The following remarks were presented at a recent public forum in Sydney to celebrate the launch of Kerry Brown’s Carnival China: The People’s Republic in the era of Hu Jintao; Essays on Politics, Society and Culture. They tackle the issue...
Read MoreDuring 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 MoreLa statue du président irakien Saddam Hussein a été déboulonnée par l'armée américaine le 9 avril 2003, jour de la prise de Bagdad. «Le modèle américain de démocratisation par les armes a conduit à un désastre en Irak et en...
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 MorePhoto: Thousands of citizens attended the candlelight vigil at Victoria Park commemorating the 24th anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen Crackdown last year. Photo: Felix Wong...
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...
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