It has been our great joy to work in collaboration with The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) to bring you the eleventh issue of demos journal. Securing funding through artsACT for the production of this issue marks a significant moment for demos journal in building our ability to support and highlight emerging voices by paying contributors for their labour. We are deeply grateful to artsACT for this opportunity and it gives us a sense of pride to present the excellent pieces in this issue which include important meditations on ideas of precarity in a globalised, climate change-impacted and crisis-driven world.
In this issue, we called for poetry, art, essays, analyses and reflections that work with and against the fragmentary effects of precarity. The pieces in the issue address precarious histories and experiences, they ruminate on what the imposed vulnerability of precarity teaches us and how we might organise for the future. Precarity’s paradoxical force unites us in a condition of fragmentation and isolation. Whether one sees ‘precarity’ as a universal condition of human life, or a context-specific form of exploitation and condition of intensified displacement and uncertainty, it is undeniable that we live in precarious times. 2020 began with a baptism of fire, heat and smoke in our region, the world was jarred by a global health crisis and the world’s economy entered the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. This issue speaks to these events, from a range of perspectives and viewpoints, including across and beyond borders.
Despite the dramatic precarity of these times, in many of the pieces in this issue we see that precarity is, in fact, historically and geographically uneven. Precarity characterises the condition of late neo-liberal capitalism through the exploitation of those in the Global South. Natalia Flores-Garrido sheds light on the way women in Mexico have created new forms of socialisation and subjectivities in the face of economic and social precarity. Nur Hadziqah frames the struggles of dalit women struggles alongside the development of feminism in India, in the context of British colonialism. Joe Clifford further explores the relationship between administrative states and people in his observations of kampung, poor urban communities, in Java, Indonesia. Gianmaria Lenti explores the fires that engulfed the Moria refugee camp this year in Lesbos, Greece, a deprivation, precarity and instability manufactured by Fortress Europe’s cruel border regime. Mursal Rahimi’s depiction of precarious living through the fire in the Grenfell Tower echoes a precarity that resonates well beyond London. Despite these imbalances of power, the translation by Rachel Min Park of Korean labour activist and poet, Song Kyung-dong, reminds us that writing and literature is a mode of resistance against precarity. More locally, Scheherazade Bloul explores the militarised lockdown of Melbourne’s public housing towers, in the context of the violence of empire and the colony and Kirstie Broadfield shows us two deaths, 15,000 kms apart, to demonstrate the necropolitical nature of colonialism and the criminal justice systems and their violence impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The ever-changing nature of poetry as a medium serves as an excellent way to communicate experiences, thoughts and emotions on precarity. Toby Fitch’s poem ‘At One with the Precariat Sitting Outside’ bridges the issues of the neoliberal university that we explored in ‘The University’ (Issue #9), with the precarity of the academic space. In a demos first, Hannah Jenkins poem is a digital piece that has no end and changes with every viewing, while Dominic Symes’s ‘Algorithm’ depicts our tenuous relationship with the online world. Kasthury Paramiswaran grounds us back in the physical world with a beautiful suite of haikus. Darcie Davey’s ‘Today (Impending)’ gazes unflinchingly at the anguish humans inflict on themselves and on the natural world. In contrast, the courtroom in Nadia Kim’s ‘Coroner’s Findings’ presents a bureaucratic anxiety etched between the stanzas. Gentrification as another form of precarity is explored in Jocelyn Dean’s two poems and Raynen Bajette O’Keefe’s ‘longitudinal study’ burrows further still into the very fabric that has formed the foundation of our current precarious existence. We are very pleased to showcase the talent that these poets have contributed to this issue. The three beautifully written short stories in this issue of Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Frances An and Tegan Crowley masterfully engage with precarity on personal and systemic levels and each take us on a journey of exploring precarity’s subtle nuances and lived experiences.
Many of us at demos journal and the IPCS are missing our friend, Tilly Houghton, who passed away this year. Tilly was a Melbourne Law School graduate, a prolific writer, poet and activist, who was involved with both the IPCS and in planning for this issue of demos journal. In this issue, we have decided to publish some of Tilly’s writing to honour her memory and her contribution to demos journal. ‘Legal Rupture, Legal Order: Three Stories of Australian Riots’, examines three incidents: the Buckland riots, the Cronulla riots and an Invasion Day protest.
We started this issue with inspirations from Sara Ahmed and Achille Mbembe, and we recap this issue by thinking through feminist and de-colonial ways of dealing with precarity. The assemblage of these pieces doesn’t provide a clear pathway but rather opens up several pathways to thinking, living through and collectively resisting precarity. A huge thank you to all our valued contributors and those who responded to our call for submissions. We are very thankful for the enthusiasm we received for this issue.
