AustLit logo

AustLit

Laura Basu Laura Basu i(A130303 works by)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 y separately published work icon Ned Kelly as Memory Dispositif: Media, Time, Power, and the Development of Australian Identities Laura Basu , Berlin Boston : Walter de Gruyter , 2013 Z1912022 2013 single work criticism 'Nineteenth-century bandit Ned Kelly is perhaps Australia s most famous historical figure. Ever since he became outlawed in 1878 his story has been repeated time and again, in every conceivable medium. Although the value of his memory has been hotly contested - and arguably because of this - he remains perhaps the national icon of Australia. Kelly s flamboyant crimes enabled him to become a popular hero for many Australians during his lifetime and far beyond, a symbol of freedom, anti authoritarianism, anti-imperialism: a Robin Hood, a Jesse James, a Che Guevara. Others have portrayed him as a villain, a gangster, a terrorist. His latest incarnation - astonishingly - has been as WikiLeaks founder and fellow-Australian Julian Assange. Despite the huge number of representations of the Kelly in all media and genres - from rampant newspaper reporting of the events, to the iconic Sydney Nolan paintings, to a movie starring Mick Jagger, to contemporary urban street art - this is the first work to take this corpus of texts itself as a subject of analysis. The fascinating case of the young outlaw provides an important opportunity to further our understanding of the dynamics of cultural memory. This book explains the processes by which the cultural memory of Ned Kelly was made and has developed over time, and how it has related to formations and negotiations of group identity.' (Publisher's blurb)
1 Towards a Memory Dispositiff : Truth, Myth, and the Ned Kelly lieu de memoire, 1890-1930 Laura Basu , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory 2009; (p. 139-155)
'The concept of 'memory site', though deployed regularly, has been generally under-theorized since initially addressed in Pierre Nora's Lieus de memoire. The term has been especially overlooked by the field of media locations of memory (e.g. Winter). Taking Australia's best known bush-ranger Ned Kelly as a case study, this article will begin to examine the processes of which a memory site may develop and function over a period of time through the processes of mediation and remediation. The article will thus contribute to a more thorough understanding of the workings of cultural memory in relation to media representation. It will conclude by suggesting the concept of a memory dispositif as a potentially fruitful avenue of research for the field, after exploring one important aspect of that dispositive, namely the media dispositif .'
1 The Ned Kelly Memory Dispositif, 1930 to 1960 : Identity Production Laura Basu , 2008-2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Traffic , no. 10 2008-2009; (p. 59-74)
In recent years ideas about memory, individual and cultural, have been taken up enthusiastically, both within the academe and popular culture. From Homi Bhaha's "On Global Memory' to successful movies thematising crises in personal memory such as Memento, we do appear to be in the midst of a "memory boom'. Recently, the crucial importance of media and communications has been acknowledged by the field of memory studies. Scholars have in particular begun to analyse the roles played by literature, film and television in memory construction, transmission and circulation. Likewise memory studies is fortuitously moving away from conceptions of memory as a static object and has begun to examine remembrance in terms of perfomativity and process. To better understand how a culture remembers, and how memories are forged by and within cultural products, it is useful to examine how particular cultural memories form, and develop over time across media texts, always involving intricate relationships between past and present.' Source: Laura Basu.
X