Links to current courses
Semester 1 2004
POLS 2096 Genocide Studies (coordinator Prof
Colin Tatz)
Other Courses:
SOCY 2044 Intersexions: Gender and
Sociology
SOCY2053 Imagining the Future: the social
origins of utopias and science fiction (with Dr Forth and Dr Greig)
Research Interests:
- Islam in the West (with stress on Europe)
- Gender
- Interethnic & interracial relations
- Cultural politics in global/local relations
- Comparative moralities/ethical imagination in
contemporary world
- New technologies & post-human discourses
Selected Publications:
'Islamophobia
& anti-discrimination laws: ethno-religion as a legal category in Australia & the UK', Conference proceedings, The
Challenges of Immigration & Integration in the EU & Australia,
Sydney 18-20 feb 2003, http://www.anu.edu.au/NEC/bloul_paper.pdf
' Being Muslim in the West'
(Digest, 15 Mar 2002), review article in The Drawing Board (http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/
) of Abdullah Saeed & Shahram
Akbarzadeh (eds) Muslim
Communities in Australia, University of New South Wales Press.
'Rethinking Barbarism? Globalisation, consumerism and contemporary forms of slavery' Conference
Proceedings, Rethinking Humanitarianism, University of Queensland, September 2001.
My (somewhat hurried)
translation of Baudrillard's Le Monde piece The Spirit of Terrorism
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0111/msg00083.html
Book review
of Bunt, G. 2000 Virtually Islamic. Computer-mediated communication and Cyber Islamic environments,
http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/
"Beyond ethnic identity:
Resisting exclusionary identification", Social Identities, 1999,
vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 7-30.
"From Moral Protest to
Religious Politics: Ethical Demands and Beur
Political Action in France", The
Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 11-44.
"Gender
and the Globalization of Islamic Discourses" in Kahn, J. (ed.) Southeast
Asian Identities.
Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, ISEAS.
"Engendering
Muslim Identities. Deterritorialization and the Ethnicization
Process in France" in Metcalf, B. (ed) Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, University of California Press, Berkeley.
"Victims
or Offenders?"
Other 'Women in French Sexual Politics', European Journal of Women's
Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 251-68.
"Veiled objects of
(post-colonial) desire: forbidden women disrupt the Republican fraternal
space", The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 5, no. 1 and
2, pp. 113-28.
Other Conference Papers:
Bloul, R 2003 Virility, power & prowess:
bargaining for sex & love and same sex relations in contemporary
Arab/Muslim imaginary, Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference,
1-3 October 2003.
Bloul, R. 2002 'Perilous Heroism: Heroes,
Fraternalism and Political Terror', Fourth International Conference, Crossroads
in Cultural Studies, June 29- July 2, Tampere, Finland.
On Utopia & Dystopia:
Blah blah
Coming up!
On Racism & assorted
horrors:
Coming up1
Great Muslim Australians:
While teaching students on race, ethnicity, identity and the like, I often
note a definitive lack of knowledge about non-Anglo Australians, and most
importantly the absolute reliance on media when it comes to the identified
'Others' in our midst. This is especially true for Muslim Australians and Islam
in Australia: anything between 80% to 90% of my students confess their general
ignorance about this topic (please remember these are the students enrolled in
my Identity, difference & ethnicity course, that is a self-selected group
with a presumed interest in 'Other' Australians). Considering the often
unbalanced media reports, I thought it would be a good idea to write up
profiles of Great Muslim Australians, a topic I once suggested to mainstream
media but which was greeted by a remarkable lack of enthusiasm. So keep checking
here, I will add those as they come (IE as I find time to write them up).
On Artivism:
A neologism: we have activism & even hacktivism.
Well now 'artivism' combines all of the latter with
an emphasis on creative artistic license & performance art on the Net to
make critical political points. The ones I particularly like take also a fairly
humourous line. But be warned what is humourous to some can be offensive to others. I will add
here links to great moments in artivism: even if you
might recoil at times, it should make you think (none of it is by me: I have
neither the time nor the technical expertise).
Twitter & Bisted:
I know, I know: sarcasm is supposed to be the lowest form of humor. It is a great relief to one's oppressed feelings though,
particularly when faced by the titbits I gathered in the news (check the news
site of my various courses)
Australian Lebanese Muslim rapists were certainly sexist and racist, and
they did cause quite a furor a while back which
helped partly explain the 55years of detention.
However we have right now (March 2004) another gang rape affair, this time
by members of a well-known Australian sporting team. I noticed that the public
discourses about this latest gang rape is much more subdued, the rapists are
certainly not vilified (granted they did not use knives and so on. But have you
seen the size of these guys?), and this victim is certainly presented
differently (accusations of her being a –what is that term?- ‘scrub’ are being diffused and certainly not
treated with the contempt such routine accusation of rape victims deserves).
But what irks me is that comparisons between the two cases which certainly came
to my mind are avoided with the outmost care. In the Australian Lebanese case
the problem has to do with an Arab-Muslim culture of rape, but Australian ball
players (sorry, can’t keep all those ball sports straight) don’t
seem to have that. They are just boys who “love a bun” (dixit a
player). I am not quite sure about the idiom but if it means what I think it
means… As is often said: “Spot the difference”