Category: Politics

Political Flak: A War Reporter’s War on Woke (Australian Book Review: paywalled)

Superficially, at least, David Rieff seems well placed to write a book about woke culture. For one thing, cultural criticism runs in the family: his parents were Susan Sontag and Philip Rieff – both intellectuals with a keen understanding of how subjectivities are shaped by social change. For another, his own work has often displayed an astute grasp of the fraught relationship between the historical, the political and the psychological.

The Limits of Social Cohesion (Arena)

My sense is that political cartoonists are finding it pretty difficult to encapsulate the events of the last two weeks in our sunburnt country girt by sea. Not because they are so depressing: a good cartoonist can always wring dark humour from a tragedy. But because they are so clearly self-satirising.

Uncanny Virtue (Griffith Review)

I first heard Peter Singer speak at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in the summer of 2009. The subject was the ethics of what we eat, and the tone of the talk was open and generous. Some in the audience were hardcore animal-rights people, as one would expect at a Singer gig. But the philosopher’s message was that ethical eating is, in fact, a pretty complex matter, bearing not only on animal welfare but also on economic justice and the environmental impact of agriculture, and that what counted as ethical behaviour in one sphere was often difficult to reconcile with ethical behaviour in others. His advice was therefore to do what we could, advice I for one resolved to follow before hogging into the free wine and nibbles around the Beaux-Arts-style reflecting pool.

Two Hours of Despair (Arena)

As far as I can recall, the audience laughed just three times at the Perth preview of Raoul Peck’s new documentary, Orwell: 2+2=5: once when the cinema manager, introducing the film, almost said ‘Enjoy!’, before correcting course and wishing us ‘a meaningful experience’; once on hearing Orwell confess his desire to give Sartre ‘a kick up the arse’ in his review of Antisemite and Jew; and once at some footage of a Trump supporter batting away a reporter’s questions on the basis that any criticism of her President was fake news.

On Enshittification (The Saturday Paper)

As neologisms go, ‘enshittification’ is not the most efficient specimen. Unlike, say, ‘nearlywed’ or ‘broligarch’, it is neither wholly self-defining nor reminiscent of some other word to which it is related in meaning. Clearly the term has struck a chord: both the American Dialect Society and Macquarie Dictionary have bestowed word-of-the-year status on it in recent times. But what, specifically, is going to shit, and what are the processes by which it does so?

A New World of Warcraft

Though few of us would dispute the proposition (commonly attributed to George Santanya) that those who cannot remember the past are preparing themselves to repeat its mistakes, it’s advisable to keep your hand on your wallet when it comes up for sale in the marketplace of ideas, especially in times of open conflict. As David... Continue Reading →

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑