Larissa Behrendt

will deliver the conference's opening keynote address.

Australian Values; Australian Fair - The Rhetoric of Inclusion and Exclusion in Australian Identity

abstract

The talk of a set of ‘Australian values’ has highlighted the tension in the visions of what it means to be Australian. Indigenous people have always played a particular role in the nation’s consciousness and it is one that has challenged the dominant stories of nationhood rather than complimented or been included in them. Debates around Aboriginal history and issues tend to be “about” Aboriginal people rather than “with” us. This paper will explore the implications of the ‘Australian values’ debate on the experience of Indigenous Australians. In particular, it will explore comparisons between the roles that farmers play in the national psyche with the role that Aboriginal people have played. It will argue that the importance of the debate is not just ideological and the psychological but rather that it has enormous implications for legal frameworks, policy making and resource allocation. Finally, it will further imagine alternative possibilities and pathways for the relationship between Indigenous people and the dominant Australian culture.

bio

Larissa Behrendt is a Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman. She was born in Cooma in April, 1969. She is the Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Jurisprudence from the University of New South Wales and a Master of Laws and a Senior Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Harvard Law School. Larissa is a Judicial Member of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, Equal Opportunity Division and the Alternate Chair of the Serious Offenders Review Board. Larissa's book, Achieving Social Justice: Indigenous Rights and Australia's Future was published by The Federation Press in 2003. She won the 2002 David Uniapon Award and a 2005 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for her novel Home. Larissa is a Board Member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, a Director of the Sydney Writer's Festival and a Director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre.

10.30, Wednesday December 6, Boiler House Lecture Theatre, Building 14, University of Canberra.

 

Klaus Neumann

will deliver the Thursday morning 'public' lecture:

Unaustralia: What and where is it? Who lives there?

Klaus Neumann writes histories. They feature a variety of characters, including, among others, West Papuan refugees, German Nazis, Maori timber workers, Tolai villagers, Mauritian immigrants and Australian diplomats. Klaus uses a variety of formats ranging from scholarly journal articles to radio plays to communicate the results of his research. His most recent book is the award-winning Refuge Australia: Australia's Humanitarian Record. Currently he is working mainly on two projects: a history of Australian and New Zealand responses to refugees, and a study of public memory in 'perpetrator societies'. Klaus is employed by the History Department at the University of Melbourne.

9.00, Thursday December 7, in public, at the intersection of Garema Place and City Walk, Civic.

For getting there details, please press here. For a map, please press here.

 

Jacques Rancière

will deliver the international keynote address. The title of Professor Rancière's presentation is:

What Does it Mean to be 'Un'? The Thinking of Dissensus Today

Jacques Rancière, born in Algiers in 1940, lives and works in Paris. He is Emeritus Professor of Aesthetics and Politics at the University of Paris VIII where he taught from 1969 to 2000. He also taught, as a visiting professor, in various American universities (Rutgers, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley). He has written many books on politics, aesthetics and their interconnections and contributed to many collections of essays and several catalogues of art exhibitions. He will publish at the beginning of 2007 a book on the politics of literature. He also writes extensively on cinema, notably in Les Cahiers du Cinéma and Trafic . His last books in English include: Disagreement, Politics and Philosophy (1998), Short Voyages to the Land of the People (2003), The Philosopher and his Poor (2004), The Flesh of Words (2004), The Politics of Aesthetics (2005), Film Fables (2006) and The Hatred of Democracy (forthcoming).

18.00, Thursday December 7, Great Hall, New Parliament House.

 

Catharine Lumby

will deliver the Friday morning keynote address:

Unrepresentable Democracy

abstract

The term ‘un-Australian’ is now routinely used by politicians and public commentators of all political persuasions to denounce a panopoly of ideas, attitudes and behaviours. At the heart of this zeal to define Australians in terms of what we are not is a deep anxiety about the status of the ability of traditional public sphere institutions to represent citizens and provide a forum for them to debate and define their values and interests. This paper will argue that the concept of representative democracy and its traditional institutions is under challenge in a broad range of counter public spheres. The paper will develop these themes through an close analysis of talkback radio discussion in the week leading up to the Cronulla riots, using materials gathered for the author’s report on media commentary prior to Cronulla, which was tabled in the New South Wales Parliament (‘Strike Force Neil’).

bio

Associate Professor Catharine Lumby was the foundation Chair of the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney and is currently Director of Degrees. A widely published opinion writer and author, her research focuses on gender, sexuality and popular culture. She has also worked as a consultant to the National Rugby League (NRL) and Channel Ten's Big Brother program on gender, sex and ethics. She sits on the Advertising Standards Board, the Education and Welfare Committee of the NRL and the management committee of Rape Crisis NSW. Her most recent publication is Why TV Is Good For Kids.

9.00, Friday December 8, Boiler House Lecture Theatre, Building 14, University of Canberra.

 

John Frow

will close the conference by delivering the University of Canberra's 2006 Don Aitkin Lecture. The Aitkin lecture is being co-programmed with the UNAUSTRALIA conference. The title of Professor Frow's presentation is:

Unaustralia: Strangeness and Value

abstract

UnAustralia is the negative image of its positive counterpart, brought into being by means of a magical exclusion of whatever does not fit, the stranger within, those whose 'values' are unfitting.

The logic of reversal expressed in the notion of UnAustralia is most evident in:

• the redefinition of borders so that the territory you arrive at (if you're unwanted) turns out not to be the territory at all;
• assent to the lodgement of Australians in the extra-judicial space of Guantanamo Bay;
• the abolition of rights of legal appeal for refugees processed offshore in that other negative mise-en-abyme of Australia, Nauru;
• the ability of the country's chief law officer, on issuing a conclusive certificate, to deny a person accused of terrorism the right to hear the evidence used against them.

This logic is accompanied by a set of redescriptions in which:

• sleep deprivation and other acts of physical harm are defined as not constituting torture;
• the use of degrading measures against unwelcome strangers is performed within a proclaimed ethos of compassion;
• the imprisonment of child refugees is thought to be compatible with family values;
• the consistent practice of politically-motivated lying is undertaken within the rubric of moral clarity;
• those who criticise torture, the imprisonment of refugees accused of no crime, and politically-motivated lying are accused of failing to share mainstream Australian values.

Yet the political logic of negative performativity, precisely because it works through a magical description of the real, is largely impervious to criticism; there is something at once smug and naïve in thinking that critique of an entrenched evil will remove it. Is there any alternative to the feelings of powerlessness that this induces?

bio

Educated at Wagga High School and the ANU, John Frow lived and worked in South America in 1970 and 1971 and then did graduate studies from 1971 to 1975 in the Comparative Literature Program at Cornell University, including a year at the University of Heidelberg. He worked at Murdoch University in Western Australia from 1975 to 1989, and was then appointed to a Chair at the University of Queensland, where he worked from 1990 to 1999. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, before returning to take up the Chair of English Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne. John Frow is the author of Marxism and Literary History (1986), Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (1995), Time and Commodity Culture (1997), Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (with Tony Bennett and Michael Emmison, 1999), and Genre (2006).

17.30, Friday December 8, Boiler House Lecture Theatre, Building 14, University of Canberra.

 

Roger Dean

who will introduce Professor Frow's Don Aitken Lecture with a live sound art performance, entitled:

Sonic Intermedia Event: anAustralia.

programme

Roger Dean will perform a short program of his recent sonic intermedia works: Ligating the Rhizome (2006), an algorithmic sonic web, generated in real-time. Slow Commotion (2006), real-time sound and image manipulation. anAustralia (first performance), improvised digital sound

bio

Roger Dean is a composer-improviser and humanities researcher. He has performed in 30 countries, and his works include computer and chamber music. His music is available on >30 international recordings and in many publications. His most recent CD is Sonic Stones (Tall Poppies, 2006). He focuses on computer-interactive sound and intermedia.  He has published five books and many articles on music and improvisation, and now researches music cognition and computation. He founded austraLYSIS, an international ensemble creating sound and intermedia, and co-leads the Sonic Communications Research Group at the University of Canberra. Unusually, Roger is a subject in both the new Grove Dictionaries of Music and Jazz. Until 2002 he was foundation director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, and has more than 300 substantive scientific publications. He is the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra.

17.30, Friday December 8, Boiler House Lecture Theatre, Building 14, University of Canberra.

 

 

 

The UNAUSTRALIA conference committee gratefully acknowledges the support of: