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Stephen<br>
<br>
Very interesting topic. Just to throw my hat in the ring I'm working on
a book on Frank Moorhouse which will use him as a lens through which to
think about the interconnections between the worlds of activism,
journalism and literary writing with a particular focus on the 60s and
70s. I'm plodding along with it but will have a substantial first
article/paper soon and would be happy to be contribute to any
conference or special journal issue<br>
<br>
Best<br>
Catharine<br>
<br>
Graham St John wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="midp0624080cc2892e2de730@%5B192.168.15.5%5D"
type="cite">
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<title>Re: [csaa-forum] the sixties</title>
<div><font face="Arial">Good questions Stephen</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">I've had an interest in how activisms from
the
1990s onwards from local environmentalism to alter-globalization have
inheritied the carnivalized politics of the past (e.g. <font
color="#000000"> the history of radical avant-garde movements
and</font> 1960s guerilla theatre) with the assistance of new
technologies (audio, visual, cyber). Festal hacktivism, tactical
frivolity, anarchist (un)masking practices and other performances have
intersected in the contemporary *protestival*,<font color="#000000"> a
heuristic which is sufficient to comprehend those performative moments
simultaneously transgressive and progressive, against and for, by
which the marginal may take their grievances to the physical and
symbolic centres ('summits') of neo-liberalism, where alternative
logics and spectacles are performed, and 'another world' is
lived.</font></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">Amidst the<font color="#000000"> summit
sieges, autonomous convergences and other reflexive events
constituting transnational carnivalesque rituals, politico-religious
pilgrimage destinations, or spatial reconfigurations critical to the
renewed opposition to capitalism,</font> it is the increasingly
ubiquitous Global Day of Action (for instance seeking interventions in
neo-liberalism, the war on terror, climate change)<font color="#000000">
which is of particular interest to me.</font> Not
only does this research necessarily reference the historical
inheritance for these developments but it also necessarily draws on
cultural studies (including subcultural studies), performance studies
and the study of new social movements to make sense of
it. </font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">Graham St John</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"><br>
</font></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>At 9:18 AM +1000 6/4/07, Stephen Muecke wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">The Sixties
Revisited</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">There are many
reasons
for a renewed interest in the sixties. The worst reason is, of course,
for superannuated baby-boomers to indulge in nostalgia, the best is
for people born, say in the eighties, to analyse a period where there
were real and effective languages of political contestation, which
could be taken even to a national scale (Mai '68, the Cultural
Revolution in China, student movements toppling the governments of Sth
Korea and Thailand, national liberation movements against
colonialism).</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">In terms of culture
there
were radical forms of experimentation in everyday life, the birth of
ecological movements, homosexuality was legalised, a stunning new
visual style emerged in in iconography, fashion, fine arts and cinema.
Popular music came of age in the USA and the UK, and there was a new
cosmopolitanism of youth movements. In science and industry plastics
emerged, the transistor made electronics portable, Man walked on the
Moon, nuclear met counter-nuclear...</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Today, in repudiation
of
the sixties, the world seems engulfed by a neo-liberal market-driven
culture which has narrowed the language of political analysis.
Conservative opinion-makers are busy characterising the sixties as a
time of looney left excess, a smokescreen perhaps for the excesses of
global corporate capitalism today.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Are the current forms
of
political and cultural activism derived from the sixties?
Community-based localist or micro-activisms, autonomists, hackers and
bloggers, ferals and sub-cultural communities?</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Serious research
should
determine how cultural and political analysis of this four-decade-old
history can sort out continuities and discontinuities. Most world
leaders grew up in the sixties, so the period still has a hold on
their unconscious: Can they let it go? Can people in their twenties
and thirties teach them to look at the present more
clearly?</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><br>
</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">The question I'd like
to put to the List, perhaps with a view to a seminar, is who in
Australia is working on the sixties (really the late 50s to the early
70s)? Who is prepared to work up a topic? There is the potential for
interesting Asian links-see I<i>nter-Asia Cultural Studies</i> issue
of December last year, 'The Asian Sixties'.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Stephen
Muecke</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Director,
Transforming
Cultures Centre</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Humanities and Social
Sciences</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">University of
Technology,
Sydney</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Box 123 BROADWAY NSW
2007
Australia</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Ph: +61 2 9514
1960</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">Fx: +612 9514
4344</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1">mb 042 5261
232</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/">http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/</a></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><br>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite=""><br>
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