The critical commentary presents and contextualizes a film and video making practice spanning three decades. It locates a contemporary visual music practice within current and emerging critical and theoretical contexts and tracks back the history of this practice to the artist’s initial screenings of work as part of the 1980’s British Scratch video art movement. At the heart of the body of work presented here is an exploration and examination of methods and working practices in the encounter of music, sound and moving image. Central to this is an examination of the affective levels that sound and image can operate on, in a transsensorial fusion, and political and cultural applications of such encounters, whilst examining the epistemological regimes such work operates in. A combination of factors has meant that work such as this, arising in the UK provinces, can fall below the historicizing and critical radar – these include the ephemeral and transitory nature of live performance work; the difficulties of documenting such work; the fragility and degeneration of emerging and quickly obsolescent formats; and a predominance of a London–centric focus on curating, screening and historicizing of experimental film and video art practices. My film and video practice has been screened nationally and internationally over three decades, and has been recognized as exemplary practice both in the early 1980s at the inception of the Scratch movement and in more recent retrospectives. The critical commentary argues that this work contributes new knowledge of the history, contexts and practices of film and video art and audiovisual and visual music practices.

Authenticity is a notion which carries considerable sociological weight in that it is used to determine cultural boundaries on one hand, and behavioural conduct in the individual on the other. Its idealization influences the formation of music cultures such as indie and punk, identifiable in the discourse of performers, cultural gatekeepers and music fans. This thesis follows the ways in which these actors pursue notions of authenticity by noting discursive constructions of culturally specific values, and the effects that this pursuit has upon music culture. Using social constructionist theory, I engage in discourse analysis of referents produced by three sets of actors: 1) musicians; 2) those who idealize notions of authenticity in various media, or gatekeepers; and 3) music fans. Arguably, through processes of claims-making, these actors discursively challenge or establish values relative to specific cultures and music, effectively defining social and aesthetic boundaries.

The point of departure for “Affecting change? Cultural politics of sexuality and ‘race’ in Norwegian education” is the reconfiguration of sexual and racial politics in the Norwegian public sphere over the past decade. Both gender equality and homotolerance was transformed from contested political issues to common values that were seen to positively distinguish Norwegian culture in this process. Furthermore, these issues were increasingly taken up to describe both cultural differences and “cultural conflicts” internationally and in Norway. This development can be traced in curriculum and textbooks from 2006-2010, especially in the discussions of cultural differences in Social Science. Through interrogations of both the discursive interconnections between gender, sexuality, and “race,” and how the issues of sexuality and “race” are tackled in education separately, the dissertation highlights that both education about sexuality and “race” in contemporary Norway can be informed by a postcolonial critique that reveals the persistence of racializing discursive strategies in Norwegian education. “Affecting Change? Cultural Politics of Sexuality and ‘Race’ in Norwegian education” is an article based dissertation that investigates the cultural configurations of sexuality and “race” in Norwegian education as they appear in textbooks and in classroom interaction. It consists of four articles and an introduction that discusses contextual, methodological, and theoretical issues that were important for the research that the articles present. The articles focus on a) the cultural politics of Norwegian sex education, b) the interplay between sexuality and questions of cultural differences in Social Science textbooks, c) conceptual and affective problems in education about “race” and racism, and d) the impact of affective educational spaces on teaching and learning questions of “difference” in the classroom. The first two articles primarily consist of discussions of existing research and textbook analyses. The latter two are based on classroom observation. The analysis highlights the persistence of heteronormalizing and racializing conceptual frameworks in education that aims to combat discrimination. Specifically, it argues that the denial of “race” as a relevant concept in Norwegian public discourse and education currently hinders educational efforts to prevent racism among young people. Furthermore, it sheds light on how affective aspects of classroom interaction can strengthen or work against education that reproduces oppressive social norms. These considerations of the cultural politics of sexuality and “race” in Norwegian education are informed by a theoretical and methodological discussion about affect and cultural analysis. Drawing on both psychosocial perspectives and Deleuzo-Guatarian affect theory, the dissertation explores the persistence of oppressive social structures through a focus on psychosocial aspects of racist interaction, and the potential for social change that can be traced through affect on the level of the situation. In the articles, affective inquiry on both these levels helps highlight both how racism is enacted and thwarted in educational encounters.

Authenticity is a notion which carries considerable sociological weight in that it is used to determine cultural boundaries on one hand, and behavioural conduct in the individual on the other. Its idealization influences the formation of music cultures such as indie and punk, identifiable in the discourse of performers, cultural gatekeepers and music fans. This thesis follows the ways in which these actors pursue notions of authenticity by noting discursive constructions of culturally specific values, and the effects that this pursuit has upon music culture. Using social constructionist theory, I engage in discourse analysis of referents produced by three sets of actors: 1) musicians; 2) those who idealize notions of authenticity in various media, or gatekeepers; and 3) music fans. Arguably, through processes of claims-making, these actors discursively challenge or establish values relative to specific cultures and music, effectively defining social and aesthetic boundaries.

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Previous analyses of the history of the innovation and commodification of menstrual hygiene products largely subscribe to the misconception that the establishment of the industry was begun in the early years of the 20th century. This research firmly relocates the decisive development of this industry to the inception of Southall's Antiseptic and Absorbant Pad in Britain in 1880. Following analysis of the imperatives of menstrual management in the mid-19th century, consideration is given to the origins of the commodification of menstruation, its vital early promotional culture and the rapid development of an established competitive commercial context within an effective industrial infrastructure. Product development and diversification are considered through to the maturation of the industry prior to the First World War. These events are considered within a historically based interdisciplinary approach employing a historical and cultural analysis to develop a fuller understanding of the issues that are explored. The industrial and cultural encoding of menstrual objects within promotional discourse is seen to reconstruct Victorian menstrual etiquette; positioning objects of menstrual management in the establishment of new hygienic protocols and brand loyalty through an emphasis on issues of social transformation, technical innovation, medical certification and discretion. The presentation and interpretation of contemporary source material facilitate a reconstruction of accepted histories and contribute to a new understanding of early menstrual communication strategies.

This research outlines the theoretical positions of Pierre Bourdieu's structuralist constructivism and Fredrik Barth's generative transactional ethnic process in relation to social practices, identity constructions and community formations of first generation migrant Muslims and Latina/Hispanic groups. It is proposed that although each theory appears to oppose the other, they can be synthesised to form a reflexive, mutually supportive and flexible discursive theoretical framework that can be effectively applied to the process of migration and its resultant social formations. The research theoretically considers the social delineation of such groups, the internal processes of group formation, and the significance of wider points of identity and belonging within group construction. It is found that the experiential process of migration is only made meaningful in relation to the current social world that both groups exist within and the subjective meanings of individuals collected within each group. Such subjective elements of knowledge often focus upon points of origin and current manifestations of identity. The research is based upon 12 months of residential fieldwork using methods of participant observation and various forms of interviewing.

This thesis constructs an analysis of the representation of blood in a selection of American films. This analysis does not aim to construct a representative theory of blood, rather, it examines discrete instances and certain relationships between a mainstream discourse of blood and various resistances presented by women film directors. In particular these films present critical approaches to blood at the level of mise-en-scene. The specific presentation of blood works in ways that resist a realist and masculinist tradition that codes blood as a marker of the feminine. An analysis of blood in mise-en-scene is used to reflect upon wider questions of narrative. I use this methodology in the absence of film criticism identifying blood as a specific object of extended analysis. Three theoretical essays form a general backdrop to the project: Barbara Creed's influential study of horror, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, where blood indicates abjection, castration and the femme castratrice; Steve Neale's essay 'Masculinity as Spectacle' that reads blood as indicating disavowed homoeroticism and doomed narcissism in the Western; and Teresa de Lauretis's essay 'Desire in Narrative' where blood is a marker of the story of the mythological male subject. I isolate two films; Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver'(1976) as inaugurating certain mainstream aesthetics of libidinal violence. Blood here is the paint of penetration and distorted pleasure, however blood also serves to erase a female narrative. In the three films that form the focus of the project, blood is frequently an intertextual key that undoes the overdetermined patterns it speaks to. Bette Gordon's Variety (1983) and Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel (1990) evoke scenes from Taxi Driver and Psycho. In Variety sex and blood are the red herrings to an open ended investigation into the scene of pornography. Blue Steel explores the allure of the gun for a female protagonist while detaching the gun from blood as libidinal. While both Variety and Blue Steel intervene into existing structures and genres, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is an experimental film and defines itself in opposition to Hollywood cinema. However, this film serves as a postscript to the project in its poetic displacement of mise-en-scene and a female subject position. This film speaks to de Lauretis's concerns in 'Desire in Narrative' in its evocation of the myth of Perseus from the Medusa's point of view. Blood functions as a literal condensation of dreamed and lived events: it is ambivalent realisation of woman's figuration within cinematic myth.

My thesis examines the discourse which has encoded the dingo since it arrived in Australia nearly five thousand years ago. While post-colonial theory has exposed the ideological structures and material practices which position indigenous peoples as "other" to the colonisers, most scholars have remained curiously silent when it comes to nonhumans. Animals now stand as the ultimate "other", denied a subjective life of their own, for their behaviour is usually read, as Helen Tiffin argues, "as having primary (and exclusive) significance for humans." The project of this thesis is to examine the narratives within which Australians have "trapped" their dingoes. My methodology takes as its starting point Foucault's theories which connect discourse and power. The thesis is divided into three sections; Colonial Discourses, Aboriginal Dreaming and Contemporary Configurations. The colonial section asks how discourse forces the dingo to represent human fears and failings. I argue that a denigrating discourse is used to justify the ill treatment of the dingo, that discourse reveals little about the "real" dingo, and that there are similarities in the discursive treatment of dingoes and Aborigines. The thesis also acknowledges the dingo's attempts to slip through the gaps in the discourse "fence". The second section researches traditional Aboriginal myths of the Dreaming Dingo. By encouraging the dingo to trot back to happier times, I allow the reader to step back also and assess Aboriginal representations of the dingo, arguing that these are based on an empirical knowledge of its habits and nature. I contend that in contrast to a colonial discourse based on difference, the Aboriginal narratives assume similarities to animals and the potential for crossovers. This section argues that a pragmatic Dreaming Dingo teaches humans to live harmoniously and cautiously in an environment which is both nurturing and dangerous. Finally the dingo returns to the trail and trots into a place where practical knowledge of wilderness is negligible. The contemporary section of this thesis argues that in their longing to claim the dingo and its wildness for their emotional and spiritual needs, urban Australians generate a confused, incompatible and ignorant mix of colonial and Dreaming Discourse. The dingo in the National Park is required to carry an impossible discourse and it fails - biting the hands which feed it. "Bringing the Dingo Home" reflects an exciting time as one more "other' breaks "the deafening silence" described by Wolch and Emel, and demands a position in post-colonial discourse. At last the discourse of the dingo can be foregrounded and its misrepresentations can be redressed.