Tag: review

Sailing Away to Lagado

Arena Quarterly no. 22

Peter Holbrook

Jul 2025

As common culture dissolves, life thins to rules, emptied of meaning. The Left is yet to recognise this crisis as such

The Great Fire Sale of the Future

Arena Quarterly no. 21

Scott Robinson

Mar 2025

The inversion of public value into private value has created a spillway, pouring public money into private hands through derisking, bailouts and tax expenditure.

The Cultural Dimensions of Peacebuilding: Reviewed

Arena Online

Ariel Salleh

13 Jun 2025

Applying a sociological lens, what I see here is a patriarchal-colonial-capitalist system that has unfolded over time, layer upon layer, with each set of practices reinforcing the one before.

Holden to the Plan

Arena Quarterly no. 20

Guy Rundle

Dec 2024

The road to renewal for working-class politics lies through a radical questioning of what ‘class’ and ‘work’ now are.

The Fat Fightback

Arena Quarterly no. 20

David Coady

Dec 2024

Review: Kate Manne: Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia, London: Allan Lane, 2024. New York-based Australian philosopher Kate Manne became famous several years ago with Down Girl, an account of misogyny that employed the techniques of analytic philosophy to great effect. In her latest book she applies these techniques to the issue of fatphobia. Her argument […]

From Guzzolene, the Portents Come

Arena Quarterly no. 19

Revan Oluklu

Sep 2024

Miller plays with the classic trope of an environment that actively rejects settler incursion and updates the tradition for the Capitalocene, an era in which capitalism has provoked Mother Nature’s ire.

We Will Be Lectured: Gingersnap’s Lament

Arena Quarterly no. 19

Sally Olds

Sep 2024

Julia Gillard’s bioplay is long on girlboss feminism, short on actual politics. Then there’s the singing children…

Popular Culture’s Historic Subversion of the Imperialist ‘Spreading Western Liberal Democracy’ Myth

Arena Online

Gavin Lewis

25 Nov 2024

Hollywood has twice previously attempted to sell Israel’s invention as a Western ethnocentric colonial adventure, fronted by blonde leading actors who often had a background in the American frontier settler genre.

Zooming Out: The ecomodernist mindset at large

Arena Quarterly no. 19

Richard King

Sep 2024

Readers who’ve spent any amount of time with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the literature inspired by them will recognise the register: here’s the problem; here’s the solution; here’s a technology or a policy that makes the solution possible.

Blank Verse

Arena Quarterly no. 18

Dan Tout

Jun 2024

Ford and Clemens have produced a highly original account of the complex contribution to Australian law, politics and poetics made by this ‘largely unacknowledged’ and pun-inducing figure—‘a man with a pun for a name’—here introduced as one of Australia’s founding fathers.

Raw Conservatism and the Aristopops

Arena Quarterly no. 18

Simon Cooper

Jun 2024

US postliberalism doesn’t understand the nature of the crisis it has identified.

‘Radical’: A film to provoke thinking

Arena Online

Peter Curtis

14 Jun 2024

For those of us who work in education systems, we can only empathise with Sergio who suffers an ‘existential crisis’ from having to teach the curriculum. The effect is soul destroying for both him, and his students.