Vicki Crowley | Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (original) (raw)
Papers by Vicki Crowley
Ngoonjook, Dec 1, 1998
In this paper we aim to critically evaluate what, over the last ten to fifteen years, has become ... more In this paper we aim to critically evaluate what, over the last ten to fifteen years, has become the hegemonic discourse about Aboriginal education in Australia. Every teacher with a serious Professional interest in Aboriginal education in this country has heard of and has at some level been influenced by the notion of 'Aboriginal learning styles'. According to the theory of Aboriginal learning styles there are significant differences in the ways in which Aborigines' and 'Whites' learn. These differences mean that teachers involved in the teaching of Aboriginal students, whether children or adults, must alter or modify their classroom teaching approaches and practices in order to be successful.
Sexualities, Apr 19, 2017
There is an ongoing missing discourse of pleasure in studies of sexuality and disability, and con... more There is an ongoing missing discourse of pleasure in studies of sexuality and disability, and considerations of sexual pleasures and sexual desire in the lives of people with disabilities play very little part in public discourse. This opening article analyzes some of the major theoretical influences and debates informing prevailing assumptions about disability and sexuality. An exposition of the theoretical and conceptual terrains that underpin and shape this special issue works to canvas a series of often disparate sites of contestation, and suggests that disabled and sexual embodied subjectivities are much more than 'asexual' or 'hypersexual' pathological constructions. The articles explore the ways in which the intersection of disability and sexuality involves an understanding of the interlocking discourses of normality, sexuality, able-bodiedness, heteronormativity and desire, which can shape possibilities for sex, sexuality, pleasure and intimacy for people with a disability. What will become evident is that a greater attention to the phenomenology of sexual embodiment, pleasure, desire, and the diverse meanings of intimacy and the erotic, can make significant contributions to social and scholarly analyses of disability and sexuality. The utilization of different methodological approaches that can attend to complexity and diversity in the experience of sex and sexuality further constitutes part of the critique of ableist narratives of the 'normal' desiring and desirable subject that cannot account for the intersubjective conditions in which embodied subjectivity is constructed and pleasure experienced.
Popular Music, Oct 1, 2009
Musical performances on the bass guitar, able to be felt bodily beyond the ear, connect into the ... more Musical performances on the bass guitar, able to be felt bodily beyond the ear, connect into the many layers of affect that music excites; but they are particularly potent as a means of communicating embodied masculinity for one young man with a hearing disability. Masculinity as a social code enacted within practices of the everyday involves both the affect and the effect of difference. The bass guitar, the instrument which drives a band's sound and rhythm, is part of the performativity of masculinity within popular music-visually, and at the level of sound, as auricular materiality-an embodied sensation where the 'feel' of sound through the body constitutes a language in which 'desirable' and 'undesirable' modes of masculinity become appropriated and defined. Displays of musical prowess on the bass guitar open a space for becoming 'unfixed' from the identity and abject status of the hearing-disabled Other. This 'Othering' occurs primarily in everyday spoken encounters where difficulties with hearing and speech limit opportunities for occupying a viable masculine positioning. By contrast, the capacity to 'fit' the sensory and sensual prompts that trigger recognition of masculinity within popular music enables the reassembling of an embodied masculine identity for a hearing-disabled young man. Masculinity and disability are rendered reversible and exchangeable-performative productions that are excessive and transgressive, contingent on the sensory perceptions of self and others. This emphasis on embodied communicative practice through the play of bass guitar provides an important counterweight to representational forms of embodied gendered subjectivity that continue to predominate in some modes of disability and gender theorising. It constitutes a forceful assertion of how everyday embodied interactions are irrevocably coupled with mobile and transient masculine and disabled aesthetic identifications.
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, Aug 1, 2004
Publisher information: Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia by Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and... more Publisher information: Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia by Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and Yue, Audrey, Duke University Press, Durliam and London, 2003, ISBN 0 8228 3087 3, 312 pp., A$21.95. Distributor: Duke University Press.
Discourse, Dec 1, 1998
... might on the surface appear. Indeed they might become questions of what Vron Ware (1992) has ... more ... might on the surface appear. Indeed they might become questions of what Vron Ware (1992) has termed 'relational connectedness', questions that demand a new reciprocity of engage-ment about identity. In the past, much ...
Artlink, Sep 1, 2013
Attending mega drag at Feast, Adelaide's QLGBT Festival in 2011, I saw a young man stop in fr... more Attending mega drag at Feast, Adelaide's QLGBT Festival in 2011, I saw a young man stop in front of Rouge, the Queen of Adelaide. She has earned this title due to her age and longevity. She has strong dancer's legs and still performs. Bowing low he kissed her on the hand. This action of acknowledgment struck me as both personal and private, yet highly public in the message it sent out. This routinely established relation of respect and mode of being demonstrated the codes and meanings that operate within this community, and the relationships within it. My interest in drag as performance began at a much earlier date, from attending late night shows with Vicki Crowley and seeing most of my friends performing as drag kings.
Routledge eBooks, May 19, 2021
Discourse, Dec 1, 2004
This edition of Discourse presents queer theory and a queer theory in education that assumes that... more This edition of Discourse presents queer theory and a queer theory in education that assumes that students and educators are intelligible, sexual beings and that pleasure and embodied pleasure ought not to be beyond the curriculum. Further, the edition is premised within the understanding that lesbian, gay, queer, intersex and transgender subjectivities, identities and identi®cations must no longer be designated as abject and always at risk, or as William Haver (1997) so powerfully named it, as `̀ wounded''. Queer Theory is a well-established ®eld of academic, cultural and community activism and endeavor. It is a ®eld deeply indebted to the work of Michel Foucault, to the traditions of gay liberation, to lesbian and gay studies and to emergent debate and contributions from the transgender movement. It is much more than this. It is shaped by poststructuralism and postmodernism's rejection of certainty. Disciplinary ®elds such as philosophy, history, literature, ®lm, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and sociology also shape it. The `̀ enticing and infuriating'' (McCrossin, 2001, p. vii) complexities of queer politics mean that it is, perhaps, better described as queer theories. Despite its vibrancy, the presence of queer theory in education and schooling is, arguably, miniscule. As editors and contributors to this edition we seek to contribute to a shift into queer theory, and illuminate what queer theory is in issues of genders and sexualities in education. Along with a number of scholars in education (Britzman, 1995; Tierney, 1997; Pinar, 1998; Talburt & Steinberg, 2000), we argue that the limited appearance of queer theory in schooling and education is due at least in part to the traditions of equity and social justice that have shaped social justice policy since the 1970sÐa tradition of tolerance and liberalism that has, in all spheres of its reach, continued to work on behalf of the Othered. Schooling and education are much more able to raise issues of homophobia and in some instances issues of heteronormativity, than they are to actively embrace a world in which heterosex is only part of the social and cultural mix. What are signi®cantly absent in schooling and education are
Discourse, Dec 1, 1998
... Postcolonial theory could perhaps be described as being located both 'within... more ... Postcolonial theory could perhaps be described as being located both 'within and against', inPatti Lather's (1991a) terms, the dominant ideologies ... Julie Mariko Matthew's paper enters her world, and that of her brother to engage with the destabilising effects of postcolonialism. ...
Discourse, Dec 1, 2004
In April 2002 Judith Halberstam, academic, cultural critic and author of Female Masculinity, tour... more In April 2002 Judith Halberstam, academic, cultural critic and author of Female Masculinity, toured Australia giving public and academic lectures about her recent work on sub-cultures, the Brandon Teena archive, representations of the transgender body and her notion of female masculinity. The interview is introduced through a brief sketch of her argument for female masculinity. The interview pursues three elements of her work. First, Halberstam's reflections on the implications that female masculinity and transgender have for teaching and pedagogy; second, the issue of humanism and post humanism as a site of concerted challenge and intervention; and finally, the interview turns to Halberstam's thoughts on an often overlooked area of sexualities--the relationship between queer theory and postcoloniality. Halberstam's responses are located amid what she sees as an era of new experimentalism. This era of experimentalism is perhaps an era where transgenderism acts as some kind of reorganizing of gender norms in which gender differences instantiate themselves as the baseline from which gender-sex-sexualities are understood and experienced. It is an argument positioned beyond binaries where multiple bodily aesthetics and practices collude and collide in the practice of displacing of singularity and authenticity.
The Aboriginal child at school, Mar 1, 1993
Aboriginal Studies has now been a part of the South Australian curriculum for many years and most... more Aboriginal Studies has now been a part of the South Australian curriculum for many years and most of the writing about teaching Aboriginal Studies has focused on appropriate content and pedagogues with little critical appraisal of the actual implementation of Aboriginal Studies curricula. A research project carried out in an inner city Adelaide secondary school suggests that it is crucial for those of us engaged in the teaching of Aboriginal Studies and Aboriginal students, to turn attention to the taken-for-granted presuppositions and ideologies that inform teacher understandings and practices in Aboriginal Studies.
Journal of Homosexuality, Apr 1, 2003
The mid 1990s saw an explosion of Drag Kings in many major and smaller cities throughout the worl... more The mid 1990s saw an explosion of Drag Kings in many major and smaller cities throughout the world. While documentation of this has largely occurred through publications in the USA and UK, the Internet and smaller publications have demonstrated a phenomenon that has arguably re-ignited feminist debate. In Adelaide, Australia, Ben Dover and His Beautiful Boys set the annual lesbian and gay festival alight. This chapter describes this performance to set the stage for exploration of some of the workings of 'race' and ethnicity in the creation of persona, choice of name and naming that is brought to Drag King performance. Drawing on interview material the chapter suggests that just as Drag Kings and kinging has been a useful and provocative site for closer and deeper understandings of genders, bodies and sexualities, Drag Kings and Kinging may also provide a useful site for unraveling some of the minefield that is race and racism.
Social alternatives, Apr 1, 2015
Australian Universities face a 'tough' Federal government of sector deregulation and incr... more Australian Universities face a 'tough' Federal government of sector deregulation and increased student fees following the Universities Australia policy, A Smarter Australia: An Agenda for Australian Higher Education 2013-2016. New technology, globalisation, productivity driven innovation and scientific method are the contexts through which research outcomes, on tighter budgets, will be made. In this paper, we redraw attention to the complexity of research contexts, including media sites, industry and digital worlds. In particular, we foreground the 'turn to affect'. Recent years have witnessed a complex revision of understandings about lived worlds by considering intangibles: affect, emotion and the senses. Universities have also included the performing arts and the digital arts and sciences. The turn to affect is, then, significant beyond discourse, and universities would be wise to encourage less tangible research strategies that impact and respond to the market and, indeed, allow the market responses to affect.
Cultural Studies Review, Feb 18, 2013
From the residue of meaning, an ensemble of shadows. From the glint of souvenir, pliable impressi... more From the residue of meaning, an ensemble of shadows. From the glint of souvenir, pliable impressions. With these words we work a poetics of encounter, of being, keeping, homage, of paying homage to fragility, to object and to interspecies-ways are found to engage motion from within and around co-extensive bodies. With the consolation of images, we follow the terse rhythms of routine and street where dwelling is a case of affective dissent. Zones of departure appear through testimony as well as chance, taking their own form. A footfall brings us as observers into quiet spaces which refuse self-estrangement as we travel by way of an unquiet ground. Breath, respiration, aspiration. Precipitation. Sculptures of mist are also the language of lives, of kinship between object, footfall and air. A language of brackets, Lisa McDonald and Vicki Crowley-To Love, To Live 291 questions, ellipses, of two voices and more. There may be a man, a dog, a barrow. There may be a woman, a trolley, a cart. Wheel barrow. Shopping cart. Air. How shall this image be made? VOLUME19 NUMBER2 SEP2013 292-WHAT IS WRITTEN Apace, you and I moving in same and other directions. You with weight, and I… '… summoned by the void … sustained by the indiscernible truth, we who are finite fragments … so here and now, already and forever'. 1 But oh so not written, a passing by, asymmetrical. Three hearts, beating. Four hearts, five. And still more.-WHAT IS SPOKEN This is, perhaps, a poetics in the arts of affect and image, place, trace, memory, interspecies. To live as academic, among … Tentative beginnings; looking for home. We could be asking 'What place poetics as cultural theory?' 'What place the ephemera of the kind that doesn't become the work of the academic but drifts … yet has its own palpable presence, albeit fleetingly so?' The piece works in conjunction with Carole Maso's novel Ava, published in 1993 (Maso is also the author of the novels Ghost Dance and The Art Lover and the collected essays, Break Every Rule). 2 Ava is a novel of traces: 'Ava Klein, 39, lover of life, world traveller, professor of comparative literature, is dying. From her hospital bed on this, her last day on earth, she makes one final ecstatic voyage … People, places, offhand memories, and imaginary things drift in and out of … consciousness and weave their way …'. 3 Hers is a writing of people, places, chance and caught memories. Things that drift. Things that stay.
This edition of Discourse comes into being after two decades of engagement with the cultural poli... more This edition of Discourse comes into being after two decades of engagement with the cultural politics of the body – through the arts, teaching, research and varied encounters with ‘disability’ ranging from the very personal to the professional. From the critique of ‘the medical model’ of disability undertaken during the early and mid-1990s, a ‘social model’ emerged, particularly in the caring professions and those trying to shape policy and practice for people with disability. In education and schooling, it was a period of cementing inclusive practices and the ‘integration’ and inclusion of disability into ‘mainstream’ (Northway, 2002; Vincent, Evans, Lunt, & Young, 1996; Vislie, 2003). What was lacking in the debates around the social model, however, were the challenges to abledness that were being grappled with in the routine and pragmatics of self-care by people with disabilities, their families, carers and caseworkers. Outside the academy, new forms of activity and new questions were circulating. Challenges to abledness flourished in the arts and constituted the lived experience of many disability activists. In the early 1990s, for instance, performing arts companies such as the London-based CanDoCo and Restless Dance Theatre in Adelaide, Australia, were making dance and redefining its boundaries as physically based performance sourced in bodily capacity (in preference to disciplining the body into extant genres of ‘the dancing body’).
Ngoonjook, Dec 1, 1998
In this paper we aim to critically evaluate what, over the last ten to fifteen years, has become ... more In this paper we aim to critically evaluate what, over the last ten to fifteen years, has become the hegemonic discourse about Aboriginal education in Australia. Every teacher with a serious Professional interest in Aboriginal education in this country has heard of and has at some level been influenced by the notion of 'Aboriginal learning styles'. According to the theory of Aboriginal learning styles there are significant differences in the ways in which Aborigines' and 'Whites' learn. These differences mean that teachers involved in the teaching of Aboriginal students, whether children or adults, must alter or modify their classroom teaching approaches and practices in order to be successful.
Sexualities, Apr 19, 2017
There is an ongoing missing discourse of pleasure in studies of sexuality and disability, and con... more There is an ongoing missing discourse of pleasure in studies of sexuality and disability, and considerations of sexual pleasures and sexual desire in the lives of people with disabilities play very little part in public discourse. This opening article analyzes some of the major theoretical influences and debates informing prevailing assumptions about disability and sexuality. An exposition of the theoretical and conceptual terrains that underpin and shape this special issue works to canvas a series of often disparate sites of contestation, and suggests that disabled and sexual embodied subjectivities are much more than 'asexual' or 'hypersexual' pathological constructions. The articles explore the ways in which the intersection of disability and sexuality involves an understanding of the interlocking discourses of normality, sexuality, able-bodiedness, heteronormativity and desire, which can shape possibilities for sex, sexuality, pleasure and intimacy for people with a disability. What will become evident is that a greater attention to the phenomenology of sexual embodiment, pleasure, desire, and the diverse meanings of intimacy and the erotic, can make significant contributions to social and scholarly analyses of disability and sexuality. The utilization of different methodological approaches that can attend to complexity and diversity in the experience of sex and sexuality further constitutes part of the critique of ableist narratives of the 'normal' desiring and desirable subject that cannot account for the intersubjective conditions in which embodied subjectivity is constructed and pleasure experienced.
Popular Music, Oct 1, 2009
Musical performances on the bass guitar, able to be felt bodily beyond the ear, connect into the ... more Musical performances on the bass guitar, able to be felt bodily beyond the ear, connect into the many layers of affect that music excites; but they are particularly potent as a means of communicating embodied masculinity for one young man with a hearing disability. Masculinity as a social code enacted within practices of the everyday involves both the affect and the effect of difference. The bass guitar, the instrument which drives a band's sound and rhythm, is part of the performativity of masculinity within popular music-visually, and at the level of sound, as auricular materiality-an embodied sensation where the 'feel' of sound through the body constitutes a language in which 'desirable' and 'undesirable' modes of masculinity become appropriated and defined. Displays of musical prowess on the bass guitar open a space for becoming 'unfixed' from the identity and abject status of the hearing-disabled Other. This 'Othering' occurs primarily in everyday spoken encounters where difficulties with hearing and speech limit opportunities for occupying a viable masculine positioning. By contrast, the capacity to 'fit' the sensory and sensual prompts that trigger recognition of masculinity within popular music enables the reassembling of an embodied masculine identity for a hearing-disabled young man. Masculinity and disability are rendered reversible and exchangeable-performative productions that are excessive and transgressive, contingent on the sensory perceptions of self and others. This emphasis on embodied communicative practice through the play of bass guitar provides an important counterweight to representational forms of embodied gendered subjectivity that continue to predominate in some modes of disability and gender theorising. It constitutes a forceful assertion of how everyday embodied interactions are irrevocably coupled with mobile and transient masculine and disabled aesthetic identifications.
Media international Australia, incorporating culture and policy, Aug 1, 2004
Publisher information: Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia by Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and... more Publisher information: Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia by Berry, Chris, Martin, Fran and Yue, Audrey, Duke University Press, Durliam and London, 2003, ISBN 0 8228 3087 3, 312 pp., A$21.95. Distributor: Duke University Press.
Discourse, Dec 1, 1998
... might on the surface appear. Indeed they might become questions of what Vron Ware (1992) has ... more ... might on the surface appear. Indeed they might become questions of what Vron Ware (1992) has termed 'relational connectedness', questions that demand a new reciprocity of engage-ment about identity. In the past, much ...
Artlink, Sep 1, 2013
Attending mega drag at Feast, Adelaide's QLGBT Festival in 2011, I saw a young man stop in fr... more Attending mega drag at Feast, Adelaide's QLGBT Festival in 2011, I saw a young man stop in front of Rouge, the Queen of Adelaide. She has earned this title due to her age and longevity. She has strong dancer's legs and still performs. Bowing low he kissed her on the hand. This action of acknowledgment struck me as both personal and private, yet highly public in the message it sent out. This routinely established relation of respect and mode of being demonstrated the codes and meanings that operate within this community, and the relationships within it. My interest in drag as performance began at a much earlier date, from attending late night shows with Vicki Crowley and seeing most of my friends performing as drag kings.
Routledge eBooks, May 19, 2021
Discourse, Dec 1, 2004
This edition of Discourse presents queer theory and a queer theory in education that assumes that... more This edition of Discourse presents queer theory and a queer theory in education that assumes that students and educators are intelligible, sexual beings and that pleasure and embodied pleasure ought not to be beyond the curriculum. Further, the edition is premised within the understanding that lesbian, gay, queer, intersex and transgender subjectivities, identities and identi®cations must no longer be designated as abject and always at risk, or as William Haver (1997) so powerfully named it, as `̀ wounded''. Queer Theory is a well-established ®eld of academic, cultural and community activism and endeavor. It is a ®eld deeply indebted to the work of Michel Foucault, to the traditions of gay liberation, to lesbian and gay studies and to emergent debate and contributions from the transgender movement. It is much more than this. It is shaped by poststructuralism and postmodernism's rejection of certainty. Disciplinary ®elds such as philosophy, history, literature, ®lm, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and sociology also shape it. The `̀ enticing and infuriating'' (McCrossin, 2001, p. vii) complexities of queer politics mean that it is, perhaps, better described as queer theories. Despite its vibrancy, the presence of queer theory in education and schooling is, arguably, miniscule. As editors and contributors to this edition we seek to contribute to a shift into queer theory, and illuminate what queer theory is in issues of genders and sexualities in education. Along with a number of scholars in education (Britzman, 1995; Tierney, 1997; Pinar, 1998; Talburt & Steinberg, 2000), we argue that the limited appearance of queer theory in schooling and education is due at least in part to the traditions of equity and social justice that have shaped social justice policy since the 1970sÐa tradition of tolerance and liberalism that has, in all spheres of its reach, continued to work on behalf of the Othered. Schooling and education are much more able to raise issues of homophobia and in some instances issues of heteronormativity, than they are to actively embrace a world in which heterosex is only part of the social and cultural mix. What are signi®cantly absent in schooling and education are
Discourse, Dec 1, 1998
... Postcolonial theory could perhaps be described as being located both 'within... more ... Postcolonial theory could perhaps be described as being located both 'within and against', inPatti Lather's (1991a) terms, the dominant ideologies ... Julie Mariko Matthew's paper enters her world, and that of her brother to engage with the destabilising effects of postcolonialism. ...
Discourse, Dec 1, 2004
In April 2002 Judith Halberstam, academic, cultural critic and author of Female Masculinity, tour... more In April 2002 Judith Halberstam, academic, cultural critic and author of Female Masculinity, toured Australia giving public and academic lectures about her recent work on sub-cultures, the Brandon Teena archive, representations of the transgender body and her notion of female masculinity. The interview is introduced through a brief sketch of her argument for female masculinity. The interview pursues three elements of her work. First, Halberstam's reflections on the implications that female masculinity and transgender have for teaching and pedagogy; second, the issue of humanism and post humanism as a site of concerted challenge and intervention; and finally, the interview turns to Halberstam's thoughts on an often overlooked area of sexualities--the relationship between queer theory and postcoloniality. Halberstam's responses are located amid what she sees as an era of new experimentalism. This era of experimentalism is perhaps an era where transgenderism acts as some kind of reorganizing of gender norms in which gender differences instantiate themselves as the baseline from which gender-sex-sexualities are understood and experienced. It is an argument positioned beyond binaries where multiple bodily aesthetics and practices collude and collide in the practice of displacing of singularity and authenticity.
The Aboriginal child at school, Mar 1, 1993
Aboriginal Studies has now been a part of the South Australian curriculum for many years and most... more Aboriginal Studies has now been a part of the South Australian curriculum for many years and most of the writing about teaching Aboriginal Studies has focused on appropriate content and pedagogues with little critical appraisal of the actual implementation of Aboriginal Studies curricula. A research project carried out in an inner city Adelaide secondary school suggests that it is crucial for those of us engaged in the teaching of Aboriginal Studies and Aboriginal students, to turn attention to the taken-for-granted presuppositions and ideologies that inform teacher understandings and practices in Aboriginal Studies.
Journal of Homosexuality, Apr 1, 2003
The mid 1990s saw an explosion of Drag Kings in many major and smaller cities throughout the worl... more The mid 1990s saw an explosion of Drag Kings in many major and smaller cities throughout the world. While documentation of this has largely occurred through publications in the USA and UK, the Internet and smaller publications have demonstrated a phenomenon that has arguably re-ignited feminist debate. In Adelaide, Australia, Ben Dover and His Beautiful Boys set the annual lesbian and gay festival alight. This chapter describes this performance to set the stage for exploration of some of the workings of 'race' and ethnicity in the creation of persona, choice of name and naming that is brought to Drag King performance. Drawing on interview material the chapter suggests that just as Drag Kings and kinging has been a useful and provocative site for closer and deeper understandings of genders, bodies and sexualities, Drag Kings and Kinging may also provide a useful site for unraveling some of the minefield that is race and racism.
Social alternatives, Apr 1, 2015
Australian Universities face a 'tough' Federal government of sector deregulation and incr... more Australian Universities face a 'tough' Federal government of sector deregulation and increased student fees following the Universities Australia policy, A Smarter Australia: An Agenda for Australian Higher Education 2013-2016. New technology, globalisation, productivity driven innovation and scientific method are the contexts through which research outcomes, on tighter budgets, will be made. In this paper, we redraw attention to the complexity of research contexts, including media sites, industry and digital worlds. In particular, we foreground the 'turn to affect'. Recent years have witnessed a complex revision of understandings about lived worlds by considering intangibles: affect, emotion and the senses. Universities have also included the performing arts and the digital arts and sciences. The turn to affect is, then, significant beyond discourse, and universities would be wise to encourage less tangible research strategies that impact and respond to the market and, indeed, allow the market responses to affect.
Cultural Studies Review, Feb 18, 2013
From the residue of meaning, an ensemble of shadows. From the glint of souvenir, pliable impressi... more From the residue of meaning, an ensemble of shadows. From the glint of souvenir, pliable impressions. With these words we work a poetics of encounter, of being, keeping, homage, of paying homage to fragility, to object and to interspecies-ways are found to engage motion from within and around co-extensive bodies. With the consolation of images, we follow the terse rhythms of routine and street where dwelling is a case of affective dissent. Zones of departure appear through testimony as well as chance, taking their own form. A footfall brings us as observers into quiet spaces which refuse self-estrangement as we travel by way of an unquiet ground. Breath, respiration, aspiration. Precipitation. Sculptures of mist are also the language of lives, of kinship between object, footfall and air. A language of brackets, Lisa McDonald and Vicki Crowley-To Love, To Live 291 questions, ellipses, of two voices and more. There may be a man, a dog, a barrow. There may be a woman, a trolley, a cart. Wheel barrow. Shopping cart. Air. How shall this image be made? VOLUME19 NUMBER2 SEP2013 292-WHAT IS WRITTEN Apace, you and I moving in same and other directions. You with weight, and I… '… summoned by the void … sustained by the indiscernible truth, we who are finite fragments … so here and now, already and forever'. 1 But oh so not written, a passing by, asymmetrical. Three hearts, beating. Four hearts, five. And still more.-WHAT IS SPOKEN This is, perhaps, a poetics in the arts of affect and image, place, trace, memory, interspecies. To live as academic, among … Tentative beginnings; looking for home. We could be asking 'What place poetics as cultural theory?' 'What place the ephemera of the kind that doesn't become the work of the academic but drifts … yet has its own palpable presence, albeit fleetingly so?' The piece works in conjunction with Carole Maso's novel Ava, published in 1993 (Maso is also the author of the novels Ghost Dance and The Art Lover and the collected essays, Break Every Rule). 2 Ava is a novel of traces: 'Ava Klein, 39, lover of life, world traveller, professor of comparative literature, is dying. From her hospital bed on this, her last day on earth, she makes one final ecstatic voyage … People, places, offhand memories, and imaginary things drift in and out of … consciousness and weave their way …'. 3 Hers is a writing of people, places, chance and caught memories. Things that drift. Things that stay.
This edition of Discourse comes into being after two decades of engagement with the cultural poli... more This edition of Discourse comes into being after two decades of engagement with the cultural politics of the body – through the arts, teaching, research and varied encounters with ‘disability’ ranging from the very personal to the professional. From the critique of ‘the medical model’ of disability undertaken during the early and mid-1990s, a ‘social model’ emerged, particularly in the caring professions and those trying to shape policy and practice for people with disability. In education and schooling, it was a period of cementing inclusive practices and the ‘integration’ and inclusion of disability into ‘mainstream’ (Northway, 2002; Vincent, Evans, Lunt, & Young, 1996; Vislie, 2003). What was lacking in the debates around the social model, however, were the challenges to abledness that were being grappled with in the routine and pragmatics of self-care by people with disabilities, their families, carers and caseworkers. Outside the academy, new forms of activity and new questions were circulating. Challenges to abledness flourished in the arts and constituted the lived experience of many disability activists. In the early 1990s, for instance, performing arts companies such as the London-based CanDoCo and Restless Dance Theatre in Adelaide, Australia, were making dance and redefining its boundaries as physically based performance sourced in bodily capacity (in preference to disciplining the body into extant genres of ‘the dancing body’).
Disability Matters: Pedagogy, Media and Affect