‘Can we chat?’ ‘Yeah, sure, anytime’ is what the casual academic is meant to say when facing this question from a permanent academic: particularly one who has employed them in the past. ‘Yeah, sure’ is probably the safest answer for a casual to give to almost any request from The Faculty. You know, if they…More
Tag Archives: Teaching
Why marking essays is good for my soul
I came to university as a mature aged student. I was 26, hadn’t even finished high school. Now I’m ‘that guy’: completed two degrees with distinction averages, got a first class honours, almost finished a PhD that’s heavy on the critical theory, got a giant brain crush on Foucault. (Image: http://weknowmemes.com/generator/meme/foucault/284339/) Fourteen year-old aerosol-sniffing me…More
CACS Case Studies: Uncanny
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. UNCANNY (Image: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/040210-who-is-afraid-of-the-uncanny-valley) UNCANNY (unheimlich) That which is unfamiliar—or more literally, un-homely—in the familiar or homely (what we know). In a famous essay, ‘Das Unheimliche’ (1919), Freud argued that the uncanny is the feeling we get when an experience that occurred by chance…More
CACS Case studies: Discipline
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. DISCIPLINE (Image: http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/5327/untitled-humor?page=1)Concept: DISCIPLINE Michel Foucault‘s concept to describe a broad scale movement he detected in European history away from spectacular and grotesque forms of punishment towards more subtle modes of coercion that take the individual body as their target. Commencing in the…More
CACS Case studies: Space
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. SPACE (Image: http://bizarro.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/172/2014/02/bz-strip-02-20-14.jpg) CONCEPT: SPACE At once the container of everyday life (i.e. where we live) and an active agent in it (a social-acting force). An incredibly wide-reaching term, with complex and even contradictory points of reference, it can refer to either the…More
CACS Case studies: Affect
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. AFFECT BEFORE CLASS READ: Loh, Maria 2011, ‘Outscreaming the Laocoön: Sensation, Special Affects, and the Moving Image’, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 393-414. CONCEPT: AFFECT That which the body and mind suffers (in the classical philosophical sense), which means simply…More
CACS Case studies: Body
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. CONCEPT BODY: Critical theory’s interest in the body (usually, though not exclusively, taken to mean the human body) is quite diverse and dates back to French philosopher René Descartes’ s famous splitting of the mind from the body. With the exception of Baruch…More
CACS Case studies: Aboriginality
Background for this post is here, rest of the series is here. ABORIGINALITY In this case study we look at concepts of power, race and identity from an indigenous perspective. We look at the social and cultural conditions for the establishment and critique of power both historically and in Australia today. We focus in particular…More
Angela J Williams 
