[-empyre-] Re: sedition and nationalism

[Danny Butt <db@dannybutt.net>]

If, as people working in the arts on international mailing lists,  
we're talking about what it means to make work that might be termed  
"seditious", then I think we need to be open to learning from all  
kinds of expertise  outside the particular nation-state that we might  
be in. The function of sedition laws themselves is to try and  
maintain a nationalist ideal of the public good that is divorced from  
e.g. international human rights frameworks. The irony is that the  
term sedition was not magically invented in Australia (or the United  
States) but is a cultural export that exists throughout (at least)  
the British Empire. So in that sense, rather than a "legal definition  
of sedition in Australian law" being a pre-requisite for the  
discussion, I think it's a distraction from the deeper questions  
around our orientation to nationalism and creative practice, and  
strategies for survival that have a lot of similarities that we can  
learn from.

--
http://www.dannybutt.net



severn@acay.com.au wrote:


> I cant see it, sorry?  Neither of the americans have any background in
> Australian law and I am completely disinterested in anything they  
> have to
> say about american sedition when there is so much to discuss about
> Australia.

> Not relevent to this discussion. The incompetancies of the american  
> legal
> system have no bearing on issues in Australian art practices.

> So we need a legal definition of "sedition" as defined in  
> Australian law,
> dont we?