Cirrus@Austlit

'In this issue of Arena, we call people to arms against arms, with a push back against the push to war, an expose on AI drones in Gaza, and the military in our schools. The politics of place in Fiji has returned Rambuka, and the melancholy right is back in Portugal. Our special section digs deeper, at a time when left theory is in disarray, and insists on a rethinking of the politics of class, intellectuals and radical possibility. There’s the best short explanation to date of the philosophy of Badiou, degrowth politics debated, and a critical account of the new ‘class conservatives’ in the US, with reviews of blak art in the Biennale, All of Us Strangers and the impossibly real Barron Field, Australia’s first and worst poet, and terra nullius pioneer, and a recall of the glory days of Oz 70s film co-ops. All this and more!' (Publication summary)

'Arena Quarterly no. 16 carries features on the internal political background to the Ukraine war, the reorientation of China’s economic program, the calamitous history of recent US wars, and an editorial on Gaza. Back home, arguments for the virtues of white civilisation and teaching it are countered in a history of Nordic supremacist and Nazi thinking in the Humanities at Melbourne University. At the heart of this edition is a special section on the contemporary self. Featuring five in-depth essays on how the person is shaped today, these reflect on the consequences of the pandemic for families, youth and ‘mental health’; the trauma of Aboriginal youth in Alice Springs; the fate of family therapy; the entwinement of philosophy in the constructed self; and new developments in culture and society that have led to an ungrounding of the self and distinctive forms of despair. Then there’s the Spanish Civil war, cannibal capitalism, East Timor, the work of Alan Garner, and reviews and poetry.' (Publication summary)

'Even though we have all witnessed the whirl of frenzied media coverage of the Alice Springs crime wave, encountering the newly security-shuttered shop-fronts along the Todd Mall and surrounding business district is a shock. As one local and long-time resident observed, the place now resembles the troubled towns of western New South Wales in the early 1980s. This man, with several decades of commitment to local Aboriginal families, is himself tired of the home invasions. He has reluctantly succumbed to the inevitable and erected a security fence around his house.' (Melinda Hinkson, Jon Altman : Editorial introduction)

'It’s a pity we don’t have a happier story to tell in our summer issue and at the end of various lockdowns.  

'In fact, there has only been a strengthening of the dire situation in which the world, and Australia, has come to rest at the end of 2021. Much is being revealed of a more divided society and body politic than we might have thought. COVID continues to stalk both the Global North and Global South. War is on the agenda locally, as our corrupted government vests Country, and tries to orient our soul (such as it is), to the needs of US imperium. China is battening down the hatches ever more firmly, with unforeseen consequences economically for a globally integrated world (whose material exchanges and supply chains have already faltered in the period of COVID). Global warming remains either an aside in national performances of climate chauvinism or, as for most of the world, merely a technical problem to be solved by clever humans. And all of this in a growth-driven and technology-obsessed culture generally, whose imperatives and fancies are at work in every sphere of personal identity and collective life.' (Alison Caddick : Editorial introduction)

'At the time of writing, Australia is still reeling from the imposition of a ban on Australian citizens returning from India, which is being consumed by COVID-19. Announced at a Friday midnight, and threatening fines and jail, the ban lasted a mere fortnight. Nevertheless, it marked an extraordinary moment in the attitude of the Australian state towards its citizens, and another of our dismal contributions to the development of the global state–citizen relationship in general.' (Guy Rundle : Editorial introduction)