The exercise of sovereign power in the North — even if it is just the deployment of six military personnel — is enacted in the process of abrogating sovereignty in the South. The possibility of popular and peaceful protest in the North — even if it is just a basic demand for ceasefire and human rights —is never more potent than when it is made impossible in the South.

Emily Dickinson was part of the elite, and although none of her works are outspoken in politics, a current of elitism, colonialism, and the wealthy language of divine right threads through all her poems. Using various language and style choices, Dickinson’s poetry is adept in the ‘clubbishness’ that was American high society’s identity.

Racism in Australia has long rested on not only vicious establishment slander, but on silence, or attempts to obfuscate, the agency, humanity and courage of the oppressed.

I took one of the courses that d’Abrera singles out – ‘Imperialism, 1815–2000’ – and by the time this goes to print I will have sat the final exam, so I’d like to take this opportunity to counter the ways d’Abrera dismisses the unit.

None of the women have much to say, but they sure look great striding around in their helmets and breastplates, muscles gleaming in the shimmery light of the Aegean sea.

Like so many other well-meaning white people, Professor Garrod’s motives in going to Rwanda are ostensibly good. Having lost the sense of meaning and purpose he once derived from his Ivy League professorship, he decides to go to Africa to ‘make a difference’. The film charts the months of rehearsals and, over time, his altruistic veneer slips. Just under the surface, a mindset that’s essentially that of the early colonialist – namely the missionary – begins to emerge

We can trace imperialist feminism to the Victorian era. In 1882 Lord Cromer, a British Consul General in Egypt, claimed to be liberating women through the British occupation of Egypt. While using women's rights to advance empire in Egypt, he was also championing the anti-suffragist cause at home.

During the first US presidential debate in September, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were asked to explain how the escalating threat of cyber warfare would be combatted by their prospective administrations. Clinton, whose candidacy was undermined by a hack on Democratic National Convention emails in July, went immediately on the offensive, accusing Russia of waging cyber-attacks on the US and voicing concern about the increased risk of state-sanctioned intimidation via malicious web leaks.

It was going to happen sooner or later. The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize has thrown into relief fears that were tentatively voiced in 2014, when, in the name of globalism, the competition was first opened to American authors: that a US-UK hegemony would cast its shadow over the literary world, sidelining smaller Commonwealth voices and severely curtailing any purchase on diversity.

The most disturbing aspect of viewing Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, half a century after its release, is how familiar the images of Western soldiers involved in a civil conflict in an Arab country now feel.