Niall Lucy
Encyclopedia
Niall Lucy is an Australian writer and scholar best known for his work in deconstruction
.
. In 1997 he was a visiting scholar in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He works mainly in the fields of deconstruction, literary theory
and cultural criticism. His recent work (much of it collaborative) brings a deconstructive approach to contemporary Australian events and figures.
, and a PhD (English) from the University of Sydney.
as a continuation (albeit not by conscious or deliberate means) of romanticism
, especially in the form of ideas associated with the Jena romantics
in Germany in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His discussion is influenced by the work of French philosophers Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
and Jean-Luc Nancy
. Lucy argues that postmodernism should be distinguished from poststructuralism, and especially from deconstruction as associated with the work of Jacques Derrida
.
Lucy’s work is notable for its sense of humour, and for taking popular culture no less seriously than philosophy. The increasing tendency in his later work towards a philosophical engagement with contemporary events is strongly informed by Derrida’s Specters of Marx
and the idea of democracy-to-come, which is the linchpin of Lucy’s account of the importance of deconstruction in A Derrida Dictionary (2004).
Much of Lucy’s recent work has been collaborative, and directly concerned with contemporary Australian cultural events and figures. His book with Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press (2006), pits a Derridean concept of democracy against what the authors argue are the undemocratic interests represented in the work of several prominent Australian media commentators (whom they refer to collectively as “Team Australia”), including Miranda Devine
, Gerard Henderson
, Janet Albrechtsen
and Andrew Bolt
. The book was shortlisted for the Gleebooks Prize in Literary and Cultural Criticism at the 2008 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards
.
Among other recent works, Lucy’s co-edited collection (with Chris Coughran), Vagabond Holes (2009), is a tribute to his late friend, David McComb
, lead singer and songwriter for Australian rock band The Triffids
, which defies the conventions of a rock biography in its deconstruction of the notion of an autonomous self or identity. Contributors include Nick Cave
, Mick Harvey
, John Kinsella, DBC Pierre, and Lucy’s sister, Judith Lucy
.
His latest book, Pomo Oz: Fear and Loathing Downunder (2010), engages with (among other issues) debates surrounding secondary-school English teaching in Australia, while taking a deconstructive slant on the Bill Henson
scandal, the children overboard affair
and The Chaser
’s prank motorcade at the 2007 APEC Australia summit
in Sydney. A significant section of the book is devoted to a discussion of John Kinsella’s poetry in relation to deconstruction, with reference to Kinsella’s friendship with Derrida. Ranging across diverse topics, and working in multiple styles, the book offers a further elaboration of Lucy’s work on democracy-to-come.
as “an excellent guide” and by Juliana De Nooy as “lucid and pedagogical”. Writing for The Times Literary Supplement
, Anthony Elliot says of A Derrida Dictionary that it “ranges with considerable flair from Hegel to Geri Halliwell
, fascism
to Francis Fukuyama
, the philosophy of consciousness to celebrity
”. “It [A Derrida Dictionary] is the kind of book whose wit makes one want to read excerpts to colleagues, and it is precisely this lightness of tone that makes Lucy’s book so pedagogically useful”, a reviewer writes in Choice. Claire Colebrook commends Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction as “a critical account of the difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism”.
Lucy’s work is widely cited across many disciplines and in several languages. Among those who refer to his work are John D. Caputo
John Hartley
, Peggy Kamuf, Keith Jenkins
, and McKenzie Wark
.
The critical reception in Australia to his book with Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy, has been divided. Kitty van Vuuren, writing in Media International Australia, says she was “unable to put the book down” and found it to be “lively, sardonic and entertaining”. In 'Overland
, Georgina Murray claims the book was “crying out to be written”. By contrast, one of the figures whose work is critiqued in The War on Democracy, education journalist Luke Slattery, describes the book as “blood sport” and decries Lucy as “a parish priest in the much-diminished postmodern church”. Another figure of critique in the book, columnist Christopher Pearson
, condemns what he calls the book’s “unusually vicious polemic”.
(2007) and for the retrospective collection, Crossing Off the Miles, by Australian rock band Chad’s Tree
.
) in Perth and 2SER
-FM in Sydney. He writes occasionally for The West Australian
and On Line Opinion
, and currently hosts weekly music show The Comfort Zone on 720 ABC Perth
.
and a member of the editorial board of Fibreculture Journal.
He is a member of the Curriculum Council of Western Australia’s Literature Reference Panel.
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
.
Career
Niall Lucy is a professor in the School of Media, Culture & Creative Arts at Curtin University, and a former Head of the School of Arts (1998–2003) at Murdoch UniversityMurdoch University
Murdoch University is a public university based in Perth, Australia. It began operations as the state's second university in 1973, and accepted its first students in 1975...
. In 1997 he was a visiting scholar in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He works mainly in the fields of deconstruction, literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
and cultural criticism. His recent work (much of it collaborative) brings a deconstructive approach to contemporary Australian events and figures.
Education
Lucy has a BA and MA (English) from the University of Western AustraliaUniversity of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia was established by an Act of the Western Australian Parliament in February 1911, and began teaching students for the first time in 1913. It is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia and the only university in the state to be a member of the...
, and a PhD (English) from the University of Sydney.
Works
In Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction (1997), Lucy identifies postmodernismPostmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
as a continuation (albeit not by conscious or deliberate means) of romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, especially in the form of ideas associated with the Jena romantics
Jena romantics
Members of the group "Jena Romanticism," which was "a first phase of Romanticism in German literature, centred in Jena from about 1798 to 1804. The group was led by the versatile writer Ludwig Tieck...
in Germany in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His discussion is influenced by the work of French philosophers Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator....
and Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
. Lucy argues that postmodernism should be distinguished from poststructuralism, and especially from deconstruction as associated with the work of Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
.
Lucy’s work is notable for its sense of humour, and for taking popular culture no less seriously than philosophy. The increasing tendency in his later work towards a philosophical engagement with contemporary events is strongly informed by Derrida’s Specters of Marx
Specters of Marx
Spectres de Marx: l'état de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale is a 1993 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida first published by Éditions Galilée and translated into American English as Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New...
and the idea of democracy-to-come, which is the linchpin of Lucy’s account of the importance of deconstruction in A Derrida Dictionary (2004).
Much of Lucy’s recent work has been collaborative, and directly concerned with contemporary Australian cultural events and figures. His book with Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press (2006), pits a Derridean concept of democracy against what the authors argue are the undemocratic interests represented in the work of several prominent Australian media commentators (whom they refer to collectively as “Team Australia”), including Miranda Devine
Miranda Devine
Miranda Devine is an Australian columnist and writer noted for her conservative stance on a range of social and political issues. Her column, formerly printed twice weekly in Fairfax Media newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald, now appears in the News Limited Daily Telegraph with...
, Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson
Gerard Henderson is a conservative Australian newspaper columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.. He is also Executive Director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded current affairs forum. His wife Anne Henderson is Deputy Director.-Education:Henderson attended the Jesuit Xavier College in...
, Janet Albrechtsen
Janet Albrechtsen
Janet Kim Albrechtsen is a conservative Australian opinion columnist with the News Limited-owned newspaper, The Australian. From 2005 through 2010, she was a member of the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's state-owned national broadcaster.-Early life and...
and Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt
Andrew Bolt is an Australian newspaper columnist, radio commentator, blogger and television host. Bolt is a columnist and associate editor of the Melbourne-based Herald Sun. He has appeared on the Nine Network, Melbourne Talk Radio, ABC Television, Network Ten and local radio...
. The book was shortlisted for the Gleebooks Prize in Literary and Cultural Criticism at the 2008 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards
New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
.
Among other recent works, Lucy’s co-edited collection (with Chris Coughran), Vagabond Holes (2009), is a tribute to his late friend, David McComb
David McComb
David Richard McComb was an Australian rock musician. He was the singer-songwriter of the Australian band, The Triffids.-Early years in Perth:...
, lead singer and songwriter for Australian rock band The Triffids
The Triffids
The Triffids were a seminal Australian alternative rock and pop band formed in Perth, Western Australia, in May 1978 with charismatic, David McComb as singer-songwriter, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboardist. They achieved negligible success in Australia, but greater success in the U.K...
, which defies the conventions of a rock biography in its deconstruction of the notion of an autonomous self or identity. Contributors include Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
, Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...
, John Kinsella, DBC Pierre, and Lucy’s sister, Judith Lucy
Judith Lucy
Judith Mary Lucy is an Australian comedian, known primarily for her stand-up comedy. She has toured Australia with several highly successful one-woman shows, including No Waiter I Ordered the Avocado , King Of The Road , An Impossible Dream , The Show , The Show 2 , Colour Me Judith...
.
His latest book, Pomo Oz: Fear and Loathing Downunder (2010), engages with (among other issues) debates surrounding secondary-school English teaching in Australia, while taking a deconstructive slant on the Bill Henson
Bill Henson
Bill Henson is an Australian contemporary art photographer.-Background:Henson's art has been exhibited in many locations, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Venice Biennale, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in...
scandal, the children overboard affair
Children overboard affair
The Children Overboard affair was an Australian political controversy involving public allegations by Howard government ministers in October 2001, in the lead-up to a federal election, that sea-faring asylum seekers had thrown children overboard in a presumed ploy to secure rescue and passage to...
and The Chaser
The Chaser
The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedian group, known for their television programmes on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation channel. The group take their name from their production of satirical newspaper, a publication known to challenge conventions of taste...
’s prank motorcade at the 2007 APEC Australia summit
The Chaser APEC pranks
The Chaser APEC pranks were a series of comic stunts that targeted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Summit , in Sydney, Australia. They were coordinated and performed by the Australian satire group The Chaser for the television series The Chaser's War on Everything...
in Sydney. A significant section of the book is devoted to a discussion of John Kinsella’s poetry in relation to deconstruction, with reference to Kinsella’s friendship with Derrida. Ranging across diverse topics, and working in multiple styles, the book offers a further elaboration of Lucy’s work on democracy-to-come.
Critical reception
Lucy has been lauded internationally for his work in deconstruction. His Debating Derrida is described by Peggy KamufPeggy Kamuf
Peggy Kamuf is the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. She is one of the primary English translators of the works of Jacques Derrida...
as “an excellent guide” and by Juliana De Nooy as “lucid and pedagogical”. Writing for The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
, Anthony Elliot says of A Derrida Dictionary that it “ranges with considerable flair from Hegel to Geri Halliwell
Geri Halliwell
Geraldine Estelle "Geri" Halliwell is an English pop singer-songwriter, author and actress. After coming to international prominence in the late 1990s as Ginger Spice, a member of the girl group the Spice Girls, Halliwell launched her solo career in 1998 and released her album Schizophonic...
, fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
to Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...
, the philosophy of consciousness to celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
”. “It [A Derrida Dictionary] is the kind of book whose wit makes one want to read excerpts to colleagues, and it is precisely this lightness of tone that makes Lucy’s book so pedagogically useful”, a reviewer writes in Choice. Claire Colebrook commends Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction as “a critical account of the difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism”.
Lucy’s work is widely cited across many disciplines and in several languages. Among those who refer to his work are John D. Caputo
John D. Caputo
John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University and the founder of weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction and...
John Hartley
John Hartley (academic)
John Hartley is an ARC Federation Fellow and a Distinguished Professor at the Queensland University of Technology, where he is Research Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. He was Foundation Dean of the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT, and before that...
, Peggy Kamuf, Keith Jenkins
Keith Jenkins
Keith Jenkins is a British historiographer. Like Hayden White and "postmodern" historiographers, Jenkins believes that any historian's output should be seen as a story. A work of history is as much about the historian's own world view and ideological positions as it is about past events...
, and McKenzie Wark
McKenzie Wark
McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born writer and scholar. He works mainly on media theory, critical theory and new media. His best known works are A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory.-Life:...
.
The critical reception in Australia to his book with Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy, has been divided. Kitty van Vuuren, writing in Media International Australia, says she was “unable to put the book down” and found it to be “lively, sardonic and entertaining”. In 'Overland
Overland (literary journal)
Overland is an Australian literary and cultural journal. It was founded in 1954, under the auspices of the Realist Writers Group in Melbourne, Australia, with Stephen Murray-Smith being the first editor. The current editor is Jeff Sparrow. The journal has a left-wing orientation.- External links :*...
, Georgina Murray claims the book was “crying out to be written”. By contrast, one of the figures whose work is critiqued in The War on Democracy, education journalist Luke Slattery, describes the book as “blood sport” and decries Lucy as “a parish priest in the much-diminished postmodern church”. Another figure of critique in the book, columnist Christopher Pearson
Christopher Pearson
Christopher Pearson is an Australian journalist who writes for The Australian.He comes from Adelaide and received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Flinders University as well as a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Adelaide...
, condemns what he calls the book’s “unusually vicious polemic”.
Other writing
Lucy has written liner notes for the re-issue of The Triffids album CalentureCalenture (album)
Calenture is the fourth studio album by The Triffids, released in February 1987 which reached No. 32 on the Australian Album Charts. Calenture also reached No...
(2007) and for the retrospective collection, Crossing Off the Miles, by Australian rock band Chad’s Tree
Chad's Tree
Chad's Tree are an Australian rock band, formed in Perth in 1983. The band's brittle, off-kilter sound evoked the sense of distance, desolation, harshness and loneliness of the Nullarbor Plain , much in the same fashion as fellow Perth outfit The Triffids.-Biography:The Snarskis were born in...
.
Media
Lucy wrote freelance music journalism in the 1980s for On the Street (Sydney), 5 O’Clock News (Perth) and other publications. He was a regular music broadcaster on 6UVS-FM (now RTR-FMRTRFM
RTRFM is a not-for-profit, community radio station based in Perth, Western Australia. It is self-funded, largely through listener subscription and fund-raising events, however it does carry some "advertising material" at a maximum of 5 mins per hour. It broadcasts 24 hours a day, on 92.1 in the...
) in Perth and 2SER
2SER
2SER is a community radio station in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, broadcasting on the frequency 107.3 FM and is a member of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. The station operates as a company limited by guarantee and is jointly owned by Macquarie University and the...
-FM in Sydney. He writes occasionally for The West Australian
The West Australian
The West Australian is the only locally-edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia, and is owned by ASX-listed Seven West Media . The West is published in tabloid format, as is the state's other major newspaper, The Sunday Times, a News Limited publication...
and On Line Opinion
On Line Opinion
On Line Opinion is an electronic opinion journal, founded in 1999 by political commentator and strategist Graham Edward Young, a former president of the Queensland branch of the Liberal Party of Australia, and edited by Susan Prior...
, and currently hosts weekly music show The Comfort Zone on 720 ABC Perth
720 ABC Perth
720 ABC Perth is a radio station located in Perth, Western Australia broadcasting on 720 kHz on the AM band. The station is a member of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ABC Local Radio network.-History:...
.
Affiliations
Lucy is a member of the consultancy board of Derrida TodayDerrida Today
Derrida Today is a biannual academic journal published by Edinburgh University Press in May and November of each year. The aim of Derrida Today is to see Derrida's work in its broadest possible context and to argue for its keen and enduring relevance to our present intellectual, cultural and...
and a member of the editorial board of Fibreculture Journal.
He is a member of the Curriculum Council of Western Australia’s Literature Reference Panel.
Publications
- Pomo Oz: Fear and Loathing Downunder (Fremantle Press, 2010).
- Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley, by John Kinsella (Liverpool University Press (2010), editor.
- Vagabond Holes: David McComb and The Triffids (Fremantle Press, 2009), co-edited with Chris Coughran.
- Beautiful Waste: Poems by David McComb (Fremantle Press, 2009), co-edited with Chris Coughran.
- Plagiarism! (From Work to Détournement), special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (Routledge, 2009), co-edited with John Kinsella.
- The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press (University of Western Australia Press, 2006), with Steve Mickler.
- A Derrida Dictionary (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004).
- Beyond Semiotics: Text, Culture and Technology (Continuum, 2001).
- Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), editor.
- Philosophy and Cultural Studies, special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Culture (1998), editor.
- Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997).
- Debating Derrida (Melbourne University Press, 1995).
See also
- List of deconstructionists
- DeconstructionDeconstructionDeconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
- Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
- PostmodernismPostmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
- Poststructuralism