2005 Handbooks

The Popular Culture of Resistance offers a study of the notions of resistance, opposition and sexual difference from a range of philosophical and political perspectives. Examples are taken from contemporary popular culture in Australia.

We look at men and women in Australian prisons; the Pauline Hanson movement and the gun lobby in Australia; the apparent decline of unionism and the rise of new anti-capitalist protests; the changing dynamics of home and work; the evolution of youth subcultures and countercultures; the gendered resistance of young urban Aborigines; as well as questions of incorporation and resistance in relation to mainstream commodities such as Barbie dolls and computer games.

An intellectual focus throughout the unit is on symbolic oppositions and the possibility of their transformation. We consider the conceptual frameworks of Marxist dialectics, semiotics, deconstruction, feminist and queer theory for ways of thinking about this possibility.