Archive: Arena Quarterly

Diderot’s Shout: On AI, signs and apocalypse

Arena Quarterly no.27

Guy Rundle

Oct 2026

The story is a useful reminder in our era, when there is entirely justified widespread disquiet about the effects of the digital world on education, sociality, subjectivity and more.

Labor’s Australia

Arena Quarterly no.27

Owen Bennett

Oct 2026

The story that Labor’s budget is a spendathon suits both major parties, for political cosplay. It’s more austerity, a refusal to use the resources we have for equality and prosperity.

The Greens, the Left and the World

Arena Quarterly no.27

Drew Hutton

Oct 2026

The Greens must get out of the trap of repressive cultural progressivism. In the meantime, a green community independent movement is needed.

Dwelling On This Place

Arena Quarterly no.27

Julia Cretan

Oct 2026

Housing policy based on simple supply and demand cannot recognise changing ideas of dwelling. A deeper approach is needed.

Dear Straits

Arena Quarterly no.27

Ethan Bainbridge

Oct 2026

Control of Hormuz is Iran’s real gain in the United States’ lost war, as geopolitics makes a return. Iran’s real gain After six months, with many thousands of munitions being dropped and dozens of statements from President Trump that the war in Iran is almost over, the conflict has remained active, with occasional periods of […]

Magnifica Obsessions

Arena Quarterly no.27

Ray Cassin

Oct 2026

Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI offers an alliance between religion and humanism in the struggle against the drive to the post-human.

Metal, Burnout, Unobjects: On Byung-Chul Han

Arena Quarterly no.27

Joel W. Duggan

Oct 2026

Byung-Chul Han, a Korean philosopher in the German tradition, has found new ways to address our era’s lostness. Is his work a new path through the woods? Or upmarket self-help?

Reeling in Horror!

Arena Quarterly no.27

Ali Alizadeh

Oct 2026

Have YouTube-era horrors Backrooms and Obsession taken us into a post-superhero era? Have the critics understood the shift: that horror is the realism of our time?

Herding Categories: On Hyperpolitics

Arena Quarterly no.27

Richard King

Oct 2026

The Left’s materialism needs to go deeper, even to the point of giving its own origins a rigorous social and historical account.

Living with the Violence of the Past

Arena Quarterly no.26

Mark Furlong

Jun 2026

I am in a tangle of emotions, I am contemplating my own complicity.

Pre-Fascist Space-Time, Forever on the Move

Arena Quarterly no.26

Mitchell Welch

Jun 2026

America is presently Making Itself Great Again. Nicolás Maduro is rotting in a Brooklyn prison cell. The Ayatollah is dead... the world has found itself in a very Pynchonian moment.

On Hilarity

Arena Quarterly no.26

Robert DiNapoli

Jun 2026

Our vexed times could do with a bit more of hilarity, as noble and salubrious a friend as humankind has ever known, and a bit of a hoyden into the bargain.