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.

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Arena Quarterly issue no. 9, 2022

Contents

TitleAuthorPagePg.
Editorial
The ‘Promise of Australia’ and why progressives can’t inspire
Guy Rundle1
Features
Climate and life after 3 degrees
Hilary Bambrick5
Permaculture, low tech and the ‘Freedom Movement’
Terry Leahy9
Behind the media myth of neoliberal Blairite social ‘achievements’
Gavin Lewis15
World
Australia’s role in the 1973 coup and the return to reform in Santiago
Rodrigo Acuña22
Resisting the wars our Anglo-allies are fomenting and how to institute peace
Alison Broinowski28
COVID and the long, cold winter of the American homeless
Georgina Ramsay35
The pandemic emergency as claim and narrative structure
Janet Roitman44
Person
Mental health by algorithm is reshaping care and sociality
Mark Furlong51
Visual Essay
In Search of Appropriate Images
With an essay by Linda Zhengová
Mattia Balsamini59
Theory and Practice
On Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s reissued Intellectual and Manual Labour and science as constitutive force
John Hinkson65
Essay
Brisbane’s bush stone curlews in the shadow of extinction
Dean Biron72
Essay
Copying, imitation, but not reproduction
John Kinsella76
Poetry
Night Letters
Kevin Hart84
A Kindness
85
Reviews
See How We Roll
Melinda Hinkson’s See How We Roll: Enduring Exile between Desert and Urban Australia
Richard Davis86
Prepared for the Common Good
The Nordic Edge: Policy Possibilities for Australia, edited by Andrew Scott and Rod Campbell
Rhonda Small89
John Lyons’ Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment
Ned Curthoys93
Forsaking East Timor
Peter Job’s A Narrative of Denial: Australia and the Indonesian Violation of East Timor
Binoy Kampmark98

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