Occlusions

The first issue of 2022 considers the many ways in which our vision can be obscured in these complex and tumultuous times.

The climate emergency—its scale so vast that it can’t be contemplated entire—grows ever more urgent. The far Right exploits well-intentioned concerns about vaccines to draw greater numbers into its fold. Meanwhile, here in Australia, a federal election looms.

Editorial: A Light Shining in the Shire

The ‘Promise of Australia’ and why progressives can’t inspire

The last decade has seen the failure of the centrist form of neoliberal progressivism that occupied the left parties in the face of an onslaught by right-wing populism, which mobilised forces old and new to present themselves…as a response on behalf of the people against the entire ‘political/media’ class, as represented by those in power.

Arena Quarterly issue no. 9, 2022

Title	Author	PagePg.
Editorial
A Light Shining in the Shire The ‘Promise of Australia’ and why progressives can’t inspire	Guy Rundle	1
Features
The Heat Is Still On Climate and life after 3 degrees	Hilary Bambrick	5
Wayward Growths Permaculture, low tech and the ‘Freedom Movement’	Terry Leahy	9
The Left's Right Turn Behind the media myth of neoliberal Blairite social ‘achievements’	Gavin Lewis	15
World
Chile: Dismantling the Dictatorship Australia’s role in the 1973 coup and the return to reform in Santiago	Rodrigo Acuña	22
Friends You Can’t Depend On Resisting the wars our Anglo-allies are fomenting and how to institute peace	Alison Broinowski	28
Exposure COVID and the long, cold winter of the American homeless	Georgina Ramsay	35
Framing COVID-19 as Crisis The pandemic emergency as claim and narrative structure	Janet Roitman	44
Person
Loving Machines Mental health by algorithm is reshaping care and sociality	Mark Furlong	51
Visual Essay
In Search of Appropriate Images With an essay by Linda Zhengová	Mattia Balsamini	59
Theory and Practice
Intellectuals and Social Being On Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s reissued Intellectual and Manual Labour and science as constitutive force	John Hinkson	65
Essay
Gentle Creatures Brisbane’s bush stone curlews in the shadow of extinction	Dean Biron	72
Essay
Anti-Material Functions Copying, imitation, but not reproduction	John Kinsella	76
Poetry
Night Letters	Kevin Hart	84
A Kindness		85
Reviews
See How We Roll Melinda Hinkson’s See How We Roll: Enduring Exile between Desert and Urban Australia	Richard Davis	86
Prepared for the Common Good The Nordic Edge: Policy Possibilities for Australia, edited by Andrew Scott and Rod Campbell	Rhonda Small	89
Threading the Needle John Lyons’ Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment	Ned Curthoys	93
Forsaking East Timor Peter Job’s A Narrative of Denial: Australia and the Indonesian Violation of East Timor	Binoy Kampmark	98

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Occlusions

Editorial: A Light Shining in the Shire

The ‘Promise of Australia’ and why progressives can’t inspire

Arena Quarterly issue no. 9, 2022

Contents

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