Australia and East Timor: the continuing denial

Arena Quarterly no.16

Peter Job

Dec 2023

Throughout the occupation, the Australian government worked as chief propagandist for the Suharto regime in the international arena on the Timor issue.

Time is Ignorance

Arena Quarterly no.16

Valerie Krips

Dec 2023

We are in thickets of folktale and myth even before the characters in Joe’s comics come to life and Joe, following a cuckoo’s call, encounters the deep past as he moves through known topography made as strange as time itself.

Statement Regarding my sacking from the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology

Arena Online

Ghassan Hage

10 Feb 2024

For anyone who knows the German landscape at the moment, there is nothing surprising about this happening to me. Many people other than me have copped a variation on this same treatment. It does not make it less infuriating. 

The Subs and the Next War

Arena Online

Samuel Hume

8 Feb 2024

AUKUS is a poor investment even when judged by the irrational standard of its proponents.

You threw the bums a line, didn’t you?: Bob Dylan’s recurring lesson plan

Arena Online

Mark Furlong

8 Feb 2024

Not interested in encouraging loyalty, or any of the values that can contest the process of individualization, Dylan has been a profiteer.

Smashing, grabbing, falling: Trauma and the core self in youth offending in Mpwartne/Alice Springs

Arena Quarterly no.16

Pamela Nathan

Dec 2023

The truth is that these youth have endured assaults and violations to their internal worlds also. It can be argued that they have lived with a form of ‘soul murder’.

The captivating whiteness of the humanities in Australia

Arena Quarterly no.16

Warwick Anderson

Dec 2023

The parameters of the ‘human’ in the humanities at the University of Melbourne were clearly defined and restricted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Ungrounded Self: Are we witnessing a breakdown in the transmission of culture and subjectivity?

Arena Quarterly no.16

Guy Rundle

Dec 2023

This current process is happening much faster than any other transformation, and so the transformation of subjectivity can be observed in real time.

Identity in Question: The contemporary self as philosophical by-product

Arena Quarterly no.16

Mark Kelly

Dec 2023

The paradox of the discourse of diversity is that it is a universal credo of anti-universalism: it demands we all acknowledge the significance of particular experience, that we can discern in advance based on who is speaking the value of their words.

Cabinet Documents Supressing both the Past and the Future

Arena Online

J. A. Ryan

26 Jan 2024

Those unable to consider any other options falsely believe that such a lack of imagination confirms the validity of the decision, rather than being a clear sign that alternatives surely exist but have been purposefully removed from the public debate.

From the Archive

Green Pathways to a People’s Future

Arena Quarterly no. 1

Adam Bandt

‘Fire’ may be an appropriate way to think and talk about the climate-change emergency, not just because we are literally dealing with a burning world but also because it does not bring with it the concerns associated with ‘rule by emergency’.

From the Archive

The Tip of the Democracy-Sinking Iceberg

Timothy Erik Ström

There is a curious and seldom-told backstory and parallel story to the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that makes the notorious firm seem like the tip of the democracy-sinking iceberg.

The Waxing and Waning of Family Therapy: From the collectivism of 70s therapy to neoliberal individualism today

Arena Quarterly no.16

Mark Furlong

Dec 2023

Set in a fine hotel in legacy southern Italy, the July 2023 conference had a title that said come-over-here-and-take-a-look-at-this!: ‘Family Therapy—The Road that Connects Individual and Social Resources. This was linked to the Assisi Manifesto, a statement prominently set out in the pre-conference publicity and conference program. The credo began: ‘Family therapy champions the family […]

Atop Corbera D’Ebre: Memorialising the Spanish Civil War

Arena Quarterly no.16

Grazyna Zajdow

Dec 2023

What memorials and resistance to them illustrate is that neither historical memory nor historical amnesia is ever complete. Shadows of events always exist, and what is a show of power, as in the case of Poble Vell, in one period may in another be a vivid reminder of resistance.

The Dragon Takes a Slow Dance: China’s new development model, global shifts, and how the pundits get it wrong

Arena Quarterly no.16

Clinton Fernandes

Dec 2023

Common prosperity means the political leadership ‘calling the tune that corporations dance to, rather than the other way around’.

After the Inferno: Mental health, children and families in the wake of the pandemic

Arena Quarterly no.16

David Ferraro

Dec 2023

The crippling anxiety, depression, attentional and other difficulties of the populace constitute real limits, of the sort that arise when something is lacking symbolically.

Depreciating the Real: The Never-Ending Disappointment of AI

Arena Online

Scott Robinson

14 Dec 2023

In this world of depersonalised narcissism, shaped by a uniform corporate directive and the imperative of comfort, convenience and consumption, it would be quite sensible to lose trust in reality.

Ukraine’s Borderline Disorder: How Ukraine’s bizarre internal politics created a European war

Arena Quarterly no.16

Peter Korotaev

Dec 2023

Ever since 2014, radical economic liberals have been in charge of economic policy, and radical ethnocentrist nationalists given crucial positions in the police and army.