Archive: Arena Quarterly #13

Looking for Eros in the long hard rain of climate collapse

As climate collapse accelerates there will be massive material effects. But what are the consequences that will befall inner life?

I’ve Seen This Before: On Noah Baumbach’s film of Don DeLillo’s White Noise

The recurrence of this interface between the individual and resonances of the uncanny in late capitalist reproduction in DeLillo’s work is something that Baumbach obviously ‘gets’.

‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’: A review of Aaron Fa’Aoso’s So Far So Good

Why does Fa’Aoso tell his story now? The reason is a shame and stain on this country, and not one that many whitefellas in their midforties would have for writing their memoir: early death.

The Metaphysics of Planetary Hope: Exploring texts on faith and practice in a technocapitalist world

A new consciousness cannot be built solely on a better scientific understanding of the world; it must be rooted in a different ontology, a different conception of reality.

Which Family?

US-based queer theorist Sophie Lewis returns the family to political critique by refurbishing arguments against it for a new generation, but ultimately offers the reader few resources to spotlight some pathway towards the future.

The Social State: The state as arena of struggle and lasting transformation

As a condensation of social relations, the state is a key arena for the struggle between the neoliberal manufacture of despair and the grassroots harnessing of hope in transformative practice.

One Step in a Chain Reaction: how a Grassroots movement stopped nuclear in Australia

Australia would look very different if it wasn’t for sustained intergenerational effort to resist the nuclear option.

That Bad Eminence: Genesis B, Paradise Lost and the dark politics of resentment

Satan’s prefiguring of today’s hard- Right ‘great replacement’ paranoia would be just a delicious irony were the latter not turning the heads of so many susceptible souls in our time.

Fighting for the World-Forest: Left movements and deforestation in South America

The best hope for the Amazon is that Lula’s return and the strengthening of the environment ministry will hinder the destructive powers of other branches of the Brazilian state.

Nuclear After-Life: From tragedy to farce, the claims of a nuclear renaissance

Non-hydro renewables have now overtaken nuclear power, with wind and solar alone reaching 10.2 per cent of global gross power generation in 2021.

Defenestrating Democracy: The status of democracy in the lead-up to Joe Biden’s summit

Alison Broinowski

6 Apr 2023

Now, the defence of democracy is being cited as a pretext for another war.

Greens Parties Go Nuclear: Will it happen here? An emerging shift internationally reveals a technocratic logic

Guy Rundle

6 Apr 2023

The political Green movement, founded in Tasmania then Germany, is now a half-century old, and is changing with the deeper social and cultural changes that are occurring underneath it.