Articles by: Richard King

Author Biography:

Richard King is an author and critic and a contributing editor to Arena. His most recent book is Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity? (Monash University Publishing, 2023). His new book, Brave New Wild: Can Technology Really Save the Planet? (Monash University Publishing) will be published on October 1.

The Wolvadoodles: A Review of Sub-Imperial Power

Arena Quarterly no. 13

Richard King

Mar 2023

The ‘rules-based international order’ is not a set of rules at all, and still less a set of principles. It is a set of material military arrangements that seek to ensure and enshrine US dominance.

Brave New Wild: Why ‘Resurrecting’ the Thylacine is a Dangerous Idea

Arena Online

Richard King

1 Dec 2022

Any public debate on de-extinction technologies must take account of the broader processes that are bringing such affordances into being, and the long-term social and psychological effects of regarding the latter as self-evident progress.

Zero Gravity: Floating towards posthumanism

Arena Quarterly no.11

Richard King

Sep 2022

The transition to the posthuman will not turn on any Judgment Day scenario, but will be a slow and incremental process of quantity turning into quality.

As Politics Narrows, Divisions Deepen: A Note of the Election and the Left

Arena Online

Richard King

5 May 2022

Should Labor come to power on 21 May, the Left will have to think carefully about the terms in which it frames its opposition to what is sure to be a disappointing government.

Suture Shock: Humanity goes Under the Knife

Arena Online

Richard King

9 Dec 2021

As we become ever more remote from ‘meatspace’, it’s worth considering the role the scalpel and the needle may play in that development.

It’s the Stupidity, Stupid! On Technocratic Populism

Arena Online

Richard King

25 Nov 2021

…while it is clear that Australians in general are more persuaded by ‘positive liberty’ arguments than the new libertarians would like to imagine, it is striking that the case for lockdown, or indeed for mandatory vaccinations, is only rarely made in those terms.

Identity Crisis: Radical Gender Theory and the Left

Arena Quarterly no. 7

Richard King

Sep 2021

The idea that there is no significant relationship between sex and gender carries with it an assumption about human beings that should strike those on the material Left as a challenge to an idea of freedom without which ‘the Left’ as a political entity would never have come into being at all…

Politically Challenged: Review of Scott Ryan’s ‘Challenging Politics’

Arena Online

Richard King

19 Aug 2021

...it may be that the current atmosphere in Canberra represents a perverse form of unity. In arguing more and more about less and less, politicians are sending a message to the electorate that Real Disagreements are being had, when in fact it is clear that the two major parties are different cheeks on the same rear end.

Biotech is about more than ownership. It’s about what human beings are

Arena Online

Richard King

11 Feb 2021

…the notion that (potential) human beings—that life—can be ‘mined’ or even created in order to provide other human beings with the material they need to be healthy and happy represents a momentous shift in how we view human being itself…

‘The First Cry of a Newborn World’: The Trinity Test at 75

Arena Online

Richard King

28 Jul 2020

The bright young things of Silicon Valley, with their dreams of direct democracy on Mars and digital immortality, are often difficult to take seriously. But their hubris is only the gaudy version of a broader cultural and political belief in the power of science and technology to edit, alter and override the very stuff from which our world is made—in other words, to ‘play God’.
"Reflections on the Coalition's mode of government as 18 May—and a possible change—draws nearer

End of an Era?, by Scott Ludlam, Raewyn Connell, Judith Brett and Amy McQuire

Arena Magazine no. 159

Amy McQuire, Guy Rundle, Judith Brett, Raewyn Connell, Richard King, Scott Ludlam

Apr 2019

Reflections on the Coalition's mode of government as 18 May—and a possible change—draws nearer
"The last six years of Coalition govern ment have been a period of unprecedented chaos…

Illiberal liberalism

Arena Magazine no. 159

Richard King

Apr 2019

PDF available from Informit

The last six years of Coalition govern ment have been a period of unprecedented chaos and malignity. If the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years were The Killing Season, then the Abbott- Turnbull-Morrison years are/were The Hunger Games: a rolling spectacle of bizarre ordeals, frenzied bouts of fratricide, and cruelty raised to the level of art. Towards the end-for surely we are approaching the end-one almost expected to see the faces of toppled and departing politicians projected onto the…