This is essentially a plug for something I just read which sounds really, really cool. There's a panel taking place at a conference I'm speaking at (and am trying to convince people to come along to, despite the distance) which seems very relevant to this course of ours. The details are below, and it's taking place at www.csaa2008.curtin.edu.au which, as Bruce suggested last Friday (or was it Jenn?), will be very Mad Max.
Academia: Beyond Thunderdome.A question which comes to mind and which I don't think we canvas on the course is this: what about Australia utopianism? What utopian social dreams and or nightmares bear the little kangaroo in a triangle?
Looking at the city of Sydney from a distance -- I'm thinking from my home, far north -- and at night makes it look like an un/hyper-real non-place, floating on the horizon. For me this is social dreaming at its best: if, as Jameson claims, utopian visions include those of the past, and modify and correct them, should the same apply to our geography? Does this mean that, due to uneven development, Australia has what we might call temporal geography or, rather, geographical temporality? What are the utopian times and spaces in Australia, our island about a non-existent sea?
Woop Woop! The Black Stump (and its beyond)! The Gold Coast!
These vague questions brought to you by the letter A, Steve Muecke's
No Road (Bitumen All the Way), my being sick of thesis, and the concept of teleology (a favorite, I hear).
Peace out, cool cats.
Imagining the Great Southern Land: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction
Convenor: Professor Andrew Milner
The three panel members are co-investigators in a Discovery Project, Imagining the Great Southern Land: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction, which has been funded by the ARC with $A 185,711 in 2007, $A 196,065 in 2008 and $A 178,317 in 2009. Their project is a critical-historical appraisal of utopianism in Australian literature, architecture and popular culture (especially science fiction). It examines the ways Australia has been used as the setting, and sometimes as the inspiration, for imaginings of a significantly better or worse society than that in which the authors lived. Its special academic significance is in its use of a wide range of disciplinary approaches to analyse the specificity of Australian utopian traditions. This kind of interdisciplinarity was precisely what was intended by the early founders of Cultural Studies (Hoggart, Thompson, Williams). The panel will address the findings of the research project, especially what they show about how Australian utopian traditions were shaped by, and in turn helped to shape, real political and social developments.
Contributors
Professor Ian Buchanan
Ian Buchanan is Professor of Critical Theory at Cardiff University. He is a former President of the CSAA and Partner Investigator for the Imagining the Great Southern Land project. His recent publications include Fredric Jameson: Live Theory (2006) and Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (2007).
Professor Verity Burgmann
Verity Burgmann is Professor of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. She is Chief Investigator for the Imagining the Great Southern Land project. Her recent publications include Unions and the Environment (2002) and Power, Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation (2003).
Professor Andrew Milner
Andrew Milner is Professor of Cultural Studies at Monash University. He is principal Chief Investigator for the Imagining the Great Southern Land project. His recent publications include Literature, Culture and Society (2005) and Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia (2007).