So What? Lectures

What is it about those rare and fleeting moments of musical beauty that fully captivate a listener’s attention? Does a composer calculate such junctures or are they happy accidents? How could a composer shape and guide the listener’s experience to create these events? Does detailed analysis of the notes tell us all we need to know to explain them? From Beethoven’s Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 to Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah, as in many other works before and since, there are precise moments where a listener may experience a superb glimpse of ‘musical truth’. Understanding how and why they happen calls for an awareness of the psychoacoustic and social contexts for the musical experience and has unavoidable aesthetic implications for the way a composer thinks about music.

The globalization of social (economic, cultural, environmental) relations has generated a new need for people who have little or nothing in common with others to create community with each other without giving up their differences. The traditional understanding of community was that people want to be together because they feel that they share something, if only the same portion of the world. So what does it mean that people now want or need to be in communities without having anything in common, no shared territories or identities or even values? How can a bond between people be established when there is nothing that unites them? How can radical difference make for communal forms of life? Recent continental philosophy has struggled with these kinds of paradoxes. In this lecture I shall discuss one contribution to these questions found in the work of the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito. This work brings to light two dimensions of community that have so far not been taken into proper account: First, the idea that community reflects an economical relation where an infinite debt ties the members to each other through continuous gift-giving. Second, the idea that community is inscribed in the horizon of life and reaches beyond the human to all forms of life. In contrast to the communist, communitarian and communicative understandings of community, this presentation argues for what could be called a biopolitical conception of community.

In a world maimed by war, climate change, economic dysfunction and political failures, the flows of migration are as intense as they have ever been. Child migrants are central actors in this movement of people across borders and continents. As those in receiving countries such as Australia know well, however, the child migrant is not always kindly greeted on arrival.

As recently as November 2012, the current Minister for Immigration commented that 'It doesn't matter whether you're a child, it doesn't matter whether you're an unaccompanied minor, it doesn't matter whether you have a health condition, if you're fit enough to get on a boat, you're fit enough to end up in offshore processing'. Is this the only way to think about journeys, arrivals and settlement?

The lecture looks at how the child migrant has figured in world cinema since 1939, and argues that the child retains a special power in describing, performing and critiquing the great movements and translations that make the world global.

There is a long-standing prejudice that early romantic philosophy developed in the footsteps of Fichtean foundationalism, and that it was uncritical of the totalitarian seizure of power of subjectivity over Being or Difference allegedly characteristic of J.G. Fichte’s thought. Drawing on the recently developed research method of ‘Constellation Research’, this lecture shows that in fact Early Romanticism was skeptical about foundationalist pretensions, respectful of subjectivity without promoting it into a ‘highest point of philosophy’, ironical with regard to ultimate knowledge claims, ontologically realistic, and in general more modern than so far thought.

Why should incorporated bodies count as legal persons? And what rights and responsibilities should they have? Should they enjoy rights that may trump the rights of individuals? Should they be able to compete with individuals for political influence? Should they be held responsible for the wrongdoing of their members or agents? And do such questions call for similar answers with corporate persons as different as companies, unions, churches, parties and states? The philosophy of incorporation, shaped by Roman jurists, a Papal bull and the South Sea Bubble, may help to shed some light on these issues.

What is sex education? Who should teach it? What are the most effective strategies? When and where should it be taught? These are just some of the questions to be examined in this lecture. After three decades research and international experience, much has been learned about how to best to teach about sex, sexuality and relationships. Despite this, there remains controversy and few countries have implemented the kinds of programs that are known to be effective. The conflict between science and strongly held beliefs makes reasoned and rational discussion difficult. So, what should we do next?

Big is back across a wide range of historical fields. More historians are stretching space, to create international, transnational and global histories. Others are expanding time, to pursue Big History, Deep History and the history of the Anthropocene. What explains this broadening of horizons? And what does it mean for the future of history? This lecture will make a case for history as a discipline of social and political transformation amid crises of global governance, rising inequality and anthropogenic climate change.

When animals become audible in the city, it is often annoying, sometimes unnerving, but also now and again a kind of annunciation.  Animals are an anomaly in the urban soundscape, which seems to be populated and made intelligible to itself exclusively by sounds of human origin. And yet cities have never become free of animals, which are all the time finding ways of recolonising urban space, and insinuating themselves into the syntax of its sounds. I will use this talk to listen out for and amplify the animal signatures in different urban soundscapes. Perhaps the sonic infiltrations of animals are not so much a haunting as a harbinger of a new, more convivial world-city.

Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy of nonviolent resistance, social justice, and respect for the environment is only increasing in its relevance given our current global challenges. His granddaughter Ela Gandhi has continued this legacy. Her lecture will discuss the importance of strategic interventions in education to promote positive action on nonviolence at various levels of academia by building networks of educators with a similar level of vision and commitment.

Aside from its musical genius, Wagner’s Ring cycle remains one of the most staggering achievements of the 19th-century stage, and has continued to stimulate innovative dramaturgy amidst the present Wagner revival. This lecture will focus on two interrelated topics: the relationship between the figure of Wotan and political fields of force; and the role of Siegfried as a way into Wagnerian theatrical psychology—the composer/dramatist’s specific ‘system’ of thinking psychological motivation.

Perhaps the most widely accepted understanding of the idea of personal freedom is that it can be defined in negative terms as absence of interference. My lecture begins by noting that, because the concept of interference is such a complex one, this general agreement has turned out to be compatible with a great deal of disagreement about the conditions under which it may be legitimate to claim that freedom has been infringed. I am chiefly concerned, however, with those writers who have wished to challenge the core assumption that freedom is best understood as absence of interference. Some doubt whether the presence of freedom is best defined in terms of an absence at all, and instead attempt to connect freedom with specific patterns of moral behaviour But other critics -- on whom my lecture will end by focusing -- agree that the presence of freedom is best understood as the absence of something, while arguing that freedom fundamentally consists in the absence not of acts of interference but rather of broader conditions of arbitrary domination and dependence. I conclude by noting some of the implications of this view of freedom for the proper conduct of democratic government.

We all know that education matters. In Australia, as elsewhere, an individual’s educational attainment is a significant predictor of success and wellbeing throughout life. At the same time, we know through experience just how hard it is to lift educational outcomes in a sustained way, and for all students. Research tells us the teachers are the most significant in-school influence on student outcomes, but has much less to say about how to improve teaching quality in ways that directly raise student achievement. This lecture will look at the shared role of universities and education systems as we seek to make a critical difference in Australian education – one that will ensure our ongoing prosperity, as individuals and as a society.

For Australia, the rise of China and India combines vast economic gain with challenges in security and values. The Asian giants have become principal markets for Australia's resources, major sources of human capital, and critical strategic players in the region. China brings Australia greater economic benefits than India, but its growing military power, combined with differences over values, poses security anxieties. Thus, Canberra has tried to intensify diplomatic engagement and economic enmeshment with both powers, yet is also seeking to hegde against Chinese power. This involves strengthening Australia's defence posture, enhancing the U.S alliance and forging new kinds of strategic ties with Asian partners, including India. In the wake of President Obama's 2011 visit, Labor's policy shift on uranium exports to India, and a challenging phase in China's regional diplomacy, this lecture will raise questions about the nature and viability of an Australian strategy to sustain good relations with the giants of the Asian century.

Across the western world, since the latter part of the twentieth century, people with mental and cognitive disabilities have been funneled into criminal justice systems, remanded, sentenced and imprisoned in larger numbers than previously and in far higher proportions than their presence in the general population. Australian criminal justice systems are no exception. The use of societal punishment and control systems in this manner is a deeply disturbing turn. People with these disabilities who become enmeshed with the police, courts and prisons are largely from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and communities, with Indigenous Australians significantly over-represented amongst them. As criminal justice processes are primarily to assess guilt and administer punishment, they tend to intensify experiences of disability; prison is not a therapeutic place. So why are there so many people with mental and cognitive disability incarcerated? Evidence from recent studies and cases suggest that at heart, this is a matter of how Australian society supports, enacts social justice for and affords human rights to the most vulnerable people.

As the world enters the fourth decade of the HIV epidemic, progress is finally noted in the fight against this global pandemic. Access to effective treatment has in particular increased, with beneficial effects on the health and life expectancy of people living with HIV. At the same time, in Australia and other resource rich countries, new HIV infections continue to occur at high rates and have been rising throughout the last decade. Treatment can play a role in reducing the transmission of HIV, but treatment alone is not enough and cost effective behavioural prevention approaches are available that in recent years have recieved much less priority. HIV prevention may in the future benefit from new biomedical approaches, including those that capitalise on the use of treatment. To date, however, evidence of the success of biomedical HIV prevention in real-life conditions is limited and many of those approaches will continue to rely on the behaviours of individuals and communities. These behaviours are shaped by a myriad of social factors and HIV prevention responses that reflect appropriate understanding of the complexity of human behaviour remain critical in achieving sustained success. This presentation will highlight the exciting new contributions contemporary theorising of social behaviour is making to HIV prevention.

Three decades of neo-liberal privatization has meant the systemic destruction of the public sphere. The global economic crisis presents new possibilities for fundamental mutations of public/urban space, driven by 'emerging' cities like Shanghai, Mumbai and Lagos. If the global city was topographical, these mega-cities are topological, spaces of infolded atmospheres. In Walter Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' justice was a violence that nullified the commodity and law. Benjamin's was a temporal, messianic critique. We must ask what kind of spatial violence can create a contemporary justice of new publics in both the emerging world and the West.

?The academic thesis of 'postmodernism' is some thirty years old, but in the three decades since it was declared dead, Modernism has shown distinct signs of life, if not 'undeath'. On the one hand, a new academic industry has emerged, under the banner of the 'New Modernism Studies', resurrecting and reframing countless acts of cultural Modernism; on the other, the work of key contemporary artists such as J. M. Coetzee, Michael Haneke and Gerhard Richter can scarcely be accounted for outside of a broadly Modernist framework. Postmodernism, as a distinct style of cultural reaction, today seems deader than Modernism. In this lecture, I take stock of the current situation in terms of the uneven development of geographical cultural domains, and of media technologies, within an overarching economic drive toward 'convergence culture' and digitization. Rather than see Modernism as an exhausted phase of cultural development, I argue that it is more appropriate to understand it as an ongoing possibility within the coordinates of the present—a possibility beset by drawbacks as much as it is saturated with prestige value.

Increasingly the richer world has become dependent on migrant women workers from the poorer regions to do their care and domestic work. As developed countries face a 'care crunch' with an ageing population, more women in paid employment and a squeeze on public expenditure, they are turning, by design or by default, to this as a solution. What are the dynamics behind these international 'care chains' and 'care drains'?

Drawing from her research Fiona will explain personal and political consequences of this phenomenon. She will argue that it poses a major challenge for global justice.

Often marketed as a rural idyll, with all the comforts of tradition, Ireland has also been modelled as the crucible of high literary modernism and, more recently, the high-tech gateway to Europe. Through consideration of the anomalous branding of ‘Ireland’, and the increasing involvement of the Irish diaspora, this lecture examines the shifting and travelling meanings of Irishness in a global era.

Across the rich democracies, social policy changes over the last two decades have been driven by a concern with "activation" and economic self-sufficiency, for women and mothers no less than for men and fathers. This is an epochal shift in social policy, politics and gender relations. Earlier family and policy systems supported women's caregiving and met social care needs in ways that were accompanied by gender inequality. Today, state policies are only partly successful in supporting care needs and facilitating mothers' employment, and have contradictory effects on gender relations.

What would it take to develop political and policy support for both social care needs and gender equality?

Ann Orloff is Professor of Sociology, Gender Studies and Political Science at NorthWestern University, USA and chair of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee 19 on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and her B.A. from Harvard University.

Orloff's areas of interest include political sociology, social policy, sociology of gender, historical and comparative sociology, and social and feminist theory. Her research focuses on gendered social policies and feminist politics in the developed world.

Orloff is currently at work on a manuscript, Farewell to Maternalism? State policies, Feminist Politics, and Mothers' Employment, that examines the shifts in the gendered logics of welfare and employment policies in the U.S. and other capitalist democracies and the implications of those shifts for feminism.