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…
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'
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…
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?
Stuart Cunningham's defence of cultural policy analysis (see 'Cultural Criticism and Policy', Arena Magazine Oct./Nov. 1993) is yet another example of the continuing tension dividing the ranks of Australian cultural theorists. More importantly, it highlights the crucial role of cultural policy in the redefinition of national identity - the need for culture not only to legitimate, but to provide the very cognitive, moral and social interactions necessary for the restructuring of local and global political…
Earlier this year, former ALP President Barry Jones told Phillip Adams on ABC Late Night Live, that he felt like wearing a burqa in public to avoid strangers constantly stopping him to air their complaints about the ALP. Jones is typical of former 'true believers' who are now scathing in their criticisms of the ALP.
