culture – Arena

Dec 2021

If art has largely been stripped of its transcendent power—a casualty of commodification and oversupply—and is now measured by utility, it is simultaneously policed for its potential negative effects. In another reversal, much of this comes from elements of the ‘Left’ rather than conservatives.

Dust in the Wind: The Transformation of University Culture

Arena Online

Robert DiNapoli

19 Nov 2020

As universities competed to attract student dollars, advertising, once unheard of, consumed progressively larger proportions of stressed budgets. It also adopted the play of illusion and conditioned reflex practised by its forerunners in more commercial quarters, trafficking in fatuous slogans like ‘Dream Large’, ‘I Believe’, and ‘Worldly’ (huh?).

Stay in your lane: the oxymoron of ‘authentic fiction’ (Part II)

Arena Online

H. C. Gildfind

29 Oct 2020

In all of this worry about authenticity, authority and authorial/appropriated identities, there is one identity that regularly gets forgotten: that of the reader

Stay in your Lane: the oxymoron of ‘authentic fiction’ (Part I)

Arena Online

H. C. Gildfind

22 Oct 2020

Are these judges…genuinely concerned about cultural appropriation? Or are they actually concerned about the accusations of cultural appropriation that are likely to result (via social media) if they award and publish a story that turns out to be written by someone who doesn’t identify clearly and directly with their subject matter?

Erasing Culture: The Attack on Critical Education

Arena Online

Jasmin Pfefferkorn

15 Oct 2020

Continuing education and suitable funding for educational initiatives are crucial because racism is not only historical—it is both contemporary and dynamic.

The Anti-Aesthetic of Cancel Culture

Arena Online

Guy Rundle

4 Aug 2020

The implicit politics of the present—in which the deep left aim of creating a society of universal self-flourishing is rendered as a society of universal ‘safety’, in an expanded sense—trends towards a ban on representation, since any representation of suffering or wrong can be taken as exploitation or aggression.

"After being funded by the CIA, having received over a million dollars in Government subsidies,…

No Poetry After the Arts Council? Quadrant’s Funding Cut

1 Jun 2016

After being funded by the CIA, having received over a million dollars in Government subsidies, Quadrant magazine has sustained collateral damage from George Brandis’ cuts to Australia Council funding. It didn’t take long for editor Keith Windschuttle to blame someone, predictably ‘the left [which] remains in control of the arts’. Instead of identifying enemies, Windschuttle might examine the market and its effect on the culture he seeks to defend. Now the Australia Council has thrown…

"Humans now have the capacity to produce synthetic life-forms (since 2010) and to destroy life…

Editorial – Issue 41/42 ‘People, Planet and the Anthropocene: Spectators of Our Own Demise?’, by Paul James

Arena Journal no. 41/42

Paul James

Jan 2014

Humans now have the capacity to produce synthetic life-forms (since 2010) and to destroy life on this planet as we know it (since 1952). It is only by recognizing this point — that we are now reconstituting the very basis of nature — that adequate acknowledgement of the Anthropocene starts to hit home.

"by Grazyna Zajdow