Issue 11:
PRECARITY
Precarity’s paradoxical force unites us in a condition of fragmentation and isolation.
Dreamers Are Dragged Away
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...
Coroner’s Findings
So the woman’s dream is, by their and our hands, hysterical. (And not entirely woman.) Voices of expression and tins of regret. It seems that, despite all tendencies, we have stairs instead. Or steps. Or plans of steps, stepmothers and stepladders. Stemming...
Frames of Precarity
Frames of Precarity
labour labour labour
The Paradox of Environment Governance
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...
Longitudinal Study
Data is extractable and its valence changes. Precarity in relationship > when we are situated in relationship to circumstance > when others situate us in relationship causally. White supremacy destabilises and shakes, only once in a while. Is white...
From the Image of Precarity to The Statement People Think
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...
Solidarity
Celebration of the Black-Palestinian Solidarity Conference
In this article, I write about my experience of being a photographer during the celebration of the afterparty of the Black-Palestinian Solidarity Conference and share excerpts of an interview with Suzannah Henty, a co-convenor of the conference. ...
Precarity Reborn from its Own Ashes: On the Opening of a New Reception and Identification Centre in Lesbos, Greece
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....
Quarantine gardening
You can’t tell if your family gave up growing vegetables. Your Mum, gazing over, wishes for peaches. Our turmeric/sage/ parsley (the talking herb we call it in our family language) tastes like nothing. Night -time, in the garden, you observe minute LEDs...
COVID-19, precarity, and the sustainability of life. Some experiences from Mexico.
In March 2020, COVID-19 created a situation of international chaos. No country from across the globe was free from the threat of the virus and the possible consequences of its spreading. This reality, familiar to most of us, accentuated a socio-economic crisis that...
Nee Stokes
My aunty had become terminally ill. The recently found melanoma had spread and was now rapidly taking over her body. I flew up to Queensland to see her with my family, not knowing then, it was to be the last time I would ever see her again.Bundaberg was hot. I felt...
Market Research Politics
‘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...
A Tale of Two Deaths: Necropolitics in the Criminal Justice System
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...
Auctioneering
If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it. Anne Carson You take photos of the auction, the world’s straightest Mardi Gras. They fill the street like the opposite of rubble. You have no skin here; you raise $100 000 and...
Anitya
Inspired by the Tamil saying, “மாற்றம் ஒன்றே மாறாதது”(matrum ondrae maaraathathu) Translation: Change is the only unchangeable thing The bird sits alone, Waiting, and mulling boredom, Feeling like dust float. Change, ablaze unchanged,...
The politics of silence and the precarity of political dissent
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 Commodified: The Figure of the Child in Neoliberal Capitalism
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...
Navigating Precarity: Some Notes on how Indonesia’s Urban Poor Negotiate with the State
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
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...
Today (Impending)
Blood orange sun burning and tar melts under peach haze while house sails obscure in custard winds coughing hacking strangling to breathe and soft fur faces are singed and bloodied birds falling are like dying while flying like drink driving and trees turn to less...
Living in Precarity: the Grenfell Tower fire
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...
Legal Rupture, Legal Order: Three Stories of Australian Riots
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...
At One with the Precariat Sitting Outside
, at some lunch table not a desk at the University of Sydney , smoking on campus which is definitely illegal now , opening up my old student email account , to discover two weeks after the fact , my ‘creative’ PhD has been awarded an ‘academic’ prize , named after...
Algorithm
stood before an automated door that refused to acknowledge my existence I thought but I’m here & yes I do remember when time online was less anxious—not a threat to national security democracy of course an election is not a cake walk though strolling...
Exclusionary feminist discourse in India, past and present
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...
Their Eyes Were Chasing Sun
After Zora Neale Hurston Tima carried a long-legged ease about her, thundering strides of a leader, full lips and wide eyes and melanin. She would raise her hand like the switch in Adelaide weather, abrupt and sure, delivering answers in Maths like they were meant to...
Why the fight against racism and ableism must be shared
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...Past Issues
