Progressive culture since 1954
As an immigrant from the Middle East, whenever I watch a Hollywood movie set in the Global South I anticipate the reduction of the East into a set of stereotypes in direct opposition to the West. Where the Western self is rational, mature, civilised, the Oriental other is irrational, childlike, savage.
Please stop walking, and look at us/Raise your head and look at us/Raise your hands and look at us/Look at the life lost in our abode/Look at the tears our eyes have lost.
Despite decades of advocacy, renters’ struggles remain socially marginal, with little scope for renters to self-represent, demonstrate collective power, and exert political force. As the pandemic exacerbates the quotidian struggles of renters and people in precarious housing, it is increasingly clear that a militant collective response is required.
If we use current literary prizes as indicators of literary merit and as generators of reading lists, Australian poetry becomes a near ghost, dancing around the edges of the industry and only sometimes allowed in. A future that truly celebrates and champions excellence in Australian poetry is something to fight for and look forward to.
The battle to save Kelly’s Bush – a public open space on the banks of the Parramatta River at Hunters Hill – is legendary, and was the catalyst that launched Mundey on a path that would bring him international fame, and guarantee him a place in the history of Australian urban political thought.
We’d like to thank everyone who entered this year for their thoughtful and incredible work. We received an impressive and high quality range of poems, and each and every writer deserves congratulations. We’d also like to thank our judges, Evelyn Araluen and Gayle Allan (Trinity College), for their hard work and dedication to the decision-making process.
Sarah Burnside reviews new books by Penny Wincer and Ambelin Kwaymullina and a new essay by Judith Brett, with a focus on care.
Australia’s case of Dutch disease has real political dimensions. The Australian state has represents what we might call in vulgar Marxist terms an executive committee for the mining industry.
In its depoliticised form, ‘mental health’ can be used to explain just about anything. Most recently, New Zealand MP Andrew Falloon was caught sending pornographic images to several young women and invoked his grief at his friends’ suicides as the cause. Perhaps unusually, this time the excuse failed to work.
As a result of events that occurred in Redfern on 15 February a seventeen-year-old Indigenous boy named Thomas Hickey is gone from not only his mother, but from us – all of us.
Before I moved in with Chris, I packed everything I owned into two boxes and sold the rest on Gumtree. I hated the idea of getting attached to things. I had Jess to thank for that. Jess had been the sort of person rules loosened around. Within a month of us living together, they’d moved from smoking outside, to out the window, to a huge mason jar of cigarettes growing yellow and grey next to the bed.
When I first left New Zealand, I didn’t think I’d have to write a piece about how to go through quarantine on my return home. But now that we’re here, I hope the values of compassion and kindness that have become linked to Jacinda Ardern’s government can be shown to mean something. I hope they’re not just empty words. For the government, this is a real test of their commitments – and their values.
If we properly situate The Last of Us: Part II in the broader medium of videogames, and not just the subfield of Triple-A action videogames, both its accomplishments and failings are better tempered and it is easier to evaluate it for what it actually is.
The privilege of common sense is not afforded to marginalised writers, who are asked to prove even the most observable phenomenon, such as their underrepresentation in the industry. Even our very marginalisation is discouraged from entering the discussion until we have gone through the lengthy process of proving its validity.
The fact of fascism in Australia is quotidian and mundane, creeping insidiously into mainstream culture through policy and broadcast. Most of the time, it is enough to let the logic of a settler colony move to its own authoritarian conclusion. Occasionally, however, things do flare up and remind us of how the table is set. This happened two weeks ago, when the police cracked down on antifascist protesters while protecting the far right.