At the heart of this exegesis is the city-bush gap and the rivalry and stereotypes that gap has generated. I acknowledge how and why our national identity evolved from the writing of the 1890s but I argue that most current artists, particularly novelists, have failed to incorporate the ongoing cultural, societal and industrial changes that have occurred since, particularly in the last thirty years. I assert that the majority of artists still refer to and draw inspiration from established, inaccurate myths and stereotypes rather than the bush and Australian characters of today. Through examining three texts, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection (Picador, Sydney, 1999), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (Random House, Sydney, 1995) and Silences Long Gone (Picador, Sydney, 1998) by Anson Cameron, I also point out how most artists in general have failed to keep pace with changes in the bush city cross-culture. My exegesis attempts to give an account of some deficiencies in contemporary Australian literature. In the creative component of this project, Summer at Mount Hope (Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 2005), I write, as did Anson Cameron in his book, Silences Long Gone, (Pan Macmillan, 1998) of a bush (in 1894) where city and bush rely on each other and technology pushes into the bush uniting city and bush, thus enhancing the economy, the cross cultural interdependence and advancing the commonality between the two. I replace stereotypical characters with less predictable characters whose traits sit easily in either bush or city culture and skew the Traditionalist role of bush and city.

This thesis maps Takashi Murakami's Theory of Superflat Art and his associated artistic practices and works. The study situates Murakami and Superflat within the context of globalising culture. The thesis interrogates Murakami's art and the theory of superflat within the historical, social, and cultural contexts of their production-consumption in Japan, the United States, and Europe. The thesis identifies Superflat art and Murakami's work as actively participating in, and expressing, the cultural conditions associated with the 'global postmodern' and globalisation processes. The thesis employs a Cultural Studies theoretical and heuristic framework, utilising a range of contemporary critical theorisations on postmodern art, Japanese cultural identity and globalisation. This framework and approach are adopted in order to draw attention to ways in which Murakami and Superflat articulate and represent the fundamental contentions and dialogues that characterise contem porary globalisation processes. The tensions that are articulated in relation to the discursive construction of the concepts of art/commodity, modern/postmodern and global/local cultural identities. Importantly, this research demonstrates the ways in which Murakami both participates in, and challenges, the conceptual distinctions indexed within the concepts of 'art' as an aesthetic expression and 'commodity' as an object of symbolic exchange in the global marketplace. It interprets Superflat as an 'expressivity' that challenges binary demarcations being constructed between art and commercial culture, and between the aesthetic-cultural identities of Japan and the West. This thesis problematises the meaning of Murakami's concept and aesthetic of Superflat art by drawing attention to these contestations within Murakami's works and Superflat which are generated as they circulate globally. The thesis argues that Murakami strategically presents his work and Superflat art as an expression of Japanese identity which paradoxically also expresses the fluid imaginings of cultural identity available through contemporary global exchanges. This deliberate territorialising and deterritorialising impulse does not resolve the contentions emerging in globalisation, but rather amplifies them, exposing the key debates on the formation of cultural identity as an oppositional expression and as a commodity in global markets. The concept of 'strategic essentialism' is used as a theoretical lens in order to understand Murakami and Superflat's activation of these global processes. This research contributes a valuable case study to the understanding of cultural production as a strategic negotiation and expression of the flows of capital and culture in globalisation.

This thesis explores the rich and provocative fields of interaction between Australian artists and museums from 1975 to 2002. Artists have investigated and engaged with museums of art, social history and natural science during this period. Despite the museum being a major source of exploration for artists, the subject has rarely been examined in the literature. This thesis redresses this gap. It identifies and examines four prevailing approaches of Australian contemporary art to museums in this period: oppositional critique, figurative representation, intervention and collaboration. / The study asserts that a general progression from oppositional critique in the seventies through to collaboration in the late nineties can be charted. It explores the work of three artists who have epitomised these approaches to the museum. Peter Cripps developed an oppositional critique of the museum and was intimately involved with the art museum politics in Melbourne during the mid-seventies. Fiona Hall figuratively represented the museum. Her approach documented and catalogued museum tropes of a bygone era. Narelle Jubelin’s work intervened with Australian museums. Her work has curatorial capacities and has had real effect within Australian museums. These differing artistic approaches to the museum have the effect of contesting history and expanding narrative within museums. / Curators collaborated with artists and used artistic methods to create exhibits in Australian museums during the 1990s. Artistic approaches are a major methodology of museums seeking to contest traditional modes of history and expand narrative in their exhibits. Contemporary art has played a vital, curatorial, role in the Hyde Park Barracks, Museum of Sydney, Melbourne Museum and Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, amongst other museums. While in earlier years artists were well known for their resistive approach to the art museum, this thesis shows that artists have increasingly participated in new forms of representation within art, social history, and natural history museums. I argue that the role of contemporary art within “new” museums is emblematic of new approaches to history, space, narrative and design within the museum. (For complete abstract open document)

Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

Masculinity is an increasingly prominent and important issue in debates within feminism, literary studies and visual theory. This study intervenes in and contributes to such debates by analysing an emerging group of Australian women’s fictions (published between 1998 and 2002) which focus on male characters and, in particular, on the description and narrative potential of their bodies. The majority of these texts, and the ones that are explored in this thesis – namely, Jillian Watkinson’s The Architect, Georgia Blain’s The Blind Eye, Mireille Juchau’s Machines for Feeling, Fiona Capp’s Last of the Sane Days, Sarah Myles’s Transplanted and Wendy Scarfe’s Miranda – share two preoccupations. Firstly, male characters bodies’ are almost always damaged or suffering in some way; secondly, the ability (or inability) of female characters to look at these bodies is repeatedly foregrounded. I argue that the interactions between male characters’ bodies and female characters’ gazes function in complex ways both to confirm and to challenge patriarchal constructions of masculinity and male corporeality. Specifically, this occurs in relation to the engagement of each text with popular discourses of feminism and masculinity crisis, discourses that emerge and interact in complex and often contradictory ways in depictions of male visibility and exposure. While my approach is generally feminist, it is also fiction-centred. Thus, I draw on a variety of theoretical perspectives, including literary theory, masculinity studies, visual theory, history, sociology and philosophy, in order to unpack and engage with these contemporary Australian women’s fictions. Paradoxically, one of the main consequences of this fiction-centred approach is a reengagement with and a rethinking of theoretical concepts emerging from psychoanalytic feminist film theory. In a remarkably consistent and explicitly pedagogical way, these fictions explore notions of objectification and dichotomisation, especially as they are elucidated in Laura Mulvey’s analysis of Hollywood narrative cinema. Objectification is overwhelmingly aligned with oppressive power structures and identified as problematic, and the first half of this thesis explores the novels’ critiques of this mode of visual interaction. The second half investigates the alternatives to objectification imagined in these fictions. While, upon closer consideration, some of these alternatives recapture male and female characters within traditional patriarchal power relations, others enable a rethinking of both women’s vision and desire, and men’s subjectivity, visibility and desirability.

<p>Ireland has long been famous for its rich traditional music. Yet the recent global success of Irish pop, rock and traditional music has transformed the Irish music scene into a world centre attracting musicians, tourists, fans and the music industry from both Ireland and abroad. This ethnographic study of young musicians in Dublin and Galway in the late 1990s analyses the Irish music scene in terms of identity, authenticity and transnationality contextualised in contemporary Ireland.</p><p>The study explores the making of Dublin and Galway into central places in the Irish music scene. It identifies musical links between the cities, and how for the young musicians, Dublin has become a 'springboard' and Galway a 'playground'. These cities provide the local arenas where young folk and popular musicians negotiate individual and collective lifestyles, identities and musical genres. By developing the concept of 'musical pathways', the study shows how these mobile musicians constantly interact with different musical sounds and scenes.</p><p>The idea that Irishness has to emanate from traditional music is challenged by a diversity of musical genres and pathways of the musicians. Some musicians embrace a certain construction of Irishness while others reject it, but they are all involved in this process in one way or another. Contrary to older generations of traditional musicians, a global awareness is more important among the young musicians than a 'restricted' view of Irishness. As the young musicians are interested in multiple musical ideas and influences, they are often reluctant about a 'narrow nationalism'. They make use of the fact that the musics of the contemporary world are very much interconnected.</p><p>This study discusses transnational processes of the Irish music scene in the late 1990s primarily on local and national levels in Ireland. This reveals how globalisation has contributed to the popularity of Irish music, yet without controlling its pathways completely. In Ireland the past is still in the present.</p>

<p>This phenomenological study of John Banville’s fiction exhibits the way in which <i>Doctor Copernicus</i>, <i>Kepler, The Newton Letter</i>, and <i>Mefisto</i> persistently present air as a constituting factor. Air occurs as a phenomenological oasis permitting constitution to effectuate disclosure <i>ex nihilo</i>. As a self-constituting field of forms rather than as a system or arrangement of signs, <i>Doctor Copernicus</i> promotes a vision of reality that bypasses a world of scientific or aesthetic representation where objective or subjective deciphering has precedence over immediate revelation as immanent showing. In <i>Kepler</i>, air’s <i>aseity </i>marks a process of constitution intense enough to erase any sense of separation between the flight-paths of discovery and the thing discovered—thus producing the impression of an intriguing parity between the constituting and the constituted. Phenomena of aviation outline the experience of air’s constituting capacity as a prehuman directedness with no source outside itself. The scientist is drawn into an airborn or airborne allure recasting his life in more profound ways than those made available in cosmological inquiry. By means of the slightness of its constituting touch, air is shown as giving birth to apparently insignificant phenomena highlighting an explorability that cannot be defined in terms of mathematical models or logical postulations. In <i>The Newton Letter</i> penurious phenomena gain ascendancy over the scientist through a process defined as <i>autochthonous substantiation</i>. As in <i>Mefisto</i>, the destructive power of accidental fire reduces material and immaterial worlds to an empirical nothing where air, almost indistinguishable from that emptiness, becomes a form of saying facilitating recovery, or the semblance thereof. Finally the study elucidates the phenomenon of <i>monozygotic gemination</i> in <i>Mefisto,</i> a constituting force that allows a phantom brother or phantom limb to function as a regenerating resource rather than as a missing entity.</p>

<p>This study critically reviews four works of the artist Joanna Rytel with the intention to find out if and how she is provocative. In order to do that I have studied the reactions on these works, mainly through press material, which differs from letters to the editors and comments posted on discussion forums that's also been used. My conclusion is that Rytel provokes not just because of her choice of subject, but because of her concept of 'art' doesn't agree with the general public's, i.e. 'art' is supposed to be something merely beautiful. The journalists sometimes seems provoked by Rytel's ability to draw attention and have claimed that to be her main aim.</p>

Belly Laughs: Body Humor in Contemporary American Literature and Film Scholars are more than happy to laugh at but seem somewhat reluctant to discuss body humor, which is perhaps the most neglected form of comedy in recent criticism. In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which contemporary American writers and filmmakers use body humor in their works, not only in moments of so-called "comic relief" but also as a valid way of exploring many of the same issues that postmodern artists typically interrogate in their more somber moments. The writers discussed in this project-Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Charles Johnson, and Woody Allen-were chosen for the divergent ways in which they present the body's comic predicament in psychological, metaphysical, and historical situations. The introduction explains the diverse traditions that these artists draw upon and considers how various theoretical approaches can affect our understanding of body humor. The first chapter examines Jewish-American novelist Philip Roth's use of absurd and grotesque body imagery as manifestations of his characters' moral dilemmas. The second chapter looks at how slapstick comedy informs a worldview dominated by paranioa and chaos in Thomas Pynchon's novels. Chapter Three looks at Woody Allen's early films, in which he parodies and revises the slapstick cinematic tradition of artists like Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers. Chapter Four considers African-American writer and cartoonist Charles Johnson's depiction of the ways in which the body's desires and pitfalls complicate the quest for spiritual enlightenment.