Reconstituting Politics

In this issue of Arena, we call people to arms against arms, with a push back against the push to war, an expose on AI drones in Gaza, and the military in our schools. The politics of place in Fiji has returned Rambuka, and the melancholy right is back in Portugal. Our special section digs deeper, at a time when Left theory is in disarray, and insists on a rethinking of the politics of class, intellectuals and radical possibility. There’s the best short explanation to date of the philosophy of Badiou, degrowth politics debated, and a critical account of the new ‘class conservatives’ in the US, with reviews of blak art in the Biennale, All of Us Strangers and the impossibly real Barron Field, Australia’s first and worst poet, and terra nullius pioneer, and a recall of the glory days of Oz 70s film co-ops. All this and more!

Editorial: The responsibility of the new intellectuals

This dual character of this new world — opening society to new forms of inquiry and liberation, while closing off possibilities of life through the imposition of a new order of power — can be seen in the intellectuals of today.

Arena Quarterly issue no. 18, 2024

Title	Author	PagePg.
Editorial
The responsibility of the new intellectuals	Guy Rundle	1
War
Australia Should Not Be There Australia is at an impasse from which the only exit is independent defence	Alison Broinowski	5
Counting Down from One Hundred Will growing resistance to killer drones set new rules for war?	Russell Rollason	11
Class Warfare The invasion of STEM education by weapons companies.	Jenny Grounds	15
Worlds
Luso Dreaming: Portugal Turns Right Portugal’s CHEGA movement draws on nostalgia for a past that never was	Fernanda Trecenti	20
Zion in the Pacific? What does Sitiveni Rabuka’s election victory mean for Fiji’s fast-changing society?	Peter Korotaev	26
Hijabi Atheists, the Artists, and Infidel Birds Istanbul’s recent history of dissent, where poets, draft refusers and post-theist Muslims perch	Christopher Houston	31
Arts and Culture
Brighter than Ten Thousand Suns? Doreen Chapman, VNS Matrix and Serwah Attafuah at the 24th Sydney Biennale	Christian Caiconte	36
Rejoinder
Reply: On Degrowth Degrowthers look for real limits within nature while elaborating a full politics	Terry Leahy	41
Special Section: Reconstituting Politics
Introduction	Guy Rundle	49
Standing Ground in a Turning World From the Gaza protests to a new conception of radical politics	Richard King	50
Reconstituting a Radical and Critical Politics for the Twenty-First Century Re-upping the Arena critique and meta-critique of left theory for a world in crisis	John Hinkson	58
Badiou: Politics, Beings and Events Badiou’s work is as essential to a new politics as was Marx’s	Justin Clemens	67
Raw Conservatism and the Aristopops US postliberalism doesn’t understand the nature of the crisis it has identified	Simon Cooper	78
Reviews
Blank Verse Barron Field in New South Wales, by Thomas H. Ford and Justin Clemens	Dan Tout	85
Of Something Already Fading in the World All of Us Strangers, by Andrew Haigh	Valerie Krips	89
Australian Film Co-ops Senses of Cinema, by John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki	Hanna Chetwin	93
Poetry
Poems for Sunny	Sarah Hart	46

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Critical * Radical * Australia * Earth

Reconstituting Politics

Editorial: The responsibility of the new intellectuals

Arena Quarterly issue no. 18, 2024

Contents

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