During several decades of contact with writers trapped in stressed and strained political circumstances, I can’t ever recall meeting a literary figure who was brave and principled enough to offer herself up for arrest and imprisonment by the authorities. That’s...
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There’s a time-tested ‘law’ in the history of modern self-government: when a bounded nation-state democracy prosecutes war abroad, the spirit and institutions of its democracy are usually vandalised at home. The Life and Death of Democracy analyses many historical instances of...
Read More[caption id="attachment_8881" align="alignnone" width="800"] Image: Fumarole near the base of Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica nexttriptourism.com[/caption] The following field notes grapple with the problem of how to understand the emergent polity of Antarctica, and why its break with the language and...
Read More3 June, 2014 Most people know from daily experience that memories are vital for their sense of well-being. Memory is the bearer of lavish gifts. It strengthens our capacity for living in the present. Memory brings direction. It prompts us to...
Read MoreManus Island camp Refugee Action Coalition The following commentary on the Abbott government’s policy of forcibly preventing people from seeking asylum within Australia has aroused considerable controversy. Several thousand public and private comments, from a wide variety of sources, have so far...
Read More20 April, 2014 Readers interested in the emerging politics of the human/non-human and the deep and difficult tensions between capitalism and democracy are bound to find stimulating a recent public lecture by one of the world’s leading social scientists, Bruno Latour. Delivered...
Read MoreXi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’ is couched in the opaque language of the Communist Party, leaving China watchers guessing at exactly what it all means. EPA/Diego Azubel “If you want to know the future of the world,” Yu Keping says, pouring green tea into...
Read MoreThe following remarks on love and politics were first delivered at a welcome symposium for all first-year humanities and social science students in the Great Hall, the University of Sydney, 27th February 2014: Good morning and a warm welcome to the...
Read MorePublic rally in support of Edward Snowden, Garden Road, Hong Kong, June 2013 flickr/See-ming Lee Along with contributions by Ulrich Beck, Julia Kristeva and others, the following short statement was published in Politiken, the largest-circulation daily newspaper in Denmark: With a political noose...
Read MoreWith talk of democracy in crisis plentiful, especially in Europe, a smart assessment of how well democracies have fared during past crises is badly needed. This is what David Runciman’s The Confidence Trap offers – with decidedly mixed results. Runciman...
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