Bargains

Posted on | April 23, 2005 | 2 Comments

The UQ Alumni Book Fair started today. I bought 23 books for $44! And that was me being very disciplined. Most exciting finds: The History of Sexuality Vol III (The Care of the Self) for $2, The Second Sex for $1, and the first ever issue of Continuum for $3. I also found William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man for 50c, tee hee.

Maybe the biggest thrill was finding the Local Consumption publication ‘Theoretical Strategies’ from 1982. It includes an interview with Roland Barthes and ‘A New Archivist’ – one of Deleuze’s essays on Foucault. I’m slowly getting a neat collection of these LCP books. They are such a brilliant moment in Australian intellectual history. I started buying them while writing about Meaghan Morris in my PhD. They’d often turn up in the bookshops along King Street in Sydney’s Newtown, distracting me on my wanderings home from uni. Meaghan was one of the people involved in LCP during the early days, working on some of the first English translations of what would become known as ‘French theory’ as well as offering her own work (‘The Pirate’s Fiancee’ essay first appears in an LCP edition the year I was born!).

This is the kind of rich history that tends to go missing in accounts of cultural studies that remain dominant, largely I think because of the huge influence of US publishing and university institutions. Anyway, it’s nice to have another piece of a formidable history that I will one day attempt both to repay and extend.

Category: Events, Out in Vegas, Reading

Comments

2 Responses to “Bargains”

  1. danny
    April 24th, 2005 @ 1:18 am

    Maybe the biggest thrill was finding the Local Consumption publication ‘Theoretical Strategies’ from 1982… I’m slowly getting a neat collection of these LCP books.

    I’m green with envy! I’ve only ever read other peoples :) . And they are a real touchstone in Aust. cultural studies, but should be more widely known about. You’ll make that happen, right?

  2. Mark Bahnisch
    April 24th, 2005 @ 9:45 am

    It’s a pity it’s only every 2 years. You can get some gems – sometimes from retiring academics donating their libraries – tons of good books on politics when Prof. Colin Hughes retired and a feast for classics lovers when Don Barrett stepped down as Dean of Arts.

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