Ghosts in the Machine: Women and Cultural Policy in Canada and Australia ed. by Alison Beale, Annette Van Den Bosch (review)

humanities 489`a linguistic analogue to commodity fetishism' by `abandoning the formal notation of a speaking and breaching ``I'' altogether, in favour of a breathless writing, entirely detached from a speaking voice as unified guarantor of self-presence.' This theoretical difference, when viewed against Canadian literary `values and expectations,' is reflected further in the receptions of the two poets' work, both nationally and internationally. Whereas Nichol's writing has appeared in `several important Canadian anthologies published since the 1970s' but `received almost no critical attention outside of Canada,' Jaeger points out, McCaffery's has been virtually `excluded from these anthologies' but `gained attention from American critics' who situate his work in an international tradition. In a certain way, Peter Jaeger's ABC of Reading TRG stages, as it is, a Lacanian phenomenon. For reading the book is like having an appetizer, as the resultant desire for more, which is only stimulated but not satisfied by Jaeger's reading, is accompanied by the absence or the lack of a more indepth , fully developed engagement with texts, theoretical and poetic, owing to his highly schematic approach. That aside, this book, balanced in critique and rich in cross-references, indeed offers what Jaeger himself calls, in his comment on TRG reports, `a useful springboard' into a hitherto largely overlooked phase of innovative poetics, the theoretical implications of which have yet to be fully acknowledged and critically assessed. (MINGQIAN MA) Alison Beale and Annette Van Den Bosch, editors. Ghosts in the Machine: Women and Cultural Policy in Canada and Australia Garamond 1998. xii, 250. $24.95 This book attempts to think through the effects of the last decade of restructuring and the rhetoric of globalization from the perspective of women working within various domains of the cultural field: as cultural activists, analysts, creators, consultants, educators, planners, and practitioners . Conceived as a collaborative exchange among feminist cultural workers across this range of occupations, Ghosts in the Machine makes a substantial contribution to the growing field of comparative Canadian /Australian studies. But it also attempts an alternative bridging. It seeks to shift the focus of feminist cultural theory from a preoccupation with questions of gender and representation towards policy issues within national, local, and international arenas, and to expand studies in cultural policy to include attention to gender. In these respects, its achievement is more uneven, although it succeeds in widening the contexts for cultural policy discussion in both countries. This ambitious agenda requires a multifaceted mode of address and focus. The collection usefully provides comparative histories of develop- 490 letters in canada 1999 ments in cultural policy in Canada and Australia. The introduction by the two editors, Andrea Hull on Australian government policy, Barbara Godard on changing discourses of culture in Canada, and Monika Kin Gagnon on recent anti-racist initiatives between 1992 and 1995 in Canada (About Face, About Frame; It's a Cultural Thing/Minquon Panchayat; Writing Thru Race) are each informative in providing overviews of key governmental and non-governmental initiatives. These essays are complemented by a series of participant case studies. Patricia Gillard provides an account of her year as the only woman and the only social scientist serving as a member of the Australian Broadband Services Expert Group in 1994. She concludes that gendered and capitalist assumptions about technology, already locked into the parameters of the research and its explanation, will be very difficult to dislodge. Deborah Stevenson writes of her work as a consultant with the City of Newcastle Cultural Review during 1993B94, considering `the potential and some of the limitations of current cultural planning processes, particularly with regard to their integration into the strategic and corporate planning practices of local council.' Here the practices and values of local government also work to inhibit fundamental change. In a comprehensive and well-documented study, Andra McCartney focuses on gendered relations within Canadian electroacoustic institutions. Jennifer Barrett considers community arts and museum practices in Australia as an entry into interrogating `the problems of using terms such as community, public, and audience as ways of approaching difference in the arts.' Brenda Longfellow compares films by Joyce Wieland and Lea Poole to analyse women's relationship to the imagined nations of (English) Canada...