ICS Seminar Series – Ben Dibley and Gay Hawkins
Date: Thursday 12 May 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EB.2.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus
Ben Dibley and Gay Hawkins
(Institute for Culture and Society)
Provoking Animals: Making Animals Real on the ABC
Abstract
What would it mean to think of natural history television as a distinct form of animal enclosure designed to provoke and display their various realities? This paper pursues this question. It begins from the assumption that reality isn't something that just passively stands there it has to be done. The issue is how have animal realities been called forth on ABC TV and with what political effects? By linking debates within science and technology studies about provocation and performativity with recent analyses from screen theory of animality on screen our aim is to understand the changing practices whereby animals have been made real. Both STS and screen theory are barking up the same tree when it comes to understanding reality. They see it as something that has to be crafted, as emerging from interactions between the world, modes of capturing or observing it, and observers. The outcomes of these interactions are not so much 'social constructions' or 'representations' but performances that are highly manipulated but also ineluctably real.
Biographies
Ben Dibley is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. He has research interests in social and cultural theory, particularly around questions of environment, colonialism, and cultural institutions. His essays have appeared in Australian Humanities Review, Cultural Studies Review, History and Anthropology, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Museum and Society, New Formations and Transformations. He is co-author of Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology and Liberal Government (Duke University Press, Forthcoming).
Gay Hawkins joined the Institute for Culture and Society as a Research Professor in 2015. She researches in the areas of materiality and political processes, urban practices around waste and water, and the interactions between publics and markets. This paper is based on an ARC Linkage project with the ABC researching the history and role of natural history content in building public interest in and value for animals.
