Harold A. Innis, Asian media and dependency theory : remembering the work of Brian Shoesmith

Casting an eye back on the cultural scene in Perth in the late eighties and early nineties, this article reflects on the legacy of the late Brian Shoesmith. I discuss Brian's work on Harold A. Innis and communications theory, his interests in Asian media and Indian cinema, the research agendas he forged at Edith Cowan University and his institution building efforts later in his career. In writing this piece, I am struck now by how rich this period was in Australian communications, media and cultural studies. In this respect, the article contributes to a broader collective account of a period that registers what we have lost in the metric obsessed academy of audit cultures, performance rankings and research excellence: a shared sense of intellectual adventure between academic staff and students, an institutional environment that conditioned disciplinary experimentation (or at least remained sufficiently oblivious to activities on its margins) and a general culture of living theory. Those days seem over. Yet, by reflecting on the many activities of Brian, together with his contemporaries like Tom O'Regan and many of their generation, we might recuperate a sense of the vibrancy of that time as a possible resource in negotiating an increasingly circumscribed institutional and disciplinary horizon of the present.