Federica Caso | La Trobe University (original) (raw)

Books by Federica Caso

This edited collection brings together cutting edge insights from a range of key thinkers working... more This edited collection brings together cutting edge insights from a range of key thinkers working in the area of popular culture and world politics (PCWP). Offering a holistic approach to this exciting field of research, it contributes to the establishment of PCWP as a sub-discipline of International Relations.

The volume opens with some theoretical considerations that ground popular culture in world politics. It then looks at different sources of popular culture and world politics, along with some of the methods we can use to study them. It concludes with a discussion about some of the implications of bringing popular culture into the classroom.

Canvassing issues such as geopolitics, political identities, the War on Terror and political communication, and drawing from sources such as film, videogames, art and music, this collection is an invaluable reader for anyone interested in popular culture and world politics.

Articles by Federica Caso

Australian Feminist Foreign Policy Coalition , 2023

This brief examines the added value of a Feminist Foreign Policy approach to peacebuilding in the... more This brief examines the added value of a Feminist Foreign
Policy approach to peacebuilding in the Pacific by looking
at the case of the Solomon Islands. It outlines the critical
role that Solomon Islands women have in local
peacebuilding efforts and discusses Australia’s current
commitments to advancing gender equality in the Solomon
Islands. We explore the implications and the ethical
considerations of a Feminist Foreign Policy approach to
peacebuilding, and include recommendations for Australia
to align its foreign policy with normative feminist
commitments that can improve the relationship with the
Solomon Islands and promote Pacific regional peace and
security.

International Political Sociology, 2021

After decades of refusal, neglect, and tacit admittance, the service of Indigenous people in the ... more After decades of refusal, neglect, and tacit admittance, the service of Indigenous people in the national armed forces of settler colonial states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States is finally gaining acknowledgment. Indigenous people are now integrated in the regular forces and represented in national war commemoration. This article maintains that while inclusion and recognition of Indigenous military service is a positive transformation in the direction of post-colonial reconciliation, it still operates within the logics of settler colonialism intended to eradicate Indigenous stories of connection to land and assimilate Indigenous people in settler society. Using the case study of Indigenous militarization in Australia, this article argues that, under conditions of settler colonialism, the inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in national militaries advances the settler colonial project intended to dispossess Indigenous people from their land and assimilate them in the new settler society. It highlights that historically, military organization has supported settler colonialism, and positions the present inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in the military as a continuation of this history.

Australian Journal of Political Science, 2020

The article examines the latest exhibition commemorating Indigenous soldiers produced by the Aust... more The article examines the latest exhibition commemorating Indigenous soldiers produced by the Australian War Memorial titled For Country, For Nation. It suggests that the exhibited material maps and visualises a neglected aspect of Indigenous history and as such expresses Indigenous resurgence and sovereignty. And yet, these artworks are not outside of colonial structures of power. While the article views the artworks of For Country, For Nation as an expression of Indigenous visual sovereignty, it also examines how they operate within setter colonial mentalities that disavow Indigenous sovereignty to legitimise settler authority. The Australian War Memorial operates in this order by refusing to commemorate the Frontier Wars. The article argues that despite the inclusion of Indigenous soldiers in official war commemorations is a sign of Indigenous recognition, as long as the Memorial refuses to include the Frontier Wars, this recognition legitimises colonial authority and contributes to ongoing settler colonialism.

The Disorder of Things, 2020

The article examines the use of the language of war in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

War art is not about passive contemplation of beautified spectacles of war. War art belongs to wh... more War art is not about passive contemplation of beautified spectacles of war. War art belongs to what Jill Bennett (2012: 2-3) calls ‘practical aesthetics,’ an aesthetics that is derived from practical and real-world encounters, and which sets to apprehend the world via sense-based and affective processes. For some, war art might seem indulgent, a way to orbit around the problem of political violence without ever doing anything to address it. In order to understand the politics of war art, one has to think of aesthetics beyond representation. Aesthetics does not equal representation. The philosopher Jacque Rancière (2004) has famously claimed that aesthetics is an intervention in the distribution of the sensible, that is, in the prevailing modes of perception in a given society. Jill Bennett (2012: 63) builds on this and suggests that the scope of art in not to replicate an event, but rather to ‘draw bodies into sensations not yet experienced.’ Thus, when art makes something invisible, like the drone, visible to audiences that are geographically and emotionally far removed, art is making an intervention into the prevailing distribution of the sensible. But sensations and perceptions cannot be reduced solely to making the invisible visible. They also encompass the realm of affective cognition, that is, the knowledge derived from the emotive responses of the body in the encounter with the other, human and non-human. Affective cognition is an important yet understated component that participates in social and politics configurations. Art’s currency is emotions, and therefore it is a crucial site of affective cognition. In Brimblecombe-Fox’s work, the politics of aesthetics is manifest not just in the exposure of the drone, but also in its staged encounter with surveillance, silent and silenced death, and shared existential risk, as well as the ensuing emotions of anxiety, horror, and hope.

ABSTRACT titled Always Loyal, aimed at funding the publication of a photographic project, with th... more ABSTRACT titled Always Loyal, aimed at funding the publication of a photographic project, with the intent of investigating its gendered and sexual aesthetics of militarism. The photographic project features physically disabled US veterans who pose in a sexually evocative way; for this reason, Always Loyal has been described as homoerotic. This representation of homoerotic disabled veterans runs against conventional aesthetic regimes of militarized militarism. The article investigates whether the addition of disability and homoerotism to the aesthetization of militarism challenges the aesthetics of militarized masculinity. Through visual and discourse analysis, I establish that sexing the disabled veteran does not undermine the problematic gender rela- tions produced by militarized masculinity. In fact, the disabled veteran of Always Loyal is re-masculinized in a post-human subject via prosthetics and sexual power. This techno-militarized masculi- nity is sold to the public via emotional labour that Michael Stokes, the photographer, performs to engage an audience that believes in western civilizational superiority on the ground of its liberal and liberated sexual politics. Always Loyal epitomizes the dangers of sexy militarism, where sexual politics is combined with militarism to normalize militarization

Book Chapters by Federica Caso

Making War on Bodies, 2020

This chapter explores the recent work of Australian artist Ben Quilty on combat fatigue and post-... more This chapter explores the recent work of Australian artist Ben Quilty on combat fatigue and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) collected in the exhibition After Afghanistan. After Afghanistan presents a series of large-scale paintings of soldiers and veterans evoking the bodily imprints of combat fatigue and PTSD. The bodies are naked, in the grasp of sensations and emotions. The chapter argues that this work has an ambivalent relationship to militarisation, whereby it proposes an alternative iconography of the modern soldier which seeds transformative potentials against the militarisation of the body; simultaneously, however, the iconography of the body of the soldier in pain has been co-opted as a militarising technology that silences opposition and contestation to war in the name of compassion towards the soldiers.
Overall, the chapter offers some considerations about the challenges and possibilities opened by representing the body of the soldier in pain in war art. In particular, it questions how far such visual representations are in fact able to exercise the agency they are often said to have. It is often assumed that representations of suffering soldiers are able to communicate the embodied consequences that war bears on those who fight and thus invite onlookers to question the ethics of how the state treats and provides for those it has sent to war. The chapter suggests that the very notion of visual images having agency is misconceived: when hegemonic public discourse is powerful enough to silence the processes of critical questioning that war art like Quilty’s ostensibly invites, art is instead liable to become militarised.

in Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline (2018). Edited by Robert Saunders an... more in Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline (2018). Edited by Robert Saunders and Vlad Strukov

Collaborations with Artists by Federica Caso

The essay reviews Kay S. Lawrence's exhibition that I produced at House Conspiracy in February 20... more The essay reviews Kay S. Lawrence's exhibition that I produced at House Conspiracy in February 2020. Lawrence's explores themes of climate emergency and the emotional response to it.

The essay explores the paintings by Brisbane artist Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox exhibited in Occupie... more The essay explores the paintings by Brisbane artist Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox exhibited in Occupied Landscapes: Evidence of Drones. It was produced for Brimblecombe-Fox's solo exhibition at POP Gallery, Brisbane, in 2019.

Talks by Federica Caso

Clearly toilets are battlegrounds for gender and sexuality. Toilets are a space where the distinc... more Clearly toilets are battlegrounds for gender and sexuality. Toilets are a space where the distinction between private and public collapses, or at least, reveals itself for what it is: a fiction.

How can we think sex politically? Sex is too often relegated to the sphere of the private. In the... more How can we think sex politically? Sex is too often relegated to the sphere of the private. In the public domain it often topic of jokes, or legal and medical discourses. Sex is a crucial component of life, not only biological, but social and political as well. Willingly or unwillingly it underlies social interactions, and it is socialised to do so in particular ways that are not devoid of power. From a feminist perspective, heterosexual penetrative sex has historically marked women as passive socio-political actors and men as active ones. This socialisation of sex can be understood to be at the core of unequal gender relations. I will argue that thinking sex politically is a step in the direction of subverting these gender relations. I will try to tackle questions about the metaphysics and phenomenology of sex to excavate a sexual politics of resistance. I will put forward the queer subject as the subjectivity to enact this political project.

Visual Essays by Federica Caso

The visual essay explores the issues of militarism and nuclear colonialism through the art exhibi... more The visual essay explores the issues of militarism and nuclear colonialism through the art exhibition titled Black Mist Burnt Country, which is touring in Australia until 2018.

Conference Presentations by Federica Caso

Presentation delivered at the Workshop on Feminism and Militarism at the University of San Franci... more Presentation delivered at the Workshop on Feminism and Militarism at the University of San Francisco (USF), San Francisco, USA, 2016
I link militarisation with security and the body and argue that while in conscription societies the body was militarised for the provision of sovereign security, in post-conscription society the body is militarised for its own security qua house of life. In post-conscription societies the militarisation of the body is effected through a diffuse form of power that operates through normative discourses. I identified three discourses: the discourse of freedom, whereby one freely chooses to join the military and in doing so they can acquire moral and social status; the discourse of risk, whereby the body of those who join the military is guaranteed to be exposed to minimal risk; the discourse of pleasure, whereby civilians militarise their bodies because of the pleasure it provides.

Australian Feminist Foreign Policy Coalition , 2023

International Political Sociology, 2021

Australian Journal of Political Science, 2020

The Disorder of Things, 2020

The article examines the use of the language of war in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Making War on Bodies, 2020

Presentation delivered at PCWP 9, Waterloo, Canada, 2016. The presentation offered some connectio... more Presentation delivered at PCWP 9, Waterloo, Canada, 2016. The presentation offered some connections between popular geopolitics and gender studies, focusing in particular how the notion of embodiment might enrich the study of popular culture as a lived experience

OCIS 2016 - Panel on Critical Theory and Critical Feminism: Recognition & Emotions in World Politics

How do representations of militarised masculinity in war video games help us understanding the ge... more How do representations of militarised masculinity in war video games help us understanding the gendered nature of discourses of international security in the post-9/11? The relevance of this question lays in the fact that war-themed video games have proliferated and reached peaks of popularity and commercial values in the post-9/11, when international politics has undergone a stark reaffirmation of masculinity. Its importance resides in the new possibilities it opens to deconstruct through visual culture the binary between international and domestic that permeates the discipline of international relations (IR).
Connell has rightly pointed out that there are multiple masculinities, and that their hegemonic forms are more likely to be upheld if there is some connection between cultural ideals and institutional power. Militarised masculinity, which refers to the configuration of “manhood” in relation to the combatant experience, is hegemonic in international politics during times of war. Building upon this observation, I will argue that representations of militarised masculinity in war video games epitomise the gendered politics that underpins discourses of security in the post-9/11. Visual and discursive representations of the tough, heroic male soldier, ready to sacrifice his life in name of the nation and of adventure, reproduce and propagate the gendered discourses that have underpinned the war on terror.
Exploring representations of militarised masculinity in war video games in an era of militarised masculine international politics will help us understanding how certain values permeate the whole society in times of war, but also how we reproduce a culture of militarism in our private sphere. The peculiar interactive nature of video games will allows us reconsidering the idea that militarised masculinity emerges in military environments, which are commonly understood as public and international spaces, vis-à-vis the new avenue that war video games have opened to think about the relation between the international, the domestic, and the private.

This volume explores the nexus between emotions, world politics, and war and argues that IR debat... more This volume explores the nexus between emotions, world politics, and war and argues that IR debates should tackle the political dimensions of emotions.

Sexing War/Policing Gender explores how female agency in political violence is made sense of thro... more Sexing War/Policing Gender explores how female agency in political violence is made sense of through the myth of motherhood. Last of the World Politics and Popular Culture book series at Routledge, it is yet another publication that sheds light on the complex interaction between politics, violence, and the most mundane acts of everyday life.

This dissertation explores the relation between masculinity and the military within the context o... more This dissertation explores the relation between masculinity and the military within the context of ‘the feminisation of the military’ thesis. This posits that the introduction of female soldiers, as well as technological development and the increased number of peace operations are weakening the ties between masculinity and the military, and as a result, the efficiency of the military. It explores the historical context that has created the connection between masculinity and the military, and the factors that are commonly cited as triggers of the feminisation of the military. It then offers a counterargument to these factors, demonstrating how masculinity is still the dominant gender identity of the military and the soldier. Overall, the dissertation argues that, despite some recent developments have paved the way to accommodate different gender and sexual identities in the military, a more thorough analysis suggests that new connections between masculinity and the military have been forged. These new connections have articulated an identity that is better defined as militarised masculinity – in place of the traditional military masculinity – insofar as it applies beyond the white heterosexual citizen-soldier.

Independent Australia, 2020

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island activists have established a tradition of commemorating the F... more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island activists have established a tradition of commemorating the Frontier Wars on Anzac Day despite the reluctance of official authorities. This year, their commemorations took place online.

Lowy Institute, 2020

Covid-19 makes traditional rituals of war commemoration impractical, but digital commemoration wa... more Covid-19 makes traditional rituals of war commemoration impractical, but
digital commemoration was already gaining traction in Australia.

Peace, Memory, & Cultural Heritage, 2020

At the core of Australia’s politics of war memory is settler colonialism, the ideological structu... more At the core of Australia’s politics of war memory is settler colonialism, the ideological structure which sustains the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty and hinders self-determination and representation. Indigenous scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls this “white possessive.” War memory in Australia functions to perpetrate the colonial fantasy that colonialism was not too bad and that it is now over anyway.

this edited collection brings together insights from some of the key thinkers working in the area... more this edited collection brings together insights from some of the key thinkers working in the area of popular culture and world politics (PCWP). Offering a holistic approach to this field of research, it contributes to the establishment of PcWP as a sub-discipline of international relations. the volume opens with some theoretical considerations that ground popular culture in world politics. it then looks at different sources of popular culture and world politics, along with some of the methods we can use to study them. it concludes with a discussion about some of the implications of bringing popular culture into the classroom. canvassing issues such as geopolitics, political identities, the ‘War on terror’ and political communication and drawing from sources such as film, videogames, art and music, this collection presents cutting-edge research and is an invaluable reader for anyone interested in popular culture and world politics.

Australian Journal of Political Science, 2020

Computations have spatial and temporal locality Problems fit into memory Methods require high pre... more Computations have spatial and temporal locality Problems fit into memory Methods require high precision arithmetic Data is static Matrix Algebra Equations and first principles Structured algorithms FFT/signal transformations Computations have no or little locality Problems do not fit into memory Variable precision or integer based arithmetic Data is dynamic Text processing, image analysis Clustering, organization, browsing Iterative refinement and interrogation Not possible to know up front what calculations will be done, nor in what order Data Intensive Sciences Problems where data is the dominaƟng factor Rate of acquisiƟon Volume Complexity Uncertainty

Critical Military Studies, 2016

Social media has become pervasive. It occupies a large portion of our daily life. It provides a s... more Social media has become pervasive. It occupies a large portion of our daily life. It provides a space to simultaneously connect to people, receive our newsfeed, voice our opinions, organize collective actions, meet new people, lobby institutions, and do many more things. Beside these mundane activities, it can also be a means to organize and perpetrate violence and conflict. The Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) recruitment strategies emblematically demonstrate that. Moreover, soldiers go to the battlefield armed with rifles and smartphones. Citizens share, ‘like’, and comment on still and moving images of war in real time. Governments and military institutions communicate manoeuvres to citizens via social media.Digital militarism: Israel’s occupation in the social media age (Kuntsman and Stein 2015) encourages reflections about the ambivalence of social media, which can be at once an intimate space and part of the war machine. It documents the encounter between social media and war in the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, so as to shed light on the interaction ‘between ordinary networking practices and wartime violence’ in Israeli society (2). This ephemeral and mundane but powerful and pervasive role of social media in the process of militarization characterizes what can be called the unbearable lightness of militarism (12). In what follows I provide a review of Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca Stein’s Digital militarism, positioning it within debates about the militarization of society and the aesthetics ofmilitarism. In this review I aim at provoking reflections beyond the Israeli context, suggesting some of the ways the book invites us to think broadly about how social media is changing the aesthetics of war, and how civilian populations react to and are embedded into war, conflict, and violence in the digital era. At this particular point in time marked by the pervasiveness of social media, it is of paramount importance to interrogate the ways in which global audiences constantly engage in practices of selective hearing, explore the material semiotics of digital warfare, and map the space where civilian and military lives meet, if we are to understand (post)modern warfare and violence. While the book offers a series of compelling points, I focus on two in particular. Firstly, the book powerfully demonstrates the ways in which digital militarism