Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

nonhumans suffer, unevenly exposed to global threats like weapons of mass destruction and catastrophic
climate change. Though their approaches vary, Serres, Latour, and Stengers envision a radically democratic
cosmopolitics that recognizes the co-existence of many worlds; the interdependence of humans and
nonhumans; and the continued relevance of social, cultural, sexual, and species differences. Inventing this
new multivalent cosmocracy will require disciplinary tools beyond those of science and technology, bringing
to bear the wisdom of philosophy, literature, social science, and the arts. Stengers in particular advocates
slowing down the frenzied rate of invention in order to examine the aims and consequences of technoscience.
I therefore propose a new pedagogy, one which takes a more deliberative, democratic, and
egalitarian approach to invention, asking not only how to invent but also what, and especially, why to invent.
Anna Hickey-Moody
The everyday atmosphere of Australian life is characterised by naturalized racism and relationships to
terrorism prevention. This bigoted atmosphere in Australia is worsening with the continuing illegal detention
and death of asylum seekers in offshore gulags and the popular exclusion of Aboriginal Australians from
mainstream media representations, and notably, academic cultures. Anna Hickey-Moody argues that
Australians need to use public art as a means of inventing new dimensions to our social imaginary, to change
existing normative racist discourses. Through exploring street art as a method of social invention and
intervention, Anna argues we can make new kinds of “interethnic habitus” (Harris 2014: 572) through
interrupting everyday racisms.
1M
Streaming cultures and the post-piracy phenomenon (Chair, Sean Fuller)
James Meese
Examining the impact of accessible streaming screen media in the Australian home
There used to be no legal, affordable and consumer-friendly way to view screen content over the internet.
This led audiences from under-served countries to turn to online piracy. Nowadays, streaming is a global
phenomenon with companies like Netflix serving on-demand content to the vast majority of the world.
These services have been lauded as bringing about the death of online piracy. However, they are still
relatively new entrants to the market. We still do not if they are replacing or merely supplementing existing
infringing practices. This paper presents the results of a two-stage micro-ethnography of Australian homes
that currently use Netflix (or services like it), providing a detailed account of how streaming media is
impacting on the existing media ecology of households.
Margie Borschke
Clouds in My Copy: The material and rhetorical dimensions of digital media
Platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music are thought to have bypassed the problem of piracy with
industry-friendly streaming technologies and cloud storage. And yet, while we have witnessed a shift in
listening practices away from the downloading, collecting and the virtual hoarding that characterised the
first decade of the 21th Century, streaming technologies, like all digital technologies, are still dependent on
copies and copying. The rhetoric of the cloud and the stream obscures the centrality of the copy in digital
media and overlooks its material dimensions. To better understand the aesthetics of circulation in
networked culture, this presentation argues that we must excavate the material reality of the copy from the
rhetorical weight of the stream. The sea of data is fed by a river of copies, and, to paraphrase Heraclitus, you
still cannot step twice into the same stream.
Martin Fredriksson
Post-piracy or post-privacy?
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