Online: Blogs

Loudspeaker

Reply to O’Shea and Razer on cultural politics and the Left

Author: Guy Rundle
Posted on: 9 May 2013

Helen Razer’s broadside against ‘the Left’s’ obsession with symbolic politic – dumb articles on newsreaders, rainbow-painted street crossings – got a strong vote of support when it appeared on Crikey last week. It was difficult not to join in. These mini-debates that flare up around gestures or dumb remarks, frequently related to gender and sexuality, sometimes seem to have become the only thing that resembles politics in a society where, more than perhaps anywhere in the world, the material/economic question has been written out of daily discussion and struggle.

Continue reading 'Reply to O’Shea and Razer on cultural politics and the Left' 18

Loudspeaker

Irony for dinner

Author: Helen Addison-Smith
Posted on: 8 May 2013

I’ve always enjoyed ironic living, even (especially) before it was fashionable. I found it a useful coping strategy that helped me navigate late capitalism, especially in the long stretches of my life when I was broke. It allows me to appreciate the things that are discarded or disregarded by the dominant culture, as ugly, uninteresting, charmless or tasteless.

Continue reading 'Irony for dinner' 3

Loudspeaker

Saving the Muslim woman, yet again

Author: Sahar Ghumkhor and Yassir Morsi
Posted on: 7 May 2013

There’s been much debate among politicians, university staff and the Muslim community about the gender-segregated seating at a lecture at the University of Melbourne organised by Islamic education group, Hikma Way. Responding to the Australian’s inquiry about the event, Melbourne uni gender studies academic Sheila Jeffreys described it as ‘gender apartheid’ and ‘ritual humiliation’. Opposition leader Tony Abbott responded with the all-too-familiar label, ‘un-Australian’.

Continue reading 'Saving the Muslim woman, yet again' 2

Loudspeaker

Helen Razer, symbolism and the Left

Author: Elizabeth OShea
Posted on: 6 May 2013

Helen Razer’s piece about the failures of the ‘Left’ is a political version of an Escher drawing. Chastising what she sees as vacuous symbolism and disintegration into individuality, Razer appears wholly unaware of the intense irony in calling this out in the exact manner she decries. Her criticism doesn’t take you anywhere; you just end up talking in circles of pithy cynicism.

Continue reading 'Helen Razer, symbolism and the Left' 19

Loudspeaker

Warrior making and Anzac Day

Author: Kim Johnston
Posted on: 3 May 2013

On Saturday 27 April, the Canberra Times published an article entitled ‘Push to add soldier to honour roll despite “objections”’. Two days earlier, 35,000 people attended the dawn service at the Australian War Memorial, with other ceremonies around Australia reporting larger crowds than the previous three or four years.

Continue reading 'Warrior making and Anzac Day' 1

Cruel Miracles

Pity the emerging writer – or not

Author: Stephen Wright
Posted on: 2 May 2013

There are so many implications built into the term ‘emerging writer’, many of them patronising and designed to reinforce a hierarchy of power. There’s a kind of infantilising regard built into the idea.

Continue reading 'Pity the emerging writer – or not' 62

Loudspeaker

Clive Palmer and the plutocratic impulse

Author: Guy Rundle
Posted on: 1 May 2013

Ross Perot ran a one-man party, based on his software fortune, in 1992, thus ensuring the election of Bill Clinton. More recently, billionaire financial services broadcaster, Michael Bloomberg simply bought the mayoralty of New York with a massive outspend of his opponent, while Vegas property developer and ultra-zionist Shelton Adelson pumped tens of millions into the one-man crusade of Newt Gingrich (in return, Gingrich’s speeches would veer alarmingly from the structural economic problems of the US to a demand that the country’s Israeli embassy be moved to Jerusalem).

Continue reading 'Clive Palmer and the plutocratic impulse' 1

Loudspeaker

Will the UN Arms Trade Treaty really work?

Author: Roselina Press
Posted on: 1 May 2013

Whether the newly adopted Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which was overwhelmingly approved in the UN General Assembly on 2 April, will be able to successfully eliminate or prevent the harms associated with the international arms trade, however, is uncertain.

Continue reading 'Will the UN Arms Trade Treaty really work?' 0

Loudspeaker

Early childhood learning and the Free Kindergarten Union

Author: Asher Wolf
Posted on: 30 April 2013

And so we have entered the age of kindergarten and childcare after the boom and bust of Eddy Grove’s ABC Learning Centres, a company that reported a record after-tax profit of $81.1 million in 2006. The stock market-listed childcare that operated 2300 facilities across four countries collapsed in 2008 owing owing creditors more than $2.7 billion.

Continue reading 'Early childhood learning and the Free Kindergarten Union' 1

In Print: 210 Autumn 2013

Features

The Great American Novel during an age of terror

‘I thought I was the only one!’

Reconciling queer identities with Islam

Golden Dawn and the challenge for the Left

Germany and Palestine

Piecing together a relationship

Self-immolations in Tibet

The aesthetics of conservatism

Australia's hidden defect

Neoliberalism, climate change and the Left

Total surveillance, the hackerati and the future of activism

Fiction

Poetry Prize

Judge’s report

First place

Second place

Third place

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