On Australia’s ‘Day of Shame’, after the release of the Brereton Report, there was much talk of ‘warrior culture’ and ‘bad apples’. Sir Galahad, shining exemplar of warrior culture, never burnt villages or murdered children, but ‘bad apples’ has more of a ring of truth if applied to the few soldiers who take pleasure in killing. The uncomfortable phrase ‘blood lust’ rarely gets a mention, in spite of a nod in that direction in the Brereton Report.
The Democratisation of Disagreement
About two days after I submitted my undergraduate thesis, my supervisor was cancelled. He’d been sending emails with slurs in them: Muslims were ‘Mussies’; East Asians were ‘Chinky-poos’; Nelson Mandela was a ‘darky’. When New Matilda published the emails online, he tried to say it was all ironic—part of, in his words, ‘a whimsical language game’. Not many people believed him. Instead, public backlash brought about the end of an illustrious academic career. He had been the University of Sydney’s first and only professor of poetry. We didn’t have the phrase ‘cancel culture’ back then. In those days, ‘political correctness’ […]
On Work
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
As Water Flows I (Should) Follow
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Bohemia on the Mountainside
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Homing
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Australia in Three Books
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Watson on Keating
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Rediscovering Kylie Tennant’s Foveaux
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
A Rich Crop From a Lean Year
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
The Dilemma of Free Speech and Discrimination
Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for a print subscription, $5 for a monthly digital subscription, and $50 for an annual digital subscription. DIGITAL PRINT
Monopolies of the Australian Mind
The political form of postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its vocation the invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as well as a spatial scale. —Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Logic of Late Capitalism Force majeure On the morning of 18 February 2021 Australia awoke to find itself at war. While the nation slept, powerful digital saboteurs cut the cords that bind the nation together, severing connections to its most popular and most important sources of factual information. The majors—Seven West, Nine–Fairfax, News and the ABC—all suddenly went dark. Fortuitously, radio […]
