Available in Selected Metros Only Rural Melancholy and the Promise of Online Connectivity

This article considers the benefits a cultural studies perspective can offer debates around rural and regional telecommunications provision. It begins with a critique of the metrocentrism dominant in recent scholarship of new media, arguing that academic, business and government discourses share progressivist assumptions in equating online connectivity with freedom. It highlights how the gap between the promotion of connectivity and actually existing infrastructure leads to an ontological resilience among rural residents who 'make do' with deferred promises of community and participation. The relationship this bears to the political subjectivities described in recent queer theory is briefly explored. The article develops to suggest that a parachute model of policy consultation privileges those in rural communities with the social and cultural capital to advance established interests – leaving the everyday lives of the majority of residents unrecognised. In encouraging ethnographic studies of technology use that spend time in rural locations, the paper concludes that the different priorities that drive country life – the prominence of environmental concerns, the importance of civic institutions, and above all, distance from the temporalities that dictate the terms for assessing political participation – offer important correctives to the ideologies of individualism and innovation that drive new media consumption.

thanmarketprovisioncurrentlyservices.Initially,thiselectionpledgewastobring high-speed internet to 98 per cent of the population by 2010, but at the time of writing, this objective has been modified to only 90 per cent of the nation's residents, although at much higher speeds than originally suggested.The government's amended proposal intends to develop a business model for more equitablebroadbandaccessthatwillbeturnedovertothemarketonceitsviability is proven.It follows an announcement made by the nation's largest telecommunicationsprovider,Telstra,toequiphomesininner-cityMelbournewith broadbandspeedssignificantlyfasterthanthenationalaverage.
The vicissitudes of market-led technology adoption are an obvious point of departureforaculturalstudiescritique.However,inwhatfollowsIseektoupdate culturalstudies'concernwithcity-countrydivideswhichstretchesbackasfarasthe defining account provided by Raymond Williams. 3As I have argued previously, Williams was one of the first cultural studies scholars to introduce an affective register to cultural studies writing and politics. 4This essay follows his example by approximatingwhatitfeelsliketobedistantfromthevisionsofonlineconnectivity currently celebrated by government and telco promoters alike.In doing so, it focuses on 'scenes of ordinary survival, not transgression, on disappointment, not refusal,toderivetheregisterofcritique'. 5

-HAPPY HOMES
To give a sense of the optimistic visions of broadband connection that have appeared regularly in recent media, I begin with two images.The first is an unremarkable Australian brick and tile home, its interior exposed akin to a child's dolls' house.Inside, each room is occupied by a member of a 'typical' family. 6The fatherisintheloungeroom,feetuponthecoffeetable,watchingascreenfromthe couch.Themotherisinthekitchen,alsoattendingacomputer.Upstairs,fourrooms are occupied by individual children, also involved in networked screen activity.Apartfromtwoyounggirlstogetherinabedroom,eachfamilymemberisalone.
Australian readers may recognise this as a description of Telstra Bigpond's large scale advertising campaign for broadband services that has appeared in magazines,newspaperinserts,mailboxes,televisioncommercialsandonline.Among thethingstonoteaboutitaretheindividuatingtendenciesitnaturalises:computers generate a succession of isolated consumer experiences and market segments, which together combine to form a contained, individual household.The nuclear familyandthehomearesynonymousandcompriseanidyllicimageofcommunity captured in the Bigpond slogan: 'We all get on when we all get on.'The advertisement is a tiny rendition of the elements comprising suburban happiness.
Whetherparodyorimitation,itisvisionofdomesticharmonythatgainscoherence throughtherelationshipsbeingformedoutsidethefamilyunit. 7e second image is a blue Volkswagon Kombi van made of cardboard (Figure1).ItisaDIYconstructionputtogetherfromaletterboxmailoutdelivered sometimein2008.TheKombicomesfromanotherTelstracampaign,thistimefor wireless broadband.Not only does it appear in the significant number of media outlets already mentioned, it also occupies prominent advertising space in public locations-forinstance,SydneyDomesticAirport(Figure2).TheKombicampaignusesafamiliarandapproachableconduittocapturea number of resonant metaphors for online connectivity.Travelling along the sunny highway, the Kombi is a modest and colloquial adaptation of descriptions of the internet as an 'information superhighway'.The many routes travelled by the van echo government policy documents which explain broadband as an infrastructure investment comparable to the rail-building and power-generating schemes that pioneered the nation's economic development.Plus, the freedom of the open road connotes the unlimited potential of the internet, the routes of travel rendered available through the trusty blue 'router'.The Kombi's historical association with alternative lifestyles-of hippie and counter-cultural movements-also suggests liberation of another kind, as if the market power of a large, profit-seeking organisation or the red tape of government regulation has little to do with the radicalpossibilitiestobeexperiencedonline.
-PASSING THROUGH Theperspectivefavouredinthissecondcampaignisthetravellerpassingthrough: someonewhoseengagementwithcountrytownsisserial,superficialandselective.Therepresentationneverconsidersthattheruralandregionallocationsmentioned might be a home rather than a temporary destination.Nor is there any sense that wireless infrastructure is actually an enforced choice for residents.In remote locations, wireless is often the only basis by which one might access the internet.Indeedthelatestgovernmentannouncementmeansthiswillalmostcertainlybethe case in a growing number of areas.Instead these images celebrate a transitory relationshipwiththeplacesmythologisedinpopularcultureandtourism.
Metro-centricmarketingofnewmediatechnologyregularlydepictsthebush and the outback as places for urban dwellers to visit on holiday or on weekends, rather than residential nodal points and households in their own right. 8The locations in Telstra's wireless campaign are places that one might drive by, stop momentarily, or simply hear about; rarely are they appreciated as generative of culture.InStewart'sterms,theyarelocations'outthere-inthespaceofmarginalia andex-centricity'thatarenonetheless'placestowhich"we"mightreturn-inmind, if not in body-in search of redemption and renewal'. 9The 'we' in Stewart In contrast to recent government policies designed to appease powerful ruralvotingblocs(witnessthepreviousCoalitionGovernment'sattemptstomediate the Telstra-enforced CDMA shut off), and as a response to the selective vision of Telstra'stravellingKombi,Stewartissuesusaninvitationtocontemplatethe'space onthesideoftheroad'.Atatimewhenacademicfundingmodelsseemdestinedto allow only piecemeal engagement with communities around the priorities of a universitycalendar,herworkisanexplorationof'howfindingoneselfonthesideof theroadcouldbecomeanepistemologicalstance'. 11pliedtothepresentcontext,andtocitetheobvious,neitheroftheimages I've mentioned speaks to a rural constituency or bothers to imagine what connectivitymightmeantothecommunitiesvisitedorpassedthroughbyothers.In the first, the promise of online connectivity is packaged as part of a suburban lifestyle that presumes wealthy (note the number of computers), leisured, nuclear families with stereotypical gender interests. 12Telstra's extensive market research clearly corresponds with publicly accessible studies conducted by government agencies that show the presence of school-age children is the principal factor in determining household broadband adoption-followed by income, education, occupation and employment. 13These are quantitative measures that justify marketing logics.For these reasons alone the appearance of these images in such volume can be easily dismissed as unremarkable.But, seen another way, they also buildacaseforaskingwhybroadbandwouldeverberelevanttooldercitizens,or thepoororunemployed.Theybegustoaskhowthosewhoselivesremainoutside theframeofsuch'picturesofstagedperfection'copewiththe'exhaustingundertow' oftheseandotherprojectionsofordinariness-whatemotionaleffectstheyhaveon thosewhoselifestylechoicesdon'tfitthe'mainstreambanality'ofcorporatecliche. 14ON-METRO MELANCHOLIA In the realm of technological imaginaries, in a country where two-thirds of the populationliveinlargemetropolitancentres, 15 non-metroresidentsshareaffinities with other marginal identities in the sense that their experiences are so regularly absent from depictions of ordinariness.Rural identity resembles a queer phenomenology if, following the work of Sara Ahmed, we take this to mean negotiating the unhappiness that others feel faced with someone's decision to pursueadifferentkindoffulfilment. 16Thenon-metrobroadbanduserreckonswith analways-presentawarenessthattheimagesofconnectivitypromotedindominant discourses-images that so many others find desirable-may actually appear as uninteresting, if not also uninhabitable.This is because a rural location so often meansalackofaccesstothefacilitiesthatgrantthesepleasuresinthefirstplace.If weweretotheorisethiscondition,whatIamcallingruralmelancholyisthefeeling thatmanifestsinthereflexactionmytitletriestosummon:itisthehabitofreading thefineprintinadvertisingthatsays"availableinselectedmetrosonly".
Thenon-metrouser'smelancholiaevolvesfromtheknowledgethatsomeof the most highly sanctioned pleasures in life must be disavowed to maintain an attachment to a crucial aspect of identity-the choice of where to live.As Judith Butler explains, in her critique of Freud, identity formation involves negotiating a historyofaccommodationtoabandonedobject-choices.Identificationsareachieved through the experience of melancholia; that is, the process of developing resilient psychicstructurestocompensatefor'anoriginallovethat,unacknowledged,failsto beresolved'.ForFreud,thelossoftheobjectisneverabsolutebecauseoursenseof self expands to incorporate it: 'the other becomes part of the ego through the permanent internalization of the other's attributes'. 17But the exhausting effort of havingtotakeaccountforthelovethatcannotberealisedmakesmelancholiaaselfpunishingstate,becauseitinvolvesanongoingprocessofrepressingidentification withsomethingdesired.
Pressing the analogy to technology advertising, the longed for object (fast broadband,andparticipationinthepleasuresofonlineconnectivitypromotedinso many business and government policies) creates tension for those who choose to live beyond the capital city bias of current coverage.The shortcomings in actually existing infrastructure lead country residents to variously compensate, make excuses for, and display cynicism in the face of what won't happen, what can't be attained, what isn't guaranteed in the fine print.The barrage of projections celebrating the benefits of broadband summons a form of defense akin to melancholywhentheplaceonelivesbecomestheveryfactorpreventingaccesstoa visionofhappiness. 18isnon-metroontologyalsosharesqualitiesthatLaurenBerlantattributes to the 'intimate public' of women's culture.In The Female Complaint she describes women's everyday experience as that of 'disappointment not disenchantment' and her project shows how the genres of sentimentality in women's popular culture alleviatethepainoflosthopesandloves.Berlantclaimswomenoffer'thesacrificeof emotional labor to a variety of kinds of callousness, incompetence, and structural inequity'presentedbytherationalpublicsphereandthatthisinvolves'strategiesof bargaining, adaptation, and flouting the rules'.Similarly, the ways that rural technology users 'make do' with infrastructure limitations and the inequalities resultingfromgovernmentandmarketfailurerecallsthepoignantpotentialBerlant sees in women's culture.Each group sustains itself in the belief that '"tomorrow is anotherday"inwhichfantasiesofthegoodlifecanbelived'. 19

-RATIONAL SUBJECTS
Here,Iamconsciouslyavoidingadiscussionofwhetherinfactruralconsumersdo or should desire high-speed broadband given the wider economic transformations affecting everyday life.Any casual review of opinion pages in today's newspapers willalmostoverwhelminglysuggestotherwise-thatonlineconnectivityisfarfrom the highest priority for many residents beyond the city.But part of my point in drawingattentiontoaffectistoindicatethelimitationsofengaginginculturalpolicy debates in these conventional ways-when to do so involves manifesting an articulate, rational speaking position performed in appropriate public sphere locations; a subjectivity that knows well enough to place a potentially infinite number of political causes in the right order of urgency and in a language fitting public submissions and stakeholder lobbying.In this situation, with the odds so heavily poised against the majority of rural residents effectively expressing their reactions to Government policy, cultural research contributes something vital by explaining the bases for political disengagement or, in Berlant's words, 'what is absorbinginthedefensive,inventive,andadaptiveactivityofgettingby,alongwith thegreatrefusalstogothroughpowertoattainlegitimacy'. 20Affectiveregistersare a counter to the linguistic challenge of saying anything truly meaningful through quantitative representations of rural experience that inform public policy.For despitethebestintentionsofgovernmentinitiativesandtelcoprovisionstargeting 'rural and regional Australia', there is still a symbolic violence in this notoriously slippery category, which assumes a shared horizon of values among inhabitants of places as geographically, demographically and historically different as Hobart, CooberPedyandRockhampton.Non-metromelancholia,bycontrast,offersameans to register the 'structure of feeling' shared across a range of rural, regional and provinciallocations. 21 Berlant has long argued, the risk of creating political 'publics' is that categorisationhastheeffectofmakingdiverseindividualsappeargeneric: it turns them into kinds of people who are both attached to and underdescribed by the identities that organize them.This paradox of partial legibility is behind much of the political and personal anger that arisesinscenesofmisrecognitionineverydaylife. 22plied to the present context, much of the anger surrounding the plans for the nationalbroadbandnetworkstemsfromtheperceptionthatcitypolicymakersfail to notice the different priorities that exist in rural areas, which affect the kind of servicesthatareseenasvaluable.Someofthemostpressingconcerns-changesto climate, access to employment, and population makeup-at least deviate from the office-based schedules pushing many improvements in information and communications technology (ICT) design.They are certainly distant from the entertainmentpreferencesofyoungurbanuserswhoarecherishedbecausewealthy demographics are driving the demand for faster broadband.To make rural connectivity more than an ambiguous promise means seriously coming to terms withthedailyhabitsandroutinesofthosewhodon'tworkinjobsinsuburbsorcity centres, who might not aspire to visit these centres in response to the boom in regional tourism, and whose everyday life may be blissfully free of computer dependence.
Cultural research can reflect the different forms of social capital, expertise and authority that operate as influencers in rural areas.Think, for instance, of the civicinstitutionsthathaveflourishedacrossAustralia'sdiverselandscapeoverthe past century-from Rotary to the Returned and Serviceman's League (RSL), churches to parents' and citizens' groups, and volunteer groups like the Country Women'sAssociation(CWA). 23 Theseaffiliationsquestionfundamentalassumptions about the benefits of the digital economy, particularly the notion that online connectionisthebestformofsocialnetworking.Andifitistheseorganisationsthat providethecommunitysolaceandsupportforruralresidentsthatonlineforaoften replace in urban contexts, it is little coincidence that they face declining memberships as ever greater numbers of civic services are reduced to an internet presence.Combined with the wider economic changes affecting employment opportunities in rural areas (including the significant potential for education and class mobility now available to women), the fortunes of conservative institutions thatremainattachedtolocalidentitywillnotbemagicallyreversedwiththetake-up of broadband.Nonetheless, rural cultural studies attentive to these tensions can contribute to the landscape for telecommunications policy by demonstrating how 'ordinary restlessness appears as a symptom of ambivalence about aspirational normativity and not a pointer toward unrealized revolution'. 24From this perspective, that rural residents have yet to mobilise in protest against the selectivityofbroadbandcoverageishardlyafailureofnerve.Itisratherareflection on the ways that the promise of online connectivity is represented as so uncompellinginitsmodesofsociality,whilesimultaneouslyharbouringathreatto otherwaysofliving.

-CULTURES OF CONNECTIVITY
Looking beyond the national, Genevieve Bell shows how a comparative approach that accounts for different cultures of connectivity can reveal what technology can anddoeslooklikegivenspecificlocalcustoms. 25Culturalresearchcanbearwitness to the many ways connectivity is actualised through co-operative, activist, mystic, religiousandcommunity-driveninitiatives,allofwhichcontrasttheindividualised, consumerist and market-driven priorities shaping Australian government and business strategy. 26Bell shares with Stewart a training in anthropological method, and each provides an example of the long-term investment in research that is necessary to appreciate and learn from the unique dynamics of rural and regional life. 27Cultural research of this kind slows down the research and activist agenda around technology use to hear the concerns of residents expressed in their own terms.
Tore-presentthe'spaceonthesideoftheroad',Stewartwrites: we need more than assertions that the local has its own epistemology or thateverythingisculturallyconstructed.Weneedtoapproachtheclashof epistemologies-ours and theirs-and to use that clash to repeatedly reopenagapinthetheoryofcultureitselfsothatwecanimaginecultureas aprocessconstitutedinuseandthereforelikelytobetense,contradictory, dialogic, texted, textured, both practical and imaginary, and in-filled with desire.Thatis,thetheoryofcultureitselfmustbebroughtintothespace of the gap between signifier and meaning-the 'space on the side of the road'-so that we can begin to imagine it as a 'thing' that is not selfidentical with itself but given to digression, deflection, displacement, deferral,anddifference. 28 Stewartdemonstratesthevalueofethnographicresearchinopeningupa'gapinthe order of things', that will recognise the range of experiences to be found in any specificplace.
My choice of the term 'non-metro' to discuss rural melancholy is therefore

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: The Bigpond wireless Kombi van, circa 2008 (photograph: Melissa Gregg) 's formulationcanbetakentomeanacity-dwellingcommentariat,andherhistoryof ethnographicresearchisachallengetothewaysthatremotelocationsarerendered visible in national histories.Informed by years spent living with Appalachian communities in West Virginia, Stewart's writing considers what it would mean to linger in the forgotten places left behind by modernity and other narratives of progress.In these contexts, she asks us to consider 'how culture in an occupied, betrayed, fragmented, and finally deserted place might become not a corpus of abstract ideas of grounded traditions but a shifting and nervous space of desire immanentinlostandre-memberedandimaginedthings'.Againstthetemptationto mythologise what happens in distant locations, Stewart's writing portrays the complexcharacteristicssharedbetweenpeoplewhoseworldsexist'inthespaceof the gap, in a logic of negation, surprise, contingency, roadblock, and perpetual incompletion'. 10 notintendedtoreifyorprolongthepresentinterestin'ruralculturalstudies',much less essentialise any notion of what the feeling of a rural or non-metro location involves for all people.Instead it is an appreciation of the significance of ordinary affectsthatescaperepresentationforprofitableorquantifiableoutcomes.Drawing onfeministandqueertheory,myaimhasalsobeentohighlightthelinksthatcanbe made between the banal imagery of advertising copy for technology access and visionsofempowermentandfulfilmentthatpertaintoothercontexts.Theaffectsof ruralidentityresemblethoseofotherminoritysubjectivitiestotheextentthateach suffersadifferentialrelationshiptothedefaultpleasuresandbenefitsofcitizenship.-THETROUBLE WITH PROMISESIn her critique of Freud's model of melancholia, Butler famously calls for a multiplicityofdissonantvariationsongenderidentity-actsof'gendertrouble'-to negate the melancholy apparently innate to normative gender ascription.This is a suggestion that might be extended to current figurations of rural identity, which rarely offer positive or complex representations of rural life and fulfilment that might compete with those imagined in metro-centric advertising.Cultural studies research informed by ethnographic principles offers a means to recognise the different priorities of rural life and how they differ from an individualised, screenbased, indoor lifestyle.It can constitute an effort to produce a multiplicity of rural identities with equal purchase on what constitutes a worthy vision of community andhappiness.The Australian Government's broadband plan is an important acknowledgementthatthebenefitsofinternetaccesssofaroverwhelminglyfavour affluentcitydwellers.Ithardlyseemssustainableforanationtoperpetuateamajor gulfbetweenthosewhoseeharmonyinasharedbroadbandconnection('weallget onwhenweallgeton')andthosewhoseektobuildcommunitynetworksthrough other avenues.To continue this division would mean that the city and the country needneverencountereachother'sdifference,justasitwouldleavelesspopulated areas vulnerable to economic appraisals of their worth.The government's latest actions at least appreciate that it is not in the market's interest to deliver the promiseofconnectivityinequalmeasure.Announcingtherevisedpolicy,PrimeMinisterKevinRuddvisitedTasmania, Australia's smallest state, which has been earmarked for the first phase of the government's new venture.As my childhood home for over twenty years, and the place I often return to see my family, Tasmania's parochial media outlets and monopolised telecommunications infrastructure are the basis for many of these musingsaboutruralmelancholy.Seizingthelimelightinapressconferenceshared withthePrimeMinisterinApril2009,TasmanianPremierDavidBartlettexplained howthegovernment'sbroadbandvisionfithishopesforTasmaniaasa'clever,kind andconnected'society.Howevercloyingthesoundbite,hisslogansetabenchmark for local politicians seeking to capitalise on the links between citizenship and connectivity.Bartlett'shopeiscommendableinthepresentclimateforthesheernovelty of choosing to articulate values in addition to the inherent worth of broadbandincludingthevaluetobefoundintheaffective.Yetinthedwindlingmonthsbefore forthcoming elections, these highly rhetorical celebrations of the revolutionary promiseofonlinepleasurescontinuetohoverinastateofanimatedsuspension.For non-metro broadband users, the future that is about to happen 29 is tantalising and elusive, like somebody's favourite web page that, because of the unaccountable logistics of telecommunications infrastructure, takes too long to load.Politicians pitchingtheirfortunesonthenewknowledgeeconomywoulddowelltonotethat, whetherone'sallegianceistocountryorthecity,thegapbetweenimageandreality is a place few residents seek to dwell.In contrast to the quality of Australia's internetaccess,iftherewasanydoubtthatmelancholymightbepolitical,wecould donobetterthanwitnessthespeedwithwhichtheseleadersloudlydeclareanother form of community for voters to believe in should their hopes be deferred much longer.-Melissa Gregg works in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the UniversityofSydney.HerbooksincludeCulturalStudies'AffectiveVoices(2006)andThe Affect Theory Reader (edited with Greg Seigworth, 2010).Melissa's three-year studyofonlinetechnology,workandhomelife,Work'sIntimacy,istobepublished in2010.<mgregg@usyd.edu.au>-NOTES 1 KathleenStewart,OrdinaryAffects,DukeUniversityPress,DurhamandLondon,2007,p.4. 2 Stewart,OrdinaryAffects,p.5.3RaymondWilliams,TheCountryandtheCity,Paladin,Frogmore,1975.4MelissaGregg,ScholarlyAffect:VoicesofInterventioninCulturalStudies,PhDthesis,Universityof Sydney,2004.PublishedasCulturalStudies'AffectiveVoices,PalgraveMacmillan,Basingstoke,2006. 5 LaurenBerlant,TheFemaleComplaint:TheUnfinishedBusinessofSentimentalityinAmericanCulture, DukeUniversityPress,DurhamandLondon,2008,p.25. 6Myuseoftheword'typical'isareferencetothedeliberatelyvaguewordingofTelstra'sownfineprint forthisadvertisement,whichwarns'Signalrangevariesfromhousetohousebutaccessisfrom anywhereinatypicalhouse'.7IthankAnnaHickey-Moodyfornoticingthisandformanyotherencouragingcommentsonthedraft ofthispaper.AlsothankstoMichelleDicinoskiforpragmaticandpoeticinspiration.