, you could take control with cosmetic surgery or dentistry from The Hospital Group” (my italics). In this way marketers marshal the neo-liberal rhetoric of consumer empowerment to encourage the consumption of cosmetic surgery and normalise the practice through the emphasis on choice. Marketing and promotional messages contribute further to these perceived deficits by problematising “normal” bodily conditions resulting from “normal” life experiences such as ageing and pregnancy. Surgeon Ran Rubinstein, for example, draws attention in his blog to thinning lips as an opportunity for lip augmentation: “Lip augmentation might seem like a trend among the younger crowd, but it’s something that people of any age can benefit from getting. As you get older, some areas of your body thin out while some thicken. You might find that you’re gaining weight around your stomach, while your lips and face are getting thin.” Problematising frames a real or perceived physical state as “as a medical problem that requires a medical solution,” subtly implying that cosmetic surgery is “an unavoidable necessity” which is medically justified (Martinez Lirola and Chovanec 503). For example, Jules’s testimonial for facial fillers frames natural, and even positive, features such as smile lines as problematic: “I smile a lot and noticed some smile lines coming through.” Indeed as medicine has historically defined the female body as “deficient and in need of repair,” cosmetic surgery can be legitimately proposed as a solution for “women’s problems with their appearance” (Davis, “A Dubious Equality” 55). Promotional messages emphasise the intrinsic benefits of external transformation, encouraging consumers to opt for surgery in order to align their external appearance with how they feel inside. Much of this discourse calls on consumers’ perceptions of a disparity between how they feel inside and their external body image (Gibson 54). For example, a testimonial from “Carole Anne 69” claims that facial fillers “make me feel like I’m the best version of myself.” (Note that Carole Anne, like all the women providing testimonials for this website, including Carol 50, Jules 38, or Pamela 59, is defined by her looks and by her age.) Although Gimlin’s research suggests that the notions of the “body reflecting the ‘true’ self or re-creating one’s ‘genuine’ appearance” have become less important (“Too Good” 930), they continue to dominate in customer testimonials on surgery websites. For example, Transform breast enlargement client Rebecca exclaims, “I’m still me, but it has completely transformed how I feel about myself on the inside, how I hold and present myself on the outside.” A typical promotional strategy is to emphasise the intangible benefits of cosmetic surgery, such as happiness or confidence. This is encapsulated in a 2011 print advert for Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group which shows a smiling young girl in a bikini holding a placard which reads, “I’ve just had my breasts done, but the biggest change you’ll see is on my face.” In promising happiness or self-confidence, intangible effects which are impossible to measure, marketers avoid the reality of surgery—where a cut is made, what is added or removed, how many stitches are required. Consumers know the world through shopping (Elliott 43), and marketers draw on this behaviour to associate surgery with any other purchase in the life of a successful consumer. Consumers are encouraged to choose from a gallery of looks, to “Browse through our Before and After Gallery for inspiration,” and the purchase is rendered more accessible through the use of discounts, offers, and incentives, which consumers are accustomed to seeing in familiar shopping contexts. Sales intent can be blatant, such as this appeal to disposable income on Realself.com: “Now that your 2015 taxes are (hopefully) filed and behind you, were you fortunate enough to get a refund? If it just so happens that the government will be returning some of your hard-earned cash, what will you be using it for? Electronic gadgets, an island vacation, a shopping spree . . . or plastic surgery?” Providers reduce perceived risk by implying that interventions such as facial fillers are considered normal practice for others, claiming that “Millions of women choose facial fillers, so that they can age exactly the way they want to” and by providing online interactive tools which consumers can use to manipulate facial features to see the potential effect of surgery (This-is-me.com).ConclusionThe aim of this article was to explore the tension between two different views of transformation, one which emphasised consumer autonomy, freedom, and market choice and the other which claims a more restrictive and manipulative influence of the market and its promotional practices. I argue that McCracken’s explanation of transformation as “the expression of consumer agency and individual freedom” (xvi) offers an overly optimistic view of consumer transformation. In the cosmetic surgery market, the expression of consumer autonomy and freedom rests on the discourse of choice. This same discourse is adopted by surgery providers in their persuasive strategies to secure new clients so that the market’s promotional language (e.g. a whole new you) becomes part of the consumer’s understanding of and articulation of cosmetic surgery transformation. I argue that marketing and promotion work to progress consumers along the path to surgery, by giving them reasons to do so. This is achieved by reflecting existing consumer anxieties as deficiencies, by creating new reasons for surgery by problematising normal conditions, by promising intangible benefits, and by normalising the purchase. These promotional practices also regulate and restrict consumers by presenting visual images of transformation which influence how others understand “the perfect you.” The gallery of looks on surgery websites constrains choice by signifying which looks are desirable, and “before and after” rhetoric emphasises the pivotal role of cosmetic surgery in achieving this transformation. ReferencesAizura, Aren. “Where Health and Beauty Meet: Femininity and Racialisation in Thai Cosmetic Surgery Clinics.” Asian Studies Review 33.3 (2009): 303–17.Bordo, Susan. “Braveheart, Babe, and the Contemporary Body.” 3 June 2016 <www.public.iastate.edu/~jwcwolf/Papers/Bordo>.———. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.Brennan, Ross, Lynn Eagle, and David Rice. “Medicalization and Marketing.” Journal of Macromarketing 30.1 (2010): 8–22.Davis, Kathy. “‘A Dubious Equality’: Men, Women and Cosmetic Surgery.” Body & Society 8.1 (2002): 49–65.———. Reshaping the Female Body. New York: Routledge, 1995.Elliott, Anthony. Making the Cut: How Cosmetic Surgery is Transforming our Lives. London: Reaktion Books, 2008.Ellis, Nick, James Fitchett, Matthew Higgins, Gavin Jack, Ming Lim, Michael Saren, and Mark Tadajewski. Marketing: A Critical Textbook. London: Sage, 2011. Fatah, Fazel. “Should All Advertising of Cosmetic Surgery Be Banned? Yes.” British Medical Journal 345 (7 Nov. 2012).Gibson, Margaret. “Bodies without Histories: Cosmetic Surgery and the Undoing of Time.” Australian Feminist Studies 21.41 (2006): 51–63.Gimlin, Debra. “‘Too Good to Be Real’: The Obviously Augmented Breast in Women’s Narratives of Cosmetic Surgery.” Gender & Society 27.6 (2013): 913–34.———. “Imagining the Other in Cosmetic Surgery.” Body & Society 16.4 (2010): 57–76.Gurrieri, Lauren, Jan Brace-Govan, and Josephine Previte. “Neoliberalism and Managed Health: Fallacies, Facades and Inadvertent Effects.” Journal of Macromarketing 34.4 (2014): 532–38.Heyes, Cressida. Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.Jones, Meredith. “Clinics of Oblivion: Makeover Culture and Cosmetic Surgery Tourism.” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 8.2 (2011).Kozinets, Robert. “Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man.” Journal of Consumer Research 29 (2002): 20–38. Laczniak, Eugene, and Patrick Murphy. “Normative Perspectives for Ethically and Socially Responsible Marketing.” Journal of Macromarketing 26 (2006): 154–77.Leve, Michelle, Lisa Rubin, and Andrea Pusic. “Cosmetic Surgery and Neoliberalisms: Managing Risk and Responsibility.” Feminism & Psychology 22. 1 (2011): 122–41.Markey, Charlotte, and Patrick Markey. “Emerging Adults’ Responses to a Media Presentation of Idealized Female Beauty: An Examination of Cosmetic Surgery in Reality Television.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture 1.4 (2012): 209–19.Martinez Lirola, Maria, and Jan Chovanec. “The Dream of a Perfect Body Come True: Multimodality in Cosmetic Surgery Advertising.” Discourse & Society 23.5 (2012): 487–507. McCracken, Grant. Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2008.Mirivel, Julien. “The Physical Examination in Cosmetic Surgery: Communication Strategies to Promote the Desirability of Surgery.” Health Communication 23.2 (2008): 153–70.Sassatelli, Roberta. Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics. London: Sage, 2007.Tait, Sue. “Television and the Domestication of Cosmetic Surgery.” Feminist Media Studies 7.2 (2007): 119–35. Tatler Magazine. “Beauty & Cosmetic Surgery Guide 2016.” Tatler 2016. 3 June 2016 <http://www.tatler.com/guides/beauty--cosmetic-surgery-guide/2016>.UK Department of Health Research. “Regulation of Cosmetic Interventions: Research among the General Public and Practitioners.” 28 Mar. 2013. Version 3. 22 Apr. 2016 <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/192029/Regulation_of_Cosmetic_Interventions_Research_Report.pdf>.Wegenstein, Bernadette. The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012.

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Abstract:

This article explores how fat women protesting challenges norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces. We use the term fat as a political reclamation; Fat Studies scholars and fat activists prefer the term fat, over the normative term “overweight” and the pathologising term “obese/obesity” (Lee and Pausé para 3). Who is and who isn’t fat, we suggest, is best left to self-determination, although it is generally accepted by fat activists that the term is most appropriately adopted by individuals who are unable to buy clothes in any store they choose. Using a tweet from conservative commentator Ann Coulter as a leaping-off point, we examine the narratives around women in the public sphere and explore how fat bodies might transgress further the norms set by society. The public representations of women in politics and protest are then are set in the context of ‘activist wisdom’ (Maddison and Scalmer) from two sides of the globe. Activist wisdom gives preference to the lived knowledge and experience of activists as tools to understand social movements. It seeks to draw theoretical implications from the practical actions of those on the ground. In centring the experiences of ourselves and other activists, we hope to expand existing understandings of body politics, gender, and political power in this piece. It is important in researching social movements to look both at the representations of protest and protestors in all forms of media as this is the ‘public face’ of movements, but also to examine the reflections of the individuals who collectively put their weight behind bringing social change.A few days after the 45th President of the United States was elected, people around the world spilled into the streets and participated in protests; precursors to the Women’s March which would take place the following January. Pictures of such marches were shared via social media, demonstrating the worldwide protest against the racism, misogyny, and overall oppressiveness, of the newly elected leader. Not everyone was supportive of these protests though; one such conservative commentator, Ann Coulter, shared this tweet: Image1: A tweet from Ann Coulter; the tweet contains a picture of a group of protestors, holding signs protesting Trump, white supremacy, and for the rights of immigrants. In front of the group, holding a megaphone is a woman. Below the picture, the text reads, “Without fat girls, there would be no protests”.Coulter continued on with two more tweets, sharing pictures of other girls protesting and suggesting that the protestors needed a diet programme. Kivan Bay (“Without Fat Girls”) suggested that perhaps Coulter was implying that skinny girls do not have time to protest because they are too busy doing skinny girl things, like buying jackets or trying on sweaters. Or perhaps Coulter was arguing that fat girls are too visible, too loud, and too big, to be taken seriously in their protests. These tweets provide a point of illustration for how fat women protesting challenge norms of womanhood, the place of women in society, and who has the power to have their say in public spaces While Coulter’s tweet was most likely intended as a hostile personal attack on political grounds, we find it useful in its foregrounding of gender, bodies and protest which we consider in this article, beginning with a review of fat girls’ role in social justice movements.Across the world, we can point to fat women who engage in activism related to body politics and more. Australian fat filmmaker and activist Kelli Jean Drinkwater makes documentaries, such as Aquaporko! and Nothing to Lose, that queer fat embodiment and confronts body norms. Newly elected Ontario MPP Jill Andrew has been fighting for equal rights for queer people and fat people in Canada for decades. Nigerian Latasha Ngwube founded About That Curvy Life, Africa’s leading body positive and empowerment site, and has organised plus-size fashion show events at Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week in Nigeria in 2016 and the Glitz Africa Fashion Week in Ghana in 2017. Fat women have been putting their bodies on the line for the rights of others to live, work, and love. American Heather Heyer was protesting the hate that white nationalists represent and the danger they posed to her friends, family, and neighbours when she died at a rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina in late 2017 (Caron). When Heyer was killed by one of those white nationalists, they declared that she was fat, and therefore her body size was lauded loudly as justification for her death (Bay, “How Nazis Use”; Spangler).Fat women protesting is not new. For example, the Fat Underground was a group of “radical fat feminist women”, who split off from the more conservative NAAFA (National Association to Aid Fat Americans) in the 1970s (Simic 18). The group educated the public about weight science, harassed weight-loss companies, and disrupted academic seminars on obesity. The Fat Underground made their first public appearance at a Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles, taking over the stage at the public event to accuse the medical profession of murdering Cass Elliot, the lead singer of the folk music group, The Mamas and the Papas (Dean and Buss). In 1973, the Fat Underground produced the Fat Liberation Manifesto. This Manifesto began by declaring that they believed “that fat people are full entitled to human respect and recognition” (Freespirit and Aldebaran 341).Women have long been disavowed, or discouraged, from participating in the public sphere (Ginzberg; van Acker) or seen as “intruders or outsiders to the tough world of politics” (van Acker 118). The feminist slogan the personal is political was intended to shed light on the role that women needed to play in the public spheres of education, employment, and government (Caha 22). Across the world, the acceptance of women within the public sphere has been varied due to cultural, political, and religious, preferences and restrictions (Agenda Feminist Media Collective). Limited acceptance of women in the public sphere has historically been granted by those ‘anointed’ by a male family member or patron (Fountaine 47).Anti-feminists are quick to disavow women being in public spaces, preferring to assign them the role as helpmeet to male political elite. As Schlafly (in Rowland 30) notes: “A Positive Woman cannot defeat a man in a wrestling or boxing match, but she can motivate him, inspire him, encourage him, teach him, restrain him, reward him, and have power over him that he can never achieve over her with all his muscle.” This idea of women working behind the scenes has been very strong in New Zealand where the ‘sternly worded’ letter is favoured over street protest. An acceptable route for women’s activism was working within existing political institutions (Grey), with activity being ‘hidden’ inside government offices such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Schuster, 23). But women’s movement organisations that engage in even the mildest form of disruptive protest are decried (Grey; van Acker).One way women have been accepted into public space is as the moral guardians or change agents of the entire political realm (Bliss; Ginzberg; van Acker; Ledwith). From the early suffrage movements both political actors and media representations highlighted women were more principled and conciliatory than men, and in many cases had a moral compass based on restraint. Cartoons showed women in the suffrage movement ‘sweeping up’ and ‘cleaning house’ (Sheppard 123). Groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were celebrated for protesting against the demon drink and anti-p*rnography campaigners like Patricia Bartlett were seen as acceptable voices of moral reason (Moynihan). And as Cunnison and Stageman (in Ledwith 193) note, women bring a “culture of femininity to trade unions … an alternative culture, derived from the particularity of their lives as women and experiences of caring and subordination”. This role of moral guardian often derived from women as ‘mothers’, responsible for the physical and moral well-being of the nation.The body itself has been a sight of protest for women including fights for bodily autonomy in their medical decisions, reproductive justice, and to live lives free from physical and sexual abuse, have long been met with criticisms of being unladylike or inappropriate. Early examples decried in NZ include the women’s clothing movement which formed part of the suffrage movement. In the second half of the 20th century it was the freedom trash can protests that started the myth of ‘women burning their bras’ which defied acceptable feminine norms (Sawer and Grey). Recent examples of women protesting for body rights include #MeToo and Time’s Up. Both movements protest the lack of bodily autonomy women can assert when men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies for their entertainment, enjoyment, and pleasure. And both movements have received considerable backlash by those who suggest it is a witch hunt that might ensnare otherwise innocent men, or those who are worried that the real victims are white men who are being left behind (see Garber; Haussegger). Women who advocate for bodily autonomy, including access to contraception and abortion, are often held up as morally irresponsible. As Archdeacon Bullock (cited in Smyth 55) asserted, “A woman should pay for her fun.”Many individuals believe that the stigma and discrimination fat people face are the consequences they sow from their own behaviours (Crandall 892); that fat people are fat because they have made poor decisions, being too indulgent with food and too lazy to exercise (Crandall 883). Therefore, fat people, like women, should have to pay for their fun. Fat women find themselves at this intersection, and are often judged more harshly for their weight than fat men (Tiggemann and Rothblum). Examining Coulter’s tweet with this perspective in mind, it can easily be read as an attempt to put fat girl protestors back into their place. It can also be read as a warning. Don’t go making too much noise or you may be labelled as fat. Presenting troublesome women as fat has a long history within political art and depictions. Marianne (the symbol of the French Republic) was depicted as fat and ugly; she also reinforced an anti-suffragist position (Chenut 441). These images are effective because of our societal views on fatness (Kyrölä). Fatness is undesirable, unworthy of love and attention, and a representation of poor character, lack of willpower, and an absence of discipline (Murray 14; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 1).Fat women who protest transgress rules around body size, gender norms, and the appropriate place for women in society. Take as an example the experiences of one of the authors of this piece, Sandra Grey, who was thrust in to political limelight nationally with the Campaign for MMP (Grey and Fitzsimmons) and when elected as the President of the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union in 2011. Sandra is a trade union activist who breaches too many norms set for the “good woman protestor,” as well as the norms for being a “good fat woman”. She looms large on a stage – literally – and holds enough power in public protest to make a crowd of 7,000 people “jump to left”, chant, sing, and march. In response, some perceive Sandra less as a tactical and strategic leader of the union movement, and more as the “jolly fat woman” who entertains, MCs, and leads public events. Though even in this role, she has been criticised for being too loud, too much, too big.These criticisms are loudest when Sandra is alongside other fat female bodies. When posting on social media photos with fellow trade union members the comments often note the need of the group to “go on a diet”. The collective fatness also brings comments about “not wanting to f*ck any of that group of fat cows”. There is something politically and socially dangerous about fat women en masse. This was behind the responses to Sandra’s first public appearance as the President of TEU when one of the male union members remarked “Clearly you have to be a fat dyke to run this union.” The four top elected and appointed positions in the TEU have been women for eight years now and both their fatness and perceived sexuality present as a threat in a once male-dominated space. Even when not numerically dominant, unions are public spaces dominated by a “masculine culture … underpinned by the undervaluation of ‘women’s worth’ and notions of womanhood ‘defined in domesticity’” (co*ckburn in Kirton 273-4). Sandra’s experiences in public space show that the derision and methods of putting fat girls back in their place varies dependent on whether the challenge to power is posed by a single fat body with positional power and a group of fat bodies with collective power.Fat Girls Are the FutureOn the other side of the world, Tara Vilhjálmsdóttir is protesting to change the law in Iceland. Tara believes that fat people should be protected against discrimination in public and private settings. Using social media such as Facebook and Instagram, Tara takes her message, and her activism, to her thousands of followers (Keller, 434; Pausé, “Rebel Heart”). And through mainstream media, she pushes back on fatphobia rhetoric and applies pressure on the government to classify weight as a protected status under the law.After a lifetime of living “under the oppression of diet culture,” Tara began her activism in 2010 (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She had suffered real harm from diet culture, developing an eating disorder as a teen and being told through her treatment for it that her fears as a fat woman – that she had no future, that fat people experienced discrimination and stigma – were unfounded. But Tara’s lived experiences demonstrated fat stigma and discrimination were real.In 2012, she co-founded the Icelandic Association for Body Respect, which promotes body positivity and fights weight stigma in Iceland. The group uses a mixture of real life and online tools; organising petitions, running campaigns against the Icelandic version of The Biggest Loser, and campaigning for weight to be a protected class in the Icelandic constitution. The Association has increased the visibility of the dangers of diet culture and the harm of fat stigma. They laid the groundwork that led to changing the human rights policy for the city of Reykjavík; fat people cannot be discriminated against in employment settings within government jobs. As the city is one of the largest employers in the country, this was a large step forward for fat rights.Tara does receive her fair share of hate messages; she’s shared that she’s amazed at the lengths people will go to misunderstand what she is saying (Vilhjálmsdóttir). “This isn’t about hurt feelings; I’m not insulted [by fat stigma]. It’s about [fat stigma] affecting the livelihood of fat people and the structural discrimination they face” (Vilhjálmsdóttir). She collects the hateful comments she receives online through screenshots and shares them in an album on her page. She believes it is important to keep a repository to demonstrate to others that the hatred towards fat people is real. But the hate she receives only fuels her work more. As does the encouragement she receives from people, both in Iceland and abroad. And she is not alone; fat activists across the world are using Web 2.0 tools to change the conversation around fatness and demand civil rights for fat people (Pausé, “Rebel Heart”; Pausé, “Live to Tell").Using Web 2.0 tools as a way to protest and engage in activism is an example of oppositional technologics; a “political praxis of resistance being woven into low-tech, amateur, hybrid, alternative subcultural feminist networks” (Garrison 151). Fat activists use social media to engage in anti-assimilationist activism and build communities of practice online in ways that would not be possible in real life (Pausé, “Express Yourself” 1). This is especially useful for those whose protests sit at the intersections of oppressions (Keller 435; Pausé, “Rebel Heart” para 19). Online protests have the ability to travel the globe quickly, providing opportunities for connections between protests and spreading protests across the globe, such as slu*tWalks in 2011-2012 (Schuster 19). And online spaces open up unlimited venues for women to participate more freely in protest than other forms (Harris 479; Schuster 16; Garrison 162).Whether online or offline, women are represented as dangerous in the political sphere when they act without male champions breaching norms of femininity, when their involvement challenges the role of woman as moral guardians, and when they make the body the site of protest. Women must ‘do politics’ politely, with utmost control, and of course caringly; that is they must play their ‘designated roles’. Whether or not you fit the gendered norms of political life affects how your protest is perceived through the media (van Acker). Coulter’s tweet loudly proclaimed that the fat ‘girls’ protesting the election of the 45th President of the United States were unworthy, out of control, and not worthy of attention (ironic, then, as her tweet caused considerable conversation about protest, fatness, and the reasons not to like the President-Elect). What the Coulter tweet demonstrates is that fat women are perceived as doubly-problematic in public space, both as fat and as women. They do not do politics in a way that is befitting womanhood – they are too visible and loud; they are not moral guardians of conservative values; and, their bodies challenge masculine power.ReferencesAgenda Feminist Media Collective. “Women in Society: Public Debate.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 10 (1991): 31-44.Bay, Kivan. “How Nazis Use Fat to Excuse Violence.” Medium, 7 Feb. 2018. 1 May 2018 <https://medium.com/@kivabay/how-nazis-use-fat-to-excuse-violence-b7da7d18fea8>.———. “Without Fat Girls, There Would Be No Protests.” Bullsh*t.ist, 13 Nov. 2016. 16 May 2018 <https://bullsh*t.ist/without-fat-girls-there-would-be-no-protests-e66690de539a>.Bliss, Katherine Elaine. Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City. Penn State Press, 2010.Caha, Omer. Women and Civil Society in Turkey: Women’s Movements in a Muslim Society. London: Ashgate, 2013.Caron, Christina. “Heather Heyer, Charlottesville Victim, Is Recalled as ‘a Strong Woman’.” New York Times, 13 Aug. 2017. 1 May 2018 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html>.Chenut, Helen. “Anti-Feminist Caricature in France: Politics, Satire and Public Opinion, 1890-1914.” Modern & Contemporary France 20.4 (2012): 437-452.Crandall, Christian S. "Prejudice against Fat People: Ideology and Self-Interest." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66.5 (1994): 882-894.Damousi, Joy. “Representations of the Body and Sexuality in Communist Iconography, 1920-1955.” Australian Feminist Studies 12.25 (1997): 59-75.Dean, Marge, and Shirl Buss. “Fat Underground.” YouTube, 11 Aug. 2016 [1975]. 1 May 2018 <https://youtu.be/UPYRZCXjoRo>.Fountaine, Susan. “Women, Politics and the Media: The 1999 New Zealand General Election.” PhD thesis. Palmerston North, NZ: Massey University, 2002.Freespirit, Judy, and Aldebaran. “Fat Liberation Manifesto November 1973.” The Fat Studies Reader. Eds. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay. New York: NYU P, 2009. 341-342.Garber, Megan. “The Selective Empathy of #MeToo Backlash.” The Atlantic, 11 Feb 2018. 5 Apr. 2018 <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/the-selective-empathy-of-metoo-backlash/553022/>.Garrison, Edith. “US Feminism – Grrrl Style! Youth (Sub)Cultures and the Technologics of the Third Wave.” Feminist Studies 26.1 (2000): 141-170.Garvey, Nicola. “Violence against Women: Beyond Gender Neutrality.” Looking Back, Moving Forward: The Janus Women’s Convention 2005. Ed. Dale Spender. Masterton: Janus Trust, 2005. 114-120.Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. Yale UP, 1992.Grey, Sandra. “Women, Politics, and Protest: Rethinking Women's Liberation Activism in New Zealand.” Rethinking Women and Politics: New Zealand and Comparative Perspectives. Eds. John Leslie, Elizabeth McLeay, and Kate McMillan. Victoria UP, 2009. 34-61.———, and Matthew Fitzsimons. “Defending Democracy: ‘Keep MMP’ and the 2011 Electoral Referendum.” Kicking the Tyres: The New Zealand General Election and Electoral Referendum of 2011. Eds. Jon Johansson and Stephen Levine. Victoria UP, 2012. 285-304.———, and Marian Sawer, eds. Women’s Movements: Flourishing or in Abeyance? London: Routledge, 2008.Harris, Anita. “Mind the Gap: Attitudes and Emergent Feminist Politics since the Third Wave.” Australian Feminist Studies 25.66 (2010): 475-484.Haussegger, Virginia. “#MeToo: Beware the Brewing Whiff of Backlash.” Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Mar. 2018. 1 Apr. 2018 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/metoo-beware-the-brewing-whiff-of-backlash-20180306-p4z33s.html>.Keller, Jessalynn. “Virtual Feminisms.” Information, Communication and Society 15.3(2011): 429-447.Kirston, Gill. “From ‘a Woman’s Place Is in Her Union’ to ‘Strong Unions Need Women’: Changing Gender Discourses, Policies and Realities in the Union Movement.” Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work 27.4 (2017): 270-283.Kyrölä, Katariina. The Weight of Images. London: Routledge, 2014.Ledwith, Sue. “Gender Politics in Trade Unions: The Representation of Women between Exclusion and Inclusion.” European Review of Labour and Research 18.2 (2012): 185-199.Lyndsey, Susan. Women, Politics, and the Media: The 1999 New Zealand General Election. Dissertation. Massey University, 2002.Maddison, Sarah, and Sean Scalmer. Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements. Sydney: UNSW P, 2006. Moynihan, Carolyn. A Stand for Decency: Patricia Bartlett & the Society for Promotion of Community Standards, 1970-1995. Wellington: The Society, 1995.Murray, Samantha. "Pathologizing 'Fatness': Medical Authority and Popular Culture." Sociology of Sport Journal 25.1 (2008): 7-21.Pausé, Cat. “Live to Tell: Coming Out as Fat.” Somatechnics 21 (2012): 42-56.———. “Express Yourself: Fat Activism in the Web 2.0 Age.” The Politics of Size: Perspectives from the Fat-Acceptance Movement. Ed. Ragen Chastain. Praeger, 2015. 1-8.———. “Rebel Heart: Performing Fatness Wrong Online.” M/C Journal 18.3 (2015).Rowland, Robyn, ed. Women Who Do and Women Who Don’t Join the Women’s Movement. London: Routledge, 1984.Schuster, Julia. “Invisible Feminists? Social Media and Young Women’s Political Participation.” Political Science 65.1 (2013): 8-24.Sheppard, Alice. "Suffrage Art and Feminism." Hypatia 5.2 (1990): 122-136.Simic, Zora. “Fat as a Feminist Issue: A History.” Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism. Eds. Helen Hester and Caroline Walters. London: Ashgate, 2015. 15-36.Spangler, Todd. “White-Supremacist Site Daily Stormer Booted by Hosting Provider.” Variety, 13 Aug. 2017. 1 May 2018 <https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/daily-stormer-heather-heyer-white-supremacist-neo-nazi-hosting-provider-1202526544/>.Smyth, Helen. Rocking the Cradle: Contraception, Sex, and Politics in New Zealand. Steele Roberts, 2000.Tiggemann, Marika, and Esther D. Rothblum. "Gender Differences in Social Consequences of Perceived Overweight in the United States and Australia." Sex Roles 18.1-2 (1988): 75-86.Van Acker, Elizabeth. “Media Representations of Women Politicians in Australia and New Zealand: High Expectations, Hostility or Stardom.” Policy and Society 22.1 (2003): 116-136.Vilhjálmsdóttir, Tara. Personal interview. 1 June 2018.

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The Netflix/BBC eight-part limited true crime series The Serpent (2021) provides a commentary on the impact of the tourist industry in South-East Asia in the 1970s. The series portrays the story of French serial killer Charles Sobhraj (played by Tahar Rahim)—a psychopathic international con artist of Vietnamese-Indian descent—who regularly targeted Western travellers, especially the long-term wanderers of the legendary “Hippie Trail” (or the “Overland”), running between eastern Europe and Asia. The series, which was filmed on location in Thailand—in Bangkok and the Thai town of Hua Hin—is set in a range of travel destinations along the route of the Hippie Trail, as the narrative follows the many crimes of Sobhraj. Cities such as Kathmandu, Goa, Varanasi, Hong Kong, and Kabul are featured on the show. The series is loosely based upon Australian writers Richard Neville and Julie Clarke’s true crime biography The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (1979). Another true crime text by Thomas Thompson called Serpentine: Charles Sobhraj’s Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia (also published in 1979) is a second reference. The show portrays the disappearance and murders of many young victims at the hands of Sobhraj. Certainly, Sobhraj is represented as a monstrous figure, but what about the business of tourism itself? Arguably, in its reflective examination of twentieth-century travel, the series also poses the hedonism of tourism as monstrous. Here, attention is drawn to Western privilege and a neo-orientalist gaze that presented Asia as an exotic playground for its visitors. The television series focuses on Sobhraj, his French-Canadian girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (played by Jenna Coleman), and the glamourous life they lead in Bangkok. The fashionable couple’s operation presents Sobhraj as a legitimate gem dealer: outwardly, they seem to embody the epitome of fun and glamour, as well as the cross-cultural sophistication of the international jet set. In reality, they drug and then steal from tourists who believe their story. Sobhraj uses stolen passports and cash to travel internationally and acquire more gems. Then, with an accomplice called Ajay Chowdhury (played by Amesh Adireweera), Sobhraj murders his victims if he thinks they could expose his fraud. Often depicted as humourless and seething with anger, the Sobhraj of the series often wears dark aviator sunglasses, a detail that enhances the sense of his impenetrability. One of the first crimes featured in The Serpent is the double-murder of an innocent Dutch couple. The murders lead to an investigation by Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (played by Billy Howle), wanting to provide closure for the families of the victims. Knippenberg enlists neighbours to go undercover at Sobhraj’s home to collect evidence. This exposes Sobhraj’s crimes, so he flees the country with Marie-Andrée and Ajay. While they were apprehended, Sobhraj would be later given pardon from a prison in India: he would only received a life sentence for murder when he is arrested in Nepal in 2003. His ability to evade punishment—and inability to admit to and atone for his crimes—become features of his monstrosity in the television series. Clearly, Sobhraj is represented as the “serpent” of this drama, a metaphor regularly reinforced both textually and visually across the length of the series. As an example, the opening credit sequence for the series coalesces shots of vintage film in Asia—including hitchhiking backpackers, VW Kombi vans, swimming pools, religious tourist sites, corrupt Asian police forces—against an animated map of central and South-East Asia and the Hippie Trail. The map is encased by the giant, slithering tail of some monstrous, reptilian creature. Situating the geographic context of the narrative, the serpentine monster appears to be rising out of continental Asia itself, figuratively stalking and then entrapping the tourists and travellers who move along its route. So, what of the other readings about the monstrosity of the tourism industry that appears on the show? The Hippie Trail was arguably a site—a serpentine cross-continental thoroughfare—of Western excess. The Hippie Trail emerged as the result of the ease of travel across continental Europe and Asia. It was an extension of a countercultural movement that first emerged in the United States in the mid 1960s. Agnieszka Sobocinska has suggested that the travellers of the Hippie Trail were motivated by “widespread dissatisfaction with the perceived conservatism of Western society and its conventions”, and that it was characterised by “youth, rebellion, self-expression and the performance of personal freedom” (par. 8). The Trail appealed to a particular subcultural group who wanted to differentiate themselves from other travellers. Culturally, the Hippie Trail has become a historical site of enduring fascination, written about in popular histories and Western travel narratives, such as A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu (Tomory 1998), Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India (MacLean 2007), The Hippie Trail: A History (Gemie and Ireland 2017), and The Hippie Trail: After Europe, Turn Left (Kreamer 2019). Despite these positive memoirs, the route also has a reputation for being destructive and even neo-imperialist: it irrevocably altered the politics of these Asian regions, especially as crowds of Western visitors would party at its cities along the way. In The Serpent, while the crimes take place on its route, on face value the Hippie Trail still appears to be romanticised and nostalgically re-imagined, especially as it represents a stark difference from our contemporary world with its heavily-policed international borders. Indeed, the travellers seem even freer from the perspective of 2021, given the show’s production phase and release in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when international travel was halted for many. As Kylie Northover has written in a review for the series in the Sydney Morning Herald, the production design of the programme and the on-location shoot in Thailand is affectionately evocative and nostalgic. Northover suggests that it “successfully evokes a very specific era of travel—the Vietnam War has just ended, the Summer of Love is over and contact with family back home was usually only through the post restante” (13). On the show, there is certainly critique of the tourist industry. For example, one scene demonstrates the “dark side” of the Hippie Trail dream. Firstly, we see a psychedelic-coloured bus of travellers driving through Nepal. The outside of the bus is covered with its planned destinations: “Istanbul. Teheran. Kabul. Delhi”. The Western travellers are young and dressed in peasant clothing and smoking marijuana. Looking over at the Himalayas, one hippie calls the mountains a “Shangri-La”, the fictional utopia of an Eastern mountain paradise. Then, the screen contracts to show old footage of Kathmandu— using the small-screen dimensions of a Super-8 film—which highlights a “hashish centre” with young children working at the front. The child labour is ignored. As the foreign hippie travellers—American and English—move through Kathmandu, they seem self-absorbed and anti-social. Rather than meeting and learning from locals, they just gather at parties with other hippies. By night-time, the series depicts drugged up travellers on heroin or other opiates, disconnected from place and culture as they stare around aimlessly. The negative representation of hippies has been observed in some of the critical reviews about The Serpent. For example, writing about the series for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey cites Joan Didion’s famous “serpentine” interpretation of the hippie culture in the United States, applying this to the search for meaning on the Hippie Trail: the subculture of expats and travellers in south-east Asia feels rather like Joan Didion’s 60s California, crisscrossed by lost young people trying to find themselves anew in religion, drugs, or simply unfamiliar places. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion writes of those who “drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins”. (Lynskey) We could apply cultural theories about tourism to a critique of the industry in the series too. Many cultural researchers have critiqued tourists and the tourism industry, as well as the powers that tourists can wield over destination cultures. In Time and Commodity Culture, John Frow has suggested that the logic of tourism is “that of a relentless extension of commodity relations, and the consequent inequalities of power, between centre and periphery, First and Third World, developed and undeveloped regions, metropolis and countryside”, as well as one that has developed from the colonial era (151). Similarly, Derek Gregory’s sensitive analyses of cultural geographies of postcolonial space showed that Nineteenth-century Orientalism is a continuing process within globalised mass tourism (114). The problem of Orientalism as a Western travel ideology is made prominent in The Serpent through Sobhraj’s denouncement of Western tourists, even though there is much irony at play here, as the series itself arguably is presenting its own retro version of Orientalism to Western audiences. Even the choice of Netflix to produce this true crime story—with its two murderers of Asian descent—is arguably a way of reinforcing negative representations about Asian identity. Then, Western characters take on the role of hero and/or central protagonist, especially the character of Knippenberg. One could ask: where is the Netflix show that depicts a positive story about a central character of Vietnamese-Indian descent? Edward Said famously defined Orientalism as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (1). It became a way for Western cultures to interpret and understand the East, and for reducing and hom*ogenising it into a more simplistic package. Orientalism explored discourses that grew to encompass India and the Far East in tandem with the expansion of Western imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examined a dualistic ideology: a way of looking that divided the globe into two limited types without any room for nuance and diversity. Inclusive and exclusive, Orientalism assumed and promoted an “us and them” binary, privileging a Western gaze as the normative cultural position, while the East was relegated to the ambiguous role of “other”. Orientalism is a field in which stereotypes of the East and West have power: as Said suggests, “the West is the actor, the Orient is a passive reactor… . The West is the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behaviour” (109). Interestingly, despite the primacy in which Sobhraj is posited as the show’s central monster, he is also the character in the series most critical of the neo-colonial oppression caused by this counter-cultural tourism, which indicates ambiguity and complexity in the representation of monstrosity. Sobhraj appears to have read Said. As he looks scornfully at a stoner hippie woman who has befriended Ajay, he seems to perceive the hippies as drop-outs and drifters, but he also connects them more thoroughly as perpetrators of neo-imperialist processes. Indicating his contempt for the sightseers of the Hippie Trail as they seek enlightenment on their travels, he interrogates his companion Ajay: why do you think these white children deny the comfort and wealth of the life they were given to come to a place like this? Worship the same gods. Wear the same rags. Live in the same filth. Each experience is only then taken home to wear like a piece of fake tribal jewellery. They travel only to acquire. It’s another form of imperialism. And she has just colonised you! Sobhraj’s speech is political but it is also menacing, and he quickly sets upon Ajay and physically punishes him for his tryst with the hippie woman. Yet, ultimately, the main Western tourists of the Hippie Trail are presented positively in The Serpent, especially as many of them are depcited as naïve innocents within the story—hopeful, idealistic and excited to travel—and simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. In this way, the series still draws upon the conventions of the true crime genre, which is to differentiate clearly between good/evil and right/wrong, and to create an emotional connection to the victims as symbols of virtue. As the crimes and deaths accumulate within the series, Sobhraj’s opinions are deceptive, designed to manipulate those around him (such as Ajay) rather than being drawn from genuine feelings of political angst about the neo-imperialist project of Western tourism. The uncertainty around Sobhraj’s motivation for his crimes remains one of the fascinating aspects of the series. It problematises the way that the monstrosity of this character is constructed within the narrative of the show. The character of Sobhraj frequently engages with these essentialising issues about Orientalism, but he appears to do so with the aim to remove the privilege that comes from a Western gaze. In the series, Sobhraj’s motivations for targeting Western travellers are often insinuated as being due to personal reasons, such as revenge for his treatment as a child in Europe, where he says he was disparaged for being of Asian heritage. For example, as he speaks to one of his drugged French-speaking victims, Sobhraj suggests that when he moved from Vietnam to France as a child, he was subject to violence and poor treatment from others: “a half-caste boy from Saigon. You can imagine how I was bullied”. In this instance, the suffering French man placed in Sobhraj’s power has been promoted as fitting into one of these “us and them” binaries, but in this set-up, there is also a reversal of power relations and Sobhraj has set himself as both the “actor” and the “spectator”. Here, he has reversed the “Orientalist” gaze onto a passive Western man, hom*ogenising a “Western body”, and hence radically destabilising the construct of Orientalism as an ideological force. This is also deeply troubling: it goes on to sustain a problematic and essentialising binary that, no matter which way it faces, aims to denigrate and stereotype a cultural group. In this way, the character of Sobhraj demonstrates that while he is angry at the way that Orientalist ideologies have victimised him in the past, he will continue to perpetrate its basic ideological assumptions as a way of administering justice and seeking personal retribution. Ultimately, perhaps one of the more powerful readings of The Serpent is that it is difficult to move away from the ideological constructs of travel. We could also suggest that same thing for the tourists. In her real-life analysis of the Hippie Trail, Agnieszka Sobocinska has suggested that while it was presented and understood as something profoundly different from older travel tours and expeditions, it could not help but be bound up in the same ideological colonial and imperial impulses that constituted earlier forms of travel: Orientalist images and imperial behaviours were augmented to suit a new generation that liked to think of itself as radically breaking from the past. Ironically, this facilitated the view that ‘alternative’ travel was a statement in anti-colonial politics, even as it perpetuated some of the inequalities inherent to imperialism. This plays out in The Serpent. We see that this supposedly radically different new group – with a relaxed and open-minded identity—is bound within the same old ideological constructs. Part of the problem of the Hippie Trail traveller was a failure to recognise the fundamentally imperialist origins of their understanding of travel. This is the same kind of concern mapped out by Turner and Ash in their analysis of neo-imperial forms of travel called The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery (1976), written and published in the same era as the events of The Serpent. Presciently gauging the effect that mass tourism would have on developing nations, Turner and Ash used the metaphor of “hordes” of tourists taking over various poorer destinations to intend a complete reversal of the stereotype of a horde of barbaric and non-Western hosts. By inferring that tourists are the “hordes” reverses Orientalist conceptions of de-personalised non-Western cultures, and shows the problem that over-tourism and unsustainable visitation can pose to host locations, especially with the acceleration of mass travel in the late Twentieth century. Certainly, the concept of a touristic “horde” is one of the monstrous ideas in travel, and can signify the worst aspects contained within mass tourism. To conclude, it is useful to return to the consideration of what is presented as monstrous in The Serpent. Here, there is the obvious monster in the sinister, impassive figure of serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Julie Clarke, in a new epilogue for The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (2020), posits that Sobhraj’s actions are monstrous and unchangeable, demonstrating the need to understand impermeable cases of human evil as a part of human society: one of the lessons of this cautionary tale should be an awareness that such ‘inhuman humans’ do live amongst us. Many don’t end up in jail, but rather reach the highest level in the corporate and political spheres. (Neville and Clarke, 2020) Then, there is the exploitational spectre of mass tourism from the Hippie Trail that has had the ability to “invade” and ruin the authenticity and/or sustainability of a particular place or location as it is overrun by the “golden hordes”. Finally, we might consider the Orientalist, imperialist and globalised ideologies of mass tourism as one of the insidious and serpentine forces that entrap the central characters in this television series. This leads to a failure to understand what is really going on as the tourists are deluded by visions of an exotic paradise. References Frow, John. Time and Commodity Culture: Essays on Culture Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford UP, 1997. Gemie, Sharif, and Brian Ireland. The Hippie Trail: A History. Manchester UP, 2017. Gregory, Derek. “Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the Cultures of Travel.” In Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing. Eds. Duncan James and Derek Gregor. Routledge, 1999. 114-150 . Kreamer, Robert. The Hippie Trail: After Europe, Turn Left. Fonthill Media, 2019. Lynskey, Dorian. “The Serpent: A Slow-Burn TV Success That’s More than a Killer Thriller.” The Guardian, 30 Jan. 2021. 1 Oct. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/29/the-serpent-more-than-a-killer-thriller-bbc-iplayer>. MacLean, Rory. Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India. Penguin, 2006. Neville, Richard, and Julie Clarke. The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Jonathan Cape, 1979. ———. On the Trail of the Serpent: The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Revised ed. Vintage, 2020. Northover, Kylie. “The Ice-Cold Conman of the ‘Hippie Trail’.” Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Mar. 2021: 13. Price, Roberta. “Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India.” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 2.2 (2009): 273-276. Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Penguin, 1995. Sobocinska, Agnieszka. “Following the ‘Hippie Sahibs’: Colonial Cultures of Travel and the Hippie Trail.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 15.2 (2014). DOI: 10.1353/cch.2014.0024. Thompson, Thomas. Serpentine: Charles Sobhraj’s Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia. Doubleday, 1979. Tomory, David, ed. A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu. Lonely Planet, 1998. Turner, Louis, and John Ash. The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery. St Martin’s Press, 1976.

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The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. — Sun TzuWorld War II saw a proliferation of maps. From command posts to the pages of National Geographic to the pages of daily newspapers, they were everywhere (Schulten). The era also saw substantive developments in cartography, especially with respect to the topographical maps that feature in our selected films. This essay offers a preliminary examination of the battle-map as depicted in two films about the Second World War: Franklin J. Shaffner’s biopic Patton (1970) and Jack Smight’s epic Midway (1976). In these films, maps, charts, or tableaux (the three-dimensional models upon which are plotted the movements of battalions, fleets, and so on) emerge as an expression of both martial and cinematic strategy. As a rear-view representation of the relative movements of personnel and materiel in particular battle arenas, the map and its accessories (pins, tape, markers, and so forth) trace the broad military dispositions of Patton’s 2nd Corp (Africa), Seventh Army (Italy) and Third Army (Western Europe) and the relative position of American and Japanese fleets in the Pacific. In both Patton and Midway, the map also emerges as a simple mode of narrative plotting: as the various encounters in the two texts play out, the battle-map more or less contemporaneously traces the progress of forces. It also serves as a foreshadowing device, not just narratively, but cinematically: that which is plotted in advance comes to pass (even if as preliminary movements before catastrophe), but the audience is also cued for the cinematic chaos and disjuncture that almost inevitably ensues in the battle scenes proper.On one hand, then, this essay proposes that at the fundamental level of fabula (seen through either the lens of historical hindsight or through the eyes of the novice who knows nothing of World War II), the annotated map is engaged both strategically and cinematically: as a stage upon which commanders attempt to act out (either in anticipation, or retrospectively) the intricate, but grotesque, ballet of warfare — and as a reflection of the broad, sequential, sweeps of conflict. While, in War and Cinema, Paul Virilio offers the phrase ‘the logistics of perception’ (1), in this this essay we, on the other hand, consider that, for those in command, the battle-map is a representation of the perception of logistics: the big picture of war finds rough indexical representation on a map, but (as Clausewitz tells us) chance, the creative agency of individual commanders, and the fog of battle make it far less probable (than is the case in more specific mappings, such as, say, the wedding rehearsal) that what is planned will play out with any degree of close correspondence (On War 19, 21, 77-81). Such mapping is, of course, further problematised by the processes of abstraction themselves: indexicality is necessarily a reduction; a de-realisation or déterritorialisation. ‘For the military commander,’ writes Virilio, ‘every dimension is unstable and presents itself in isolation from its original context’ (War and Cinema 32). Yet rehearsal (on maps, charts, or tableaux) is a keying activity that seeks to presage particular real world patterns (Goffman 45). As suggested above, far from being a rhizomatic activity, the heavily plotted (as opposed to thematic) business of mapping is always out of joint: either a practice of imperfect anticipation or an equally imperfect (pared back and behind-the-times) rendition of activity in the field. As is argued by Tolstoj in War and Peace, the map then presents to the responder a series of tensions and ironies often lost on the masters of conflict themselves. War, as Tostoj proposes, is a stochastic phenomenon while the map is a relatively static, and naive, attempt to impose order upon it. Tolstoj, then, pillories Phull (in the novel, Pfuhl), the aptly-named Prussian general whose lock-stepped obedience to the science of war (of which the map is part) results in the abject humiliation of 1806:Pfuhl was one of those theoreticians who are so fond of their theory that they lose sight of the object of that theory - its application in practice. (Vol. 2, Part 1, Ch. 10, 53)In both Patton and Midway, then, the map unfolds not only as an epistemological tool (read, ‘battle plan’) or reflection (read, the near contemporaneous plotting of real world affray) of the war narrative, but as a device of foreshadowing and as an allegory of command and its profound limitations. So, in Deleuzian terms, while emerging as an image of both time and perception, for commanders and filmgoers alike, the map is also something of a seduction: a ‘crystal-image’ situated in the interstices between the virtual and the actual (Deleuze 95). To put it another way, in our films the map emerges as an isomorphism: a studied plotting in which inheres a counter-text (Goffman 26). As a simple device of narrative, and in the conventional terms of latitude and longitude, in both Patton and Midway, the map, chart, or tableau facilitate the plotting of the resources of war in relation to relief (including island land masses), roads, railways, settlements, rivers, and seas. On this syntagmatic plane, in Greimasian terms, the map is likewise received as a canonical sign of command: where there are maps, there are, after all, commanders (Culler 13). On the other hand, as suggested above, the battle-map (hereafter, we use the term to signify the conventional paper map, the maritime chart, or tableau) materialises as a sanitised image of the unknown and the grotesque: as apodictic object that reduces complexity and that incidentally banishes horror and affect. Thus, the map evolves, in the viewer’s perception, as an ironic sign of all that may not be commanded. This is because, as an emblem of the rational order, in Patton and Midway the map belies the ubiquity of battle’s friction: that defined by Clausewitz as ‘the only concept which...distinguishes real war from war on paper’ (73). ‘Friction’ writes Clausewitz, ‘makes that which appears easy in War difficult in reality’ (81).Our work here cannot ignore or side-step the work of others in identifying the core cycles, characteristics of the war film genre. Jeanine Basinger, for instance, offers nothing less than an annotated checklist of sixteen key characteristics for the World War II combat film. Beyond this taxonomy, though, Basinger identifies the crucial role this sub-type of film plays in the corpus of war cinema more broadly. The World War II combat film’s ‘position in the evolutionary process is established, as well as its overall relationship to history and reality. It demonstrates how a primary set of concepts solidifies into a story – and how they can be interpreted for a changing ideology’ (78). Stuart Bender builds on Basinger’s taxonomy and discussion of narrative tropes with a substantial quantitative analysis of the very building blocks of battle sequences. This is due to Bender’s contention that ‘when a critic’s focus [is] on the narrative or ideological components of a combat film [this may] lead them to make assumptions about the style which are untenable’ (8). We seek with this research to add to a rich and detailed body of knowledge by redressing a surprising omission therein: a conscious and focussed analysis of the use of battle-maps in war cinema. In Patton and in Midway — as in War and Peace — the map emerges as an emblem of an intergeneric dialogue: as a simple storytelling device and as a paradigmatic engine of understanding. To put it another way, as viewer-responders with a synoptic perspective we perceive what might be considered a ‘double exposure’: in the map we see what is obviously before us (the collision of represented forces), but an Archimedean positioning facilitates the production of far more revelatory textual isotopies along what Roman Jakobson calls the ‘axis of combination’ (Linguistics and Poetics 358). Here, otherwise unconnected signs (in our case various manifestations and configurations of the battle-map) are brought together in relation to particular settings, situations, and figures. Through this palimpsest of perspective, a crucial binary emerges: via the battle-map we see ‘command’ and the sequence of engagement — and, through Greimasian processes of axiological combination (belonging more to syuzhet than fabula), elucidated for us are the wrenching ironies of warfare (Culler 228). Thus, through the profound and bound motif of the map (Tomashevsky 69), are we empowered to pass judgement on the map bearers who, in both films, present as the larger-than-life heroes of old. Figure 1.While we have scope only to deal with the African theatre, Patton opens with a dramatic wide-shot of the American flag: a ‘map’, if you will, of a national history forged in war (Fig. 1). Against this potent sign of American hegemony, as he slowly climbs up to the stage before it, the general appears a diminutive figure -- until, via a series of matched cuts that culminate in extreme close-ups, he manifests as a giant about to play his part in a great American story (Fig. 2).Figure 2.Some nineteen minutes into a film, having surveyed the carnage of Kasserine Pass (in which, in February 1943, the Germans inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Americans) General Omar Bradley is reunited with his old friend and newly-nominated three-star general, George S. Patton Jr.. Against a backdrop of an indistinct topographical map (that nonetheless appears to show the front line) and the American flag that together denote the men’s authority, the two discuss the Kasserine catastrophe. Bradley’s response to Patton’s question ‘What happened at Kasserine?’ clearly illustrates the tension between strategy and real-world engagement. While the battle-plan was solid, the Americans were outgunned, their tanks were outclassed, and (most importantly) their troops were out-disciplined. Patton’s concludes that Rommel can only be beaten if the American soldiers are fearless and fight as a cohesive unit. Now that he is in command of the American 2nd Corp, the tide of American martial fortune is about to turn.The next time Patton appears in relation to the map is around half an hour into the two-and-three-quarter-hour feature. Here, in the American HQ, the map once more appears as a simple, canonical sign of command. Somewhat carelessly, the map of Europe seems to show post-1945 national divisions and so is ostensibly offered as a straightforward prop. In terms of martial specifics, screenplay writer Francis Ford Coppola apparently did not envisage much close scrutiny of the film’s maps. Highlighted, instead, are the tensions between strategy as a general principle and action on the ground. As British General Sir Arthur Coningham waxes lyrical about allied air supremacy, a German bomber drops its payload on the HQ, causing the map of Europe to (emblematically) collapse forward into the room. Following a few passes by the attacking aircraft, the film then cuts to a one second medium shot as a hail of bullets from a Heinkel He 111 strike a North African battle map (Fig. 3). Still prone, Patton remarks: ‘You were discussing air supremacy, Sir Arthur.’ Dramatising a scene that did take place (although Coningham was not present), Schaffner’s intention is to allow Patton to shoot holes in the British strategy (of which he is contemptuous) but a broader objective is the director’s exposé of the more general disjuncture between strategy and action. As the film progresses, and the battle-map’s allegorical significance is increasingly foregrounded, this critique becomes definitively sharper.Figure 3.Immediately following a scene in which an introspective Patton walks through a cemetery in which are interred the remains of those killed at Kasserine, to further the critique of Allied strategy the camera cuts to Berlin’s high command and a high-tech ensemble of tableaux, projected maps, and walls featuring lights, counters, and clocks. Tasked to research the newly appointed Patton, Captain Steiger walks through the bunker HQ with Hitler’s Chief of Staff, General Jodl, to meet with Rommel — who, suffering nasal diphtheria, is away from the African theatre. In a memorable exchange, Steiger reveals that Patton permanently attacks and never retreats. Rommel, who, following his easy victory at Kasserine, is on the verge of total tactical victory, in turn declares that he will ‘attack and annihilate’ Patton — before the poet-warrior does the same to him. As Clausewitz has argued, and as Schaffner is at pains to point out, it seems that, in part, the outcome of warfare has more to do with the individual consciousness of competing warriors than it does with even the most exquisite of battle-plans.Figure 4.So, even this early in the film’s runtime, as viewer-responders we start to reassess various manifestations of the battle-map. To put it as Michelle Langford does in her assessment of Schroeter’s cinema, ‘fragments of the familiar world [in our case, battle-maps] … become radically unfamiliar’ (Allegorical Images 57). Among the revelations is that from the flag (in the context of close battle, all sense of ‘the national’ dissolves), to the wall map, to the most detailed of tableau, the battle-plan is enveloped in the fog of war: thus, the extended deeply-focussed scenes of the Battle of El Guettar take us from strategic overview (Patton’s field glass perspectives over what will soon become a Valley of Death) to what Boris Eichenbaum has called ‘Stendhalian’ scale (The Young Tolstoi 105) in which, (in Patton) through more closely situated perspectives, we almost palpably experience the Germans’ disarray under heavy fire. As the camera pivots between the general and the particular (and between the omniscient and the nescient) the cinematographer highlights the tension between the strategic and the actual. Inasmuch as it works out (and, as Schaffner shows us, it never works out completely as planned) this is the outcome of modern martial strategy: chaos and unimaginable carnage on the ground that no cartographic representation might capture. As Patton observes the destruction unfold in the valley below and before him, he declares: ‘Hell of a waste of fine infantry.’ Figure 5.An important inclusion, then, is that following the protracted El Guettar battle scenes, Schaffner has the (symbolically flag-draped) casket of Patton’s aide, Captain Richard N. “Dick” Jenson, wheeled away on a horse-drawn cart — with the lonely figure of the mourning general marching behind, his ironic interior monologue audible to the audience: ‘I can't see the reason such fine young men get killed. There are so many battles yet to fight.’ Finally, in terms of this brief and partial assessment of the battle-map in Patton, less than an hour in, we may observe that the map is emerging as something far more than a casual prop; as something more than a plotting of battlelines; as something more than an emblem of command. Along a new and unexpected axis of semantic combination, it is now manifesting as a sign of that which cannot be represented nor commanded.Midway presents the lead-up to the eponymous naval battle of 1942. Smight’s work is of interest primarily because the battle itself plays a relatively small role in the film; what is most important is the prolonged strategising that comprises most of the film’s run time. In Midway, battle-tables and fleet markers become key players in the cinematic action, second almost to the commanders themselves. Two key sequences are discussed here: the moment in which Yamamoto outlines his strategy for the attack on Midway (by way of a decoy attack on the Aleutian Islands), and the scene some moments later where Admiral Nimitz and his assembled fleet commanders (Spruance, Blake, and company) survey their own plan to defend the atoll. In Midway, as is represented by the notion of a fleet-in-being, the oceanic battlefield is presented as a speculative plane on which commanders can test ideas. Here, a fleet in a certain position projects a radius of influence that will deter an enemy fleet from attacking: i.e. ‘a fleet which is able and willing to attack an enemy proposing a descent upon territory which that force has it in charge to protect’ (Colomb viii). The fleet-in-being, it is worth noting, is one that never leaves port and, while it is certainly true that the latter half of Midway is concerned with the execution of strategy, the first half is a prolonged cinematic game of chess, with neither player wanting to move lest the other has thought three moves ahead. Virilio opines that the fleet-in-being is ‘a new idea of violence that no longer comes from direct confrontation and bloodshed, but rather from the unequal properties of bodies, evaluation of the number of movements allowed them in a chosen element, permanent verification of their dynamic efficiency’ (Speed and Politics 62). Here, as in Patton, we begin to read the map as a sign of the subjective as well as the objective. This ‘game of chess’ (or, if you prefer, ‘Battleships’) is presented cinematically through the interaction of command teams with their battle-tables and fleet markers. To be sure, this is to show strategy being developed — but it is also to prepare viewers for the defamiliarised representation of the battle itself.The first sequence opens with a close-up of Admiral Yamamoto declaring: ‘This is how I expect the battle to develop.’ The plan to decoy the Americans with an attack on the Aleutians is shown via close-ups of the conveniently-labelled ‘Northern Force’ (Fig. 6). It is then explained that, twenty-four hours later, a second force will break off and strike south, on the Midway atoll. There is a cut from closeups of the pointer on the map to the wider shot of the Japanese commanders around their battle table (Fig. 7). Interestingly, apart from the opening of the film in the Japanese garden, and the later parts of the film in the operations room, the Japanese commanders are only ever shown in this battle-table area. This canonically positions the Japanese as pure strategists, little concerned with the enmeshing of war with political or social considerations. The sequence ends with Commander Yasimasa showing a photograph of Vice Admiral Halsey, who the Japanese mistakenly believe will be leading the carrier fleet. Despite some bickering among the commanders earlier in the film, this sequence shows the absolute confidence of the Japanese strategists in their plan. The shots are suitably languorous — averaging three to four seconds between cuts — and the body language of the commanders shows a calm determination. The battle-map here is presented as an index of perfect command and inevitable victory: each part of the plan is presented with narration suggesting the Japanese expect to encounter little resistance. While Yasimasa and his clique are confident, the other commanders suggest a reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor to ascertain the position of the American fleet; the fear of fleet-in-being is shown here firsthand and on the map, where the reconnaissance planes are placed alongside the ship markers. The battle-map is never shown in full: only sections of the naval landscape are presented. We suggest that this is done in order to prepare the audience for the later stages of the film: as in Patton (from time to time) the battle-map here is filmed abstractly, to prime the audience for the abstract montage of the battle itself in the film’s second half.Figure 6.Figure 7.Having established in the intervening running time that Halsey is out of action, his replacement, Rear Admiral Spruance, is introduced to the rest of the command team. As with all the important American command and strategy meetings in the film, this is done in the operations room. A transparent coordinates board is shown in the foreground as Nimitz, Spruance and Rear Admiral Fletcher move through to the battle table. Behind the men, as they lean over the table, is an enormous map of the world (Fig. 8). In this sequence, Nimitz freely admits that while he knows each Japanese battle group’s origin and heading, he is unsure of their target. He asks Spruance for his advice:‘Ray, assuming what you see here isn’t just an elaborate ruse — Washington thinks it is, but assuming they’re wrong — what kind of move do you suggest?’This querying is followed by Spruance glancing to a particular point on the map (Fig. 9), then a cut to a shot of models representing the aircraft carriers Hornet, Enterprise & Yorktown (Fig. 10). This is one of the few model/map shots unaccompanied by dialogue or exposition. In effect, this shot shows Spruance’s thought process before he responds: strategic thought presented via cinematography. Spruance then suggests situating the American carrier group just northeast of Midway, in case the Japanese target is actually the West Coast of the United States. It is, in effect, a hedging of bets. Spruance’s positioning of the carrier group also projects that group’s sphere of influence around Midway atoll and north to essentially cut off Japanese access to the US. The fleet-in-being is presented graphically — on the map — in order to, once again, cue the audience to match the later (edited) images of the battle to these strategic musings.In summary, in Midway, the map is an element of production design that works alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to present the notion of strategic thought to the audience. In addition, and crucially, it functions as an abstraction of strategy that prepares the audience for the cinematic disorientation that will occur through montage as the actual battle rages later in the film. Figure 8.Figure 9.Figure 10.This essay has argued that the battle-map is a simulacrum of the weakest kind: what Baudrillard would call ‘simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model’ (121). Just as cinema itself offers a distorted view of history (the war film, in particular, tends to hagiography), the battle-map is an over-simplification that fails to capture the physical and psychological realities of conflict. We have also argued that in both Patton and Midway, the map is not a ‘free’ motif (Tomashevsky 69). Rather, it is bound: a central thematic device. In the two films, the battle-map emerges as a crucial isomorphic element. On the one hand, it features as a prop to signify command and to relay otherwise complex strategic plottings. At this syntagmatic level, it functions alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to give audiences a glimpse into how military strategy is formed and tested: a traditional ‘reading’ of the map. But on the flip side of what emerges as a classic structuralist binary, is the map as a device of foreshadowing (especially in Midway) and as a depiction of command’s profound limitations. Here, at a paradigmatic level, along a new axis of combination, a new reading of the map in war cinema is proposed: the battle-map is as much a sign of the subjective as it is the objective.ReferencesBasinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. Middletown, CT: Columbia UP, 1986.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbour: U of Michigan Press, 1994.Bender, Stuart. Film Style and the World War II Combat Genre. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Vol. 1. London: Kegan Paul, 1908.Colomb, Philip Howard. Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated. 3rd ed. London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1899.Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Continuum, 2005.Eichenbaum, Boris. The Young Tolstoi. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1972.Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976.Jakobson, Roman. "Linguistics and Poetics." Style in Language. Ed. T. Sebebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1960. 350—77.Langford, Michelle. Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gesture in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter. Bristol: Intellect, 2006.Midway. Jack Smight. Universal Pictures, 1976. Film.Patton. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century Fox, 1970. Film.Schulten, Susan. World War II Led to a Revolution in Cartography. New Republic 21 May 2014. 16 June 2017 <https://newrepublic.com/article/117835/richard-edes-harrison-reinvented-mapmaking-world-war-2-americans>.Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Vol. 2. London: Folio, 1997.Tomashevsky, Boris. "Thematics." Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Eds. L. Lemon and M. Reis, Lincoln: U. Nebraska Press, 2012. 61—95.Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. San Diego: Canterbury Classics, 2014.Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Paris: Semiotext(e), 2006.Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London: Verso, 1989.

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Abstract:

The Gothic is not always suited to women’s emancipation, but it is very well suited to women’s anger, and all other instances of what Barbara Creed (3) would refer to as ‘abject’ femininity: excessive, uncanny and uncontained instances that disturb patriarchal norms of womanhood. This article asserts that the conventions of the Gothic genre are well suited to expressions of women’s rage; invoking Sarah Ahmed’s work on the discomforting presence of the kill-joy in order to explore how the often-alienating processes of uncensored female anger coincide with contemporary notions of the Monstrous Feminine. This should not suggest that the Gothic is a wholly feminist genre - one need only look to Jane Eyre to observe the binarised construction of Gothic women as either ‘pure’ or ‘deviant’: virginal heroine or mad woman in the attic. However, what is significant about the Gothic genre is that it often permits far more in-depth, even sympathetic explorations of ‘deviant femininity’ that are out of place elsewhere.Indeed, the normative, rationalist demand for good health and accommodating cheerfulness is symptomatic of what Queer Crip scholar Katarina Kolářová (264) describes as ‘compulsory, curative positivity’ – wherein the Monstrousness of deviant femininity, Queerness and disability must be ‘fixed’ in order to produce blithe, comforting feminine docility. It seems almost too obvious to point to The Yellow Wallpaper as a perfect exemplar of this: the physician husband of Gillman’s protagonist literally prescribes indolence and passivity as ‘cures’ for what may well be post-partum depression – another instance of distinctly feminine irrationality that must be promptly contained. The short story is peppered through with references to the protagonist’s ‘illness’ as a source of consternation or discomfort for her husband, who declares, “I feel easier with you now” (134) as she becomes more and more passive.The notion of men’s comfort is important within discussions of women’s anger – not only within the Gothic, but within a broader context of gendered power and privileged experience. Sara Ahmed’s Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness asserts that we “describe as happy a situation that you wish to defend. Happiness translates its wish into a politics, a wishful politics, a politics that demands that others live according to a wish” (573) For Ahmed, happiness is not solely an individual experience, but rather is relational, and as much influenced by normative systems of power as any other interpersonal process.It has historically fallen upon women to sacrifice their own happiness to ensure that men are comfortable; being quiet and unargumentative, remaining both chase and sexually alluring, being maternal and nurturing, while scrupulously censoring any evidence of pregnancy, breastfeeding or menstrual cycles (Boyer 79). If a woman has ceased to be happy within these terms, then she has failed to be a good woman, and experiences what Ahmed refers to as a ‘negative affect’ – a feeling of being out of place. To be out of place is to be an ‘affect alien’: one must either continue feeling alienated or correct one’s feelings (Ahmed 582). Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild uses the analogy of a bride feeling miserable at her wedding, obliging herself to bring her feelings in-line with what is expected of her, “Sensing a gap between the ideal feeling and the actual feeling she tolerated, the bride prompts herself to be happy” (Hochschild 61).Ahmed uses to the term ‘Kill Joy’ to refer to feminists – particularly black feminists – whose actions or presence refuse this obligation, and in turn project their discomfort outwards, instead of inwards. The stereotype of the angry black woman, or the humourless feminist persist because these women are not complicit in social orders that hold the comfort of white men as paramount (583); their presence is discomforting.Contrary to its title, Killing Joy does not advocate for an end to happiness. Rather, one might understand the act of killing joy as a tactic of subjective honesty – an acknowledgement of dis-ease, of one’s alienation and displacement within the social contract of reciprocal happiness. Here I use the word dis-ease as a deliberate double entendre – implying both the experience of a negative affect, as well as the apparent social ‘illness’ of refusing acquiescent female joy. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist’s passive femininity is ironically both the antithesis and the cause of her Monstrous transformation, demonstrating an instance of feminine liminality that is the hallmark of the Gothic heroine.Here I introduce the example of Lily Frankenstein, a modern interpretation of the Bride of the Creature, portrayed by Billie Piper in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful. In Shelley’s novel the Bride is commissioned for the Creature’s contentment, a contract that Frankenstein acknowledges she could not possibly have consented to (Shelley 206). She is never given sentience or agency; her theoretical existence and pre-natal destruction being premised entirely on the comfort of men. Upon her destruction, the Creature cries, “Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness?” (Shelley 209). Her first film portrayal by Elsa Lanchester in James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1936) is iconic, but brief. She is granted no dialogue, other than a terrified scream, followed by a goose-like hiss of disgust at Boris Karloff’s lonely Creature. Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) merges the characters of Elizabeth and the Bride into the same doomed woman. After being murdered by the Creature, she is resurrected by Frankenstein – and consequently fought over by both. Her inevitable suicide is her one moment of tragic autonomy.Penny Dreadful is the first time that the Bride has been given an opportunity to speak for herself. Lily’s character arc is neither that of the idealised, innocent victim, nor is she entirely abject and wanton: she is – quite literally – two women in one. Before she is re-animated and conditioned by Victor Frankenstein to be the perfect bride, she was Brona, a predictably tragic, Irish street-walker with a taste for whisky and a consumptive cough. Diane Long Hoeveler describes the ambiguous duality of the Gothic feminine arising from the fantasies of middle-class woman writing gothic fiction during the 19th century (106). Drawing upon Harriet Guest’s examination of the development of femininity in early Gothic literature, Hoeveler asserts that women may explore the ‘deviant’ pleasures of wanton sexuality and individualistic, sad*stic power while still retaining the chaste femininity demanded of them by their bourgeois upbringings. As both innocent victim of patriarchy and Monstrous Feminine, the construction of the gothic heroine simultaneously criminalises and deifies women.I assert that Penny Dreadful demonstrates the blurring of these boundaries in such a way that the fantasy of the sympathetic, yet Monstrous Gothic Feminine is launched out of the parlours of bored Victorian housewives into a contemporary feminist moment that is characterised by a split between respectable diplomacy and the visibility of female rage. Her transition from coerced docility and abject, sexualised anger manifests in the second season of the show. The Creature – having grown impatient and jealous – comes to collect his Bride and is met with a furious refusal.Lily’s rage is explosive. Her raw emotion is evidently startling to the Creature, who stands in astonishment and fear at something even more monstrous and alien than himself – a woman’s unrestrained anger. For all his wretched ‘Otherness’ and misery, he is yet a man - a bastard son of the Enlightenment, desperate to be allowed entrance into the hallowed halls of reason. In both Shelley’s original novel and the series, he tries (and fails) to establish himself as a worthy and rational citizen; settling upon the Bride as his coveted consolation prize for his Monstrous failure. If he cannot be a man as his creator was, then he shall have a companion that is ‘like’ him to soothe his pain.Consequently, Lily’s refusal of the Creature is more than a rejection – it is the manifestation of an alien affect that has been given form within the undead, angry woman: a trifecta of ‘Otherness’. “Shall we wonder the pastures and recite your f*cking poetry to the f*cking cows?” She mocks the Creature’s bucolic, romantic ideals, killing his joyful phantasy that she, as his companion, will love and comfort him despite his Monstrousness (“Memento Mori”).Lily’s confrontation of the Creature is an unrestrained litany of women’s pain – the humiliation of corsetry and high heels, the slavery of marriage, the brutality of sexual coercion: all which Ahmed would refer to as the “signs of labour under the sign of happiness” (573). These are the pains that women must hide in order to maintain men’s comfort, the sacrificial emotional labours which are obfuscated by the mandates of male-defined femininity. The Gothic’s nurturance of anger transforms Lily’s outburst from an act of cruelty and selfishness to a site of significant feminine abjection. Through this scene Hochschild’s comment takes on new meaning: Lily – being quite literally the Bride (or the intended Bride) of the Creature – has turned the tables and has altered the process of disaffection – and made herself happy at the expense of men.Lily forms a militia of ‘fallen’ women from whom she demands tribute: the bleeding, amputated hands of abusive men. The scene is a thrilling one, recalling the misogyny of witch trials, sexual violence and exploitation as an army of angry kill joys bang on the banquet table, baying for men’s blood (“Ebb Tide”). However, as seems almost inevitable, Lily’s campaign is short-lived. Her efforts are thwarted and her foot soldiers either murdered or fled. We last see her walking dejectedly through the London fog, her fate and future unknown.Lily’s story recalls an instance of the ‘bad feminism’ that nice, respectable, mainstream feminists seek to distance themselves from. In her discussion of the acquittal of infamous castatrix Lorena Bobbitt, poet Katha Pollitt (65-66) observes the scramble by “nice, liberal middle-class professional” feminists to distance themselves from the narratives of irrational rage that supposedly characterise ‘victim feminism’ – opting instead for the comforting ivory towers of self-control and diplomacy.Lily’s speech to her troops is seen partly through the perspective of an increasingly alarmed Dorian Gray, who has hitherto been enjoying the debauched potential of these liberated, ‘deviant’ women, recalling bell hooks’ observation that “ultimately many males revolted when we stated that our bodies were territories that they could not occupy at will. Men who were ready for female sexual liberation if it meant free puss*, no strings attached, were rarely ready for feminist female sexual agency” (41). This is no longer a coterie of wanton women that he may enjoy, but a sisterhood of angry, vengeful kill-joys that will not be respectable, or considerate of his feelings in their endeavours.Here, parallels arise between the absolutes drawn between women as agents or victims, and the positioning of women as positive, progressive ‘rational’ beings or melancholic kill-joys that Ahmed describes. We need only turn to the contemporary debate surrounding the MeToo movement (and its asinine, defensive response of ‘Not All Men’) to observe that the process of identifying oneself as a victim has – for many – become synonymous with weakness, even amongst other feminists. Notably, Germaine Greer referred to the movement as ‘whinging’, calling upon women to be more assertive, instead of wallowing in self-victimisation and misandry, as Lily supposedly does (Miller).While Greer may be a particularly easy strawman, her comments nonetheless recall Judith Halberstam’s observations of prescriptive paternalism (maternalism?) within Western feminist discourse. His chapter Shadow Feminisms uses the work of Gayatri Spivak to describe how triumphalist narratives of women’s liberation often function to restrict the terms of women’s agency and expression – particularly those of women of colour.Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak? asserts that the colonial narratives inherent within white feminists’ attempts to ‘save’ non-Western women are premised upon the imagined heroicism of the individual, which in turn demands the rejection of ‘subaltern’ strategies like passiveness, anger and refusal. She asks, “does the category of resistance impose a teleology of progressive politics on the analytics of power?” (9). Put more simply, both Halberstam and Spivak beg the question of why it is necessary for women and other historically marginalised groups to adopt optimistic and respectable standards of agency? Especially when those terms are pre-emptively defined by feminists like Greer.Halberstam conceptualises Shadow Feminisms in the melancholic terms of refusal, undoing, failure and anger. Even in name, Shadow Feminism is well suited to the Gothic – it has no agenda of triumphant, linear progress, nor the saccharine coercion of individualistic optimism. Rather, it emphasises the repressed, quiet forms of subversion that skulk in the introspective, resentful gloom. This is a feminism that cannot and will not let go of its traumas or its pain, because it should not have to (Halberstam, Queer Art 128-129).Thus, the Monstrousness of female rage is given space to acknowledge, rather than downplay or dismiss the affective-alienation of patriarchy. To paraphrase scholars Andrew Smith and Diana Wallace, the Gothic allows women to explore the hidden or censured expressions of dissatisfaction and resentment within patriarchal societies, being a “coded expression of women’s fears of entrapment within the domestic and within the female body” (Smith & Wallace 2).It may be easy to dismiss the Gothic as eldritch assemblages of Opheliac madness and abject hyperbole, I argue that it is valuable precisely because it invites the opening of festering wounds and the exploration of mouldering sepulchres that are shunned by the squeamish mainstream; coaxing the skeletons from the closet so that they may finally air their musty grievances. As Halberstam states in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, the Gothic represents the return of the repressed and thus encourages rather than censors the exploration of grief, madness and irrationality (Skin Shows 19). Accordingly, we may understand Lily’s rage as what Halberstam would refer to as a Monstrous Technology (21-22) – more specifically, a technology of the Monstrous Feminine: a significant site of disruption within Gothic narratives that not only ‘shows’ the source of its abjection, but angrily airs its dirty laundry for everyone to see.Here emerges the distinction between the ‘non-whinging’, respectable feminism advocated by the likes of Greer and Lily’s Monstrous, Gothic Feminism. Observing a demonstration by a group of suffragettes, Lily describes their efforts as unambitious – “their enemies are same, but they seek equality” (“Good and Evil Braided Be”). Lily has set her sights upon mastery. By allowing her rage to manifest freely, her movement has manifested as the violent misandry that anti-suffragists and contemporary anti-feminists alike believe is characteristic of women’s liberation, provoking an uncomfortable moment for ‘good’ feminists who desperately wish to avoid such pejorative stereotypes.What Lily offers is not ethical. It does not conform to any justifiable feminist ideology. She represents that which is repressed, a distinctly female rage that has no place within any rational system of belief. Nonetheless, Lily remains a sympathetic character, her “doomed, keening women” (“Ebb Tide”) evoking a quiet, subversive thrill of solidarity that must be immediately hushed. This, I assert, is indicative of the liminal ambiguity that makes the Monstrous Feminine so unsettling, and so significant.And Monsters are always significant. Their ‘Otherness’ functions like lighthouses of meaning. Further, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (6) reminds us, Monsters signify not only the fragile boundaries of human subjectivity and discourse, but also the origins of the alterity that defines them. Like the tragic creature of Shelley’s masterpiece, Monsters eventually follow their creators home to demand an explanation – their revenant terror demands accountability (Cohen 20). What Lily exemplifies does not have to make others comfortable, and it is under no obligation to remain within any standards of ethics. To return one last time to Halberstam, I argue that the Monstrosity manifested within female rage is valuable precisely because it because it obliges us “to be unsettled by the politically problematic connections history throws our way” (Halberstam, Queer Art 162). Therefore, to be angry, to dwell on traumatic pasts, and to revel in the ‘failure’ of negativity is to ensure that these genealogies are not ignored.When finally captured, Victor Frankenstein attempts to lobotomise her, promising to permanently take away the pain that is the cause of her Monstrous rage. To this, Lily responds: “there are some wounds that can never heal. There are scars that make us who we are, but without them, we don’t exist” (“Perpetual Night and the Blessed Dark”). Lily refuses to let go of her grief and her anger, and in so doing she fails to coalesce within the placid, docile femininity demanded by Victor Frankenstein. But her refusal is not premised in an obdurate reactionism. Rather, it is a tactic of survival. By her own words, without her trauma – and that of countless women before her – she does not exist. The violence of rape, abuse and the theft of her agency have defined her as both a woman and as a Monster. “I’m the sum part of one woman’s days. No more, no less”, she tells Frankenstein. To eschew her rage is to deny its origin.So, to finish I ask readers to take a moment, and dwell on that rage. On women’s rage. On yours. On the rage that may have been directed at you. Does that make you uncomfortable?Good.ReferencesAhmed, Sara. “Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35.3 (2010): 571-593.Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 3-25.Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993.“Ebb Tide.”. Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.“Good and Evil Braided Be.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. USA: Duke UP, 1995.———. The Queer Art of Failure. USA: Duke UP, 2011.Hoeveler, Diane. “The Female Gothic, Beating Fantasies and the Civilizing Process.” Comparative Romanticisms: Power, Gender, Subjectivity. Eds. Larry H. Peer and Diane Long Hoeveler. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998. 101-132.hooks, bell. Communion: The Female Search for Love. USA: Harper Collins, 2003.Kolářová, Kristina. “The Inarticulate Post-Socialist Crip: On the Cruel Optimism of Neo-Liberal Transformation in the Czech Republic.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8.3 (2014): 257-274.“Memento Mori.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2015.Miller, Nick. “Germaine Greer Challenges #MeToo Campaign.” Sydney Morning Herald, 21 Jan. 2018.“Perpetual Night/The Blessed Dark.” Penny Dreadful. Showtime, 2016.Pollitt, Katha. “Lorena’s Army.” “Bad Girls”/“Good Girls”: Women, Sex & Power in the Nineties. Eds. Nan Bauer Maglin and Donna Perry. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. 65-67.Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus. Australia: Penguin Books, 2009 [1818].Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1988.Smith, Andrew, and Diana Wallace. “The Female Gothic: Now and Then”. Gothic Studies 6.1 (2004): 1-7.

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Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them. Hermida’s Ambient Journalism and the Role of Journalists Hermida describes ambient journalism as: “broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on communication systems [that] are creating new kinds of interactions around the news, and are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them” (Hermida 2). His ideas appear to have two related aspects. He conceives ambient journalism as an “awareness system” between individuals that functions as a collective intelligence or kind of ‘distributed cognition’ at a group level (Hermida 2, 4-6). Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks are examples. Hermida also suggests that such networks enable non-professionals to engage in ‘communication’ and ‘conversation’ about news and media events (Hermida 2, 7). In a helpful clarification, Hermida observes that ‘para-journalists’ are like the paralegals or non-lawyers who provide administrative support in the legal profession and, in academic debates about journalism, are more commonly known as ‘citizen journalists’. Thus, Hermida’s ambient journalism appears to be: (1) an information systems model of new platforms and networks, and (2) a normative argument that these tools empower ‘para-journalists’ to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. Hermida’s thesis is intriguing and worthy of further discussion and debate. As currently formulated however it risks sharing the blind-spots and contradictions of the academic literature that Hermida cites, which suffers from poor theory-building (Burns). A major reason is that the participatory media context on which Hermida often builds his work has different mental models and normative theories than the journalists or media institutions that are the target of critique. Ambient journalism would be a stronger and more convincing framework if these incorrect assumptions were jettisoned. Others may also potentially misunderstand what Hermida proposes, because the academic debate is often polarised between para-journalists and professional journalists, due to different views about institutions, the politics of knowledge, decision heuristics, journalist training, and normative theoretical traditions (Christians et al. 126; Cole and Harcup 166-176). In the academic debate, para-journalists or ‘citizen journalists’ may be said to have a communitarian ethic and desire more autonomous solutions to journalists who are framed as uncritical and reliant on official sources, and to media institutions who are portrayed as surveillance-like ‘monitors’ of society (Christians et al. 124-127). This is however only one of a range of possible relationships. Sole reliance on para-journalists could be a premature solution to a more complex media ecology. Journalism craft, which does not rely just on official sources, also has a range of practices that already provides the “more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication” sought (Hermida 2). Citizen- and para-journalist accounts may overlook micro-studies in how newsrooms adopt technological innovations and integrate them into newsgathering routines (Hemmingway 196). Thus, an examination of the realities of professional journalism will help to cast a better light on how ambient journalism can shape the mental models of para-journalists, and provide more rigorous analysis of news and similar events. Professional journalism has several core dimensions that para-journalists may overlook. Journalism’s foundation as an experiential craft includes guidance and norms that orient the journalist to information, and that includes practitioner ethics. This craft is experiential; the basis for journalism’s claim to “social expertise” as a discipline; and more like the original Linux and Open Source movements which evolved through creative conflict (Sennett 9, 25-27, 125-127, 249-251). There are learnable, transmissible skills to contextually evaluate, filter, select and distil the essential insights. This craft-based foundation and skills informs and structures the journalist’s cognitive witnessing of an event, either directly or via reconstructed, cultivated sources. The journalist publishes through a recognised media institution or online platform, which provides communal validation and verification. There is far more here than the academic portrayal of journalists as ‘gate-watchers’ for a ‘corporatist’ media elite. Craft and skills distinguish the professional journalist from Hermida’s para-journalist. Increasingly, media institutions hire journalists who are trained in other craft-based research methods (Burns and Saunders). Bethany McLean who ‘broke’ the Enron scandal was an investment banker; documentary filmmaker Errol Morris first interviewed serial killers for an early project; and Neil Chenoweth used ‘forensic accounting’ techniques to investigate Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Such expertise allows the journalist to filter information, and to mediate any influences in the external environment, in order to develop an individualised, ‘embodied’ perspective (Hofstadter 234; Thompson; Garfinkel and Rawls). Para-journalists and social network platforms cannot replace this expertise, which is often unique to individual journalists and their research teams. Ambient Journalism and Twitter Current academic debates about how citizen- and para-journalists may augment or even replace professional journalists can often turn into legitimation battles whether the ‘de facto’ solution is a social media network rather than a media institution. For example, Hermida discusses Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that allows users to post 140-character messages that are small, discrete information chunks, for short-term and episodic memory. Twitter enables users to monitor other users, to group other messages, and to search for terms specified by a hashtag. Twitter thus illustrates how social media platforms can make data more transparent and explicit to non-specialists like para-journalists. In fact, Twitter is suitable for five different categories of real-time information: news, pre-news, rumours, the formation of social media and subject-based networks, and “molecular search” using granular data-mining tools (Leinweber 204-205). In this model, the para-journalist acts as a navigator and “way-finder” to new information (Morville, Findability). Jaron Lanier, an early designer of ‘virtual reality’ systems, is perhaps the most vocal critic of relying on groups of non-experts and tools like Twitter, instead of individuals who have professional expertise. For Lanier, what underlies debates about citizen- and para-journalists is a philosophy of “cybernetic totalism” and “digital Maoism” which exalts the Internet collective at the expense of truly individual views. He is deeply critical of Hermida’s chosen platform, Twitter: “A design that shares Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments. We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space” [emphasis added] (Lanier 24). In part, Lanier’s objection is traceable back to an unresolved debate on human factors and design in information science. Influenced by the post-war research into cybernetics, J.C.R. Licklider proposed a cyborg-like model of “man-machine symbiosis” between computers and humans (Licklider). In turn, Licklider’s framework influenced Douglas Engelbart, who shaped the growth of human-computer interaction, and the design of computer interfaces, the mouse, and other tools (Engelbart). In taking a system-level view of platforms Hermida builds on the strength of Licklider and Engelbart’s work. Yet because he focuses on para-journalists, and does not appear to include the craft and skills-based expertise of professional journalists, it is unclear how he would answer Lanier’s fears about how reliance on groups for news and other information is superior to individual expertise and judgment. Hermida’s two case studies point to this unresolved problem. Both cases appear to show how Twitter provides quicker and better forms of news and information, thereby increasing the effectiveness of para-journalists to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. However, alternative explanations may exist that raise questions about Twitter as a new platform, and thus these cases might actually reveal circ*mstances in which ambient journalism may fail. Hermida alludes to how para-journalists now fulfil the earlier role of ‘first responders’ and stringers, in providing the “immediate dissemination” of non-official information about disasters and emergencies (Hermida 1-2; Haddow and Haddow 117-118). Whilst important, this is really a specific role. In fact, disaster and emergency reporting occurs within well-established practices, professional ethics, and institutional routines that may involve journalists, government officials, and professional communication experts (Moeller). Officials and emergency management planners are concerned that citizen- or para-journalism is equated with the craft and skills of professional journalism. The experience of these officials and planners in 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in the United States, and in 2009’s Black Saturday bushfires in Australia, suggests that whilst para-journalists might be ‘first responders’ in a decentralised, complex crisis, they are perceived to spread rumours and potential social unrest when people need reliable information (Haddow and Haddow 39). These terms of engagement between officials, planners and para-journalists are still to be resolved. Hermida readily acknowledges that Twitter and other social network platforms are vulnerable to rumours (Hermida 3-4; Sunstein). However, his other case study, Iran’s 2009 election crisis, further complicates the vision of ambient journalism, and always-on communication systems in particular. Hermida discusses several events during the crisis: the US State Department request to halt a server upgrade, how the Basij’s shooting of bystander Neda Soltan was captured on a mobile phone camera, the spread across social network platforms, and the high-velocity number of ‘tweets’ or messages during the first two weeks of Iran’s electoral uncertainty (Hermida 1). The US State Department was interested in how Twitter could be used for non-official sources, and to inform people who were monitoring the election events. Twitter’s perceived ‘success’ during Iran’s 2009 election now looks rather different when other factors are considered such as: the dynamics and patterns of Tehran street protests; Iran’s clerics who used Soltan’s death as propaganda; claims that Iran’s intelligence services used Twitter to track down and to kill protestors; the ‘black box’ case of what the US State Department and others actually did during the crisis; the history of neo-conservative interest in a Twitter-like platform for strategic information operations; and the Iranian diaspora’s incitement of Tehran student protests via satellite broadcasts. Iran’s 2009 election crisis has important lessons for ambient journalism: always-on communication systems may create noise and spread rumours; ‘mirror-imaging’ of mental models may occur, when other participants have very different worldviews and ‘contexts of use’ for social network platforms; and the new kinds of interaction may not lead to effective intervention in crisis events. Hermida’s combination of news and non-news fragments is the perfect environment for psychological operations and strategic information warfare (Burns and Eltham). Lessons of Current Platforms for Ambient Journalism We have discussed some unresolved problems for ambient journalism as a framework for journalists, and as mental models for news and similar events. Hermida’s goal of an “awareness system” faces a further challenge: the phenomenological limitations of human consciousness to deal with information complexity and ambiguous situations, whether by becoming ‘entangled’ in abstract information or by developing new, unexpected uses for emergent technologies (Thackara; Thompson; Hofstadter 101-102, 186; Morville, Findability, 55, 57, 158). The recursive and reflective capacities of human consciousness imposes its own epistemological frames. It’s still unclear how Licklider’s human-computer interaction will shape consciousness, but Douglas Hofstadter’s experiments with art and video-based group experiments may be suggestive. Hofstadter observes: “the interpenetration of our worlds becomes so great that our worldviews start to fuse” (266). Current research into user experience and information design provides some validation of Hofstadter’s experience, such as how Google is now the ‘default’ search engine, and how its interface design shapes the user’s subjective experience of online search (Morville, Findability; Morville, Search Patterns). Several models of Hermida’s awareness system already exist that build on Hofstadter’s insight. Within the information systems field, on-going research into artificial intelligence–‘expert systems’ that can model expertise as algorithms and decision rules, genetic algorithms, and evolutionary computation–has attempted to achieve Hermida’s goal. What these systems share are mental models of cognition, learning and adaptiveness to new information, often with forecasting and prediction capabilities. Such systems work in journalism areas such as finance and sports that involve analytics, data-mining and statistics, and in related fields such as health informatics where there are clear, explicit guidelines on information and international standards. After a mid-1980s investment bubble (Leinweber 183-184) these systems now underpin the technology platforms of global finance and news intermediaries. Bloomberg LP’s ubiquitous dual-screen computers, proprietary network and data analytics (www.bloomberg.com), and its competitors such as Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com and www.reuters.com), illustrate how financial analysts and traders rely on an “awareness system” to navigate global stock-markets (Clifford and Creswell). For example, a Bloomberg subscriber can access real-time analytics from exchanges, markets, and from data vendors such as Dow Jones, NYSE Euronext and Thomson Reuters. They can use portfolio management tools to evaluate market information, to make allocation and trading decisions, to monitor ‘breaking’ news, and to integrate this information. Twitter is perhaps the para-journalist equivalent to how professional journalists and finance analysts rely on Bloomberg’s platform for real-time market and business information. Already, hedge funds like PhaseCapital are data-mining Twitter’s ‘tweets’ or messages for rumours, shifts in stock-market sentiment, and to analyse potential trading patterns (Pritchett and Palmer). The US-based Securities and Exchange Commission, and researchers like David Gelernter and Paul Tetlock, have also shown the benefits of applied data-mining for regulatory market supervision, in particular to uncover analysts who provide ‘whisper numbers’ to online message boards, and who have access to material, non-public information (Leinweber 60, 136, 144-145, 208, 219, 241-246). Hermida’s framework might be developed further for such regulatory supervision. Hermida’s awareness system may also benefit from the algorithms found in high-frequency trading (HFT) systems that Citadel Group, Goldman Sachs, Renaissance Technologies, and other quantitative financial institutions use. Rather than human traders, HFT uses co-located servers and complex algorithms, to make high-volume trades on stock-markets that take advantage of microsecond changes in prices (Duhigg). HFT capabilities are shrouded in secrecy, and became the focus of regulatory attention after several high-profile investigations of traders alleged to have stolen the software code (Bray and Bunge). One public example is Streambase (www.streambase.com), a ‘complex event processing’ (CEP) platform that can be used in HFT, and commercialised from the Project Aurora research collaboration between Brandeis University, Brown University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. CEP and HFT may be the ‘killer apps’ of Hermida’s awareness system. Alternatively, they may confirm Jaron Lanier’s worst fears: your data-stream and user-generated content can be harvested by others–for their gain, and your loss! Conclusion: Brian Eno and Redefining ‘Ambient Journalism’ On the basis of the above discussion, I suggest a modified definition of Hermida’s thesis: ‘Ambient journalism’ is an emerging analytical framework for journalists, informed by cognitive, cybernetic, and information systems research. It ‘sensitises’ the individual journalist, whether professional or ‘para-professional’, to observe and to evaluate their immediate context. In doing so, ‘ambient journalism’, like journalism generally, emphasises ‘novel’ information. It can also inform the design of real-time platforms for journalistic sources and news delivery. Individual ‘ambient journalists’ can learn much from the career of musician and producer Brian Eno. His personal definition of ‘ambient’ is “an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint,” that relies on the co-evolution of the musician, creative horizons, and studio technology as a tool, just as para-journalists use Twitter as a platform (Sheppard 278; Eno 293-297). Like para-journalists, Eno claims to be a “self-educated but largely untrained” musician and yet also a craft-based producer (McFadzean; Tamm 177; 44-50). Perhaps Eno would frame the distinction between para-journalist and professional journalist as “axis thinking” (Eno 298, 302) which is needlessly polarised due to different normative theories, stances, and practices. Furthermore, I would argue that Eno’s worldview was shaped by similar influences to Licklider and Engelbart, who appear to have informed Hermida’s assumptions. These influences include the mathematician and game theorist John von Neumann and biologist Richard Dawkins (Eno 162); musicians Eric Satie, John Cage and his book Silence (Eno 19-22, 162; Sheppard 22, 36, 378-379); and the field of self-organising systems, in particular cyberneticist Stafford Beer (Eno 245; Tamm 86; Sheppard 224). Eno summed up the central lesson of this theoretical corpus during his collaborations with New York’s ‘No Wave’ scene in 1978, of “people experimenting with their lives” (Eno 253; Reynolds 146-147; Sheppard 290-295). Importantly, he developed a personal view of normative theories through practice-based research, on a range of projects, and with different creative and collaborative teams. Rather than a technological solution, Eno settled on a way to encode his craft and skills into a quasi-experimental, transmittable method—an aim of practitioner development in professional journalism. Even if only a “founding myth,” the story of Eno’s 1975 street accident with a taxi, and how he conceived ‘ambient music’ during his hospital stay, illustrates how ambient journalists might perceive something new in specific circ*mstances (Tamm 131; Sheppard 186-188). More tellingly, this background informed his collaboration with the late painter Peter Schmidt, to co-create the Oblique Strategies deck of aphorisms: aleatory, oracular messages that appeared dependent on chance, luck, and randomness, but that in fact were based on Eno and Schmidt’s creative philosophy and work guidelines (Tamm 77-78; Sheppard 178-179; Reynolds 170). In short, Eno was engaging with the kind of reflective practices that underpin exemplary professional journalism. He was able to encode this craft and skills into a quasi-experimental method, rather than a technological solution. Journalists and practitioners who adopt Hermida’s framework could learn much from the published accounts of Eno’s practice-based research, in the context of creative projects and collaborative teams. In particular, these detail the contexts and choices of Eno’s early ambient music recordings (Sheppard 199-200); Eno’s duels with David Bowie during ‘Sense of Doubt’ for the Heroes album (Tamm 158; Sheppard 254-255); troubled collaborations with Talking Heads and David Byrne (Reynolds 165-170; Sheppard; 338-347, 353); a curatorial, mentor role on U2’s The Unforgettable Fire (Sheppard 368-369); the ‘grand, stadium scale’ experiments of U2’s 1991-93 ZooTV tour (Sheppard 404); the Zorn-like games of Bowie’s Outside album (Eno 382-389); and the ‘generative’ artwork 77 Million Paintings (Eno 330-332; Tamm 133-135; Sheppard 278-279; Eno 435). Eno is clearly a highly flexible maker and producer. Developing such flexibility would ensure ambient journalism remains open to novelty as an analytical framework that may enhance the practitioner development and work of professional journalists and para-journalists alike.Acknowledgments The author thanks editor Luke Jaaniste, Alfred Hermida, and the two blind peer reviewers for their constructive feedback and reflective insights. References Bray, Chad, and Jacob Bunge. “Ex-Goldman Programmer Indicted for Trade Secrets Theft.” The Wall Street Journal 12 Feb. 2010. 17 March 2010 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059660427173510.html›. Burns, Alex. “Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism.” M/C Journal 11.1 (2008). 17 March 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/30›.———, and Barry Saunders. “Journalists as Investigators and ‘Quality Media’ Reputation.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 281-297. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15229/1/CPRF09BurnsSaunders.pdf›.———, and Ben Eltham. “Twitter Free Iran: An Evaluation of Twitter’s Role in Public Diplomacy and Information Operations in Iran’s 2009 Election Crisis.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 298-310. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15230/1/CPRF09BurnsEltham.pdf›. Christians, Clifford G., Theodore Glasser, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert A. White. Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Clifford, Stephanie, and Julie Creswell. “At Bloomberg, Modest Strategy to Rule the World.” The New York Times 14 Nov. 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/media/15bloom.html?ref=businessandpagewanted=all›.Cole, Peter, and Tony Harcup. Newspaper Journalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2010. Duhigg, Charles. “Stock Traders Find Speed Pays, in Milliseconds.” The New York Times 23 July 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=2andref=business›. Engelbart, Douglas. “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962.” Ed. Neil Spiller. Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era. London: Phaidon Press, 2002. 60-67. Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Garfinkel, Harold, and Anne Warfield Rawls. Toward a Sociological Theory of Information. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Hadlow, George D., and Kim S. Haddow. Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington MA, 2009. Hemmingway, Emma. Into the Newsroom: Exploring the Digital Production of Regional Television News. Milton Park: Routledge, 2008. Hermida, Alfred. “Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.” Journalism Practice 4.3 (2010): 1-12. Hofstadter, Douglas. I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Perseus Books, 2007. Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. London: Allen Lane, 2010. Leinweber, David. Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2009. Licklider, J.C.R. “Man-Machine Symbiosis, 1960.” Ed. Neil Spiller. Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era, London: Phaidon Press, 2002. 52-59. McFadzean, Elspeth. “What Can We Learn from Creative People? The Story of Brian Eno.” Management Decision 38.1 (2000): 51-56. Moeller, Susan. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morville, Peter. Ambient Findability. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Press, 2005. ———. Search Patterns. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Press, 2010.Pritchett, Eric, and Mark Palmer. ‘Following the Tweet Trail.’ CNBC 11 July 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.casttv.com/ext/ug0p08›. Reynolds, Simon. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Penguin Books, 2006. Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. London: Penguin Books, 2008. Sheppard, David. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno. London: Orion Books, 2008. Sunstein, Cass. On Rumours: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Tamm, Eric. Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Colour of Sound. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 1995. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Science of Mind. Boston, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.

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Abstract:

Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers. For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him, the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be “eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective” (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408). To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from Auden’s ideal. Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136) Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9). John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators. There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is real reading and frivolous fiction is merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example, at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311). Endings such as these provide a space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks Motive). The subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail. Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12). This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final: As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409). The unilateral endorsem*nt of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states: So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes place (32). It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions” (Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in the preservation of social mores. It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human, and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of justice and punishment. It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written: [N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174). Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the, rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above. Conclusion For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10 Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste. It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also influence our reading preferences. Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction, and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by accident or deliberately seek it out. There are also those, like Auden, who are addicted to crime fiction. So there are corpses for the conservative and dead bodies for the bloodthirsty. There is, indeed, a murder victim, and a murder story, to suit every reader’s taste. References Auden, W.H. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on The Detective Story, By an Addict.” Harper’s Magazine May (1948): 406–12. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206›. Carter Snead, O. “Memory and Punishment.” Vanderbilt Law Review 64.4 (2011): 1195–264. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976/1977. Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. London: Penguin, 1939/1970. ––. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: HarperCollins, 1920/2007. Cole, Cathy. Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction. Fremantle: Curtin UP, 2004. Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980): 202–32. Franks, Rachel. “May I Suggest Murder?: An Overview of Crime Fiction for Readers’ Advisory Services Staff.” Australian Library Journal 60.2 (2011): 133–43. ––. “Motive for Murder: Reading Crime Fiction.” The Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference. Sydney: Jul. 2012. ––. “Punishment by the Book: Delivering and Evading Punishment in Crime Fiction.” Inter-Disciplinary.Net 3rd Global Conference on Punishment. Oxford: Sep. 2013. Freeman, R.A. “The Art of the Detective Story.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924/1947. 7–17. Galgut, E. “Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns: A Defense of Suspension of Disbelief.” South African Journal of Philosophy 21.3 (2002): 190–99. Garland, David. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Random House, 1929/2004. ––. in R. Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Hitchens, P. A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. London: Atlantic Books, 2003. James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction since 1800: Death, Detection, Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010. Knox, Ronald A. “Club Rules: The 10 Commandments for Detective Novelists, 1928.” Ronald Knox Society of North America. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.ronaldknoxsociety.com/detective.html›. Malmgren, C.D. “Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective and Crime Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture Spring (1997): 115–21. Maloney, Shane. The Murray Whelan Trilogy: Stiff, The Brush-Off and Nice Try. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1994/2008. Marsh, Ngaio in J. Drayton. Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2008. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1949/1989. Roland, Susan. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2001. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 71–109. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2005. Sisterson, C. “Battle for the Marsh: Awards 2013.” Black Mask: Pulps, Noir and News of Same. 1 Jan. 2014 http://www.blackmask.com/category/awards-2013/ Sutherland, John. in A. Flood. “Could Miles Franklin turn the Booker Prize to Crime?” The Guardian. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/25/miles-franklin-booker-prize-crime›. Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928/1947. 189-93. Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944/1947. 390–97. Wyatt, N. “Redefining RA: A RA Big Think.” Library Journal Online. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2007/07/ljarchives/lj-series-redefining-ra-an-ra-big-think›. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.

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Abstract:

While the term “visual literacy” has grown in popularity in the last 50 years, its meaning remains nebulous. It is described variously as: a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation, a means of defence against visual manipulation, a sorting mechanism for an increasingly data-saturated age, and a prerequisite to civic inclusion (Fransecky 23; Messaris 181; McTigue and Flowers 580). Scholars have written extensively about the first three subjects but there has been less research on how visual literacy frames civic life and how it might help the public as a tool to address disadvantage and assist in removing social and cultural barriers. This article examines a forerunner to visual literacy in the push to create an international symbol language born out of popular education movements, a project that fell short of its goals but still left a considerable impression on graphic media. This article, then, presents an analysis of visual literacy campaigns in the early postwar era. These campaigns did not attempt to invent a symbolic language but posited that images themselves served as a universal language in which students could receive training. Of particular interest is how the concept of visual literacy has been mobilised as a pedagogical tool in design, digital humanities and in broader civic education initiatives promoted by Third Space institutions. Behind the creation of new visual literacy curricula is the idea that images can help anchor a world community, supplementing textual communication. Figure 1: Visual Literacy Yearbook. Montebello Unified School District, USA, 1973. Shedding Light: Origins of the Visual Literacy Frame The term “visual literacy” came to the fore in the early 1970s on the heels of mass literacy campaigns. The educators, creatives and media theorists who first advocated for visual learning linked this aim to literacy, an unassailable goal, to promote a more radical curricular overhaul. They challenged a system that had hitherto only acknowledged a very limited pathway towards academic success; pushing “language and mathematics”, courses “referred to as solids (something substantial) as contrasted with liquids or gases (courses with little or no substance)” (Eisner 92). This was deemed “a parochial view of both human ability and the possibilities of education” that did not acknowledge multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner). This change not only integrated elements of mass culture that had been rejected in education, notably film and graphic arts, but also encouraged the critique of images as a form of good citizenship, assuming that visually literate arbiters could call out media misrepresentations and manipulative political advertising (Messaris, “Visual Test”). This movement was, in many ways, reactive to new forms of mass media that began to replace newspapers as key forms of civic participation. Unlike simple literacy (being able to decipher letters as a mnemonic system), visual literacy involves imputing meanings to images where meanings are less fixed, yet still with embedded cultural signifiers. Visual literacy promised to extend enlightenment metaphors of sight (as in the German Aufklärung) and illumination (as in the French Lumières) to help citizens understand an increasingly complex marketplace of images. The move towards visual literacy was not so much a shift towards images (and away from books and oration) but an affirmation of the need to critically investigate the visual sphere. It introduced doubt to previously upheld hierarchies of perception. Sight, to Kant the “noblest of the senses” (158), was no longer the sense “least affected” by the surrounding world but an input centre that was equally manipulable. In Kant’s view of societal development, the “cosmopolitan” held the key to pacifying bellicose states and ensuring global prosperity and tranquillity. The process of developing a cosmopolitan ideology rests, according to Kant, on the gradual elimination of war and “the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture” (188-89). Transforming disparate societies into “a universal cosmopolitan existence” that would “at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop” and would take well-funded educational institutions and, potentially, a new framework for imparting knowledge (Kant 51). To some, the world of the visual presented a baseline for shared experience. Figure 2: Exhibition by the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, photograph c. 1927. An International Picture Language The quest to find a mutually intelligible language that could “bridge worlds” and solder together all of humankind goes back to the late nineteenth century and the Esperanto movement of Ludwig Zamenhof (Schor 59). The expression of this ideal in the world of the visual picked up steam in the interwar years with designers and editors like Fritz Kahn, Gerd Arntz, and Otto and Marie Neurath. Their work transposing complex ideas into graphic form has been rediscovered as an antecedent to modern infographics, but the symbols they deployed were not to merely explain, but also help education and build international fellowship unbounded by spoken language. The Neuraths in particular are celebrated for their international picture language or Isotypes. These pictograms (sometimes viewed as proto-emojis) can be used to represent data without text. Taken together they are an “intemporal, hieroglyphic language” that Neutrath hoped would unite working-class people the world over (Lee 159). The Neuraths’ work was done in the explicit service of visual education with a popular socialist agenda and incubated in the social sphere of Red Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social and Economic Museum) where Otto served as Director. The Wirtschaftsmuseum was an experiment in popular education, with multiple branches and late opening hours to accommodate the “the working man [who] has time to see a museum only at night” (Neurath 72-73). The Isotype contained universalist aspirations for the “making of a world language, or a helping picture language—[that] will give support to international developments generally” and “educate by the eye” (Neurath 13). Figure 3: Gerd Arntz Isotype Images. (Source: University of Reading.) The Isotype was widely adopted in the postwar era in pre-packaged sets of symbols used in graphic design and wayfinding systems for buildings and transportation networks, but with the socialism of the Neuraths’ peeled away, leaving only the system of logos that we are familiar with from airport washrooms, charts, and public transport maps. Much of the uptake in this symbol language could be traced to increased mobility and tourism, particularly in countries that did not make use of a Roman alphabet. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo helped pave the way when organisers, fearful of jumbling too many scripts together, opted instead for black and white icons to represent the program of sports that summer. The new focus on the visual was both technologically mediated—cheaper printing and broadcast technologies made the diffusion of image increasingly possible—but also ideologically supported by a growing emphasis on projects that transcended linguistic, ethnic, and national borders. The Olympic symbols gradually morphed into Letraset icons, and, later, symbols in the Unicode Standard, which are the basis for today’s emojis. Wordless signs helped facilitate interconnectedness, but only in the most literal sense; their application was limited primarily to sports mega-events, highway maps, and “brand building”, and they never fulfilled their role as an educational language “to give the different nations a common outlook” (Neurath 18). Universally understood icons, particularly in the form of emojis, point to a rise in visual communication but they have fallen short as a cosmopolitan project, supporting neither the globalisation of Kantian ethics nor the transnational socialism of the Neuraths. Figure 4: Symbols in use. Women's bathroom. 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (Source: The official report of the Organizing Committee.) Counter Education By mid-century, the optimism of a universal symbol language seemed dated, and focus shifted from distillation to discernment. New educational programs presented ways to study images, increasingly reproducible with new technologies, as a language in and of themselves. These methods had their roots in the fin-de-siècle educational reforms of John Dewey, Helen Parkhurst, and Maria Montessori. As early as the 1920s, progressive educators were using highly visual magazines, like National Geographic, as the basis for lesson planning, with the hopes that they would “expose students to edifying and culturally enriching reading” and “develop a more catholic taste or sensibility, representing an important cosmopolitan value” (Hawkins 45). The rise in imagery from previously inaccessible regions helped pupils to see themselves in relation to the larger world (although this connection always came with the presumed superiority of the reader). “Pictorial education in public schools” taught readers—through images—to accept a broader world but, too often, they saw photographs as a “straightforward transcription of the real world” (Hawkins 57). The images of cultures and events presented in Life and National Geographic for the purposes of education and enrichment were now the subject of greater analysis in the classroom, not just as “windows into new worlds” but as cultural products in and of themselves. The emerging visual curriculum aimed to do more than just teach with previously excluded modes (photography, film and comics); it would investigate how images presented and mediated the world. This gained wider appeal with new analytical writing on film, like Raymond Spottiswoode's Grammar of the Film (1950) which sought to formulate the grammatical rules of visual communication (Messaris 181), influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics; the emphasis on grammar can also be seen in far earlier writings on design systems such as Owen Jones’s 1856 The Grammar of Ornament, which also advocated for new, universalising methods in design education (Sloboda 228). The inventorying impulse is on display in books like Donis A. Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973), a text that meditates on visual perception but also functions as an introduction to line and form in the applied arts, picking up where the Bauhaus left off. Dondis enumerates the “syntactical guidelines” of the applied arts with illustrations that are in keeping with 1920s books by Kandinsky and Klee and analyse pictorial elements. However, at the end of the book she shifts focus with two chapters that examine “messaging” and visual literacy explicitly. Dondis predicts that “an intellectual, trained ability to make and understand visual messages is becoming a vital necessity to involvement with communication. It is quite likely that visual literacy will be one of the fundamental measures of education in the last third of our century” (33) and she presses for more programs that incorporate the exploration and analysis of images in tertiary education. Figure 5: Ideal spatial environment for the Blueprint charts, 1970. (Image: Inventory Press.) Visual literacy in education arrived in earnest with a wave of publications in the mid-1970s. They offered ways for students to understand media processes and for teachers to use visual culture as an entry point into complex social and scientific subject matter, tapping into the “visual consciousness of the ‘television generation’” (Fransecky 5). Visual culture was often seen as inherently democratising, a break from stuffiness, the “artificialities of civilisation”, and the “archaic structures” that set sensorial perception apart from scholarship (Dworkin 131-132). Many radical university projects and community education initiatives of the 1960s made use of new media in novel ways: from Maurice Stein and Larry Miller’s fold-out posters accompanying Blueprint for Counter Education (1970) to Emory Douglas’s graphics for The Black Panther newspaper. Blueprint’s text- and image-dense wall charts were made via assemblage and they were imagined less as charts and more as a “matrix of resources” that could be used—and added to—by youth to undertake their own counter education (Cronin 53). These experiments in visual learning helped to break down old hierarchies in education, but their aim was influenced more by countercultural notions of disruption than the universal ideals of cosmopolitanism. From Image as Text to City as Text For a brief period in the 1970s, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan et al., Massage) and artists like Bruno Munari (Tanchis and Munari) collaborated fruitfully with graphic designers to create books that mixed text and image in novel ways. Using new compositional methods, they broke apart traditional printing lock-ups to superimpose photographs, twist text, and bend narrative frames. The most famous work from this era is, undoubtedly, The Medium Is the Massage (1967), McLuhan’s team-up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, but it was followed by dozens of other books intended to communicate theory and scientific ideas with popularising graphics. Following in the footsteps of McLuhan, many of these texts sought not just to explain an issue but to self-consciously reference their own method of information delivery. These works set the precedent for visual aids (and, to a lesser extent, audio) that launched a diverse, non-hierarchical discourse that was nonetheless bound to tactile artefacts. In 1977, McLuhan helped develop a media textbook for secondary school students called City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. It is notable for its direct address style and its focus on investigating spaces outside of the classroom (provocatively, a section on the third page begins with “Should all schools be closed?”). The book follows with a fine-grained analysis of advertising forms in which students are asked to first bring advertisem*nts into class for analysis and later to go out into the city to explore “a man-made environment, a huge warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of charge” (McLuhan et al., City 149). As a document City as Classroom is critical of existing teaching methods, in line with the radical “in the streets” pedagogy of its day. McLuhan’s theories proved particularly salient for the counter education movement, in part because they tapped into a healthy scepticism of advertisers and other image-makers. They also dovetailed with growing discontent with the ad-strew visual environment of cities in the 1970s. Budgets for advertising had mushroomed in the1960s and outdoor advertising “cluttered” cities with billboards and neon, generating “fierce intensities and new hybrid energies” that threatened to throw off the visual equilibrium (McLuhan 74). Visual literacy curricula brought in experiential learning focussed on the legibility of the cities, mapping, and the visualisation of urban issues with social justice implications. The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a “collective endeavour of community research and education” that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 uprisings, is the most storied of the groups that suffused the collection of spatial data with community engagement and organising (Warren et al. 61). The following decades would see a tamed approach to visual literacy that, while still pressing for critical reading, did not upend traditional methods of educational delivery. Figure 6: Beginning a College Program-Assisting Teachers to Develop Visual Literacy Approaches in Public School Classrooms. 1977. ERIC. Searching for Civic Education The visual literacy initiatives formed in the early 1970s both affirmed existing civil society institutions while also asserting the need to better inform the public. Most of the campaigns were sponsored by universities, major libraries, and international groups such as UNESCO, which published its “Declaration on Media Education” in 1982. They noted that “participation” was “essential to the working of a pluralistic and representative democracy” and the “public—users, citizens, individuals, groups ... were too systematically overlooked”. Here, the public is conceived as both “targets of the information and communication process” and users who “should have the last word”. To that end their “continuing education” should be ensured (Study 18). Programs consisted primarily of cognitive “see-scan-analyse” techniques (Little et al.) for younger students but some also sought to bring visual analysis to adult learners via continuing education (often through museums eager to engage more diverse audiences) and more radical popular education programs sponsored by community groups. By the mid-80s, scores of modules had been built around the comprehension of visual media and had become standard educational fare across North America, Australasia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the role of data and image presentation in decision-making, as evidenced by the surprising commercial success of Edward Tufte’s 1982 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Visual literacy—or at least image analysis—was now enmeshed in teaching practice and needed little active advocacy. Scholarly interest in the subject went into a brief period of hibernation in the 1980s and early 1990s, only to be reborn with the arrival of new media distribution technologies (CD-ROMs and then the internet) in classrooms and the widespread availability of digital imaging technology starting in the late 1990s; companies like Adobe distributed free and reduced-fee licences to schools and launched extensive teacher training programs. Visual literacy was reanimated but primarily within a circ*mscribed academic field of education and data visualisation. Figure 7: Visual Literacy; What Research Says to the Teacher, 1975. National Education Association. USA. Part of the shifting frame of visual literacy has to do with institutional imperatives, particularly in places where austerity measures forced strange alliances between disciplines. What had been a project in alternative education morphed into an uncontested part of the curriculum and a dependable budget line. This shift was already forecasted in 1972 by Harun Farocki who, writing in Filmkritik, noted that funding for new film schools would be difficult to obtain but money might be found for “training in media education … a discipline that could persuade ministers of education, that would at the same time turn the budget restrictions into an advantage, and that would match the functions of art schools” (98). Nearly 50 years later educators are still using media education (rebranded as visual or media literacy) to make the case for fine arts and humanities education. While earlier iterations of visual literacy education were often too reliant on the idea of cracking the “code” of images, they did promote ways of learning that were a deep departure from the rote methods of previous generations. Next-gen curricula frame visual literacy as largely supplemental—a resource, but not a program. By the end of the 20th century, visual literacy had changed from a scholarly interest to a standard resource in the “teacher’s toolkit”, entering into school programs and influencing museum education, corporate training, and the development of public-oriented media (Literacy). An appreciation of image culture was seen as key to creating empathetic global citizens, but its scope was increasingly limited. With rising austerity in the education sector (a shift that preceded the 2008 recession by decades in some countries), art educators, museum enrichment staff, and design researchers need to make a case for why their disciplines were relevant in pedagogical models that are increasingly aimed at “skills-based” and “job ready” teaching. Arts educators worked hard to insert their fields into learning goals for secondary students as visual literacy, with the hope that “literacy” would carry the weight of an educational imperative and not a supplementary field of study. Conclusion For nearly a century, educational initiatives have sought to inculcate a cosmopolitan perspective with a variety of teaching materials and pedagogical reference points. Symbolic languages, like the Isotype, looked to unite disparate people with shared visual forms; while educational initiatives aimed to train the eyes of students to make them more discerning citizens. The term ‘visual literacy’ emerged in the 1960s and has since been deployed in programs with a wide variety of goals. Countercultural initiatives saw it as a prerequisite for popular education from the ground up, but, in the years since, it has been formalised and brought into more staid curricula, often as a sort of shorthand for learning from media and pictures. The grand cosmopolitan vision of a complete ‘visual language’ has been scaled back considerably, but still exists in trace amounts. Processes of globalisation require images to universalise experiences, commodities, and more for people without shared languages. Emoji alphabets and globalese (brands and consumer messaging that are “visual-linguistic” amalgams “increasingly detached from any specific ethnolinguistic group or locality”) are a testament to a mediatised banal cosmopolitanism (Jaworski 231). In this sense, becoming “fluent” in global design vernacular means familiarity with firms and products, an understanding that is aesthetic, not critical. It is very much the beneficiaries of globalisation—both state and commercial actors—who have been able to harness increasingly image-based technologies for their benefit. To take a humorous but nonetheless consequential example, Spanish culinary boosters were able to successfully lobby for a paella emoji (Miller) rather than having a food symbol from a less wealthy country such as a Senegalese jollof or a Morrocan tagine. This trend has gone even further as new forms of visual communication are increasingly streamlined and managed by for-profit media platforms. The ubiquity of these forms of communication and their global reach has made visual literacy more important than ever but it has also fundamentally shifted the endeavour from a graphic sorting practice to a critical piece of social infrastructure that has tremendous political ramifications. Visual literacy campaigns hold out the promise of educating students in an image-based system with the potential to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. This cosmopolitan political project has not yet been realised, as the visual literacy frame has drifted into specialised silos of art, design, and digital humanities education. It can help bridge the “incomplete connections” of an increasingly globalised world (Calhoun 112), but it does not have a program in and of itself. Rather, an evolving visual literacy curriculum might be seen as a litmus test for how we imagine the role of images in the world. References Brown, Neil. “The Myth of Visual Literacy.” Australian Art Education 13.2 (1989): 28-32. Calhoun, Craig. “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary.” Daedalus 137.3 (2008): 105–114. Cronin, Paul. “Recovering and Rendering Vital Blueprint for Counter Education at the California Institute for the Arts.” Blueprint for Counter Education. Inventory Press, 2016. 36-58. Dondis, Donis A. A Primer of Visual Literacy. MIT P, 1973. Dworkin, M.S. “Toward an Image Curriculum: Some Questions and Cautions.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 4.2 (1970): 129–132. Eisner, Elliot. Cognition and Curriculum: A Basis for Deciding What to Teach. Longmans, 1982. Farocki, Harun. “Film Courses in Art Schools.” Trans. Ted Fendt. Grey Room 79 (Apr. 2020): 96–99. Fransecky, Roger B. Visual Literacy: A Way to Learn—A Way to Teach. Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1972. Gardner, Howard. Frames Of Mind. Basic Books, 1983. Hawkins, Stephanie L. “Training the ‘I’ to See: Progressive Education, Visual Literacy, and National Geographic Membership.” American Iconographic. U of Virginia P, 2010. 28–61. Jaworski, Adam. “Globalese: A New Visual-Linguistic Register.” Social Semiotics 25.2 (2015): 217-35. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge UP, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace.” Political Writings. Ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge UP, 1991 [1795]. 116–130. Kress, G., and T. van Leeuwen. Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge, 1996. Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Visual Literacy. Department of Education and Training (DET), State of Victoria. 29 Aug. 2018. 30 Sep. 2020 <https://www.education.vic.gov.au:443/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/ readingviewing/Pages/litfocusvisual.aspx>. Lee, Jae Young. “Otto Neurath's Isotype and the Rhetoric of Neutrality.” Visible Language 42.2: 159-180. Little, D., et al. Looking and Learning: Visual Literacy across the Disciplines. Wiley, 2015. Messaris, Paul. “Visual Literacy vs. Visual Manipulation.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11.2: 181-203. DOI: 10.1080/15295039409366894 ———. “A Visual Test for Visual ‘Literacy.’” The Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association. 31 Oct. to 3 Nov. 1991. Atlanta, GA. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED347604.pdf>. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage, Bantam Books, 1967. McLuhan, Marshall, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan. City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. Agincourt, Ontario: Book Society of Canada, 1977. McTigue, Erin, and Amanda Flowers. “Science Visual Literacy: Learners' Perceptions and Knowledge of Diagrams.” Reading Teacher 64.8: 578-89. Miller, Sarah. “The Secret History of the Paella Emoji.” Food & Wine, 20 June 2017. <https://www.foodandwine.com/news/true-story-paella-emoji>. Munari, Bruno. Square, Circle, Triangle. Princeton Architectural Press, 2016. Newfield, Denise. “From Visual Literacy to Critical Visual Literacy: An Analysis of Educational Materials.” English Teaching-Practice and Critique 10 (2011): 81-94. Neurath, Otto. International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936. Schor, Esther. Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. Henry Holt and Company, 2016. Sloboda, Stacey. “‘The Grammar of Ornament’: Cosmopolitanism and Reform in British Design.” Journal of Design History 21.3 (2008): 223-36. Study of Communication Problems: Implementation of Resolutions 4/19 and 4/20 Adopted by the General Conference at Its Twenty-First Session; Report by the Director-General. UNESCO, 1983. Tanchis, Aldo, and Bruno Munari. Bruno Munari: Design as Art. MIT P, 1987. Warren, Gwendolyn, Cindi Katz, and Nik Heynen. “Myths, Cults, Memories, and Revisions in Radical Geographic History: Revisiting the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute.” Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond. Wiley, 2019. 59-86.

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Introduction This article explores the changing relational quality of “the shadow of hierarchy”, in the context of the merging of platforms with infrastructure as the source of the shadow of hierarchy. In governance and regulatory studies, the shadow of hierarchy (or variations thereof), describes the space of influence that hierarchal organisations and infrastructures have (Héritier and Lehmkuhl; Lance et al.). A shift in who/what casts the shadow of hierarchy will necessarily result in changes to the attendant relational values, logics, and (techno)socialities that constitute the shadow, and a new arrangement of shadow that presents new challenges and opportunities. This article reflects on relevant literature to consider two different ways the shadow of hierarchy has qualitatively changed as platforms, rather than infrastructures, come to cast the shadow of hierarchy – an increase in scalability; and new socio-technical arrangements of (non)participation – and the opportunities and challenges therein. The article concludes that more concerted efforts are needed to design the shadow, given a seemingly directionless desire to enact data-driven solutions. The Shadow of Hierarchy, Infrastructures, and Platforms The shadow of hierarchy refers to how institutional, infrastructural, and organisational hierarchies create a relational zone of influence over a particular space. This commonly refers to executive decisions and legislation created by nation states, which are cast over private and non-governmental actors (Héritier and Lehmkuhl, 2). Lance et al. (252–53) argue that the shadow of hierarchy is a productive and desirable thing. Exploring the shadow of hierarchy in the context of how geospatial data agencies govern their data, Lance et al. find that the shadow of hierarchy enables the networked governance approaches that agencies adopt. This is because operating in the shadow of institutions provides authority, confers bureaucratic legitimacy and top-down power, and offers financial support. The darkness of the shadow is thus less a moral or ethicopolitical statement (such as that suggested by Fisher and Bolter, who use the idea of darkness to unpack the morality of tourism involving death and human suffering), and instead a relationality; an expression of differing values, logics, and (techno)socialities internal and external to those infrastructures and institutions that cast it (Gehl and McKelvey). The shadow of hierarchy might therefore be thought of as a field of relational influences and power that a social body casts over society, by virtue of a privileged position vis-a-vis society. It modulates society’s “light”; the resources (Bourdieu) and power relationships (Foucault) that run through social life, as parsed through a certain institutional and infrastructural worldview (the thing that blocks the light to create the shadow). In this way the shadow of hierarchy is not a field of absolute blackness that obscures, but instead a gradient of light and dark that creates certain effects. The shadow of hierarchy is now, however, also being cast by decentralised, privately held, and non-hierarchal platforms that are replacing or merging with public infrastructure, creating new social effects. Platforms are digital, socio-technical systems that create relationships between different entities. They are most commonly built around a relatively fixed core function (such as a social media service like Facebook), that then interacts with a peripheral set of complementors (advertising companies and app developers in the case of social media; Baldwin and Woodard), to create new relationships, forms of value, and other interactions (van Dijck, The Culture of Connectivity). In creating these relationships, platforms become inherently political (Gillespie), shaping relationships and content on the platform (Suzor) and in embodied life (Ajunwa; Eubanks). While platforms are often associated with optional consumer platforms (such as streaming services like Spotify), they have increasingly come to occupy the place of public infrastructure, and act as a powerful enabler to different socio-technical, economic, and political relationships (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, Plantin et al. argue that platforms have merged with infrastructures, and that once publicly held and funded institutions and essential services now share many characteristics with for-profit, privately held platforms. For example, Australia has had a long history of outsourcing employment services (Webster and Harding), and nearly privatised its entire visa processing data infrastructure (Jenkins). Platforms therefore have a greater role in casting the shadow of hierarchy than before. In doing so, they cast a shadow that is qualitatively different, modulated through a different set of relational values and (techno)socialities. Scalability A key difference and selling point of platforms is their scalability; since they can rapidly and easily up- and down-scale their functionalities in a way that traditional infrastructure cannot (Plantin et al.). The ability to respond “on-demand” to infrastructural requirements has made platforms the go-to service delivery option in the neo-liberalised public infrastructure environment (van Dijck, Governing Digital Societies). For instance, services providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure provide on demand computing capacity for many nations’ most valuable services, including their intelligence and security capabilities (Amoore, Cloud Ethics; Konkel). The value of such platforms to government lies in the reduced cost and risk that comes with using rented capabilities, and the enhanced flexibility to increase or decrease their usage as required, without any of the economic sunk costs attached to owning the infrastructure. Scalability is, however, not just about on-demand technical capability, but about how platforms can change the scale of socio-technical relationships and services that are mediated through the platform. This changes the relational quality of the shadow of hierarchy, as activities and services occurring within the shadow are now connected into a larger and rapidly modulating scale. Scalability allows the shadow of hierarchy to extend from those in proximity to institutions to the broader population in general. For example, individual citizens can more easily “reach up” into governmental services and agencies as a part of completing their everyday business through platform such as MyGov in Australia (Services Australia). Using a smartphone application, citizens are afforded a more personalised and adaptive experience of the welfare state, as engaging with welfare services is no-longer tied to specific “brick-and-mortar” locations, but constantly available through a smartphone app and web portal. Multiple government services including healthcare and taxation are also connected to this platform, allowing users to reach across multiple government service domains to complete their personal business, seeking information and services that would have once required separate communications with different branches of government. The individual’s capacities to engage with the state have therefore upscaled with this change in the shadow, retaining a productivity and capacity enhancing quality that is reminiscent of older infrastructures and institutions, as the individual and their lived context is brought closer to the institutions themselves. Scale, however, comes with complications. The fundamental driver for scalability and its adaptive qualities is datafication. This means individuals and organisations are inflecting their operational and relational logics with the logic of datafication: a need to capture all data, at all times (van Dijck, Datafication; Fourcade and Healy). Platforms, especially privately held platforms, benefit significantly from this, as they rely on data to drive and refine their algorithmic tools, and ultimately create actionable intelligence that benefits their operations. Thus, scalability allows platforms to better “reach down” into individual lives and different social domains to fuel their operations. For example, as public transport services become increasingly datafied into mobility-as-a-service (MAAS) systems, ride sharing and on-demand transportation platforms like Uber and Lyft become incorporated into the public transport ecosystem (Lyons et al.). These platforms capture geospatial, behavioural, and reputational data from users and drivers during their interactions with the platform (Rosenblat and Stark; Attoh et al.). This generates additional value, and profits, for the platform itself with limited value returned to the user or the broader public it supports, outside of the transport service. It also places the platform in a position to gain wider access to the population and their data, by virtue of operating as a part of a public service. In this way the shadow of hierarchy may exacerbate inequity. The (dis)benefits of the shadow of hierarchy become unevenly spread amongst actors within its field, a function of an increased scalability that connects individuals into much broader assemblages of datafication. For Eubank, this can entrench existing economic and social inequalities by forcing those in need to engage with digitally mediated welfare systems that rely on distant and opaque computational judgements. Local services are subject to increased digital surveillance, a removal of agency from frontline advocates, and algorithmic judgement at scale. More fortunate citizens are also still at risk, with Nardi and Ekbia arguing that many digitally scaled relationships are examples of “heteromation”, whereby platforms convince actors in the platform to labour for free, such as through providing ratings which establish a platform’s reputational economy. Such labour fuels the operation of the platform through exploiting users, who become both a product/resource (as a source of data for third party advertisers) and a performer of unrewarded digital labour, such as through providing user reviews that help guide a platform’s algorithm(s). Both these examples represent a particularly disconcerting outcome for the shadow of hierarchy, which has its roots in public sector institutions who operate for a common good through shared and publicly held infrastructure. In shifting towards platforms, especially privately held platforms, value is transmitted to private corporations and not the public or the commons, as was the case with traditional infrastructure. The public also comes to own the risks attached to platforms if they become tied to public services, placing a further burden on the public if the platform fails, while reaping none of the profit and value generated through datafication. This is a poor bargain at best. (Non)Participation Scalability forms the basis for a further predicament: a changing socio-technical dynamic of (non)participation between individuals and services. According to Star (118), infrastructures are defined through their relationships to a given context. These relationships, which often exist as boundary objects between different communities, are “loosely structured in common use, and become tightly bound in particular locations” (Star, 118). While platforms are certainly boundary objects and relationally defined, the affordances of cloud computing have enabled a decoupling from physical location, and the operation of platforms across time and space through distributed digital nodes (smartphones, computers, and other localised hardware) and powerful algorithms that sort and process requests for service. This does not mean location is not important for the cloud (see Amoore, Cloud Geographies), but platforms are less likely to have a physically co-located presence in the same way traditional infrastructures had. Without the same institutional and infrastructural footprint, the modality for participating in and with the shadow of hierarchy that platforms cast becomes qualitatively different and predicated on digital intermediaries. Replacing a physical and human footprint with algorithmically supported and decentralised computing power allows scalability and some efficiency improvements, but it also removes taken-for-granted touchpoints for contestation and recourse. For example, ride-sharing platform Uber operates globally, and has expressed interest in operating in complement to (and perhaps in competition with) public transport services in some cities (Hall et al.; Conger). Given that Uber would come to operate as a part of the shadow of hierarchy that transport authorities cast over said cities, it would not be unreasonable to expect Uber to be subject to comparable advocacy, adjudication, transparency, and complaint-handling requirements. Unfortunately, it is unclear if this would be the case, with examples suggesting that Uber would use the scalability of its platform to avoid these mechanisms. This is revealed by ongoing legal action launched by concerned Uber drivers in the United Kingdom, who have sought access to the profiling data that Uber uses to manage and monitor its drivers (Sawers). The challenge has relied on transnational law (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation), with UK-based drivers lodging claims in Amsterdam to initiate the challenge. Such costly and complex actions are beyond the means of many, but demonstrate how reasonable participation in socio-technical and governance relationships (like contestations) might become limited, depending on how the shadow of hierarchy changes with the incorporation of platforms. Even if legal challenges for transparency are successful, they may not produce meaningful change. For instance, O’Neil links algorithmic bias to mathematical shortcomings in the variables used to measure the world; in the creation of irritational feedback loops based on incorrect data; and in the use of unsound data analysis techniques. These three factors contribute to inequitable digital metrics like predictive policing algorithms that disproportionately target racial minorities. Large amounts of selective data on minorities create myopic algorithms that direct police to target minorities, creating more selective data that reinforces the spurious model. These biases, however, are persistently inaccessible, and even when visible are often unintelligible to experts (Ananny and Crawford). The visibility of the technical “installed base” that support institutions and public services is therefore not a panacea, especially when the installed base (un)intentionally obfuscates participation in meaningful engagement like complaints handling. A negative outcome is, however, also not an inevitable thing. It is entirely possible to design platforms to allow individual users to scale up and have opportunities for enhanced participation. For instance, eGovernance and mobile governance literature have explored how citizens engage with state services at scale (Thomas and Streib; Foth et al.), and the open government movement has demonstrated the effectiveness of open data in understanding government operations (Barns; Janssen et al.), although these both have their challenges (Chadwick; Dawes). It is not a fantasy to imagine alternative configurations of the shadow of hierarchy that allow more participatory relationships. Open data could facilitate the governance of platforms at scale (Box et al.), where users are enfranchised into a platform by some form of membership right and given access to financial and governance records, in the same way that corporate shareholders are enfranchised, facilitated by the same app that provides a service. This could also be extended to decision making through voting and polling functions. Such a governance form would require radically different legal, business, and institutional structures to create and enforce this arrangement. Delacoix and Lawrence, for instance, suggest that data trusts, where a trustee is assigned legal and fiduciary responsibility to achieve maximum benefit for a specific group’s data, can be used to negotiate legal and governance relationships that meaningfully benefit the users of the trust. Trustees can be instructed to only share data to services whose algorithms are regularly audited for bias and provide datasets that are accurate representations of their users, for instance, avoiding erroneous proxies that disrupt algorithmic models. While these developments are in their infancy, it is not unreasonable to reflect on such endeavours now, as the technologies to achieve these are already in use. Conclusions There is a persistent myth that data will yield better, faster, more complete results in whatever field it is applied (Lee and Cook; Fourcade and Healy; Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier; Kitchin). This myth has led to data-driven assemblages, including artificial intelligence, platforms, surveillance, and other data-technologies, being deployed throughout social life. The public sector is no exception to this, but the deployment of any technological solution within the traditional institutions of the shadow of hierarchy is fraught with challenges, and often results in failure or unintended consequences (Henman). The complexity of these systems combined with time, budgetary, and political pressures can create a contested environment. It is this environment that moulds societies' light and resources to cast the shadow of hierarchy. Relationality within a shadow of hierarchy that reflects the complicated and competing interests of platforms is likely to present a range of unintended social consequences that are inherently emergent because they are entering into a complex system – society – that is extremely hard to model. The relational qualities of the shadow of hierarchy are therefore now more multidimensional and emergent, and experiences relating to socio-technical features like scale, and as a follow-on (non)participation, are evidence of this. Yet by being emergent, they are also directionless, a product of complex systems rather than designed and strategic intent. This is not an inherently bad thing, but given the potential for data-system and platforms to have negative or unintended consequences, it is worth considering whether remaining directionless is the best outcome. There are many examples of data-driven systems in healthcare (Obermeyer et al.), welfare (Eubanks; Henman and Marston), and economics (MacKenzie), having unintended and negative social consequences. Appropriately guiding the design and deployment of theses system also represents a growing body of knowledge and practical endeavour (Jirotka et al.; Stilgoe et al.). Armed with the knowledge of these social implications, constructing an appropriate social architecture (Box and Lemon; Box et al.) around the platforms and data systems that form the shadow of hierarchy should be encouraged. This social architecture should account for the affordances and emergent potentials of a complex social, institutional, economic, political, and technical environment, and should assist in guiding the shadow of hierarchy away from egregious challenges and towards meaningful opportunities. To be directionless is an opportunity to take a new direction. The intersection of platforms with public institutions and infrastructures has moulded society’s light into an evolving and emergent shadow of hierarchy over many domains. With the scale of the shadow changing, and shaping participation, who benefits and who loses out in the shadow of hierarchy is also changing. Equipped with insights into this change, we should not hesitate to shape this change, creating or preserving relationalities that offer the best outcomes. Defining, understanding, and practically implementing what the “best” outcome(s) are would be a valuable next step in this endeavour, and should prompt considerable discussion. 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Abstract:

In this paper we explore the rise of anti-gambling apps in the context of the massive expansion of gambling in new spheres of life (online and offline) and an acceleration in strategies of anticipatory and individualised management of harm caused by gambling. These apps, and the techniques and forms of labour they demand, are examples of and a mechanism through which a mode of governance premised on ‘self-care’ and ‘self-control’ is articulated and put into practice. To support this argument, we explore two government initiatives in the Australian context. Quit Pokies, a mobile app project between the Moreland City Council, North East Primary Care Partnership and the Victorian Local Governance Association, is an example of an emerging service paradigm of ‘self-care’ that uses online and mobile platforms with geo-location to deliver real time health and support interventions. A similar mobile app, Gambling Terminator, was launched by the NSW government in late 2012. Both apps work on the premise that interrupting a gaming session through a trigger, described by Quit Pokies’ creator as a “tap on the shoulder” provides gamblers the opportunity to take a reflexive stance and cut short their gambling practice in the course of play. We critically examine these apps as self-disciplining techniques of contemporary neo-liberalism directed towards anticipating and reducing the personal harm and social risk associated with gambling. We analyse the material and discursive elements, and new forms of user labour, through which this consumable media is framed and assembled. We argue that understanding the role of these apps, and mobile media more generally, in generating new techniques and technologies of the self, is important for identifying emerging modes of governance and their implications at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of cultural normalisation in online and offline environments. The Australian context is particularly germane for the way gambling permeates everyday spaces of sociality and leisure, and the potential of gambling interventions to interrupt and re-configure these spaces and institute a new kind of subject-state relation. Gambling in Australia Though a global phenomenon, the growth and expansion of gambling manifests distinctly in Australia because of its long cultural and historical attachment to games of chance. Australians are among the biggest betters and losers in the world (Ziolkowski), mainly on Electronic Gaming Machines (EGM) or pokies. As of 2013, according to The World Count of Gaming Machine (Ziolkowski), there were 198,150 EGMs in the country, of which 197,274 were slot machines, with the rest being electronic table games of roulette, blackjack and poker. There are 118 persons per machine in Australia. New South Wales is the jurisdiction with most EGMs (95,799), followed by Queensland (46,680) and Victoria (28,758) (Ziolkowski). Gambling is significant in Australian cultural history and average Australian households spend at least some money on different forms of gambling, from pokies to scratch cards, every year (Worthington et al.). In 1985, long-time gambling researcher Geoffrey Caldwell stated thatAustralians seem to take a pride in the belief that we are a nation of gamblers. Thus we do not appear to be ashamed of our gambling instincts, habits and practices. Gambling is regarded by most Australians as a normal, everyday practice in contrast to the view that gambling is a sinful activity which weakens the moral fibre of the individual and the community. (Caldwell 18) The omnipresence of gambling opportunities in most Australian states has been further facilitated by the availability of online and mobile gambling and gambling-like spaces. Social casino apps, for instance, are widely popular in Australia. The slots social casino app Slotomania was the most downloaded product in the iTunes store in 2012 (Metherell). In response to the high rate of different forms of gambling in Australia, a range of disparate interest groups have identified the expansion of gambling as a concerning trend. Health researchers have pointed out that online gamblers have a higher risk of experiencing problems with gambling (at 30%) compared to 15% in offline bettors (Hastings). The incidence of gambling problems is also disproportionately high in specific vulnerable demographics, including university students (Cervini), young adults prone to substance abuse problems (Hayatbakhsh et al.), migrants (Tanasornnarong et al.; Scull & Woolco*ck; Ohtsuka & Ohtsuka), pensioners (Hing & Breen), female players (Lee), Aboriginal communities (Young et al.; McMillen & Donnelly) and individuals experiencing homelessness (Holsworth et al.). While there is general recognition of the personal and public health impacts of gambling in Australia, there is a contradiction in the approach to gambling at a governance level. On one hand, its expansion is promoted and even encouraged by the federal and state governments, as gambling is an enormous source of revenue, as evidenced, for example, by the construction of the new Crown casino in Barangaroo in Sydney (Markham & Young). Campaigns trying to limit the use of poker machines, which are associated with concerns over problem gambling and addiction, are deemed by the gambling lobby as un-Australian. Paradoxically, efforts to restrict gambling or control gambling winnings have also been described as un-Australian, such as in the Australian Taxation Office’s campaign against MONA’s founder, David Walsh, whose immense art collection was acquired with the funds from a gambling scheme (Global Mail). On the other hand, people experiencing problems with gambling are often categorised as addicts and the ultimate blame (and responsibility) is attributed to the individual. In Australia, attitudes towards people who are arguably addicted to gambling are different than those towards individuals afflicted by alcohol or drug abuse (Jean). While “Australians tend to be sympathetic towards people with alcohol and other drug addictions who seek help,” unless it is seen as one of the more socially acceptable forms of occasional, controlled gambling (such as sports betting, gambling on the Melbourne Cup or celebrating ANZAC Day with Two-Up), gambling is framed as an individual “problem” and “moral failing” (Jean). The expansion of gambling is the backdrop to another development in health care and public health discourse, which have for some time now been devoted to the ideal of what Lupton has called the “digitally engaged patient” (Lupton). Technologies are central to the delivery of this model of health service provision that puts the patient at the centre of, and responsible for, their own health and medical care. Lupton has pointed out how this discourse, while appearing new, is in fact the latest version of the 1970s emphasis on the ‘patient as consumer’, an idea given an extra injection by the massive development and availability of digital and interactive web-based and mobile platforms, many of these directed towards the provision of health and health-related information and services. What this means for patients is that, rather than relying solely on professional medical expertise and care, the patient is encouraged to take on some of this medical/health work to conduct practices of ‘self-care’ (Lupton). The Discourse of ‘Self-Management’ and ‘Self-Care’ The model of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’ by ‘empowering’ digital technology has now become a dominant discourse within health and medicine, and is increasingly deployed across a range of related sectors such as welfare services. In recent research conducted on homelessness and mobile media, for example, government department staff involved in the reform of welfare services referred to ‘self-management’ as the new service paradigm that underpins their digital reform strategy. Echoing ideas and language similar to the “digitally engaged patient”, customers of Centrelink, Medicare and other ‘human services’ are being encouraged (through planned strategic initiatives aimed at shifting targeted customer groups online) to transact with government services digitally and manage their own personal profiles and health information. One departmental staff member described this in terms of an “opportunity cost”, the savings in time otherwise spent standing in long queues in service centres (Humphry). Rather than view these examples as isolated incidents taking place within or across sectors or disciplines, these are better understood as features of an emerging ‘discursive formation’ , a term Foucault used to describe the way in which particular institutions and/or the state establish a regime of truth, or an accepted social reality and which gives definition to a new historical episteme and subject: in this case that of the self-disciplined and “digitally engaged medical/health patient”. As Foucault explained, once this subject has become fully integrated into and across the social field, it is no longer easy to excavate, since it lies below the surface of articulation and is held together through everyday actions, habits and institutional routines and techniques that appear to be universal, necessary and/normal. The way in which this citizen subject becomes a universal model and norm, however, is not a straightforward or linear story and since we are in the midst of its rise, is not a story with a foretold conclusion. Nevertheless, across a range of different fields of governance: medicine; health and welfare, we can see signs of this emerging figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged patient” constituted from a range of different techniques and practices of self-governance. In Australia, this figure is at the centre of a concerted strategy of service digitisation involving a number of cross sector initiatives such as Australia’s National EHealth Strategy (2008), the National Digital Economy Strategy (2011) and the Australian Public Service Mobile Roadmap (2013). This figure of the self-caring “digitally engaged” patient, aligns well and is entirely compatible with neo-liberal formulations of the individual and the reduced role of the state as a provider of welfare and care. Berry refers to Foucault’s definition of neoliberalism as outlined in his lectures to the College de France as a “particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility of the ‘well-being' of the population” (65). In the case of gambling, the neoliberal defined state enables the wedding of two seemingly contradictory stances: promoting gambling as a major source of revenue and capitalisation on the one hand, and identifying and treating gambling addiction as an individual pursuit and potential risk on the other. Risk avoidance strategies are focused on particular groups of people who are targeted for self-treatment to avoid the harm of gambling addiction, which is similarly framed as individual rather than socially and systematically produced. What unites and makes possible this alignment of neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” is first and foremost, the construction of a subject in a chronic state of ill health. This figure is positioned as terminal from the start. They are ‘sick’, a ‘patient’, an ‘addict’: in need of immediate and continuous treatment. Secondly, this neoliberal patient/addict is enabled (we could even go so far as to say ‘empowered’) by digital technology, especially smartphones and the apps available through these devices in the form of a myriad of applications for intervening and treating ones afflictions. These apps range fromself-tracking programs such as mood regulators through to social media interventions. Anti-Pokie Apps and the Neoliberal Gambler We now turn to two examples which illustrate this alignment between neoliberalism and the new “digitally engaged subject/patient” in relation to gambling. Anti-gambling apps function to both replace or ‘take the place’ of institutions and individuals actively involved in the treatment of problem gambling and re-engineer this service through the logics of ‘self-care’ and ‘self-management’. Here, we depart somewhat from Foucault’s model of disciplinary power summed up in the institution (with the prison exemplifying this disciplinary logic) and move towards Deleuze’s understanding of power as exerted by the State not through enclosures but through diffuse and rhizomatic information flows and technologies (Deleuze). At the same time, we retain Foucault’s attention to the role and agency of the user in this power-dynamic, identifiable in the technics of self-regulation and in his ideas on governmentality. We now turn to analyse these apps more closely, and explore the way in which these articulate and perform these disciplinary logics. The app Quit Pokies was a joint venture of the North East Primary Care Partnership, the Victorian Local Governance Association and the Moreland City Council, launched in early 2014. The idea of the rational, self-reflexive and agentic user is evident in the description of the app by app developer Susan Rennie who described it this way: What they need is for someone to tap them on the shoulder and tell them to get out of there… I thought the phone could be that tap on the shoulder. The “tap on the shoulder” feature uses geolocation and works by emitting a sound alert when the user enters a gaming venue. It also provides information about each user’s losses at that venue. This “tap on the shoulder” is both an alert and a reprimand from past gambling sessions. Through the Responsible Gambling Fund, the NSW government also launched an anti-pokie app in 2013, Gambling Terminator, including a similar feature. The app runs on Apple and Android smartphone platforms, and when a person is inside a gambling venue in New South Wales it: sends reminder messages that interrupt gaming-machine play and gives you a chance to re-think your choices. It also provides instant access to live phone and online counselling services which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (Google Play Store) Yet an approach that tries to prevent harm by anticipating the harm that will come from gambling at the point of entering a venue, also eliminates the chance of potential negotiations and encounters a user might have during a visit to the pub and how this experience will unfold. It reduces the “tap on the shoulder”, which may involve a far wider set of interactions and affects, to a software operation and it frames the pub or the club (which under some conditions functions as hubs for socialization and community building) as dangerous places that should be avoided. This has the potential to lead to further stigmatisation of gamblers, their isolation and their exclusion from everyday spaces. Moreland Mayor, Councillor Tapinos captures the implicit framing of self-care as a private act in his explanation of the app as a method for problem gamblers to avoid being stigmatised by, for example, publicly attending group meetings. Yet, curiously, the app has the potential to create a new kind of public stigmatisation through potentially drawing other peoples’ attention to users’ gambling play (as the alarm is triggered) generating embarrassment and humiliation at being “caught out” in an act framed as aberrant and literally, “alarming”. Both Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator require their users to perform ‘acts’ of physical and affective labour aimed at behaviour change and developing the skills of self-control. After downloading Quit Pokies on the iPhone and launching the app, the user is presented an initial request: “Before you set up this app. please write a list of the pokies venues that you regularly use because the app will ask you to identify these venues so it can send you alerts if you spend time in these locations. It will also use your set up location to identify other venues you might use so we recommend that you set up the App in the location where you spend most time. Congratulation on choosing Quit Pokies.”Self-performed processes include installation, setting up, updating the app software, programming in gambling venues to be detected by the smartphone’s inbuilt GPS, monitoring and responding to the program’s alerts and engaging in alternate “legitimate” forms of leisure such as going to the movies or the library, having coffee with a friend or browsing Facebook. These self-performed labours can be understood as ‘technologies of the self’, a term used by Foucault to describe the way in which social members are obliged to regulate and police their ‘selves’ through a range of different techniques. While Foucault traces the origins of ‘technologies of the self’ to the Greco-Roman texts with their emphasis on “care of oneself” as one of the duties of citizenry, he notes the shift to “self-knowledge” under Christianity around the 8th century, where it became bound up in ideals of self-renunciation and truth. Quit Pokies and Gambling Terminator may signal a recuperation of the ideal of self-care, over confession and disclosure. These apps institute a set of bodily activities and obligations directed to the user’s health and wellbeing, aided through activities of self-examination such as charting your recovery through a Recovery Diary and implementing a number of suggested “Strategies for Change” such as “writing a list” and “learning about ways to manage your money better”. Writing is central to the acts of self-examination. As Jeremy Prangnell, gambling counsellor from Mission Australia for Wollongong and Shellharbour regions explained the app is “like an electronic diary, which is a really common tool for people who are trying to change their behaviour” (Thompson). The labours required by users are also implicated in the functionality and performance of the platform itself suggesting the way in which ‘technologies of the self’ simultaneously function as a form of platform work: user labour that supports and sustains the operation of digital systems and is central to the performance and continuation of digital capitalism in general (Humphry, Demanding Media). In addition to the acts of labour performed on the self and platform, bodies are themselves potentially mobilised (and put into new circuits of consumption and production), as a result of triggers to nudge users away from gambling venues, towards a range of other cultural practices in alternative social spaces considered to be more legitimate.Conclusion Whether or not these technological interventions are effective or successful is yet to be tested. Indeed, the lack of recent activity in the community forums and preponderance of issues reported on installation and use suggests otherwise, pointing to a need for more empirical research into these developments. Regardless, what we’ve tried to identify is the way in which apps such as these embody a new kind of subject-state relation that emphasises self-control of gambling harm and hastens the divestment of institutional and social responsibility at a time when gambling is going through an immense period of expansion in many respects backed by and sanctioned by the state. Patterns of smartphone take up in the mainstream population and the rise of the so called ‘mobile only population’ (ACMA) provide support for this new subject and service paradigm and are often cited as the rationale for digital service reform (APSMR). Media convergence feeds into these dynamics: service delivery becomes the new frontier for the merging of previously separate media distribution systems (Dwyer). Letters, customer service centres, face-to-face meetings and web sites, are combined and in some instances replaced, with online and mobile media platforms, accessible from multiple and mobile devices. These changes are not, however, simply the migration of services to a digital medium with little effective change to the service itself. Health and medical services are re-invented through their technological re-assemblage, bringing into play new meanings, practices and negotiations among the state, industry and neoliberal subjects (in the case of problem gambling apps, a new subjectivity, the ‘neoliberal addict’). These new assemblages are as much about bringing forth a new kind of subject and mode of governance, as they are a solution to problem gambling. 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Abstract:

Introduction“From every kind of man obedience I expect; I’m the Emperor of Japan.” (“Miyasama,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical The Mikado, 1885)This commentary is facilitated by—surprisingly resilient—oriental stereotypes of an imagined Japan (think of Oscar Wilde’s assertion, in 1889, that Japan was a European invention). During the Victorian era, in Britain, there was a craze for all things oriental, particularly ceramics and “there was a craze for all things Japanese and no middle class drawing room was without its Japanese fan or teapot.“ (V&A Victorian). These pastoral depictions of the ‘oriental life’ included the figures of men and women in oriental garb, with fans, stilt shoes, kimono-like robes, and appropriate headdresses, engaging in garden-based activities, especially tea ceremony variations (Landow). In fact, tea itself, and the idea of a ceremony of serving it, had taken up a central role, even an obsession in middle- and upper-class Victorian life. Similarly, landscapes with wild seas, rugged rocks and stunted pines, wizened monks, pagodas and temples, and particular fauna and flora (cranes and other birds flying through clouds of peonies, cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums) were very popular motifs (see Martin and Koda). Rather than authenticity, these designs heightened the Western-based romantic stereotypes associated with a stylised form of Japanese life, conducted sedately under rule of the Japanese Imperial Court. In reality, prior to the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Emperor was largely removed from everyday concerns, residing as an isolated, holy figure in Kyoto, the traditional capital of Japan. Japan was instead ruled from Edo (modern day Tokyo) led by the Shogun and his generals, according to a strict Confucian influenced code (see Keene). In Japan, as elsewhere, the presence of feudal-style governance includes policies that determine much of everyday life, including restrictions on clothing (Rall 169). The Samurai code was no different, and included a series of protocols that restricted rank, movement, behaviour, and clothing. As Vincent has noted in the case of the ‘lace tax’ in Great Britain, these restrictions were designed to punish those who seek to penetrate the upper classes through their costume (28-30). In Japan, pre-Meiji sumptuary laws, for example, restricted the use of gold, and prohibited the use of a certain shade of red by merchant classes (V&A Kimono).Therefore, in the governance of pre-globalised societies, the importance of clothing and textile is evident; as Jones and Stallybrass comment: We need to understand the antimatedness of clothes, their ability to “pick up” subjects, to mould and shape them both physically and socially—to constitute subjects through their power as material memories […] Clothing is a worn world: a world of social relations put upon the wearer’s body. (2-3, emphasis added)The significant re-imagining of Japanese cultural and national identities are explored here through the cataclysmic impact of Western ideologies on Japanese cultural traditions. There are many ways to examine how indigenous cultures respond to European, British, or American (hereafter Western) influences, particularly in times of conflict (Wilk). Western ideology arrived in Japan after a long period of isolation (during which time Japan’s only contact was with Dutch traders) through the threat of military hostility and war. It is after this outside threat was realised that Japan’s adoption of military and industrial practices begins. The re-imagining of their national identity took many forms, and the inclusion of a Western-style military costuming as a schoolboy uniform became a highly visible indicator of Japan’s mission to protect its sovereign integrity. A brief history of Japan’s rise from a collection of isolated feudal states to a unified military power, in not only the Asian Pacific region but globally, demonstrates the speed at which they adopted the Western mode of warfare. Gunboats on Japan’s ShorelinesJapan was forcefully opened to the West in the 1850s by America under threat of First Name Perry’s ‘gunboat diplomacy’ (Hillsborough 7-8). Following this, Japan underwent a rapid period of modernisation, and an upsurge in nationalism and military expansion that was driven by a desire to catch up to the European powers present in the Pacific. Noted by Ian Ferguson in Civilization: The West and the Rest, Unsure, the Japanese decided […] to copy everything […] Japanese institutions were refashioned on Western models. The army drilled like Germans; the navy sailed like Britons. An American-style system of state elementary and middle schools was also introduced. (221, emphasis added)This was nothing short of a wide-scale reorganisation of Japan’s entire social structure and governance. Under the Emperor Meiji, who wrested power from the Shogunate and reclaimed it for the Imperial head, Japan steamed into an industrial revolution, achieving in a matter of years what had taken Europe over a century.Japan quickly became a major player-elect on the world stage. However, as an island nation, Japan lacked the essentials of both coal and iron with which to fashion not only industrial machinery but also military equipment, the machinery of war. In 1875 Japan forced Korea to open itself to foreign (read: Japanese) trade. In the same treaty, Korea was recognised as a sovereign nation, separate from Qing China (Tucker 1461). The necessity for raw materials then led to the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), a conflict between Japan and China that marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power. The Korean Peninsula had long been China’s most important client state, but its strategic location adjacent to the Japanese archipelago, and its natural resources of coal and iron, attracted Japan’s interest. Later, the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), allowed a victorious Japan to force Russia to abandon its expansionist policy in the Far East, becoming the first Asian power in modern times to defeat a European power. The Russo-Japanese War developed out of the rivalry between Russia and Japan for dominance in Korea and Manchuria, again in the struggle for natural resources (Tucker 1534-46).Japan’s victories, together with the county’s drive for resources, meant that Japan could now determine its role within the Asia-Pacific sphere of influence. As Japan’s military, and their adoption of Westernised combat, proved effective in maintaining national integrity, other social institutions also looked to the West (Ferguson 221). In an ironic twist—while Victorian and Continental fashion was busy adopting the exotic, oriental look (Martin and Koda)—the kimono, along with other essentials of Japanese fashions, were rapidly altered (both literally and figuratively) to suit new, warlike ideology. It should be noted that kimono literally means ‘things that you wear’ and which, prior to exposure to Western fashions, signified all worn clothing (Dalby 65-119). “Wearing Things” in Westernised JapanAs Japan modernised during the late 1800s the kimono was positioned as symbolising barbaric, pre-modern, ‘oriental’ Japan. Indeed, on 17 January 1887 the Meiji Empress issued a memorandum on the subject of women’s clothing in Japan: “She [the Empress] believed that western clothes were in fact closer to the dress of women in ancient Japan than the kimonos currently worn and urged that they be adopted as the standard clothes of the reign” (Keene 404). The resemblance between Western skirts and blouses and the simple skirt and separate top that had been worn in ancient times by a people descended from the sun goddess, Amaterasu wo mikami, was used to give authority and cultural authenticity to Japan’s modernisation projects. The Imperial Court, with its newly ennobled European style aristocrats, exchanged kimono silks for Victorian finery, and samurai armour for military pomp and splendour (Figure 1).Figure 1: The Meiji Emperor, Empress and Crown Prince resplendent in European fashions on an outing to Asukayama Park. Illustration: Toyohara Chikanobu, circa 1890.It is argued here that the function of a uniform is to prepare the body for service. Maids and butlers, nurses and courtesans, doctors, policemen, and soldiers are all distinguished by their garb. Prudence Black states: “as a technology, uniforms shape and code the body so they become a unit that belongs to a collective whole” (93). The requirement to discipline bodies through clothing, particularly through uniforms, is well documented (see Craik, Peoples, and Foucault). The need to distinguish enemies from allies on the battlefield requires adherence to a set of defined protocols, as referenced in military fashion compendiums (see Molloy). While the postcolonial adoption of Western-based clothing reflects a new form of subservience (Rall, Kuechler and Miller), in Japan, the indigenous garments were clearly designed in the interests of ideological allegiance. To understand the Japanese sartorial traditions, the kimono itself must be read as providing a strong disciplinary element. The traditional garment is designed to represent an upright and unbending column—where two meters of under bindings are used to discipline the body into shape are then topped with a further four meters of a stiffened silk obi wrapped around the waist and lower chest. To dress formally in such a garment requires helpers (see Dalby). The kimono both constructs and confines the women who wear it, and presses them into their roles as dutiful, upper-class daughters (see Craik). From the 1890s through to the 1930s, when Japan again enters a period of militarism, the myth of the kimono again changes as it is integrated into the build-up towards World War II.Decades later, when Japan re-established itself as a global economic power in the 1970s and 1980s, the kimono was re-authenticated as Japan’s ‘traditional’ garment. This time it was not the myth of a people descended from solar deities that was on display, but that of samurai strength and propriety for men, alongside an exaggerated femininity for women, invoking a powerful vision of Japanese sartorial tradition. This reworking of the kimono was only possible as the garment was already contained within the framework of Confucian family duty. However, in the lead up to World War II, Japanese military advancement demanded of its people soldiers that could win European-style wars. The quickest solution was to copy the military acumen and strategies of global warfare, and the costumes of the soldiery and seamen of Europe, including Great Britain (Ferguson). It was also acknowledged that soldiers were ‘made not born’ so the Japanese educational system was re-vamped to emulate those of its military rivals (McVeigh). It was in the uptake of schoolboy uniforms that this re-imagining of Japanese imperial strength took place.The Japanese Schoolboy UniformCentral to their rapid modernisation, Japan adopted a constitutional system of education that borrowed from American and French models (Tipton 68-69). The government viewed education as a “primary means of developing a sense of nation,” and at its core, was the imperial authorities’ obsession with defining “Japan and Japaneseness” (Tipton 68-69). Numerous reforms eventually saw, after an abolition of fees, nearly 100% attendance by both boys and girls, despite a lingering mind-set that educating women was “a waste of time” (Tipton 68-69). A boys’ uniform based on the French and Prussian military uniforms of the 1860s and 1870s respectively (Kinsella 217), was adopted in 1879 (McVeigh 47). This jacket, initially with Prussian cape and cap, consists of a square body, standing mandarin style collar and a buttoned front. It was through these education reforms, as visually symbolised by the adoption of military style school uniforms, that citizen making, education, and military training became interrelated aspects of Meiji modernisation (Kinsella 217). Known as the gakuran (gaku: to study; ran: meaning both orchid, and a pun on Horanda, meaning Holland, the only Western country with trading relations in pre-Meiji Japan), these jackets were a symbol of education, indicating European knowledge, power and influence and came to reflect all things European in Meiji Japan. By adopting these jackets two objectives were realised:through the magical power of imitation, Japan would, by adopting the clothing of the West, naturally rise in military power; and boys were uniformed to become not only educated as quasi-Europeans, but as fighting soldiers and sons (suns) of the nation.The gakuran jacket was first popularised by state-run schools, however, in the century and a half that the garment has been in use it has come to symbolise young Japanese masculinity as showcased in campus films, anime, manga, computer games, and as fashion is the preeminent garment for boybands and Japanese hipsters.While the gakuran is central to the rise of global militarism in Japan (McVeigh 51-53), the jacket would go on to form the basis of the Sun Yat Sen and Mao Suits as symbols of revolutionary China (see McVeigh). Supposedly, Sun Yat Sen saw the schoolboy jacket in Japan as a utilitarian garment and adopted it with a turn down collar (Cumming et al.). For Sun Yat Sen, the gakuran was the perfect mix of civilian (school boy) and military (the garment’s Prussian heritage) allowing him to walk a middle path between the demands of both. Furthermore, the garment allowed Sun to navigate between Western style suits and old-fashioned Qing dynasty styles (Gerth 116); one was associated with the imperialism of the National Products Movement, while the other represented the corruption of the old dynasty. In this way, the gakuran was further politicised from a national (Japanese) symbol to a global one. While military uniforms have always been political garments, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as the world was rocked by revolutions and war, civilian clothing also became a means of expressing political ideals (McVeigh 48-49). Note that Mahatma Ghandi’s clothing choices also evolved from wholly Western styles to traditional and emphasised domestic products (Gerth 116).Mao adopted this style circa 1927, further defining the style when he came to power by adding elements from the trousers, tunics, and black cotton shoes worn by peasants. The suit was further codified during the 1960s, reaching its height in the Cultural Revolution. While the gakuran has always been a scholarly black (see Figure 2), subtle differences in the colour palette differentiated the Chinese population—peasants and workers donned indigo blue Mao jackets, while the People’s Liberation Army Soldiers donned khaki green. This limited colour scheme somewhat paradoxically ensured that subtle hierarchical differences were maintained even whilst advocating egalitarian ideals (Davis 522). Both the Sun Yat Sen suit and the Mao jacket represented the rejection of bourgeois (Western) norms that objectified the female form in favour of a uniform society. Neo-Maoism and Mao fever of the early 1990s saw the Mao suit emerge again as a desirable piece of iconic/ironic youth fashion. Figure 2: An example of Gakuran uniform next to the girl’s equivalent on display at Ichikawa Gakuen School (Japan). Photo: Emerald King, 2015.There is a clear and vital link between the influence of the Prussian style Japanese schoolboy uniform on the later creation of the Mao jacket—that of the uniform as an integral piece of worn propaganda (Atkins).For Japan, the rapid deployment of new military and industrial technologies, as well as a sartorial need to present her leaders as modern (read: Western) demanded the adoption of European-style uniforms. The Imperial family had always been removed from Samurai battlefields, so the adoption of Western military costume allowed Japan’s rulers to present a uniform face to other global powers. When Japan found itself in conflict in the Asia Pacific Region, without an organised military, the first requirement was to completely reorganise their system of warfare from a feudal base and to train up national servicemen. Within an American-style compulsory education system, the European-based curriculum included training in mathematics, engineering and military history, as young Britons had for generations begun their education in Greek and Latin, with the study of Ancient Greek and Roman wars (Bantock). It is only in the classroom that ideological change on a mass scale can take place (Reference Please), a lesson not missed by later leaders such as Mao Zedong.ConclusionIn the 1880s, the Japanese leaders established their position in global politics by adopting clothing and practices from the West (Europeans, Britons, and Americans) in order to quickly re-shape their country’s educational system and military establishment. The prevailing military costume from foreign cultures not only disciplined their adopted European bodies, they enforced a new regime through dress (Rall 157-174). For boys, the gakuran symbolised the unity of education and militarism as central to Japanese masculinity. Wearing a uniform, as many authors suggest, furthers compliance (Craik, Nagasawa Kaiser and Hutton, and McVeigh). As conscription became a part of Japanese reality in World War II, the schoolboys just swapped their military-inspired school uniforms for genuine military garments.Re-imagining a Japanese schoolboy uniform from a European military costume might suit ideological purposes (Atkins), but there is more. The gakuran, as a uniform based on a close, but not fitted jacket, was the product of a process of advanced industrialisation in the garment-making industry also taking place in the 1800s:Between 1810 and 1830, technical calibrations invented by tailors working at the very highest level of the craft [in Britain] eventually made it possible for hundreds of suits to be cut up and made in advance [...] and the ready-to-wear idea was put into practice for men’s clothes […] originally for uniforms for the War of 1812. (Hollander 31) In this way, industrialisation became a means to mass production, which furthered militarisation, “the uniform is thus the clothing of the modern disciplinary society” (Black 102). There is a perfect resonance between Japan’s appetite for a modern military and their rise to an industrialised society, and their conquests in Asia Pacific supplied the necessary material resources that made such a rapid deployment possible. The Japanese schoolboy uniform was an integral part of the process of both industrialisation and militarisation, which instilled in the wearer a social role required by modern Japanese society in its rise for global power. Garments are never just clothing, but offer a “world of social relations put upon the wearer’s body” (Jones and Stallybrass 3-4).Today, both the Japanese kimono and the Japanese schoolboy uniform continue to interact with, and interrogate, global fashions as contemporary designers continue to call on the tropes of ‘military chic’ (Tonchi) and Japanese-inspired clothing (Kawamura). References Atkins, Jaqueline. Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States. Princeton: Yale UP, 2005.Bantock, Geoffrey Herman. Culture, Industrialisation and Education. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1968.Black, Prudence. “The Discipline of Appearance: Military Style and Australian Flight Hostess Uniforms 1930–1964.” Fashion & War in Popular Culture. Ed. Denise N. Rall. Bristol: Intellect/U Chicago P, 2014. 91-106.Craik, Jenifer. Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression. Oxford: Berg, 2005.Cumming, Valerie, Cecil Williet Cunnington, and Phillis Emily Cunnington. “Mao Style.” The Dictionary of Fashion History. Eds. Valerie Cumming, Cecil Williet Cunnington, and Phillis Emily Cunnington. Oxford: Berg, 2010.Dalby, Liza, ed. Kimono: Fashioning Culture. London: Vintage, 2001.Davis, Edward L., ed. Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture. London: Routledge, 2005.Dees, Jan. Taisho Kimono: Speaking of Past and Present. Milan: Skira, 2009.Ferguson, N. Civilization: The West and the Rest. London: Penguin, 2011.Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1997. Gerth, Karl. China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation, Cambridge: East Asian Harvard Monograph 224, 2003.Gilbert, W.S., and Arthur Sullivan. The Mikado or, The Town of Titipu. 1885. 16 Nov. 2015 ‹http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/mikado/mk_lib.pdf›. Hillsborough, Romulus. Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen through the Eyes of the Shogun's Last Samurai. Vermont: Tuttle, 2014.Jones, Anne R., and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. New York: Columbia UP, 2002.King, Emerald L. “Schoolboys and Kimono Ladies.” Presentation to the Un-Thinking Asian Migrations Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, 24-26 Aug. 2014. Kinsella, Sharon. “What’s Behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms?” Fashion Theory 6.2 (2002): 215-37. Kuechler, Susanne, and Daniel Miller, eds. Clothing as Material Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2005.Landow, George P. “Liberty and the Evolution of the Liberty Style.” 22 Aug. 2010. ‹http://www.victorianweb.org/art/design/liberty/lstyle.html›.Martin, Richard, and Harold Koda. Orientalism: Vision of the East in Western Dress. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.McVeigh, Brian J. 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