Academic Criticism Research Articles

Falsifying falsification

Abstract Almost a decade after the UKSC’s decision of AIB v Redler, there remains significant academic criticism and judicial scepticism towards the employment of causal inquiries in equity’s remedial response to trustees’ misapplications of trust property. This article seeks to defend AIB, and the causal principles enunciated therein, from those criticisms. It does so by arguing that the interpretative arguments and normative justifications propounded in the literature in favour of falsification orders rest on shaky foundations. Consequently, it takes the view that the remedial principles espoused in AIB should be broadly accepted as representing equity’s general remedial approach to custodial breaches of trust.

“Painting the Woods into Existence”: Australian Fiction on the Value of the Arts

ABSTRACT This article analyses two works of contemporary Australian fiction—Wayne Macauley’s Caravan Story and Julie Koh’s “Inquiry Regarding the Recent Goings-On in the Woods”—and places their depictions of artists under attack in the context of Australian cultural policy history. Despite the surreal hyperviolence contained in these stories, their concerns neatly align with the academic criticisms of cultural policy in their respective eras. Caravan Story, published at the end of the John Howard era, shows how a focus on economic return in lieu of artistic merit can erode the value artists place on themselves and their work. “Inquiry”, published soon after Minister for the Arts George Brandis had significantly reduced available arts funding, represents the drastic effect the funding cuts had on artists and the passionate community response. The texts are further connected by their optimistic endings, contextualised here through an exploration of the artists’ biographies and their struggles to push back against cultural demands of economic success. This article shows how these experimental works of fiction make the case for the intrinsic value of the arts through narratives that reject the economic imperative and in their very constitution as creative works.

The lost shape of words: reading the post-literate condition in Ali Smith’s Like (1997)

ABSTRACT This article explores the representation of ‘post-literacy’ in Ali Smith’s debut novel Like (1997). The protagonist Amy Shone – once a fellow in English an unnamed Cambridge college who wielded books and knowledge as ‘power tools’ over others – mysteriously loses the ability to read and to write. I argue that Smith uses her protagonist’s experience of post-literacy to critique the scholarly regimentation of reading in academic literary criticism. As the narrative charts the protagonist’s loss and eventual recovery of literacy, Smith uses puns and wordplay to disrupt academic reading habits, in the process re-enchanting modes of aesthetic appreciation and interpretive enquiry through the inquisitive eyes of Amy’s seven-year-old daughter. This article uses Like, and its framing of post-literacy, to intervene in emergent discourses on the postcritical. It asks: how does academic criticism, including postcriticism, entrench ideas of written literacy as superior? How does Like challenge this? What are the epistemological possibilities of post-literacy (as a state of being, mode of reading, way of knowing), as they emerge in Like through Amy’s journey? How might they challenge, serve, or disrupt academic styles of reading – that is, the kinds of reading taught in the university classroom or valorised in contemporary literary studies?

Whimsical criticism

ABSTRACT For many decades, Virginia Woolf's reputation in the history of literary criticism has been as a heroic rebel and challenger to the dominant forms and institutions of literary criticism. This legacy has rightfully been celebrated. Yet this view tends to treat Woolf's idiosyncratic and whimsical writings in relation to and in opposition to the prevailing standards of academic criticism rather than as a serious, normatively coherent form of criticism in its own right. Thus, this essay takes up the hypothesis that Woolf's critical writing constitutes a methodologically coherent criticism, even while it understands the values of reading and literature in deeply different terms. Taking up Woolf's whimsical criticism offers an important alternative practice of criticism capable of mediating between professional and everyday forms of reading. Pursuing Woolf's criticism also allows the essay to unfold some of the values that subtend and continue to shape the hidden norms of literary criticism today.

Migration Governance in South Africa

The emerging global migration governance architecture is very different from the formal multilateralism of the post-1945 era that influenced the evolution of transboundary issues of trade, the environment, and finance. States have recognised that they cannot address the challenge of migration without international cooperation. Consequently, multiple institutions co-exist across the bilateral, regional, inter-regional, and multilateral levels, through both formal and informal structures. Proponents of a 'management' approach to global migration governance, primarily countries in the Global North, have preferred to keep intergovernmental discussions regarding migration outside of the United Nations (UN) in various state-led fora in different regional and global settings. Equally, countries in the Global South, along with normative organizations such as ILO, OHCHR, and IOM, have sought to further a rights-based approach to the governance of migration within the UN. IOM's recommendation that has been faulted by academia for being biased: International migration in countries in the Global South, including South Africa, is that migration management frameworks should be anchored in sound policies and underpinned by enabling legal frameworks and implementation strategies that have the support of all stakeholders and devoid of these symptoms of a lack of coordination, coherence and cooperation. The academic critique fails to appreciate that public administration has many lenses that are not in public domains. This paper is explanatory research that is built on exploratory and descriptive research types. It goes further to determine causes and reasons, extend the theory or principles, and provide evidence to support or refute explanations or predictions. The research philosophy of this paper is pragmatism underpinned by the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge of migration governance and the role of values of the researcher. It reviewed relevant literature to the paper, applicable policies, laws, discourses, and practices following a qualitative method with reflexive and critical comparison approach combining broad, multidisciplinary literature review; evaluating of promotion, application, and treaty review of international standards; the direct participation in policy processes in two Reginal Economic Communities in Africa: EAC and IGAD. The relevant literature reviewed are publications on migration, migration management, migration governance, migration development, border management, national security, human rights, international relations, social protection, international labour and skills mobility, development, and related themes. This paper adopted the model of migration that draws upon recent developments in migration theory: the Model Mechanisms that Produce Migration. MMPM does away with the notion of root causes; the notion of 'root causes' originated in the European policy debates about conflict-driven displacement. The attempts to tackle root causes centred on humanitarian action to prevent violence, end human rights abuses, and facilitate peace-building. This flawed preventative logic was transferred to economically motivated migration with the assumption that migration can be stemmed by alleviating poverty and creating jobs. The knowledge growth about the mixed nature of migration flows and migration motivations has been recognized by governments and international agencies and is broadly applicable across different categories of migrants, including refugees. The Model is built around three steps. Migration governance in South Africa remains a complex and challenging issue, requiring a comprehensive, coordinated, and integrated approach from the government and other stakeholders described as a whole-of-society and government approach and partnership. Adequate State funding and stakeholders' participation in the implementation of the South Africa White Paper on International Migration has the potential to address many of the challenges associated with migration governance in the country and the SADC region effectively and sustainably.

(Im)possible change

Abstract This article examines three sets of infrastructures that give shape to the academic knowledge economy, namely: institutional infrastructures (universities and conferences); gate-keeping infrastructures (journals and publishers); and validation infrastructures (competitive assessments of individuals and institutions). We analyse the tensed interplay between critical perspectives in applied linguistics and the influence of academic neoliberalism. We develop our argument in three parts: (1) Academic critique and its emancipatory epistemologies are intertwined with established systems and coexist with mechanisms that perpetuate inequalities. (2) Inequalities in knowledge production reverberate in knowledge dissemination, where the hegemonic role of English as the language of academic publishing reinforces the unequal position of different actors in their academic fields. (3) These inequalities (that originate in institutional and gate-keeping infrastructures) extend to the validation of knowledge, which is entrenched in the audit culture that pervades academia and further reinforces neoliberal competitive dynamics. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities for change at these three levels.

Is She a Feminist Icon Now? Barbie 2023 Movie and a Critique of Postfeminism

This study seeks to analyse Greta Gerwig’s Barbie 2023 movie, exploring how it playfully interacts with academic criticisms by incorporating them into its narrative in a humorous way. This article intends to investigate how the movie serves as a critique of postfeminist media texts by highlighting how it affects women's psychological well-being, illustrating the ways in which it can be debilitating. The movie also highlights the unfulfilled psychological aspects of feminism, rendering it a feminist text in that regard. A thematic analysis of the movie prompts a discussion on how a character who has been a postfeminist icon transforms into a feminist narrative identity.In the beginning of the film, Barbie resides within a paradisiacal realm characterized by unwavering agency and authority. She lives in Barbieland where “every day is a great day”. This mirrors the way in which both girls and boys immerse themselves in their imaginative play, constructing their microcosms replete with agency and the role of the protagonist (Yakali Camoglu, 2020). However, as individuals mature into adulthood, the shift is palpable and the world they encounter demands a relinquishment of some of that power, leading them to transition from active agents to potentially objectified subjects in certain contexts. This is symbolised in Barbie’s own transition from Barbieland (imaginations of childhood) to the Real World (adulthood) in the end of the movie.The movie engages in the critique that Barbie encounters, as her portrayal symbolizes the unrealistic standards imposed on women, portraying them as unattainable ideals. Although her initial intent -supposedly- is to empower girls by rescuing them from the confines of stereotypical maternal roles and introducing them to diverse occupations, her portrayal inadvertently immerses them in a realm where not only physical perfection but also success in careers and relationships is expected—a realm where limitless possibilities coexist with a profound burden. This postfeminist portrayal offers a vision of boundless potential achievable through belief in self, but concurrently fosters a burdensome mental strain and self-objectification among women, entangling them in a constant cycle of self-critique.This predicament forms the crux of Barbie's critical error, leading her to relinquish her paradisiacal abode, Barbieland, and embrace the realm of real-world womanhood. By assuming the complex roles women navigate, Barbie forfeits her idyllic sanctuary and immerses herself in a world where the concept of "perfection" is inherently absent, as authenticity takes precedence over plastic constructs.After identifying the existing literature on Barbie, the article proceeds to present the theoretical framework, which is postfeminism, and outlines the research methodology. The results of the thematic analysis reveal Barbie's active engagement in critiquing the postfeminist media culture in which she was a prominent figure. This pivotal process underscores Barbie's latest contribution to the realm of media studies, transforming from a text entrenched in postfeminist ideals to embodying a feminist narrative.

Pensar la SSR en el Pacífico: Reflexiones desde la literatura

Thinking about Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Pacific region implies great research challenges. The lack of statistics and research in this regard doubles the challenges to understand the phenomenon in these territories. However, this article proposes that the literature on the development of international and national policies on SRH can serve to guide research in this regard in the Colombian Pacific. In this way, it explores the normative development on SRH at the international level, hand in hand with feminist and academic criticism in this regard. Then, it describes the national progress in policies on SRH, so that it points out the academic criticism of these advances at the international level and shows the dialogues of this national regulation with the international advances in the matter. Likewise, it locates the main criticisms of the literature on the development and implementation of normative policies on SRH, so that it shows how the main studies on the subject in Guapi and Buenaventura are inserted in these criticisms.

Who’s excellent now? The unspeakable nature of business excellence

ABSTRACT This paper, developed in the long shadow cast by the 40th anniversary of the first publication of In Search Excellence offers a critical reanalysis of the orientations of the excellence project and a reconsideration of its legacy. Observing that the excellence prevails in the face of a host of academic critiques, which highlight its methodological, conceptual and empirical failings, the paper argues that In Search of Excellence continues to exercise an influence on the theory and practice of management because critics have made the conduct of Peters and Waterman their central analytical concern. Changing this focus the paper offers reflections on the lived experience of business excellence and the choices pursued by the exemplars of excellence. Drawing upon newspaper archives and other contemporary sources the paper focuses upon two of the fourteen organizations highlighted as exemplars of excellence and demonstrates serious misconduct including bribery, corruption, racism, sexism and anti-Semitism within these settings. Noting that these features of the lived experience of business excellence have evaded academic scrutiny for some 40 years, the paper concludes with the suggestion that management pedagogy and research must now adapt to acknowledge the unspeakable nature of business excellence.

«Nude Vita» of the Post-classical Regression of the Culture Industry and Retrocausal Reversibility

The article examines the phenomenon of Western visual practices known as “nude vita.” Using the example of landmark nu-projects, the author analyzes socio-philosophical criticism of cultural-industrial post-classical regression by independent Ukrainian and international scholars who study the entropy of contemporary artistic experience. The researchers discussed emphasize the need for an immediate revision of the self-destructive art episteme of postmodernism and the return to social and individual creative consciousness of the essential reflection as a stratagem of transcendental aesthetics. As an additional argument in favor of the validity of such academic criticism, the article draws on the ideas of the modern quantum-mechanical theory of retrocausality, which highlights the importance of the historical-temporal integrity of cultural memory, since the causal effect of temporal reversibility on a subtle spiritual and intellectual level can change the past states of systems through the transformation of future events, which plays an important role in the cultural and artistic context of the here-and-now nation-building.

The promises of the bureaucratisation of intangible cultural heritage safeguarding in post-conflict regions: lessons from anthropological fieldwork in four Western Balkan states

ABSTRACT Anthropology and critical heritage studies share a rather negative view of the role of bureaucracy in heritage management as utilised by the international community in post-conflict regions. However, fieldwork findings among ethnologists working as expert bureaucrats in four Western Balkan states (Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina) suggest that the ongoing process of the ‘bureaucratisation’ of collective identities, based on UNESCO principles, holds more promise for successful conflict management than relying solely on day-to-day politics or a purely academic critique. The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage has emerged as a powerful tool for redirecting identity-based conflicts towards abstract concepts such as ‘elements’, ‘lists’, and ‘registers’. These abstractions are less susceptible to suffering than real individuals. Consequently, this approach offers a greater chance of success in mitigating conflicts. Anthropology’s most significant contribution to the global implementation of the heritage-for-peace paradigm could be to reconcile with ethnology, despite any disciplinary incongruity that may arise.

Joséphine Baker Watches Herself

The cultural phenomenon of international superstar and American ex-pat extraordinaire Joséphine Baker’s success in Paris is mediated primarily through its documentation on film transferred to video and digital formats. In many ways, Baker is a media marvel. Meanwhile, much of the engagement with Baker’s legacy, both written and embodied, takes place through well-established rubrics of theater, choreography, fiction, academic criticism, and even citation in poetry, film, and painting almost as though discussing unmediated material. Thus since we experience Baker’s legacy in reproduction, that is, in highly mediated (and ephemeral) digital formats, what would it mean to mine Baker as a repository that could be explored through digital interpretive practices? As Baker’s image endures as image, the video essay Joséphine Baker Watches Herself reframes Baker as a thinking spectator of her own work.

“A Slave Obeys”: Capital Violence and Illusory Agency in BioShock

The video game BioShock, developed by 2K Boston, depicts a world in which a laissez-faire capitalist named Andrew Ryan creates an underwater utopia called Rapture that is devoid of institutionalized oversight and entitles all of its citizens to their own production. Despite this exceptional aspiration, the game opens to a metropolis in disrepair; it showcases the broken endgame of the objectivist paradise it critiques (Yeates, 2015). Kevin Roozen suggests, in his paper “Writing is Linked to Identity,” that finding ways to engage students in a way that promotes selfhood is the key to engaging them as a community (2016). The brand of selfhood with which modern students in western capitalistic societies are familiar is often leveraged via excessive competition, and this suggests BioShock has unique insight to offer as a pedagogical locus (Kasser and Lin, 2016). Analyzing the inter-class competition within Rapture that caused the state of dissonance between its utopian ideals and dystopian practice leads to insight into the game’s take on Randian Objectivism and class inequality, an especially salient and relevant context to consider within the context of western economies replete with increasing levels of economic disparity and unrest (“Politics of Poverty”, 2010). In this essay, I approach BioShock with a Marxist perspective, aiming to showcase the game’s depictions of the social consequences for Rapture’s proletariat and bourgeoisie as meaningful insight into real-world class warfare. An important distinction I propose the game makes is in its depictions of agency, violence, and capitalism as intrinsically interconnected—they cannot be separated and are dependent on one another, because the sociological ecosystem established by the game’s narrative insists that each element is required; in so doing, my contention is that the game should be considered not only as a pop culture artifact, but as a legitimate piece of academic criticism in the vein of Marx’s Manifesto. I conclude that, in the game’s philosophical space, to be a successful capitalist, one requires agency without restriction, and the only way to exact that agency is through violence. Through its articulation of these concepts, BioShock functions as a useful vehicle in the search for accessible introductions to various economic, philosophical, and epistemological lessons.

Leading the Circular Future: South Australia’s Potential Influence on Circular Economy Development in Asia-Pacific Region

Circular economy is among the most influential concepts relating to the realization of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Advocates of the circular economy promote its potential to achieve a decoupling of growth from material consumption. Academic critiques describe the circular economy concept as poorly defined and insufficiently concerned with other problems associated with consumerism, globalization, and inequality. South Australia has built a reputation as a first mover in waste management regulations and has recently positioned itself as a leader in the transition to the circular economy. However, the Asia-Pacific region contains a wide variety of socioeconomic, geographic, and climatic conditions that impact waste generation, resource recovery, and circular economy potentials. There are questions about the appropriateness of transferring waste strategy and technologies to different settings. Therefore, this paper explores the basis of South Australia’s leadership credentials and discusses its potential influence over the region. This research is based on an analysis of policy documents produced by the South Australian Government. This study found that while multiple South Australian policy documents highlight a desire to lead in circular economy transition, South Australia’s leadership reputation had been built prior to its adoption of circular economy ideology. The South Australian Waste Strategy 2020–2025 projects a vision of circular futures aligned to circular modernism and planned circularity. The paper concludes that any transfer of waste strategy should occur with sensitivity to existing waste management systems including the informal sector. Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, should consider decentralized, low-tech circular economy projects to help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Resisting Academic Neoliberalism

What are the prospects for critique in an age of collapse? Collapsing ecosystems, “democratic decay,” vicious “culture wars,” and changing knowledge economies all impact the conditions of possibility for academic critique. Universities have become bastions of “academic neoliberalism,” driven by managerialism, rankings, and punishing overwork. Terms such as “postcritique” capture the possibility that critique has literally “run out of steam,” as Bruno Latour famously put it. This article takes the form of a staged call to arms to address some of these issues. First, it sets out to name the combination of economic and cultural forces that constitute “academic neoliberalism,” and to propose a constructive strategy against them. Second, it critiques debates about “postcritique.” Third, it argues that academic neoliberalism can be resisted and that this is now primary business for the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. The article closes by proposing new scholarly practices based in “constitutive criticism,” explicitly oriented towards the retrograde politics of the present.

Judging Nonacademic Claims about Leadership According to Academic Standards

This short piece questions the utility and preferable form of academic criticisms about popular materials on leadership, such as Ted talks, blogs, and what are called airport books. It then addresses an effort to say that when these materials claim that a leader is or does something in particular, what they are saying is that anyone who is, or does that particular thing is therefore a leader. It is unclear that anyone makes that argument. If these materials are instead stipulating a definition, then it is not invalid to apply that definition. But even if they are saying that among the things that leaders are or do is something in particular, they are still not saying that anyone who is or does that particular something is necessarily a leader. It is not illogical to identify what a person believes that leaders are or do. That much can be helpful. The question is what logical inferences they draw from this premise.

The slow violence of austerity politics and the UK’s ‘hostile environment’: Examining the responses of third sector organisations supporting people seeking asylum

Around the globe, people seeking asylum are subject to ever-increasing levels of securitisation, surveillance, hostility and violence. In the UK, successive Labour and Conservative governments have sought to create an increasingly ‘hostile environment’ for people without leave to remain in the country, generating and perpetuating anti-immigrant sentiment in the process. This paper centres attention on the implications of this politics of hostility, which has combined with sweeping levels of austerity, for third sector organisations in and around a city situated in the North East of England. We specifically focus on organisations offering cultural, sporting and artistic activities to gain an insight into how the ways they operate are affected by the UK’s immigration and austerity politics. Through researcher volunteering and observation at several organisations and interviews with people associated with them, we document some of the shared practices of quiet care and solidarity, in spite of the significant funding challenges they face. We show how these organisations are providing a crucial support structure to people seeking asylum, offering shared spaces that facilitate the ‘doing together’ of various activities. However, we also show how these third sector responses, and the people who attend them, are shaped and constrained by this hostile politics. We examine how organisations initially set up to focus on the provision of cultural and artistic activities are increasingly having to tailor their services to provide vitally important forms of support through the provision of, for example, food, clothing and assistance with bureaucratic (but essential) form-filling. The paper makes a key contribution to the relatively scant literature on cultural and artistic initiatives in the third sector set up for people seeking asylum and calls for sensitive academic critiques of the sector that forefront state structural violence and the socio-political contexts in which asylum sector organisations operate.

Contingent Encounters: Understanding the Relationship Between Homophily and Polarisation within Social Media

We are witnessing a polarisation of opinions and political groupings across the world, as evidenced by the rise of populism, conspiracy theories and an increasing distrust of authority. One common theme which runs through this polarisation is the mediation of social media. I thus ask, what is it about social media that creates polarisation, and how can a philosophy of the encounter help remedy it? I argue existing understandings of polarisation online such as the filter bubble hypothesis are technologically deterministic. This determinism, I argue is confusing academic critiques of the sociological principle of homophily. To counter this position and extend our critique of homophily in network science, I propose to turn to Louis Althusser’s ‘The underground current of the materialism of the encounter’ in which he argues that contingency and openness is the material basis for freedom, thinking and the encountering of the world. With an emphasis on contingency, we can correctly ascertain how technology distorts and intervenes in the encounter. This paper aims to build on such a critical stance for analysing digital networks by reclaiming the contingency which defines true encounters and arguing that to understand polarisation means to move beyond the filter bubble hypothesis. This in turn enables a clearer understanding of the role homophily plays in causing polarisation within social media. The implications of these findings instruct us to look outside of algorithmic structure of social media and into the wider societal causes of polarisation.

The Plea of Necessity in Cyber Emergencies

Abstract Although an increasing number of states has explicitly acknowledged the plea of necessity as a circumstance precluding wrongfulness to be applicable in situations of cyber emergencies, important doctrinal questions remain underexposed in both official expressions of opinio juris and in the literature. The article closes this gap by giving an account of three of the most salient issues in the context of the necessity defence: the “only way” requirement, the condition of non-contribution, and assistance by unaffected states to defensive measures taken in emergencies. It concludes that while recently growing academic criticism of the prevailing strict understanding of the “only way” criterion might be less relevant in the cyber context, states should consider more explicitly how emerging norms obliging states to observe a certain standard of cyber hygiene in regard to domestic cyber infrastructures could influence legal assessments as to a possible contribution to a situation of cyber emergency, potentially precluding the necessity defence. Finally, long-running doctrinal debates surrounding the exact legal nature of the defence within the larger context of the customary rules on state responsibility are revisited to examine whether third states could be permitted to come to the help of imperilled states even if the defence does not apply to them individually.

Precision Teaching for maths: An academic critique

This critique briefly summarises the evolution of the Precision Teaching (PT) approach, exploring what PT is, who it can be used with and its theoretical underpinnings. The results of a systematic literature search exploring the question ‘Is Precision Teaching effective at improving maths skills in school aged children and young people?’ are then discussed.Based on the five publications reviewed, the interventions that involved PT generally showed greater performance gains than the control or comparison group. Given the highly specific conditions of these interventions however, it is not possible to generalise the intervention effects beyond these studies. It must therefore be concluded that based on these five papers, it is not possible to say whether PT is an effective way to support maths skills.The implications for professional practice suggest a need to establish an evidence base, built around formalised and structured evaluations of PT, that use a control or comparison group. It is suggested that more teachers be involved in this process rather than it being the role of academics. This would enable teachers and Educational Psychologists to speak with more certainty of the efficacy of PT at improving maths skills in school aged children and young people.