Progressive culture since 1954
By highlighting the movement’s role in actively constructing neoliberal society, Humphrys points to a future in which labour can unmake neoliberal society. If the complicity of the working-class was required to make Australia what it is today, then those same agents of history can withdraw their consent.
By partnering with Ramsay, Australian universities are lending their names to an institution that promotes a self-identified sympathiser of the far-right.
When I first met Andrew, in the mid-1990s, he had already won the Vogel award for Praise and had written a play, Bait. Working alongside David Berthold, Bait was the result of Andrew’s time as a resident writer at the Queensland Theatre Company. As fate would have it, the company passed on producing it. Andrew’s time at the company was also over, and so that may well have been it for Andrew’s involvement in the theatre.
From across the ditch, the news that the Christchurch terrorist was an Australian was accompanied by a sinking feeling. The way in which our everyday public debate is steeped in concepts of white superiority made it all too predictable that such a horrendous crime should find its origins on our shores.
The Christchurch mosque attacks have conjured waves of support and solidarity and shame. These are important and heartwarming, but they are not enough. Every attack of this kind opens floodgates of racialised violence. It legitimises and emboldens.
This might come across as if I’m trying to exonerate myself: ‘You weren’t paying attention, but I was.’ But I’m as culpable as anyone – and especially culpable as a trade unionist, an activist, and a writer – for laughing off the local white supremacists as nothing more than a rabble.
Many of us immigrants have heard in the last few days that ‘this is not New Zealand.’ It’s meant to be a comforting sentiment. It’s understandable where it’s coming from. What can you possibly say about unspeakable horror, without needing to disavow it?
Even as the country was grieving with its Muslim community, a quiet process of revision began.
The year is 1982. US President Ronald Reagan is ankle-deep in his first term. Across the pond, Margaret Thatcher will soon be elected Prime Minister of the UK. Everyone’s shaking hands with free market capitalism, neoliberal ideals, and a hostile brand of shark-eyed individualism that will endure for decades to come. Jim Henson is having none of it.
Clark Ashton Smith’s ‘weird’ short story from 1931, ‘The city of the singing flame’, presents the journals of Gilles Angarth (also a writer of weird fiction) and his accidental discovery of a portal to another dimension near the California-Nevada border – a place of lush vegetation surrounding a strange and cyclopean city.
We are pleased to announce that Overland will be running two writing residencies in 2019, both of which are supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. These residencies will again address a lack of opportunities for underrepresented writers, providing space, time, stipend and mentorship.
Sam Wallman reports from the pavement outside the Chemist Warehouse during the (ongoing) picket in Preston.
Authors are always put at the centre of Australia’s copyright debates, grounding claims for more rights or fewer exceptions. Despite that, our law has no explicit rights to protect authors in the case of unfair, unclear or outdated contacts. I criticised this state of affairs in the last spring issue of Overland, making a case for Australia finally joining the majority of the world’s nations by granting authors appropriate baseline protections.
After these events, women still went back to jobs where they aren’t paid, protected or promoted as much as their male counterparts, and they went back to their homes with just as many chores and threats of violence as before.
As the federal election looms, the familiar terrain of political conflict over immigration is being prepared. Going by recent reporting, the issue of undocumented migrant labour is likely to acquire a special significance.
We are in shock and mourning, so I’ll keep this brief as I can.
On Friday we learned, in the most horrific way, that we live in a country where a man can walk down the street in broad daylight fully armed and livestream his massacre of Muslims at our place of worship.
What is the meaning of the Yellow Vests?
The Good University is an important book which should be read by anyone concerned about modern academia, both inside and outside the institutions. It should also be mandatory reading for all of Australia’s Vice-Chancellors.