The following are translated excerpts from South Korean poet and activist Song Kyung-dong’s essay collection, Dreamers Are Dragged Away (Silcheon Press, 2011). “One vibrant day in May” It happened on a Saturday during my high school years—a clear spring day when the...
Despite the wealth of scientific knowledge available to us today, true environmental justice seems to be an almost unattainable goal. The increasing number of transnational environmental problems has been met with an increasing global response through multilateral...
Speech is often found at the heart of debates concerning politics and the political, in particular the question of who and what counts as a speaking and rational being, and the passage from silent to speaking beings, from nonsense to sense. One notable attempt to...
This article centers on the implications of Moria’s destruction and its repercussions for migrants who used to inhabit its overcrowded tents. Firstly, it discusses the implications of its existence within the nexus between border regimes and humanitarianism....
‘We’ve received reports of a suspicious individual conducting surveys and photographing people’s boarding passes around Terminal 2 of Domestic Airport.’ Two Federal police officers approached me. Both are Anglo-Australian men almost twice my...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this article contains the names of deceased persons. All readers are respectfully advised that this article contains references to deaths in custody that may cause distress. This is a story of two...
Yajo* lived in place that has produced some of the most brilliant, distinguished academics and professionals. In fact, it once had a flourishing democracy, producing some of the best theorists on state-formation. However, Yajo comes from a place with...
Innocence is an important cultural marker. As I and others have written elsewhere, it holds powerful significatory value as a contested and complicated sign which entangles richly with other forms of meaning (Wekker 2016, Kanjere 2019, Tuck and Yang 2012, Fellows and...
Introduction If you are to follow the path of River Code in Yogyakarta and then navigate your way under the Gondolayu Bridge you will come to Kampung Code, a riverbank settlement in Yogyakarta made up of brightly painted houses and murals. This settlement has...
I need to breathe Get up, look at that news Markers of enslavers Tearing down Pushed in the water Like them chains Clanking to the ground Like the bodies of ancestors past Forgotten in the water? ‘So-called australia. Born a prison, still a prison’ are the words of...
Precarity and the conditions that underpin precarious living are not arbitrary. Rather, they are the engineered products of prioritising the interests of the few over the many. Such precarious living was the reality of the residents of the Grenfell Tower, who in 2017...
Tilly Houghton was a friend to many at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) and demos journal, and worked on and contributed to this issue of demos journal. We have been given permission by Double Dialogues to reproduce the following piece of Tilly’s, in...
It was 2017 and Trump had just been elected. Women’s marches had sprung up in many places and on my television screen. The image of thousands of women standing shoulder to shoulder, coming together to advocate for shared goals — could feel inspiring; it could look...
I used to think I had the privilege of being at arm’s length from the politics of disability. I strongly supported anti-racist politics, but being “able-bodied” and without caring responsibilities, the disability studies and the disability rights movement was not a...
‘Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.’ – Ibn Khaldun The pandemic crisis has...
The health-cum-economic crisis of COVID-19 has exposed many weaknesses of contemporary governance. These weaknesses are associated with representative democracy, which simply offers citizens a right to vote every few years, a mere choice between a small number of...
The story of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed (KNAG) begins in 2012. A handful of older women joined an anti-coal seam gas (CSG) group in Lismore NSW. They wanted to take action when the Northern Rivers area of NSW was being targeted for CSG mining by...
The word crisis refers to different meanings. It can refer to a tension of two or more different “forces” or tendencies, whose clash creates a conflict (for example, in van der Poel, 2019). Another meaning of crisis is the idea of a decisive moment of change. For...
Early on the morning of 2 March 2020, a small vessel full of refugees from across the Middle East arrived at the shores of Lesvos. It was the latest of the over 70 irregular boats documented since the turn of the year. Locals gathered nearby. Videos quickly circulated...
Masculinity is in crisis. This is a readily agreed upon view amongst many scholars, pop psychologists and media figures alike. Examining declining educational achievement, high suicide rates, and a growing cohort of ‘angry men’ determined to reclaim a lost sense of...
“In every crisis a piece of the world, something common to us all, is destroyed. The failure of common sense, like a divining rod, points to the place where such a cave-in has occurred. Hannah Arendt, ‘Truth and Politics’, Between Past and Future Hannah Arendt’s...
On a bright morning in March 2016, I came to my office at the Australian National University (ANU) with an extremely heavy heart. I heard that my primary supervisor was one of the academics losing their positions due to the school review. I could not help swearing all...
In 2016, I worked as a part of Language Diversity at ANU, to stop proposed cuts to programs in the College of Asia and the Pacific’s School of Culture, History and Languages (CHL). While working with the group, I learned valuable lessons about the university. 2016 was...
The education market Two distinct understandings of the corporation have become entwined with one another in the contemporary public university, which has caused confusion and uncertainty as to its character and purpose. The not for-profit corporation was established...
Australian universities are now more reliant on casualised labour than at any other point in their history. While university management may see this as a positive trend, this essay argues that both the nature and scale of casualised labour have had almost wholly...
In March of 2019, during a rally, Donald Trump threatened to execute an executive order requiring “colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research funds” (Shepardson & Johnson 2018). The details are foggy on exactly what this order...
“When some day we enter the university – that is to say, when we occupy and decolonize it – we will not merely open the doors and redecorate the walls. We will destroy both so that we may all fit in.” – Boaventura de Sousa Santos Many academics – especially those who...
I find it fascinating how in the short time since I graduated from my university’s Diploma of Languages in 2016 and its PhB Bachelor of Philosophy (Arts) in 2017, both programs[1] have been scrapped.[2] Yet while I was somewhat shocked to hear the news, I can’t say I...
Kambri is an island, a detachment that floats separate to the rest of campus. This “cultural precinct” and “community space” features a flashy bookstore, cafés, student services, and open-plan study spaces. Students at the Australian National University are meant to...
Academic labour is grounded in long-established, and sometimes hard-won, scholarly traditions that help to shape and direct academic disciplines and secure the trust of the wider public in the results of that labour. It should be no surprise, then, to find that...
As the students’ representative of my department, I had just came out from a small but, significant, battle about the Postgraduate and Research Students Associate’s (PARSA) budget allocation; an outrageous amount of money for ‘social activities’ (which I read as...
Technology is making us robots. It feels like an absolute cop out to begin a piece by gesticulating about the age of technology – but hear me out. In a recent media consumption frenzy, I came across RadioLab’s recent experimentation with the Turing Test which...
I. Introduction “Every person with disabilities has a right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others.” — Article 17, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities All individuals are entitled to bodily integrity—the...
One of the ways I experience dance is as a series of body images.‘instilled,’ a solo dance performance (2010) contains many elements that express how I image body, both mine and others. These include images that are visceral, infant-like, in-culturated as woman, as...
‘Bodies, is that all we are?’ This was the response from a colleague of mine when I was discussing a monograph I had recently published entitled Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body during and after the Cold War (2016). The wry humour was...
Throughout history, humans have utilised their bodies to fight against different forms of oppression and shape their political and social landscape. From Ghandi to the Occupy Movement, the marginalised and oppressed have used their bodies to gain visibility and shine...
When most people think of contemporary student activism, they think of students campaigning around federal education policy or local campus issues. Student environmentalism or student protests in support of refugees might get a mention. However, students also have a...
I picked up a banner for the first time and joined the fight against fee deregulation as a second-year student in 2014. The experience of being part of a vibrant and winning campaign is crucial for any activist – personally, I came to realise we have the power and...
The refugee campaign in Australia has been one of the most visible and tenacious movements of social activism of the last four of five years. In it, many thousands of people have fought to estabilish a basic principle – that people seeking refuge should not be locked...
Like many students, I came to university hoping to find a way to make the world a more just and sustainable place. After a few environmental science courses that explored the causes and consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, food insecurity, and...
Rick Kuhn is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology at the ANU. Since his first appointment at ANU in 1987, he has researched and taught in political economy, the history of the labour movement, race and racism in Australia, and Marxist economic theory. His book...
Photo: Robert Hall The 1960s, student activism and the Vietnam War conjure images of protest, change and radicalism. At the time, radical Australian students were referred to by politicians as ‘political bikies who pack-rape democracy’ (Billy Snedden, 1970) and have...
For over fifty years, the collective voices of student activists have echoed up from Australian universities to our policy makers. From the Civil Rights movement and the 1965 Freedom Ride to advocating for Aboriginal rights in rural New South Wales, championing...
“Shame on you!” That was one of the many slogans yelled and used often over the past few years at protests held by thousands of people in Washington against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Jones, 2000). In the last decades the world has seen...
What obligations, if any, do we owe future generations? This question lies at heart of some of the most important debates in contemporary society. What are we to do about climate change? Should we protect natural resources or prioritise present economic development?...
New Age spirituality is a sociological mystery, and as a subject of academic enquiry, incredibly difficult to analyse. Participants engage with a variety of practises that originate from many different cultural sources. Most individuals aim, in one way or another, to...
Sometimes resistance is not violent. Sometimes, it is reinforcing what is peripheral to a culture because the roots of it are still in the homeland. The Kashmir Valley, at the foot the of the Himalayas, endures both kinds. My family, as far back as we can trace, are...
Readers be warned: bringing up genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at a dinner party could just be the 21st century equivalent of bringing up feminism or conscientious objection in the early 1900s. I have committed this techno-era faux pas and it did not end well....
Much of the discourse surrounding Myanmar discusses its struggles with identity formation as an obstacle to its otherwise huge potential for growth and development (Dittmer, 2010) (Perry, 2007). After decades of isolation, Myanmar emerged out of its cocoon only to...
Understanding resistance, and social phenomena more broadly, has traditionally been the domain of the social scientist who stands above the everyday to bring to light what was previously unknown about our own lives. However with the emergence of affect theory, which...
Last December, the leader of the Islamic State posted portions of a call-to-action on Twitter intended for Muslims around the world. The words were cut from an audio recording, in which Adu Bakr al-Baghladi declared that taking up arms and “joining the fight” urgently...
Resistance is a battle cry. Resistance can move mountains. Resistance, in many ways, has defined the shape and limits of the modern world. But what occurs within its contours? In his book Alter Politics and Radical Imaginary Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage...
In July of 2016 four violent attacks in three different German cities claimed the lives of 13 people. The first anti-terrorism policy draft published in the aftermath of the attacks suggests increased surveillance, more police and more thorough background-checks on...
– Ramsey Kanaan interviewed by Odette Shenfield PM Press’ Stall at the World Social Forum At the 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal, I sat down to talk to Ramsey Kanaan, founder of PM Press. PM Press is a radical publisher based out of Oakland, California. I first...
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the impacts of climate change would lead to the relocation of millions of people around the world.[1] More recently, as our attention is captured by reports of nations being swallowed whole by...
‘It is the rule of the border in general that the refugee challenges … it is the justice of national sovereignty itself that the body of the asylum seeker refutes.’[1] The poor often find themselves at society’s boundaries, borders and margins. Their bodies hover at...
Hanan, from Egypt holding a sign reading: “I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because my freedom is not a gift from anyone I was created free and I will take my rights and impose my freedom.” The online remains a yet unchartered, ungendered space. A...
Recent decades have seen a protracted attack and painstaking demolition of the traditional or ‘old’ university and an associated purging of academics. The rise of managers and ‘managerial’ doctrines were supposed to make universities more efficient and productive,...
We are already on the way to a new climate normal. Whether that normal is one decided by us or for us is yet to be determined. We’re experiencing longer and hotter summers, and more extreme and frequent natural disasters.[i] Air pollution is killing 7 million...
There is a paradox in left wing ideology. The left wing often supports underdogs in an effort to ensure equality. Yet the underdog always carries baggage that can be directly opposed to left wing philosophies. As a progressive person, should I support the supressed,...
A discussion of cultural appropriation often begets one of two extreme reactions. The first is a denial of any possibility of cultural exchange outside the original culture. The second often comes in the form of a cringe-worthy whitesplain of the – to paraphrase –...
Those who follow International Relations might have notice the curious rise of the “Thucydides Trap” as the vogue concept among leaders. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has dropped the reference on numerous occasions at international summits abroad.[1] It...
Modern identity politics is often denigrated; depicted as an irrational mass shouting defiantly about their experiences; a moment of politics that erases the good old fashion posturing of parliamentary debate. While identity politics, like all politics, operates in...
In 2015, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, announced his support of Western Australian Premier Barnett’s plan to close nearly half of the state’s two hundred and seventy-four remote Indigenous communities.[1] This proposal, which spurred much public criticism and...
I’m knee deep in my newest purchase: a giant maze of unique fingerprint arabesques spread out before me that delineate Namadgi and Brindabella National Parks. I couldn’t be more thrilled. While focusing almost obsessively on the complexities of the map I can already...
Gender and Peace-Making in Israel-Palestine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in 2000, called for the mainstream involvement of women in conflict resolution and management. The Resolution intended to promote equal participation in peace...
Politics is a noisy place. This can be seen its everyday machinations: parliamentary speeches, the bustle of protests, various heated discussion on the value of free speech. This essay seeks to investigate how western political philosophy has placed a primacy on...
If you live in metropolitan Australia, chances are you rarely think about soil erosion. If you live in a regional or remote area, you probably battle with wind and/or water erosion on a daily basis. That is the reality: soil erosion is ever-present in Australia with...
The kind of silence I wish to discuss permeates everyday life: mental health, particularly in developing countries. Having done previous research[1] on development and humanitarian organisations’ lack of critical engagement with psychosocial emergencies and...
“The ocean is at its best today.” It was hard to believe how this sentence which, on the surface, seemed so optimistic, could be so depressing. An individual’s engagement with creation is inherently personal. For some, the idea of creation is deeply embedded in...
Without presenting myself as an authority on racial identity politics or African-American culture, this essay discusses the way in which creative media has been a forum for resistance and an affirmation of difference in identity politics. While this essay focuses on...
In a 2005 article for The Guardian, Robert Macfarlane lamented the lack of a cultural response to climate change, asking: ‘where are the novels, the plays, the poems, the songs, the libretti, of this massive contemporary anxiety?’ Since then, a rapidly expanding body...
Emphatic Exordium The concept of a ‘people’ is a distinctly weird one. Everything about it seems tendentious and unclear; even grammatically, the expression “a people” appears to teeter uneasily between singular (“a person”) and plural (“people”). You can see then why...
Introduction The Greek debt currently totals somewhere around 240 billion euros. Throughout what has come to be called the Greek debt crisis, the actions of the European Union has left commentators perplexed and in search of an explanation. The handling of the Greek...
In Australia marriage equality waits impatiently for political sanction. Already, it has received the sanction of society, with public opinion polls consistently showing majority support.[1] Possibly by the end of this year all Australians will be able to marry the...
