Living the Dream Living The Dream

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In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@jonpiccini) discuss The White Possessive by Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Goenpul woman from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia and is Professor of Indigenous Research at the University of Queensland.
Moreton-Robinson’s work provides a root-and-branch critique of modernity from the perspective of Indigenous Sovereignty and produces a set of critical concepts to think against the operation of race and whiteness both within Australia and beyond.
Other sources mentioned include The Act of Disappearing (meanjin.com.au) by Amy McQuire and the work of Onyeka Nubia, David Roediger and Noel Ignatiev
Listeners should be aware that this show discusses racism, including racist violence.
Music by Chasing Ghost
 

Recorded just before Xmas in this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) talk about 2021. Unsurprisingly we talk a lot about the global pandemic and the attempts to manage it. We discuss the continual rise of an insurgent Right that seems to have become the pole for much of social rebellion at the same time large sections of the Left have further invested in fantasies of the state, the current condition of global capitalism beset by a logistics crisis, labour insubordinations and inflation and more!
 
Stuff we mention include
Conspiracy and Social Struggle – Wu Ming
The Specific Character of Today’s Crisis – Sergio Bologna
Immunodemocracy
Dear Agamben, I write to you – Donatella Di Cesare  

In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) chats with two anarchist comrades Tommy (@correnterosso) and Charlie about Tommy’s recent article Anarchy and Its Allies: The United Front and the Groupings of Tendency and the related rise in anarcho-communist organisations in Australia.  We chat about how anarchism is developing andthe current appeal of Platformism and Especifismo . Topics of discussion include the role a theoretical framework plays and where it comes from, class composition and the history of organisations, and the relationship of revolutionaries to class struggle.
 
A key text mentioned is Social Anarchism and Organisation
 
Tommy is a member of Geelong Anarcho-Communists  and says sorry for how they pronounced the group TMA
Charlie is a member of Black Flag Sydney
 
They recommend reading Red and Black Notes
 
You used to be able to find the archives of the Mutiny Zine at Jura but their website is having issues.
Music by Ernst Busch

In this episode Jon (@JonPiccini) and Dave (@withsobersenses) continue their discussion about race, whiteness and Australia. This time they are reading Ghassan Hage’s classic of 90s Theory White Nation. We talk through his ideas about Whiteness, White Nationalism and fantasy, his critique of tolerance and multiculturalism and try to work out what these ideas give us and also what they miss. How does Hage’s work reflect the changes in Australian society, its internal conflicts and the ruptures and continuations in radical ideas?
We finish this episode with Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face – picked as an example of a particular kind of humour produced by 70s/80s multiculturalism. Since then we have discovered that Joe Dolce, a self-declared Leftist, has moved over to writing for Quadrant, largely it seems due as a reaction to cultural debates. So there you go.

In this episode Dave (@withsobersenses) and Jon (@JonPiccini) discuss Humphrey McQueen's A New Britannia. This is the first of three books we are reading as part of a series on race and capitalism in Australia,
We try to come to grips with his argument and its explanation for racism arising from the specifics of class formation in Australia, how it challenged established Leftwing thought and its implications for today.
We reference
Two Radical Legends: Russel Ward, Humphrey McQueen and the New Left Challenge in Australian Historiography
 
Music by Redgum