Ned Kelly as Memory Dispositif: Media, Time, Power, and the Development of Australian Identities (Media and Cultural Memory / Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung Book 13)

Nineteenth-century outlaw Ned Kelly is perhaps Australia's most famous historical figure. Ever since he went on the run 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 main national icon of Australia. Kelly's flamboyant crimes turned him into 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 has been as WikiLeaks founder and fellow Australian "cyber outlaw" Julian Assange. Despite the huge number of representations of Kelly – from rampant newspaper reporting of the events, to the iconic Sidney Nolan paintings, to a movie starring Mick Jagger, to contemporary urban street art – this is the first work to take this corpus of material itself as a subject of analysis. The fascinating case of this young outlaw provides an important opportunity to further our understanding of the dynamics of cultural memory. The 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 national identity. It breaks new ground in memory studies in the first place by showing that cultural memories are formed and develop through tangles of relations, what Basu terms __memory dispositifs.__ In introducing the concept of the memory dispositif, this volume brings together and develops the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Agamben on the dispositif, along with relevant concepts from the field of memory studies such as __allochronism, colonial aphasia,__ and __multidirectionality,__ the __memory site__ – especially as developed by Ann Rigney – and Jan Assmann's __figure of memory.__ Secondly, this work makes important headway in our understanding of the relationships between cultural memory and national identity, at a time when matters of identity appear to be more urgent and fraught than ever. In doing so, it shows that national identities are never purely national but are always sub- and transnational. The Ned Kelly memory dispositif has made complex and conflicting contributions to constructions of national identity. Ever since his outlawry, the identities invested in Kelly and those invested in the Australian nation have, in a two-way dynamic, fused into and strengthened each other, so that Kelly is in many ways a symbol for the national identity. Kelly has come to stand for an anti-establishment, working class, subaltern, Irish-inflected national identity. At the same time he has come to represent and enforce the whiteness, hyper-heterosexual masculinity and violence of "Australianness". Basu shows that Kelly has therefore always functioned in both radical and conservative ways, often both at once: a turbulent, Janus-faced figure.

Im Kontext der kulturwissenschaftlichen Gedächtnisforschung widmet sich diese interdisziplinär ausgerichtete Reihe dem Verhältnis von Medien und kultureller Erinnerung. Die hier vorgestellten Studien behandeln die ganze Bandbreite der durch Medien konstruierten, tradierten und verbreiteten Erinnerung. Schrift und Bild, das Kino und die ‘neuen’ digitalen Medien, Intermedialität, Transmedialität und Remediation sowie die sozialen, zunehmend transnationalen und transkulturellen, Kontexte der mediatisierten Erinnerung gehören zu den Forschungsinteressen der Reihe. Ziel ist es, eine internationale Plattform für die interdisziplinäre Medien- und Gedächtnisforschung zu schaffen. Eingereichte Manuskripte werden im peer review Verfahren durch externe Experten begutachtet.

Den Herausgebern, Astrid Erll (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) und Ansgar Nünning (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen) ist ein internationaler Beirat aus renommierten Wissenschaftlern assoziiert:

• Aleida Assmann (Universität Konstanz)
• Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam)
• Vita Fortunati (University of Bologna)
• Richard Grusin (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
• Udo Hebel (Universität Regensburg)
• Andrew Hoskins (University of Glasgow)
• Wulf Kansteiner (Binghamton University)
• Alison Landsberg (George Mason University)
• Claus Leggewie (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)
• Jeffrey Olick (University of Virginia)
• Susannah Radstone (University of South Australia)
• Ann Rigney (Utrecht University)
• Michael Rothberg (University of Illinois)
• Werner Sollors (Harvard University)
• Frederic Tygstrup (University of Copenhagen)
• Harald Welzer (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen)

Introduction 11 1. Sites and Dispositifs 12 2. Media 17 3. Time 19 4. Power 22 5. Australian Identities 24 6. Ned Kelly 28 Chapter 1. 1878-1882: The Power of the Press 34 1. The Kelly Memory Dispositif: The Power of the Press 35 i. Memorialisation: Mediation and Time 37 ii. Incorporation part I: Mediation 41 iii. Incorporation part II: Mediation and Power 46 iv. The Press, the Sympathisers, and the Authorities 50 2. Identity 54 i. The Criminal Class 55 ii. From Antithetical Identity to Non-Identity 60 iii. Between Antithetical and Extinct: The Irish 65 Conclusion 67 Chapter 2. 1882-1930: Truth and Myth, the Bushman and the Empire 70 1. Truth and Myth: Mediation, Temporality, and Power 72 i. Authority and Authenticity 72 ii. Romance and Myth 79 2. The Bushman and the Empire: Identity 82 i. The Radical Bushman 83 ii. The Imperial Bushman 89 iii. Displacement and Double Displacement 95 Conclusion 100 Chapter 3. 1930—1960: High Culture and Deferred Identities 102 1. Ned Kelly and Australian Historiography 103 2. Ned Kelly and High Culture 107 i. Douglas Stewart 107 ii. Sidney Nolan 112 3. Deferred Identities 117 Conclusion 130 Chapter 4. 1960—1990: The Bushman Breaks Down 132 1. Ned Kelly as Social Bandit and the Memory of British Imperialism 135 i. Ned Kelly: Social Bandit 136 ii. Back to the “Present”: Mediation and Power 139 iii. What’s Missing? 142 2. Law and Out-Law 148 3. New Articulations of Gender and Sexuality 155 i. Ned Kelly: Herstory 156 ii. “Perfumed Ned was no Pansy” 160 Conclusion 163 Chapter 5. 1990-2010: Ned Kelly and the Global Nation 165 1. Ned Kelly and the Memory Industry 167 i. Globalisation, Commodification, and Ned’s Loss of Meaning 167 ii. Privatisation of the Nation 175 2. Reconciliation, the “History Wars”, and Ned Kelly post 9/11 180 i. Reconciliation 182 ii. The History Wars 188 iii. Ned Kelly post 9/11 192 Conclusion 197 Conclusion 199 References 202 References without Author 210 Index 213 Main description: Nineteenth-century outlaw Ned Kelly is perhaps Australia's most famous historical figure. This book explains the processes by which the cultural memory of Kelly has developed over time, and how it has related to negotiations of group identity. It breaks new grounds in memory studies by showing how memories are formed and develop through tangles of relations - memory dispositifs - and by furthering understanding of the relationships between cultural memory and national identity, at a time when matters of identity are more urgent than ever