Urban Myths & Modern Fables
Panel Abstracts

Stephen Muecke
Professor, Writing and Cultural Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS
Director, Trans/forming Cultures Research Centre, UTS

Fabulation: Flying carpets and artful politics in the Indian Ocean

In investigating the circulation of commodities in the Indian Ocean, historically, I began to think about how value is added to things. To sell a carpet you have to tell a good story about it, to make it fly, for instance. Fictions build up around mere commodities, giving them a career and a journey through time, supported by various technical strings and illusions.
We are also aware that cultures themselves are traded, across borders where people don't always share the same values. Once, the Western libido was captured by the stories of the 'fabulous' East, and Vasco da Gama's ships sailed into the Indian Ocean to trade. After Europe was built up with this trade, they had a story to sell into Eastern markets, that of Western modernity itself, as if that kind of modernity was the real purchase ('a better future') and the little gadget or commodity (some 'labour-saving device') were its mere symptom.
Art and illusion are cultural excess that demonstrate that what is simply economically rational is never enough to account for all the values that are added to value: the very strangeness of the world throws out a challenge to think and to feel strangely, to feel a slight elevation. Only then do we know we have gotten our money's worth.

Devleena Ghosh
Senior Lecturer, Social Inquiry, Humanities and Social Sciences UTS
Trans/forming Cultures Research Centre, UTS

From Mumbai to Moscow to Mykonos:
Global Bollywood

Bollywood cinema now has a global reach that transcends the South Asian diaspora. Baz Luhrmann paid tribute to Bollywood cinema in song/dance sequences in Moulin Rouge, the film Kal Ho Naa Ho was set completely in New York and Salaam Namaste was shot in Melbourne. What does Bollywood mean in these different contexts and spaces? How does it speak to its various audiences? Why is it popular in countries ranging from Russia to the Middle East to Africa? Devleena will talk about the 'global' nature of Bollywood films and the way they imagine a certain kind of India for viewers.

Heather Goodall
Professor, Social Inquiry, Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS
Trans/forming Cultures Research Centre, UTS

Australian Port Cities, Indian Seafarers, Indonesian Independence:
Indian Ocean fables for modern times

Abstract
A drama began to unfold in Australia in August 1945 which brought together working people from the countries we now know as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh with those from Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia. Central to the story were Indian seamen in Sydney and Brisbane who, with Australian maritime workers, responded to a call for support from Indonesian nationalists by boycotting all Dutch shipping in Australian waters. This was a powerful strategy: 559 ships were immobilised between October 1945 and the eventual achievement of Indonesian nationhood in 1949, including 36 Dutch merchant ships, 3 Royal Australian naval vessels and 2 British troopships. Such events often only leave us records of the public statements of leaders. This struggle, however, has given us a rare glimpse of deeper relationships: the links made between the everyday working people involved, the working seamen and their supporters. We find people who had many differences but who also shared powerful hopes with which they were trying to shape their vision of new worlds.
This story is about crossings of the Indian Ocean, that body of water which offers a rich history of fables to enliven cultures around its shores. Ironically because they are so recent, the extraordinary hopes and optimism of these 1945 events seem just as much a fable to us today as any tale from the distant and imaginary past. The stories have been ignored or lost, the people themselves seem to have been made to disappear. But finally, we can make the people visible again. In doing so, we can ask if this brief time of fable might show new pathways into the future.
The years from 1945 to 1949 have been studied in each area as national histories, revealing dynamic change as decolonisation formed new nations, new alliances and new directions. The perspective from the Indian Ocean, however, demands that we think outside the national boundaries which are such a defining part of today's analysis and indeed of its daily news. It asks how interactions and flows of people, trade, nature and ideas might have been occurring around the Ocean, regardless of national borders.