Interdisciplinary Field or Emerging Discipline?: Performance Studies at the University of Sydney

Abstract

At the final session of the PSi (Performance Studies International) conference in Singapore in 2004, conference co-organiser Ray Langenbach reported that preliminary analysis of the participants indicated that twenty percent were locals living in Singapore, forty percent came from other Asian countries, fifteen percent from Europe, and twenty-five percent from America. Someone called out from the floor, "Where did you put Australia?" The laughter provoked was intensified when Ray admitted that he did not know the answer. This incident reveals in an almost emblematic way the ambivalent position of Australia in relation to dominant geopolitical and cultural forces at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Is Australia part of Europe (the majority of its citizens are of European descent and its institutions are overwhelmingly British in origin), or part of the geographical region (its closest neighbours are Papua New Guinea and Indonesia)? Or has it now become a virtual outpost of the United States, as Prime Minister John Howard implied when, to the dismay of most Australians, he expressed himself willing to be seen as George Bush's deputy sheriff in the region? It was, of course, an Australian who asked the question, for it is Australians who experience most directly the uncertainties as to where their country is located-and is seen to be located-within the global polity, and where they themselves would locate it. The gap between the view or views from within and views from without indicates the complexity of the country's current colonial/postcolonial situation and the way this impacts upon relations with both geographical neighbours and erstwhile colonial authorities.