Intellectuals and Communities Cultural Studies Conference 4-7 December 1994 University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract

Reading over my notes of this conference, its joint sessions, and its individual papers, I find myself pondering a question. How long can academics in Cultural Studies continue to characterise themselves as marginal, excluded, other, while at the same time proclaiming the centrality of their kinds of analysis and interests to everything everywhere? This paradoxical self-image seemed to surface in paper after paper. In a strange way, it was a productive tension, but it left me feeling rather confused, and somewhat marginal to cultural studies, at least the ways in which key players seem to be attempting to constitute it. Many different concepts of both 'intellectual' and 'community were aired at the conference, but debate was never really joined about these differences or how such terms might be related. Perhaps the acrimony of some sessions at the previous conference, in Melbourne in December 1993 had made participants this year wary of inviting retaliation. So a kind of disengaged pluralism prevailed, where words were used to opposite purposes without anyone actually pointing it out. Surely there is some mode of interaction which is between academic politeness and furious polemic, drawing perhaps from both. With so many papers on offer each session, it was hard to choose. I can comment only on the ones I heard. As one would expect with the theme of the conference, a great deal of self examination took place, among Australian paper givers, though the international visitors were on a different tack, and must have found a good deal of the discussion quite mystifying. In the opening session's discussion, John Frow and Meaghan Morris, raised some old ghosts of discussions about policy, the public sphere, and the marginality of cultural studies intellectuals within it. More interesting, because less predictable, the difficulties of being a public intellectual who is Aboriginal were displayed in following papers by Jackie Huggins and Philip Morrissey. Their decision not to take questions meant that what might have been the most fruitful discussion of the conference was forestalled, and atomised into many different lunchtime conversations. Theme sessions on Intellectuals, and on Communities continued throughout the conference, and many papers addressed these issues. Ghassan Hage posited the possibility of an 'intellectual politics' which would not collapse what is specific about intellectual practice into demands for political engagement. This position resonated strongly with Morris's earlier criticism of 'ethical aerobics' in the field. Greg Noble's paper on the Australian New Left reminded listeners that intellectuals have a tendency to universalise their own historically specific experience, and to constitute themselves as the subject of history. Given both the