Articles by: Boris Frankel

Author Biography: No biography available

Informit: Unchained radical prometheans

It is precisely at a time when the socialist Left is extremely weak in developed capitalist countries that utopian thinking flourishes to fill the gap created by the absence of strong mass movements. This is particularly true of the United Kingdom and the United States, where a sense of hopelessness about radical change (as opposed to social democratic change) has produced unusual or spectacular flights of fancy. When major thinkers such as Fredric Jameson contemplate…

Foundation Arena Articles: John Hinkson

Four articles by John Hinkson and a reply by Boris Frankel, from Arena issues spanning 1982 - 1992: 'Beyond Imagination? Responding to Nuclear War', 'Post-Lyotard: A Critique of the Information Society', 'Misreading the Deeper Current: The Limits of Economic Rationality', 'A Postmodern Market Society?' (Frankel), and 'Ships in the Night: A Reply to Boris Frankel'

Abbottville by Boris Frankel

Visions of society and democracy in the Abbott/Hockey budget

Opportunity Lost by Boris Frankel

Marcia Langton’s Boyer Lectures

Informit: Elites … and the politics of Australian nationalism

Informit: Radical politics: the falterings of a third way

Informit: ABC of media. [Response to Wark, McKenzie. Schlock of the Newties, TV and the public intellectual; in no. 25, Oct/ Nov, 1996.]

Informit: Re/ imagining political economy

Informit: The myth of it’s time. [Australian society paid a high price for Paul Keating’s infatuation with ‘a beautiful set of numbers’.]

Informit: Abbottvill

Tony Abbott's twenty-first-century Australia could be an updated incarnation of the film 'Pleasantville'. Instead of 1950s America, Abbottville is a sanitised, stable suburban and rural world based upon existing forms and levels of consumption and production. It is free of climate-change concerns, 'boat people', political dissidents and unassimilated Indigenous Australians. Yet, unlike Pleasantville, Abbottville can't always be pleasant. Sacrifices must be made by society, especially by workers and welfare recipients if the loyal business defenders…

Informit: Liberal interpretations. [The Liberals are here to stay.]

Informit: Opportunity lost

It is possible that Marcia Langton's 2012 Boyer Lectures will rank as a particularly shameful episode in the ABC's history. For five weeks, audiences were subjected to the kind of vitriol and empirically unfounded claims against the Left and environmentalists usually confined to Andrew Bolt's columns or Alan Jones' broadcasts. Where was the so-called balance that ABC management invokes usually to placate the Right, but never the Left?