Books by Jon Stratton
As the research progressed it became clear to me that there were, in fact, three interrelated iss... more As the research progressed it became clear to me that there were, in fact, three interrelated issues:,the discourse of race in Australia,'the policy) and, practice, of multicultnr-alik4, and the còäcërn=ove national identitq. Historically, race has been a central concept in the formation of the Australian nation. It has operated here, as it has in other Western' countries, as a marker to exclude those who were not considered to be eligible to be members of the nation. Simultaneously, it has worked as a guarantor of a particularised homogeneity. Homogeneity, of language and culture as well as race, was, throughout the nineteenth century and up until very recently, the most basic concern of the nation. In Australia there has been a persistent myth since the ending of the White Australia policy in the early 1970s, and since the advent of the policy of multiculturalism around the same time that race has not only been expelled from the political vocabulary, but that it no longer plays a part in everyday Australian life. In this book I argue that neither of these things are the case. In fact race is of great importance I 0 Race Daze been gathering pace in the thinking expressed in the Australian public sphere had reached a watershed. The change I have in mind is from an understanding of the meaning of `Australia', and what it is to be an 'Australian', grounded in the empirical, the reductive and the universal, to one founded in the cultural, the relative and the specific. Introduction II everyday life of our schools' classrooms. Ethnics arè migrants', `NESBs'; the people so identified are called, and call themselves, `wogs', `dagoes', and a host of other names that have historically been used by the British as derogatory terms for foreigners. One publicly visible example of this acceptance or appropriation of such denigratory terms was the Melbourne comedy show, Wogs Out of Work, starring among others Nick Giannopolous, the son of Greek migrants. The show started in 1986 and ran for three years, subsequently being transformed into a television sitcom called `Acropolis Now'. On the other side there are thè Australians', those whose ancestors' presence predates that of the `migrants', or who are from English-speaking backgrounds. These are the people sometimes called `skips' after Skippy the kangaroo. They have names like Smith or Corrigan. This divide will not go away under the present dispensation. The assumptions behind the policy of multiculturalism must be radically overhauled. I argue in Chapter One that Hanson is not a racialist in the older sense of someone who views racial difference as a marker of cultural difference, or a racist in the sense of privileging one race over another. Rather, Hanson typifies the new kind of racist, really espousing a kind of culturalism, in which particular cultures are considered to be incompatible with, in this case, what is claimed to be Australia's national culture and this claimed fundamental cultural difference is dren of mixed-race couples would be infertile. There is also the feeling that such integration would ultimately reduce to its constituent elements. When the term is applied to culture, then, we have assumptions about cultures being discrete entities, that they may integrate but that there is always the possibility that the resultant new cultural formation may break apart and fragment back to its original forms. This is one of the negative images of the Australian culture produced through the policy of multiculturalism. I will use creolisation to mean something different. 'Creole' is, a term Introduction (5 Australia should be a republic. I show how the issues of race, multiculturalism and national identity operate as elements in the broader political agendas of both the left and, in particular, the right of Australian politics. While race remains a repressed discourse and virtually any use of the term leaves the user open to the charge of being a racist, the official policy of multiculturalism has moved from being merely a population management policy to being a constituent part, and indeed when the left talks about a republic, to being the foundational part, of Australia's national identity. What this the period in similar terms He specifically describes the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission as the 'Thought Police' and implies that a more general policing of public debate was pervasive through the Labor years. What happened is rather more complicated. Hawke and Keating implemented many of the economic rationalist policies of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States.. In doing so they moved the Labor Party away from its social-reformist base and its concern for its working-class voters, and towards what was then the political centre-right of Australian politics. One consequence of this move was that the Liberal Party, increasingly dominated by New Right free marketeers and American-style advocates of small government, and losing its own moral grounding in political liberalism, also moved further to the right. At the same time, the National Party, seeing its membership diminishing and feeling that its views on immigration, economic protectionism and federal support for the rural sector were looking increasingly dated, moved towards the new political centre. What was produced was a broad political consensus among the middle class, which is the dominant class in Australia, over precisely those social issues non-discriminatory migration, official multiculturalism, Aboriginal Australia to non-discriminatory migration and official multi= culturalism, that are the core of One Nation's supporters. III It is October 11, 1998 Last Saturday, in the Federal election, the Coalition sneaked back into power with a very reduced majority. With an overall swing of more than 5 per
Coming out Jewish: Constructing ambivalent identities
... of given representations might meet. Coming out Jewish is a work of recovery and innovation. ... more ... of given representations might meet. Coming out Jewish is a work of recovery and innovation. Andrew Renton, University College London What does it mean to be 'Jewish' in the modern world? In Coming Out Jewish, Jon Stratton ...
The desirable body: Cultural fetishism and the erotics of consumption
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the construction and representation of the body has been ... more From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the construction and representation of the body has been deeply implicated in the development of capitalist economies. Stratton reveals how the ideologies of state power and gender politics become literally embodied, through an ...
The desirable body
University of Illinois Press
Writing sites: a genealogy of the postmodern world
Acknowledgements As I first came across the ideas of Michel Foucault whilst doing postgraduate wo... more Acknowledgements As I first came across the ideas of Michel Foucault whilst doing postgraduate work under Michael Lane at the Univer-sity of Essex in the early 1970s, I would like to thank him for this opportunity. Later my thinking on what is now being called postmodernist ...
The virgin text: Fiction, sexuality, and ideology
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Book Chapters by Jon Stratton
Jewish Identity in Western Pop Culture, 2008
Why Were the Sixties so Jewish? Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Pa... more Why Were the Sixties so Jewish? Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago With his friend, a jealous monk Bob Dylan "Desolation Row." I need to start with a caveat. This is not a historical trainspotting chapter about who was Jewish in the American counterculture of the sixties. As we shall see, a high proportion of identifying Jewish college students was engaged in radical political activity. More, a remarkably high percentage of Jews, as compared to their presence within the general population, were leaders in the political and socio-political arena. 1 Indeed, Jews were central to areas of activism as diverse as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, the Diggers, the Yippies, the second wave feminist movement, the protest movement in folk-rock music. Jews also played a very important role in the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, as Jonathan Kaufman notes, "[b]y the mid-1960s, Jewish contributors made up threequarters of the money raised by SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], and SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference]." 2 However, in a crucial development, not only for its practical consequences but for what it suggests about the changing discursive context in which 283 African-Americans and Jews related to each other, an SNCC staff meeting in December 1966, with Stokely Carmichael as chairman, voted to exclude all whites, which included Jews, from the organization. 3 This marks an important watershed, and one I will discuss in more detail because it signals the repositioning of Jews in American society; a repositioning which, as we shall see, was central to Jewish involvement in the counterculture and, to some extent, to the existence of the counterculture itself.
Kuan-Hsing Chen and David Morley (eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues. London: Routledge, pp. 361-391 , 1996
As we approach the end of the century, cultural studies has become one of the most lively and wid... more As we approach the end of the century, cultural studies has become one of the most lively and widely-discussed intellectual fields in the international academic world. University programmes, conferences and publications in cultural studies are proliferating massively, suggesting a clear and indisputable boom. The effect of this steady expansion is that there is less and less consensus over what 'cultural studies' means.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research, 2020
An Anthology of Australian Albums, 2020
An Anthology of Australian Albums, 2020
Stars of David: Jews and Popular Music: Der Sound des 20. Jahrhunderts, 2016
“Mazal Tov, Amigos!” Jews and Popular Music in the Americas,, 2016
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures, 2015
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Books by Jon Stratton
Book Chapters by Jon Stratton