Tony Schirato

BOURDIEU'S CONCEPT OF REFLEXIVITY AS METALITERACY

For Bourdieu, the extent to which agents can attain knowledge of, and negotiate, various cultural fields is dependent upon, and explicable in terms of, two epistemological types. The first is a practical sense (the ‘logic of practice’), while the second involves a sort of conscious comprehension that he names ‘reflexivity’. Bourdieu defines reflexivity as an interrogation of the three types of limitations (of social position, of field and of the scholastic point of view) that are constitutive of knowledge itself. But the reflexive relation to the habitus, the demands and influences exerted by cultural fields, and ones own practices within those fields, cannot be understood simply as something that is obtained by the subject; rather, any reflexive relation to the doxa and illusio of the field must be a constitutive part of that field. This paper identifies a number of principles taken from Bourdieus work that clarify how, where and why the reflexive ‘surpassing’ of literacy might occur. But we also suggest, contra Bourdieu, that only fields that are informed or characterized by the scholastic point of view are likely to be characterized by the set of conditions constitutive of reflexive knowledge; and that the scholastic point of view is therefore, simultaneously, both a potential impediment to, and a condition (almost necessary) of the production of reflexive knowledge.

Fantasy sport and media interactivity

Media interactivity in the field of sport functions as both a lure and a way of transforming a viewers relation to a game. Sport websites, along with the more traditional medium of television, have taken on the pedagogical task of acquainting a mass audience with a variety of sports and their rules, skills, histories and cultures, and by extension turning them into sport fans and consumers. Fantasy sport accentuates and intensifies, while also constituting a reaction against, this development: it can be seen as a form of escape from what many connoisseurs of sport doubtlessly consider sport has become: a commercialized, trivialized and hyperbolized media spectacle. At the same time, fantasy sport produces entirely new sets of relations between spectators as fans and sporting contests, and to a large extent transforms the visual regime of sport spectatorship.

Communication Technology and Cultural Politics

The ‘new’ communication technologies occupy a highly contingent place in social consciousness: at once central to our everyday lives, and yet capable of generating anxiety and uncertainty. This article traces some aspects of the relation of everyday people to new media technologies and evaluates the reception and impact of new technologies in their public contexts. Drawing on the thinking of writers such as Slavoj Z izek and Jonathan Crary, we argue that both the fears and celebrations of the media have a considerable lineage. We critically address issues of technological determinism, particularly examining the connection between new media technologies and the politics of global relations.

Digital media, fantasy sport and the transformation of the contemporary field of sport

ABSTRACT This article is concerned with how and why the commercial imperatives, logics, values and technologies of the contemporary commercial media are transforming the field of sport. In order to exemplify this last point, I shall look at the ways in which fantasy sport, a relatively recent phenomenon that is predominantly tied to and operated through various forms of digital media, is transforming what Jonathan Crary (1998) would call the ‘visual regime’ of the field of sport. I shall start with two sets of (brief) contextualising introductions: the first will provide a very general history of the development of the sport–mass media nexus; the second look at the relatively recent phenomenon of fantasy sport, and then describe and analyse how digitally mediated fantasy sport produces an entirely different way of looking at the things of sport and by extension transforms the traditional visual regime of sports’ spectatorship.

Anything goes: Lefort, ideology and the “adventure of democracy’

This article initially introduces and outlines the main aspects of Claude Leforts theorising of democracy as a radically antagonistic and contingent political formation. This is followed by a critique of those theories, primarily through the application of Slavoj Zizek ‘s work on the politics of community as it applies to the emergence, in Australian politics, of Pauline Hanson and her ‘One Nation’ party and policies.