Putu goes to Paris: Global Communication and Australian Imaginings of the East

According to the precepts of recent theory, history ought to be understood as a quantum series, a set of what Foucault in his middle writings cal1s discontinuities: random and self-reflexive events that defy structural, categorical or teleological definition. Yet as analysts of contemporary culture and contemporary social life - and this point Foucault himself ultimately concedes1 - we are perhaps duty bound to unlock broader referential and heuristic patterns in order to account more fully for the multiple contingencies directing our personal and social destinies. To this extent, Australia's integration with the South East Asian region appears to have become an axiom in public discussion, though the specific nature and degree of this historical osmosis remains problematic. With specific reference to Bali, the most extant and commonly imagined constituency of the Far East-Near North constellation, this essay would hope to elucidate some of the cultural-discursive and socio-political dimensions of this integration process.