Archive: Arena Quarterly #25

In the Shadow of a Desert Tower

Arena Quarterly no.25

Guy Rundle, Arena Publications Editors

Apr 2026

The new system of death that is rapidly being assembled is an expression of what one might call the master process of human ‘civilisation’ at its most concrete and abstract levels: a tendency to take for granted the given frameworks of social life while abstracting from what it has meant to be human.

The Bots Are Not What They Seem: On Superintelligence

Arena Quarterly no.25

Timothy Erik Ström

Apr 2026

There seems to be a growing consensus among AI experts that if a ‘superintelligent’ machine were made, it would initiate a feedback loop by reprogramming itself in ways beyond human comprehension. If this proves possible, what happens when the means of abstraction are automated into posthuman territory?

The Safety Club

Arena Quarterly no.25

Guy Rundle

Apr 2026

From such a reflection comes the only possibility for a critical Left, which is a pluralism: tolerating the most vociferously argued attacks of one’s foes, without seeking the agency of the state to discipline or control them.

Three Days in the City of Toys

Arena Quarterly no.25

Gerry Simpson

Apr 2026

‘What Europe can’t forgive Hitler is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is the fact that he applied European colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for Africa.’

The Disenchanted Games

Arena Quarterly no.25

Scott Robinson

Apr 2026

The flaws of sports with no drug-testing are clear to many. What are its advocates missing? What is the meaning of sport for us?

Liberation, Not Uberisation

Arena Quarterly no.25

Belinda Robson

Apr 2026

Beyond Blue include in their submissions many economic and social drivers of mental ill health. Cooper has cherry-picked the submissions to the Productivity Commission that, naturally, focus on mental health and productivity.

Birds of Paradise Lost and Found and Lost Again and So On

Arena Quarterly no.25

Ali Schnabel

Apr 2026

This is what I mean by Birdwatching: the ecstatic joy of looking and seeing is only available if you go in with a sense of openness. You cannot go on an excursion desiring to see a particular kind of bird, even if you know that they are nesting in that place right now, even if they were registered on BirdLife just yesterday...you have immediately sucked the life and possibility out of the thing by focusing…

Watched Over by Machines of Blundering Guess

Arena Quarterly no.25

John Hinkson

Apr 2026

It is important to put AI in its proper context. Though it is a fundamental development in the history of technology, it is something more and other than what one might call ‘stand-alone technology’, as could be said about the major developments of the printing press or even writing.

The General Unintelligence?

Arena Quarterly no.25

Paul Atkinson

Apr 2026

Universities are adapting to pressures of an information marketplace rather than drawing upon their own disciplinary traditions to produce new knowledge—a fundamental feature of research—or even starting with the most basic questions about what we want our students to know.

Getting Off in Late Capitalism

Arena Quarterly no.25

David Ferraro

Apr 2026

The point here is not to moralise about online debauchery or mobs, or the gradual but real stupidification entailed by ceaseless intake of short-form content. Rather, it is to see what is new in this as a mode of consumption.

Selective Engagement: Picking Winners in Indigenous Policy

Arena Quarterly no.25

Michael Dillion

Apr 2026

From 2013, the Coalition reverted Indigenous policy to pre-1967 forms of patronage and clientelism. Labor has done nothing to change this. A new approach is needed.

Welfare Survives A Difficult History

Arena Quarterly no.25

Anthony O'Donnell

Apr 2026

On John Murphy's 'An Unlikely Survival: The Politics of Welfare in Australia Since 1950'