Journal articles: 'Bank of Virginia-Central' – Grafiati (2024)

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Upper Pleistocene deposits from 21 localities in Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and northern Florida yielded 77 ostracode species; virtually all are living today in brackish and marine water. Five late Pleistocene ostracode biofacies signifying lagoonal, oyster bank, estuarine, open sound, and inner sublittoral environments were delineated using Principal Coordinate Analysis. During the late Pleistocene, the Lagoonal and Oyster Bank Biofacies predominated in the Chesapeake Bay area, whereas east-central North Carolina was characterized by an Open Sound Biofacies similar to that in Pamlico Sound today. The Inner Sublittoral Biofacies was present in southeastern Virginia and along the South Carolina coast. The Estuarine Biofacies was found only in the Chesapeake Bay region. Paleoclimates were inferred by a comparison of Holocene and late Pleistocene ostracode zoogeography; apparently the climate during the late Pleistocene was as warm as, and in some areas warmer than at the same latitudes today. Ostracode species are illustrated by scanning electron photomicrographs Cyprideis margarita, Neocaudites atlan-tica, and Microcytherura norfolkensis are described as new species.

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✓ The investigators undertook a retrospective analysis of ventriculostomy infections to evaluate their relationship to monitoring duration and prophylactic catheter exchange. In 1984, the results of an epidemiological study of ventriculostomy-related infection were published. One of the conclusions of the paper was that the incidence of ventriculostomy-related infections rose after 5 days of monitoring. This led to the recommendation that catheters be prophylactically changed at 5-day intervals if prolonged monitoring was required. A recent randomized prospective study on central venous catheters showed no reduction in infection with prophylactic catheter exchanges. This has led the authors to reexamine their experience with ventriculostomy infections. Data on 584 severely head injured patients with ventriculostomies were prospectively collected in two data banks, The Traumatic Coma Data Bank and The Medical College of Virginia Neurocore Data Bank. These data were retrospectively analyzed for factors associated with ventriculostomy related infections. It was found that there is a relationship of ventriculitis to monitoring duration but it is not simple or linear. There is a rising risk of infection over the first 10 days, but infection then becomes very unlikely despite a population that continues to be at risk. Patients in whom catheters were replaced prior to 5 days did not have a lower infection rate than those whose catheters were exchanged at more than 5-day intervals. Based on these data, it is recommended that ventriculostomy catheters for intracranial pressure monitoring be removed as quickly as possible, and in circ*mstances in which prolonged monitoring is required, there appears to be no benefit from catheter exchange.

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INTRODUCTION The revitalization of downtown Richmond, Virginia, in the 21st century has been a slow process, beginning in the financial center near the State Capitol Building and migrating slowly westward along Broad Street, the traditional retail avenue of the City. One by one over the course of the past several years, large, iconic buildings have been rehabilitated for new and exciting uses. These buildings have long been associated with the history of the City itself: the Miller & Rhoads Department Store, the John Marshall Hotel, the First National Bank Building, and the Hotel Richmond among others. The Central National Bank (CNB) Building was built at the dawn of the Great Depression and eventually became one of the last Art Deco style skyscrapers remaining in downtown Richmond. Its location in the neglected western fringe area of Broad Street made it the next logical target for rehabilitation. When Douglas Development purchased the vacant building in 2005, they were buying the crowning piece of architecture that they hoped would become the linchpin project to spur the revitalization of the surrounding neighborhood. That lofty goal was not without challenges, of course, and it took 8 years to put the project together and start the building's renovation. The complications inherent in the rehabilitation of any iconic 75-year old building listed on the National Register of Historic Places to suit continued use for contemporary life also clearly came into play.

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In the opening passage ofA Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf catches herself, and is subsequently caught out, in a moment of reflection on the banks of a river, within the grounds of a barely fictionalised “Oxbridge University”:Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please – it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. (6–7)In this fictional account of her trespass on university property, Woolf forges a close association between the environment in which she does her thinking and what she thinks, so that body, mind, and text are shown to be engaged in the same work. Her thoughts, she suggests, have a physical weight: they bow her head to the ground. The landscape bows with her so that a momentarily surreal vista of flaming leaves and long-haired trees is at once the place she is sitting and the space of her imagination, and the “reflections” through which the undergraduate oars take on a double meaning as the boat floats through her consciousness and back out again. The interruption of the beadle causes her to lose her train of thought: it is a fish that jumps and then disappears back into the river. This reverie, which rehearses the lecture's central argument concerning the material conditions required for gender equality, identifies the university as a case in point. Oxbridge is experienced by Woolf's fictional avatar as a place where intellectual freedom is achieved within a series of carefully regulated spaces, and her essay balances the attraction and acknowledged value of these exclusive spaces against the experience of her own exclusion. As so often in her work, the geography of Woolf's prose is haunted by the Victorians, whose lyric voices she can only half hear as she sits at a college window. Her essay therefore invites a return to nineteenth-century accounts of university life that pay attention to the material, or formal, delineations of the university.

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Sustainable Agriculture Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. Their help and contributions in maintaining the quality of the journal are greatly appreciated. Sustainable Agriculture Research is recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please contact us for the application form at: sar@ccsenet.org   Reviewers for Volume 9, Number 2 Adel Khashaveh, Islamic Azad University, Iran Darwin Pangaribuan, Lampung University, Indonesia Dietrich Darr, Hochschule Rhein-Waal, Germany Entessar Mohammad Al JBawi, General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research, Syria Francesco Sunseri, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy Gema Parra, Universidad de Jaén, Spain Giuseppina Migliore, University of Palermo, Italy Gunnar Bengtsson, Sweden Inder Pal Singh, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Science University (GADVASU), India Isaac Danso, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Oil Palm Research Institute, Ghana Kassim Adekunle Akanni, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria Katarzyna Panasiewicz, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Poland Manuel Teles Oliveira, University Tras os Montes Alto Douro (UTAD), Portugal Maren Langhof, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany Murtazain Raza, Subsidiary of Habib Bank AG Zurich, Pakistan Nehemie T. Donfa*gsiteli, Institute of Medical Research and Medicinal Plants Studies, Cameroon Nicusor-Flavius Sima, University of Agricultural Studies and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, Romania Sait Engindeniz, Ege University Faculty of Agriculture, Turkey Stefano Marino, University of Molise, Italy Subhash Chand, Central Agricultural Research Institute CARI Port Blair, India Suheb Mohammed, University of Virginia, United States Tenaw Workayehu, Hawassa Research Center, Southern Agricultural Research Institute, Ethiopia

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Abstract Chemical crop tree release treatments were applied to young hardwood stands at three sites in central West Virginia to evaluate the effectiveness of glyphosate as Accord (41.5% SL), imazapyr as Arsenal AC (53.1% SL) and Chopper (27.6% EC), and triclopyr as Garlon 3A (44.4% triethylamine salt SL), and Garlon 4 (61.6% butoxyethyl ester EC) using hack-and-squirt injection and low volume stem bark band application methods. American beech (fa*gus grandifolia Ehrh.) was a major competitor to black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) crop trees at each site. The treatments were applied in June and evaluated 12 months after treatment. A numerical rating system ranging from 1 to 7 (0–100% crown affected), which utilized visual symptoms, was used to evaluate the efficacy of each treatment. Trees receiving a rating of 5 (75% crown control) or greater were considered controlled.After 12 months, almost complete control (99+%) was achieved with the Accord, Garlon 3A, and Arsenal AC injection treatments across all study sites. The low volume stem bark band treatments used in this study were not effective. The imazapyr treatments adversely affected several crop trees and are not recommended for hardwood crop tree release. Some crop tree damage was inflicted by the Accord treatments, but when suggested guidelines are followed, Accord is recommended for crop tree release treatments. No crop tree damage was observed in the Garlon 3A treatments. The costs of the injection treatments expressed in dollars/ft2 of basal area controlled were as follows: Accord ($0.91), Garlon 3A ($1.04), and Arsenal AC ($0.84). The Northeast Decision Model Stand Inventory Processor using the NE-TWIGS growth simulator was used to predict the future composition and value of projected stands. The stem injection treatments more than doubled projected growth of black cherry basal area. Real rates of return for investment in weed tree control averaged 8.77% for stem injection treatments. This study indicates that chemical crop tree release treatments using stem injection with label recommended solutions of Accord or Garlon 3A are an effective way to increase the future value of Appalachian hardwood stands. North. J. Appl. For. 18(2):46–54.

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AbstractThis article will explore the idea of the archive as medium, with sub-themes of neutrality, silence, and truth. An archive can serve as the intermediary in the construction of the archival series and collections around a central theme or scope. The messages bound in the archival container are selected to fit into an archival series or collection to reiterate or document a particular aspect. Archival collections have the power and effect of creating cumulative viewpoints over time by way of the contained messages. Selected case studies of more recent user-generated digital archives will be explored in context to these themes; such as A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland and Take Back the Archive (University of Virginia).

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AbstractThe discovery of a pulsar or pulsars orbiting near the Galactic Center (GC) could offer an unprecedented probe of strong-field gravity, the properties of our galaxy's supermassive black hole and insights into the paradoxical star formation history of the region. However, searching for pulsars near the GC is severely hampered by the large electron densities along our line of sight and the scattering-induced pulse broadening of the pulsar emission observed through it. As the broadened pulse length approaches the pulsar period, the periodicity in pulsar emission becomes nearly undetectable. Searches extended to higher frequencies, in an effort to reduce scattering, suffer from reduced intrinsic flux, higher system temperatures and increased atmospheric opacity. We are currently attempting to mitigate the challenges associated with searching for pulsars near the GC by employing new wide bandwidth receivers, upgraded IF distribution systems and novel digital spectrometers in a GC pulsar search campaign at the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA.Our search will cover two frequency bands, from 12-15 GHz (Ku Band) and 18-26 GHz (K Band), during a total of approximately 30 hours of observations, with expected characteristic 10-sigma sensitivities between 5-10 micro-Jy. Our first observations are scheduled for mid-March 2012. Here we will present the status of our observations and initial results.

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Since the arrival of enslaved Africans to the British colony of Virginia in the early 17th century, the spaces of Black men have been policed. Templates characterizing Black males as violent, dangerous, and sexually potent were fully developed by the 18th century and reflected in laws, practices, and systems designed to control their movement. This article applies lenses of social identity and gender to examine contemporary constructs of and practices toward Black men, tracing them back to their historical precursors. The authors contend that fear-based templates continue to be evoked in 21st century America to control the movement and space of Black men through systems and structures which criminalize, terrorize, and economically and educationally dis-advantage them. A major impetus for the development of these systems and structures has been the construction of White masculinities. The authors thus explore the co-constitutive nature of Black and White social identities, a central component of which is gender.

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The need for integration may be the singie most important issue facing social science, the humanities and their subdisciplines, especially given the scope of the social/behavioral problems facing humanity. One path toward integrating disciplines, sub-disciplines, and micro-macro levels is suggested by Spinoza's idea of part/whole methodology, moving rapidly back and forth between concrete instances and general ideas. Any discipline, sub-discipline or level can serve as a valuable stepping-off place, but to advance further, integration with at least one other viewpoint may be necessary. This essay links three hitherto separate subjects: role-taking, meditation, and a theory of emotion. The idea of role-taking plays a central part in sociological social psychology. Meditation implies the same process in terms of a self able to witness the ego. Drama theories also depend upon a witnessing self that establishes a safe zone for resolving intense emotions. All three approaches imply that the everyday ego is largely automated. In one of her novels, Virginia Woolf suggests three crucial points about automated thought: incredible speed, how it involves role-taking, and by implication, the presence of a witnessing self.

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AbstractThe deployment and recovery of autonomous or remotely piloted platforms from research vessels have become a way of significantly extending the capabilities and reach of the research fleet. This paper describes the use of ship-launched and ship-recovered Boeing–Insitu ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAVs were instrumented to characterize the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) structure and dynamics, and to measure ocean surface processes during the October 2012 Equatorial Mixing (EquatorMix) experiment in the central Pacific and during the July 2013 Trident Warrior experiment off the Virginia coast. The UAV measurements, including atmospheric momentum and radiative, sensible, and latent heat fluxes, are complemented by measurements from ship-based instrumentation, including a foremast MABL eddy-covariance system, lidar altimeters, and a digitized X-band radar system. During EquatorMix, UAV measurements reveal longitudinal atmospheric roll structures not sampled by ship measurements, which contribute significantly to vertical fluxes of heat and momentum. With the nadir-looking UAV lidar, surface signatures of internal waves are observed, consistent and coherent with measurements from ship-based X-band radar, a Hydrographic Doppler Sonar System, and a theoretical model. In the Trident Warrior experiment, the instrumented UAVs were used to demonstrate real-time data assimilation of meteorological data from UAVs into regional coupled ocean–atmosphere models. The instrumented UAVs have provided unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution in atmospheric and oceanographic measurements in remote ocean locations, demonstrating the capabilities of these platforms to extend the range and capabilities of the research fleet for oceanographic and atmospheric studies.

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On the afternoon of 21 August 2017, a partial solar eclipse occurred over the Blue Ridge Mountains in central Virginia, USA. High-resolution meteorological observations were made on the floor of a small valley to investigate the effect of eclipse-induced cooling on thermally-driven winds. Measurements taken both at the surface and in the lower atmosphere indicate cooling throughout much of the atmospheric boundary layer. Multiple surface weather stations observed wind rotations that occurred both during and after the eclipse, as wind direction shifted from upvalley to downvalley and back to upvalley. The direction of these rotations (clockwise vs. counterclockwise) varied between stations and was strongly influenced by the proximity of the stations to topographic features in the valley. Doppler lidar observations over the valley floor show a 300 m thick layer of downvalley winds that formed below a deeper layer of upvalley winds. Changes in boundary layer winds and structure during the solar eclipse are similar to changes during the morning and evening transitions. However, the subtle differences in the direction of wind rotations between diurnal- and eclipse-transition periods provided important new insights into the interaction between slope- and valley flows, incoming solar radiation, and topographic features.

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Abstract The Chesapeake Lighthouse and Aircraft Measurements for Satellites (CLAMS) experiment was carried out off the central East Coast of the United States in July 2001. During CLAMS, aerosol particle mass was measured at two ground stations and on the University of Washington’s Convair 580 research aircraft. Physical and chemical characteristics of the aerosols were identified and quantified. Three main aerosol regimes were identified in the region and are discussed in this work: local pollution/sea salt background, long-range transported dust, and long-range transported pollution. The major component measured in the fine mode of the aerosol on the ground at Wallops Island, Virginia, was sulfate, estimated as NH4HSO4, which accounted for 55% ± 9% on average of the fine particle mass (FPM) during the experiment period. Black carbon concentrations accounted for 3% ± 1% of FPM; soil dust was also present, representing on average 6% ± 8% of FPM. The difference between the sum of the masses of the measured compounds and the total fine particle mass was 36% ± 10% of FPM, which is attributed primarily to nitrates and organic carbon that were not measured. Aerosol chemical composition in the atmospheric column is also discussed and compared with ground-based measurements. Aerosol dust concentration reached 40% of FPM during an incursion of Saharan dust between 24 and 26 July. Sulfate aerosol reached 70% of FPM during the transport of regional pollution on 17 July. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol optical thickness, coupled with air parcel back trajectories, supported the conclusion of episodes of long-range transport of dust from the Sahara Desert and pollutants from the continental United States.

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AbstractA field experiment was carried out in 1996 in Central Italy in order to evaluate the effects of nitrogen fertilization (0, 60, 120 kg h-1 N) of Virginia tobacco (cv. K394) in terms of net assimilation, growth and yield. Measurements of net leaf assimilation of CO2 were taken at midday under conditions of strong sunlight (Anhigh) using a portable infra-red gas analyzer and at decreasing photosynthetic photon flux density by shading the leaves with filters (An vs PPFD). For An vs PPFD measurements the Anmax value was calculated as the asymptote of the function proposed by CONNOR et al. (1). Growth was analysed by taking weekly samples to determine the fresh and dry weight and LAI (Leaf Area Index).Before topping, Anhigh (average assimilation found in lower, middle and upper leaves) rose in proportion to increased levels of N (14.7, 17.2, 20.2 μmolm-2 s-1, for 0, 60 and 120 kg ha-1 N respectively). After topping, Anhigh also grew with increased levels of N, but at a lower rate (6.8, 7.2 and 8.2μmol m-2 s-1, respectively).Similarly, for each of the three fertilization methods (N0, N60 and N120) the increase in Anmax in relation to N levels was greater before topping than afterwards (i.e. 18.7, 23.3, 26.3 μmolm-2 s-1 before topping compared to 7.5, 14.0 and 17.8 μmol m-2 s-1 after topping for each treatment respectively). The decrease of CO2 assimilation after topping was probably caused by the accumulation of soluble photo assimilates in the leaf which could have led to a feed-back control on leaf photosynthesis. In N60 and N120 treatments, which had the same leaf expansion rate of 0.14 m2 m-2 d-1 (m2 of leaf on m2 of soil per day), the rapid leaf expansion phase started about 40 days after transplanting, while it started some days later in N0 (rate of 0.11 m2 m-2 d-1). That phase ended at topping in N60 and N120, while in N0 it ended some days before topping. Biomass accumulation followed the same pattern of LAI. The rapid biomass accumulation phase was characterised by growth rates of 9, 16 and 19 g d.m. m-2 d-1, respectively for the N0, N60 and N120 treatments but did not end at topping. This confirms that assimilate accumulation occurred after topping but was not accompanied by leaf expansion. At fertilization rates of 0, 60 and 120 kg N ha-1 the yields of cured leaf tobacco were 3226, 4202 and 4839 kg ha-1 respectively.

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-Dennis Walder, Robert D. Hamner, Derek Walcott. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. xvi + 199 pp.''Critical perspectives on Derek Walcott. Washington DC: Three continents, 1993. xvii + 482 pp.-Yannick Tarrieu, Lilyan Kesteloot, Black writers in French: A literary history of Negritude. Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1991. xxxiii + 411 pp.-Renée Larrier, Carole Boyce Davies ,Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean women and literature. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1990. xxiii + 399 pp., Elaine Savory Fido (eds)-Renée Larrier, Evelyn O'Callaghan, Woman version: Theoretical approaches to West Indian fiction by women. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. viii + 126 pp.-Lisa Douglass, Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the blood: Orality, gender and the 'vulgar' body of Jamaican popular culture. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. ix + 214 pp.-Christine G.T. Ho, Kumar Mahabir, East Indian women of Trinidad & Tobago: An annotated bibliography with photographs and ephemera. San Juan, Trinidad: Chakra, 1992. vii + 346 pp.-Eva Abraham, Richenel Ansano ,Mundu Yama Sinta Mira: Womanhood in Curacao. Eithel Martis (eds.). Curacao: Fundashon Publikashon, 1992. xii + 240 pp., Joceline Clemencia, Jeanette Cook (eds)-Louis Allaire, Corrine L. Hofman, In search of the native population of pre-Colombian Saba (400-1450 A.D.): Pottery styles and their interpretations. Part one. Amsterdam: Natuurwetenschappelijke Studiekring voor het Caraïbisch Gebied, 1993. xiv + 269 pp.-Frank L. Mills, Bonham C. Richardson, The Caribbean in the wider world, 1492-1992: A regional geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xvi + 235 pp.-Frank L. Mills, Thomas D. Boswell ,The Caribbean Islands: Endless geographical diversity. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. viii + 240 pp., Dennis Conway (eds)-Alex van Stipriaan, H.W. van den Doel ,Nederland en de Nieuwe Wereld. Utrecht: Aula, 1992. 348 pp., P.C. Emmer, H.PH. Vogel (eds)-Idsa E. Alegría Ortega, Francine Jácome, Diversidad cultural y tensión regional: América Latina y el Caribe. Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1993. 143 pp.-Barbara L. Solow, Ira Berlin ,Cultivation and culture: Labor and the shaping of slave life in the Americas. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. viii + 388 pp., Philip D. Morgan (eds)-Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The other puritan colony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xiii + 393 pp.-Armando Lampe, Johannes Meier, Die Anfänge der Kirche auf den Karibischen Inseln: Die Geschichte der Bistümer Santo Domingo, Concepción de la Vega, San Juan de Puerto Rico und Santiago de Cuba von ihrer Entstehung (1511/22) bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Immensee: Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 1991. xxxiii + 313 pp.-Edward L. Cox, Carl C. Campbell, Cedulants and capitulants; The politics of the coloured opposition in the slave society of Trinidad, 1783-1838. Port of Spain, Trinidad: Paria Publishing, 1992. xv + 429 pp.-Thomas J. Spinner, Jr., Basdeo Mangru, Indenture and abolition: Sacrifice and survival on the Guyanese sugar plantations. Toronto: TSAR, 1993. xiii + 146 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Lila Gobardhan-Rambocus ,Immigratie en ontwikkeling: Emancipatie van contractanten. Paramaribo: Anton de Kom Universiteit, 1993. 262 pp., Maurits S. Hassankhan (eds)-Juan A. Giusti-Cordero, Teresita Martínez-Vergne, Capitalism in colonial Puerto Rico: Central San Vicente in the late nineteenth century. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. 189 pp.-Jean Pierre Sainton, Henriette Levillain, La Guadeloupe 1875 -1914: Les soubresauts d'une société pluriethnique ou les ambiguïtés de l'assimilation. Paris: Autrement, 1994. 241 pp.-Michèle Baj Strobel, Solange Contour, Fort de France au début du siècle. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994. 224 pp.-Betty Wood, Robert J. Stewart, Religion and society in post-emancipation Jamaica. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. xx + 254 pp.-O. Nigel Bolland, Michael Havinden ,Colonialism and development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1850-1960. New York: Routledge, 1993. xv + 420 pp., David Meredith (eds)-Luis Martínez-Fernández, Luis Navarro García, La independencia de Cuba. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. 413 pp.-Pedro A. Pequeño, Guillermo J. Grenier ,Miami now! : Immigration, ethnicity, and social change. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. 219 pp., Alex Stepick III (eds)-George Irving, Alistair Hennessy ,The fractured blockade: West European-Cuban relations during the revolution. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1993. xv + 358 pp., George Lambie (eds)-George Irving, Donna Rich Kaplowitz, Cuba's ties to a changing world. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993, xii + 263 pp.-G.B. Hagelberg, Scott B. MacDonald ,The politics of the Caribbean basin sugar trade. New York: Praeger, 1991. vii + 164 pp., Georges A. Fauriol (eds)-Bonham C. Richardson, Trevor W. Purcell, Banana Fallout: Class, color, and culture among West Indians in Costa Rica. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American studies, 1993. xxi + 198 pp.-Gertrude Fraser, George Gmelch, Double Passage: The lives of Caribbean migrants abroad and back home. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. viii + 335 pp.-Gertrude Fraser, John Western, A passage to England: Barbadian Londoners speak of home. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. xxii + 309 pp.-Trevor W. Purcell, Harry G. Lefever, Turtle Bogue: Afro-Caribbean life and culture in a Costa Rican Village. Cranbury NJ: Susquehanna University Press, 1992. 249 pp.-Elizabeth Fortenberry, Virginia Heyer Young, Becoming West Indian: Culture, self, and nation in St. Vincent. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. x + 229 pp.-Horace Campbell, Dudley J. Thompson ,From Kingston to Kenya: The making of a Pan-Africanist lawyer. Dover MA: The Majority Press, 1993. xii + 144 pp., Margaret Cezair Thompson (eds)-Kumar Mahabir, Samaroo Siewah, The lotus and the dagger: The Capildeo speeches (1957-1994). Port of Spain: Chakra Publishing House, 1994. 811 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Forty years of steel: An annotated discography of steel band and Pan recordings, 1951-1991. Jeffrey Thomas (comp.). Westport CT: Greenwood, 1992. xxxii + 307 pp.-Jill A. Leonard, André Lucrèce, Société et modernité: Essai d'interprétation de la société martiniquaise. Case Pilote, Martinique: Editions de l'Autre Mer, 1994. 188 pp.-Dirk H. van der Elst, Ben Scholtens ,Gaama Duumi, Buta Gaama: Overlijden en opvolging van Aboikoni, grootopperhoofd van de Saramaka bosnegers. Stanley Dieko. Paramaribo: Afdeling Cultuurstudies/Minov; Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1992. 204 pp., Gloria Wekker, Lady van Putten (eds)-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Chandra van Binnendijk ,Sranan: Cultuur in Suriname. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen/Rotterdam: Museum voor Volkenkunde, 1992. 159 pp., Paul Faber (eds)-Harold Munneke, A.J.A. Quintus Bosz, Grepen uit de Surinaamse rechtshistorie. Paramaribo: Vaco, 1993. 176 pp.-Harold Munneke, Irvin Kanhai ,Strijd om grond in Suriname: Verkenning van het probleem van de grondenrechten van Indianen en Bosnegers. Paramaribo, 1993, 200 pp., Joyce Nelson (eds)-Ronald Donk, J. Hartog, De geschiedenis van twee landen: De Nederlandse Antillen en Aruba. Zaltbommel: Europese Bibliotheek, 1993. 183 pp.-Aart G. Broek, J.J. Oversteegen, In het schuim van grauwe wolken: Het leven van Cola Debrot tot 1948. Amsterdam: Muelenhoff, 1994. 556 pp.''Gemunt op wederkeer: Het leven van Cola Debrot vanaf 1948. Amsterdam: Muelenhoff, 1994. 397 pp.

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-Peter Hulme, Polly Pattullo, Last resorts: The cost of tourism in the Caribbean. London: Cassell/Latin America Bureau and Kingston: Ian Randle, 1996. xiii + 220 pp.-Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Édouard Glissant, Introduction à une poétique du Divers. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1995. 106 pp.-Bruce King, Tejumola Olaniyan, Scars of conquest / Masks of resistance: The invention of cultural identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. xii + 196 pp.-Sidney W. Mintz, Raymond T. Smith, The Matrifocal family: Power, pluralism and politics. New York: Routledge, 1996. x + 236 pp.-Raymond T. Smith, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon, 1995. xix + 191 pp.-Michiel Baud, Samuel Martínez, Peripheral migrants: Haitians and Dominican Republic sugar plantations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. xxi + 228 pp.-Samuel Martínez, Michiel Baud, Peasants and Tobacco in the Dominican Republic, 1870-1930. Knoxville; University of Tennessee Press, 1995. x + 326 pp.-Robert C. Paquette, Aline Helg, Our rightful share: The Afro-Cuban struggle for equality, 1886-1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xii + 361 pp.-Daniel C. Littlefield, Roderick A. McDonald, The economy and material culture of slaves: Goods and Chattels on the sugar plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. xiv + 339 pp.-Jorge L. Chinea, Luis M. Díaz Soler, Puerto Rico: desde sus orígenes hasta el cese de la dominación española. Río Piedras: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994. xix + 758 pp.-David Buisseret, Edward E. Crain, Historic architecture in the Caribbean Islands. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. ix + 256 pp.-Hilary McD. Beckles, Mavis C. Campbell, Back to Africa. George Ross and the Maroons: From Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1993. xxv + 115 pp.-Sandra Burr, Gretchen Gerzina, Black London: Life before emancipation. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. xii + 244 pp.-Carlene J. Edie, Trevor Munroe, The cold war and the Jamaican Left 1950-1955: Reopening the files. Kingston: Kingston Publishers, 1992. xii + 242 pp.-Carlene J. Edie, David Panton, Jamaica's Michael Manley: The great transformation (1972-92). Kingston: Kingston Publishers, 1993. xx + 225 pp.-Percy C. Hintzen, Cary Fraser, Ambivalent anti-colonialism: The United States and the genesis of West Indian independence, 1940-1964. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1994. vii + 233 pp.-Anthony J. Payne, Carlene J. Edie, Democracy in the Caribbean: Myths and realities. Westport CT: Praeger, 1994. xvi + 296 pp.-Alma H. Young, Jean Grugel, Politics and development in the Caribbean basin: Central America and the Caribbean in the New World Order. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. xii + 270 pp.-Alma H. Young, Douglas G. Lockhart ,The development process in small island states. London: Routledge, 1993. xv + 275 pp., David Drakakis-Smith, John Schembri (eds)-Virginia Heyer Young, José Solis, Public school reform in Puerto Rico: Sustaining colonial models of development. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. x + 171 pp.-Carolyn Cooper, Christian Habekost, Verbal Riddim: The politics and aesthetics of African-Caribbean Dub poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. vii + 262 pp.-Clarisse Zimra, Jaqueline Leiner, Aimé Césaire: Le terreau primordial. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1993. 175 pp.-Clarisse Zimra, Abiola Írélé, Aimé Césaire: Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. With introduction, commentary and notes. Abiola Írélé. Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1994. 158 pp.-Alvina Ruprecht, Stella Algoo-Baksh, Austin C. Clarke: A biography. Barbados: The Press - University of the West Indies; Toronto: ECW Press, 1994. 234 pp.-Sue N. Greene, Glyne A. Griffith, Deconstruction, imperialism and the West Indian novel. Kingston: The Press - University of the West Indies, 1996. xxiii + 147 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Peter Manuel ,Caribbean currents: Caribbean music from Rumba to Reggae. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. xi + 272 pp., Kenneth Bilby, Michael Largey (eds)-Daniel J. Crowley, Judith Bettelheim, Cuban festivals: An illustrated anthology. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993. x + 261 pp.-Judith Bettelheim, Ramón Marín, Las fiestas populares de Ponce. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1994. 277 pp.-Marijke Koning, Eric O. Ayisi, St. Eustatius: The treasure island of the Caribbean. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1992. xviii + 224 pp.-Peter L. Patrick, Marcyliena Morgan, Language & the social construction of identity in Creole situations. Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American studies, UCLA, 1994. vii + 158 pp.-John McWhorter, Tonjes Veenstra, Serial verbs in Saramaccan: Predication and Creole genesis. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphic, 1996. x + 217 pp.-John McWhorter, Jacques Arends, The early stages of creolization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. xv + 297 pp.

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I was born and raised in the old mining town of Barrio DAS (Don Andres Soriano), Lutopan, Toledo City where Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC) is situated. Dad started his practice in the company’s hospital as an EENT specialist in the early 60’s and was the ‘go to’ EENT Doc not only of nearby towns or cities (including Cebu City) but also the surrounding provinces in the early 70’s. In my elementary years, he was Assistant Director of ACMDC Hospital (we lived just behind in company housing, only a 3-minute walk). I grew interested in what my dad did, sometimes staying in his clinic an hour or so after school, amazed at how efficiently he handled his patients who always felt so satisfied seeing him. At the end of the day, there was always ‘buyot’ (basket) of vegetables, live chickens, freshwater crabs, crayfish, catfish or tilapia. I wondered if he went marketing earlier, but knew he was too busy for that (and mom did that) until I noticed endless lines of patients outside and remembered when he would say: “Being a doctor here - you’ll never go hungry!” I later realized they were PFs (professional fees) of his patients. As a company doctor, Dad received a fixed salary, free housing, utilities, gasoline, schooling for kids and a company car. It was the perfect life! The company even sponsored his further training in Johns-Hopkins, Baltimore, USA. A family man, he loved us so much and was a bit of a joker too, especially at mealtimes. Dad’s daily routine was from 8 am – 5 pm and changed into his tennis, pelota, or badminton outfit. He was the athlete, winning trophies and medals in local sports matches. Dad wanted me to go to the University of the Philippines (UP) High School in the city. I thought a change of environment would be interesting, but I would miss my friends. Anyway, I complied and there I started to understand that my dad was not just an EENT practicing in the Mines but was teaching in Cebu Institute of Medicine and Cebu Doctors College of Medicine (CDCM) and was a consultant in most of the hospitals in Cebu City. And still he went back up to the mountains, back to Lutopan, our mining town where our home was. The old ACMDC hospital was replaced with a new state-of-the-art hospital now named ACMDC Medical Center, complete with Burn Unit, Trauma center and an observation deck in the OR for teaching interns from CDCM. Dad enjoyed teaching them. Most of them are consultants today who are so fond of my dad that they always send their regards when they see me. My dad loved making model airplanes, vehicles, etc. and I realized I had that skill when I was 8 years old and I made my first airplane model. He used to build them out of Balsa wood which is so skillful. I can’t be half the man he was but I realized this hobby enhanced his surgical skills. My dad was so diplomatic and just said to get an engineering course before you become a pilot (most of dads brothers are engineers). I actually gave engineering a go, but after 1 ½ years I realized I was not cut out for it. I actually loved Biology and anything dealing with life and with all the exposure to my dad’s clinic and hospital activities … med school it was! At this point, my dad was already President of the ORL Central Visayas Chapter and was head of ENT Products and Hearing Center. As a graduate of the UP College of Medicine who finished Otorhinolaryngology residency with an additional year in Ophthalmology as one of the last EENTs to finish in UP PGH in the late 50’s, he hinted that if I finished my medical schooling in CDCM that I consider Otorhinolaryngology as a residency program and that UP-PGH would be a good training center. I ended up inheriting the ORL practice of my dad mostly, who taught me some of Ophthalmology outpatient procedures. Dad showed me clinical and surgical techniques in ENT management especially how to deal with patients beyond being a doctor! You don’t learn this in books but from experience. I learned a lot from my dad. Just so lucky I guess! He actually designed and made his own ENT Treatment Unit, which I’m still using to this day (with some modifications of my own). And he created a certain electrically powered ‘eye magnet’ with the help of my cousin (who’s an engineer now in Chicago) which can attract metallic foreign bodies from within the eyeball to the surface so they can easily be picked out – it really works! Dad loved to travel in his younger years especially abroad for conventions or just simply leisure or vacations, most of the time with my mom. But as he was getting older, travels became uncomfortable. His last travel with me was in 2012 for the AAO-HNS Convention in Washington DC. It was a great time as we then proceeded to a US Navy Airshow in nearby Virginia after the convention, meeting up with my brother who is retired from the USN. Then we took the train to New York and stayed with my sister who is a PICU nurse in NY Presbyterian. Then off to Missouri and Ohio visiting the National Museum of the US Air Force, the largest military aircraft museum in the world. For years, Dad had been battling with heredofamilial-hypercholesterolemia problem which took its toll on his liver and made him weak and tired but still he practiced and continued teaching and sharing his knowledge until he retired at the age of 80. By then, my wife and I would take him and my mom out on weekends, he loved to be driven around and eat in different places. I really witnessed and have seen how he suffered from his illness in his final years. But he never showed it or complained, never even wanted to use a cane! He didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. What most affected me was that my dad passed and I wasn’t even there. I had helped call for a physician to rush to the house and had oxygen cylinders to be brought for him as his end stage liver cirrhosis was causing cardio-pulmonary complications (non-COVID). Amidst all this I was the one admitted for 14 days because of COVID-19 pneumonia. My dad passed away peacefully at home as I was being discharged from the hospital. He was 88. I never reached him just to say good bye and cried when I reached home still dyspneic recovering from the viral pneumonia. I realized from my loved ones who told me that dad didn’t want me to stress out taking care of him, as I’ve been doing ever since, but instead to rest and recuperate myself. I cried again with that thought. In my view, he was not only a great Physician and Surgeon but also the greatest Dad. He lived a full life and touched so many lives with his treatments, charity services and teaching new physicians. It’s seeing, remembering and carrying on what he showed and taught us that really makes us miss him. I really love and miss my dad and with a smile on my face, I see he’s also happy to be with his brothers and sisters who passed on ahead. And that he’s rested. He is a man content, I remember he always said this, ‘ As long as I have a roof over my head and a bed to rest my back, I’m okay!”

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Abstract: This qualitative research with case study design aims to describe the Instructional Leadership of School Principals at SMPN 2 Palangka Raya, seen from: (1) Efforts made by principals in improving the quality of learning in aspects of teachers and students, (2) Stakeholder support for the efforts of principals schools in improving the quality of learning, and (3) Supporting factors and obstacles in the implementation of instructional leadership. Data collection is done by in-depth interviews, participant observation, and study documentation. Determination of data sources is done by using purposive sampling technique. Data analysis was performed using the interactive patterns of Miles and Huberman (1994). Checking the validity of the data is done by using a degree of credibility through both source and method triangulation techniques. The results showed that: (1) Efforts made by school principals in improving the quality of learning in the aspects of teachers were carried out by conducting workshops to improve the quality of learning, support teachers to take part in MGMP activities, routine academic supervision to teachers; while in the aspect of students is done through the implementation of additional learning hours and private tutoring activities, (2) Stakeholder support for the efforts of school principals in improving the quality of learning through synergic collaboration with the Central Kalimantan Province LPMP, BSNP, School Supervisors and School Committees, and (3) Supporting factors in implementing instructional leadership include: the availability of facilities to support the learning process, optimal performance of teaching staff (teacher), and support from parents of students; Constraint factors include ineffective management of learning facilities and infrastructure. Keywords: Instructional Leadership, Principals, SMPN 2 Palangka Raya Abstrak: Penelitian kualitatif dengan rancangan studi kasus ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan tentang Kepemimpinan Instruksional Kepala Sekolah di SMPN 2 Palangka Raya, dilihat dari: (1) Upaya yang dilakukan kepala sekolah dalam meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran pada aspek guru dan siswa, (2) Dukungan stakeholder terhadap upaya kepala sekolah dalam meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran, dan (3) Faktor pendukung dan kendala dalam implementasi kepemimpinan instruksional. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan metode wawancara mendalam, observasi partisipan, dan studi dokumentasi. Penetapan sumber data dilakukan dengan teknik purposive sampling. Analisis data dilakukan dengan menggunakan pola interaktif Miles dan Huberman (1994). Pengecekan keabsahan data dilakukan dengan menggunakan derajat kepercayaan (credibility) melalui teknik triangulasi baik sumber maupun metode. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa: (1) Upaya yang dilakukan kepala sekolah dalam meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran pada aspek guru dilakukan dengan melaksanakan workshop peningkatan kualitas pembelajaran, support guru untuk mengikuti kegiatan MGMP, supervisi akademik rutin kepada para guru; sedangkan pada aspek siswa dilakukan melalui pelaksanaan jam pelajaran tambahan dan kegiatan les privat, (2) Dukungan stakeholder terhadap upaya kepala sekolah dalam meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran melalui kerjasama sinergis dengan pihak LPMP Provinsi Kalimantan Tengah, BSNP, Pengawas sekolah dan Komite sekolah, dan (3) Faktor pendukung dalam mengimplementasi kepemimpinan instruksional meliputi: tersedianya sarana para sarana penunjang proses pembelajaran, kinerja tenaga pendidik (guru) yang optimal, dan dukungan orang tua murid; Faktor kendala meliputi belum efektifnya pengelolaan sarana dan prasarana pembelajaran. Kata Kunci: Kepemimpinan Instruksional, Kepala Sekolah, SMPN 2 Palangka Raya References: Sujak, A. (2009). Kepemimpinan dan Manajer (Eksistensinya dalam Perilaku Organisasi). Jakarta: Rajawali Pers. Fathoni, A. (2006). Metodologi Penelitian dan Teknik Penyusunan Skripsi. Jakarta: PT Rineka Cipta. Fitri, A. Z. (2012). Pendidikan Karakter Berbasis Nilai dan Etika di Sekolah. Jogjakarta: Ar-Ruz Media. Basrowi., & Suwandi. (2008). Memahami Penelitian Kualitatif. Jakarta: Rineka Cipta. Bush, R. (2003). Measuring Quality of Life Among Those with Type 2 in Primary Care. (online), diunduh pada tanggal 20 Juli 2018, dari http://www.uq.edu.au/helath-/helathycomm/docs/Qol.pdf. Cotton, K. (2003). Principals and Student Achievement. Virginia USA, ASCD. Diunduh pada tanggal 22 Juli 2018 dari:http://aktual asiddau.blogspot.com/2010/09/tugas-pokok-dan-fungsi-kepala-sekolah.html Daryanto. (2013). Kepala Sekolah sebagai Pemimpin Pembelajaran. Yogyakarta: Gava Media. Mulyasa, E. (2001). Menjadi Kepala Sekolah Profesional. Bandung: PT. Remaja Rosdakarya. Hallinger, P. (2003). Leadership for 21st Century Schools: From Instructional Leadership to Leadership for Learning. The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Diunduh pada tanggal 21 Oktober 2018, dari http://www.proquest.umi.com. Hermino, A. (2014). Kepemimpinan Pendidikan di Era Globalisasi. Jakarta: Pustaka Pelajar. Juni. D. W. (2012). Kepemimpinan Instruksional Kepala Madrasah dan Inovatif Guru terhadap Produktivitas Kerja Guru Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Se-Kecamatan Manis Renggo Klaten. Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan. Diunduh pada tanggal 29 Oktober 2018, dari http://repo.iaintulungagung.ac.id/50/7/.pdf Jalal, F. (2009). Reformasi Pendidikan Dalam Konteks Otonomi Daerah, Yogyakarta: Adicita Karya Nusa Kompri. (2015). Manajemen Sekolah Orientasi Kemandirian Kepala Sekolah. Pustaka Pelajar. Lunenburg, C., & Irby, J. (2006). The Principalship; Vision toaction. Wadsworth: Cengangelearning. Diunduh pada tanggal 22 Oktober 2018, dari: http://lib.unnes.ac.id/21893/1/1401411127-s.pdf. Makawimbang, H. (2012). Kepemimpinan yang Bermutu. Bandung: Alfabeta Arifin, M. (2012). Etika & Profesi Kependidikan. Yogyakarta: Ar-Ruz Media. Margono, S. (2009). Metodologi Penelitian Pendidikan. Jakarta: Rineka Cipta. Miarso, Y. (2007). Menyemai Benih Teknologi Pendidikan. Jakarta: Kencana. Miles, M., & Huberman, A. M. (1992). Analisis Data Kualitatif: Buku Sumber Tentang Metode-Metode Baru. Jakarta: UI Press. Moleong. L. J. (2010). Metode Penelitian Kualitatif. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Moos, J., & Day, O. C. (2011).How School PrincipalsSustain Over Time, International Perspective. UK. Springer. Diunduh pada tanggal 29 Oktober 2018, dari http://repo.iain-tulungagung.ac.id/50/7/.pdf. Mulyasa, E. (2011). Manajemen Berbasis Sekolah, Konsep, strategi dan Implementasi. Bandung: PT Remaja Rosdakarya Nurdin, S. (2002). Guru dan Implementasi Kurikulum. Jakarta: Ciputat Pers. Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional Nomor 13 Tahun 2007 tentang Standar Kepala Sekolah. Rahmah, S. (2016). Mengenal Sekolah Unggulan.Diunduh pada tanggal 22 April 2019 darihttp://journal.uin-alauddin.ac.id/index.php/Inspiratif-Pendidikan/article/viewFile/3222/3065. Sediono, dkk., (2003). Paket Pelatihan Awal: Untuk Sekolah dan Masyarakat. Jakarta: NZAID. Sugiyono. (2015). Metode Penelitian Pendidikan Pendekatan Kuantitatif, Kualitatif, dan R & D. Bandung: Alfabeta. Sulistyorini. (2009). Evaluasi Pendidikan dalam Meningkatkan Mutu Pendidikan. Yogyakarta: TERAS. Soutworth,G. (2002). InstructionalLeadershipin Schools:Reflectionand Empirical Evidence. Diunduh pada tanggal 10 Nopember 2018, dari: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82042012.pdf. Suharsaputra, U. (2016). Kepemimpinan Inovasi Pendidikan. Bandung: Refika Aditama. Sugiyono. (2014). Memahami Penelitian Kualitatif. Bandung: Alfabeta. Triatna, C. (2015). Perilaku Organisasi. Bandung: PT. Remaja Rosdakarya. Usman, H., & Raharjo, N. E. 2013. Strategi Kepemimpinan Pembelajaran Menyongsong Implementasi Kurikulum 2013. Jurnal Cakrawala Pendidikan. Diunduh pada tanggal 21 Oktober 2018, dari: https://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/cp. Wahjosumidjo. (1999).Kepemimpinan Kepala Sekolah. Jakarta: Raja Grafindo Persada.

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China is positioning itself as a global leader in both renewable energy research, development, and deployment, and fossil fuel investment, exploration, and consumption. The newly merged mega-company, China Energy Investment Corp., has agreed to invest an unprecedented $83.7 billion into shale gas, power, and chemical projects in West Virginia. This decision comes after a visit to China by the United States’ President Trump, during which he secured professed commitments for over $250 billion in energy investments across the United States. While investment and dispossession in Appalachia have long been international in scope, the scale of this investment, as well as its particular political-historical context, makes this case unique. This paper analyzes two key processes central to this conjuncture in West Virginia’s recent history. First, building on recent scholarship, it argues that the ways in which the social and environmental costs of meeting China’s energy needs are increasingly being externalized into global “sacrifice zones” at global scales, even as China is making massive domestic investments in renewable energy, may constitute a sort of regional “socioecological fix” to the environmental effects of capitalist development. Second, via a consideration of Gaventa’s classic and more recent analyses of power and powerlessness in an Appalachian coal community, it explores why and how political assent to such development—which seems to reprise so many historical patterns that local critics decry—is secured in West Virginia. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways in which these familiar processes are playing out in a distinctive contemporary context, one characterized by a combination of populist and authoritarian politics that, in the United States, have touted false promises to “bring back coal” and rejuvenate a struggling local economy, and in China have led an authoritarian state to maintain economic growth for the nation at all costs.

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Looked at again and again half consciously by a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that it loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it. (Virginia Woolf 38) From briefcases to drugs, and from boxing rings to tower blocks, this issue of M/C Journal turns its attention to the diverse materialities that make up our social worlds. Across a variety of empirical contexts, the collected papers employ objects, structures, and spaces as lenses onto corporeality, extending and unsettling habitual understandings of what a body is and does. By exploring everyday encounters among bodies and other materialities, the contributors elucidate the material processes through which human corporeality is enacted and imagined, produced and unmade.That materialities “tell stories” of bodies is an implicit tenet of embodied existence. In biomedical practice, for example, the thermometer assigns a value to a disease process which might already be felt, whereas the blood pressure cuff sets in motion a story of illness that is otherwise hidden or existentially absent. In so doing, such objects recast corporeality, shaping not only experiences of embodied life, but also the very matter of embodiment.Whilst recognising that objects are “companion[s] in life experience” (Turkle 5), this issue seeks to go beyond a sole focus on embodied experience, and explore the co-constitutive entanglements of embodiment and materiality. The collected papers examine how bodies and the material worlds around them are dialectically forged and shaped. By engaging with a specific object, structure, or space, each paper reflects on embodiment in ways that take account of its myriad material dynamics. BodiesHow to conceptualise the body and attend to its complex relationships with sociality, identity, and agency has been a central question in many recent strands of thinking across the humanities and social sciences (see Blackman; Shilling). From discussions of embodiment and personhood to an engagement with the affective and material turns, these strands have challenged theoretical emphases on body/mind dualisms that have historically informed much thinking about bodies in Western thought, turning the analytic focus towards the felt experience of embodied being.Through these explorations of embodiment, the body, as Csordas writes, has emerged as “the existential ground of culture” (135). Inspired by phenomenology, and particularly by the writings of Merleau-Ponty, Csordas has theorised the body as always-already inter-subjective. In constant dynamic interaction with self, others, and the environment, the body is both creative and created, constituting culture while being constituted by it. As such, bodies continuously materialise through sensory experiences of oneself and others, spaces and objects, such that the embodied self is at once both material and social.The concept of embodiment—as inter-subjective, dynamic, and experientially focussed—is central to this collection of papers. In using the term corporeality, we build on the concept of embodiment in order to interrogate the material makings of bodies. We attend to the ways in which objects, structures, and spaces extend into, and emanate from, embodied experiences and bodily imaginings. Being inherently inter-subjective, bodies are therefore not individual, clearly bounded entities. Rather, the body is an "infinitely malleable and highly unstable culturally constructed product” (Shilling 78), produced, shaped, and negated by political and social processes. Studies of professional practice—for example, in medicine—have shown how the body is assembled through culturally specific, sometimes contingent, arrangements of knowledges and practices (Berg and Mol). Such arrangements serve to make the body inherently “multiple” (Mol) as well as mutable.A further challenge to entrenched notions of singularity and boundedness has been offered by the “affective turn” (Halley and Clough) in the humanities and social sciences (see also Gregg and Siegworth; Massumi; Stewart). Affect theory is concerned with the felt experiences that comprise and shape our being-in-the-world. It problematises the discursive boundaries among emotive and visceral, cognitive and sensory, experiences. In so doing, the affective turn has sought to theorise inter-subjectivity by engaging with the ways in which bodily capacities arise in relation to other materialities, contexts, and “force-relations” (Seigworth and Gregg 4). In attending to affect, emphasis is placed on the unfinishedness of both human and non-human bodies, showing these to be “perpetual[ly] becoming (always becoming otherwise)” (3, italics in original). Affect theory thereby elucidates that a body is “as much outside itself as in itself” and is “webbed in its relations” (3).ObjectsIn parallel to the “affective turn,” a “material turn” across the social sciences has attended to “corporeality as a practical and efficacious series of emergent capacities” which “reveals both the materiality of agency and agentic properties inherent in nature itself” (Coole and Frost 20). This renewed attention to the “stuff” (Miller) of human and non-human environments and bodies has complemented, but also challenged, constructivist theorisations of social life that tend to privilege discourse over materiality. Engaging with the “evocative objects” (Turkle) of everyday life has thereby challenged any assumed distinction between material and social processes. The material turn has, instead, sought to take account of “active processes of materialization of which embodied humans are an integral part, rather than the monotonous repetitions of dead matter from which human subjects are apart” (Coole and Frost 8).Key to this material turn has been a recognition that matter is not lumpen or inert; rather, it is processual, emergent, and always relational. From Bergson, through Deleuze and Guattari, to Bennett and Barad, a focus on the “vitality” of matter has drawn questions about the agency of the animate and inanimate to the fore. Engaging with the agentic capacities of the objects that surround us, the “material turn” recognises human agency as always embedded in networks of human and non-human actors, all of whom shape and reshape each other. This is an idea influentially articulated in Actor-Network-Theory (Latour).In an exposition of Actor-Network-Theory, Latour writes: “Scallops make the fisherman do things just as nets placed in the ocean lure the scallops into attaching themselves to the nets and just as data collectors bring together fishermen and scallops in oceanography” (107, italics in original). Humans, non-human animals, objects, and spaces are thus always already entangled, their capacities realised and their movements motivated, directed, and moulded by one another in generative processes of responsive action.Embodied Objects: The IssueAt the intersections of a constructivist and materialist analysis, Alison Bartlett’s paper draws our attention to the ways in which “retro masculinity is materialised and embodied as both a set of values and a set of objects” in Nancy Meyers’s film The Intern. Bartlett engages with the business suit, the briefcase, and the handkerchief that adorn Ben the intern, played by Robert De Niro. Arguing that his “senior white male body” is framed by the depoliticised fetishisation of these objects, Bartlett elucidates how they construct, reinforce, or interrupt the gaze of others. The dynamics of the gaze are also the focus of Anita Howarth’s analysis of food banks in the UK. Howarth suggests that the material spaces of food banks, with their queues of people in dire need, make hunger visible. In so doing, food banks draw hunger from the hidden depths of biological intimacy into public view. Howarth thus calls attention to the ways in which individual bodies may be caught up in circulating cultural and political discursive regimes, in this case ones that define poverty and deservingness. Discursive entanglements also echo through Alexandra Littaye’s paper. Like Bartlett, Littaye focusses on the construction and performance of gender. Autoethnographically reflecting on her experiences as a boxer, Littaye challenges the cultural gendering of boxing in discourse and regulation. To unsettle this gendering, Littaye explores how being punched in the face by male opponents evolved into an experience of camaraderie and respect. She contends that the boxing ring is a unique space in which violence can break down definitions of gendered embodiment.Through the changing meaning of such encounters between another’s hand and the mutable surfaces of her face, Littaye charts how her “body boundaries were profoundly reconfigured” within the space of the boxing ring. This analysis highlights material transformations that bodies undergo—agentially or unagentially—in moments of encounter with other materialities, which is a key theme of the issue. Such material transformation is brought into sharp relief by Fay Dennis’s exploration of drug use, where ways of being emerge through the embodied entanglements of personhood and diamorphine, as the drug both offers and reconfigures bodily boundaries. Dennis draws on an interview with Mya, who has lived experience of drug use, and addiction treatment, in London, UK. Her analysis parses Mya’s discursive construction of “becoming normal” through the everyday use of drugs, highlighting how drugs are implicated in creating Mya’s construction of a “normal” embodied self as a less vulnerable, more productive, being-in-the-world.Moments of material transformation, however, can also incite experiences of embodied extremes. This is elucidated by the issue’s feature paper, in which Roy Brockington and Nela Cicmil offer an autoethnographic study of architectural objects. Focussing on two Brutalist housing developments in London, UK, they write that they “feel small and quite squashable in comparison” to the buildings they traverse. They suggest that the effects of walking within one of these vast concrete entities can be likened to having eaten the cake or drunk the potion from Alice in Wonderland (Carroll). Like the boxing ring and diamorphine, the buildings “shape the physicality of the bodies interacting within them,” as Brockington and Cicmil put it.That objects, spaces, and structures are therefore intrinsic to, rather than set apart from, the dynamic processes through which human bodies are made or unmade ripples through this collection of papers in diverse ways. While Dennis’s paper focusses on the potentiality of body/object encounters to set in motion mutual processes of becoming, an interest in the vulnerabilities of such processes is shared across the papers. Glimpsed in Howarth’s, as well as in Brockington and Cicmil’s discussions, this vulnerability comes to the fore in Bessie Dernikos and Cathlin Goulding’s analysis of teacher evaluations as textual objects. Drawing on their own experiences of teaching at high school and college levels, Dernikos and Goulding analyse the ways in which teacher evaluations are “anything but dead and lifeless;” they explore how evaluations painfully intervene in or interrupt corporeality, as the words on the page “sink deeply into [one’s] skin.” These words thereby enter into and impress upon bodies, both viscerally and emotionally, their affective power unveiling the agency that imbues a lit screen or a scribbled page.Yet, importantly, this issue also demonstrates how bodies actively forge the objects, spaces, and environments they encounter. Paola Esposito’s paper registers the press of bodies on material worlds by exploring the collective act of walking with golden thread, a project that has since come to be entitled “Walking Threads.” Writing that the thread becomes caught up in “the bumpy path, trees, wind, and passers-by,” Esposito explores how these intensities and forms register on the moving collective of bodies, just as those bodies also press into, and leave traces on, the world around them. That diverse materialities thereby come to be imbued with, or perhaps haunted by, the material and affective traces of (other) bodies, is also shown by the metonymic resonance between Littaye’s face and her coach’s pad: each bears the marks of another’s punch. Likewise, in Bartlett’s analysis of The Intern, Ben is described as having “shaped the building where the floor dips over in the corner” due to the heavy printers he used in his previous, analogue era, job.This sense of the marks or fragments left by the human form perhaps emerges most resonantly in Michael Gantley and James Carney’s paper. Exploring mortuary practices in archaeological context, Gantley and Carney trace the symbolic imprint of culture on the body, and of the body on (material) culture; their paper shows how concepts of the dead body are informed by cultural anxieties and technologies, which in turn shape death rituals. This discussion thereby draws attention to the material, even molecular, traces left by bodies, long after those bodies have ceased to be of substance. The (im)material intermingling of human and non-human bodies that this highlights is also invoked, albeit in a more affective way, by Chris Stover’s analysis of improvisational musical spaces. Through a discussion of “musical-objects-as-bodies,” Stover shows how each performer leaves an imprint on the musical bodies that emerge from transient moments of performance. Writing that “improvised music is a more fruitful starting place for thinking about embodiment and the co-constitutive relationship between performer and sound,” Stover suggests that performers’ bodies and the music “unfold” together. In so doing, he approaches the subject of bodies beyond the human, probing the blurred intersections among human and non-human (im)materialities.Across the issue, then, the contributors challenge any neat distinction between bodies and objects, showing how diverse materialities “become” together, to borrow from Deleuze and Guattari. This blurring is key to Gantley and Carney’s paper. They write that “in post-mortem rituals, the body—formerly the manipulator of objects—becomes itself the object that is manipulated.” Likewise, Esposito argues that “we generally think of objects and bodies as belonging to different domains—the inanimate and the animate, the lifeless and the living.” Her paper shares with the others a desire to illuminate the transient, situated, and often vulnerable processes through which bodies and (other) materialities are co-produced. Or, as Stover puts it, this issue “problematise[s] where one body stops and the next begins.”Thus, together, the papers explore the many dimensions and materialities of embodiment. In writing corporeality, the contributors engage with a range of theories and various empirical contexts, to interrogate the material dynamics through which bodies processually come into being. The issue thereby problematises taken-for-granted distinctions between bodies and objects. The corporeality that emerges from the collected discussions is striking in its relational and dynamic constitution, in the porosity of (imagined) boundaries between self, space, subjects, and objects. As the papers suggest, corporeal being is realised through and within continuously changing relations among the visceral, affective, and material. Such relations not only make individual bodies, but also implicate socio-political and ecological processes that materialise in structures, technologies, and lived experiences. We offer corporeality, then, as a framework to illuminate the otherwise hidden, politically contingent, becomings of embodied beings. ReferencesBarad, Karen. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (2003): 801–831.Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010.Berg, Marc, and Annemarie Mol (eds.) Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies. Durham, NC: Duke, 1998.Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. London: Henry Holt and Company, 1911Blackman, Lisa. The Body: Key Concepts. London: Berg, 2008.Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. London: Macmillan, 1865.Coole, Diana, and Samantha Frost. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Eds. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. Durham, NC: Duke, 2010. 1-46.Csordas, Thomas J. “Somatic Modes of Attention.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993): 135-156.Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum, 2004.Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory Seigworth (eds.) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke, 2010.Halley, Jean, and Patricia Ticineto Clough. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007.Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Massumi, Brian. The Politics of Affect. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1962Miller, Daniel. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010.Mol, Anemarie. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002.Seigworth, Gregory, and Melissa Gregg. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” The Affect Theory Reader. Eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth. Durham, NC: Duke, 2010. 1-28.Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. Nottingham: SAGE Publications, 2012.Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2007.Turkle, Sherry. “The Things That Matter.” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Ed. Sherry Turkle. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007.Woolf, Virginia. Street Haunting. London: Penguin Books, 2005.

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Introduction Special occasion cookery has been a staple of the cookbook writing in the English speaking Western world for decades. This includes providing catering for personal milestones as well as religious and secular festivals. Yet, in an era when the culinary publishing sector is undergoing considerable expansion and market segmentation, narratives of foods marking of one of life’s central and inescapable rites—death—are extremely rare. This discussion investigates examples of food writing related to death and funeral rites in contemporary cookbooks. Funeral feasts held in honour of the dead date back beyond recorded history (Luby and Gruber), and religious, ceremonial and community group meals as a component of funeral rites are now ubiquitous around the world. In earlier times, the dead were believed to derive both pleasure and advantage from these offerings (LeClercq), and contemporary practice still reflects this to some extent, with foods favoured by the deceased sometimes included in such meals (see, for instance, Varidel). In the past, offering some sustenance as a component of a funeral was often necessary, as mourners might have travelled considerable distances to attend the ceremony, and eateries outside the home were not as commonplace or convenient to access as they are today. The abundance and/or lavishness of the foods provided may also have reflected the high esteem in which the dead was held, and offered as a mark of community respect (Smith and Bird). Following longstanding tradition, it is still common for Western funeral attendees to gather after the formal parts of the event—the funeral service and burial or cremation —in a more informal atmosphere to share memories of the deceased and refreshments (Simplicity Funerals 31). Thursby notes that these events, which are ostensibly about the dead, often develop into a celebration of the ties between living family members and friends, “times of reunions and renewed relationships” (94). Sharing food is central to this celebration as “foods affirm identity, strengthen kinship bonds, provide comfortable and familiar emotional support during periods of stress” (79), while familiar dishes evoke both memories and promising signals of the continued celebration of life” (94). While in the southern states and some other parts of the USA, it is customary to gather at the church premises after the funeral for a meal made up of items contributed by members of the congregation, and with leftovers sent home with the bereaved family (Siegfried), it is more common in Australasia and the UK to gather either in the home of the principal mourners, someone else’s home or a local hotel, club or restaurant (Jalland). Church halls are a less common option in Australasia, and an increasing trend is the utilisation of facilities attached to the funeral home and supplied as a component of a funeral package (Australian Heritage Funerals). The provision of this catering largely depends on the venue chosen, with the cookery either done by family and/or friends, the hotel, club, restaurant or professional catering companies, although this does not usually affect the style of the food, which in Australia and New Zealand is often based on a morning or afternoon tea style meal (Jalland). Despite widespread culinary innovation in other contexts, funeral catering bears little evidence of experimentation. Ash likens this to as being “fed by grandmothers”, and describes “scones, pastries, sandwiches, biscuits, lamingtons—food from a fifties afternoon party with the taste of Country Women’s Association about it”, noting that funerals “require humble food. A sandwich is not an affront to the dead” (online). Numerous other memoirists note this reliance on familiar foods. In “S is for Sad” in her An Alphabet for Gourmets (1949), food writer M.F.K. Fisher writes of mourners’s deep need for sustenance at this time as a “mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem breaking and our lives too bleakly empty” (135). In line with Probyn’s argument that food foregrounds the viscerality of life (7), Fisher notes that “most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak. […] It is as if our bodies, wiser than we who wear them, call out for encouragement and strength and […] compel us […] to eat” (135, 136). Yet, while funerals are a recurring theme in food memoirs (see, for example, West, Consuming), only a small number of Western cookbooks address this form of special occasion food provision. Feast by Nigella Lawson Nigella Lawson’s Feast: Food that Celebrates Life (2004) is one of the very few popular contemporary cookbooks in English that includes an entire named section on cookery for funerals. Following twenty-one chapters that range from the expected (Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and wedding) to more original (children’s and midnight) feasts, Lawson frames her discussion with an anthropological understanding of the meaning of special occasion eating. She notes that we use food “to mark occasions that are important to us in life” (vii) and how eating together “is the vital way we celebrate anything that matters […] how we mark the connections between us, how we celebrate life” (vii). Such meals embody both personal and group identities because both how and what is eaten “lies at the heart of who we are-as individuals, families, communities” (vii). This is consistent with her overall aims as a food writer—to explore foods’ meanings—as she states in the book’s introduction “the recipes matter […] but it is what the food says that really counts” (vii). She reiterates this near the end of the book, adding, almost as an afterthought, “and, of course, what it tastes like” (318). Lawson’s food writing also reveals considerable detail about herself. In common with many other celebrity chefs and food writers, Lawson continuously draws on, elaborates upon, and ultimately constructs her own life as a major theme of her works (Brien, Rutherford, and Williamson). In doing so, she, like these other chefs and food writers, draws upon revelations of her private life to lend authenticity to her cooking, to the point where her cookbooks could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). The privileging of autobiographical information in Lawson’s work extends beyond the use of her own home and children in her television programs and books, to the revelation of personal details about her life, with the result that these have become well known. Her readers thus know that her mother, sister and first and much-loved husband all died of cancer in a relatively brief space of time, and how these tragedies affected her life. Her first book, How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (1998), opened with the following dedication: “In memory of my mother, Vanessa (1936–1985) and my sister Thomasina (1961–1993)” (dedication page). Her husband, BBC broadcaster and The Times (London) journalist John Diamond, who died of throat cancer in 2001, furthered this public knowledge, writing about both his illness and at length about Lawson in his column and his book C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1999). In Feast, Lawson discusses her personal tragedies in the introduction of the ‘Funeral Foods’ chapter, writing about a friend's kind act of leaving bags of shopping from the supermarket for her when she was grieving (451). Her first recipe in this section, for a potato topped fish pie, is highly personalised in that it is described as “what I made on the evening following my mother’s funeral” (451). Following this, she again uses her own personal experience when she notes that “I don’t think anyone wants to cook in the immediate shock of bereavement […] but a few days on cooking can be a calming act, and since the mind knows no rest and has no focus, the body may as well be busy” (451). Similarly, her recipe for the slowly hard-boiled, dark-stained Hamine Eggs are described as “sans bouche”, which she explains means “without mouths to express sorrow and anguish.” She adds, drawing on her own memories of feelings at such times, “I find that appropriate: there is nothing to be said, or nothing that helps” (455). Despite these examples of raw emotion, Lawson’s chapter is not all about grief. She also comments on both the aesthetics of dishes suitable for such times and their meanings, as well as the assistance that can be offered to others through the preparation and sharing of food. In her recipe for a lamb tagine that includes prunes, she notes, for example, that the dried plums are “traditionally part of the funeral fare of many cultures […] since their black colour is thought to be appropriate to the solemnity of the occasion” (452). Lawson then suggests this as a suitable dish to offer to someone in mourning, someone who needs to “be taken care of by you” (452). This is followed by a lentil soup, the lentils again “because of their dark colour … considered fitting food for funerals” (453), but also practical, as the dish is “both comforting and sustaining and, importantly, easy to transport and reheat” (453). Her next recipe for a meatloaf containing a line of hard-boiled eggs continues this rhetorical framing—as it is “always comfort food […] perfect for having sliced on a plate at a funeral tea or for sending round to someone’s house” (453). She adds the observation that there is “something hopeful and cheering about the golden yolk showing through in each slice” (453), noting that the egg “is a recurring feature in funeral food, symbolising as it does, the cycle of life, the end and the beginning in one” (453). The next recipe, Heavenly Potatoes, is Lawson’s version of the dish known as Mormon or Utah Funeral potatoes (Jensen), which are so iconic in Utah that they were featured on one of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games souvenir pins (Spackman). This tray of potatoes baked in milk and sour cream and then topped with crushed cornflakes are, she notes, although they sound exotic, quite familiar, and “perfect alongside the British traditional baked ham” (454), and reference given to an earlier ham recipe. These savoury recipes are followed by those for three substantial cakes: an orange cake marbled with chocolate-coffee swirls, a fruit tea loaf, and a rosemary flavoured butter cake, each to be served sliced to mourners. She suggests making the marble cake (which Lawson advises she includes in memory of the deceased mother of one of her friends) in a ring mould, “as the circle is always significant. There is a cycle that continues but—after all, the cake is sliced and the circle broken—another that has ended” (456). Of the fruitcake, she writes “I think you need a fruit cake for a funeral: there’s something both comforting and bolstering (and traditional) about it” (457). This tripartite concern—with comfort, sustenance and tradition—is common to much writing about funeral foods. Cookbooks from the American South Despite this English example, a large proportion of cookbook writing about funeral foods is in American publications, and especially those by southern American authors, reflecting the bountiful spreads regularly offered to mourners in these states. This is chronicled in novels, short stories, folk songs and food memoirs as well as some cookery books (Purvis). West’s memoir Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life (2000) has a chapter devoted to funeral food, complete with recipes (132–44). West notes that it is traditional in southern small towns to bring covered dishes of food to the bereaved, and that these foods have a powerful, and singular, expressive mode: “Sometimes we say all the wrong things, but food […] says, ‘I know you are inconsolable. I know you are fragile right now. And I am so sorry for your loss’” (139). Suggesting that these foods are “concern and sympathy in a Pyrex bowl” (139), West includes recipes for Chess pie (a lemon tart), with the information that this is known in the South as “funeral pie” (135) and a lemon-flavoured slice that, with a cup of tea, will “revive the spirit” (136). Like Lawson, West finds significance in the colours of funeral foods, continuing that the sunny lemon in this slice “reminds us that life continues, that we must sustain and nourish it” (139). Gaydon Metcalf and Charlotte Hays’s Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral (2005), is one of the few volumes available dedicated to funeral planning and also offers a significant cookery-focused section on food to offer at, and take to, funeral events. Jessica Bemis Ward’s To Die For: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales from the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia (2004) not only contains more than 100 recipes, but also information about funeral customs, practical advice in writing obituaries and condolence notes, and a series of very atmospheric photographs of this historic cemetery. The recipes in the book are explicitly noted to be traditional comfort foods from Central Virginia, as Ward agrees with the other writers identified that “simplicity is the by-word when talking about funeral food” (20). Unlike the other examples cited here, however, Ward also promotes purchasing commercially-prepared local specialties to supplement home-cooked items. There is certainly significantly more general recognition of the specialist nature of catering for funerals in the USA than in Australasia. American food is notable in stressing how different ethnic groups and regions have specific dishes that are associated with post-funeral meals. From this, readers learn that the Amish commonly prepare a funeral pie with raisins, and Chinese-American funerals include symbolic foods taken to the graveside as an offering—including piles of oranges for good luck and entire roast pigs. Jewish, Italian and Greek culinary customs in America also receive attention in both scholarly studies and popular American food writing (see, for example, Rogak, Purvis). This is beginning to be acknowledged in Australia with some recent investigation into the cultural importance of food in contemporary Chinese, Jewish, Greek, and Anglo-Australian funerals (Keys), but is yet to be translated into local mainstream cookery publication. Possible Publishing Futures As home funerals are a growing trend in the USA (Wilson 2009), green funerals increase in popularity in the UK (West, Natural Burial), and the multi-million dollar funeral industry is beginning to be questioned in Australia (FCDC), a more family or community-centered “response to death and after-death care” (NHFA) is beginning to re-emerge. This is a process whereby family and community members play a key role in various parts of the funeral, including in planning and carrying out after-death rituals or ceremonies, preparing the body, transporting it to the place of burial or cremation, and facilitating its final disposition in such activities as digging the grave (Gonzalez and Hereira, NHFA). Westrate, director of the documentary A Family Undertaking (2004), believes this challenges us to “re-examine our attitudes toward death […] it’s one of life’s most defining moments, yet it’s the one we typically prepare for least […] [and an indication of our] culture of denial” (PBS). With an emphasis on holding meaningful re-personalised after-disposal events as well as minimal, non-invasive and environmentally friendly treatment of the body (Harris), such developments would also seem to indicate that the catering involved in funeral occasions, and the cookbooks that focus on the provision of such food, may well become more prominent in the future. References [AHF] Australian Heritage Funerals. “After the Funeral.” Australian Heritage Funerals, 2013. 10 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.ahfunerals.com.au/services.php?arid=31›. Ash, Romy. “The Taste of Sad: Funeral Feasts, Loss and Mourning.” Voracious: Best New Australian Food Writing. Ed. Paul McNally. Richmond, Vic.: Hardie Grant, 2011. 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.romyash.com/non-fiction/the-taste-of-sad-funeral-feasts-loss-and-mourning›. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php›. Brien, Donna Lee, and Rosemary Williamson. “‘Angels of the Home’ in Cyberspace: New Technologies and Biographies of Domestic Production”. Biography and New Technologies. Australian National University. Humanities Research Centre, Canberra, ACT. 12-14 Sep. 2006. Conference Presentation. Diamond, John. C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too… . London: Vermilion, 1998. Fisher, M.F.K. “S is for Sad.” An Alphabet for Gourmets. New York, North Point P, 1989. 1st. pub. New York, Viking: 1949. Gonzalez, Faustino, and Mildreys Hereira. “Home-Based Viewing (El Velorio) After Death: A Cost-Effective Alternative for Some Families.” American Journal of Hospice & Pallative Medicine 25.5 (2008): 419–20. Harris, Mark. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. New York: Scribner, 2007. Jalland, Patricia. Australian Ways of Death: A Social and Cultural History 1840-1918. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2002. Jensen, Julie Badger. The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations. Salt Lake City: Deseret, 2004. Keys, Laura. “Undertaking a Jelly Feast in Williamstown.” Hobsons Bay Leader 28 Mar. 2011. 2 Apr. 2013 ‹http://hobsons-bay-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/undertaking-a-jelly-feast-in-williamstown›. Lawson, Nigella. How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998. ---. Feast: Food that Celebrates Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 2004. LeClercq, H. “The Agape Feast.” The Catholic Encyclopedia I, New York: Robert Appleton, 1907. 3 Apr. 2013. ‹http://www.piney.com/AgapeCE.html›. Luby, Edward M., and Mark F. Gruber. “The Dead Must Be Fed: Symbolic Meanings of the Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9.1 (1999): 95–108. Metcalf, Gaydon, and Charlotte Hays. Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. New York: Miramax, 2005. [NHFA] National Home Funeral Alliance. “What is a Home Funeral?” National Home Funeral Alliance, 2012. 3 Apr. 2013. ‹http://homefuneralalliance.org›. PBS. “A Family Undertaking.” POV: Documentaries with a Point of View. PBS, 2004. 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.pbs.org/pov/afamilyundertaking/film_description.php#.UYHI2PFquRY›. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Food/Sex/Identities. London: Routledge, 2000. Purvis, Kathleen. “Funeral Food.” The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Ed. Andrew F. Smith. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. 247–48. Rogak, Lisa. Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World. Berkeley: Ten Speed P, 2004. Siegfried, Susie. Church Potluck Carry-Ins and Casseroles: Homestyle Recipes for Church Suppers, Gatherings, and Community Celebrations. Avon, MA.: Adams Media, 2006. Simplicity Funerals. Things You Need To Know About Funerals. Sydney: Simplicity Funerals, 1990. Smith, Eric Alden, and Rebecca L. Bliege Bird. “Turtle Hunting and Tombstone Opening: Public Generosity as Costly Signaling.” Evolution and Human Behavior 21.4 (2000): 245–61.Spackman, Christy. “Mormonism’s Jell-O Mold: Why Do We Associate the Religion With the Gelatin Dessert?” Slate Magazine 17 Aug. (2012). 3 Apr. 2013.Thursby, Jacqueline S. Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2006. Varidel, Rebecca. “Bompas and Parr: Funerals and Food at Nelson Bros.” Inside Cuisine 12 Mar. (2011). 3 Apr. 2013 ‹http://insidecuisine.com/2011/03/12/bompas-and-parr-funerals-and-food-at-nelson-bros›. Ward, Jessica Bemis. Food To Die for: A Book of Funeral Food, Tips, and Tales from the Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg, Virginia. Lynchburg: Southern Memorial Association, 2004. West, Ken. A Guide to Natural Burial. Andover UK: Sweet & Maxwell, 2010. West, Michael Lee. Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life. New York: Perennial, 2000. Wilson, M.T. “The Home Funeral as the Final Act of Caring: A Qualitative Study.” Master in Nursing thesis. Livonia, Michigan: Madonna University, 2009.

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Russell Belk,in an amazing 1995 essay on consumption (where 22 of the 38 pages are references, demonstrating hyper-consumption in action), argues that the 1990s heralded a new understanding of consumer behaviour. In the shifting paradigm identified by Belk, the analytical focus of consumer behaviour research became translated from 'Economic/Psychological' to 'Sociological/Anthropological', and from a 'Focus on buying' to a 'Focus on consuming' (61). This made intuitive sense in a world of postmodern marketing (Brown), and it re-enforced an idea that had been put forward by Dallas Smythe that audiences are sold to advertisers . The value of an audience lies in its potential to consume, and Virginia Nightingale subsequently explored this dynamic in her argument that consumption is work: "It is because of the relationship between advertising and television that watching television is work. Watching television is a leisure activity in the pursuit of which viewers are asked to lose themselves, to blur the distinctions between reality and fantasy. They are asked to forget that watching television is also work, to see television advertisem*nts not as a continual reminder of the work of purchasing, but as entertainment. They are asked to believe that what they see on television is what they want to see, specially selected to please them." (33-4) Nightingale had previously argued that consumption in the domestic context was not only work, but quintessentially women'swork: Commercial television is an integral part of the modern shopping world. In this age of image advertising, it is from television that the meanings of brands are learned. If women learned to shop in the nineteenth century, they had to be taught to shop for others in the twentieth. The unpredictable woman of the nineteenth century had to be transformed into predictable, programmable 'Mum' one hundred years later. The branding of food commodities and the establishment of television as an efficient system of brand information assisted a change in the mode of address of the shopping world to women purchasers. In the cut-price world of the 50s and 60s seduction was out and value was in. In a shopping world of comparable brands, Mum has to learn not only the meaning, the lifestyle connotations of branded products from television advertising, but their meanings for the members of the family destined to consume her purchases (33). This way of looking at the world although illuminating begged the question as to an appropriate definition of work. Why did watching television seem so much less like work than, say, typing an article, or working as a waiter? Staying alive breathing, metabolising requires work at some level; what differentiates the 'going to work' side of working: and how does this relate to a consumer society which (as Belk identifies) increasingly involves an emphasis upon consumption rather than production? Greg Hearn, Tom Mandeville and David Anthony estimate that "consumption now accounts for about 60 per cent of GDP ... mass communication, advertising and the consumer economy form a nexus that is centrally implicated in the operation of Western societies" (104). They go on to argue that the "central assertion of postmodern views of consumption is that social identity can be interpreted as a function of consumption" (106). Citing Lunt and Livingstone, Hearn et al. suggest that "fuelled by their ability to modify and process the building blocks of identity (images, visual codes, phrases and ideas), our current mass media, via identity construction, have expanded consumption in advanced industrial societies" (107). Identity construction, however, is a given of existence it is impossible to live without some kind of identity, and impossible to adopt an identity in a vacuum, with no relationship to the social world in which the individual lives. Given that identity-construction is a necessity of existence, and will also necessarily reflect an individual's social practices and their consumption characteristics, can it be seen as 'work'? (And, if not, why not?) One way this problem can be investigated is through changes in work patterns in contemporary societies. Among the most dramatic socio-economic developments of the past two generations has been the changing role of women in the workforce. Some women still in employment are members of the generation which, as recently as the 1960s, were obliged to surrender their jobs upon marriage. Many were subsequently re-employed on a casual basis, but others were unable to resume a career of any sort given that they now had 'family responsibilities' (even if that 'family responsibility' was their spouse alone). The reason behind the compulsory female resignations was the patriarchal view that it was the husband's role to provide financially for his wife. For a married woman to hold a job was akin to double dipping the job was there to support a woman who had no husband to support her; or for a man with a wife (and sometimes other family) to provide for. When women successfully campaigned against this discriminatory practice, and later in favour of equal pay for equal work, the ultimate result was that the real wages of men fell. Two-income families do not earn twice a 'living' wage; they earn a living wage between them. The advent of equal pay for women means that only a small proportion of women (or men) have the choice of making domestic and community-based unwaged labour the focus of their daily life, without the effect of this choice being a much smaller financial engagement in consumer society. The gender dimension to money-earning remains considerable, even in this age of equal opportunity legislation. In particular, the 'wages for housework' campaign has been all but lost over the past thirty years. Further, although it is now unlawful for women to receive less money than their male counterparts for equal work, women's average pay continues to lag significantly behind that of men (WEL). This is one way of demonstrating that traditional women's work tends to be less well paid than men's work. Nursing, teaching and office work all remain low-paid compared with executive occupations, although compulsory post-schooling study requirements might be higher in the female areas. And it is commonplace to note that in traditionally female occupations (like primary school teaching) although males might be out-numbered 5:1 it tends to be a man who gets promoted. (Less a case of the glass ceiling: more a case of the invisible escalator.) In capitalist societies, the original source of monetary wealth lies in power the power to control labour/work for the profit of an individual other than the labourer. This is a hangover from feudal agrarianism, and a precursor to the information age (Bell). In all human society, power confers advantage, including the capacity to direct the work of others. While this was true of the feudal lord, the merchant prince and the early industrialist, it achieved its purest form with the introduction of monetary rewards for labour. Frederic Jameson (77) comments that: "technology may well serve as adequate shorthand to designate that enormous properly human and anti-natural power of dead human labour stored up in our machinery, an alienated power, what Sartre calls the counterfinality of the practico-inert, which turns back on and against us in unrecognizable forms and seems to constitute the massive dystopian horizon of our collective as well as our individual praxis." What Jameson says of technology in general would be equally true of the particular technology of money. Accumulated capital, and its constituent parts of coins, notes, currencies and data sets represents 'dead human labour', in the sense of work expended in the past in the production of goods and services. It is this stored human labour which buys the carrots, or the magazine subscription, and which represents an exchange for the time and energy that would have been required to grow the carrots, or produce the magazine. Similarly, the income paid to the carrot-grower, the journalist, the designer and the advertiser represents to them a distilled recompense for their work. Arguably, the energy that produced the labour for which one is paid is 'dead' energy controlled by another and exchanged for money. At an individual level, the roles played in the personaeof a person earning money, or a person spending money (a common indication of consumption) are very different: with the role of the person earning money much more circ*mscribed. Joshua Meyrowitz (29-31) spends some time in explaining Goffman's analysis of the roles of the waiter, using metaphors from drama of front/back region/stage: Waiters for example are in a front region when they serve people in a restaurant dining room. In the front region waiters are usually polite and respectful. Their appearance and manner is one of cleanliness and efficiency. They do not enter into the dinner conversations of restaurant patrons. They do not comment on their customers' eating habits or table manners. They rarely, if ever, eat while in the sight of patrons. When waiters step from the dining room into the kitchen, however, they suddenly cross a line between the onstage and backstage areas. In the kitchen waiters are in an area which is hidden from the audience and they share this area with others who perform the same or similar roles vis-a-vis the audience. Here, then, waiters may make remarks to each other about the 'strange behaviour of the people at table seven', they may imitate a customer, or give advice to a 'rookie' on methods of getting big tips. In the kitchen food may be handled and discussed with somewhat less respect than in the dining room, and waiters may 'get out of costume' or sit in a sloppy position with their feet up on a counter... We expect to be treated differently in a restaurant than in a doctor's office. We expect the doctor to appear confident, concerned, patient and professional and slightly superior. We expect a waitress to be efficient, respectful and nonintrusive. And we demand these differences in 'character' even if the waitress is a student earning her way through medical school. This analysis indicates that where behaviour is related to money where a person is paid to fulfil a role; the production of the goods or services the behaviour is more constrained and circ*mscribed by the expectations of the employer/consumer. The behaviour of people who are paying for a service, whose intention is to consume, is the least constrained. It may be that Kerry Packer has awful table manners, but few restauranteurs would fail to be pleased to see him walking through their door. At the level of the individual producer/consumer in consumer societies, money is seen to exert decisive control in the lives of workers. Is it possible to think of a better, less obviously coercive way to get people into cars, and onto freeways and clocking into the office on such a regular, reliable basis: other than their being paid to do so? American academic Camille Paglia does not think so: "Capitalism, whatever its problems, remains the most efficient economic mechanism yet devised to bring the highest quality of life to the greatest number... Because I have studied the past, I know that, in America and under capitalism, I am the freest woman in history" (Menand 27). Paglia obviously considers herself sufficiently well paid. Since access to money limits access to goods, to some experiences and to travel, money is a potent incentive to behave in a way that is rewarded by society. Even so, not everyone is able to exhibit the work behaviour that social systems are most inclined to reward. The stresses of unemployment lie in its curtailing of options; in its implications for health, housing, leisure, and educational opportunities; and in the fact that the need to get more money monopolises the time of the unemployed. The old adage 'time is money' is only partly true. In some respects the two share an inverse relationship: 'free' time is inversely related to money. For the vast majority of the population, the opportunity to convert work/labour into money significantly limits the time available in which to enjoy consuming the rewards for their labours. When people have 'free' time, it is frequently because the opportunity to earn money by the production of goods and services is absent. Consequently possible consumption activities are also severely limited. There are no hard and fast rules in Jameson's late capitalist society, but the general case might be that we are paid to produce goods, services and information through our controlled work, while consumption is generally constructed as a voluntary activity. It is partly that voluntariness which implicates consumption in identity construction, makes it an expression of individual difference, and renders it potentially pleasurable. Arguably, however, the voluntary nature of consumption together with the impossibility of notconsuming prevents it from being categorised unambiguously as 'work'. The relationship of work to money helps explain why it may be work to watch television, but it's a different kind of work from that performed at the Coles check-out. Identity-construction may be a major consumer project using raw materials provided by the mass media, but it is not work we're paid to do. No-one else is prepared to use their stored labour to recompense us for our everyday work as non-professional television viewers, or for our project of self-individuation as expressed through the production of our personal identity. References Belk, Russell. "Studies in the New Consumer Behaviour." Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies. Ed. D. Miller. London: Routledge, 1995. 58-95. Bell, Daniel. The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society. Rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Brown, Stephen. Postmodern Marketing. London: Routledge, 1995. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Hearn, Greg, Tom Mandeville and David Anthony. The Communication Superhighway: Social and Economic Change in the Digital Age. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. Jameson, Frederic. "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." New Left Review146 (1984): 53-92. Lunt, Peter, and Sonia Livingstone. Mass Consumption and Personal Identity: Everyday Economic Experience. Milton Keynes: Open UP, 1992. Menand, Louis. "Sexual Politics with Snap, Crackle and Pure Paglian Pop." The Australian3 Feb. 1993: 27. Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Nightingale, Virginia. "Women as Audiences." Television and Women's Culture: The Politics of the Popular. Ed. M.-E. Brown. Sydney: Currency Press, 1990. 25-36. Smythe, Dallas. Dependency Road. New Jersey: Ablex, 1981. WEL. 12 Nov. 2001 <http://www.wel.org.au/policy/00pol1.htm>. Links http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwpress/jrls/cjc/BackIssues/17.4/melody.html http://www.onemoreweb.com/soapbox/paglia.html http://www.wel.org.au/policy/00pol1.htm http://www.business.utah.edu/~mktrwb/ http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/jameson/ Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia. "The Work of Consumption: Why Aren't We Paid?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4.5 (2001). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Green.xml >. Chicago Style Green, Lelia, "The Work of Consumption: Why Aren't We Paid?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4, no. 5 (2001), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Green.xml > ([your date of access]). APA Style Green, Lelia. (2001) The Work of Consumption: Why Aren't We Paid?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Green.xml > ([your date of access]).

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On 10 September 2012, a cat named Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign for mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, Canada (“Tuxedo Stan for Mayor”). Backed by his human supporters in the Tuxedo Party, he ran on a platform of animal welfare: “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” Artwork Courtesy of Joe Popovitch As a feline activist, Tuxedo Stan joins an unexpected—if not entirely unprecedented—cohort of cats that advocate for animal welfare through their “cute” appeals for humane treatment. From Tuxedo Stan’s internet presence to his appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN segment “The RidicuList,” Tuxedo Stan’s cute campaign opens space for a cultural imaginary that differently envisions animals’ and humans’ political responsibilities. Who Can Be a Moral Agent? Iris Marion Young proposes “political responsibility” as a way to answer a question central to human and animal welfare: “How should moral agents—both individual and organizational—think about their responsibilities in relation to structural social injustice?” (7). In legal frameworks, responsibility is connected to liability: an individual acts, harm occurs, and the law decides how much liability the individual should assume. However, Young redefines responsibility in relation to structural injustices, which she conceptualizes as “harms” that result from “structural processes in which many people participate.” Young argues that “because it is therefore difficult for individuals to see a relationship between their own actions and structural outcomes, we have a tendency to distance ourselves from any responsibility for them” (7). Young presents political responsibility as a call to share the responsibility “to engage in actions directed at transforming the structures” and suggests that the less-advantaged might organize and propose “remedies for injustice, because their interests [are] the most acutely at stake” and because they are vulnerable to the actions of others “situated in more powerful and privileged positions” (15). Though Young does not address animals, her conception of responsible agency raises a question: who can be a moral agent? Arguably, the answer to this question changes as cultural imaginaries expand to accommodate difference, including gender- and species-difference. Corey Wrenn analyzes a selection of anti-suffragette postcards that equate granting votes to women as akin to granting votes to cats. Young shifts responsibility from a liability to a political frame, but Wrenn’s work suggests that a further shift is necessary where responsibility is gendered and tied to domestic, feminized roles: Cats and dogs are gendered in contemporary American culture…dogs are thought to be the proper pet for men and cats for women (especially lesbians). This, it turns out, is an old stereotype. In fact, cats were a common symbol in suffragette imagery. Cats represented the domestic sphere, and anti-suffrage postcards often used them to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement. (Wrenn) Dressing cats in women’s clothing and calling them suffragettes marks women as less-than-human and casts cats as the opposite of human. The frilly garments, worn by cats whose presence evoked the domestic sphere, suggest that women belong in the domestic sphere because they are too soft, or perhaps too cute, to contend with the demands of public life. In addition, the cards that feature domestic scenes suggest that women should account for their families’ welfare ahead of their own, and that women’s refusal to accept this arithmetic marks them as immoral—and irresponsible—subjects. Not Schrödinger's Cat In different ways, Jacques Derrida and Carey Wolfe explore the question Young’s work raises: who can be a moral agent? Derrida and Wolfe complicate the question by adding species difference: how should (human) moral agents think about their responsibilities (to animals)? Prompted by an encounter with his cat, Jacques Derrida follows the figure of the animal, through a variety of texts, in order to make sensible the trace of “the animal” as it has appeared in Western traditions. Derrida’s cat accompanies him as Derrida playfully, and attentively, deconstructs the rationalist, humanist discourses that structure Western philosophy. Discourses, whose tenets reflect the systems of beliefs embedded within a culture, are often both hegemonic and invisible; at least for those who enjoy privileged positions within the culture, discourses may simply appear as common sense or common knowledge. Derrida argues that Western, humanist thinking has created a discourse around “the human” and that this discourse deploys a reductive figure of “the animal” to justify human supremacy and facilitate human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is the doctrine that humans’ superiority to animals exempts humans from behaving humanely towards those deemed non-human, and it is the hegemony of the discourse of human exceptionalism that Derrida contravenes. Derrida interrupts by entering the discourse with “his” cat and creating a counter-narrative that troubles “the human” hegemony by redefining what it means to think. Derrida orients his intellectual work as surrender—he surrenders to the gaze of his cat and to his affectionate response to her presence: “the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. The cat that looks at me naked and that is truly a little cat, this cat I am talking about…It comes to me as this irreplaceable living being that one day enters my space, into this place where it can encounter me, see me, even see me naked” (6-9, italics in original). The diminutive Derrida uses to describe his cat, she is little and truly a little cat, gestures toward affection, or affect, as the “thing…philosophy has, essentially, had to deprive itself of” (7). For Derrida, rationalist thinking hurries to “enclose and circ*mscribe the concept of the human as much as that of reason,” and it is through this movement toward enclosure that rationalist humanism fails to think (105). While Derrida questions the ethics of humanist philosophy, Carey Wolfe questions the ethics of humanism. Wolfe argues that “the operative theories and procedures we now have for articulating the social and legal relation between ethics and action are inadequate” because humanism imbues discourses about human and/or animal rights with utilitarian and contractarian logics that are inherently speciesist and therefore flawed (192). Utilitarian approaches attempt to determine the morality of a given action by weighing the act’s aggregate benefit against its aggregate harm. Contractarian approaches evaluate a given (human or animal) subject’s ability to understand and comply with a social contract that stipulates reciprocity; if a subject receives kindness, that subject must understand their implied, moral responsibility to return it. When opponents of animal rights designate animals as less capable of suffering than humans and decide that animals cannot enter moral contracts, animals are then seen as not only undeserving of rights but as incapable of bearing rights. As Wolfe argues, rights discourse—like rationalist humanism—reaches an impasse, and Wolfe proposes posthumanist theory as the way through: “because the discourse of speciesism…anchored in this material, institutional base, can be used to mark any social other, we need to understand that the ethical and philosophical urgency of confronting the institution of speciesism and crafting a posthumanist theory of the subject has nothing to do with whether you like animals” (7, italics in original). Wolfe’s strategic statement marks the necessity of attending to injustice at a structural level; however, as Tuxedo Stan’s campaign demonstrates, at a tactical level, how much you “like” an animal might matter very much. Seriously Cute: Tuxedo Stan as a Moral Agent Tuxedo Stan’s 2012-13 campaign pressed for improved protections for stray and feral cats in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). While “cute” is a subjective, aesthetic judgment, numerous internet sites make claims like: “These 30 Animals With Their Adorable Miniature Versions Are The Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww” (“These 30 Animals”). From Tuxedo Stan’s kitten pictures to the plush versions of Tuxedo Stan, available for purchase on his website, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign positioned him within this cute culture (Chisolm “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion”). Photo Courtesy of Hugh Chisolm, Tuxedo Party The difference between Tuxedo Stan’s cute and the kind of cute invoked by pictures of animals with miniature animals—the difference that connects Tuxedo Stan’s cute to a moral or ethical position—is the narrative of political responsibility attached to his campaign. While existing animal protection laws in Halifax’s Animal Protection Act outlined some protections for animals, “there was a clear oversight in that issues related to cats are not included” (Chisolm TuxedoStan.com). Hugh Chisholm, co-founder of the Tuxedo Party, further notes: There are literally thousands of homeless cats — feral and abandoned— who live by their willpower in the back alleys and streets and bushes in HRM…But there is very little people can do if they want to help, because there is no pound. If there’s a lost or injured dog, you can call the pound and they will come and take the dog and give it a place to stay, and some food and care. But if you do the same thing with a cat, you get nothing, because there’s nothing in place. (Mombourquette) Tuxedo Stan’s campaign mobilizes cute images that reveal the connection between unnoticed and unrelieved suffering. Proceeds from Tuxedo Party merchandise go toward Spay Day HRM, a charity dedicated to “assisting students and low-income families” whose financial situations may prevent them from paying for spay and neuter surgeries (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). According to his e-book ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story, Stan “wanted to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of homeless, unneutered cats in [Halifax Regional Municipality]. We needed a low-cost spay/neuter clinic. We needed a Trap-Neuter-Return and Care program. We needed a sanctuary for homeless, unwanted strays to live out their lives in comfort” (Tuxedo Stanley and Chisholm 14). As does “his” memoir, Tuxedo Stan’s Pledge of Compassion and Action follows Young’s logic of political responsibility. Although his participation is mediated by human organizers, Tuxedo Stan is a cat pressing legislators to “pledge to help the cats” by supporting “a comprehensive feline population control program to humanely control the feline population and prevent suffering” and by creating “an affordable and accessible spay/neuter program” (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). While framing the feral cat population as a “problem” that must be “fixed” upholds discourses around controlling subjected populations’ reproduction, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign also opens space for a counternarrative that destabilizes the human exceptionalism that encompasses his campaign. A Different ‘Logic’, a Different Cultural Imaginary As Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign in 2012, fellow feline Hank ran for the United States senate seat in Virginia – he received approximately 7,000 votes and placed third (Wyatt) – and “Mayor” Stubbs celebrated his 15th year as the honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, also in the United States: Fifteen years ago, the citizens of Talkeetna (pop. 800) didn’t like the looks of their candidates for mayor. Around that same time resident Lauri Stec, manager of Nagley’s General Store, saw a box of kittens and decided to adopt one. She named him Stubbs because he didn’t have a tail and soon the whole town was in love with him. So smitten were they with this kitten, in fact, that they wrote him in for mayor instead of deciding on one of the two lesser candidates. (Friedman) Though only Stan and Hank connect their candidacy to animal welfare activism, all three cats’ stories contribute to building a cultural imaginary that has drawn responses across social and news media. Tuxedo Stan’s Facebook page has 19,000+ “likes,” and Stan supporters submit photographs of Tuxedo Stan “minions” spreading Tuxedo Stan’s message. The Tuxedo Party’s website maintains a photo gallery that documents “Tuxedo Stan’s World Tour”: “Tuxedo Stan’s Minions are currently on their world tour spreading his message of hope and compassion for felines around the globe" (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). Each minion’s photo in the gallery represents humans’ ideological and financial support for Tuxedo Stan. News media supported Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs’s candidacies in a more ambiguous fashion. While Craig Medred argues that “Silly 'Alaska cat mayor' saga spotlights how easily the media can be scammed” (Medred), a CBC News video announced that Tuxedo Stan was “interested in sinking his claws into the top seat at City Hall” and ready to “mark his territory around the mayor's seat” (“Tuxedo Stan the cat chases Halifax mayor chair”), and Lauren Strapagiel reported on Halifax’s “cuddliest would-be mayor.” In an unexpected echo of Derrida’s language, as Derrida repeats that he is truly talking about a cat, truly a little cat, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper endorses Tuxedo Stan for mayor and follows his endorsem*nt with this statement: If he’s serious about a career in politics, maybe he should come to the United States. Just look at the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska. That’s Stubbs the cat, and he’s been the mayor for 15 years. I’m not kidding…Not only that, but right now, as we speak, there is a cat running for Senate from Virginia. (Cooper) As he introduces a “Hank for Senate” campaign video, again Cooper mentions that he is “not kidding.” While Cooper’s “not kidding” echoes Derrida’s “truly,” the difference in meanings is différance. For Derrida, his encounter with his cat is “a matter of developing another ‘logic’ of decision, of the response and of the event…a matter of reinscribing the différance between reaction and response, and hence this historicity of ethical, juridical, or political responsibility, within another thinking of life, of the living, within another relation of the living, to their own…reactional automaticity” (126). Derrida proceeds through the impasse, the limit he identifies within philosophical engagements with animals, by tracing the ways his little cat’s presence affects him. Derrida finds another logic, which is not logic but surrender, to accommodate what he, like Young, terms “political responsibility.” Cooper, however, applies the hegemonic logic of human exceptionalism to his engagement with feline interlocutors, Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs. Although Cooper’s segment, called “The RidicuList,” makes a pretense of political responsibility, it is different in kind from the pretense made in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign. As Derrida argues, a “pretense…even a simple pretense, consists in rendering a sensible trace illegible or imperceptible” (135). Tuxedo Stan’s campaign pretends that Tuxedo Stan fits within humanist, hegemonic notions of mayoral candidacy and then mobilizes this cute pretense in aid of political responsibility; the pretense—the pretense in which Tuxedo Stan’s human fans and supporters engage—renders the “sensible” trace of human exceptionalism illegible, if not imperceptible. Cooper’s pretense, however, works to make legible the trace of human exceptionalism and so to reinscribe its discursive hegemony. Discursively, the political potential of cute in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign is that Tuxedo Stan’s activism complicates humanist and posthumanist thinking about agency, about ethics, and about political responsibility. Thinking about animals may not change animals’ lives, but it may change (post)humans’ responses to these questions: Who can be a moral agent? How should moral agents—both individual and organizational, both human and animal—“think” about how they respond to structural social injustice? Epilogue: A Political Response Tuxedo Stan died of kidney cancer on 8 September 2013. Before he died, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign yielded improved cat protection legislation as well as a $40,000 endowment to create a spay-and-neuter facility accessible to low-income families. Tuxedo Stan’s litter mate, Earl Grey, carries on Tuxedo Stan’s work. Earl Grey’s campaign platform expands the Tuxedo Party’s appeals for animal welfare, and Earl Grey maintains the Tuxedo Party’s presence on Facebook, on Twitter (@TuxedoParty and @TuxedoEarlGrey), and at TuxedoStan.com (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). On 27 February 2014, Agriculture Minister Keith Colwell of Nova Scotia released draft legislation whose standards of care aim to prevent distress and cruelty to pets and to strengthen their protection. They…include proposals on companion animal restraints, outdoor care, shelters, companion animal pens and enclosures, abandonment of companion animals, as well as the transportation and sale of companion animals…The standards also include cats, and the hope is to have legislation ready to introduce in the spring and enacted by the fall. (“Nova Scotia cracks down”) References Chisolm, Hugh. “Tuxedo Stan Kitten.” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh. “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion.” TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisolm, Hugh. “You're Voting for Fred? Not at MY Polling Station!” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh, and Kathy Chisholm. TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Cooper, Anderson. “The RidicuList.” CNN Anderson Cooper 360, 24 Sep. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–67. 2 Mar. 2014. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Trans. David Willis. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Friedman, Amy. “Cat Marks 15 Years as Mayor of Alaska Town.” Newsfeed.time.com, 17 July 2012. 2 March 2014. Medred, Craig. “Silly ‘Alaska Cat Mayor’ Saga Spotlights How Easily the Media Can Be Scammed.” Alaska Dispatch, 11 Sep. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Mombourquette, Angela. “Candidate’s Ethics Are as Finely Honed as His Claws.” The Chronicle Herald, 27 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. “Nova Scotia Cracks Down on Tethering of Dogs.” The Chronicle Herald 27 Feb. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Pace, Natasha. “Halifax City Council Doles Out Cash to Help Control the Feral Cat Population.” Global News 14 May 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Popovitch, Joe. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” RefuseToBeBoring.com. 2 Mar. 2014. Strapagiel, Lauren. “Tuxedo Stan, Beloved Halifax Cat Politician, Dead at 3.” OCanada.com, 9 Sep. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. “These 30 Animals with Their Adorable Miniatures Are the Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww.” WorthyToShare.com, n.d. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Dinner Highlights.” Vimeo.com, 2 Mar. 2014. Tuxedo Stanley, and Kathy Chisholm. ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story. Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia: Ailurophile Publishing, 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan the Cat Chases Halifax Mayor Chair.” CBC News, 13 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Wrenn, Corey. “Suffragette Cats Are the Original Cat Ladies.” Jezebel.com, 6 Dec. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Wyatt, Susan. “Hank, the Cat Who Ran for Virginia Senate, Gets MMore than 7,000 Votes.” King5.com The Pet Dish, 7 Nov. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Young, Iris Marion. “Political Responsibility and Structural Injustice.” Lindley Lecture. Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. 5 May 2003.

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IntroductionIn the contemporary West, experiences of time are shaped by—and inextricably linked to—the nature of media production and consumption. In Derrida and Steigler’s estimation, teletechnologies bring time “into play” and thus produce time as an “artifact”, that is, a knowable product (3). How and why time becomes “artifactually” produced, according to these thinkers, is a result of the various properties of media production; media ensure that “gestures” (which can be understood here as the cultural moments marked as significant in some way, especially public ones) are registered. Being so, time is constrained, “formatted, initialised” by the matrix of the media system (3). Subsequently, because the media apparatus undergirds the Western imaginary, so too, the media apparatus undergirds the Western concept of time. We can say, in the radically changing global mediascape then, digital culture performs and generates ontological shifts that rewrite the relationship between media, time, and experience. This point lends itself to the significance of the role of both new media platforms and new media texts in reconfiguring understandings between past, present, and future timescapes.There are various ways in which new media texts and platforms work upon experiences of time. In the following, I will focus on just one of these ways: narrativity. By examining a ‘new media’ text, I elucidate how new media narratives imagine timescapes that are constructed through metaphors of ‘confetti’ or ‘snow’, as opposed to more traditional lineal metaphors like ‘rivers’ or ‘streams’ (see Augustine Sedgewick’s “Against Flows” for more critical thinking on the relationship between history, narrative, and the ‘flows’ metaphor). I focus on the revisioning of narrative structure in the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House (2018) from its original form in the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson. The narrative revisioning from the novel to the televisual both demonstrates and manifests emergent conceptualisations of time through the creative play of temporal multi-flows, which are contemporaneous yet fragmented.The first consideration is the shift in textual format. However, the translocation of the narrative from a novel to a televisual text is important, but not the focus here. Added to this, I deliberately move toward a “general narrative analysis” (Cobley 28), which has the advantage of focusing onmechanisms which may be integral to linguistically or visually-based genres without becoming embroiled in parochial questions to do with the ‘effectiveness’ of given modes, or the relative ‘value’ of different genres. This also allows narrative analysis to track the development of a specified process as well as its embodiment in a range of generic and technological forms. (Cobley 28)It should be also be noted from the outset that I am not suggesting that fragmented narrative constructions and representations were never imagined or explored prior to this new media age. Quite the contrary if we think of Modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf (Lodwick; Haggland). Rather, it is to claim that this abstraction is emerging in the mainstream entertainment media in greater contest with the dominant and more historically entrenched version of ‘time as a construct’ that is characterised through Realist narratology as linear and flowing only one way. As I will explore below, the reasons for this are largely related to shifts in everyday media consumption brought about by digital culture. There are two reasons why I specifically utilise Netflix’s series The Haunting of Hill House as a fulcrum from which to lever arguments about new media and the contemporary experience of time. First, as a web series, it embodies some of the pertinent conventions of the digital media landscape, both diegetically and also through practices of production and consumption by way of new time-shifting paradigms (see Leaver). I focus on the former in this article, but the latter is fruitful ground for critical consideration. For example, Netflix itself, as a platform, has somewhat destabilised normative temporal routines, such as in the case of ‘binge-watching’ where audiences ‘lose’ time similarly to gamblers in the casino space. Second, the fact that there are two iterations of the same story—one a novel and one a televisual text—provide us with a comparative benchmark from which to make further assertions about the changing nature of media and time from the mid-century to a post-millennium digital mediascape. Though it should be noted, my discussion will focus on the nature and quality of the contemporary framework, and I use the 1959 novel as a frame of reference only rather than examining its rich tapestry in its own right (for critique on the novel itself, see Wilson; see Roberts).Media and the Production of Time-SenseThere is a remarkable canon of literature detailing the relationship between media and the production of time, which can help us place this discussion in a theoretical framework. I am limited by space, but I will engage with some of the most pertinent material to set out a conceptual map. Markedly, from here, I refer to the Western experience of time as a “time-sense” following E.P. Thompson’s work (80). Following Thompson’s language, I use the term “time-sense” to refer to “our inward notation of time”, characterised by the rhythms of our “technological conditioning” systems, whether those be the forces of labour, media, or otherwise (80). Through the textual analysis of Hill House to follow, I will offer ways in which the technological conditioning of the new media system both constructs and shapes time-sense in terms related to a constellation of moments, or, to use a metaphor from the Netflix series itself, like “confetti” or “snow” (“Silence Lay Steadily”).However, in discussing the production of time-sense through new media mechanisms, note that time-sense is not an abstraction but is still linked to our understandings of the literal nature of time-space. For example, Alvin Toffler explains that, in its most simple construction, “Time can be conceived as the intervals during which events occur” (21). However, we must be reminded that events must first occur within the paradigm of experience. That is to say that matters of ‘duration’ cannot be unhinged from the experiential or phenomenological accounts of those durations, or in Toffler’s words, in an echo of Thompson, “Man’s [sic] perception of time is closely linked with his internal rhythms” (71). In the 1970s, Toffler commented upon the radical expansion of global systems of communications that produces the “twin forces of acceleration and transience”, which “alter the texture of existence, hammering our lives and psyches into new and unfamiliar shapes” (18). This simultaneous ‘speeding up’ (which he calls acceleration) and sense of ‘skipping’ (which he calls transience) manifest in a range of modern experiences which disrupt temporal contingencies. Nearly two decades after Toffler, David Harvey commented upon the Postmodern’s “total acceptance of ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic” (44). Only a decade ago, Terry Smith emphasised that time-sense had become even more characterised by the “insistent presentness of multiple, often incompatible temporalities” (196). Netflix had not even launched in Australia and New Zealand until 2015, as well as a host of other time-shifting media technologies which have emerged in the past five years. As a result, it behooves us to revaluate time-sense with this emergent field of production.That being said, entertainment media have always impressed itself upon our understanding of temporal flows. Since the dawn of cinema in the late 19th century, entertainment media have been pivotal in constructing, manifesting, and illustrating time-sense. This has largely (but not exclusively) been in relation to the changing nature of narratology and the ways that narrative produces a sense of temporality. Helen Powell points out that the very earliest cinema, such as the Lumière Brothers’ short films screened in Paris, did not embed narrative, rather, “the Lumières’ actualities captured life as it happened with all its contingencies” (2). It is really only with the emergence of classical mainstream Hollywood that narrative became central, and with it new representations of “temporal flow” (2). Powell tells us that “the classical Hollywood narrative embodies a specific representation of temporal flow, rational and linear in its construction” reflecting “the standardised view of time introduced by the onset of industrialisation” (Powell 2). Of course, as media production and trends change, so does narrative structure. By the late 20th century, new approaches to narrative structure manifest in tropes such as ‘the puzzle film,’ as an example, which “play with audiences” expectations of conventional roles and storytelling through the use of the unreliable narrator and the fracturing of linearity. In doing so, they open up wider questions of belief, truth and reliability” (Powell 4). Puzzle films which might be familiar to the reader are Memento (2001) and Run Lola Run (1999), each playing with the relationship between time and memory, and thus experiences of contemporaneity. The issue of narrative in the construction of temporal flow is therefore critically linked to the ways that mediatic production of narrative, in various ways, reorganises time-sense more broadly. To examine this more closely, I now turn to Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House.Narratology and Temporal FlowNetflix’s revision of The Haunting of Hill House reveals critical insights into the ways in which media manifest the nature and quality of time-sense. Of course, the main difference between the 1959 novel and the Netflix web series is the change of the textual format from a print text to a televisual text distributed on an Internet streaming platform. This change performs what Marie-Laure Ryan calls “transfictionality across media” (385). There are several models through which transfictionality might occur and thus transmogrify textual and narratival parametres of a text. In the case of The Haunting of Hill House, the Netflix series follows the “displacement” model, which means it “constructs essentially different versions of the protoworld, redesigning its structure and reinventing its story” (Doležel 206). For example, in the 2018 television remake, the protoworld from the original novel retains integrity in that it conveys the story of a group of people who are brought to a mansion called Hill House. In both versions of the protoworld, the discombobulating effects of the mansion work upon the group dynamics until a final break down reveals the supernatural nature of the house. However, in ‘displacing’ the original narrative for adaptation to the web series, the nature of the group is radically reshaped (from a research contingent to a nuclear family unit) and the events follow radically different temporal contingencies.More specifically, the original 1959 novel utilises third-person limited narration and follows a conventional linear temporal flow through which events occur in chronological order. This style of storytelling is often thought about in metaphorical terms by way of ‘rivers’ or ‘streams,’ that is, flowing one-way and never repeating the same configuration (very much unlike the televisual text, in which some scenes are repeated to punctuate various time-streams). Sean Cubitt has examined the relationship between this conventional narrative structure and time sensibility, stating thatthe chronological narrative proposes to us a protagonist who always occupies a perpetual present … as a point moving along a line whose dimensions have however already been mapped: the protagonist of the chronological narrative is caught in a story whose beginning and end have already been determined, and which therefore constructs story time as the unfolding of destiny rather than the passage from past certainty into an uncertain future. (4)I would map Cubitt’s characterisation onto the original Hill House novel as representative of a mid-century textual artifact. Although Modernist literature (by way of Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, and so forth) certainly ‘played’ with non-linear or multi-linear narrative structures, in relation to time-sense, Christina Chau reminds us that Modernity, as a general mood, was very much still caught up in the idea that “time that moves in a linear fashion with the future moving through the present and into the past” (26). Additionally, even though flashbacks are utilised in the original novel, they are revealed using the narrative convention of ‘memories’ through the inner dialogue of the central character, thus still occurring in the ‘present’ of the novel’s timescape and still in keeping with a ‘one-way’ trajectory. Most importantly, the original novel follows what I will call one ‘time-stream’, in that events unfold, and are conveyed through, one temporal flow.In the Netflix series, there are obvious (and even cardinal) changes which reorganise the entire cast of characters as well as the narrative structure. In fact, the very process of returning to the original novel in order to produce a televisual remake says something about the nature of time-sense in itself, which is further sophisticated by the recognition of Netflix as a ‘streaming service’. That is, Netflix encapsulates this notion of ‘rivers-on-demand’ which overlap with each other in the context of the contemporaneous and persistent ‘now’ of digital culture. Marie-Laure Ryan suggests that “the proliferation of rewrites … is easily explained by the sense of pastness that pervades Postmodern culture and by the fixation of contemporary thought with the textual nature of reality” (386). While the Netflix series remains loyal to the mood and basic premise (i.e., that there is a haunted house in which characters endure strange happenings and enter into psycho-drama), the series instead uses fractured narrative convention through which three time-streams are simultaneously at work (although one time-stream is embedded in another and therefore its significance is ‘hidden’ to the viewer until the final episode), which we will examine now.The Time-Streams of Hill HouseIn the Netflix series, the central time-stream is, at first, ostensibly located in the characters’ ‘present’. I will call this time-stream A. (As a note to the reader here, there are spoilers for those who have not watched the Netflix series.) The viewer assumes they are, from the very first scene, following the ‘present’ time-stream in which the characters are adults. This is the time-stream in which the series opens, however, only for the first minute of viewing. After around one minute of viewing time, we already enter into a second time-stream. Even though both the original novel and the TV series begin with the same dialogue, the original novel continues to follow one time-stream, while the TV series begins to play with contemporaneous action by manifesting a second time-stream (following a series of events from the characters past) running in parallel action to the first time-stream. This narrative revisioning resonates with Toffler’s estimation of shifting nature of time-sense in the later twentieth century, in which he cites thatindeed, not only do contemporary events radiate instantaneously—now we can be said to be feeling the impact of all past events in a new way. For the past is doubling back on us. We are caught in what might be called a ‘time skip’. (16)In its ‘displacement’ model, the Hill House televisual remake points to this ongoing fascination with, and re-actualisation of, the exaggerated temporal discrepancies in the experience of contemporary everyday life. The Netflix Hill House series constructs a dimensional timescape in which the timeline ‘skips’ back and forth (not only for the viewer but also the characters), and certain spaces (such as the Red Room) are only permeable to some characters at certain times.If we think about Toffler’s words here—a doubling back, or, a time-skip—we might be pulled toward ever more recent incarnations of this effect. In Helen Powell’s investigation of the relationship between narrative and time-sense, she insists that “new media’s temporalities offer up the potential to challenge the chronological mode of temporal experience” (152). Sean Cubitt proposes that with the intensification of new media “we enter a certain, as yet inchoate, mode of time. For all the boasts of instantaneity, our actual relations with one another are mediated and as such subject to delays: slow downloads, periodic crashes, cache clearances and software uploads” (10). Resultingly, we have myriad temporal contingencies running at any one time—some slow, frustrating, mundane, in ‘real-time’ and others rapid to the point of instantaneous, or even able to pull the past into the present (through the endless trove of archived media on the web) and again into other mediatic dimensions such as virtual reality. To wit, Powell writes that “narrative, in mirroring these new temporal relations must embody fragmentation, discontinuity and incomplete resolution” (153). Fragmentation, discontinuity, and incompleteness are appropriate ways to think through the Hill House’s narrative revision and the ways in which it manifests some of these time-sensibilities.The notion of a ‘time-skip’ is an appropriate way to describe the transitions between the three temporal flows occurring simultaneously in the Hill House televisual remake. Before being comfortably seated in any one time-stream, the viewer is translocated into a second time-stream that runs parallel to it (almost suggesting a kind of parallel dimension). So, we begin with the characters as adults and then almost immediately, we are also watching them as children with the rapid emergence of this second time-stream. This ‘second time-stream’ conveys the events of ‘the past’ in which the central characters are children, so I will call this time-stream B. While time-stream B conveys the scenes in which the characters are children, the scenes are not necessarily in chronological order.The third time-stream is the spectral-stream, or time-stream C. However, the viewer is not fully aware that there is a totally separate time stream at play (the audience is made to think that this time-stream is the product of mere ghost-sightings). This is until the final episode, which completes the narrative ‘puzzle’. That is, the third time-stream conveys the events which are occurring simultaneously in both of the two other time-streams. In a sense, time-stream C, the spectral stream, is used to collapse the ontological boundaries of the former two time-streams. Throughout the early episodes, this time-stream C weaves in and out of time-streams A and B, like an intrusive time-stream (intruding upon the two others until it manifests on its own in the final episode). Time-stream C is used to create a 'puzzle' for the viewer in that the viewer does not fully understand its total significance until the puzzle is completed in the final episode. This convention, too, says something about the nature of time-sense as it shifts and mutates with mediatic production. This echoes back to Powell’s discussion of the ‘puzzle’ trend, which, as I note earlier, plays with “audiences’ expectations of conventional roles and storytelling through the use of the unreliable narrator and the fracturing of linearity” which serves to “open up wider questions of belief, truth and reliability” (4). Similarly, the skipping between three time-streams to build the Hill House puzzle manifests the ever-complicating relationships of time-management experiences in everyday life, in which pasts, presents, and futures impinge upon one another and interfere with each other.Critically, in terms of plot, time-stream B (in which the characters are little children) opens with the character Nell as a small child of 5 or 6 years of age. She appears to have woken up from a nightmare about The Bent Neck Lady. This vision traumatises Nell, and she is duly comforted in this scene by the characters of the eldest son and the father. This provides crucial exposition for the viewer: We are told that these ‘visitations’ from The Bent Neck Lady are a recurring trauma for the child-Nell character. It is important to note that, while these scenes may be mistaken for simple memory flashbacks, it becomes clearer throughout the series that this time-stream is not tied to any one character’s memory but is a separate storyline, though critical to the functioning of the other two. Moreover, the Bent Neck Lady recurs as both (apparent) nightmares and waking visions throughout the course of Nell’s life. It is in Episode Five that we realise why.The reason why The Bent Neck Lady always appears to Nell is that she is Nell. We learn this at the end of Episode Five when the storyline finally conveys how Nell dies in the House, which is by hanging from a noose tied to the mezzanine in the Hill House foyer. As Nell drops from the mezzanine attached to this noose, her neck snaps—she is The Bent Neck Lady. However, Nell does not just drop to the end of the noose. She continues to drop five more times back into the other two time streams. Each time Nell drops, she drops into a different moment in time (and each time the neck snapping is emphasised). The first drop she appears to herself in a basem*nt. The second drop she appears to herself on the road outside the car while she is with her brother. The third is during (what we have been told) is a kind of sleep paralysis. The fourth and fifth drops she appears to herself as the small child on two separate occasions—both of which we witness with her in the first episode. So not only is Nell journeying through time, the audience is too. The viewer follows Nell’s journey through her ‘time-skip’. The result of the staggered but now conjoined time-streams is that we come to realise that Nell is, in fact, haunting herself—and the audience now understands they have followed this throughout not as a ghost-sighting but as a ‘future’ time-stream impinging on another.In the final episode of season one, the siblings are confronted by Ghost-Nell in the Red Room. This is important because it is in this Red Room through which all time-streams coalesce. The Red Room exists dimensionally, cutting across disparate spaces and times—it is the spatial representation of the spectral time-stream C. It is in this final episode, and in this spectral dimension, that all the three time-streams collapse upon each other and complete the narrative ‘puzzle’ for the viewer. The temporal flow of the spectral dimension, time-stream C, interrupts and interferes with the temporal flow of the former two—for both the characters in the text and viewing audience.The collapse of time-streams is produced through a strategic dialogic structure. When Ghost-Nell appears to the siblings in the Red Room, her first line of dialogue is a non-sequitur. Luke emerges from his near-death experience and points to Nell, to which Nell replies: “I feel a little clearer just now. We have. All of us have” ("Silence Lay Steadily"). Nell’s dialogue continues but, eventually, she returns to the same statement, almost like she is running through a cyclic piece of text. She states again, “We have. All of us have.” However, this time around, the phrase is pre-punctuated by Shirley’s claim that she feels as though she had been in the Red Room before. Nell’s dialogue and the dialogue of the other characters suddenly align in synchronicity. The audience now understands that Nell’s very first statement, “We have. All of us have” is actually a response to the statement that Shirley had not yet made. This narrative convention emphasises the ‘confetti-like’ nature of the construction of time here. Confetti is, after all, sheets of paper that have been cut into pieces, thrown into the air, and then fallen out of place. Similarly, the narrative makes sense as a whole but feels cut into pieces and realigned, if only momentarily. When Nell then loops back through the same dialogue, it finally appears in synch and thus makes sense. This signifies that the time-streams are now merged.The Ghost of Nell has travelled through (and in and out of) each separate time-stream. As a result, Ghost-Nell understands the nature of the Red Room—it manifests a slippage of timespace that each of the siblings had entered during their stay at the Hill House mansion. It is with this realisation that Ghost-Nell explains:Everything’s been out of order. Time, I mean. I thought for so long that time was like a line, that ... our moments were laid out like dominoes, and that they ... fell, one into another and on it went, just days tipping, one into the next, into the next, in a long line between the beginning ... and the end.But I was wrong. It’s not like that at all. Our moments fall around us like rain. Or... snow. Or confetti. (“Silence Lay Steadily”)This brings me to the titular concern: The emerging abstraction of time as a mode of layering and fracturing, a mode performed through this analogy of ‘confetti’ or ‘snow’. The Netflix Hill House revision rearranges time constructs so that any one moment of time may be accessed, much like scrolling back and forth (and in and out) of social media feeds, Internet forums, virtual reality programs and so forth. Each moment, like a flake of ‘snow’ or ‘confetti’ litters the timespace matrix, making an infinite tapestry that exists dimensionally. In the Hill House narrative, all moments exist simultaneously and accessing each moment at any point in the time-stream is merely a process of perception.ConclusionNetflix is optimised as a ‘streaming platform’ which has all but ushered in the era of ‘time-shifting’ predicated on geospatial politics (see Leaver). The current media landscape offers instantaneity, contemporaneity, as well as, arbitrary boundedness on the basis of geopolitics, which Tama Leaver refers to as the “tyranny of digital distance”. Therefore, it is fitting that Netflix’s revision of the Hill House narrative is preoccupied with time as well as spectrality. Above, I have explored just some of the ways that the televisual remake plays with notions of time through a diegetic analysis.However, we should take note that even in its production and consumption, this series, to quote Graham Meikle and Sherman Young, is embedded within “the current phase of television [that] suggests contested continuities” (67). Powell problematises the time-sense of this media apparatus further by reminding us that “there are three layers of temporality contained within any film image: the time of registration (production); the time of narration (storytelling); and the time of its consumption (viewing)” (3-4). Each of these aspects produces what Althusser and Balibar have called a “peculiar time”, that is, “different levels of the whole as developing ‘in the same historical time’ … relatively autonomous and hence relatively independent, even in its dependence, of the ‘times’ of the other levels” (99). When we think of the layers upon layers of different time ‘signatures’ which converge in Hill House as a textual artifact—in its production, consumption, distribution, and diegesis—the nature of contemporary time reveals itself as complex but also fleeting—hard to hold onto—much like snow or confetti.ReferencesAlthusser, Louis, and Étienne Balibar. Reading Capital. London: NLB, 1970.Cobley, Paul. Narrative. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2013.Cubitt, S. “Spreadsheets, Sitemaps and Search Engines.” New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative. Eds. Martin Rieser and Andrea Zapp. London: BFI, 2002. 3-13.Derrida, Jacques, and Bernard Stiegler. Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews. Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2002.Doležel, Lubomir. Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999.Hägglund, Martin. Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012.Hartley, Lodwick. “Of Time and Mrs. Woolf.” The Sewanee Review 47.2 (1939): 235-241.Harvey, David. Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Viking, 1959.Laurie-Ryan Marie. “Transfictionality across Media.” Theorizing Narrativity. Eds. John Pier, García Landa, and José Angel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 385-418.Leaver, Tama. “Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance.” Media International Australia 126 (2008): 145-154.Meikle, George, and Sherman Young. “Beyond Broadcasting? TV For the Twenty-First Century.” Media International Australia 126 (2008): 67-70.Powell, Helen. Stop the Clocks! Time and Narrative in Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.Roberts, Brittany. “Helping Eleanor Come Home: A Reassessment of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 16 (2017): 67-93.Smith, Terry. What Is Contemporary Art? Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009.The Haunting of Hill House. Mike Flanagan. Amblin Entertainment, 2018.Thompson, E.P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38.1 (1967): 56-97.Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books, 1971.Wilson, Michael T. “‘Absolute Reality’ and the Role of the Ineffable in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” Journal of Popular Culture 48.1 (2015): 114-123.

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Abstract:

In Victorian times, when female travel narratives were read as excursions rather than expeditions, it was common for women authors to preface their travels with an apology. “What this book wants,” begins Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, “is not a simple preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that” (4). This tendency of the woman writer to depreciate her travel with an acknowledgment of its presumptuousness crafted her apology essentially as an admission of guilt. “Where I have offered my opinions,” Isabella Bird writes in The Englishwoman in America, “I have done so with extreme diffidence, giving impressions rather than conclusions” (2). While Elizabeth Howells has since argued the apologetic preface was in fact an opposing strategy that allowed women writers to assert their authority by averting it, it is certainly telling of the time and genre that a female writer could only defend her work by first excusing it. The personal apology may have emerged as the natural response to social restrictions but it has not been without consequence for female travel. The female position, often constructed as communal, is still problematised in contemporary travel texts. While there has been a traceable shift from apology to affirmation since the first women travellers abandoned their embroidery, it seems some sense of lingering culpability still remains. In many ways, the modern female traveller, like the early lady traveller, is still a displaced woman. She still sets out cautiously, guide book in hand. Often she writes, like the female confessant, in an attempt to recover what Virginia Woolf calls “the lives of the obscure”: those found locked in old diaries, stuffed away in old drawers or simply unrecorded (44). Often she speaks insistently of the abstract things which Kingsley, ironically, wrote so easily and extensively about. She is, however, even when writing from within the confines of her own home, still writing from abroad. Women’s solitary or “unescorted” travel, even in contemporary times, is considered less common in the Western world, with recurrent travel warnings constantly targeted at female travellers. Travelling women are always made aware of the limits of their body and its vulnerabilities. Mary Morris comments on “the fear of rape, for example, whether crossing the Sahara or just crossing a city street at night” (xvii). While a certain degree of danger always exists in travel for men and women alike and while it is inevitable that some of those risks are gender-specific, travel is frequently viewed as far more hazardous for women. Guide books, travel magazines and online advice columns targeted especially at female readers are cramped with words of concern and caution for women travellers. Often, the implicit message that women are too weak and vulnerable to travel is packaged neatly into “a cache of valuable advice” with shocking anecdotes and officious chapters such as “Dealing with Officials”, “Choosing Companions” or “If You Become a Victim” (Swan and Laufer vii). As these warnings are usually levelled at white, middle to upper class women who have the freedom and financing to travel, the question arises as to what is really at risk when women take to the road. It seems the usual dialogue between issues of mobility and issues of safety can be read more complexly as confusions between questions of mobility and morality. As Kristi Siegel explains, “among the various subtexts embedded in these travel warnings is the long-held fear of ‘women on the loose’” (4). According to Karen Lawrence, travel has always entailed a “risky and rewardingly excessive” terrain for women because of the historical link between wandering and promiscuity (240). Paul Hyland has even suggested that the nature of travel itself is “gloriously” promiscuous: “the shifting destination, arrival again and again, the unknown possessed, the quest for an illusory home” (211). This construction of female travel as a desire to wander connotes straying behaviours that are often cast in sexual terms. The identification of these traits in early criminological research, such as 19th century studies of cacogenic families, is often linked to travel in a broad sense. According to Nicolas Hahn’s study, Too Dumb to Know Better, contributors to the image of the “bad” woman frequently cite three traits as characteristic. “First, they have pictured her as irresolute and all too easily lead. Second, they have usually shown her to be promiscuous and a good deal more lascivious than her virtuous sister. Third, they have often emphasised the bad woman’s responsibility for not only her own sins, but those of her mate and descendents as well” (3). Like Eve, who wanders around the edge of the garden, the promiscuous woman has long been said to have a wandering disposition. Interestingly, however, both male and female travel writers have at different times and for dissimilar reasons assumed hermaphroditic identities while travelling. The female traveller, for example, may assume the figure of “the observer” or “the reporter with historical and political awareness”, while the male traveller may feminise his behaviours to confront inevitabilities of confinement and mortality (Fortunati, Monticelli and Ascari 11). Female travellers such as Alexandra David-Neel and Isabelle Eberhardt who ventured out of the home and cross-dressed for safety or success, deliberately and fully appropriated traditional roles of the male sex. Often, this attempt by female wanderers to fulfil their own intentions in cognito evaded their dismissal as wild and unruly women and asserted their power over those duped by their disguise. Those women who did travel openly into the world were often accused of flaunting the gendered norms of female decorum with their “so-called unnatural and inappropriate behaviour” (Siegel 3). The continued harnessing of this cultural taboo by popular media continues to shape contemporary patterns of female travel. In fact, as a result of perceived connections between wandering and danger, the narrative of the woman traveller often emerges as a self-conscious fiction where “the persona who emerges on the page is as much a character as a woman in a novel” (Bassnett 234). This process of self-fictionalising converts the travel writing into a graph of subliminal fears and desires. In Tracks, for example, which is Robyn Davidson’s account of her solitary journey by camel across the Australian desert, Davidson shares with her readers the single, unvarying warning she received from the locals while preparing for her expedition. That was, if she ventured into the desert alone without a guide or male accompaniment, she would be attacked and raped by an Aboriginal man. In her opening pages, Davidson recounts a conversation in the local pub when one of the “kinder regulars” warns her: “You ought to be more careful, girl, you know you’ve been nominated by some of these blokes as the next town rape case” (19). “I felt really frightened for the first time,” Davidson confesses (20). Perhaps no tale better depicts this gendered troubling than the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. In the earliest versions of the story, Little Red outwits the Wolf with her own cunning and escapes without harm. By the time the first printed version emerges, however, the story has dramatically changed. Little Red now falls for the guise of the Wolf, and tricked by her captor, is eaten without rescue or escape. Charles Perrault, who is credited with the original publication, explains the moral at the end of the tale, leaving no doubt to its intended meaning. “From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, and it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner” (77). Interestingly, in the Grimm Brothers’ version which emerges two centuries later an explicit warning now appears in the tale, in the shape of the mother’s instruction to “walk nicely and quietly, and not run off the path” (144). This new inclusion sanitises the tale and highlights the slippages between issues of mobility and morality. Where Little Red once set out with no instruction not to wander, she is now told plainly to stay on the path; not for her own safety but for implied matters of virtue. If Little Red strays while travelling alone she risks losing her virginity and, of course, her virtue (Siegel 55). Essentially, this is what is at stake when Little Red wanders; not that she will get lost in the woods and be unable to find her way, but that in straying from the path and purposefully disobeying her mother, she will no longer be “a dear little girl” (Grimm 144). In the Grimms’ version, Red Riding Hood herself critically reflects on her trespassing from the safe space of the village to the dangerous world of the forest and makes a concluding statement that demonstrates she has learnt her lesson. “As long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so” (149). Red’s message to her female readers is representative of the social world’s message to its women travellers. “We are easily distracted and disobedient, we are not safe alone in the woods (travelling off the beaten path); we are fairly stupid; we get ourselves into trouble; and we need to be rescued by a man” (Siegel 56). As Siegel explains, even Angela Carter’s Red Riding Hood, who bursts out laughing when the Wolf says “all the better to eat you with” for “she knew she was nobody’s meat” (219), still shocks readers when she uses her virginity to take power over the voracious Wolf. In Carter’s world “children do not stay young for long,” and Little Red, who has her knife and is “afraid of nothing”, is certainly no exception (215). Yet in the end, when Red seduces the Wolf and falls asleep between his paws, there is still a sense this is a twist ending. As Siegel explains, “even given the background Carter provides in the story’s beginning, the scene startles. We knew the girl was strong, independent, and armed. However, the pattern of woman-alone-travelling-alone-helpless-alone-victim is so embedded in our consciousness we are caught off guard” (57). In Roald Dahl’s revolting rhyme, Little Red is also awarded agency, not through sexual prerogative, but through the enactment of traits often considered synonymous with male bravado: quick thinking, wit and cunning. After the wolf devours Grandmamma, Red pulls a pistol from her underpants and shoots him dead. “The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers. She whips a pistol from her knickers. She aims it at the creature’s head and bang bang bang, she shoots him dead” (lines 48—51). In the weeks that follow Red’s triumph she even takes a trophy, substituting her red cloak for a “furry wolfskin coat” (line 57). While Dahl subverts female stereotypes through Red’s decisive action and immediacy, there is still a sense, perhaps heightened by the rhyming couplets, that we are not to take the shooting seriously. Instead, Red’s girrrl-power is an imagined celebration; it is something comical to be mused over, but its shock value lies in its impossibility; it is not at all believable. While the sexual overtones of the tale have become more explicit in contemporary film adaptations such as David Slade’s Hard Candy and Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, the question that arises is what is really at threat, or more specifically who is threatened, when women travel off the well-ordered path of duty. As this problematic continues to surface in discussions of the genre, other more nuanced readings have also distorted the purpose and practice of women’s travel. Some psychoanalytical theorists, for example, have adopted Freud’s notion of travel as an escape from the family, particularly the father figure. In his essay A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis, Freud explains how his own longing to travel was “a wish to escape from that pressure, like the force which drives so many adolescent children to run away from home” (237). “When one first catches sight of the sea,” Freud writes, “one feels oneself like a hero who has performed deeds of improbable greatness” (237). The inherent gender trouble with such a reading is the suggestion women only move in search of a quixotic male figure, “fleeing from their real or imaginary powerful fathers and searching for an idealised and imaginary ‘loving father’ instead” (Berger 55). This kind of thinking reduces the identities of modern women to fragile, unfinished selves, whose investment in travel is always linked to recovering or resisting a male self. Such readings neglect the unique history of women’s travel writing as they dismiss differences in the male and female practice and forget that “travel itself is a thoroughly gendered category” (Holland and Huggan 111). Freud’s experience of travel, for example, his description of feeling like a “hero” who has achieved “improbable greatness” is problematised by the female context, since the possibility arises that women may travel with different e/motions and, indeed, motives to their male counterparts. For example, often when a female character does leave home it is to escape an unhappy marriage, recover from a broken heart or search for new love. Elizabeth Gilbert’s best selling travelogue, Eat, Pray, Love (which spent 57 weeks at the number one spot of the New York Times), found its success on the premise of a once happily married woman who, reeling from a contentious divorce, takes off around the world “in search of everything” (1). Since its debut, the novel has been accused of being self-absorbed and sexist, and even branded by the New York Post as “narcissistic New Age reading, curated by Winfrey” (Callahan par 13). Perhaps most interesting for discussions of travel morality, however, is Bitch magazine’s recent article Eat, Pray, Spend, which suggests that the positioning of the memoir as “an Everywoman’s guide to whole, empowered living” typifies a new literature of privilege that excludes “all but the most fortunate among us from participating” (Sanders and Barnes-Brown par 7). Without seeking to limit the novel with separatist generalisations, the freedoms of Elizabeth Gilbert (a wealthy, white American novelist) to leave home and to write about her travels afterwards have not always been the freedoms of all women. As a result of this problematic, many contemporary women mark out alternative patterns of movement when travelling, often moving deliberately in a variety of directions and at varying paces, in an attempt to resist their placelessness in the travel genre and in the mappable world. As Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, speaking of Housekeeping’s Ruthie and Sylvie, explains, “they do not travel ever westward in search of some frontier space, nor do they travel across great spaces. Rather, they circle, they drift, they wander” (199). As a result of this double displacement, women have to work twice as hard to be considered credible travellers, particularly since travel is traditionally a male discursive practice. In this tradition, the male is often constructed as the heroic explorer while the female is mapped as a place on his itinerary. She is a point of conquest, a land to be penetrated, a site to be mapped and plotted, but rarely a travelling equal. Annette Kolodny considers this metaphor of “land-as-woman” (67) in her seminal work, The Lay of the Land, in which she discusses “men’s impulse to alter, penetrate and conquer” unfamiliar space (87). Finally, it often emerges that even when female travel focuses specifically on an individual or collective female experience, it is still read in opposition to the long tradition of travelling men. In their introduction to Amazonian, Dea Birkett and Sara Wheeler maintain the primary difference between male and female travel writers is that “the male species” has not become extinct (vii). The pair, who have theorised widely on New Travel Writing, identify some of the myths and misconceptions of the female genre, often citing their own encounters with androcentrism in the industry. “We have found that even when people are confronted by a real, live woman travel writer, they still get us wrong. In the time allowed for questions after a lecture, we are regularly asked, ‘Was that before you sailed around the world or after?’ even though neither of us has ever done any such thing” (xvii). The obvious bias in such a comment is an archaic view of what qualifies as “good” travel and a preservation of the stereotypes surrounding women’s intentions in leaving home. As Birkett and Wheeler explain, “the inference here is that to qualify as travel writers women must achieve astonishing and record-breaking feats. Either that, or we’re trying to get our hands down some man’s trousers. One of us was once asked by the president of a distinguished geographical institution, ‘What made you go to Chile? Was it a guy?’” (xviii). In light of such comments, there remain traceable difficulties for contemporary female travel. As travel itself is inherently gendered, its practice has often been “defined by men according to the dictates of their experience” (Holland and Huggan 11). As a result, its discourse has traditionally reinforced male prerogatives to wander and female obligations to wait. Even the travel trade itself, an industry that often makes its profits out of preying on fear, continues to shape the way women move through the world. While the female traveller then may no longer preface her work with an explicit apology, there are still signs she is carrying some historical baggage. It is from this site of trouble that new patterns of female travel will continue to emerge, distinguishably and defiantly, towards a much more colourful vista of general misrule. References Bassnett, Susan. “Travel Writing and Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 225-40. Berger, Arthur Asa. Deconstructing Travel: Cultural Perspectives on Tourism. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2004. Bird, Isabella. The Englishwoman in America. London: John Murray, 1856. Birkett, Dea, and Sara Wheeler, eds. Amazonian: The Penguin Book of New Women’s Travel Writing. London: Penguin, 1998. Callahan, Maureen. “Eat, Pray, Loathe: Latest Self-Help Bestseller Proves Faith is Blind.” New York Post 23 Dec. 2007. Carter, Angela. “The Company of Wolves.” Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories. London: Vintage, 1995. 212-20. Dahl, Roald. Revolting Rhymes. London: Puffin Books, 1982. Davidson, Robyn. Tracks. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980. Fortunati, Vita, Rita Monticelli, and Maurizio Ascari, eds. Travel Writing and the Female Imaginary. Bologna: Patron Editore, 2001. Freud, Sigmund. “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XXII. New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works, 1936. 237-48. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. New Jersey: Penguin, 2007. Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. “Little Red Riding Hood.” Grimms’ Fairy Tales, London: Jonathan Cape, 1962. 144-9. Hahn, Nicolas. “Too Dumb to Know Better: Cacogenic Family Studies and the Criminology of Women.” Criminology 18.1 (1980): 3-25. Hard Candy. Dir. David Slade. Lionsgate. 2005. Holland, Patrick, and Graham Huggan. Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2003. Howells, Elizabeth. “Apologizing for Authority: The Rhetoric of the Prefaces of Eliza Cook, Isabelle Bird, and Hannah More.” Professing Rhetoric: Selected Papers from the 2000 Rhetoric Society of America Conference, eds. F.J. Antczak, C. Coggins, and G.D. Klinger. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. 131-7. Hyland, Paul. The Black Heart: A Voyage into Central Africa. New York: Paragon House, 1988. Kingsley, Mary. Travels in West Africa. Middlesex: The Echo Library, 2008. Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. USA: U of North Carolina P, 1975. Lawrence, Karen. Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. Morris, Mary. Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travellers. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Perrault, Charles. Perrault’s Complete Fairytales. Trans. A.E. Johnson and others. London: Constable & Company, 1961. Red Riding Hood. Dir. Catherine Hardwicke. Warner Bros. 2011. Sanders, Joshunda, and Diana Barnes-Brown. “Eat, Pray, Spend: Priv-Lit and the New, Enlightened American Dream” Bitch Magazine 47 (2010). 10 May, 2011 < http://bitchmagazine.org/article/eat-pray-spend >. Siegel, Kristi. Ed. Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Slettedahl Macpherson, Heidi. “Women’s Travel Writing and the Politics of Location: Somewhere In-Between.” Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing, ed. Kristi Siegel. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 194-207. Swan, Sheila, and Peter Laufer. Safety and Security for Women who Travel. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Travelers’ Tales, 2004. Woolf, Virginia. Women and Writing. London: The Women’s Press, 1979.

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IntroductionTraditionally, the femme fatale has been closely associated with a series of noir films (such as Double Indemnity [1944], The Maltese Falcon [1941], and The Big Heat [1953]) in the 1940s and 50s that necessarily betray male anxieties about independent women in the years during and following World War II. However, the anxieties and historical factors that precipitated the emergence of the noir femme fatale similarly existed in the sixteenth century and, as a result, the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. In this context, to re-imagine is to imagine or conceive of something in a new way. It involves taking a concept or an idea and re-imagining it into something simultaneously similar and new. This article will argue, first, that the noir femme fatale’s emergence coincided with a period of history characterised by suspicion, intolerance and perceived vulnerability and that a similar set of historical factors—namely the presence of a female monarch and changes to marriage laws—precipitated the emergence a femme fatale type figure in the Renaissance period. Second, noir films typically contain a series of narrative tropes that can be similarly identified in a selection of Renaissance plays, which enables the production of a new, re-imagined reading of these plays as tragedies of the feminine desire for autonomy. The femme fatale, according to Rebecca Stott, is not unique to the twentieth century. The femme fatale label can be applied retrospectively to seductive, if noticeably evil women, whose seduction and destruction of men render them amenable to our twenty-first century understanding of the femme fatale (Allen). Mario Praz similarly contends that the femme fatale has always existed; she simply becomes more prolific in times of social and cultural upheaval. The definition of the femme fatale, however, has only recently been added to the dictionary and the burden of all definitions is the same: the femme fatale is a woman who lures men into danger, destruction and even death by means of her overpowering seductive charms. There is a woman on the Renaissance stage who combines adultery, murder, and insubordination and this figure embodies the same characteristics as the twentieth-century femme fatale because she is similarly drawn from an archetypal pattern of male anxieties regarding sexually appetitive/desirous women. The fear that this selection of women elicit arises invariably from their initial defiance of their fathers and/or brothers in marrying without their consent and/or the possibility that these women may marry or seek a union with a man out of sexual lust.The femme fatale of 1940s and 50s noir films is embodied by such women as Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Maltese Falcon), Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity), and Ann Grayle (Murder, My Sweet), while the figure of the femme fatale can be re-imagined in a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, including The Changeling (1622), Arden of Faversham (1592), and The Maid’s Tragedy (1619). Like the noir femme fatale, there is a female protagonist in each of these plays who uses both cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her desired independence. By focusing on one noir film and one Renaissance play, this article will explore both the historical factors that precipitate the emergence of these fatal women and the structural tropes that are common to both Double Indemnity and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling. The obvious parallels between the two figures at the centre of these narratives—Phyllis and Beatrice-Joanna respectively—namely an aversion to the institution of marriage and the instigation of murder to attain one’s desires, enable a re-imagined reading of Beatrice-Joanna as a femme fatale. Socio-Cultural AnxietiesThe femme fatale is a component of changing consciousness: she is one of the recurring motifs of the film noir genre and takes her place amongst degeneration anxieties, anxieties about sexuality and race and concerns about cultural virility and fitness (Stott). According to Sylvia Harvey, the emergence of the femme fatale parallels social changes taking place in the 1940s, particularly the increasing entry of women into the labour market. She also notes the apparent frustration of the institution of the family in this era and the boredom and stifling entrapment of marriage and how the femme fatale threatens to destroy traditional family structures. Jans Wager likewise notes that the femme fatale emerged as an expression of the New Woman, whose presence in the public sphere was in opposition to her adherence to traditional societal values, while Virginia Allen argues that the femme fatale came to maturity in the years marked by the first birth control campaigns and female emancipation movement. The Renaissance femme fatale similarly emerged in the wake of historical trigger factors occurring at the time, namely the presence of a female monarch and changes to marriage laws. In 1558, Queen Elizabeth I assumed the throne, which had a profound impact upon relations of gender in English Renaissance society. She occupied a privileged position of power in a society that believed women should have none by virtue of their inferior sex (Montrose). This was compounded by her decision to remain unmarried, which ensured the consolidation of her power that she would have otherwise forfeited to her husband. The presence of a female ruler destabilised established notions of women as passive objects of desire and, as I argue here, contributed to representations of powerful women in Renaissance drama. Men created femme fatales in their work as an expression of what they saw in women who were beginning to declare their sexual and political freedom. In addition, changing conceptions of marriage from arranged practices (unions for social and economic reasons) to romantic idealism (marriage for companionship and affective ties) saw the legitimation of desire outside the holy sacrament. Plays depicting femme fatales, including The Changeling (1622), Arden of Faversham (1592) and The Maid’s Tragedy (1619) to name a few, appear to have fed off the anxieties that resulted from the shift from arranged marriages to individual choice of a spouse. Similarly, in the noir period, “restrictions on women’s rights ensured that married women had comparatively fewer rights than single women, who could at least lay claim to their own property and wages” (Braun 53). As such, the femme fatale represented an alternative to domesticity, one in which a woman could retain her dignity without a man.Re-imagining the Femme Fatale James Damico proposes a model of film noir’s plot structure and character type. The male protagonist is hired for a job associated with a non-innocent woman to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted to. Through his attraction, either because the woman induces him to it or because it is a natural result of their relationship, the man comes to cheat, attempt to or actually murder a second man to whom a woman is unhappily or unwillingly attached (generally her husband or lover). This act invariably leads to the woman’s betrayal of the protagonist and either metaphorically or literally results in the destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attached, and the protagonist himself. In Double Indemnity, Phyllis Dietrichson lures her hapless lover, Walter Neff, into committing murder on her behalf. He puts up minimal resistance to Phyllis’s plan to insure her husband without his knowledge so that he can be killed and she can reap the benefits of the policy. Walter says, “I fought it [the idea of murder], only I guess I didn’t fight it hard enough.” Similarly, in The Changeling, Beatrice-Joanna’s father, Vermandero, arranges her marriage to Alonzo de Piracquo; however, she is in love with Alsemero, who would also be a suitable match if Alonzo were out of the way. She thus employs the use of her servant DeFlores to kill her intended. He does as instructed and brings back her dead fiancée’s finger as proof of the deed, expecting for his services a sexual reward, rather than the gold Beatrice-Joanna offered him: “Never was man / Dearlier rewarded” (2.2.138-140). Renaissance fears regarding women’s desirous subjectivity are justified in this scene, which represent Beatrice-Joanna as willingly succumbing to DeFlore’s advances: she came to “love anon” what she had previously “fear’st and faint’st to venture on” (3.4.171-172). She experienced a “giddy turning in [her]” (1.1.159), which compelled her to seduce DeFlores on the eve of her wedding to Alsemero. Both Phyllis and Beatrice-Joanna localise contemporary fears and fantasies about women, sexuality and marriage (Haber) and, despite the existing literature surrounding the noir femme fatale, a re-imagining of this figure on the Renaissance stage is unique. Furthermore, and in addition to similarities in plot structure, noir films are typically characterised by three narrative tropes (masquerade, the polarisation of the femme fatale with the femme attrappe and the demise of the femme fatale) that are likewise present in The Changeling. 1. Masquerade: Her Sexual Past Is the Central Mystery of the Narrative The femme fatale appropriates the signifiers of femininity (modesty, obedience, silence) that bewitch men and fool them into believing that she embodies everything he desires. According to Luce Irigaray, the femme fatale assumes an unnatural, flaunted facade and, in so doing, she conceals her own subjectivity and disrupts notions of what she is really like. Her sexual past is often the central mystery and so she figuratively embodies the hidden secrets of feminine sexuality while the males battle for control over this knowledge (Lee-Hedgeco*ck). John Caleb-Hopkins characterises Phyllis as a faux housewife because of her rejection of the domestic, her utilisation of the role to further her agency, and her method of deception via gender performance. It is “faux” because she plays the role as a means to achieve her monetary or material desires. When Phyllis first meets Walter she plays up the housewife routine because she immediately recognises his potential utility for her. The house is not a space in which she belongs but a space she can utilise to further her agency and so she devises a plan to dethrone and remove the patriarch from his position within the home. Walter, as the last patriarchal figure in her vicinity to interfere with the pursuit of her desire, must be killed as well. Beatrice-Joanna’s masquerade of femininity (“there was a visor / O’er that cunning face” [5.3.46-7]) and her performance as a chaste virgin to please Alsemero, suggests that she possesses an ineffaceable knowledge that femininity is a construction that women put on for men. Having surrendered her virginity to DeFlores prior to marrying Alsemero, she agonises that he will find out: “Never was bride so fearfully distressed […] There’s no venturing / Into his bed […] Without my shame” (4.1.2-13). Fortunately, she discovers a manuscript (the Book of Experiments) that documents “How to know whether a woman be a maid or not” (4.1.41). Having discovered the book and potions, Beatrice-Joanna persuades her waiting-woman Diaphanta to take the potions so that she can witness its effects and mimic them as necessary. Thus instructed, Beatrice-Joanna is equipped with the ability to feign the symptoms of virginity, which leads us to the notion of female masquerade as a means to evade the male gaze by feigning virtue and thus retaining her status as desirable to men. Her masquerade conceals her sexual experience and hides the truth of female deceitfulness from the men in the play, which makes manifest the theme of women’s unknowability. 2. Femme Fatale versus Femme AttrappeThe original source of the femme fatale is the dark half of the dualistic concept of the Eternal Feminine: the Mary/Eve dichotomy (Allen). In film noir, the female characters fall into one of two categories—the femme fatale or woman as redeemer. Unlike the femme fatale, the femme attrappe is the known, familiar and comfortable other, who is juxtaposed to the unknown, devious and deceptive other. According to Jans Wager both women are trapped by patriarchal authority—the femme fatale by her resistance and the good wife by her acquiescence. These two women invariably appear side-by-side in order to demonstrate acceptable womanhood in the case of the femme attrappe and dangerous and unacceptable displays of femininity in the case of the femme fatale. In Double Indemnity, Phyllis is an obvious example of the latter. She flirts brazenly with Walter while introducing the idea of insuring her husband and when he finally kills her husband, she stares unflinchingly ahead and continues driving, showing very little remorse after the murder. Lola (Phyllis’s step-daughter and the film’s femme attrappe) functions as a foil to Phyllis. “Lola’s narrative purpose is to provide a female character to contrast with Phyllis to further depict her femininity as bad […] The more Lola is emphatically stressed as victim through Walter’s narration, the more vilified Phyllis is” (Caleb-Hopkins). Lola presents a type of femininity that patriarchy approves of and necessitates. Phyllis is the antithesis to this because her sexuality is provocative and open and she uses it to manipulate those around her (Caleb-Hopkins). It is Lola who eventually tells Walter that Phyllis murdered her mother and that her former boyfriend Nino has been spotted at Phyllis’s house most nights. This leads Walter to conclude, logically, that she is arranging for Nino to kill him as well (Maxfield). The Renaissance subplot heroine has been juxtaposed, here, with the deadly woman at the center of the play, thus supporting a common structural trope of the film noir genre in which the femme attrappe and femme fatale exist alongside each other. In The Changeling, Isabella and Beatrice-Joanna occupy these positions respectively. In the play’s subplot, Alibius employs his servant Lollio to watch over his wife Isabella while he is away and, ironically, it is Lollio himself who attempts to seduce Isabella. He offers himself to her as a “most shrewd temptation” (1.2.57); however, unlike Beatrice-Joanna, who engages in a lascivious affair with another man, Isabella remains faithful to her husband. In so doing, Beatrice-Joanna’s status as a femme fatale is exemplified. She is represented as a woman who cannot control her desires and will resort to any and all means necessary to get what she wants. 3. The Femme Fatale’s Demise The femme fatale is characterised by the two-fold possession of desire: desire for autonomy and self-government and the desire for death. Her quest for freedom, which is only available in death, explains the femme fatale’s desire to self-destruct in these plays, which guarantees that she will never deviate from the course she alighted on even if that path leads inevitably to her demise. According to Elizabeth Bronfen, “the choice between freedom and death inevitably requires that one choose death because there you show that you have freedom of choice. She undertakes an act that allows her to choose death as a way of choosing real freedom by turning the inevitability of her fate into her responsibility” (2004).The femme fatale will never show her true intentions to anyone, especially not the hero she has inveigled, even if it entails his and her own death (Bronfen). In Double Indemnity, Phyllis, by choosing not to shoot Walter the second time, performs an act in which she actively accepts her own fallibility: “I never loved you Walter. Not you or anybody else. I’m rotten to the heart. I used you just as you said. That’s all you ever meant to me. Until a minute ago, when I couldn’t fire that second shot.” This is similarly the case with Beatrice-Joanna who, only at the very end, admits to the murder of Alonzo—“Your love has made me / A cruel murd’ress” (5.3.64-5)—in order to get the man she wanted. According to Bronfen, the femme fatale turns what is inevitable into a source of power. She does not contest the murder charge because a guilty verdict and punishment of death will grant her the freedom she has sought unwaveringly since the beginning of the play. Both Beatrice-Joanna and Phyllis apprehend that there is no appropriate outlet for their unabashed independence. Their unions, with Alsemero and Walter respectively, will nevertheless require their subjection in the patriarchal institution of monogamous marriage. The destruction of the sanctity of marriage in Double Indemnity and The Changeling inevitably results in placing the relationship of the lovers under strain, beyond the boundaries of conventional moral law, to the extent that the adulterous relationship becomes an impossibility that invariably results in the mutual destruction of both parties. ConclusionThe plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, like the noir films of the 1940s and 50s, lament a lost past when women accepted their subordination without reproach and anxiously anticipated a future in which women refused submission to men and masculine forms of authority (Born-Lechleitner). While the femme fatale is commonly associated with the noir era, this article has argued that a series of historical factors and socio-cultural anxieties in the Renaissance period allow for a re-imagined reading of the femme fatale on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. In The Changeling, Middleton and Rowley foreground contemporary cultural anxieties by fleshing out the lusty details that confirm Beatrice-Joanna’s status a female villainess. Throughout the play we come to understand the ideologies that dictate the manner of her representation. That is, early modern anxieties regarding the independent, sexually appetitive woman manifested in representations of a female figure on the Renaissance stage who can be re-imagined as a femme fatale.ReferencesAllen, Virginia M. The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon. New York: Whitson Publishing Company, 1983. Born-Lechleitner, Ilse. The Motif of Adultery in Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline Tragedy. New York: Edwin Hellen Press, 1995.Braun, Heather. The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790-1910. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2012. Bronfen, Elizabeth. “Femme Fatale: Negotiations of Tragic Desire.” New Literary History 35.1 (2004): 103–16. Caleb-Hopkins, John. “There’s No Place like Home … Anymore: Domestic Masquerade and Faux-Housewife Femme Fatale in Barbara Stanwyck’s Early 1940s Films.” Masters thesis. Canada: Carleton University, 2014.Damico, James. “Film Noir: A Modest Proposal.” Film Noir Reader. Eds. Alain Silver and James Ursini. New York: Limelight, 1996.Double Indemnity. Billy Wilder. Paramount Pictures, 1944.Haber, Judith. “I(t) Could Not Choose But Follow: Erotic Logic in The Changeling.” Representations 81.18 (2003): 79–98. Harvey, Sylivia. “Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. A. Kaplan. London: British Film Institute, 1978. Irigaray, Luce. The Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.Lee-Hedgeco*ck, Jennifer. The Sexual Threat and Danger of the Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2005. Montrose, Louis. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006.Maxfield, James F. The Fatal Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1996.Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951 [1933]. Stott, Rebecca. The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale. London: Macmillan Press, 1992.Wager, Jans B. Dangerous Dames: Women and Representation in the Weimar Street Film and Film Noir. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1999.

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Introduction Contrary to popular understandings of academia, the work of academics is intrinsically community driven, because scholarly inquiry is invariably about social life. Therefore, what occupies academic scholarship is in the interest of the broader populace, and we rely on the public to inform our work. The findings of academic work are simultaneously a reflection of the researcher, and the public. The research interests of contemporary cultural and social researchers inevitably, and often necessarily, reflect issues and activities that they encounter in their everyday lives. My own doctoral research into contemporary cultural discourses informing the expectations, and experiences of motherhood in regional Western Australia, reflects an academic, personal and community interest. The doctoral research drawn on in this paper, stresses the relevance of cultural research projects to the concerns and behaviours of the wider public. The enthusiasm with which participants responded to this project, and reported back about their feelings and actions following the interview was unexpected. The immediacy of the impact this project has had on assisting women to create and consider alternate discourses demonstrates the capacity of this work to inform and direct contemporary social, political and cultural debates surrounding the bodily expectations, and experiences of motherhood. The feminist inspired methodology adopted in this project facilitated my speaking to other women negotiating cultural ideals about what constitutes a "good mother" in contemporary regional Western Australia. It has the potential to open up conversations between women, and between women and men, as evidenced by subsequent responses from participants. By examining the impact of these cultural ideals with everyday women, this project provides a means for women, and men, to reflect, engage critically and ultimately re-shape these discourses to more accurately reveal the desires and aspirations of everyday Australian women. From my perspective, three discourses in particular, the Good Mother, the Superwoman, and the Yummy Mummy, inform the expectations and experiences of motherhood. The orthodox discourse of the 'Good Mother' understands motherhood as a natural feminine desire and it describes characteristics such as enduring love, care, patience and selflessness that are often presented as synonymous with motherhood. Women who can successfully juggle the expectations of being a 'good mother' and a dedicated professional worker, are 'superwomen'. Increasingly dominant is the expectation that following maternity, women should not look as if they have had a child at all; the discourse of the Yummy Mummy focused on in this paper. The relationships between these discourses are complex; "failure to perform" them adequately can result in women being labelled "bad mothers", either by themselves or others. Although these discourses are Western and globalising, they have a tangible effect locally. The cultural scripts they proscribe to are often contradictory; resulting in many women feeling conflicted. Despite some levels of critical engagement with these competing cultural agendas, the women in this study reflected, to differing degrees, their internalisation of the expectations that accompany these cultural scripts. The outcome of this work, and the process of producing it, has the capacity to influence the direction of current debates in Australia. Amongst others, the debate surrounding the contemporary cultural "presentation" of postnatal bodies, including what women should look like as mothers. The role of the media in shaping the current expectations surrounding the postnatal body, including the recently raised proposal that glossy magazines, and other forms of media, should have to declare incidences of Photoshopping, or other forms of photo enhancement, is one agenda that this project can influence. I explore the potential of this work to influence these debates through an examination of the impact of popularised fantasies on women's subjectivity, and feelings towards their postnatal bodies. An examination of the ways that some aspects of mothering are excluded from popular media sources highlights the capacity of this work to provide a practical means of sharing contemporary expectations and experiences of motherhood amongst women, those already mothering, and those intending to mother, and men. These debates have an impact on, and relevance for, the everyday lives of Australian women and men. Feminist Methodologies: Opportunities to Foster Mutual Understanding and Recognition of Shared Experience The motivating emphasis of feminist research is "women's lives and the questions they have about their own experiences" (Bloom 112). Consequently, a feminist methodology includes a concern with transformation and empowerment through the research practice (McRobbie, "Politics" 52). For Luff this reminds feminist researchers that their first duty is to "deal respectively with women's subjectivity, and indeed the inter-subjectivities of researcher and participants" (692). Olesen, in her account of feminist qualitative research, articulates that: the researcher too, has attributes, characteristics, a history, and gender, class, race and social attributes that enter the researcher interaction … in light of the multiple positions, selves, and identities at play in the research process, the subjectivity of the researcher, as much as that of the researched, became foregrounded. (226-7) This signifies for Olesen the indistinct boundary between researchers and researched (227), and for myself, signals the potential that feminist research praxis has for uniting the academic and broader, communities. According to Reinharz the interview has historically been the principle way in which feminists have pursued the active contribution of their participants in the construction of their research projects (Heyl 374). The research findings of this doctoral project are based on a series of interviews with nine intending to mother women, and twenty one already mothering women. The research questions were open-ended to allow participants to answer "in their own terms" (Jones 48). Participants were also encouraged to reflect on aspects of mothering, or plans to mother, that were most significant to them. Following Oakley (49) and others (Bloom 11) argument that there can be no intimacy between researcher and participant without reciprocity, while I chose not to express my personal disagreement to any statements made by participants, I self-consciously chose to answer any questions that participants directed to me. I did not attempt to hide my personal empathy with many of their accounts, and allowed for email follow up. By doing my upmost to position myself as a "validating listener" rather than a scrutinising judge, I allowed the women to reflect on the fact that their feelings were not necessarily unusual or "abnormal", and did not make them "bad mothers". In this way, both the process, and the final product of this work can provide a practical means for women to share some of their feelings, which are often excluded, or in some cases, vilified (Arendell 1196; O'Donohoe 14), in popular media outlets. The outcome of this work can contribute to an alternate space for everyday women to "be real" with both other mothers, and intending to mother women, and contribute to discourses of motherhood. Unreal Imagery and the Postnatal Body: Possibilities for Communication and Alteration Drawing on the principal example of the impact of unreal imagery, specifically images of airbrushed supermodels and celebrities, on the real experiences of motherhood by everyday Australian women, I propose that this project can foster further communications between intending to mother, and already mothering women, and their partners, about the realities, and misconceptions of motherhood; particularly, to share aspects of mothering that are excluded or marginalised in popular media representations. Through this process of validating the experiences of "real" everyday women, women, and men, can affect a break from, or at least critique, dominant discourses surrounding motherhood, and appreciate that there are a multiplicity of opinions, information, and ways of mothering. A dominant aspect of the "unreal" surrounding motherhood concerns the body and what women are led to believe their bodies can, and indeed, should, look like, postnatal. Unsurprisingly, the women in my study associated this "unreal" with Hollywood representations, and the increasing plethora of celebrity mums they encounter in the media. As McRobbie has suggested, a popular front page image for various celebrity chasing weekly magazines is the Yummy Mummy, "who can squeeze into size six jeans a couple of weeks after giving birth, with the help of a personal trainer", an image that has provided the perfect foundation for marketing companies to promote the arena of maternity as the next central cultural performance in terms of femininity, in which "high maintenance pampering techniques, as well as a designer wardrobe" ("Yummy") are essential. The majority of women in my study spoke about these images, and the messages they send. With few exceptions, the participants identified popular images surrounding mothering, and the expectations that accompany them, as unrealistic, and inaccurate. Several women reflected on the way that some aspects of their experience, which, in many cases, turned out to be shared experience, of mothering are excluded, or "hidden away", in popular media forms. For Rachel, popular media representations do not capture the "realness" of everyday experiences of motherhood: I was looking at all these not so real people … Miranda Kerr like breast feeding with her red stiletto's on and her red lipstick and I'm just like right you've got your slippers on and your pyjamas on and you're lucky to brush your teeth by lunchtime … I don't think they want to keep it real … It's not all giggles and smiles; there is uncontrollable crying in the middle of the night because you don't know what's wrong with them and you find out the next day that they've got an ear infection. You know where's all that, they miss out all that, it's all about the beautiful sleeping babies and you know the glam mums. (Rachel, aged 33, mother of one) The individual women involved in this study were personally implicated to differing degrees in these unreal images. For Penelope, these types of representations influenced her bodily expectations, and she identified this disjunction as the most significant in her mothering experience: I expected to pop straight back into my pre-maternity size, that for me was the hugest thing actually, like you see these ladies who six weeks after they've had their baby, look as good as before sort of thing, no stretch marks or anything like and then I thought if they can do it, I can do it sort of thing and it didn't work like that. (Penelope, aged 36, mother of four) Penelope's experience was not an unusual one, with the majority of women reporting similar feelings. The findings of this study concur with the outcomes reported by a recent United Kingdom survey of 2000 women, which found that 82 per cent were unhappy with their postnatal bodies, 77 per cent were "shocked by the changes to their body", and, more than nine out of ten agreed that "celebrity mothers' dramatic weight loss 'puts immense and unwelcome pressure on ordinary mums" (O'Donohoe 9). This suggests that celebrity images, and the expectations that accompany them, are having a widespread effect in the Western world, resulting in many women experiencing a sense of loss when it comes to their bodies. They must "get their bodies back", and may experience shame over the unattainability of this goal, which appears to be readily achievable for other women. To appreciate the implications of these images, and the power relations involved, these effects need to be examined on the local, everyday level. O'Donohoe discusses the role of magazines in funding this unreal imagery, and their fixation on high-profile Yummy Mummies, describing their coverage as "hyper-hypocritical" (9-10). On one hand, they play a leading role in the proliferation, promotion and reinforcement of the Yummy Mummy ideal, and the significant pressure this discourse places on women in the wider community. Whilst on the other hand they denigrate and vilify celebrity mums who are also increasingly pressured into this performance, labelling them as "weigh too thin" (cover of Famous magazine, Jan. 2011) and "too stressed to eat" (cover of OK magazine, June 2011). Gill and Arthurs observe how: the female celebrity body is under constant surveillance, policed for being too fat, too thin, having wrinkles or 'ugly hands' … 'ordinary' women's bodies are under similar scrutiny when they participate in the growing number of reality make-over shows in which … female participants are frequently humiliated and vilified. (444) An observation by one of my participants suggests the implications of these media trends on the lives of everyday women, and suggests that everyday women are inscrutably aware of the lack of alternative discourses: It's kind of like fashionable to talk about your body and what's wrong with it, it's not really, I don't know. You don't really say, check out, like god I've got good boobs and look at me, look how good I look. It's almost like, my boobs are sagging, or my bums too big, it's never anything really positive. (Daisy, aged 36, mother of two) The "fashionable" nature of body surveillance is further supported by the vast majority of women in this study who reported such behaviour. A preoccupation with the body as a source of identity that emphasises self-surveillance, self-monitoring, and self-discipline (Gill 155) is a central component to neoliberalism, and the Yummy Mummy phenomenon. As O'Donohoe surmises, maternity now requires high maintenance (3). O'Donohoe comments on the concern this generates amongst some women regarding their weight gain, leading to some cases of infant malnutrition as a consequence of dieting whilst pregnant (9). Whilst this is an extreme example, mothering women's anxiety over body image is a widespread concern as reflected in this study. This trend towards body surveillance suggests that the type of sexualisation Attwood describes as taking place in Western cultures, is present and influential amongst the women in this study. I concur with Attwood that this trend is supplementary to the intensification of neoliberalism, in which "the individual becomes a self-regulating unit in society" (xxiii). The body as a key site for identity construction, acts as a canvas, on which the cultural trend towards increasing sexualisation, is printed, and has implications for both feminine and maternal identities. The women in this study reported high incidences of body self-surveillance, with an emphasis on the monitoring of "weight". For many women, the disjuncture between the popularised "unreal", and the reality of their postnatal bodies resulted in feelings of shock and disappointment. For Teal, positive feelings and self-esteem were connected to her weight, and she discussed how she had to restrict weighing herself to once a week, at a particular time of day, to avoid distress: I'm trying to make it that I don't go on the scales, just once and week and like in the morning, because like I go at different times and like your weight does change a little bit during the day and your oh my goodness I've put on kilo! And feel awful and then next morning you weigh yourself and go good its back. (Teal, aged 25, mother of one) According to Foucault (Sawicki, Disciplining 68), the practice of self-surveillance teaches individuals to monitor themselves, and is one of the key normative operations of biopower, a process that attaches individuals to their identities. The habitual approach to weight monitoring by many of the women in this study suggests that the Yummy Mummy discourse is becoming incorporated into the identities of everyday mothering women, as a recognisable and dominant cultural script to perform, to differing degrees, and to varying grades of consciousness. A number of participants in this study worked in the fitness industry, and whilst I expected them to be more concerned about their bodies postnatal, because of the pressures they face in their workplaces to "look the part", the education they receive about their bodies gave them a realistic idea of what individual women can achieve, and they were among the most critical of weight monitoring practices. As several feminist and poststructuralist theorists suggest, disciplinary practices, such as self-surveillance, both underscore, and contribute to, contemporary cultural definitions of femininity. From a Foucauldian perspective, a woman in this context becomes "a self-policing subject, self-committed to a relentless self-surveillance" (Hekman 275). However, although for Foucault, total liberation is impossible, some parts of social life are more vulnerable to criticism than others, and we can change particular normalising practices (165). Creating alternate mothering discourses is one way to achieve this, and some women did reflect critically on these types of self-policing behaviours. A minority of women in this study recognised their body as "different" to before they had children. Rather than agonise over these changes, they accepted them as part of where they are in their lives right now: I'm not the same person that I was then, its different, I like I just sort of feel that change is good, it's okay to be different, it's okay for me look different, it's okay for my body to kind of wear my motherhood badges that's okay I feel happy about that. So I don't want it to look exactly the same, no I don't actually. (Corinne, aged 33, mother of four) As many of the women who have been in email contact with me since their interviews have expressed, the questions I asked have prompted them to reflect more consciously on many of these issues, and for some, to have conversations with loved ones. For me, this demonstrates that this project has assisted women, and the process of taking part has elicited conversations between more women, and importantly, between women and men, about these types of media representations, and the expectations they create. In response to a growing body of research into the effects of unrealistic imagery on women, particularly young women and the increasing rates of eating disorders amongst women (see for example Hudson et al.; Taylor et al.; Treasure) in Western communities, there has been debate in a number of Western countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Australia, over whether the practice of digitally altering photos in the media, should be legislated so that media outlets are required to declare when and how images have been altered. The media has not greeted this suggestion warmly. In response to calls for legislative action Jill Wanless, an associate editor at Look magazine, suggested that "sometimes readers want hyper-reality in a way—they want to be taken out of their own situation". The justification for "perfected" images, in this case, is the inferred distinction they create between the unreal and reality. However, the responses from the everyday women involved in this study suggest that their desire is not for "hyper reality", but rather for "realness" to be represented. As Corinne explains: Where's the mother on the front page of the magazine that says I took 11 months to lose my baby weight…I hate this fantasy world, where's the reality, where's our real mums, our real women who are out there going I agonise over dropping my kid in day care everyday when they cry, I hate it. That's real. Performativity, as an inextricable aspect of hyper reality, may be ignored by those with a vested interest in media production, but the roles that discourses such as the Yummy Mummy have in proliferating and creating the expectation of these performances, is of interest to both the community and cultural theorists. Conclusion The capacity to influence current cultural, political and social debates surrounding what women should look like as mothers in contemporary Western Australian society is important to explore. Using feminist methodologies in such work provides an opportunity to unite the academic and broader communities. By disassembling the boundary between researcher and researched, it is possible to encourage mutual understanding and the recognition of mutual experience amongst researcher, participants' and the wider community. Taking part in this research has elicited conversations between women, and men concerning their expectations, and experiences of parenthood. Most importantly, the outcome of this work has reflected a desire by local everyday women for the media to include their stories in the broader presentation of motherhood. In this sense, this project has, and can further, assist women in sharing aspects of their experiences that are frequently excluded from popular media representations, and present the multiplicity of mothering experiences, and what being a "good mother" can entail. Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank the following for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article: Dr Kathryn Trees, Yann Toussaint, Linda Warren and the anonymous M/C Journal reviewers. References Arendell, Terry. "Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade's Scholarship." Journal of Marriage and the Family 62.4 (2000): 1192-207. Attwood, Feona. Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Bloom, Leslie. "Reflections from the Field: Locked in Uneasy Sisterhood: Reflections on Feminist Methodology and Research Relations." Anthropology & Education Quarterly 28.1 (1997): 111-22. Wanless, Jill. "Curb Airbrushed Images, Keep Bodies Real." CBS News World UK, 2010. 20 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/20/world/main6884884.shtml›. Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity P, 2007. Gill, Rosalind, and Jane Arthurs. "Editors Introduction: New Femininities?" Feminist Media Studies 6.4 (2006): 443-51. Hekman, Susan. Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. Heyl, Barbara Sherman. "Ethnographic Interviewing." Handbook of Ethnography. Eds. Paul Atkinson, Amanda J. Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn H. Lofland. London: Sage, 2001. 369-83. Hudson, James I., Eva Hiripi, Harrison G. Pope Jr., and Ronald C. Kessler. "The Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication." Biological Psychiatry 61.3 (2007). 348-58. Jones, Sue. "Depth Interviewing." Applied Qualitative Research. Ed. Robert Walker. Ashgate, 1985. 45-56. Luff, Donna. "Dialogue across the Divides: 'Moments of Rapport' and Power in Feminist Research with Anti-Feminist Women." Sociology 33.4 (1999): 687-703. McRobbie, Angela. "The Politics of Feminist Research: Between Talk, Text and Action." Feminist Review 12 (1982): 46-57. ———. "Yummy Mummies Leave a Bad Taste for Young Women: The Cult of Celebrity Motherhood Is Deterring Couples from Having Children Early. We Need to Rethink the Nanny Culture." The Guardian 2 Mar. 2006. Oakley, Ann. "Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms." Doing Feminist Research. Ed. Helen Roberts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 30-61. O'Donohoe, Stephanie. "Yummy Mummies: The Clamour of Glamour in Advertising to Mothers." Advertising & Society Review 7.3 (2006): 1-18. Olesen, Virginia. "Feminisms and Qualitative Research at and into the Millennium." Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. London: Sage, 2000. 215-55. Sawicki, Jana. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. ———. "Feminism, Foucault, and 'Subjects' of Power and Freedom." Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. Ed. Susan J. Hekman, University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. 159-210. Taylor, C. Barr, et al. "The Adverse Effect of Negative Comments about Weight and Shape for Family and Siblings on Women at High Risk for Eating Disorders." Paediatrics 118 (2006): 731-38. Treasure, Janet. "An Image Is Worth a Thousand Words of Public Health." Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry 56.1 (2007): 7-8.

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This paper is part of a larger project exploring Australian literary responses to the Great War of 1914-1918. It draws on theories of embodiment, mourning, ritual and the recuperative potential of writing, together with a brief discussion of selected exemplars, to suggest that literary works of the period contain and lay bare a suite of creative, corporeal and social impulses, including resurrection, placation or stilling of ghosts, and formation of an empathic and duty-bound community. In Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood hypothesises that “all writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality—by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead” (156). She asks an attendant question: “why should it be writing, over and above any other art or medium,” that functions this way? It is not only that writing acquires the appearance of permanence, by surviving “its own performance,” but also that some arts are transient, like dance, while others, like painting and sculpture and music, do “not survive as voice.” For Atwood, writing is a “score for voice,” and what the voice does mostly is tell stories, whether in prose or poetry: “Something unfurls, something reveals itself” (158). Writing, by this view, conjures, materialises or embodies the absent or dead, or is at least laden with this potential. Of course, as Katherine Sutherland observes, “representation is always the purview of the living, even when the order it constructs contains the dead” (202). She argues that all writing about death “might be regarded as epitaph or memorial; such writing is likely to contain the signs of ritual but also of ambiguity and forgetting” (204). Arguably writing can be regarded as participation in a ritual that “affirms membership of the collectivity, and through symbolic manipulation places the life of an individual within a much broader, sometimes cosmic, interpretive framework” (Seale 29), which may assist healing in relation to loss, even if some non-therapeutic purposes, such as restoration of social and political order, also lie behind both rites and writing. In a critical orthodoxy dating back to the 1920s, it has become accepted wisdom that the Australian literary response to the war was essentially nationalistic, “big-noting” ephemera, and thus of little worth (see Gerster and Caesar, for example). Consequently, as Bruce Clunies Ross points out, most Australian literary output of the period has “dropped into oblivion.” In his view, neglect of writings by First World War combatants is not due to its quality, “for this is not the only, or even the essential, condition” for consideration; rather, it is attributable to a “disjunction between the ideals enshrined in the Anzac legend and the experiences recorded or depicted” (170). The silence, we argue, also encompasses literary responses by non-combatants, many of whom were women, though limited space precludes consideration here of their particular contributions.Although poetry and fiction by those of middling or little literary reputation is not normally subject to critical scrutiny, it is patently not the case that there is no body of literature from the war period worthy of scholarly consideration, or that most works are merely patriotic, jingoistic, sentimental and in service of recruitment, even though these elements are certainly present. Our different proposition is that the “lost literatures” deserve attention for various reasons, including the ways they embody conflicting aims and emotions, as well as overt negotiations with the dead, during a period of unprecedented anguish. This is borne out by our substantial collection of creative writing provoked by the war, much of which was published by newspapers, magazines and journals. As Joy Damousi points out in The Labour of Loss, newspapers were the primary form of communication during the war, and never before or since have they dominated to such a degree; readers formed collective support groups through shared reading and actual or anticipated mourning, and some women commiserated with each other in person and in letters after reading casualty lists and death notices (21). The war produced the largest body count in the history of humanity to that time, including 60,000 Australians: none was returned to Australia for burial. They were placed in makeshift graves close to where they died, where possible marked by wooden crosses. At the end of the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) was charged with the responsibility of exhuming and reinterring bodily remains in immaculately curated cemeteries across Europe, at Gallipoli and in the Middle East, as if the peace demanded it. As many as one third of the customary headstones were inscribed with “known unto God,” the euphemism for bodies that could not be identified. The CWGC received numerous requests from families for the crosses, which might embody their loved one and link his sacrificial death with resurrection and immortality. For allegedly logistical reasons, however, all crosses were destroyed on site. Benedict Anderson suggested the importance to nationalism of the print media, which enables private reading of ephemera to generate a sense of communion with thousands or millions of anonymous people understood to be doing likewise. Furthermore, Judith Herman demonstrates in Trauma and Recovery that sharing traumatic experience with others is a “precondition for the restitution of a sense of a meaningful world” (70). Need of community and restitution extends to the dead. The practices of burying the dead together and of returning the dead to their homeland when they die abroad speak to this need, for “in establishing a society of the dead, the society of the living regularly recreates itself” (Hertz qtd. in Searle 66). For Australians, the society of the dead existed elsewhere, in unfamiliar terrain, accentuating the absence inherent in all death. The society of the dead and missing—and thus of the living and wounded—was created and recreated throughout the war via available means, including literature. Writers of war-related poems and fiction helped create and sustain imagined communities. Dominant use of conventional, sometimes archaic, literary forms, devices, language and imagery indicates desire for broadly accessible and purposeful communication; much writing invokes shared grief, resolve, gratitude, and sympathy. Yet, in many stories and poems, there is also ambivalence in relation to sacrifice and the community of the dead.Speaking in the voice of the other is a fundamental task of the creative writer, and the ultimate other, the dead, gaze upon and speak to or about the living in a number of poems. For example, they might vocalise displeasure and plead for reinforcements, as, for example, in Ella M’Fadyen’s poem “The Wardens,” published in the Sydney Mail in 1918, which includes the lines: “Can’t you hear them calling in the night-time’s lonely spaces […] Can’t you see them passing […] Those that strove full strongly, and have laid their lives away?” The speaker hears and conveys the pleading of those who have given their breath in order to make explicit the reader’s responsibility to both the dead and the Allied cause: “‘Thus and thus we battled, we were faithful in endeavour;/Still it lies unfinished—will ye make the deed in vain?’” M’Fadyen focusses on soldierly sacrifice and “drafts that never came,” whereas a poem entitled “Your Country’s Call,” published in the same paper in 1915 by “An Australian Mother, Shirley, Queensland,” refers to maternal sacrifice and the joys and difficulties of birthing and raising her son only to find the country’s claims on him outweigh her own. She grapples with patriotism and resistance: “he must go/forth./Where? Why? Don’t think. Just smother/up the pain./Give him up quickly, for his country’s gain.” The War Precautions Act of October 1914 made it “illegal to publish any material likely to discourage recruiting or undermine the Allied effort” (Damousi 21), which undoubtedly meant that, to achieve publication, critical, depressing or negative views would need to be repressed or cast as inducement to enlist, though evidently many writers also sought to convince themselves as well as others that the cause was noble and the cost redeemable. “Your Country’s Call” concludes uncertainly, “Give him up proudly./You have done your share./There may be recompense—somewhere.”Sociologist Clive Seal argues that “social and cultural life involves turning away from the inevitability of death, which is contained in the fact of our embodiment, and towards life” (1). He contends that “grief for embodiment” is pervasive and perpetual and “extends beyond the obvious manifestations of loss by the dying and bereaved, to incorporate the rituals of everyday interaction” (200), and he goes so far as to suggest that if we recognise that our bodies “give to us both our lives and our deaths” then we can understand that “social and cultural life can, in the last analysis, be understood as a human construction in the face of death” (210). To deal with the grief that comes with “realisation of embodiment,” Searle finds that we engage in various “resurrective practices designed to transform an orientation towards death into one that points towards life” (8). He includes narrative reconstruction as well as funeral lament and everyday conversation as rituals associated with maintenance of the social bond, which is “the most crucial human motive” (Scheff qtd. in Searle 30). Although Seale does not discuss the acts of writing or of reading specifically, his argument can be extended, we believe, to include both as important resurrective practices that contain desire for self-repair and reorientation as well as for inclusion in and creation of an empathic moral community, though this does not imply that such desires can ever be satisfied. In “Reading,” Virginia Woolf reminds that “somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in whatever is written down is the form of a human being” (28-29), but her very reminder assumes that this knowledge of embodiment tends to be forgotten or repressed. Writing, by its aura of permanence and resurrective potential, points towards life and connection, even as it signifies absence and disconnection. Christian Riegel explains that the “literary work of mourning,” whether poetry, fiction or nonfiction, often has both a psychic and social function, “partaking of the processes of mourning while simultaneously being a product for public reception.” Such a text is indicative of ways that societies shape and control responses to death, making it “an inherently socio-historical construct” (xviii). Jacques Derrida’s passionate and uneasy enactment of this labour in The Work of Mourning suggests that writing often responds to the death of a known person or their oeuvre, where each death changes and reduces the world, so that the world as one knew it “sinks into an abyss” (115). Of course, writing also wrestles with anonymous, large-scale loss which is similarly capable of shattering our sense of “ontological security” (Riegel xx). Sandra Gilbert proposes that some traumatic events cause “death’s door” to swing “so publicly and dramatically open that we can’t look away” (xxii). Derrida’s work of mourning entails imaginative revival of those he has lost and is a struggle with representation and fidelity, whereas critical silence in respect of the body of literature of the First World War might imply repeated turning from “grief for embodiment” towards myths of immortality and indebtedness. Commemorating the war dead might be regarded as a resurrective practice that forges and fortifies communities of the living, while addressing the imagined demands of those who die for their nation.Riegel observes that in its multiplicity of motivations and functions, the literary work of mourning is always “an attempt to make present that which is irrefutably lost, and within that paradoxical tension lies a central tenet of all writerly endeavour that deals with the representation of death” (xix). The literary work of mourning must remain incomplete: it is “always a limiting attempt at revival and at representation,” because words inevitably “fail to replace a lost one.” Even so, they can assist in the attempt to “work through and understand” loss (xix). But the reader or mourner is caught in a strange situation, for he or she inevitably scrutinises words not the body, a corpus not a corpse, and while this is a form of evasion it is also the only possibility open to us. Even so, Derrida might say that it is “as if, by reading, by observing the signs on the drawn sheet of paper, [readers are] trying to forget, repress, deny, or conjure away death—and the anxiety before death.” But he also concedes (after Sarah Kofman), that this process might involve “a cunning affirmation of life, its irrepressible movement to survive, to live on” (176), which supports Seale’s contention in relation to resurrective practices generally. Atwood points out that the dead have always made demands on the living, but, because there is a risk in negotiating with the dead, there needs to be good reason or reward for doing so. Our reading of war literature written by noncombatants suggests that in many instances writers seek to appease the unsettled dead whose death was meant to mean something for the future: the living owe the dead a debt that can only be paid by changing the way they live. The living, in other words, must not only remember the fallen, but also heed them by their conduct. It becomes the poet’s task to remind people of this, that is, to turn them from death towards life.Arthur H Adams’s 1918 poem “When the Anzac Dead Came Home,” published in the Bulletin, is based on this premise: the souls of the dead— the “failed” and “fallen”—drift uncertainly over their homeland, observing the world to which they cannot return, with its “cheerful throng,” “fair women swathed in fripperies,” and “sweet girls” that cling “round windows like bees on honeycomb.” One soul recognises a soldier, Steve, from his former battalion, a mate who kept his life but lost his arm and, after hovering for a while, again “wafts far”; his homecoming creates a “strange” stabbing pain, an ache in his pal’s “old scar.” In this uncanny scene, irreconcilable and traumatic knowledge expresses itself somatically. The poet conveys the viewpoint of the dead Anzac rather than the returned one. The living soldier, whose body is a site of partial loss, does not explicitly conjure or mourn his dead friend but, rather, is a living extension of his loss. In fact, the empathic connection construed by the poet is not figured as spectral orchestration or as mindful on the part of man or community; rather, it occurs despite bodily death or everyday living and forgetting; it persists as hysterical pain or embodied knowledge. Freud and Breuer’s influential Studies on Hysteria, published in 1895, raised the issue of mind/body relations, given its theory that the hysteric’s body expresses psychic trauma that she or he may not recollect: repressed “memories of aetiological significance” result in “morbid symptoms” (56). They posited that experience leaves traces which, like disinterred archaeological artefacts, inform on the past (57). However, such a theory depends on what Rousseau and Porter refer to as an “almost mystical collaboration between mind and body” (vii), wherein painful or perverse or unspeakable “reminiscences” are converted into symptoms, or “mnemic symbols,” which is to envisage the body as penetrable text. But how can memory return unbidden and in such effective disguise that the conscious mind does not recognise it as memory? How can the body express pain without one remembering or acknowledging its origin? Do these kinds of questions suggest that the Cartesian mind/body split has continued valency despite the challenge that hysteria itself presents to such a theory? Is it possible, rather, that the body itself remembers—and not just its own replete form, as suggested by those who feel the presence of a limb after its removal—but the suffering body of “the other”? In Adam’s poem, as in M’Fadyen’s, intersubjective knowledge subsists between embodied and disembodied subjects, creating an imagined community of sensation.Adams’s poem envisions mourning as embodied knowledge that allows one man to experience another’s pain—or soul—as both “old” and “strange” in the midst of living. He suggests that the dead gaze at us even as they are present “in us” (Derrida). Derrida reminds that ghosts occupy an ambiguous space, “neither life nor death, but the haunting of the one by the other” (41). Human mutability, the possibility of exchanging places in a kind of Socratic cycle of life and death, is posited by Adams, whose next stanzas depict the souls of the war dead reclaiming Australia and displacing the thankless living: blown to land, they murmur to each other, “’Tis we who are the living: this continent is dead.” A significant imputation is that the dead must be reckoned with, deserve better, and will not rest unless the living pay their moral dues. The disillusioned tone and intent of this 1918 poem contrasts with a poem Adams published in the Bulletin in 1915 entitled “The Trojan War,” which suggests even “Great Agamemnon” would “lift his hand” to honour “plain Private Bill,” the heroic, fallen Anzac who ventured forth to save “Some Mother-Helen sad at home. Some obscure Helen on a farm.” The act of war is envisaged as an act of birthing the nation, anticipating the Anzac legend, but simultaneously as its epitaph: “Upon the ancient Dardanelles New peoples write—in blood—their name.” Such a poem arguably invokes, though in ambiguous form, what Derrida (after Lyotard) refers to as the “beautiful death,” which is an attempt to lift death up, make it meaningful, and thereby foreclose or limit mourning, so that what threatens disorder and despair might instead reassure and restore “the body politic,” providing “explicit models of virtue” (Nass 82-83) that guarantee its defence and survival. Adams’ later poem, in constructing Steve as “a living fellow-ghost” of the dead Anzac, casts stern judgement on the society that fails to notice what has been lost even as it profits by it. Ideological and propagandist language is also denounced: “Big word-warriors still played the Party game;/They nobly planned campaigns of words, and deemed/their speeches deeds,/And fought fierce offensives for strange old creeds.” This complaint recalls Ezra Pound’s lines in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley about the dead who “walked eye-deep in hell/believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving/came home, home to a lie/home to many deceits,/home to old lies and new infamy;/usury age-old and age-thick/and liars in public places,” and it would seem that this is the kind of disillusion and bitterness that Clunies Ross considers to be “incompatible with the Anzac tradition” (178) and thus ignored. The Anzac tradition, though quieted for a time, possibly due to the 1930s Depression, Second World War, Vietnam War and other disabling events has, since the 1980s, been greatly revived, with Anzac Day commemorations in Australia and at Gallipoli growing exponentially, possibly making maintenance of this sacrificial national mythology, or beautiful death, among Australia’s most capacious and costly creative industries. As we approach the centenary of the war and of Gallipoli, this industry will only increase.Elaine Scarry proposes that the imagination invents mechanisms for “transforming the condition of absence into presence” (163). It does not escape us that in turning towards lost literatures we are ourselves engaging in a form of resurrective practice and that this paper, like other forms of social and cultural practice, might be understood as one more human construction motivated by grief for embodiment.Note: An archive and annotated bibliography of the “Lost Literatures of the First World War,” which comprises over 2,000 items, is expected to be published online in 2015.References Adams, Arthur H. “When the Anzac Dead Came Home.” Bulletin 21 Mar. 1918.---. “The Trojan War.” Bulletin 20 May 1915.An Australian Mother. “Your Country’s Call.” Sydney Mail 19 May 1915.Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. London: Verso, 1991.Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. New York: Random House, 2002.Caesar, Adrian. “National Myths of Manhood: Anzac and Others.” The Oxford Literary History of Australia. Eds. Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998. 147-168.Clunies Ross, Bruce. “Silent Heroes.” War: Australia’s Creative Response. Eds. Anna Rutherford and James Wieland. West Yorkshire: Dangaroo Press, 1997. 169-181.Damousi, Joy. The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Derrida, Jacques. The Work of Mourning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.Freud, Sigmund, and Joseph Breuer. Studies on Hysteria. Pelican Freud Library. Vol. 3. Trans. and eds. James Strachey, Alix Strachey, and Angela Richards. London: Penguin, 1988.Gerster, Robin. Big Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992.Gilbert, Sandra M. Death’s Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1992. M’Fayden, Ella. “The Wardens.” Sydney Mail 17 Apr. 1918.Naas, Michael. “History’s Remains: Of Memory, Mourning, and the Event.” Research in Phenomenology 33 (2003): 76-96.Pound, Ezra. “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly.” iv. 1920. 19 June 2012. ‹http://www.archive.org/stream/hughselwynmauber00pounrich/hughselwynmauber00pounrich_djvu.txt›.Riegal, Christian, ed. Response to Death: The Literary Work of Mourning. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 2005. Rousseau, G.S., and Roy Porter. “Introduction: The Destinies of Hysteria.” Hysteria beyond Freud. Ed. Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G.S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.Seale, Clive. Constructing Death: The Sociology of Dying and Bereavement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Sutherland, Katherine. “Land of Their Graves: Maternity, Mourning and Nation in Janet Frame, Sara Suleri, and Arundhati Roy.” Riegel 201-16.Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays Volume 2. London: Hogarth, 1966. 28-29.

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Mobilities We live in a world of mobilised social life, as John Urry describes it. This is a world made out of constant flows of items, ideas, and actors travelling materially and/or immaterially from one location to another, non-stop. The movement of things and people goes back and forth; it changes direction and passes around various locations, both physical and virtual. No discussion of mobility today can be complete without consideration of the role of communication in reshaping mobilised social life. In many respects, our social life and a sense of community may be thought of as displaced and imaginary (Taylor). This is to say that, in today’s world, “belonging” as a constitutive element of community is acted out, in many cases, at a distance, without physical contact (Delanty 119-49). Furthermore, our sense of belonging is shaped by cultural and social communication networks and the media logic of the latest communication technology (Castells 54-136). It is in these de-territorialised communities (Dayan 166) that we communicate from one to one, or from one to many, without physical restriction; and by doing this, we form, transmit, and modify our self-understanding (or mis/understanding!) of the world in which we live and in which our lives are formed, transmitted, and modified by others. To understand the deeper dynamics of our newly mobilised social life, we need to elaborate on yet another dimension of communication: that is, the idea of circulation (Latour 36). The simplest way of defining circulation is to say that it is about “going the round” and/or “passing on” something—whether it is material or immaterial items, goods, artefacts, ideas, or beliefs that are being distributed and disseminated (Sumiala 44-55). However, as Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma (192) argue, if circulation is to serve as a useful analytic construct for the analysis of contemporary social life, “it needs be conceived as more than simply the movement of people, ideas, and commodities from one culture to another.” It is necessary to analyse circulation as a cultural process with its “own forms of abstraction, evaluation, and constraint” (192). It is, indeed, the dynamic structures of circulation that we have to look for. In this article, I shall attempt to illuminate the workings of circulation by discussing how images of violence travel in different types of mobile media environments and how that movement contributes to the formation and reformation of various social imaginaries. Drawing on Charles Taylor’s, Arjun Appadurai’s and Dilip Gaonkar’s work, I define social imaginaries as a symbolic matrix within which people imagine their collective social life. As Gaonkar (1-19) argues, it is within the folds of a social imaginary that we see ourselves as agents who traverse a social space and inhabit a temporal horizon. In everyday life, social imaginaries are carried in stories, symbols and images and in today’s world they rely heavily on stranger sociability—that is, sociability based on media-related relations among strangers (Gaonkar 4-5, 10). Images In Kauhajoki, Finland, on 23 September 2008, a 22-year-old male student went on the rampage at the Seinäjoki University of Applied Science (located in Kauhajoki, the province of Western Finland: a town with a population of some 14,000 inhabitants). The killer shot a teacher, nine of his classmates and, finally, himself. This was a second school shooting tragedy in Finland in less than a year, the first major incident being in Jokela in 2007. Before committing his crimes, the killer had distributed several self-images on the Internet (namely on IRC-gallery and YouTube) in which he broadcast his fascination for guns and shooting. Altogether, he had posted some 15 images on the IRC-gallery site. Some of the images were video clips, but these were later converted into still images. The images that started to circulate in the media after the tragedy included ones of the shooter pointing at the camera with his gun or of him shooting in a shooting range, as well as a number of self-portraits. Following Bruno Latour (159-64), I shall attempt to track the circulation of the killer’s images across different media landscapes: social and mainstream media. This short media ethnography covers excerpts from the Finnish online papers, television news, social media, and newspapers from the day of the tragedy (23 September 2008). Only print newspapers are collected from the next day, 24 September. More specifically, I trace the killer’s images from the largest broadsheet Helsingin Sanomat (print and online versions), the two tabloids Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti (print and online versions), and the national public broadcasting company, YLE (TV1 and TV2), as well as the two largest national commercial TV channels, MTV3 and TV4 (I will look especially at the main broadcast newscasts from the channels for the first day). En Route The Kauhajoki rampage shooter launched the process of circulation only about 15 minutes before he left home and started shooting. He logged in, downloaded the images on the social media website, IRC-gallery, and made a link to a server called Rapidshare to accelerate dissemination of his visual material. But this was only the tip of the iceberg in the shooter’s case. In the past, he had been an active circulator of violent material on the Web. By tracing his online history, we can confirm that the killer was a competent user of the digital communication technology (Hakala 99-118). The shooter registered with IRC-gallery in December 2004 and with YouTube in mid-March 2008. He took, for example, the username Wumpscut86 as his online identification. In the course of 2008, the images of the young man smiling at the camera changed into profile photos taken at a shooting range and eventually into a video where the man shoots at the camera. The shooter posted the first photos, hinting at the impending massacre, in the IRC-gallery in August 2008. Ten days after the first posting, the shooter downloaded a picture of his weapon onto the IRC-gallery, titled “Pity for majority”. At the end of August, pictures appeared on the IRC-gallery featuring the man firing his weapon at a shooting range and posing for the camera with his weapon. On Wednesday, 17 September 2008, he again added two more gunman photos of himself to his gallery (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). During September, the killer downloaded four shooting videos onto YouTube, the last ones on 18 September 2008 (the Thursday of the week before the shooting). The videos feature the man firing his weapon at a location that appears to be a shooting range. On the day of the shooting, Tuesday 23 September 2008, he included a link to his Massacre in Kauhajoki file package, which contained the videos “You will die next”, “Goodbye”, and “Me and my Walther,” as well as an aerial shot of the school centre and photos of him aiming the weapon at the camera (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29).It is therefore clear that the shooter had planned his media strategy carefully before he committed his crime: he left plenty of visual traces, easy to find and distribute, after the catastrophe. In this respect, he also followed the pattern of his predecessors in Virginia Tech and in Jokela: these shooters had also activated social media sites to circulate violent material before taking any action (Kellner 39-43; Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). The killer started shooting in the school centre at around 10:46. The emergency response centre was notified of a fire and of the shooting at 10:47. Altogether, he shot ten people: nine students and one teacher. Around noon, the killer shot himself, but didn’t die immediately. His death, from gunshot wounds, was reported at Tampere University Hospital at 17:40 that evening. The first pieces of information about the shooting appeared on the social media site MuroBBS (a chat room) about half an hour after the shooting had started. About five minutes later, people chatting on the MuroBBS site made a connection between the shooter and his YouTube videos and IRC-gallery material. The IRC-gallery server removed his videos at 11:29 and the YouTube server an hour later, but they had already been uploaded by other users of social media and thus could not be totally destroyed by the server (Hakala 100-18). The online tabloid Iltalehti, published the first of the shooter’s images about 45 minutes after he had shot himself but was still alive. At this point, his face was not recognisable in the images because it was obscured by a black box. The tabloid headline said (in English translation) “Is he the shooter?” Later in the afternoon, all three online papers, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, and Ilta-Sanomat, published online images of the killer shooting and pointing his gun at the camera, and of his face (as originally published in IRC-gallery). With regard to issues of mobility, the online images travelled much faster than people with cameras. Kauhajoki, the town where the massacre took place, is situated far away from Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and centre of the country’s largest media and news organisations. Only the most well-resourced news organisations were able to send journalists and photographers to the scene of the crime with helicopters and planes; other journalists and broadcasters had to sit in a car or in a train for hours to get to Kauhajoki. Consequently, the critical moment had passed by the time they finally arrived (Hakala 99-118). By contrast, the images posted by the killer himself were available on the Web as soon the shooting started. And it was the social media sites that were the first to make the connection between the shooter and his images. This early annexing of images by the social media users was thus crucial in putting the massacre into circulation in its virtual form (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). As noted above, social media operators in IRC-gallery and YouTube started to remove the shooter’s material less than an hour after the tragedy started at Kauhajoki. But, when searching YouTube or googling “Kauhajoki” at around 14:00 on the same day, one could still find at least 15 (and probably many more) of his videos (or at least, clips) on YouTube. The titles of these videos included: “School Massacre in Finland (Kauhajoki) 9/23/2008”, “The Shooter at the Massacre in Kauhajoki”, “Kauhajoki Killer Shooting his Deadly Weapon”. One of the crucial aspects of circulation is the issue of which material gets into circulation and what value is attached to it. In the case of the Kauhajoki school shootings, one needs to ask which were the texts or images that started to circulate in the national media, as it is the national media (in particular, television) that play a crucial role in transforming a local news event it into a national media catastrophe (see e.g. Liebes 71-84). The newscasts analysed for this research included evening news from every national news channel: YLE: channel 1 (20:30); channel 2 (21:50); MTV3 (19:00); and TV4 (23.00). All of them showed the shooter’s own images as part of their broadcasts. YLE channels 1 and 2 were more cautious about showing visual material, whereas the commercial channels MTV3 and TV4 used more airtime (and a larger number of images, both still and moving) to profile the killer. By the end of the day, the “Kauhajoki Killer” had become “the star” of the shootings (both nationwide and internationally), largely on account of the visual material he had left behind on the Web and which was so easy to circulate from one medium to another (Hakala 48-98). Needless to day, the “victims” of the shooting (nine students and a teacher) all but faded from view. Events the next day only increased this emphasis. The two tabloids Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat brought out extra issues featuring the killer’s own visual material on several double-page spreads. Especially interesting was Iltalehti’s double page (24-25), covered with images from the international online papers: Spiegel Online, Mail Online, CNN.com, BBC news, El Pais.com, Expressen and Aftonbladet, all but one of which had chosen to display the killer’s face on the front page. Helsingin Sanomat also chose to give the killer’s face extraordinary visibility; in Finland, the front page of the daily is usually always sold for advertisem*nts and there are only very few instances in its history that have been an exception to this rule. The Kauhajoki massacre was one of these rare moments in history. Community Through this short media ethnography, I hope to have illustrated some of the ways in which circulation features in a contemporary media context through the example of the “Kauhajoki School Shooter”. The direction of this “circulation” was clearly from the social media to the mainstream media: from online to offline. As a media event, it was diachronic (i.e. “historical”—it evolved “across time”), but also synchronic inasmuch as the images multiplied on the Web in an instant (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29). In the circulation of the Kauhajoki shooter’s images, digital communication technology clearly played an absolutely central role. The images were easily accessible on social media sites and they were in a digital format that was simple to convert from one medium to another. This enabled instant and sensational “remediation”, to use Bolter and Grusin’s formulation. Not only were the images transformed from one medium to another; they became remediated, especially in commercial electronic and print media, as they all (MTV3, TV4, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, and Ilta-Sanomat) circulated images from the killer’s own online sites. Yet I do not wish to give the impression that the media circulation of the Kauhajoki killer images is an “innocent” or inconsequential cultural phenomenon in the context of mobilised social life. Circulation, as a means of communication, has the power to influence social imaginaries: how belonging is imagined and acted out in the age of mobility. In his book Fear of Small Numbers, Arjun Appadurai has argued that, in the contemporary era, communities are not only organised around communications that nurture positive imaginaries, but also circulate violence, fear, destruction, and uncertainty. By copying, repeating, and “recycling” violent material—by keeping circulation on the move, in other words—social imaginaries of violence are spread, not only on a national scale but globally. In this sense, it is arguable that they become distinctly glocal phenomena. Some of the circulation of the violent material is condensed on Web-based “hate groups”: this refers to those global communities that share a common hatred or anger regarding a given phenomenon or issue. The cause of hatred is often race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender, but it can also be misanthropy of a more general kind (Duffy 292). The attitudes towards the objects of hatred that are revealed may vary in both nature and degree, but the “national” exporting of violence from one country to another arguably follows a similar trajectory to the migrant flow of human subjects (Sumiala and Tikka 17-29) and therefore adds to the impression that circulatory “flows” have become the dominant trope of contemporary life the world over. Imaginary communities, as de-territorialised forms of belonging, can, in fact, be regarded as the communities of the era of mobility (see also Pikner in this issue). They cannot be physically perceived, but they do have social momentum. The shooter in Kauhajoki was a member of a large number of global virtual communities himself and arguably succeeded in exporting both himself, and “Finland”, to the rest of the world. He had, as we’ve seen, registered with YouTube, IRC-gallery, Suomi24 (Finland’s largest online community), and Battlefield 2 long before the massacre took place. It is also worth noting that, in these virtual communities, the killer took up his place as a resident rather than a visitor. Having established his online profile, he sought out contact with like-minded users, and engaged in social relationships in global online communities that were, quite literally, a world away from his home in Finland. In the virtual “hate communities” to which the Kauhajoki shooter belonged, dispersed people from around the world came together through a discourse of violence, hate, and destruction; I call these ephemeral encounters of stranger sociability networked communities of destruction. These are virtual global communities held together by a social imaginary constructed around the visualisation of texts of death and violence that emanate from a specific nation (in this case, Finland) but almost instantly transcend it. These communities cancel the distance between centre and periphery and cohere around the discourses of hate and destruction (Coman and Rothenbuhler 6). By remaking and circulating the Kauhajoki shooter’s photos and videos, these communities render a figure like the Kauhajoki killer immortal in an unprecedented way. The promise of post-mortem fame for a potential school shooter is thus kept vividly alive in today’s networked communities through the endless circulation of imaginaries of violence and destruction, raising issues of ethics and digital/media responsibility that have only just begun to be addressed. References Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. London: Duke University Press, 2006. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Castells, Manuel. Communication Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Coman, Mihai, and Eric Rothenbuhler. “The Promise of Media Anthropology.” Media Anthropology. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005. 1-11. Dayan, Daniel. “The Pope at Reunion: Hagiography, Casting, and Imagination.” Media Anthropology. Ed. Eric Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman. Thousand Oaks and London: Sage, 2005. 165-75. Delanty, Gerard. Community. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2010. Duffy, Margaret. “Web of Hate: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of the Rhetorical Vision of Hate Groups Online.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 27 (2003): 291-312. Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar. “Toward New Imaginaries: An Introduction.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 1-19. Hakala, Salli. Koulusurmat verkostoyhteiskunnassa. Analyysi Jokelan ja Kauhajoen kriisien viestinnästä. Helsingin yliopisto: CRC/Viestinnän laitos, 2009. ‹http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/crc/koulusurmat.htm›. Kellner, Douglas. Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the Virginia Tech Massacre. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lee, Benjamin, and Edward LiPuma. “Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 191-214. Liebes, Tamar. “Television’s Disaster Marathons: A Danger for Democratic Processes?” Media, Ritual and Identity. Eds. Tamar Liebes and James Curran. London : Routledge, 1998. 71-84. Sumiala, Johanna. “Circulation.” Keywords in Religion, Media, and Culture. Ed. David Morgan. London: Routledge, 2008. 44-55. Sumiala, Johanna, and Minttu Tikka. “‘Web First’ to Death: The Media Logic of the School Shootings in the Era of Uncertainty. Nordicom Review 31 (2010): 17-29. ‹http://www.nordicom.gu.se/eng.php?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=325&me=2%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank›. Taylor, Charles. “Modern Social Imaginaries.” Public Culture 14 (2002): 91-124. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity, 2008.

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"verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice" (Barrett 1)IntroductionMany of us share in an obsessive collecting of cookbooks and recipes. Torn or cut from newspapers and magazines, recipes sit swelling scrapbooks with bloated, unfilled desire. They’re non-hybrid seeds, peas under the mattress, an endless cycle of reproduction. Desire and narrative are folded into each other in our drive, as humans, to create meaning. But what holds us to narrative is good writing. And what can also drive desire is image—literal as well as metaphorical—the visceral pleasure of the gaze, or looking and viewing the sensually aesthetic and the work of the imagination. Creative WritingCooking, winemaking, and food and wine writing can all be considered art. For example, James Halliday (31), the eminent Australian wine critic, posed the question “Is winemaking an art?,” answering: “Most would say so” (31). Cookbooks are stories within stories, narratives that are both factual and imagined, everyday and fantastic—created by both writer and reader from where, along with its historical, cultural and publishing context, a text gets its meaning. Creative writing, in broad terms of genre, is either fiction (imagined, made-up) or creative nonfiction (true, factual). Genre comes from the human taxonomic impulse to create order from chaos through cataloguing and classification. In what might seem overwhelming infinite variety, we establish categories and within them formulas and conventions. But genres are not necessarily stable or clear-cut, and variation in a genre can contribute to its de/trans/formation (Curti 33). Creative nonfiction includes life writing (auto/biography) and food writing among other subgenres (although these subgenres can also be part of fiction). Cookbooks sit within the creative nonfiction genre. More clearly, dietary or nutrition manuals are nonfiction, technical rather than creative. Recipe writing specifically is perhaps less an art and more a technical exercise; generally it’s nonfiction, or between that and creative nonfiction. (One guide to writing recipes is Ostmann and Baker.) Creative writing is built upon approximately five, more or less, fundamentals of practice: point of view or focalisation or who narrates, structure (plot or story, and theme), characterisation, heightened or descriptive language, setting, and dialogue (not in any order of importance). (There are many handbooks on creative writing, that will take a writer through these fundamentals.) Style or voice derives from what a writer writes about (their recurring themes), and how they write about it (their vocabulary choice, particular use of imagery, rhythm, syntax etc.). Traditionally, as a reader, and writer, you are either a plot person or character person, but you can also be interested primarily in ideas or language, and in the popular or literary.Cookbooks as Creative NonfictionCookbooks often have a sense of their author’s persona or subjectivity as a character—that is, their proclivities, lives and thus ideology, and historical, social and cultural place and time. Memoir, a slice of the author–chef/cook’s autobiography, is often explicitly part of the cookbook, or implicit in the nature of the recipes, and the para-textual material which includes the book’s presentation and publishing context, and the writer’s biographical note and acknowledgements. And in relation to the latter, here's Australian wine educator Colin Corney telling us, in his biographical note, about his nascent passion for wine: “I returned home […] stony broke. So the next day I took a job as a bottleshop assistant at Moore Park Cellars […] to tide me over—I stayed three years!” (xi). In this context, character and place, in the broadest sense, are inevitably evoked. So in conjunction with this para-textual material, recipe ingredients and instructions, visual images and the book’s production values combine to become the components for authoring a fictive narrative of self, space and time—fictive, because writing inevitably, in a broad or conceptual sense, fictionalises everything, since it can only re-present through language and only from a particular point of view.The CookbooksTo talk about the art of cookbooks, I make a judgmental (from a creative-writer's point of view) case study of four cookbooks: Lyndey Milan and Colin Corney’s Balance: Matching Food and Wine, Sean Moran’s Let It Simmer (this is the first edition; the second is titled Let It Simmer: From Bush to Beach and Onto Your Plate), Kate Lamont’s Wine and Food, and Greg Duncan Powell’s Rump and a Rough Red (this is the second edition; the first was The Pig, the Olive & the Squid: Food & Wine from Humble Beginnings) I discuss reading, writing, imaging, and designing, which, together, form the nexus for interpreting these cookbooks in particular. The choice of these books was only relatively random, influenced by my desire to see how Australia, a major wine-producing country, was faring with discussion of wine and food choices; by the presence of discursive text beyond technical presentation of recipes, and of photographs and purposefully artful design; and by familiarity with names, restaurants and/or publishers. Reading Moran's cookbook is a model of good writing in its use of selective and specific detail directed towards a particular theme. The theme is further created or reinforced in the mix of narrative, language use, images and design. His writing has authenticity: a sense of an original, distinct voice.Moran’s aphoristic title could imply many things, but, in reading the cookbook, you realise it resonates with a mindfulness that ripples throughout his writing. The aphorism, with its laidback casualness (legendary Australian), is affectively in sync with the chef’s approach. Jacques Derrida said of the aphorism that it produces “an echo of really curious, indelible power” (67).Moran’s aim for his recipes is that they be about “honest, home-style cooking” and bringing “out a little bit of the professional chef in the home cook”, and they are “guidelines” available for “sparkle” and seduction from interpretation (4). The book lives out this persona and personal proclivities. Moran’s storytellings are specifically and solely highlighted in the Contents section which structures the book via broad categories (for example, "Grains" featuring "The dance of the paella" and "Heaven" featuring "A trifle coming on" for example). In comparison, Powell uses "The Lemon", for example, as well as "The Sheep". The first level of Contents in Lamont’s book is done by broad wine styles: sparkling, light white, robust white and so on, and the second level is the recipe list in each of these sections. Lamont’s "For me, matching food and wine comes down to flavour" (xiii) is not as dramatic or expressive as Powell’s "Wine: the forgotten condiment." Although food is first in Milan and Corney’s book’s subtitle, their first content is wine, then matching food with colour and specific grape, from Sauvignon Blanc to Barbera and more. Powell claims that the third of his rules (the idea of rules is playful but not comedic) for choosing the best wine per se is to combine region with grape variety. He covers a more detailed and diversified range of grape varieties than Lamont, systematically discussing them first-up. Where Lamont names wine styles, Powell points out where wine styles are best represented in Australian states and regions in a longish list (titled “13 of the best Australian grape and region combos”). Lamont only occasionally does this. Powell discusses the minor alternative white, Arneis, and major alternative reds such as Barbera and Nebbiolo (Allen 81, 85). This engaging detail engenders a committed reader. Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo are as alternative as Lamont gets. In contrast to Moran's laidbackness, Lamont emphasises professionalism: "My greatest pleasure as a chef is knowing that guests have enjoyed the entire food and wine experience […] That means I have done my job" (xiii). Her reminders of the obvious are, nevertheless, noteworthy: "Thankfully we have moved on from white wine/white meat and red wine/red meat" (xiv). She then addresses the alterations in flavour caused by "method of cooking" and "combination of ingredients", with examples. One such is poached chicken and mango crying "out for a vibrant, zesty Riesling" (xiii): but where from, I ask? Roast chicken with herbs and garlic would favour "red wine with silky tannin" and "chocolatey flavours" (xiii): again, I ask, where from? Powell claims "a different evolution" for his book "to the average cookbook" (7). In recipes that have "a wine focus", there are no "pretty […] little salads, or lavish […] cakes" but "brown" albeit tasty food that will not require ingredients from "poncy inner-city providores", be easy to cook, and go with a cheap, budget-based wine (7). While this identity-setting is empathetic for a Powell clone, and I am envious of his skill with verbiage, he doesn’t deliver dreaming or desire. Milan and Corney do their best job in an eye-catching, informative exemplar list of food and wine matches: "Red duck curry and Barossa Valley Shiraz" for example (7), and in wine "At-a-glance" tables, telling us, for example, that the best Australian regions for Chardonnay are Margaret River and the Adelaide Hills (53). WritingThe "Introduction" to Moran’s cookbook is a slice of memoir, a portrait of a chef as a young man: the coming into being of passion, skill, and professionalism. And the introduction to the introduction is most memorable, being a loving description of his frugal Australian childhood dinners: creations of his mother’s use of manufactured, canned, and bottled substitutes-for-the-real, including Gravox and Dessert Whip (1). From his travel-based international culinary education in handmade, agrarian food, he describes "a head of buffalo mozzarella stuffed with ricotta and studded with white truffles" as "sheer beauty", "ambrosial flavour" and "edible white 'terrazzo'." The consonants b, s, t, d, and r are picked up and repeated, as are the vowels e, a, and o. Notice, too, the comparison of classic Italian food to an equally classic Italian artefact. Later, in an interactive text, questions are posed: "Who could now imagine life without this peppery salad green?" (23). Moran uses the expected action verbs of peel, mince, toss, etc.: "A bucket of tiny clams needs a good tumble under the running tap" (92). But he also uses the unexpected hug, nab, snuggle, waltz, "wave of garlic" and "raining rice." Milan and Corney display a metaphoric-language play too: the bubbles of a sparkling wine matching red meat become "the little red broom […] sweep[ing] away the […] cloying richness" (114). In contrast, Lamont’s cookbook can seem flat, lacking distinctiveness. But with a title like Wine and Food, perhaps you are not expecting much more than information, plain directness. Moran delivers recipes as reproducible with ease and care. An image of a restaurant blackboard menu with the word "chook" forestalls intimidation. Good quality, basic ingredients and knowledge of their source and season carry weight. The message is that food and drink are due respect, and that cooking is neither a stressful, grandiose nor competitive activity. While both Moran and Lamont have recipes for Duck Liver Pâté—with the exception that Lamont’s is (disturbingly, for this cook) "Parfait", Moran also has Lentil Patties, a granola, and a number of breads. Lamont has Brioche (but, granted, without the yeast, seeming much easier to make). Powell’s Plateless Pork is "mud pies for grown-ups", and you are asked to cook a "vat" of sauce. This communal meal is "a great way to spread communicable diseases", but "fun." But his passionately delivered historical information mixed with the laconic attitude of a larrikin (legendary Australian again) transform him into a sage, a step up from the monastery (Powell is photographed in dress-up friar’s habit). Again, the obvious is noteworthy in Milan and Corney’s statement that Rosé "possesses qualities of both red and white wines" (116). "On a hot summery afternoon, sitting in the sun overlooking the view … what could be better?" (116). The interactive questioning also feeds in useful information: "there is a huge range of styles" for Rosé so "[g]rape variety is usually a good guide", and "increasingly we are seeing […] even […] Chambourcin" (116). Rosé is set next to a Bouillabaisse recipe, and, empathetically, Milan and Corney acknowledge that the traditional fish soup "can be intimidating" (116). Succinctly incorporated into the recipes are simple greyscale graphs of grape "Flavour Profiles" delineating the strength on the front and back palate and tongue (103).Imaging and DesigningThe cover of Moran’s cookbook in its first edition reproduces the colours of 1930–1940's beach towels, umbrellas or sunshades in matt stripes of blue, yellow, red, and green (Australian beaches traditionally have a grass verge; and, I am told (Costello), these were the colours of his restaurant Panoroma’s original upholstery). A second edition has the same back cover but a generic front cover shifting from the location of his restaurant to the food in a new subtitle: "From Bush to Beach and onto Your Plate". The front endpapers are Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach where Panoroma restaurant is embedded on the lower wall of an old building of flats, ubiquitous in Bondi, like a halved avocado, or a small shallow elliptic cave in one of the sandstone cliff-faces. The cookbook’s back endpapers are his bush-shack country. Surfaces, cooking equipment, table linen, crockery, cutlery and glassware are not ostentatious, but simple and subdued, in the colours and textures of nature/culture: ivory, bone, ecru, and cream; and linen, wire, wood, and cardboard. The mundane, such as a colander, is highlighted: humbleness elevated, hands at work, cooking as an embodied activity. Moran is photographed throughout engaged in cooking, quietly fetching in his slim, clean-cut, short-haired, altar-boyish good-looks, dressed casually in plain bone apron, t-shirt (most often plain white), and jeans. While some recipes are traditionally constructed, with the headnote, the list of ingredients and the discursive instructions for cooking, on occasion this is done by a double-page spread of continuous prose, inviting you into the story-telling. The typeface of Simmer varies to include a hand-written lookalike. The book also has a varied layout. Notes and small images sit on selected pages, as often as not at an asymmetric angle, with faux tape, as if stuck there as an afterthought—but an excited and enthusiastic afterthought—and to signal that what is informally known is as valuable as professional knowledge/skill and the tried, tested, and formally presented.Lamont’s publishers have laid out recipe instructions on the right-hand side (traditional English-language Western reading is top down, left to right). But when the recipe requires more than one item to be cooked, there is no repeated title; the spacing and line-up are not necessarily clear; and some immediate, albeit temporary, confusion occurs. Her recipes, alongside images of classic fine dining, carry the implication of chefing rather than cooking. She is photographed as a professional, with a chef’s familiar striped apron, and if she is not wearing a chef’s jacket, tunic or shirt, her staff are. The food is beautiful to look at and imagine, but tackling it in the home kitchen becomes a secondary thought. The left-hand section divider pages are meant to signal the wines, with the appropriate colour, and repetitive pattern of circles; but I understood this belatedly, mistaking them for retro wallpaper bemusedly. On the other hand, Powell’s bog-in-don’t-wait everyday heartiness of a communal stewed dinner at a medieval inn (Peasy Lamb looks exactly like this) may be overcooked, and, without sensuousness, uninviting. Images in Lamont’s book tend toward the predictable and anonymous (broad sweep of grape-vined landscape; large groups of people with eating and drinking utensils). The Lamont family run a vineyard, and up-market restaurants, one photographed on Perth’s river dockside. But Sean's Panoroma has a specificity about it; it hasn’t lost its local flavour in the mix with the global. (Admittedly, Moran’s bush "shack", the origin of much Panoroma produce and the destination of Panoroma compost, looks architect-designed.) Powell’s book, given "rump" and "rough" in the title, stridently plays down glitz (large type size, minimum spacing, rustic surface imagery, full-page portraits of a chicken, rump, and cabbage etc). While not over-glam, the photography in Balance may at first appear unsubtle. Images fill whole pages. But their beautifully coloured and intriguing shapes—the yellow lime of a white-wine bottle base or a sparkling wine cork beneath its cage—shift them into hyperreality. White wine in a glass becomes the edge of a desert lake; an open fig, the jaws of an alien; the flesh of a lemon after squeezing, a sea anemone. The minimal number of images is a judicious choice. ConclusionReading can be immersive, but it can also hover critically at a meta level, especially if the writer foregrounds process. A conversation starts in this exchange, the reader imagining for themselves the worlds written about. Writers read as writers, to acquire a sense of what good writing is, who writing colleagues are, where writing is being published, and, comparably, to learn to judge their own writing. Writing is produced from a combination of passion and the discipline of everyday work. To be a writer in the world is to observe and remember/record, to be conscious of aiming to see the narrative potential in an array of experiences, events, and images, or, to put it another way, "to develop the habit of art" (Jolley 20). Photography makes significant whatever is photographed. The image is immobile in a literal sense but, because of its referential nature, evocative. Design, too, is about communication through aesthetics as a sensuous visual code for ideas or concepts. (There is a large amount of scholarship on the workings of image combined with text. Roland Barthes is a place to begin, particularly about photography. There are also textbooks dealing with visual literacy or culture, only one example being Shirato and Webb.) It is reasonable to think about why there is so much interest in food in this moment. Food has become folded into celebrity culture, but, naturally, obviously, food is about our security and survival, physically and emotionally. Given that our planet is under threat from global warming which is also driving climate change, and we are facing peak oil, and alternative forms of energy are still not taken seriously in a widespread manner, then food production is under threat. Food supply and production are also linked to the growing gap between poverty and wealth, and the movement of whole populations: food is about being at home. Creativity is associated with mastery of a discipline, openness to new experiences, and persistence and courage, among other things. We read, write, photograph, and design to argue and critique, to use the imagination, to shape and transform, to transmit ideas, to celebrate living and to live more fully.References Allen, Max. The Future Makers: Australian Wines for the 21st Century. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2010. Barratt, Virginia. “verbiage very thinly sliced and plated up real nice.” Assignment, ENG10022 Writing from the Edge. Lismore: Southern Cross U, 2009. [lower case in the title is the author's proclivity, and subsequently published in Carson and Dettori. Eds. Banquet: A Feast of New Writing and Arts by Queer Women]Costello, Patricia. Personal conversation. 31 May 2012. Curti, Lidia. Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity and Representation. UK: Macmillan, 1998.Derrida, Jacques. "Fifty-Two Aphorisms for a Foreword." Deconstruction: Omnibus Volume. Eds. Andreas Apadakis, Catherine Cook, and Andrew Benjamin. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.Halliday, James. “An Artist’s Spirit.” The Weekend Australian: The Weekend Australian Magazine 13-14 Feb. (2010): 31.Jolley, Elizabeth. Central Mischief. Ringwood: Viking/Penguin 1992. Lamont, Kate. Wine and Food. Perth: U of Western Australia P, 2009. Milan, Lyndey, and Corney, Colin. Balance: Matching Food and Wine: What Works and Why. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2005. Moran, Sean. Let It Simmer. Camberwell: Lantern/Penguin, 2006. Ostmann, Barbara Gibbs, and Jane L. Baker. The Recipe Writer's Handbook. Canada: John Wiley, 2001.Powell, Greg Duncan. Rump and a Rough Red. Millers Point: Murdoch, 2010. Shirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004.

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Abstract:

This article is a comparison of two remarkably different takes on a single subject, namely the shifting meaning of the word ‘publishing’ brought about by the changes in literacy habits related to Web 2.0. One the one hand, we have Andrew Keen’s much lambasted 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur, which is essentially an attempt to defend traditional gatekeeper models of cultural production by denigrating online, user-generated content. The second is Spin journalist Andy Greenwald’s Nothing Feels Good, focusing on the Emo subculture of the early 2000s and its reliance on Web 2.0 as an integral medium for communication and the accumulation of subcultural capital. What I want to suggest in this article is that these two books, with their contrasting readings of Web 2.0, both tell us something specific about what the word “publishing” means and how it is currently undergoing a significant change brought about by a radical adaptation of literacy practices. What I think both books also do is give us an insight into how those changes are being interpreted, to be rejected on the one hand and applauded on the other. Both books have their faults. Keen’s work can fairly easily be passed off as a sort of cantankerous reminiscence for the legitimacy of an earlier era of publishing, and Greenwald’s Emos have, like all teen subcultures, changed somewhat. Yet what both books portray is an attempt to digest how Web 2.0 has altered perceptions of what constitutes legitimate speaking positions and how that is reflected in the literacy practices that shape the relationships among authors, readers, and the channels through which they interact. Their primary difference is a disparity in the value they place on Web 2.0’s amplification of the Internet’s use as a social and communicative medium. Greenwald embraces it as the facilitator of an open-access dialogue, whereas Keen sees it as a direct threat to other, more traditional, gatekeeper genres. Accordingly, Keen begins his book with a lament that Web 2.0’s “democratization” of media is “undermining truth, souring civic discourse and belittling expertise, experience, and talent … it is threatening the very future of our cultural institutions” (15). He continues, Today’s editors, technicians, and cultural gatekeepers—the experts across an array of fields—are necessary to help us to sift through what’s important and what’s not, what is credible from what is unreliable, what is worth spending our time on as opposed to the white noise that can be safely ignored. (45) As examples of the “white noise,” he lists some of the core features of Web 2.0—blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook. The notable similarity between all of these is that their content is user generated and, accordingly, comes from the position of the personal, rather than from a gatekeeper. In terms of their readership, this presents a fundamental shift in an understanding of authenticated speaking positions, one which Keen suggests underwrites reliability by removing the presence of certifiable expertise. He looks at Web 2.0 and sees a mass of low grade, personal content overwhelming traditional benchmarks of quality and accountability. His definition of “publishing” is essentially one in which a few, carefully groomed producers express work seen as relevant to the wider community. The relationship between reader and writer is primarily one sided, mediated by a gatekeeper and rests on the assumption by all involved that the producer has the legitimacy to speak to a large, and largely silent, readership. Greenwald, by contrast, looks at the same genres and comes to a remarkably different and far more positive conclusion. He focuses heavily on the lively message boards of the social networking site Makeoutclub, the shift to a long tail marketing style by key Emo record labels such as Vagrant and Drive-Thru Records and, in particular, the widespread use of LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com) by suburban, Emo fixated teenagers. Of this he writes: The language is inflated, coded as ‘adult’ and ‘poetic’, which often translates into affected, stilted and forced. But if one can accept that, there’s a sweet vulnerability to it. The world of LiveJournal is an enclosed circuit where everyone has agreed to check their cynicism at the sign on screen; it’s a pulsing, swoony realm of inflated emotions, expectations and dialogue. (287) He specifically notes that one cannot read mediums like LiveJournal in the same style as their more traditional counterparts. There is a necessity to adopt a reading style conducive to a dialogue devoid of conventional quality controls. It is also, he notes, a heavily interconnected, inherently social medium: LiveJournals represent the truest and easiest realization of the essential teenage (and artistic) tenet of the importance of a ‘room of one’s own’, and yet the framework of the website is enough to make each individual room interconnected into a mosaic of richly felt lives. (288) Where Keen sees Web 2.0 as a shift way from established cultural forums, Greenwald sees it as an interconnected conversation. His definition of publishing is more fluid, founded on a belief not in the authenticity of a single, validated voice but on the legitimacy of interaction and communication entirely devoid of any gatekeepers. Central to understanding the difference between Greenwald and Keen is the issue or whether or not we accept the legitimacy of personal voices and how we evaluate the kind of reading practices involved in interpreting them. In this respect, Greenwald’s reference to “a room of one’s own” is telling. When Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own in 1929, Web 2.0 wasn’t even a consideration, but her work dealt with a similar subject matter, detailing the key role the novel genre played in legitimising women’s voices precisely because it was “young enough to be soft in [their] hands” (74). What would eventually emerge from Woolf’s work was the field of feminist literary criticism, which hit its stride in the mid-eighties. In terms of its understanding of the power relations inherent to cultural production, particularly as they relate to gatekeeping, it’s a rich academic tradition notably lacking in the writing on Web 2.0. For example, Celia Lury’s essay “Reading the Self,” written more than ten years before the popularisation of the internet, looks specifically at the way in which authoritative speaking positions gain their legitimacy not just through the words on the page but through the entire relationships among author, genre, channels of distribution, and readership. She argues that, “to write is to enter into a relationship with a community of readers, and various forms of writing are seen to involve and imply, at any particular time, various forms of relationship” (102). She continues, so far as text is clearly written/read within a particular genre, it can be seen to rest upon a more or less specific set of social relations. It also means that ‘textual relations’—that is, formal techniques, reading strategies and so on—are not held separate from ‘non-textual relations’—such as methods of cultural production and modes of distribution—and that the latter can be seen to help construct ‘literary value.’ (102) The implication is that an appropriation of legitimised speaking positions isn’t done purely by overthrowing or contesting an established system of ‘quality’ but by developing a unique relationship between author, genre, and readership. Textual and non-textual practices blur together to create literary environments and cultural space. The term “publishing” is at the heart of these relationships, describing the literacies required to interpret particular voices and forms of communication. Yet, as Lury writes, literacy habits can vary. Participation in dialogue-driven, user-generated mediums is utterly different from conventional, gatekeeper-driven ones, yet the two can easily co-exist. For instance, reading last year’s Man Booker prize-winner doesn’t stop one from reading, or even writing, blogs. One can enact numerous literacy practices, move between discourses and inhabit varied relationships between genre, reader, and writer. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 a whole range of literacies that used to be defined as “private sphere” or “everyday literacies,” everything from personal conversations and correspondence to book clubs and fanzines, have become far, far more public. In the past these dialogue-based channels of communication have never been in a position where they could be defined as “publishing.” Web 2.0 changes that, moving previously private sphere communication into online public space in a very obvious way. Keen dismisses this shift as a wall of white noise, but Greenwald does something equally interesting. To a large extent, his positive treatment of Web 2.0’s “affected, stilted and forced” user-generated content is validated by his focus on a “Youth” subculture, namely Emo. Indeed, he heavily links the impact of youthful subcultural practices with the internet, writing that Teenage life has always been about self-creation, and its inflated emotions and high stakes have always existed in a grossly accelerated bubble of hypertime. The internet is the most teenage of media because it too exists in this hypertime of limitless limited moments and constant reinvention. If emo is the soundtrack to hypertime, then the web is its greatest vehicle, the secret tunnel out of the locked bedroom and dead-eyed judgmental scenes of youth. (277) In this light, we accept the voices of his Emo subjects because, underneath their low-quality writing, they produce a “sweet vulnerability” and a “dialogue,” which provides them with a “secret tunnel” out of the loneliness of their bedrooms or unsupportive geographical communities. It’s a theme that hints at the degree to which discussions of Web 2.0 are often heavily connected to arguments about generationalism, framed by the field of youth studies and accordingly end up being mined for what Tara Brabazon calls “spectacular youth subcultures” (23). We see some core examples of this in some of the quasi-academic writing on the subject of “Youth.” For example, in his 2005 book XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare, Michael Grose declares Generation Y as “post-literate”: Like their baby boomer parents and generation X before them, generation Ys get their information from a range of sources that include the written and spoken word. Magazines and books are in, but visual communication is more important for this cohort than their parents. They live in a globalised, visual world where images rather than words are universal communication media. The Internet has heightened the use of symbols as a direct communicator. (95) Given the Internet is overwhelmingly a textual medium, it’s hard to tell exactly what Grose’s point is other than to express his confusion over new literacy practices. In a similar vein and in a similar style, Rebecca Huntley writes in her book The World According to Y, In the Y world, a mobile phone is not merely a phone. It is, as described by demographer Bernard Salt, “a personal accessory, a personal communications device and a personal entertainment centre.” It’s a device for work and play, flirtation and sex, friendship and family. For Yers, their phone symbolizes freedom and flexibility. More than that, your mobile phone symbolizes you. (16) Like Keen, Grose and Huntley are trying to understand a shift in publishing and media that has produced new literacy practices. Unlike Keen, Grose and Huntley pin the change on young people and, like Greenwald, they turn a series of new literacy practices into something akin to what Dick Hebdige called “conspicuous consumption” (103). It’s a term he linked to his definition of bricolage as the production of “implicitly coherent, though explicitly bewildering, systems of connection between things which perfectly equip their users to ‘think’ their own world” (103). Thus, young people are differentiated from the rest of the population by their supposedly unique consumption of “symbols” and mobile phones, into which they read their own cryptic meanings and develop their own generational language. Greenwald shows this methodology in action, with the Emo use of things like LiveJournal, Makeoutclub and other bastions of Web 2.0 joining their record collections, ubiquitous sweeping fringes and penchant for accessorised outfits as part of the conspicuous consumption inherent to understandings of youth subculture. The same theme is reflected in Michel de Certeau’s term “tactics” or, more common amongst those studying Web 2.0, Henry Jenkins’s notion of “poaching”. The idea is that people, specifically young people, appropriate particular forms of cultural literacy to redefine themselves and add a sense of value to their voices. De Certeau’s definition of tactics, as a method of resistance “which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality” (489), is a prime example of how Web 2.0 is being understood. Young people, Emo or not, engage in a consumption of the Internet, poaching the tools of production to redefine the value of their voices in a style completely acceptable to the neo-Marxist, Birmingham school understanding of youth and subculture as a combination producing a sense of resistance. It’s a narrative highly compatible within the fields of cultural and media studies, which, despite major shifts brought about by people like Ken Gelder, Sarah Thornton, Keith Kahn-Harris and the aforementioned Tara Brabazon, still look heavily for patterns of politicised consumption. The problem, as I think Keen inadvertently suggests, is that the Internet isn’t just about young people and their habits as consumers. It’s about what the word “publishing” actually means and how we think about the interaction among writers, readers, and the avenues through which they interact. The idea that we can pass off the redefinition of literacy practices brought about by Web 2.0 as a subcultural youth phenomena is an easy way of bypassing wider cultural shifts onto a token demographic. It presents Web 2.0 as an issue of “Youth” resisting the hegemony of traditional gatekeepers, which is effectively what Greenwald does. Yet such an approach has a very short shelf life. It’s a little like claiming the telephone or the television set were “youth genres.” The uptake of new technologies will inadvertently impact differently on those who grew up with them as compared to those who grew up without them. Yet ultimately changes in literacy habits are much larger than a generationalist framework can really express, particularly given the first generation of “digital natives” are now in their thirties. There’s a lot of things wrong with Andrew Keen’s book but one thing he does do well is ground the debate about Web 2.0 back to issues of legitimate speaking positions and publishing. That said, he also significantly simplifies those issues when he claims the problem is purely about the decline of traditional gatekeeper models. Responding to Keen’s criticism of him, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig writes, I think it is a great thing when amateurs create, even if the thing they create is not as great as what the professional creates. I want my kids to write. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop reading Hemingway and read only what they write. What Keen misses is the value to a culture that comes from developing the capacity to create—independent of the quality created. That doesn’t mean we should not criticize works created badly (such as, for example, Keen’s book…). But it does mean you’re missing the point if you simply compare the average blog to the NY times (Lessig). What Lessig expresses here is the different, but not mutually exclusive, literacy practices involved in the word “publishing.” Publishing a blog is very different to publishing a newspaper and the way readers react to both will change as they move in and out the differing discursive spaces each occupies. In a recent collaborative paper by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger, they describe this capacity to move across different reading and writing styles as “transliteracy.” They define the term as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” (Thomas et al.). It’s a term that perfectly describes the capacity to move fluidly across discursive environments. Here we return to Greenwald’s use of a framework of youth and subculture. While I have criticised the Birminghamesque fixation on a hom*ogeneous “Youth” demographic enacting resistance through conspicuous consumption, there is good reason to use existing subculture studies methodology as a means of understanding how transliteracies play out in everyday life. David Chaney remarks, the idea of subculture is redundant because the type of investment that the notion of subculture labelled is becoming more general, and therefore the varieties of modes of symbolization and involvement are more common in everyday life. (37) I think the increasing commonality of subcultural practices in everyday life actually makes the idea more relevant, not less. It does, however, make it much harder to pin things on “spectacular youth subcultures.” Yet the focus on “everyday life” is important here, shifting our understanding of “subculture” to the types of literacies played out within localised, personal networks and experiences. As de Certeau has argued, the practice of everyday life is an issue of “a way of thinking invested in a way of acting, an art of combination which cannot be dissociated from an art of using” (Certeau 486). This is as true for our literacy practices as anything else. Whether we choose to label those practices subcultural or not, our ability to interpret, take part in and react to different communicative forums is clearly fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, regardless of our age. Sarah Thornton suggests a useful alternate definition of subculture when she talks about subcultural capital: Subcultural capital is the linchpin of an alternative hierarchy in which the aces of age, gender, sexuality and race are all employed in order to keep the determinations of class, income and occupation at bay (105). This is an understanding that avoids easy narratives of young people and their consumption of Web 2.0 by recognising the complexity with which people’s literacy habits, in the cultural sense, connect to their active participation in the production of meaning. Subcultural capital implies that the framework through which individuals read, interpret, and shift between discursive environments, personalising and building links across the strata of cultural production, is acted out at the local and personal level, rather than purely through the relationship between a producing gatekeeper and a passive, consuming readership. If we recognise the ability for readers to connect multiple mediums, to shift between reading and writing practices, and to seamlessly interpret and digest markedly different assumptions about legitimate speaking voices across genres, our understanding of what it means to “publish” ceases to be an issue of generationalism or conventional mediums being washed away by the digital era. The issue we see in both Keen and Greenwald is an attempt to digest the way Web 2.0 has forced the concept of “publishing” to take on a multiplicity of meanings, played out by individual readers, and imbued with their own unique and interwoven textual and cultural literacy habits. It’s not only Emos who publish livejournals, and it’s incredibly naive to assume gatekeepers have ever really held a monopoly on all aspects of cultural production. What the rise of Web 2.0 has done is simply to bring everyday, private sphere dialogue driven literacies into the public sphere in a very obvious way. The kind of discourses once passed off as resistant youth subcultures are now being shown as common place. Keen is right to suggest that this will continue to impact, sometimes negatively, on traditional gatekeepers. Yet the change is inevitable. As our reading and writing practices alter around new genres, our understandings of what constitutes legitimate fields of publishing will also change. References Brabazon, Tara. From Revolution to Revelation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. de Certeau, Michel. “Practice of Every Day Life.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Ed. John Story. London: Prentice Hall, 1998. 483–94. Chaney, David. “Fragmented Culture and Subcultures.” After Subculture. Ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris. Houndsmill: Palgrave McMillian, 2004. 36–48. Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers and Emo. New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 2003. Grose, Michael. XYZ: The New Rules of Generational Warfare. Sydney: Random House, 2005. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1979. Huntley, Rebecca. The World According to Y. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2006. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2007. Lessig, Lawrence. “Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur’: BRILLIANT!” Lessig May 31, 2007. Aug. 19 2008 ‹http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html>. Lury, Celia. “Reading the Self: Autobiography, Gender and the Institution of the Literary.” Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Ed. Sarah. Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. Hammersmith: HarperCollinsAcademic, 1991. 97–108. Thomas, Sue, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger. “Transliteracy: Crossing Divides.” First Monday 12.12. (2007). Apr. 1 2008 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2060/1908>. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Oxford: Polity Press, 1995. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Frogmore: Triad/Panther Press, 1977.

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Introduction Sydney, Australia has experienced a sustained period of building and infrastructure development. There are hundreds of kilometres of bitumen and rail currently being laid. There are significant building projects in large central sites such as Darling Harbour and Barangaroo on the famous Harbour foreshore. The period of development has offered an unprecedented opportunity for the New South Wales (NSW) State Government to arrest the attention of the Sydney public through kilometres of construction hoarding. This opportunity has not been missed, with the public display of a new logo, complete with pithy slogan, on and around all manner of government projects and activities since September 2015. NSW is “making it happen” according to the logo being displayed. At first glance it is a proactive, simple and concise slogan that, according to the NSW Government brand guidelines, has a wide remit to be used for projects that relate to construction, economic growth, improved services, and major events. However, when viewed through the lens of public, expert, and media research into Sydney infrastructure development it can also be read as a message derived from reactive politics. This paper elucidates turning points in the history of the last decade of infrastructure building in NSW through qualitative primary research into media, public, and practice led discourse. Ultimately, through the prism of Colin Hay’s investigation into political disengagement, I question whether the current build-at-any-cost mentality and its mantra “making it happen” is in the long-term interest of the NSW constituency or the short-term interest of a political party or whether, more broadly, it reflects a crisis of identity for today’s political class. The Non-Launch of the New Logo Image 1: An ABC Sydney Tweet. Image credit: ABC Sydney. There is scant evidence of a specific launch of the logo. Michael Koziol states that to call it an unveiling, “might be a misnomer, given the stealth with which the design has started to make appearances on banners, barriers [see: Image 1, above] and briefing papers” (online). The logo has a wide range of applications. The NSW Government brand guidelines specify that the logo be used “on all projects, programs and announcements that focus on economic growth and confidence in investing in NSW” as well as “infrastructure for the future and smarter services” (30). The section of the guidelines relating to the “making it happen” logo begins with a full-colour, full-page photograph of the Barangaroo building development on Sydney Harbour—complete with nine towering cranes clearly visible across the project/page. The guidelines specifically mention infrastructure, housing projects, and major developments upfront in the section denoted to appropriate logo applications (31). This is a logo that the government clearly intends to use around its major projects to highlight the amount of building currently underway in NSW.In the first week of the logo’s release journalist Elle Hunt asks an unnamed government spokesperson for a definition of “it” in “making it happen.” The spokesperson states, “just a buzz around the state in terms of economic growth and infrastructure […] the premier [the now retired Mike Baird] has used the phrase several times this week in media conferences and it feels like we are making it happen.” Words like “buzz,” “feels like” and the ubiquitous “it” echo the infamous courtroom scene summation of Dennis Denuto from the 1997 Australian film The Castle that have deeply penetrated the Australian psyche and lexicon. Denuto (played by actor Tiriel Mora) is acting as a solicitor for Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) in fighting the compulsory acquisition of the Kerrigan family property. In concluding an address to the court, Denuto states, “In summing up, it’s the constitution, it’s Mabo, it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the Vibe and, no that’s it, it’s the vibe. I rest my case.” All fun and irony (the reason for the house acquisition that inspired Denuto’s now famous speech was an airport infrastructure expansion project) aside, we can assume from the brand guidelines as well as the Hunt article that the intended meaning of “making it happen” is fluid and diffuse rather than fixed and specific. With this article I question why the government would choose to express this diffuse message to the public?Purpose, Scope, Method and ResearchTo explore this question I intertwine empirical research with a close critique of Colin Hay’s thesis on the problematisation of political decision-making—specifically the proliferation of certain tenets of public choice theory. My empirical research is a study of news media, public, and expert discourse and its impact on the success or otherwise of major rail infrastructure projects in Sydney. One case study project, initially announced as the North West Rail Line (NWR) and recently rebadged as the Sydney Metro Northwest (see: http://www.sydneymetro.info/northwest/project-overview), is at the forefront of the infrastructure building that the government is looking to highlight with “making it happen.” A comparison case study is the failed Sydney City Metro (SCM) project that preceded the NWR as the major Sydney rail infrastructure endeavour. I have written in greater detail on the scope of this research elsewhere (see: Richardson, “Curatorial”; “Upheaval”; “Hinterland”). In short, my empirical secondary research involved a study of print news media from 2010 to 2016 spanning Sydney’s two daily papers the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and the Daily Telegraph (TELE). My qualitative research was conducted in 2013. The public qualitative research consisted of a survey, interviews, and focus groups involving 149 participants from across Sydney. The primary expert research consisted of 30 qualitative interviews with experts from politics, the news media and communications practice, as well as project delivery professions such as architecture and planning, project management, engineering, project finance and legal. Respondents were drawn from both the public and private sectors. My analysis of this research is undertaken in a manner similar to what Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke term a “thematic discourse analysis” (81). The intention is to examine “the ways in which events, realities, meanings and experiences and so on are the effects of a range of discourses operating within society.” A “theme” captures “something important about the data in relation to the research question,” and represents, “some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set.” Thematic analysis therefore, “involves the searching across a data set—be that a number of interviews or focus groups, or a range of texts—to find repeated patterns of meaning” (80-86).Governing Sydney: A Legacy of Inability, Broken Promises, and Failure The SCM was abandoned in February 2010. The project’s abandonment had long been foreshadowed in the news media (Anonymous, Future). In the days preceding and following the announcement, news media articles focussed almost exclusively on the ineptitude and wastefulness of a government that would again fail to deliver transport it had promised and invested in (Cratchley; Teutsch & Benns; Anonymous, Taxation). Immediately following the decision, the peak industry body, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, asserted, “this decision shreds the credibility of the government in delivering projects and will likely make it much harder to attract investment and skills to deliver new infrastructure” (Anonymous, Taxation). The reported ineptitude of the then Labor Government of NSW and the industry fallout surrounding the decision were clearly established as the main news media angles. My print media research found coverage to be overwhelmingly and consistently negative. 70% of the articles studied were negatively inclined. Furthermore, approximately one-quarter featured statements pertaining directly to government paralysis and inability to deliver infrastructure.My public, expert, and media research revealed a number of “repeated patterns of meaning,” which Braun and Clarke describe as themes (86). There are three themes that are particularly pertinent to my investigation here. To describe the first theme I have used the statement, an inability of government to successfully deliver projects. The theme is closely tied to the two other interrelated themes—for one I use the statement, a legacy of failure to implement projects successfully—for the other I use a cycle of broken promises to describe the mounting number of announcements on projects that government then fails to deliver. Some of the more relevant comments, on this matter, collected throughout my research appear below.A former Sydney radio announcer, now a major project community consultation advisor, asserts that a “legacy issue” exists with regards to the poor performance of government over time. Through the SCM failure, which she asserts was “a perfectly sound idea,” the NSW Government came to represent “lost opportunities” resulting in a “massive erosion of public trust.” This sentiment was broadly mirrored across the public and industry expert research I conducted. For example, a public respondent states, “repeated public transport failures through the past 20 years has lowered my belief in future projects being successful.” And, a former director general of NSW planning asserts that because of the repeated project failures culminating in the demise of the SCM, “everybody is now so cynical”.Today under the “making it happen” banner, the major Sydney rail transport project investment is to the northwest of Sydney. There was a change of government in 2011 and the NWR was a key election promise for the incoming Premier at the time, Barry O’Farrell. The NWR project, (now renamed Sydney Metro Northwest as well as extended with new stages through the city to Sydney’s Southwest) remains ongoing and in many respects it appears that Sydney may have turned a corner with major infrastructure construction finally underway. Paradoxically though, the NWR project received far less support than the SCM from the majority of the 30 experts I interviewed. The most common theme from expert respondents (including a number working on the project) is that it is not the most urgent transport priority for Sydney but was instead a political decision. As a communications manager for a large Australian infrastructure provider states: “The NWR was an election promise, it wasn’t a decision based on whether the public wanted that rail link or not”. And, the aforementioned former director general of NSW planning mirrors this sentiment when she contends that the NWR is not a priority and “totally political”.My research findings strongly indicate that the failure of the SCM is in fact a vitally important catalyst for the implementation of the NWR. In other words, I assert that the formulation of the NWR has been influenced by the dominant themes that portray the abilities of government in a negative light—themes strengthened and amplified due to the failure of the SCM. Therefore, I assert that the NWR symbolises a desperate government determined to reverse these themes even if it means adopting a build at any cost mentality. As a respondent who specialises in infrastructure finance for one of Australia’s largest banks, states: “I think in politics there are certain promises that people attempt to keep and I think Barry O’Farrell has made it very clear that he is going to make sure those [NWR] tunnel boring machines are on the ground. So that’s going to happen rain, hail or shine”. Hating Politics My empirical research clearly elucidates the three themes I term an inability of government to successfully deliver projects, a legacy of failure and a cycle of broken promises. These intertwining themes are firmly embedded and strengthening. They also portray government in a negative light. I assert that the NWR, as a determined attempt to reverse these themes (irrespective of the cost), indicates a government at best reactive in its decision making and at worst desperate to reverse public and media perception.The negativity facing the NSW government seems extreme. However, in the context of Colin Hay’s work, the situation is perhaps more inevitable than surprising. In Why We Hate Politics (2007), Hay charts the history of public disengagement with western politics. He does this largely by arguing the considerable influence of problematic key tenets of public choice theory that permeate the discourse of most western democracies, including Australia. They are tenets that normalise depoliticisation and cast a lengthy shadow over the behaviour and motivations of politicians and bureaucrats. Public choice can be defined as the economic study of nonmarket decision-making, or, simply the application of economics to political science. The basic behavioral postulate of public choice, as for economics, is that man is an egoistic, rational, utility maximizer. (Mueller 395)Originating from rational choice theory generally and spurred by Kenneth Arrow’s investigations into rational choice and social policy more specifically, the basic premise of public choice is a privileging of individual values above rational collective choice in social policy development (Arrow; Dunleavy; Hauptman; Mueller). Hay asserts that public choice evolved as a theory throughout the 1960s and 70s in order to conceptualise a more market-orientated alternative to the influential theory of welfare economics. Both were formulated in response to a need for intervention and regulation of markets to correct their “natural tendency to failure” (95). In many ways public choice was a reaction to the “idealized depiction of the state” that welfare economics was seen to be propagating. Instead a “more sanguine and realistic view of the […] imperfect state, it was argued, would lead to a rather safer set of inferences about the need for state intervention” (96). Hay asserts that in effect by challenging the motivations of elected officials and public servants, public choice theory “assumed the worst”, branding all parties self-interested and declaring the state inefficient and ineffective in the delivery of public goods (96). Although, as Hay admits, public choice advocates perhaps provided “a healthy cynicism about both the motivations and the capabilities of politicians and public officials,” the theory was overly simplistic, overstated and unproven. Furthermore, when market woes became real rather than theoretical with crippling stagflation in the 1970s, public choice readily identify “villains” at the heart of the problem and the media and public leapt on it (Hay 109). An academic theory was thrust into mainstream discourse. Two results key to the investigations of this paper were 1) a perception of politics “synonymous with the blind pursuit of individual self interest” and 2) the demystification of the “public service ethos” (Hay 108-12). Hay concludes that instead the long-term result has been a conception of politicians and the bureaucracy that is “increasingly synonymous with duplicity, greed, corruption, interference and inefficiency” (160).Deciphering “Making It Happen” More than three decades on, echoes of public choice theory abound in my empirical research into NSW infrastructure building. In particular they are clearly evident in the three themes I term an inability of government to successfully deliver projects, a legacy of failure and a cycle of broken promises. Within this context, what then can we decipher from the pithy, ubiquitous slogan on a government logo? Of course, in one sense “making it happen” could be interpreted as a further attempt to reverse these three themes. The brand guidelines provide the following description of the logo: “the tone is confident, progressive, friendly, trustworthy, active, consistent, getting on with the job, achieving deadlines—“making it happen” (30). Indeed, this description seems the antithesis of perceptions of government identified in my primary research as well as the dogma of public choice theory. There is certainly expert evidence that one of the centrepieces of the government’s push to demonstrate that it is “making it happen”, the NWR, is a flawed project that represents a political decision. Therefore, it is hard not to be cynical and consider the government self-interested and shortsighted in its approach to building and development. If we were to adopt this view then it would be tempting to dismiss the new logo as political, reactive, and entirely self-serving. Further, with the worrying evidence of a ‘build at any cost’ mentality that may lead to wasted taxpayer funds and developments that future generations may judge harshly. As the principal of an national architectural practice states:politicians feel they have to get something done and getting something done is more important than the quality of what might be done because producing something of quality takes time […] it needs to have the support of a lot of people—it needs to be well thought through […] if you want to leap into some trite solution for something just to get something done, at the end of the day you’ll probably end up with something that doesn’t suit the taxpayers very well at all but that’s just the way politics is.In this context, the logo and its mantra could come to represent irreparable long-term damage to Sydney. That said, what if the cynics (this author included) tried to silence the public choice rhetoric that has become so ingrained? What if we reflect for a moment on the effects of our criticism – namely, the further perpetuation and deeper embedding of the cycle of broken promises, the legacy of failure and ineptitude? As Hay states, “if we look hard enough, we are likely to find plenty of behaviour consistent with such pessimistic assumptions. Moreover, the more we look the more we will reinforce that increasingly intuitive tendency” (160). What if we instead consider that by continuing to adopt the mantra of a political cynic, we are in effect perpetuating an overly simplistic, unsubstantiated theory that has cleverly affected us so profoundly? When confronted by the hundreds of kilometres of construction hoarding across Sydney, I am struck by the flippancy of “making it happen.” The vast expanse of hoarding itself symbolises that things are evidently “happening.” However, my research suggests these things could be other things with potential to deliver better public benefits. There is a conundrum here though—publicly expressing pessimism weakens further the utility of politicians and the bureaucracy and exacerbates the problems. Such is the self-fulfilling nature of public choice. ConclusionHay argues that rather than expecting politics and politicians to change, it is our expectations of what government can achieve that we need to modify. Hay asserts that although there is overwhelming evidence that we hate politics more now than at any stage in the past, he does not believe that, “today’s breed of politicians are any more sinful than their predecessors.” Instead he contends that it is more likely that “we have simply got into the habit of viewing them, and their conduct, in such terms” (160). The ramifications of such thinking ultimately, according to Hay, means a breakdown in “trust” that greatly hampers the “co-operation,” so important to politics (161). He implores us to remember “that politics can be more than the pursuit of individual utility, and that the depiction of politics in such terms is both a distortion and a denial of the capacity for public deliberation and the provision of collective goods” (162). What then if we give the NSW Government the benefit of the doubt and believe that the current building boom (including the decision to build the NWR) was not entirely self-serving but a line drawn in the sand with the determination to tackle a problem that is far greater than just that of Sydney’s transport or any other single policy or project problem—the ongoing issue of the spiralling reputation and identity of government decision-makers and perhaps even democracy generally as public choice ideals proliferate in western democracies like that of Australia’s most populous state. As a partner in a national architectural and planning practice states: I think in NSW in particular there has been such an under investment in infrastructure and so few of the promises have been kept […]. Who cares if NWR is right or not? If they actually build it they’ll be the first government in 25 years to do anything.ReferencesABC Sydney. “Confirmed. This is the new logo and phrase for #NSW getting its first outing. What do you think of it?” Twitter. 1 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <https://twitter.com/abcsydney/status/638909482697777152>.Arrow, Kenneth, J. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley, 1951.Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2006): 77-101. The Castle. Dir. Rob Sitch. Working Dog, 1997.Cratchley, Drew. “Builders Want Compo If Sydney Metro Axed.” Sydney Morning Herald 12 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/builders-want-compo-if-sydney-metro-axed-20100212-nwn2.html>.Dunleavy, Patrick. Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Hauptmann, Emily. Putting Choice before Democracy: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory. Albany, New York: State U of New York P, 1996.Hay, Colin. Why We Hate Politics. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.Hunt, Elle. “New South Wales’ New Logo and Slogan Slips By Unnoticed – Almost.” The Guardian Australian Edition 10 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/blog/2015/sep/10/new-south-wales-new-logo-and-slogan-slips-by-unnoticed-almost>.Koziol, Michael. “‘Making It Happen’: NSW Gets a New Logo. Make Sure You Don’t Breach Its Publishing Guidelines.” Sydney Morning Herald 11 Sep. 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/making-it-happen-nsw-gets-a-new-logo-make-sure-you-dont-breach-its-publishing-guidelines-20150911-gjk6z0.html>.Mueller, Dennis C. “Public Choice: A Survey.” Journal of Economic Literature 14 (1976): 395-433.“The NSW Government Branding Style Guide.” Sydney: NSW Government, 2015. 19 Jan. 2017 <http://www.advertising.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/downloads/page/nsw_government_branding_guide.pdf>.Perry, Jenny. “Future of Sydney Metro Remains Uncertain.” Rail Express 3 Feb. 2010. 25 Apr. 2017 <https://www.railexpress.com.au/future-of-sydney-metro-remains-uncertain/>.Richardson, Nicholas. “Political Upheaval in Australia: Media, Foucault and Shocking Policy.” ANZCA Conference Proceedings 2015, eds. D. Paterno, M. Bourk, and D. Matheson.———. “A Curatorial Turn in Policy Development? Managing the Changing Nature of Policymaking Subject to Mediatisation” M/C Journal 18.4 (2015).———. “The Hinterland of Power: Rethinking Mediatised Messy Policy.” PhD Thesis. University of Western Sydney, 2015.“Taxpayers Will Compensate Axed Metro Losers: Keneally.” Sydney Morning Herald 21 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/taxpayers-will-compensate-axed-metro-losers-keneally-20100221-on6h.html>. Teutsch, Danielle, and Matthew Benns. “Call for Inquiry over $500m Poured into Doomed Metro.” Sydney Morning Herald 21 Mar. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/call-for-inquiry-over-500m-poured-into-doomed-Metro-20100320-qn7b.html>.“Train Ready to Leave: Will Politicians Get on Board?” Sydney Morning Herald 13 Feb. 2010. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/train-ready-to-leave-will-politicians-get-on-board-20100212-nxfk.html>.

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Over the last two decades the female forensic pathologist investigator has become a prominent figure in crime fiction. Her presence causes suspicion on a number of levels in the narrative and this article will examine the reasons for that suspicion and the manner in which it is presented in two texts: Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem and Tess Gerritsen’s The Sinner. Cornwell and Gerritsen are North American crime writers whose series of novels both feature female forensic pathologists who are deeply involved in homicide investigation. Cornwell’s protagonist is Dr Kay Scarpetta, then-Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. Gerritsen’s is Dr Maura Isles, a forensic pathologist in the Boston Medical Examiner’s office. Their jobs entail attending crime scenes to assess bodies in situ, performing examinations and autopsies, and working with police to solve the cases.In this article I will first examine Western cultural attitudes towards dissection and autopsy since the twelfth century before discussing how the most recent of these provoke suspicion in the selected novels. I will further analyse this by drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject. I will then consider how female pathologist protagonists try to deflect their colleagues’ suspicion of their professional choices, drawing in part on Judith Butler’s ideas of gender as a performative category. I define ‘gender’ as the socially constructed roles, activities, attributes, and behaviours that Western culture considers appropriate for women and men, and ‘sex’ as the physical biological characteristics that differentiate women and men. I argue that the female forensic pathologist investigator is portrayed as suspicious in the chosen novels for her occupation of the abject space caused by her sex in her roles as investigator and pathologist, her identification with the dead, and her performance of elements of both masculine and feminine conventional gender roles. Scholars such as Barthes, Rolls, and Grauby have approached detective fiction by focusing on intertextuality, the openness of the text, and the possibility of different meanings, with Vargas being one example of how this can operate; however, this article focuses on examining how the female forensic pathologist investigator is represented as suspicious in mainstream crime novels that attract a readership seeking resolution and closure.A significant part of each of these novels focuses on the corpse and its injuries as the site at which the search for truth commences, and I argue that the corpse itself, those who work most closely with it and the procedures they employ in this search are all treated with suspicion in the crime fiction in this study. The central procedures of autopsy and dissection have historically been seen as abominations, in some part due to religious views such as the belief of Christians prior to the thirteenth century that the resurrection of the soul required an intact body (Klaver 10) and the Jewish and Muslim edicts against disfigurement of the dead (Davis and Peterson 1042). In later centuries dissection was made part of the death sentence and was perceived “as an abhorrent additional post-mortem punishment” that “promised the exposure of nakedness, dismemberment, and the deliberate destruction of the corpse,” which was considered “a gross assault on the integrity and the identity of the body, and upon the repose of the soul” (Richardson 154). While now a mainstay of many popular crime narratives, the autopsy as a procedure in real life continues to appall much of the public (Klaver 18). This is because “the human body—especially the dead human body—is an object still surrounded by taboos and prohibitions” (Sawday 269). The living are also reluctant to “yield the subjecthood of the other-dead to object status” (Klaver 18), which often produces a horrified response from some families to doctors seeking permission to dissect for autopsy. According to Gawande, when doctors suggest an autopsy the victim’s family commonly asks “Hasn’t she been through enough?” (187). The forensic pathologists who perform the autopsy are themselves linked with the repugnance of the act (Klaver 9), and in these novels that fact combined with the characters’ willingness to be in close proximity with the corpse and their comfort with dissecting it produces considerable suspicion on the part of their police colleagues.The female sex of the pathologists in these novels causes additional suspicion. This is primarily because women are “culturally associated [...] with life and life giving” (Vanacker 66). While historically women were also involved in the care of the sick and the dead (Nunn and Biressi 200), the growth of medical knowledge and the subsequent medicalisation of death in Western culture over the past two centuries has seen women relegated to a stylised kind of “angelic ministry” (Nunn and Biressi 201). This is an image inconsistent with these female characters’ performance of what is perceived as a “violent ‘reduction’ into parts: a brutal dismemberment” (Sawday 1). Drawing on Butler’s ideas about gender as a culturally constructed performance, we can see that while these characters are biologically female, in carrying out tasks that are perceived as masculine they are not performing their traditional gender roles and are thus regarded with suspicion by their police colleagues. Both Scarpetta and Isles are aware of this, as illustrated by the interior monologue with which Gerritsen opens her novel:They called her the Queen of the Dead. Though no one ever said it to her face, Dr. Maura Isles sometimes heard the nickname murmured in her wake as she travelled the grim triangle of her job between courtroom and death scene and morgue. [...] Sometimes the whispers held a tremolo of disquiet, like the murmurs of the pious as an unholy stranger passes among them. It was the disquiet of those who could not understand why she chose to walk in Death’s footsteps. Does she enjoy it, they wonder? Does the touch of cold flesh, the stench of decay, hold such allure for her that she has turned her back on the living? (Gerritsen 6)The police officers’ inability to understand why Isles chooses to work with the dead leads them to wonder whether she takes pleasure in it, and because they cannot comprehend how a “normal” person could act that way she is immediately marked as a suspicious Other. Gerritsen’s language builds images of transgression: words such as murmured, wake, whispers, disquiet, unholy, death’s footsteps, cold, stench, and decay suggest a fearful attitude towards the dead and the abjection of the corpse itself, a topic I will explore shortly. Isles later describes seeing police officers cast uneasy glances her way, noting details that only reinforce their beliefs that she is an odd duck: The ivory skin, the black hair with its Cleopatra cut. The red slash of lipstick. Who else wears lipstick to a death scene? Most of all, it’s her calmness that disturbs them, her coolly regal gaze as she surveys the horrors that they themselves can barely stomach. Unlike them, she does not avert her gaze. Instead she bends close and stares, touches. She sniffs. And later, under bright lights in her autopsy lab, she cuts. (Gerritsen 7) While the term “odd duck” suggests a somewhat quaintly affectionate tolerance, it is contrasted by the rest of the description: the red slash brings to mind blood and a gaping wound perhaps also suggestive of female genitalia; the calmness, the coolly regal gaze, and the verb “surveys” imply detachment; the willingness to move close to the corpse, to touch and even smell it, and later cut it open, emphasise the difference between the police officers, who can “barely stomach” the sight, and Isles who readily goes much further.Kristeva describes the abject as that which is not one thing or another (4). The corpse is recognisable as once-human, but is no-longer; the body was once Subject, but we cannot make ourselves perceive it yet as fully Object, and thus it is incomprehensible and abject. I suggest that the abject is suspicious because of this “neither-nor” nature: its liminal identity cannot be pinned down, its meaning cannot be determined, and therefore it cannot be trusted. In the abject corpse, “that compelling, raw, insolent thing in the morgue’s full sunlight [...] that thing that no longer matches and therefore no longer signifies anything” (Kristeva 4), we see the loss of borders between ourselves and the Other, and we are simultaneously “drawn to and repelled” by it; “nausea is a biological recognition of it, and fear and adrenalin also acknowledge its presence” (Pentony). In these novels the police officers’ recognition of these feelings in themselves emphasises their assumptions about the apparent lack of the same responses in the female pathologist investigators. In the quote from The Sinner above, for example, the officers are unnerved by Isles’ calmness around the thing they can barely face. In Postmortem, the security guard who works for the morgue hides behind his desk when a body is delivered (17) and refuses to enter the body storage area when requested to do so (26) in contrast with Scarpetta’s ease with the corpses.Abjection results from “that which disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules” (Kristeva 4), and by having what appears to be an unnatural reaction to the corpse, these women are perceived as failing to respect systems and boundaries and therefore are viewed as abject themselves. At the same time, however, the female characters strive against the abject in their efforts to repair the disturbance caused by the corpse and the crime of murder that produced it by locating evidence leading to the apprehension of the culprit. Ever-present and undermining these attempts to restore order is the evidence of the crime itself, the corpse, which is abject not only for its “neither-nor” status but also because it exposes “the fragility of the law” (Kristeva 4). In addition, these female pathologist characters’ sex causes abjection in another form through their “liminal status” as outsiders in the male hierarchy of law enforcement (Nunn and Biressi 203); while they are employed by it and work to maintain its dominance over law-breakers and society in general, as biological females they can never truly belong.Abjection also results from the blurring of boundaries between investigator and victim. Such blurring is common in crime fiction, and while it is most likely to develop between criminal and investigator when the investigator is male, when that investigator is female it tends instead to involve the victim (Mizejewski 8). In these novels this is illustrated by the ways in which the female investigators see themselves as similar to the victims by reason of gender plus sensibility and/or work. The first victim in Cornwell’s Postmortem is a young female doctor, and reminders of her similarities to Scarpetta appear throughout the novel, such as when Scarpetta notices the pile of medical journals near the victim's bed (Cornwell 12), and when she considers the importance of the woman's fingers in her work as a surgeon (26). When another character suggests to Scarpetta that, “in a sense, you were her once,” Scarpetta agrees (218). This loss of boundaries between self and not-self can be considered another form of abjection because the status and roles of investigator and victim become unclear, and it also results in an emotional bond, with both Scarpetta and Isles becoming sensitive to what lies in wait for the bodies. This awareness, and the frisson it creates, is in stark contrast to their previous equanimity. For example, when preparing for an autopsy on the body of a nun, Isles finds herself fighting extreme reluctance, knowing that “this was a woman who had chosen to live hidden from the eyes of men; now she would be cruelly revealed, her body probed, her orifices swabbed. The prospect of such an invasion brought a bitter taste to [Isles’s] throat and she paused to regain her composure” (Gerritsen 57). The language highlights the penetrative nature of Isles’s contact with the corpse through words such as revealed, orifices, probed, and invasion, which all suggest unwanted interference, the violence inherent in the dissecting procedures of autopsy, and the masculine nature of the task even when performed by a female pathologist. This in turn adds to the problematic issue here of gender as performance, a subject I will discuss shortly.In a further blurring of those boundaries, the female characters are often perceived as potential victims by both themselves and others. Critic Lee Horsley describes Scarpetta as “increasingly giv[ing] way to a tendency to see herself in the place of the victim, her interior self exposed and open to inspection by hostile eyes” (154). This is demonstrated in the novel when plot developments see Scarpetta’s work scrutinised (Cornwell 105), when she feels she does not belong to the same world as the living people around her (133), and when she almost becomes a victim in a literal sense at the climax of the novel, when the perpetrator breaks into her home to torture and kill her but is stopped by the timely arrival of a police officer (281).Similarly, Gerritsen’s character Isles comes to see herself as a possible victim in The Sinner. When it is feared that the criminal is watching the Boston police and Isles realises he may be watching her too, she thinks about how “she was accustomed to being in the eye of the media, but now she considered the other eyes that might be watching her. Tracking her. And she remembered what she had felt in the darkness at [a previous crime scene]: the prey’s cold sense of dread when it suddenly realises it is being stalked” (Gerritsen 222). She too almost becomes a literal victim when the criminal enters her home with intent to kill (323).As investigators, these characters’ sex causes suspicion because they are “transgressive female bod[ies] occupying the spaces traditionally held by a man” (Mizejewski 6). The investigator in crime fiction has “traditionally been represented as a marginalized outsider” (Mizejewski 11), a person who not only needs to think like the criminal in order to apprehend them but be willing to use violence or to step outside the law in their pursuit of this goal, and is regarded as suspicious as a result. To place a woman in this position then makes that investigator’s role doubly suspicious (Mizejewski 11). Judith Butler’s work on gender as performance provides a useful tool for examining this. Because “the various acts of gender create the gender itself” (Butler 522), these female characters are judged as woman or not-woman according to what they do. By working as investigators in the male-dominated field of law-enforcement and particularly by choosing to spend their days handling the dead in ways that involve the masculine actions of penetrating and dismembering, each has “radically crossed the limits of her gender role, with her choice of the most unsavoury and ‘unfeminine’ of professions” (Vanacker 65). The suspicion this attracts is demonstrated by Scarpetta being compared to her male predecessor who got on so well with the police, judges, and lawyers with whom she struggles (Cornwell 91). This sense of marginalisation and unfavourable comparison is reinforced through her recollections of her time in medical school when she was one of only four women in her class and can remember vividly the isolating tactics the male students employed against the female members (60). One critic has estimated the dates of Scarpetta’s schooling as putting her “on the leading edge of women moving into professionals schools in the early 1970s” (Robinson 97), in the time of second wave feminism, when such changes were not welcomed by all men in the institutions. In The Sinner, Isles wants her male colleagues to see her as “a brain and a white coat” (Gerritsen 175) rather than a woman, and chooses strategies such as maintaining an “icy professionalism” (109) and always wearing that white coat to ensure she is seen as an intimidating authority figure, as she believes that once they see her as a woman, sex will get in the way (175). She wants to be perceived as a professional with a job to do rather than a prospective sexual partner. The white coat also helps conceal the physical indicators of her sex, such as breasts and hips (mirroring the decision of the murdered nun to hide herself from the eyes of men and revealing their shared sensibility). Butler’s argument that “the distinction between appearance and reality [...] structures a good deal of populist thinking about gender identity” (527) is appropriate here, for Isles’s actions in trying to mask her sex and thus her gender declare to her colleagues that her sex is irrelevant to her role and therefore she can and should be treated as just another colleague performing a task.Scarpetta makes similar choices. Critic Bobbie Robinson says “Scarpetta triggers the typical distrust of powerful women in a male-oriented world, and in that world she seems determined to swaddle her lurking femininity to construct a persona that keeps her Other” (106), and that “because she perceives her femininity as problematic for others, she intentionally misaligns or masks the expectations of gender so that the masculine and feminine in her cancel each other out, constructing her as an androgyne” (98). Examples of this include Scarpetta’s acknowledgement of her own attractiveness (Cornwell 62) and her nurturing of herself and her niece Lucy through cooking, an activity she describes as “what I do best” (109) while at the same time she hides her emotions from her colleagues (204) and maintains that her work is her priority despite her mother’s accusations that “it’s not natural for a woman” (34). Butler states that “certain kinds of acts are usually interpreted as expressive of a gender core or identity, and that these acts either conform to an expected gender identity or contest that expectation in some way” (527). Scarpetta’s attention to her looks and her enjoyment of cooking conform to a societal assumption of female gender identity, while her construction of an emotionless facade and focus on her work falls more in the area of expected male gender identity.These characters deliberately choose to perform in a specific manner as a way of coping and succeeding in their workplace: by masking the most overt signs of their sex and gender they are attempting to lessen the suspicion cast upon them by others for not being “woman.” There exists, however, a contradiction between that decision and the clear markers of femininity demonstrated on occasion by both characters, for example, the use by Isles of bright red lipstick and a smart Cleopatra haircut, and the performance by both of the “feminised role as caretaker of, or alignment with, the victim’s body” (Summers-Bremner 133). While the characters do also perform the more masculine role of “rendering [the body’s] secrets in scientific form” (Summers-Bremner 133), a strong focus of the novels is their emotional connection to the bodies and so this feminised role is foregrounded. The attention to lipstick and hairstyle and their overtly caring natures fulfill Butler’s ideas of the conventional performance of gender and may be a reassurance to readers about the characters’ core femininity and their resultant availability for romance sub-plots, however they also have the effect of emphasising the contrasting performative gender elements within these characters and marking them once again in the eyes of other characters as neither one thing nor another, and therefore deserving of suspicion.In conclusion, the female forensic pathologist investigator is portrayed in the chosen novels as suspicious for her involvement in the abject space that results from her comfort around and identification with the corpse in contrast to the revulsion experienced by her police colleagues; her sex in her roles as investigator and pathologist where these roles are conventionally seen as masculine; and her performance of elements of both masculine and feminine conventional gender roles as she carries out her work. This, however, sets up a further line of inquiry about the central position of the abject in novels featuring female forensic pathologist investigators, as these texts depict this character’s occupation of the abject space as crucial to the solving of the case: it is through her ability to perform the procedures of her job while identifying with the corpse that clues are located, the narrative of events reconstructed, and the criminal identified and apprehended.ReferencesBarthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. London: Jonathan Cape. 1975. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal. 40.4 (1988): 519–31. 5 October 2011 ‹http://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893›Cornwell, Patricia. Postmortem. London: Warner Books, 1994. Davis, Gregory J. and Bradley R. Peterson. “Dilemmas and Solutions for the Pathologist and Clinician Encountering Religious Views of the Autopsy.” Southern Medical Journal. 89.11 (1996): 1041–44. Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. London: Profile Books, 2003.Gerritsen, Tess. The Sinner. Sydney: Random House, 2003. Grauby, Francois. “‘In the Noir’: The Blind Detective in Bridgette Aubert’s La mort des bois.” Mostly French: French (in) detective fiction. Modern French Identities, v.88. Ed. Alistair Rolls. Oxford: Peter Lang. 2009.Horsley, Lee. Twentieth Century Crime Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Klaver, Elizabeth. Sites of Autopsy in Contemporary Culture. Albany: State U of NYP, 2005.Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: Essays on Abjection. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.Mizejewski, Linda. “Illusive Evidence: Patricia Cornwell and the Body Double.” South Central Review. 18.3/4 (2001): 6–20. 19 March 2010. ‹http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190350›Nunn, Heather and Anita Biressi. “Silent Witness: Detection, Femininity, and the Post Mortem Body.” Feminist Media Studies. 3.2 (2003): 193–206. 18 January 2011. ‹http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1468077032000119317›Pentony, Samantha. “How Kristeva’s Theory of Abjection Works in Relation to the Fairy Tale and Post Colonial Novel: Angela Carter’s The Blood Chamber and Keri Hulme’s The Bone People.” Deep South. 2.3 (1996): n.p. 13 November 2011. ‹http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol2no3/pentony.html›Richardson, Ruth. “Human Dissection and Organ Donation: A Historical Background.” Mortality. 11.2 (2006): 151–65. 13 May 2011. ‹http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576270600615351›Robinson, Bobbie. “Playing Like the Boys: Patricia Cornwell Writes Men.” The Journal of Popular Culture. 39.1 (2006): 95–108. 2 August 2010. ‹http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2006.00205.x/full›Rolls, Alistair. “An Uncertain Place: (Dis-)Locating the Frenchness of French and Australian Detective Fiction.” in Mostly French: French (in) Detective Fiction. Modern French Identities, v.88. Ed. Alistair Rolls. Oxford: Peter Lang. 2009.---. “What Does It Mean? Contemplating Rita and Desiring Dead Bodies in Two Short Stories by Raymond Carver.” Literature and Aesthetics: The Journal of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics. 18.2 (2008): 88-116. Sawday, Jonathon. The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. London: Routledge, 1996.Summers-Bremner, Eluned. “Post-Traumatic Woundings: Sexual Anxiety in Patricia Cornwell’s Fiction.” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics. 43 (2001): 131–47. Vanacker, Sabine. “V.I Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone and Kay Scarpetta: Creating a Feminist Detective Hero.” Criminal Proceedings: The Contemporary American Crime Novel. Ed. Peter Messent. London: Pluto P, 1997. 62–87. Vargas, Fred. This Night’s Foul Work. Trans. Sian Reynolds. London: Harvill Secker, 2008.

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Abstract:

Cute pictures of animals feature as an inoffensive and adorable background to the contemporary online experience with cute content regularly shared on social media platforms. Indeed the demand for cuteness is so strong in the current cultural milieu that some animals become recognisable animal celebrities in the process (Hepola). However, despite the existence of this professionalisation in some sections of the cute economy, amateurs produce the majority of cute content that circulates online. This is largely because one of the central contributors to this steady stream of cute animal pictures is the subforum Aww, hosted on the online community Reddit. Aww is wholly dedicated to pictures of cute things and allows users to directly submit cute content directly to the site. Aww is one of the default subforums that new Reddit users are automatically subscribed to and is immensely popular, featuring over 4.2 million dedicated subscribers as well as untold casual visits. The section is self-described as: “Things that make you go AWW! -- like puppies, and bunnies, and so on...Feel free to post pictures, videos and stories of cute things” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Users upload cute animal photos that they have taken and wait for the Reddit community to vote on their favourite pictures. The voting mechanism helps users to acknowledge their favourite posts, with the most popular featured on the front page of Aww (for a detailed critique of this process see van der Nagel 2013). The user-generated model of the site means that instead of visitors being confronted with a formally curated selection of cute animal photos, Aww offers a constantly changing mixture of amateur, semi-pro and professional content. Aww - and Reddit more generally - stand as an emblematic example of participatory culture (Jenkins 2006), with users playing an active role in the production and curation of online content. However, given the commercial nature of many user-generated content sites, this amateur media activity is becoming increasingly subject to intellectual property claims and conflicts (see Burgess; Kennedy). Across the internet there are growing tensions between website operators and amateur producers. As Jenny Kennedy (132) notes, while these platforms promote a public rhetoric of “sharing”, these corporate narratives “downplay their economic power” and imply “that they do not control the practices contained within their sites”. Subsequently, the expectations of users regarding how content is managed and organised can differ substantially from the corporate goals of social media companies. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature interested in the politics of amateur media production (see Hunter and Lastowka; Benkler; Burgess; Kennedy) by exploring the emergence of attribution norms and informal enforcement measures in and around the Aww online community. In contrast to professional content creators, amateurs often have fewer resources on hand to protect their copyrighted work and are also challenged by a pervasive online rhetoric that suggests that popular content essentially “belongs to the Internet” (Douglas). A number of communities on Reddit have questioned the company’s handling of amateur content with users suggesting that Reddit actively seeks to de-contextualise original content and not attribute original creators. By examining how amateur creators and online communities regulate content online, I interrogate the power relations that exist between social media platforms and users and explore how the corporate rhetoric of participatory culture interacts with the legal framework of copyright law. This article also contributes to existing legal scholarship on communities of practice and norms-based intellectual property systems. This literature has explored how social norms effectively regulate the protection of, among other things, recipes (Fauchart and Von Hippel), fashion design (Raustiala and Sprigman) and stand-up comedy routines (Oliar and Sprigman), in situations where copyright law does not function as an effective regulatory mechanism. Often these norms are in line with copyright law protections, but in other cases they diverge from these legal principles. In this paper I suggest that particular sections of Reddit function in a similar way, with their own set of self-governing norms, and that these norms largely align with the philosophical aims of copyright law. The paper begins by outlining a series of recent debates that have occurred between amateur media creators and Reddit, before exploring how norms are regulated on Reddit subforums Aww and Karma Court. I then offer some brief conclusions on the value of paying attention to how social norms structure forms of “sharing” (see Kennedy) and provide a useful way for amateur media producers to protect their content without going through formal legal processes. Introducing Reddit and the Confused Politics of Amateur Content Reddit is a social news site, a vibrant community and one of the most popular websites online. It stands as the most visible iteration of a long-standing tradition of user-generated and managed news, one that goes back to websites like Slashdot, which operated in the mid to late-90s. Founded in 2005 Reddit was launched after only one funding round of venture capital, receiving $100k in seed funding from Y Combinatory (Miller). Despite some early rivalry between Reddit and competitor site Digg, Reddit had enough potential to be purchased by Condé Nast for an estimated $20 million (Carr). Reddit’s audience numbers have grown exponentially in the last few years, with the site currently receiving over 5 billion page views and 114 million unique visitors per month (“About Reddit”). It has also changed focus significantly in the last few years with the site now “as much about posting interesting or funny pictures as it is about news” (Sepponen). Reddit hosts a number of individual subforums (called subreddits), which focus on a particular topic and function essentially like online bulletin boards. The front-page of Reddit showcases the most popular content from across the whole website, and user-generated content features heavily here. Amateur media cannot spread without the structural support of social media platforms, but this support is qualified in particular ways. Reddit stands as a paradigmatic case. Users on Reddit are “incentivized to submit direct links to images, because viewers can get to them more easily” (Douglas) and the website encourages amateur creators to use a preferred content server – Imgur – to host images. The Imgur service provides a direct public link to an image – even bypassing the Reddit discussion page – and with its free hosting and limited ads it has become a popular service and is used by most Reddit users (Slater-Robins). For the majority of Reddit users this is an unproblematic partnership. Imgur is free, effective and fast. However, a vocal minority of Reddit users and amateur creators claim that the partnership between Reddit and Imgur has created the equivalent of an online ghetto (Douglas).As Nick Douglas explains, when using services like Imgur there is no requirement to either provide an external link to a creators website or to attribute the creator, limiting the ability for an amateur creator to gain exposure. It also bypasses existing revenue streams that may have been set up by creators, including ad-supported websites or online stores offering merchandise. As a result creators have little opportunity to benefit either economically or reputationally from this system. This occurs to such an extent that “there are actually warnings against submitting your own [original] work” to particular subforums on Reddit (Douglas). For example, some forum moderators require submissions to either “link directly to a specific image file or to a website with minimal ads” (“Reddit Pics”). It is in this context, that the posting of original content without attribution is not actively policed. There are a number of complaints circulating within the Reddit community about these practices (see “Ok, look people. I know you heart Imgur, but webcomics? Just link to the freaking site”; “The problem with reddit”). Many creators have directly protested against this aspect of Reddit’s structural organisation. Blogger Benjamin Grelle (a.k.a The Frogman) and writer Chris Menning are two notable examples. Grelle’s protest was witty and dramatic. He wrote a blog post featuring a picture of an email he sent to Imgur offering the company a choice: send him a huge novelty check for $10,000 or alternatively, add a proper attribution system that allows artists, photographers and content creators to properly credit their work. Grelle estimates that his work generated around $20,000 in ad revenue for Imgur; however the structure of Reddit and Imgur meant he earned little income from the “viral” success of his content. Grelle claimed he was happy for his work to be shared, but attribution meant that it was more likely a fan would follow the link to his website and provide him with some financial recompense for his work. Unsurprisingly, Grelle didn’t receive a paycheck and so in response has developed a unique way to gain exposure. He has started to insert himself into his work, “[s]o when you see a stolen Frogman piece, you still see Ben Grelle’s face” (Douglas). Chris Menning posted a blog about being banned from Reddit, hoping to bring to light some of the inequalities that persist around Reddit’s current structure. He began by noting that he had received a significant amount of traffic from them in the past. He had responded in kind by looking to create original content for particular subforums, knowing what a particular community would enjoy. However, his habit of providing the link to his own website along with the content he posted saw him get labelled as a spammer and banned by administrators. Menning chose not to fight the ban:It seems that the only way I could avoid [getting banned] is if I were to relinquish any rights to my original content and post it exclusively to Imgur. In effect, reddit punishes the creation of original content, and rewards content theft (Menning). Instead he decided to quit Reddit, claiming that Reddit’s approach would carry long-term consequences as the platform provided little incentive for creators to produce wholly original content. It is worth noting that neither Menning nor Grelle turned to legal avenues in order to gain financial restitution. Considering the nature of the practices they were complaining about, compensation in the form of an injunction or damages would have certainly been possible. In Benjamin’s case, a user had combined a number of his copyrighted works into one image and posted the image to Imgur without attribution --this infringed Grelle’s copyright in his work as well as his moral right to be attributed as the creator of the work. However, the public comments of both creators suggest that despite the possibility of legal success, their issue was not so much to do with their individual cases but rather the broader structural issues at play within Reddit. While they might gain individually from a successful legal challenge, over the long term Reddit would continue to be a fraught place for amateur and semi-professional content creators. Certain parts of the Reddit community appear to be sympathetic to these issues, and the complaints of dissenting users like Menning and Grelle have received active support from some users and moderators on the site. This has led to changes in the way content is being posted and managed on Aww, and has also driven the emergence of a satirical user-run court entitled Karma Court. In these spaces moderators and members establish community norms, regularly police the correct attribution of works and challenge the de-contextualisation of content overtly encouraged by Reddit, Imgur and other subforums. In the following section I will examine both Aww and Karma Court in order to explore how these norms are established and negotiated by both moderators and users alike. reddit.com/r/aww: The Online Hub of Cute Animal Pictures As we have seen, the design of Reddit and Imgur creates a number of problems for amateur creators who wish to protect their intellectual property. To address these shortcomings, the Aww community has created its own informal regulatory systems. Volunteer moderators play a crucial role: they establish informal codes of conduct for the Aww community and enforce various rules about how the site should be used. One of these rules relates to attribution. Users are asked to to “post original content whenever possible or attribute original content creators” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Due to the volunteer nature of the work and the size of the Aww sub-reddit, moderator enforcement is haphazard. Consequently, responsibility falls on the wider user community to self-police. Despite its informal nature, this process manages to facilitate a fairly consistent standard of attribution. In this way it functions as an informal method of intellectual property protection. It is worth noting however that this commitment to original content is not solely due to the moral character of Aww users. A significant motivation is the distribution of karma points amongst Reddit users. Karma, which represents your good standing within the Reddit community, can be earned through user likes and votes – these push the most popular content to the front page of each subforum. Thus karma stands as a numerical representation of a user’s value to Reddit. This ostensibly democratic system has the paradoxical effect of fuelling intellectual property violations on the site. Users often repost other users’ jpegs, animated gifs, and other content, in order to reap the social and cultural capital that comes with posting a popular picture. In some cases they claim authorship of the content; in other cases they simply re-post content that they feel “belongs to the internet” (Douglas). Some content is so popular or pervasive online (this content that is often described as “viral”) that users feel there is little reason or need to attribute content. This helps to explain the persistence of ownership and attribution conflicts on Reddit. In the eyes of some users and moderators the management of these rights and the correct distribution of karma are seen to be vital to the long-term functioning of site. The karma system offers a numerical representation of each contributor’s value. Re-posting already successful content and claiming it as your own challenges the proper functioning of the karma system and potentially ‘inhibits the innovative potential of contributions (Richterich). On Aww the re-posting of original content is viewed as a taboo act that breaches these norms. The poster is seen to have engaged in deceptive conduct in order to gain karma for their user profile. In addition there is a strong ethic that runs through these comment threads that the original creator deserves attribution. There is a presumption that this attribution is vital in order to increasing the possible marketability of the posted content and to recognise and courage creators within the community. This sort of community-driven regulation contrasts with the aforementioned site design of Reddit and Imgur, which frustrates effective authorship attribution practices. Aww users, in contrast, have shown a willingness to defend what they see as the intellectual property rights of content creators.A series of recent examples outline how this process works in practice. User “moonlikeme123” posted a picture of a cat with its hands on the steering wheel of a car. The picture was entitled “we don’t need to ask for directions, Helen”. During the same day, three separate users had identified the picture as a repost, with one noting that the same picture was already on the front page of Aww. “moonlikeme123” received no karma points for the picture. In a second example, the user “nibblur” posted a photo of a kitten “hunting” a toy mouse. Within a day, one enterprising user had identified the original photographer – “torode”, an amateur photographer – and linked to his Reddit profile (see fig. 2) ("ferocious cat hunting its prey: aww."). One further example: on 15 July 2013 “Cuzacelmare” posted a picture of two dogs comforting each other – an image which had originally been posted by “lauface”. Again, users were quick to point out the lack of attribution and the attempt to claim someone else’s content as their own (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww). It is worth noting that some Reddit users consider attributing content to be entirely without benefit. Some deride karma as “meaningless” and suggest that as a significant amount of content online is regularly reposted elsewhere, there is little harm done in re-posting what is essentially amateur content destined to be lost in the bowels of the internet. For example, the comments that follow Cuzacelmare’s reflect an ambivalence about reposting, suggesting that users weigh up the benefits of exposure gained by the re-posting against the lack of attribution granted and the increasingly decontextualized nature of the photo itself:Why does everyone get so bitchy about reposts. Not everyone is on ALL the time or has been on Rreddit since it was created. I mean if you've seen it already ignore it. It's just picture you aren't forced to click the link. [sic] (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”)We're arguing semantics, but any content that gets attention can benefit the creator, whether it's reddit or Youtube (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”) Such discussions are common on comment threads following re-posts by other users. They underline the conflicted status of this ephemeral media and the underlying frictions that are part of these processes. These discussions underline the fact that on Reddit the “sharing” (Kennedy) and “spreading” (Jenkins et al.) of content is not seen as an unquestioned positive but rather as a contestable structural feature that needs to be constantly negotiated and discussed. These informal methods of identification, post-hoc attribution and criticism in comment threads have been the long-standing method used to redress questions of attribution and ownership of content on Reddit. However in recent times, Reddit users have turned to satirical methods of formal adjudication for particularly egregious cases. A sub-reddit, Karma Court, now functions as an informal tribunal in which punishment is meted out for “the abuse of karma and general contemptible actions heretofore identified as wrongdoing” (“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”). Due to its double function as both an adjudicator and satire of users overly-invested in online debates, there is no limit to the possible “crimes” a user may be charged with. The following charges are only presented as guidelines and speak to common negative experiences on online: (1). Douchebaggery - When one is being a douche.(2). Defamation - Tarnishing another redditor's [user’s] username.(3). Public Indecency - When a user flexes his or her 'e-peen' with the intent to shame other users.(4). Ohsh*t.exe - Intentional reposting that results in reddit Gold.(5). GrandTheft.jpg - Reposting while claiming credit for the post.(6). Obstruction of Justice - Impeding or interfering with an investigation, such as submitting false screenshots, deleting evidence, or providing false evidence to the court.(7). Other - Literally anything else you want. We like creative names for charges.(“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”) In Karma Court, legal representation can be sourced from a list of attorneys and judges, populated by users who volunteer to help adjudicate the case. They are required to have been a Reddit member for over six months. The only punishment is a public shaming. Interestingly Karma Court has developed a fair reposting clause that attempts to manage the complex debates around reposting and attribution. Under the non-binding satirical clause, users are able to repost content if it has not featured on the front page of a sub-reddit for seven or more days, if the re-poster acknowledges in the title or description that they are re-posting or if the original poster has less than 30,000 link karma (which means that the original poster has not substantially contributed to the Reddit community). If a re-poster does not adhere by these rules and claims a re-post as their own original content (or “OC”), they can be charged with “grandtheft.jpg” and brought to trial by another Reddit user. As one of the most popular subforums, a number of cases have emerged from Aww. The aforementioned re-poster “Cuzacelmare” (“I am bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to trial …”) was “charged” through this process and served with a summons after denying “cute and innocent animals of that subreddit of their much deserved karma”. Similar cases to do with re-posting without attribution on Aww involve “FreshCorio” (“Reddit vs. U/FreshCorio …”) and “ninjacollin” (“People of Reddit vs. /U/ ninjacollin”) who were also brought to karma court. In each case prosecutors were adamant that false authorship claims needed to be punished. With these mock trials run by volunteers it takes time for arguments to be heard and judgment to occur; however “ninjacollin” expedited the legal process by offering a full confession. As a new user, “ninjacollin” was reprimanded severely for his actions and the users on Karma Court underlined the consequences of not identifying original content creators when re-posting content. Ownership and Attribution: Amateur Media, Distribution and Law The practices outlined above offer a number of alternate ways to think about amateur media and how it is distributed. An increasingly complex picture of content attribution and circulation emerges once we take into account the structural operation of Reddit, the intellectual property norms of users, and the various formal and informal systems of regulation that are appearing on the site. Such practices require users to negotiate complex questions of ownership between each other and in relation to corporate bodies. These negotiations often lead to informal agreements around a set of norms to regulate the spread of content within a particular community, suggesting that the lack of a formal legal process in these debates does not mean that there is an absence of regulation. As noted throughout this paper, the spread of online content often involves progressive de-contextualisation. Website design features often support this process in the hopes of encouraging content to spread in a fashion amenable to their corporate goals. Considering this tendency for content to be decontextualized online, the presence of attribution norms on subforums like Aww is significant. Instead of remixing, spreading and re-purposing content indiscriminately, users retain a concept of ownership and attribution that tracks closely to the basic principles of copyright law. Rather than users radically redefining concepts of attribution and ownership, as prefigured in some of the more utopian accounts of participatory media, the dominant norms of the Reddit community extend a discourse of copyright and ownership. As well as providing a greater level of detail to contemporary debates around amateur media and its viral or spreadable nature (Burgess; Jenkins; Jenkins et al), this analysis offers some lessons for copyright law. The emergence of norms in particular Reddit subforums which govern the use of copyrighted content and the use of a mock court structure suggests that online communities have the capacity to engage in forms of redress for amateur creators. These organic forms of copyright management operate adjacent to formal legal structures of copyright law. However, they are more accessible and practical for amateur creators, who do not always have the money to hire lawyers, especially when the market value of their content might be negligible. The informal regulatory systems outlined above may not operate perfectly but they reveal communities who are willing to engage foundational conversations around the importance of attribution and ownership. Following the existing literature (Fauchart and Von Hippel; Raustiala and Sprigman; Schultz; Oliar and Sprigman), I suggest that these online social norms provide a useful form of alternative protection for amateur creators. Acknowledgements Thanks to Ramon Lobato and Emily van der Nagel for comments and productive discussions around these issues. I am also grateful to the two anonymous peer reviewers for their assistance in developing this argument. References “About Reddit.” Reddit, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/about/›. Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Burgess, Jean. “YouTube and the Formalisation of Amateur Media.” Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives. In Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson, and Julian Thomas, eds. Oxford: Routledge, 2012. Carr, Nicholas. “Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars.” The New York Times: Business, 2 Sep. 2012. “Comforting Her Sister during a Storm: aww.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 15 July 2013. “Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. Douglas, Nick. “Everything on the Internet Gets Stolen: Here’s How You Should Feel about That.” Slacktory, 8 Sep. 2009. Fauchart, Emmanual, and Eric von Hippel. “Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs.” Organization Science 19.2 (2008): 187 - 201 "Ferocious Cat Hunting Its Prey: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 4 April 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1bobcp/ferocious_cat_hunting_its_prey/›. Hepola, Sarah. “The Internet is Made of Kittens.” Salon.com, 11 Feb. 2009. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.salon.com/2009/02/10/cat_internet/›. Hunter, Dan, and Greg Lastowka. “Amateur-to-Amateur.” William & Mary Law Review 46 (2004): 951 - 1030. “I Am Bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to Trial on the Basis of Being One of the Biggest _______ I’ve Ever Seen, by Reposting Cute Animal Pictures to /R/Awww. Feels.Jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 21 March 2013. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Menning, Chris. "So I Got Banned from Reddit" Modern Primate, 23 Aug. 2012. Miller, Keery. “How Y Combinator Helped Shape Reddit.” Bloomberg Businessweek, 26 Sep. 2007. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-09-26/how-y-combinator-helped-shape-redditbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice›. “Ok, Look People. I Know You Heart Imgur, But Webcomics? Just Link to the Freaking Site.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 22 Aug. 2011. Oliar, Dotan, and Christopher Sprigman. “There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy.” Virginia Law Review 94.8 (2009): 1787 – 1867. “People of reddit vs. /U/Ninjacollin for Grandtheft.jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 Jan. 2013. Raustiala, Kal, and Christopher Sprigman. “The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design”. Virginia Law Review 92.8 (2006): 1687-1777. “Reddit v. U/FreshCorio. User Uploads Popular Repost Picture of R/AWW and Claims It Is His Sister’s Cat. Falsely Claims It Is His Cakeday for Good Measure.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 12 Apr. 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1c7vxz/reddit_vs_ufreshcorio_user_uploads_popular_repost/›. “Reddit Pics.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/›. Richterich, Annika. “’Karma, Precious Karma!’ Karmawhoring on Reddit and the Front Page’s Econometrisation.” Journal of Peer Production 4 (2014). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-4-value-and-currency/peer-reviewed-articles/karma-precious-karma/›. Schultz, Mark. “Fear and Norms and Rock & Roll: What Jambands Can Teach Us about Persuading People to Obey Copyright Law.” Berkley Technology Law Journal 21.2 (2006): 651 – 728. Sepponen, Bemmu. “Why Redditors Gave Imgur a Chance.” Social Media Today, 20 July 2011. Slater-Robins, Max. “From Rags to Riches: The Story of Imgur.” Neowin, 21 Apr. 2013. "The Cutest Things on the Internet!" reddit: the front page of the internet, n.d. “The Problem with reddit.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 23 Aug. 2012. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/technology/comments/ypbe2/the_problem_with_rreddit/›. Van der Nagel, Emily. “Faceless Bodies: Negotiating Technological and Cultural Codes on reddit gonewild.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture 10.2 (2013). "We Don’t Need to Ask for Directions, Helen: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 June 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1heut6/we_dont_need_to_ask_for_directions_helen/›.

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Abstract:

According to Oscar Wilde, the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Wilde’s aphorism alludes to a major issue that bedevils all attempts to influence the public sphere: the fact that public activities encroach unduly on citizens’ valuable time. In the 21st century, the dilemma of how to deal with “too many evenings” is one that many citizen journalists face as they give their own time to public pursuits. This paper will look at the development of the public citizen and what it means to be a citizen journalist with reference to some of the writer’s own experiences in the field. The paper will conclude with an examination of future possibilities. While large media companies change their change their focus from traditional news values, citizen journalism can play a stronger role in public life as long as it grasps some of the opportunities that are available. There are substantial compensations available to citizen journalists for the problems presented by Wilde’s evenings. The quote from Wilde is borrowed from Albert Hirschman’s Shifting Involvements, which among other things, is an examination of the disappointments of public action. Hirschman noted how it was a common experience for beginners who engage in public action to find that takes up more time than expected (96). As public activity encroaches not only on time devoted to private consumption but also on to the time devoted to the production of income, it can become a costly pursuit which may cause a sharp reaction against the “practice of citizenship” (Hirschman 97). Yet the more stimuli about politics people receive, the greater the likelihood is they will participate in politics and the greater the depth of their participation (Milbrath & Goel 35). People with a positive attraction to politics are more likely to receive stimuli about politics and participate more (Milbrath & Goel 36). Active citizenship, it seems, has its own feedback loops. An active citizenry is not a new idea. The concepts of citizen and citizenship emerged from the sophisticated polity established in the Greek city states about 2,500 years ago. The status of a citizen signified that the individual had the right to full membership of, and participation in, an independent political society (Batrouney & Goldlust 24). In later eras that society could be defined as a kingdom, an empire, or a nation state. The conditions for a bourgeois public sphere were created in the 13th century as capitalists in European city states created a traffic in commodities and news (Habermas 15). A true public sphere emerged in the 17th century with the rise of the English coffee houses and French salons where people had the freedom to express opinions regardless of their social status (Habermas 36). In 1848, France held the first election under universal direct suffrage (for males) and the contemporary slogan was that “universal suffrage closes the era of revolutions” (Hirschman 113). Out of this heady optimism, the late 19th century ushered in the era of the “informed citizen” as voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right – a civic obligation enforceable only by private conscience (Schudson). These concepts live on in the modern idea that the model voter is considered to be a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice (Menand 1). The internet is a new knowledge space which offers an alternative reading of the citizen. In Pierre Lévy’s vision of cyberculture, identity is no longer a function of belonging, it is “distributed and nomadic” (Ross & Nightingale 149). The Internet has diffused widely and is increasingly central to everyday life as a place where people go to get information (Dutton 10). Journalism initially prospered on an information scarcity factor however the technology of the Internet has created an information rich society (Tapsall & Varley 18). But research suggests that online discussions do not promote consensus, are short-lived with little impact and end up turning into “dialogues of the deaf” (Nguyen 148). The easy online publishing environment is a fertile ground for rumours, hoaxes and cheating games to circulate which risk turning the public sphere into a chaotic and anarchic space (Nguyen 148). The stereotypical blogger is pejoratively dismissed as “pajama-clad” (Papandrea 516) connoting a sense of disrespect for the proper transmission of ideas. Nevertheless the Internet offers powerful tools for collaboration that is opening up many everyday institutions to greater social accountability (Dutton 3). Recent research by the 2007 Digital Futures project shows 65 percent of respondents consider the Internet “to be a very important or extremely important source of information” (Cowden 76). By 2006, Roy Morgan was reporting that three million Australians were visiting online news site each month (Cowden.76). Crikey.com.au, Australia’s first online-only news outlet, has become a significant independent player in the Australia mediascape claiming over 5,000 subscribers by 2005 with three times as many non-paying “squatters” reading its daily email (Devine 50). Online Opinion has a similar number of subscribers and was receiving 750,000 page views a month by 2005 (National Forum). Both Crikey.com.au and Online Opinion have made moves towards public journalism in an attempt to provide ordinary people access to the public sphere. As professional journalists lose their connection with the public, bloggers are able to fill the public journalism niche (Simons, Content Makers 208). At their best, blogs can offer a “more broad-based, democratic involvement of citizens in the issues that matter to them” (Bruns 7). The research of University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer showed that cities and towns with public journalism-oriented newspapers led to a better educated local public (Simons, Content Makers 211). Meyer’s idea of good public journalism has six defining elements: a) the need to define a community’s sense of itself b) devotion of time to issues that demand community attention c) devotion of depth to the issues d) more attention to the middle ground e) a preference for substance over tactics and f) encouraging reciprocal understanding (Meyer 1). The objective of public journalism is to foster a greater sense of connection between the community and the media. It can mean journalists using ordinary people as sources and also ordinary people acting as journalists. Jay Rosen proposed a new model based on journalism as conversation (Simons, Content Makers 209). He believes the technology has now overtaken the public journalism movement (Simons, Content Makers 213). His own experiments at pro-am Internet open at assignment.net have had mixed results. His conclusion was that it wasn’t easy for people working voluntarily on the Internet to report on big stories together nor had they “unlocked” the secret of successful pro-am methods (Rosen). Nevertheless, the people formerly known as the audience, as Rosen called them, have seized the agenda. The barriers to entry into journalism have disappeared. Blogging has made Web publishing easy and the social networks are even more user friendly. The problem today is not getting published but finding an audience. And as the audience fragments, the issue will become finding a niche. One such niche is local political activism. The 2007 Australian federal election saw many online sites actively promoting citizen journalism. Most prominent was Youdecide2007 at Queensland University of Technology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in partnership with SBS, Online Opinion and the Brisbane Institute. Site co-editor Graham Young said the site’s aim was to use citizen journalists to report on their own electorates to fill the gap left by fewer journalists on the ground, especially in less populated areas (Young). While the site’s stated aim was to provide a forum for a seat-by-seat coverage and provide “a new perspective on national politics” (Youdecide2007), the end result was significantly skewed by the fact that the professional editorial team was based in Brisbane. Youdecide2007 published 96 articles in its news archive of which 59 could be identified as having a state-based focus. Figure 1 shows 62.7% of these state-based stories were about Queensland. Figure 1: Youdecide2007 news stories identifiable by state (note: national stories are omitted from this table): State Total no. of stories %age Qld 37 62.7 NSW 8 13.6 Vic 6 10.2 WA 3 5.1 Tas 2 3.4 ACT 2 3.4 SA 1 1.6 Modern election campaigns are characterised by a complex and increasingly fragmented news environment and the new media are rapidly adding another layer of complexity to the mix (Norris et al. 11-12). The slick management of national campaigns are is counter-productive to useful citizen journalism. According to Matthew Clayfield from the citizen journalism site electionTracker.net, “there are very few open events which ordinary people could cover in a way that could be described as citizen journalism” (qtd. in Hills 2007). Similar to other systems, the Australian campaign communication empowers the political leaders and media owners at the expense of ordinary party members and citizens (Warhurst 135). However the slick modern national “on message” campaign has not totally replaced old-style local activity. Although the national campaign has superimposed upon the local one and displaced it from the focus of attention, local candidates must still communicate their party policies in the electorate (Warhurst 113). Citizen journalists are ideally placed to harness this local communication. A grassroots approach is encapsulated in the words of Dan Gillmor who said “every reporter should realise that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about” (qtd. in Quinn & Quinn-Allan 66). With this in mind, I set out my own stall in citizen journalism for the 2007 Australian federal election with two personal goals: to interview all my local federal Lower House candidates and to attend as many public election meetings as possible. As a result, I wrote 19 election articles in the two months prior to the election. This consisted of 9 news items, 6 candidate interviews and 4 reports of public meetings. All the local candidates except one agreed to be interviewed. The local Liberal candidate refused to be interviewed despite repeated requests. There was no reason offered, just a continual ignoring of requests. Liberal candidates were also noticeably absent from most candidate forums I attended. This pattern of non-communicative behaviour was observed elsewhere (Bartlett, Wilson). I tried to turn this to my advantage by turning their refusal to talk into a story itself. For those that were prepared to talk, I set the expectation that the entire interview would be on the record and would be edited and published on my blog site. As a result, all candidates asked for a list of questions in advance which I supplied. Because politicians devote considerable energy and financial resources to ensure the information they impart to citizens has an appropriate ‘spin’ on it, (Negrine 10) I reserved the right to ask follow-up questions on any of their answers that required clarification. For the interviews themselves, I followed the advice of Spradley’s principle by starting with a conscious attitude of near-total ignorance, not writing the story in advance, and attempting to be descriptive, incisive, investigative and critical (Alia 100). After I posted the results of the interview, I sent a link to each of the respondents offering them a chance to clarify or correct any inaccuracies in the interview statements. Defamation skirts the boundary between free speech and reputation (Pearson 159) and a good working knowledge of the way defamation law affects journalists (citizen or otherwise) is crucial, particularly in dealing with public figures. This was an important consideration for some of the lesser known candidates as Google searches on their names brought my articles up within the top 20 results for each of the Democrat, Green and Liberal Democratic Party candidates I interviewed. None of the public meetings I attended were covered in the mainstream media. These meetings are the type of news Jan Schaffer of University of Maryland’s J-Lab saw as an ecological niche for citizen journalists to “create opportunities for citizens to get informed and inform others about micro-news that falls under the radar of news organisations who don’t have the resources” (Schaffer in Glaser). As Mark Bahnisch points out, Brisbane had three daily newspapers and a daily state based 7.30 Report twenty years ago which contrasts with the situation now where there’s no effective state parliamentary press gallery and little coverage of local politics at all (“State of Political Blogging”). Brisbane’s situation is not unique and the gaps are there to be exploited by new players. While the high cost of market entry renders the “central square” of the public sphere inaccessible to new players (Curran 128) the ease of Web access has given the citizen journalists the chance to roam its back alleys. However even if they fill the voids left by departing news organisations, there will still be a large hole in the mediascape. No one will be doing the hardhitting investigative journalism. This gritty work requires great resources and often years of time. The final product of investigative journalism is often complicated to read, unentertaining and inconclusive (Bower in Negrine 13). Margaret Simons says that journalism is a skill that involves the ability to find things out. She says the challenge of the future will be to marry the strengths of the newsroom and the dirty work of investigative journalism with the power of the conversation of blogs (“Politics and the Internet”). One possibility is raised by the Danish project Scoop. They offer financial support to individual journalists who have good ideas for investigative journalism. Founded by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism and funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, Scoop supports media projects across the world with the only proviso being that a journalist has to have an agreement with an editor to publish the resulting story (ABC Media Report). But even without financial support, citizens have the ability to perform rudimentary investigative journalism. The primary tool of investigative journalism is the interview (McIlwane & Bowman 260). While an interview can be arranged by anyone with access to a telephone or e-mail, it should not be underestimated how difficult a skill interviewing is. According to American journalist John Brady, the science of journalistic interviewing aims to gain two things, trust and information (Brady in White 75). In the interviews I did with politicians during the federal election, I found that getting past the “spin” of the party line to get genuine information was the toughest part of the task. There is also a considerable amount of information in the public domain which is rarely explored by reporters (Negrine 23). Knowing how to make use of this information will become a critical success factor for citizen journalists. Corporate journalists use databases such as Lexis/Nexis and Factiva to gain background information, a facility unavailable to most citizen journalists unless they are either have access through a learning institution or are prepared to pay a premium for the information. While large corporate vendors supply highly specialised information, amateurs can play a greater role in the creation and transmission of local news. According to G. Stuart Adam, journalism contains four basic elements: reporting, judging, a public voice and the here and now (13). Citizen journalism is capable of meeting all four criteria. The likelihood is that the future of communications will belong to the centralised corporations on one hand and the unsupervised amateur on the other (Bird 36). Whether the motive to continue is payment or empowerment, the challenge for citizen journalists is to advance beyond the initial success of tactical actions towards the establishment as a serious political and media alternative (Bruns 19). Nguyen et al.’s uses and gratification research project suggests there is a still a long way to go in Australia. While they found widespread diffusion of online news, the vast majority of users (78%) were still getting their news from newspaper Websites (Nguyen et al. 13). The research corroborates Mark Bahnisch’s view that “most Australians have not heard of blogs and only a tiny minority reads them (quoted in Simons, Content Makers 219). The Australian blogosphere still waits for its defining Swiftboat incident or Rathergate to announce its arrival. But Bahnisch doesn’t necessarily believe this is a good evolutionary strategy anyway. Here it is becoming more a conversation than a platform “with its own niche and its own value” (Bahnisch, “This Is Not America”). As far as my own experiments go, the citizen journalism reports I wrote gave me no financial reward but plenty of other compensations that made the experience richly rewarding. It was important to bring otherwise neglected ideas, stories and personalities into the public domain and the reports helped me make valuable connections with public-minded members of my local community. They were also useful practice to hone interview techniques and political writing skills. Finally the exercise raised my own public profile as several of my entries were picked up or hyperlinked by other citizen journalism sites and blogs. 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Hunter, C. “The Internet and the Public Sphere: Revitalization or Decay?” Virginia Journal of Communication 12 (2000): 93-127. Killenberg, G., and R. Dardenne. “Instruction in News Reporting as Community Focused Journalism.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 52.1 (Spring 1997). McIlwane, S., and L. Bowman. “Interviewing Techniques.” In S. Tanner (ed.), Journalism: Investigation and Research. Sydney: Longman, 2002. Menand, L. “The Unpolitical Animal: How Political Science Understands Voters.” The New Yorker 30 Aug. 2004. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830crat_atlarge>. Meyer, P. Public Journalism and the Problem of Objectivity. 1995. 16 Feb. 2008 http://www.unc.edu/%7Epmeyer/ire95pj.htm>. Milbrath, L., and M. Goel. Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? Chicago: Rand McNally M, 1975. National Forum. “Annual Report 2005.” 6 April 2008 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/documents/reports/ annual_report_to_agm_2005.pdf>. Negrine, R. The Communication of Politics. London: Sage, 1996. Nguyen, A. “Journalism in the Wake of Participatory Publishing.” Australian Journalism Review 28.1 (July 2006). Nguyen, A., E. Ferrier, M. Western, and S. McKay. “Online News in Australia: Patterns of Use and Gratification.” Australian Studies in Journalism 15 (2005). Norris, P., J. Curtice, D. Sanders, M. Scammell, and H. Setemko. On Message: Communicating the Campaign. London: Sage, 1999. Papandrea, M. “Citizen Journalism and the Reporter’s Privilege.” Minnesota Law Review 91 (2007). Pearson, M. The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law. 2nd ed. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2004. Quinn, S., and D. Quinn-Allan. “User-Generated Content and the Changing News Cycle.” Australian Journalism Review 28.1 (July 2006). Rosen, J. “Assignment Zero: Can Crowds Create Fiction, Architecture and Photography?” Wired 2007. 6 April 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_zero_all>. Ross, K., and V. Nightingale. Media Audiences: New Perspectives. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open UP, 2003. Schaffer, J. “Citizens Media: Has It Reached a Tipping Point.” Nieman Reports 59.4 (Winter 2005). Schudson, M. Good Citizens and Bad History: Today’s Political Ideals in Historical Perspective. 1999. 17 Feb. 2008 http://www.mtsu.edu/~seig/paper_m_schudson.html>. Simons, M. The Content Makers. Melbourne: Penguin, 2007. Simons, M. “Politics and the Internet.” Keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, 14 Sep. 2007. Tapsall, S., and C. Varley (eds.). Journalism: Theory in Practice. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2001. Warhurst, J. “Campaign Communications in Australia.” In F. Fletcher (ed.), Media, Elections and Democracy, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991. White, S. Reporting in Australia. 2nd ed. Melbourne: MacMillan, 2005. Wilson, J. “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Electorate.” Youdecide2007 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.youdecide2007.org/content/view/283/101/>. Young, G. “Citizen Journalism.” Presentation at the Australian Blogging Conference, 28 Sep. 2007. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Barry, Derek. "Wilde’s Evenings: The Rewards of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/09-barry.php>. APA Style Barry, D. (Apr. 2008) "Wilde’s Evenings: The Rewards of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/09-barry.php>.

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Abstract:

According to Oscar Wilde, the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Wilde’s aphorism alludes to a major issue that bedevils all attempts to influence the public sphere: the fact that public activities encroach unduly on citizens’ valuable time. In the 21st century, the dilemma of how to deal with “too many evenings” is one that many citizen journalists face as they give their own time to public pursuits. This paper will look at the development of the public citizen and what it means to be a citizen journalist with reference to some of the writer’s own experiences in the field. The paper will conclude with an examination of future possibilities. While large media companies change their change their focus from traditional news values, citizen journalism can play a stronger role in public life as long as it grasps some of the opportunities that are available. There are substantial compensations available to citizen journalists for the problems presented by Wilde’s evenings. The quote from Wilde is borrowed from Albert Hirschman’s Shifting Involvements, which among other things, is an examination of the disappointments of public action. Hirschman noted how it was a common experience for beginners who engage in public action to find that takes up more time than expected (96). As public activity encroaches not only on time devoted to private consumption but also on to the time devoted to the production of income, it can become a costly pursuit which may cause a sharp reaction against the “practice of citizenship” (Hirschman 97). Yet the more stimuli about politics people receive, the greater the likelihood is they will participate in politics and the greater the depth of their participation (Milbrath & Goel 35). People with a positive attraction to politics are more likely to receive stimuli about politics and participate more (Milbrath & Goel 36). Active citizenship, it seems, has its own feedback loops. An active citizenry is not a new idea. The concepts of citizen and citizenship emerged from the sophisticated polity established in the Greek city states about 2,500 years ago. The status of a citizen signified that the individual had the right to full membership of, and participation in, an independent political society (Batrouney & Goldlust 24). In later eras that society could be defined as a kingdom, an empire, or a nation state. The conditions for a bourgeois public sphere were created in the 13th century as capitalists in European city states created a traffic in commodities and news (Habermas 15). A true public sphere emerged in the 17th century with the rise of the English coffee houses and French salons where people had the freedom to express opinions regardless of their social status (Habermas 36). In 1848, France held the first election under universal direct suffrage (for males) and the contemporary slogan was that “universal suffrage closes the era of revolutions” (Hirschman 113). Out of this heady optimism, the late 19th century ushered in the era of the “informed citizen” as voting changed from a social and public duty to a private right – a civic obligation enforceable only by private conscience (Schudson). These concepts live on in the modern idea that the model voter is considered to be a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice (Menand 1). The internet is a new knowledge space which offers an alternative reading of the citizen. In Pierre Lévy’s vision of cyberculture, identity is no longer a function of belonging, it is “distributed and nomadic” (Ross & Nightingale 149). The Internet has diffused widely and is increasingly central to everyday life as a place where people go to get information (Dutton 10). Journalism initially prospered on an information scarcity factor however the technology of the Internet has created an information rich society (Tapsall & Varley 18). But research suggests that online discussions do not promote consensus, are short-lived with little impact and end up turning into “dialogues of the deaf” (Nguyen 148). The easy online publishing environment is a fertile ground for rumours, hoaxes and cheating games to circulate which risk turning the public sphere into a chaotic and anarchic space (Nguyen 148). The stereotypical blogger is pejoratively dismissed as “pajama-clad” (Papandrea 516) connoting a sense of disrespect for the proper transmission of ideas. Nevertheless the Internet offers powerful tools for collaboration that is opening up many everyday institutions to greater social accountability (Dutton 3). Recent research by the 2007 Digital Futures project shows 65 percent of respondents consider the Internet “to be a very important or extremely important source of information” (Cowden 76). By 2006, Roy Morgan was reporting that three million Australians were visiting online news site each month (Cowden.76). Crikey.com.au, Australia’s first online-only news outlet, has become a significant independent player in the Australia mediascape claiming over 5,000 subscribers by 2005 with three times as many non-paying “squatters” reading its daily email (Devine 50). Online Opinion has a similar number of subscribers and was receiving 750,000 page views a month by 2005 (National Forum). Both Crikey.com.au and Online Opinion have made moves towards public journalism in an attempt to provide ordinary people access to the public sphere. As professional journalists lose their connection with the public, bloggers are able to fill the public journalism niche (Simons, Content Makers 208). At their best, blogs can offer a “more broad-based, democratic involvement of citizens in the issues that matter to them” (Bruns 7). The research of University of North Carolina journalism professor Philip Meyer showed that cities and towns with public journalism-oriented newspapers led to a better educated local public (Simons, Content Makers 211). Meyer’s idea of good public journalism has six defining elements: a) the need to define a community’s sense of itself b) devotion of time to issues that demand community attention c) devotion of depth to the issues d) more attention to the middle ground e) a preference for substance over tactics and f) encouraging reciprocal understanding (Meyer 1). The objective of public journalism is to foster a greater sense of connection between the community and the media. It can mean journalists using ordinary people as sources and also ordinary people acting as journalists. Jay Rosen proposed a new model based on journalism as conversation (Simons, Content Makers 209). He believes the technology has now overtaken the public journalism movement (Simons, Content Makers 213). His own experiments at pro-am Internet open at assignment.net have had mixed results. His conclusion was that it wasn’t easy for people working voluntarily on the Internet to report on big stories together nor had they “unlocked” the secret of successful pro-am methods (Rosen). Nevertheless, the people formerly known as the audience, as Rosen called them, have seized the agenda. The barriers to entry into journalism have disappeared. Blogging has made Web publishing easy and the social networks are even more user friendly. The problem today is not getting published but finding an audience. And as the audience fragments, the issue will become finding a niche. One such niche is local political activism. The 2007 Australian federal election saw many online sites actively promoting citizen journalism. Most prominent was Youdecide2007 at Queensland University of Technology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in partnership with SBS, Online Opinion and the Brisbane Institute. Site co-editor Graham Young said the site’s aim was to use citizen journalists to report on their own electorates to fill the gap left by fewer journalists on the ground, especially in less populated areas (Young). While the site’s stated aim was to provide a forum for a seat-by-seat coverage and provide “a new perspective on national politics” (Youdecide2007), the end result was significantly skewed by the fact that the professional editorial team was based in Brisbane. Youdecide2007 published 96 articles in its news archive of which 59 could be identified as having a state-based focus. Figure 1 shows 62.7% of these state-based stories were about Queensland. Figure 1: Youdecide2007 news stories identifiable by state (note: national stories are omitted from this table): State Total no. of stories %age Qld 37 62.7 NSW 8 13.6 Vic 6 10.2 WA 3 5.1 Tas 2 3.4 ACT 2 3.4 SA 1 1.6 Modern election campaigns are characterised by a complex and increasingly fragmented news environment and the new media are rapidly adding another layer of complexity to the mix (Norris et al. 11-12). The slick management of national campaigns are is counter-productive to useful citizen journalism. According to Matthew Clayfield from the citizen journalism site electionTracker.net, “there are very few open events which ordinary people could cover in a way that could be described as citizen journalism” (qtd. in Hills 2007). Similar to other systems, the Australian campaign communication empowers the political leaders and media owners at the expense of ordinary party members and citizens (Warhurst 135). However the slick modern national “on message” campaign has not totally replaced old-style local activity. Although the national campaign has superimposed upon the local one and displaced it from the focus of attention, local candidates must still communicate their party policies in the electorate (Warhurst 113). Citizen journalists are ideally placed to harness this local communication. A grassroots approach is encapsulated in the words of Dan Gillmor who said “every reporter should realise that, collectively, the readers know more than they do about what they write about” (qtd. in Quinn & Quinn-Allan 66). With this in mind, I set out my own stall in citizen journalism for the 2007 Australian federal election with two personal goals: to interview all my local federal Lower House candidates and to attend as many public election meetings as possible. As a result, I wrote 19 election articles in the two months prior to the election. This consisted of 9 news items, 6 candidate interviews and 4 reports of public meetings. All the local candidates except one agreed to be interviewed. The local Liberal candidate refused to be interviewed despite repeated requests. There was no reason offered, just a continual ignoring of requests. Liberal candidates were also noticeably absent from most candidate forums I attended. This pattern of non-communicative behaviour was observed elsewhere (Bartlett, Wilson). I tried to turn this to my advantage by turning their refusal to talk into a story itself. For those that were prepared to talk, I set the expectation that the entire interview would be on the record and would be edited and published on my blog site. As a result, all candidates asked for a list of questions in advance which I supplied. Because politicians devote considerable energy and financial resources to ensure the information they impart to citizens has an appropriate ‘spin’ on it, (Negrine 10) I reserved the right to ask follow-up questions on any of their answers that required clarification. For the interviews themselves, I followed the advice of Spradley’s principle by starting with a conscious attitude of near-total ignorance, not writing the story in advance, and attempting to be descriptive, incisive, investigative and critical (Alia 100). After I posted the results of the interview, I sent a link to each of the respondents offering them a chance to clarify or correct any inaccuracies in the interview statements. Defamation skirts the boundary between free speech and reputation (Pearson 159) and a good working knowledge of the way defamation law affects journalists (citizen or otherwise) is crucial, particularly in dealing with public figures. This was an important consideration for some of the lesser known candidates as Google searches on their names brought my articles up within the top 20 results for each of the Democrat, Green and Liberal Democratic Party candidates I interviewed. None of the public meetings I attended were covered in the mainstream media. These meetings are the type of news Jan Schaffer of University of Maryland’s J-Lab saw as an ecological niche for citizen journalists to “create opportunities for citizens to get informed and inform others about micro-news that falls under the radar of news organisations who don’t have the resources” (Schaffer in Glaser). As Mark Bahnisch points out, Brisbane had three daily newspapers and a daily state based 7.30 Report twenty years ago which contrasts with the situation now where there’s no effective state parliamentary press gallery and little coverage of local politics at all (“State of Political Blogging”). Brisbane’s situation is not unique and the gaps are there to be exploited by new players. While the high cost of market entry renders the “central square” of the public sphere inaccessible to new players (Curran 128) the ease of Web access has given the citizen journalists the chance to roam its back alleys. However even if they fill the voids left by departing news organisations, there will still be a large hole in the mediascape. No one will be doing the hardhitting investigative journalism. This gritty work requires great resources and often years of time. The final product of investigative journalism is often complicated to read, unentertaining and inconclusive (Bower in Negrine 13). Margaret Simons says that journalism is a skill that involves the ability to find things out. She says the challenge of the future will be to marry the strengths of the newsroom and the dirty work of investigative journalism with the power of the conversation of blogs (“Politics and the Internet”). One possibility is raised by the Danish project Scoop. They offer financial support to individual journalists who have good ideas for investigative journalism. Founded by the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism and funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, Scoop supports media projects across the world with the only proviso being that a journalist has to have an agreement with an editor to publish the resulting story (ABC Media Report). But even without financial support, citizens have the ability to perform rudimentary investigative journalism. The primary tool of investigative journalism is the interview (McIlwane & Bowman 260). While an interview can be arranged by anyone with access to a telephone or e-mail, it should not be underestimated how difficult a skill interviewing is. According to American journalist John Brady, the science of journalistic interviewing aims to gain two things, trust and information (Brady in White 75). In the interviews I did with politicians during the federal election, I found that getting past the “spin” of the party line to get genuine information was the toughest part of the task. There is also a considerable amount of information in the public domain which is rarely explored by reporters (Negrine 23). Knowing how to make use of this information will become a critical success factor for citizen journalists. Corporate journalists use databases such as Lexis/Nexis and Factiva to gain background information, a facility unavailable to most citizen journalists unless they are either have access through a learning institution or are prepared to pay a premium for the information. While large corporate vendors supply highly specialised information, amateurs can play a greater role in the creation and transmission of local news. According to G. Stuart Adam, journalism contains four basic elements: reporting, judging, a public voice and the here and now (13). Citizen journalism is capable of meeting all four criteria. The likelihood is that the future of communications will belong to the centralised corporations on one hand and the unsupervised amateur on the other (Bird 36). Whether the motive to continue is payment or empowerment, the challenge for citizen journalists is to advance beyond the initial success of tactical actions towards the establishment as a serious political and media alternative (Bruns 19). Nguyen et al.’s uses and gratification research project suggests there is a still a long way to go in Australia. While they found widespread diffusion of online news, the vast majority of users (78%) were still getting their news from newspaper Websites (Nguyen et al. 13). The research corroborates Mark Bahnisch’s view that “most Australians have not heard of blogs and only a tiny minority reads them (quoted in Simons, Content Makers 219). The Australian blogosphere still waits for its defining Swiftboat incident or Rathergate to announce its arrival. But Bahnisch doesn’t necessarily believe this is a good evolutionary strategy anyway. Here it is becoming more a conversation than a platform “with its own niche and its own value” (Bahnisch, “This Is Not America”). As far as my own experiments go, the citizen journalism reports I wrote gave me no financial reward but plenty of other compensations that made the experience richly rewarding. It was important to bring otherwise neglected ideas, stories and personalities into the public domain and the reports helped me make valuable connections with public-minded members of my local community. They were also useful practice to hone interview techniques and political writing skills. Finally the exercise raised my own public profile as several of my entries were picked up or hyperlinked by other citizen journalism sites and blogs. Some day, and probably soon, a model will be worked out which will make citizen journalism a worthwhile economic endeavour. In the meantime, we rely on active citizens of the blogosphere to give their evenings freely for the betterment of the public sphere. References ABC Media Report. “Scoop.” 2008. 17 Feb. 2008 < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2151204.htm#transcript >. Adam, G. Notes towards a Definition of Journalism: Understanding an Old Craft as an Art Form. St Petersburg, Fl.: Poynter Institute, 1993. Alia, V. “The Rashom*on Principle: The Journalist as Ethnographer.” In V. Alia, B. Brennan, and B. Hoffmaster (eds.), Deadlines and Diversity: Journalism Ethics in a Changing World. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996. Bahnisch, M. “This Is Not America.” newmatilda.com 2007. 17 Feb. 2008 < http://www.newmatilda.com/2007/10/04/not-america >. 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Rosen, J. “Assignment Zero: Can Crowds Create Fiction, Architecture and Photography?” Wired 2007. 6 April 2008 < http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_zero_all >. Ross, K., and V. Nightingale. Media Audiences: New Perspectives. Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open UP, 2003. Schaffer, J. “Citizens Media: Has It Reached a Tipping Point.” Nieman Reports 59.4 (Winter 2005). Schudson, M. Good Citizens and Bad History: Today’s Political Ideals in Historical Perspective. 1999. 17 Feb. 2008 < http://www.mtsu.edu/~seig/paper_m_schudson.html >. Simons, M. The Content Makers. Melbourne: Penguin, 2007. Simons, M. “Politics and the Internet.” Keynote speech at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, 14 Sep. 2007. Tapsall, S., and C. Varley (eds.). Journalism: Theory in Practice. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2001. Warhurst, J. “Campaign Communications in Australia.” In F. Fletcher (ed.), Media, Elections and Democracy, Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1991. White, S. Reporting in Australia. 2nd ed. Melbourne: MacMillan, 2005. Wilson, J. “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Electorate.” Youdecide2007 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.youdecide2007.org/content/view/283/101/ >. Young, G. “Citizen Journalism.” Presentation at the Australian Blogging Conference, 28 Sep. 2007.