Androgynous ethical intervention and living history

This paper explores how narratives of Australian belonging are formedthrough a quilted matrix of myth, history and memory. This is done through looking atthe Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and the beach, tracing the mythology of theSurf Life Saver, the surfer and contemporary sexual and ethnic identities. I suggest thatlife is lived through layers of the past, organised in formal and informal, conscious andunconscious ways, connected in asymmetrical and symmetrical fashion. The aim here isnot to add to the measurable, instrumental canon of history, but to activate what GregDenning has referred to as “living histories”, by exploring androgynous moments ofbelonging.