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Elspeth Probyn
The University of Sydney, Gender and Cultural Studies, Faculty Member
- My current research area includes questions about the sustainability of food production & consumption from an ethnogr... moreMy current research area includes questions about the sustainability of food production & consumption from an ethnographic and cultural perspective. This comes out of my previous work on embodiment, gender, sexuality, ethics and cultural practice and shifts into debates about the more-than-human realm.edit
Along with the English translation by Cecil Wele Manona, the volume also includes the original isiXhosa account by Jabavu. Additionally, in the introductory chapters, the editors have included a detailed analysis of the travelogue and... more
Along with the English translation by Cecil Wele Manona, the volume also includes the original isiXhosa account by Jabavu. Additionally, in the introductory chapters, the editors have included a detailed analysis of the travelogue and provided historical background exploring the interconnections between India’s freedom struggle, East Africa’s fight against colonialism, South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, and the American Civil Rights Movement, as well as Jabavu’s andManona’s biographies. Most importantly, the editors argue for the study of literature in regional languages: ‘Any study of African and Indian Ocean literatures that overlooks materials in local languages is an academic joke in bad taste’ (). As a comparatist who researches Canadian literature written in heritage languages, I cannot emphasise enough both the need for recognition of literature in non-hegemonic languages as well as translations of these works. To that end, the editors as well as the translators of Jabavu’s book should be commended for undertaking this project. As comparatists have been arguing for a long time, translation is crucial to expanding the canon of world literature. This translation of Jabavu’s travelogue from isiXhosa into English offers a window into a world which would have been otherwise left out of the reach of scholars globally. For readers who do not have the knowledge of isiXhosa, the translation is interesting as it attempts to retain the style, tone, and flavour of the original text. Jabavu’s travel narrative provides readers with a new vantage point from which to reconsider the cultural and political landscape of India, South Africa, and East Africa in particular, as well as the Indian Ocean region in general. The book will be an excellent addition for anyone interested in Africa, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean world, as well as those working in comparative literature, travel studies, African studies, and translation studies.
Research Interests: Oceanography and Politics
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n this article, I address the omission of the ocean or the aqua in geo-political scholarship and public debate. My argument is motivated by the public descriptions of Putin’s invasion and war in Ukraine and the lack of attention to the... more
n this article, I address the omission of the ocean or the aqua in geo-political scholarship and public debate. My argument is motivated by the public descriptions of Putin’s invasion and war in Ukraine and the lack of attention to the oceanic geopolitics of deep sea mining. Descriptions of Putin’s attack reproduce old terrestrial arguments about the role of geography in figuring national identity and destiny. On the contrary, I posit that the war in Ukraine is focused on capturing control of the oceanic circulation of resources. Deep sea mining is framed as a green response to defossilization of energy and the economy, and centres on mining minerals on the sea floor for the ‘EV revolution’. I argue that these two events or crises can be understood through a conjunctural framework. However, this involves reworking cultural studies’ usual understanding of conjunctural analysis. Following the work of Ben Highmore and others, this means deepening the geopolitical, historical and material scales involved in the disjunctures that hold together simultaneously yet separately the invasion of Ukraine and the legal framing of mining the deep seas through the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Such an analysis involves narrating the clashing of what Timothy Clarke calls the derangement of temporal scales of the Anthropocene if we are to figure ‘what happening now’. KEYWORDS: Ukraine deep sea mining geopolitics terrestrial and oceanic scales UN Convention of the Law of the Seas
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On the move again: we are on our fi fth or sixth temporary accommodation in as many months. Th is is not a tragic tale of displacement, just the banal machinations of urban life. But each move strips my dwindling hoarding of spices-smoked... more
On the move again: we are on our fi fth or sixth temporary accommodation in as many months. Th is is not a tragic tale of displacement, just the banal machinations of urban life. But each move strips my dwindling hoarding of spices-smoked ancho Mexican chilies that are hard to source in Sydney; my bay tree, the lime tree that rarely produced much fruit but was still a thrill for a former Montrealer, and all my herbs are long gone. At fi rst there was the glee of living in what Sydney tries to pass off as its "Paris" quartier, Potts Point. Th e joy of good coff ee and croissants , a decent butcher, a proper Italian deli with great wines , and walking to restaurants purveying the best vitello tonnato, or outstanding saganaki, was enough to soothe my displaced soul. Th e next apartment was a soulless box in inner city Darlinghurst, the previous beating heart of queer Sydney that is now stilled to a comatose state. And now we have descended to the nadiran apartment building seemingly totally comprised of AirBnB transient bodies, as of course we are too. No smiles in the elevator. A dark, mean kitchen , and nowhere to buy anything to cook. Situated next to the main Central station, it's all buses, trains, grime, and dust and really bad takeaway joints. Depression sets in. I feel malnourished in so many ways. Reading the great American (food) writer M. F. K. Fisher helps in an odd way. She understands that "our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others." 1 But she doesn't give us a saccharine version of food as easy comfort. Th is framing has become legion. If I had to read Elizabeth Gilbert's horrendously successful Pray, Eat, Love in my current state, I'd vomit. 2 No, the comfort of and from food is hard won. Fisher brings an edge even if at times her descriptions of food, the space
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n this article, I address the omission of the ocean or the aqua in geo-political scholarship and public debate. My argument is motivated by the public descriptions of Putin’s invasion and war in Ukraine and the lack of attention to the... more
n this article, I address the omission of the ocean or the aqua in geo-political scholarship and public debate. My argument is motivated by the public descriptions of Putin’s invasion and war in Ukraine and the lack of attention to the oceanic geopolitics of deep sea mining. Descriptions of Putin’s attack reproduce old terrestrial arguments about the role of geography in figuring national identity and destiny. On the contrary, I posit that the war in Ukraine is focused on capturing control of the oceanic circulation of resources. Deep sea mining is framed as a green response to defossilization of energy and the economy, and centres on mining minerals on the sea floor for the ‘EV revolution’. I argue that these two events or crises can be understood through a conjunctural framework. However, this involves reworking cultural studies’ usual understanding of conjunctural analysis. Following the work of Ben Highmore and others, this means deepening the geopolitical, historical and material scales involved in the disjunctures that hold together simultaneously yet separately the invasion of Ukraine and the legal framing of mining the deep seas through the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) and the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Such an analysis involves narrating the clashing of what Timothy Clarke calls the derangement of temporal scales of the Anthropocene if we are to figure ‘what happening now’.
KEYWORDS:
Ukraine deep sea mining geopolitics terrestrial and oceanic scales UN Convention of the Law of the Seas
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Ukraine deep sea mining geopolitics terrestrial and oceanic scales UN Convention of the Law of the Seas
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In this chapter, I explore how the politics of fish-as-food is mediated through the lens of television food programmes, documentaries, and social media. I argue that advocacy documentaries and television series perform a mediation that... more
In this chapter, I explore how the politics of fish-as-food is mediated through the lens of television food programmes, documentaries, and social media. I argue that advocacy documentaries and television series perform a mediation that construct fish and fishing in polemical ways. I will also consider whether the processes of mediatization complicate the dominant mediation and its accompanying moralism. Lastly, I explore whether there are national differences within and across the mediation of fish and fishing.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Sexing
Do we eat what we are, or are we what we eat? Do we eat or are we eaten? In less cryptic terms, in eating, do we confirm our identities, or are our identities reforged, and refracted by what and how we eat? In posing these questions, I... more
Do we eat what we are, or are we what we eat? Do we eat or are we eaten? In less cryptic terms, in eating, do we confirm our identities, or are our identities reforged, and refracted by what and how we eat? In posing these questions, I want to shift the terms of current debates about identity. I want to signal that the study of identity may take on new insights when we look at how we are or want to be in terms of what, how, and with whom we eat. If the analysis of identity has by and large been conducted through the optic of sex, it may well be that in western societies we are witnessing a shift away from sex as the sovereign signifier, or to put it more finely, the question of what we are is a constantly morphing one that mixes up bodies, appetites, classes, genders and ethnicities. It must be said that the question of identity and subjectivity has been so well trodden in the last several decades that the possibility of any virgin territory is slim. Bombarded by critiques of identi...
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In the debates about the future of work there is a lack of analysis on how young women and men are approaching their future work and family lives. In this article we use data collected in the Australian Women’s Working Future (AWWF)... more
In the debates about the future of work there is a lack of analysis on how young women and men are approaching their future work and family lives. In this article we use data collected in the Australian Women’s Working Future (AWWF) Project 2017 to analyse what young workers imagine will be important to their future success in work and family. We find that formal workplace supports for care, such as paid parental leave and childcare, and workplace flexibility are identified as very important. Shared domestic labour is also desired. Parents have the strongest expectations for care policy supports. Young men without children are least likely to factor these into future work trajectories, while young women do. However, data on women’s plans for family formation, compared with men’s, suggests that difficulties accessing vital care supports pose a risk to young women’s ability to work, form families and care.
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This article reframes fisheries sustainability as a matter of production and consumption. It argues that only a more-than-human approach that takes seriously the entanglement of all oceanic entities—fish, fishers, water—can tackle the... more
This article reframes fisheries sustainability as a matter of production and consumption. It argues that only a more-than-human approach that takes seriously the entanglement of all oceanic entities—fish, fishers, water—can tackle the sustainability of fish. In order to bring this to fruition, an affective oceanic habitus needs to be mobilized. Drawing on cultural references to the entanglement of humans and oceans, this article attempts to model what such affective habitus might entail.
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The very term ‘ethnic’ has deep culinary resonances. It also vibrates with different affects. Charles Darwin’s discussion of disgust was, after all, triggered by his mediated contact with a ‘native’ via a morsel of meat. In the everyday... more
The very term ‘ethnic’ has deep culinary resonances. It also vibrates with different affects. Charles Darwin’s discussion of disgust was, after all, triggered by his mediated contact with a ‘native’ via a morsel of meat. In the everyday of multicultural cities, food cultures speak of colonial violence, consumed now with pleasure. While the tendency for mainstream white culture has been to celebrate and reify ‘authentic ethnic food’ as a self-congratulatory indicator of tolerance, there is of course a darker side. Departing from the usual mode of analysing the cultural semiotics of cuisines, in this chapter I focus on the materiality of the thing that is eaten. In other words, I shift attention to how ‘ethnicity’ is transferred from a socially defined category of human to the objects eaten: from ‘exotic’ fish, stag penises, to cheese described by some Chinese as ‘the mucous discharge of some old cow’s guts, allowed to putrefy.’ Across several ethnographic vignettes I examine closely the food objects that are differentially considered as delicious or disgusting. As Ash Amin argues, increasingly we are brought together across ethnicities in our everyday living, or what he calls ‘conviviality’. Analysing different scenes of eating—of sharing what is deemed edible by whom—I see commensality and conviviality as practices in progress that are fuelled by hope, the hope of being together that will change a collective and individual present and future.
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In this chapter we will: contextualise cosmetic surgery tourism and sketch some of its defining features; look more closely at how cosmetic surgery tourism works as a phenomenon that assembles a complex set of people, places and... more
In this chapter we will: contextualise cosmetic surgery tourism and sketch some of its defining features; look more closely at how cosmetic surgery tourism works as a phenomenon that assembles a complex set of people, places and practices; examine how the cosmetic surgery tourism industry is developing; consider debates in tourism studies to understand what it means to call our subject cosmetic surgery tourism.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
Dans cet article, l’auteure problématise l’idée communément répandue selon laquelle le lieu de la télévision est le foyer. Historiquement, il est reconnu que les femmes ont été placées au foyer avec le téléviseur. Une distinction entre... more
Dans cet article, l’auteure problématise l’idée communément répandue selon laquelle le lieu de la télévision est le foyer. Historiquement, il est reconnu que les femmes ont été placées au foyer avec le téléviseur. Une distinction entre local et localité est utilisée pour réfléchir aux différentes façons selon lesquelles la télévision est toujours insérée dans un quotidien déjà sexué. Un extrait du talk-show américain Oprah Winfrey est analysé pour mettre en valeur le lien entre des lieux sexués de la réception et le genre télévisuel.
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Résumé Cet article défend l’intérêt de la honte comme objet d’étude. En effet, je prétends que la honte a simultanément des effets culturels, sociaux, psychologiques et physiologiques, effets qu’il nous faut embrasser en trouvant de... more
Résumé Cet article défend l’intérêt de la honte comme objet d’étude. En effet, je prétends que la honte a simultanément des effets culturels, sociaux, psychologiques et physiologiques, effets qu’il nous faut embrasser en trouvant de nouveaux moyens de représenter l’expérience anthropologique. Mon propos emprunte à Bourdieu et à Mauss ainsi qu’à d’autres auteurs, du monde universitaire ou littéraire. Je prétends qu’il est nécessaire de raconter des histoires et de les raconter différemment si l’on veut relever les défis que pose, aux chercheurs, le phénomène de la honte.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Humanities, Art, Interest, Shame, and 5 moreAffective Experience, Vergüenza, Honte, Intérêt, and Interés
Résumé Cet article expose de façon schématique comment certains aspects de la pensée de Foucault dépassent les deux pôles qui ont défini la plupart des débats dans le champ des études gaies et lesbiennes à propos de la sexualité :... more
Résumé Cet article expose de façon schématique comment certains aspects de la pensée de Foucault dépassent les deux pôles qui ont défini la plupart des débats dans le champ des études gaies et lesbiennes à propos de la sexualité : Pessentia-lisme et le constructivisme social.
Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
In 2009 an international team of scientists working with Clean Seas Tuna managed to get captive Southern Bluefin tuna to spawn on land. This was heralded as an international break through and a first step in producing wholly sustainable... more
In 2009 an international team of scientists working with Clean Seas Tuna managed to get captive Southern Bluefin tuna to spawn on land. This was heralded as an international break through and a first step in producing wholly sustainable Bluefin tuna, a highly lucrative product. In this talk I want to explore how human populations have interacted with tuna and how this shapes identities in particular ways in the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. To adequately capture the complexity of the seafood market takes us into ‘research in the wild’, as Michel Callon characterises ‘the new forms of techno-science-society interactions, in which non-scientists work with scientists to produce and disseminate knowledge.’ (2003) Callon’s earlier work on the scallop industry in France pointed to a new way of understanding the dynamics of markets. However he, along with much of ANT, ignores the sensuality of the material connections they trace. In this talk I will engage with what I have previously called a rhizo-ethnography of bodies as a necessary addition to his conception of markets. We will begin to see how human and tuna appetites forge historical and sensual networks essential to the promotion of sustainable seafood markets, in ways that open out the question of sustainability.
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Summer in Montréal, hot and very humid. And as with every year, it seems that the heated pavement brings forth a new Montréal subject, a different social and civic subject wrought of the peculiarities of climate and sensibility. Indeed,... more
Summer in Montréal, hot and very humid. And as with every year, it seems that the heated pavement brings forth a new Montréal subject, a different social and civic subject wrought of the peculiarities of climate and sensibility. Indeed, it is a local cliché that for a brief moment of time Montrealers and Montréalais alike put off their penchant for politics large and small, cast off with the salt-stained boots and tired winter coats. Instead of political platforms we have bandstands, festivals compete and overlap into a weave of carnival, a moving warp of bodies against bodies: the International Festival of Fireworks, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, Divers-cité (our gay pride march), le festival du homard, le festival de la bière en fû, le Tour de l'île, Portuguese and Italian saints' days, the Construction Workers' holiday, les fétes du trottoir—all transform the streets into chaotic bursting capillaries of people celebrating something or other, or merel...
Research Interests: History, Politics, Jazz, Pride, Queer, and 4 moreFireworks, Language Culture and Communication, Cliché, and Sensibility
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Page 1. Feminism and Cultural Studies Anne Balsamo Multi-, Inter-, or Post-Disciplinary? From the early feminist work by those associated with the Centre for Contem-porary Cultural Studies in Birmingham in the 1970s and ...
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Drawing on ethnographic and interview research conducted in Scotland, South Australia and New South Wales, Australia, I attempt to frame the cultural, social and geographical networks created by the people who follow fish (primarily... more
Drawing on ethnographic and interview research conducted in Scotland, South Australia and New South Wales, Australia, I attempt to frame the cultural, social and geographical networks created by the people who follow fish (primarily commercial fishers). My account is constructed through a ‘self-conscious storying’ (Whatmore 2008) deployed by geographers working in a more-than-human perspective. Although I find much to inspire from this approach, throughout this article the question that nags at me is how to account for women within a materialist more-than-human framework, and how to articulate a feminist politics within this epistemological and methodological space. I try to avoid admonitions about what should be done and to advance or to model an embodied glimpse of what such a politics might be.
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SOCIOLOGIE ET SOCIÉTÉS Directeur fondateur: Jacques Dofny Directeur: Louis Maheu Rédactrice en chef: Nicole Laurin-Frenette Secrétaire à la rédaction: Gilles Houle Comité scientifique: Harold Benenson (Université McGill), Paul Bernard... more
SOCIOLOGIE ET SOCIÉTÉS Directeur fondateur: Jacques Dofny Directeur: Louis Maheu Rédactrice en chef: Nicole Laurin-Frenette Secrétaire à la rédaction: Gilles Houle Comité scientifique: Harold Benenson (Université McGill), Paul Bernard (Université de Montréal), Line Chamberland ( ...
I need to preface these brief remarks with a caveat. I was to write of Hall’s contribution to forging feminist cultural studies, the intellectual project I have felt affiliated with across my academic life, and certainly that which has... more
I need to preface these brief remarks with a caveat. I was to write of Hall’s contribution to forging feminist cultural studies, the intellectual project I have felt affiliated with across my academic life, and certainly that which has inspired and formed me. But I don’t feel entitled to write of ‘feminist cultural studies’ in the way that others, such as Lucy Bland, Janice Winship, Angela McRobbie and Charlotte Brunsdon can. I wasn’t there when the Women Studies Group at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies struggled with ‘the dilemma’ of ‘whether to conquer the whole of cultural studies and only then to make a feminist critique of it, or whether to focus on the “woman question” from the beginning’. The group did conceptual work across the disciplines of history, anthropology, psychology and literary studies, and grappled with theoretical movements influenced by figures as varied as Lacan, Marx and Foucault and across sites such as popular culture, regimes of gendered work ...
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On the move again: we are on our fi fth or sixth temporary accommodation in as many months. Th is is not a tragic tale of displacement, just the banal machinations of urban life. But each move strips my dwindling hoarding of spices-smoked... more
On the move again: we are on our fi fth or sixth temporary accommodation in as many months. Th is is not a tragic tale of displacement, just the banal machinations of urban life. But each move strips my dwindling hoarding of spices-smoked ancho Mexican chilies that are hard to source in Sydney; my bay tree, the lime tree that rarely produced much fruit but was still a thrill for a former Montrealer, and all my herbs are long gone. At fi rst there was the glee of living in what Sydney tries to pass off as its "Paris" quartier, Potts Point. Th e joy of good coff ee and croissants , a decent butcher, a proper Italian deli with great wines , and walking to restaurants purveying the best vitello tonnato, or outstanding saganaki, was enough to soothe my displaced soul. Th e next apartment was a soulless box in inner city Darlinghurst, the previous beating heart of queer Sydney that is now stilled to a comatose state. And now we have descended to the nadiran apartment building seemingly totally comprised of AirBnB transient bodies, as of course we are too. No smiles in the elevator. A dark, mean kitchen , and nowhere to buy anything to cook. Situated next to the main Central station, it's all buses, trains, grime, and dust and really bad takeaway joints. Depression sets in. I feel malnourished in so many ways. Reading the great American (food) writer M. F. K. Fisher helps in an odd way. She understands that "our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others." 1 But she doesn't give us a saccharine version of food as easy comfort. Th is framing has become legion. If I had to read Elizabeth Gilbert's horrendously successful Pray, Eat, Love in my current state, I'd vomit. 2 No, the comfort of and from food is hard won. Fisher brings an edge even if at times her descriptions of food, the space
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Shame has typically been understood as a negative emotion, a view which is prevalent in individualist, psychologising discourses about human experience. Elspeth Probyn's approach to shame departs significantly from these tropes. As... more
Shame has typically been understood as a negative emotion, a view which is prevalent in individualist, psychologising discourses about human experience. Elspeth Probyn's approach to shame departs significantly from these tropes. As interviewers, we share a common interest in feminist ethics and productive affects in teaching and scholarship. Hence, our specific interest in Probyn's Blush: Faces of Shame. Blush is an excellent example of viewing the politics of shame as a productive and relational process. Probyn proposes that shame comes about through an interest in and a connection with another. This connection can result in building care for the other and community through re-evaluations of the self. In this way, shame can be a productive force in postcoloniality, in the feminist political ethics of care and in attempts at reconciliation. This view corresponds with the focus of this Special Issue – an affirmative and relational but political view of shame. The interview pr...
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Laws of the Sea assembles scholars from law, geography, anthropology, and environmental humanities to consider the possibilities of a critical ocean approach in legal studies. Unlike the United Nations’ monumental Convention on the... more
Laws of the Sea assembles scholars from law, geography, anthropology, and environmental humanities to consider the possibilities of a critical ocean approach in legal studies.
Unlike the United Nations’ monumental Convention on the Law of the Sea, which imagines one comprehensive constitutional framework for governing the ocean, Laws of the Sea approaches oceanic law in plural and dynamic ways. Critically engaging contemporary concerns about the fate of the ocean, the collection’s twelve chapters range from hydrothermal vents through the continental shelf and marine genetic resources to coastal communities in France, Sweden, Florida, and Indonesia. Documenting the longstanding binary of land and sea, the chapters pose a fundamental challenge to European law’s “terracentrism” and its pervasive influence on juridical modes of knowing and making the world. Together, the chapters ask: is contemporary Eurocentric law—and international law in particular—capable of moving away from its capitalist and colonial legacies, established through myriad oceanic abstractions and classifications, toward more amphibious legalities?
Unlike the United Nations’ monumental Convention on the Law of the Sea, which imagines one comprehensive constitutional framework for governing the ocean, Laws of the Sea approaches oceanic law in plural and dynamic ways. Critically engaging contemporary concerns about the fate of the ocean, the collection’s twelve chapters range from hydrothermal vents through the continental shelf and marine genetic resources to coastal communities in France, Sweden, Florida, and Indonesia. Documenting the longstanding binary of land and sea, the chapters pose a fundamental challenge to European law’s “terracentrism” and its pervasive influence on juridical modes of knowing and making the world. Together, the chapters ask: is contemporary Eurocentric law—and international law in particular—capable of moving away from its capitalist and colonial legacies, established through myriad oceanic abstractions and classifications, toward more amphibious legalities?
Humans have dumped ‘stuff’ in oceans in a particularly concentrated way since the Industrial Revolution, the effects of which we now note as evidence of the Anthropocene – or the Anthropocean. In this article, I consider what the oceans... more
Humans have dumped ‘stuff’ in oceans in a particularly concentrated way since the Industrial Revolution, the effects of which we now note as evidence of the Anthropocene – or the Anthropocean. In this article, I consider what the oceans now return to us in the form of pollution. I trace the production of a mercurial ocean through the production of mercury as it is taken up and transported by atmospheric and oceanic currents from artisanal mines in Asia, and transformed into methylmercury. As methylmercury, it enters into the food chain and eventuates in the diets of certain populations, especially those in Nordic countries, with toxic effects into future generations. This, I argue, produces a particular ocean, one with temporal and spatial multiplicity. The flow of mercury is gendered and racialized with women workers in Indonesia being primarily affected while women in the north are the recipients of methylmercury in the form of toxic fish. I engage with scientific research on merc...
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[Extract] Reading the articles for this themed section had me reeling. They are each so individually scrumptious, and together so rich that my head and stomach went in all sorts of different directions at once. Given the speculation tht... more
[Extract] Reading the articles for this themed section had me reeling. They are each so individually scrumptious, and together so rich that my head and stomach went in all sorts of different directions at once. Given the speculation tht the enteric nervous sysstem is "our body's second brain", reading these papers stimulated several gut feelings. Certainly, the description of competitive eaters made me feel quite queasy. But as I've argued recently (Probyn, 2016a), feeling seasick and being at all sea can be useful prompts to thinking differently.
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This publication reports the findings from a combined quantitative and qualitative study of Australian working women, aged under 40. It draws together four separate data sources: a nationally representative online survey of (n=2,109)... more
This publication reports the findings from a combined quantitative and qualitative study of Australian working women, aged under 40. It draws together four separate data sources: a nationally representative online survey of (n=2,109) working women under 40; a smaller comparative survey of (n=502) working men under 40; additional boosted survey sample among (n=53) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander working women aged under 40; and the findings from five focus groups of (n=41) working women under 40. Quantitative fieldwork was conducted between September and October, while qualitative fieldwork was conducted in November 2017.
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In November 1991, the Australian Academy of the Humanities held a symposium under the title Beyond the Disciplines: the New Humanities. The symposium set out to explore the ‘battering’ that the traditional humanities had received ‘from... more
In November 1991, the Australian Academy of the Humanities held a symposium under the title Beyond the Disciplines: the New Humanities. The symposium set out to explore the ‘battering’ that the traditional humanities had received ‘from radical critiques of their methods and politics’ in the context of the ‘Theory Wars’.1 It did so by bringing together representatives of the ‘New Humanities’ to address six topics.
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This article canvasses a broad range of fish representations across several disciplines. It asks what cultural studies can learn from scientific representation of fish, and argues that in turn cultural studies can be a nuanced... more
This article canvasses a broad range of fish representations across several disciplines. It asks what cultural studies can learn from scientific representation of fish, and argues that in turn cultural studies can be a nuanced understanding of the work of images. The objective of the article is to open debate about fish and their sustainability beyond discrete disciplines and/or ideologies. This, it is argued, is crucial if we are to go beyond a simplified cultural politics of fish.
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For those who grew up in middle Amer i ca in the last century, Chicken of the Sea might evoke white tuna fish on white bread sandwiches, maybe with a glass of milk: a nice white lunch. For some, the mention of chicken brings back racist... more
For those who grew up in middle Amer i ca in the last century, Chicken of the Sea might evoke white tuna fish on white bread sandwiches, maybe with a glass of milk: a nice white lunch. For some, the mention of chicken brings back racist ste reo types of African Americans through food choices. As Psyche Williams-Forson writes: "a black-faced man with large, extended red lips, was typically symbolic of how whites would ste reo type black people with food to endorse vari ous products like fried chicken. " 1 Here the transformation is: "a celebrated food of the South. .. turns into an object of ridicule and defacement. " 2 For others, chicken of the sea is just downright confusing. An infamous moment on The Newlyweds in 2003 had Jessica Simpson wondering what she is eating: "I know it's tuna, but it says chicken by the sea. Is that stupid?" 3 While Simpson had to play the role of the blond bimbo, her question for non-Americans is maybe even more hilarious than it was for those who knew the reference, bringing to mind the image of chickens strolling along "by the sea" eating tuna.
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Short chapter on the use of emotions in research with case study on anorexia.
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Dead bodies wash up on shores. Years prior to this tragedy, in 2006, thirty thousand migrants managed to reach the Canary Islands—with some seven thousand people who drowned trying to make the crossing (International Organization for... more
Dead bodies wash up on shores. Years prior to this tragedy, in 2006, thirty thousand migrants managed to reach the Canary Islands—with some seven thousand people who drowned trying to make the crossing (International Organization for Migration [IOM] 2018). The lucky ones arrived on Fuerte- ventura, described in travel brochures as “a veritable oasis on the Atlantic. White and luminous, the island boasts huge stretches of golden shiny beaches washed by crystal-clear blue waters that will make you feel as if you were in paradise.”1 They came to the Canaries in cayucos or pateras or pirogues, one thousand miles across open ocean in small wooden boats held together with rusty nails (McAllister and Prentice 2018), migrants fleeing poverty. That poverty has different roots but a major one is the lack of, or more properly, the theft of fish. West Africa has become a global hub of illegal fishing, losing an estimated $1.3 billion a year to the trade, according to a report from the Africa Progress Panel, with Senegal alone accounting for $300 mil- lion—around 2 percent of its gross domestic product (McAllister and Prentice 2018). China’s “distant-water fishing” fleet (e.g., those that fish outside of their two-hundred-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone [EEZ]) is a prime culprit, which targets West African nations; their vessels report only an esti- mated 8 percent of their catch (Jacobs 2017).
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Why read Sustaining Seas? It is as simple as this: the seas sustain all life. This edited book emerges from conversations across several disciplines, and including practitioners of different specialities (artists, writers, planners,... more
Why read Sustaining Seas? It is as simple as this: the seas sustain all life.
This edited book emerges from conversations across several disciplines, and including practitioners of different specialities (artists, writers, planners, policy makers) about how to sustain the seas, as they sustain us. Sustaining Seas: Oceanic space and the politics of care aims to build a better understanding of what it means to care for aquatic places and their biocultural communities. The book is truly interdisciplinary and brings together a wide range of authors including, academics from diverse fields (architecture, science, cultural studies, law), artists, fisheries managers, and Indigenous Traditional Owners. It provides readers with new theoretical framings, as well as grounded case studies with a wide geographical and cultural breadth. This book assumes that understanding complexity, including social, cultural, ecological and economic interconnections, is crucial to any solution.
Sustaining the seas is one of the most pressing global challenges for the planet and all her inhabitants.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786612830/Sustaining-Seas-Oceanic-Space-and-the-Politics-of-Care
This edited book emerges from conversations across several disciplines, and including practitioners of different specialities (artists, writers, planners, policy makers) about how to sustain the seas, as they sustain us. Sustaining Seas: Oceanic space and the politics of care aims to build a better understanding of what it means to care for aquatic places and their biocultural communities. The book is truly interdisciplinary and brings together a wide range of authors including, academics from diverse fields (architecture, science, cultural studies, law), artists, fisheries managers, and Indigenous Traditional Owners. It provides readers with new theoretical framings, as well as grounded case studies with a wide geographical and cultural breadth. This book assumes that understanding complexity, including social, cultural, ecological and economic interconnections, is crucial to any solution.
Sustaining the seas is one of the most pressing global challenges for the planet and all her inhabitants.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786612830/Sustaining-Seas-Oceanic-Space-and-the-Politics-of-Care
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“The sea is empty” (cited in Jacobs 2017): I remember thinking this some years ago snorkeling in the Mediterranean off Sicily. Tourists prodded at a poor lone octopus, seemingly the only life in what looked like a barren moonscape of an... more
“The sea is empty” (cited in Jacobs 2017): I remember thinking this some years ago snorkeling in the Mediterranean off Sicily. Tourists prodded at a poor lone octopus, seemingly the only life in what looked like a barren moonscape of an ocean.
Of course, the sea wasn’t empty. It was filled with memories and material shards of history—of shipwrecks and bodies. On October 3, 2013, one of the worst migrant shipwrecks occurred on the coast of Lampedusa off Sicily when a boat carrying 500 passengers capsized leaving only 155 survivors.
Dead bodies wash up on shores. Years prior to this tragedy, in 2006, thirty thousand migrants managed to reach the Canary Islands—with some seven thousand people who drowned trying to make the crossing (International Organization for Migration [IOM] 2018). ....
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786612830/Sustaining-Seas-Oceanic-Space-and-the-Politics-of-Care
Of course, the sea wasn’t empty. It was filled with memories and material shards of history—of shipwrecks and bodies. On October 3, 2013, one of the worst migrant shipwrecks occurred on the coast of Lampedusa off Sicily when a boat carrying 500 passengers capsized leaving only 155 survivors.
Dead bodies wash up on shores. Years prior to this tragedy, in 2006, thirty thousand migrants managed to reach the Canary Islands—with some seven thousand people who drowned trying to make the crossing (International Organization for Migration [IOM] 2018). ....
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786612830/Sustaining-Seas-Oceanic-Space-and-the-Politics-of-Care
Research Interests:
Abstract: In this chapter I seek to queer the genre of food writing, to render it athwart. I explore the writing of MFK Fisher who I argue who lets us see how food writing reveals and produces the full force of what Gilles Deleuze and... more
Abstract:
In this chapter I seek to queer the genre of food writing, to render it athwart. I explore the writing of MFK Fisher who I argue who lets us see how food writing reveals and produces the full force of what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call “the obligatory, necessary, or permitted interminglings of bodies”. These bodies – texts, descriptions of food, feeding and eating, render messy any distinction between and among them. This calls forth a style of writing that seeks not the comfort of an identity in food but rather revels in what food can unleash. Drawing on EK Sedgwick’s understanding of queer as athwart, I argue that food writing has the potential to make present the materiality of eating, writing and food and exemplify the always attendant “cruel optimism” (Berlant) of those pairings.
In this chapter I seek to queer the genre of food writing, to render it athwart. I explore the writing of MFK Fisher who I argue who lets us see how food writing reveals and produces the full force of what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call “the obligatory, necessary, or permitted interminglings of bodies”. These bodies – texts, descriptions of food, feeding and eating, render messy any distinction between and among them. This calls forth a style of writing that seeks not the comfort of an identity in food but rather revels in what food can unleash. Drawing on EK Sedgwick’s understanding of queer as athwart, I argue that food writing has the potential to make present the materiality of eating, writing and food and exemplify the always attendant “cruel optimism” (Berlant) of those pairings.
Research Interests:
An early attempt to think through how gendered, sexed, raced experience can be used in cultural theory.
In 2009 an international team of scientists working with Clean Seas Tuna managed to get captive Southern Bluefin tuna to spawn on land. This was heralded as an international break through and a first step in producing wholly sustainable... more
In 2009 an international team of scientists working with Clean Seas Tuna managed to get captive Southern Bluefin tuna to spawn on land. This was heralded as an international break through and a first step in producing wholly sustainable Bluefin tuna, a highly lucrative product. In this talk I want to explore how human populations have interacted with tuna and how this shapes identities in particular ways in the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. To adequately capture the complexity of the seafood market takes us into ‘research in the wild’, as Michel Callon characterises ‘the new forms of techno-science-society interactions, in which non-scientists work with scientists to produce and disseminate knowledge.’ (2003) Callon’s earlier work on the scallop industry in France pointed to a new way of understanding the dynamics of markets. However he, along with much of ANT, ignores the sensuality of the material connections they trace. In this talk I will engage with what I have previously called a rhizo-ethnography of bodies as a necessary addition to his conception of markets. We will begin to see how human and tuna appetites forge historical and sensual networks essential to the promotion of sustainable seafood markets, in ways that open out the question of sustainability.
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Research Interests:
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ANXIOUS PROXIMITIES The space-time of concepts Elspeth Probyn We agreed that perhaps distance in space or time weakened all feelings and all sorts of guilty conscience. (Diderot, in Ginzburg, 1994: 110) Time/space The enormity of the... more
ANXIOUS PROXIMITIES The space-time of concepts Elspeth Probyn We agreed that perhaps distance in space or time weakened all feelings and all sorts of guilty conscience. (Diderot, in Ginzburg, 1994: 110) Time/space The enormity of the terms strikes as I wander the ...
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With the rise of pride - national pride, gay pride, black pride, fat pride - shame, the "sickness of the soul," has acquired a bad reputation. While the repudiation of some forms and consequences of societal shame are undoubtedly... more
With the rise of pride - national pride, gay pride, black pride, fat pride - shame, the "sickness of the soul," has acquired a bad reputation. While the repudiation of some forms and consequences of societal shame are undoubtedly necessary, Elspeth Probyn contends that this emotion is a powerful resource in rethinking who we are and who we want to be. When we blush, we are driven to question what we value about ourselves and why. Blush argues that we are all born with a capacity for shame, much as we are born with the capacity for anger or pride, and that shame, like these other emotions, can be good for us and reveal the good in us. Painfully introspective, shame demands that we question our actions and our relationship to others. Shame's physical manifestation - the blush - gives us away, connecting us to our humanity. What shames us says a great deal about our character as individuals and as a society, about our past and our desires for the future. Written in an engaging and personal style, Blush combines psychology and cultural criticism, sociology and popular science, to present a unique perspective on debates about the ethics and emotion of identity.
This analysis of the ethical challenges posed by new media formats, technologies and audiences considers many aspects of these emerging genres and technologies. It reveals how they work and are reshaping the public sphere, as well as how... more
This analysis of the ethical challenges posed by new media formats, technologies and audiences considers many aspects of these emerging genres and technologies. It reveals how they work and are reshaping the public sphere, as well as how the connections between product and viewer, and producer and media consumer, are being changed by new shows and formats. With so much interest in contemporary media forms and so many heated debates about media ethics, this book is essential to journalists, media practitioners and theorists.
What is there a new explosion of interest in authentic ethnic foods and exotic cooking shows, where macho chefs promote sensual adventures in the kitchen? Why do we watch TV ads that promise more sex if we serve the right breakfast... more
What is there a new explosion of interest in authentic ethnic foods and exotic cooking shows, where macho chefs promote sensual adventures in the kitchen? Why do we watch TV ads that promise more sex if we serve the right breakfast cereal? Why is the hunger strike such a potent political tool? Food inevitably engages questions of sensuality and power, of our connections to our bodies and to our world. Carnal Appetites brilliantly uses the lens of food and eating to ask how we eat into culture, eat into identities, indeed eat into ourselves. Drawing on interviews, theory, and her own war with anorexia, Probyn argues that food is replacing sex in our imagination and experience of bodily pleasure. Our culinary cravings and habits express the turmoil in gender roles, in families, and even in the world economy, where famine coexists with plenty. Probyn explores these dark interconnections to forge a new visceral ethics rooted in the language of hunger and satiety, disgust and pleasure, gluttony and restraint. From the fat pride movement and diet fads to genetically altered grain and colonial cannibalism, Carnal Appetites looks at what we eat to tell us who we are.
Outside Belongings argues against a psychological depth model of identity--one in which individuals possess an intrinsic quality that guarantees authentic belonging. Instead, Probyn proposes a model of identity that takes into account the... more
Outside Belongings argues against a psychological depth model of identity--one in which individuals possess an intrinsic quality that guarantees authentic belonging. Instead, Probyn proposes a model of identity that takes into account the desires of individuals, and groups of individuals, to belong. The main ideas she considers--"the outside", "the surface", and "belonging"--allow her to articulate, in concrete terms, her precise concerns about sexuality and nationality.
Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but... more
Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but also explores what runs underneath and within all sexualities, discovering what is fundamentally weird and strange about all bodies, all carnalities.
Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard.
Sexy Bodies makes new connections between and amongst bodies, cruising the borders of the obscene, the pleasurable, the desirable and the hitherto unspoken rethinking sexuality anew as deeply and strangely sexy.
Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard.
Sexy Bodies makes new connections between and amongst bodies, cruising the borders of the obscene, the pleasurable, the desirable and the hitherto unspoken rethinking sexuality anew as deeply and strangely sexy.
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Faced with the seemingly enormous difficulty of representing `others', many theorists working in Cultural Studies have been turning to themselves as a way of speaking about the personal. In Sexing the Self Elspeth Probyn tackles this... more
Faced with the seemingly enormous difficulty of representing `others', many theorists working in Cultural Studies have been turning to themselves as a way of speaking about the personal. In Sexing the Self Elspeth Probyn tackles this question of the sex of the self, an issue of vital importance to feminists and yet neglected by feminist theory until now, to suggest that there are ways of using our gendered selves in order to speak and theorize non-essential but embodied selves. Arguing for `feminisms with attitude', Sexing the Self ranges across a wide range of theoretical strands, drawing upon a body of literature from early Cultural Studies to Anglo-American feminist literary criticism, from `identity debates' to Foucault's `care of the self'.