Month: August 2017

  • Framing the Debate: On the Same-Sex Marriage ‘Vote’

    First published in New Matilda, here. * Well, it’s happened. Australia is united. It’s only taken 230 years, and it may not last beyond September, but for now a kind of consensus reins. Everyone, it seems, from the hairiest leftist to the drippiest liberal to the hoariest Tory, agrees that the same-sex marriage survey is…

  • True Colours: Identity, Class and Rightwing Populism

    Of all the flags seen at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month – the Gadsden, the Confederate, the National Socialist – none so caught the media’s attention as the one raised in its immediate aftermath. Responding to the far-right rally, and to the atrocity committed by one of the protestors,…

  • Where We Live: On Ian Strange’s ISLAND

    Raised in Perth and based in New York, the multidisciplinary artist Ian Strange is, like all migrants, a stranger in two lands. No doubt it is partly for this reason that he is so fascinated by the idea of home, its promise of stability but essential vulnerability. Home, and in particular the house, is for…

  • Losing the Plot: On the Liberal Reaction to Hulu’s Handmaid

    I’ll say one thing for the Cheeto Jesus: he’s done wonders for the journalistic trade in specious literary comparisons. In the year or so since Donald Trump became the GOP’s presidential nominee, I must have read hundreds of articles comparing his rise and behaviour in office to dystopias and alternative histories such as Sinclair Lewis’…