Essays

ANU’s Shame

The Death of Humanitarianism

I’d love to know how many senior staff members at the Australian National University would call themselves humanitarians. I suspect a high number of them, given that the only way they seem able to sleep at night is by convincing themselves that the Socially Responsible Investment policy is sufficient.

Palestine, Intersectionality & Global Liberation Struggles

Writing this on stolen Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, where mass over-policing, youth detention, and deaths in custody are features of a system designed to dispossess.

ANU and Canberra’s Landscape of Protest

On Reconciliation Day 2024, I awoke and glanced at my phone, a habit I had fallen into, and I saw a call out from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment Instagram account. A showdown had begun between ANU students and staff, and security officers and police over the Encampment.

Art-making and world-making against institutional erasure: A case study of the Shababeek Memorial Gallery

What does it mean to be an artist when you are a settler in the imperial core? I have been wrestling with this question for a long time, but the urgency of it has drastically increased since the beginning of the Gaza genocide.

Attempted Suppression of the BIPOC Department: Threats to autonomy and political expression

The BIPOC Base at the Australian National University stands as one of the most significant achievements of the ANUSA BIPOC Department. Established through years of relentless advocacy by BIPOC student leaders, it was envisioned as a vital safe space where Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) students could exist free from the pervasive racism that continues to shape campus experiences.

Encampment as Classroom: Reflections on Learning and Solidarity in a Time of Genocide

In early 2024, as other student groups in Australia and elsewhere began establishing encampments on university campuses, students at the Australian National University (ANU) established the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Kambri.

Arbitrary Powers in the Marketplace of Ideas: What ANU’s response to Palestine solidarity protestors reveals about the university

On Wednesday May 15th 2024, the 76th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, 7 ANU students were summoned to a meeting with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Grady Venville (Gore 2024). What followed was a bizarre, McCarthyite show trial dressed up in condescendingly benign corporate-HR language.

How Did We Get Here: Universities and the Militarised Political Economy of Death

On April 29th 2024, we held our first Gaza Solidarity Encampment meeting on the balcony of the student union. As that day came to a close, many of us were zipping up our tents and wriggling into our sleeping bags.

110 Days of Solidarity: ANU Gaza Encampment and Civil Society Action

Civil society has long been the arena where ordinary people contest power, demand justice, and force institutions to shift. Theorists describe it as the ‘space between state and market,’ but in practice it is the place where unions, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), student groups, faith communities and solidarity networks make their voices heard.

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 ...

Frames of Precarity

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...

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 environ...

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 pas...

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 spre...

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 conta...

Market Research Politics

[caption id="attachment_1607" align="alignnone" width="800"] 'Race to Finish', via Flickr[/caption] 'We've received reports of a suspicious individual conducting surveys and photog...

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 gi...

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 ...

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...

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 sett...

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 Forgotte...

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. Suc...

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...

The Pandemic of Distance

‘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, ...

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 ...

Democratic Crises and Degrowth

The health-cum-economic crisis of COVID-19 has exposed many weaknesses of contemporary governance. These weaknesses are associated with representative democracy, which simply offer...

On social memory and the Chilean political crisis

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 Poe...

‘Viva La Nannalution!’: Using craftivism to transform crisis into social movement

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 ...

We are again reminded of the violence of borders

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 ...

What are we talking about when we talk about a crisis in masculinity?

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 sui...

Re-thinking crisis with Hannah Arendt: Neoliberalism Against the Common World

“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 occu...

At Loss: International Students at the Center of University Restructuring

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 ...

Language Diversity at ANU: One Perspective on the CHL Review

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)....

The ideology of managerialism in the public university

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 unce...

Resisting the casualised university

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...

Death by a thousand cuts

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]...

How Heterodox Academy creates a safe space for bad ideas

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 fu...

Destroying the walls and the doors

“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...

Time to face the music?

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 p...

Hostility or Hospitality

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, a...

Semi-fictionalised reminiscences on the School of Culture, History and Language (CHL) review at the ANU and some all too real questions

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 ...

On Being __ Your Body

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 fre...

Bodily Integrity: The Forced Medication of Prisoners with Mental Illness

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...

Unraveling threads – revealing body through dance

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 ot...

Students and Aboriginal Rights – From 1965 to Now

When most people think of contemporary student activism, they think of students campaigning around federal education policy or local campus issues. Student environmentalism or stud...

Bodies on the Line in Palestine

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 Movem...

Bodies – is that all we are?

‘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 i...

The Deficiencies of Education Activism in the Modern University

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 campai...

Refugee Activism at the ANU: Why We Must Keep Fighting the Good Fight

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 f...

Redefining Normality with Acts of Everyday Activism

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 cause...

“My Real University Education”: An Interview with Rick Kuhn

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 ...

Dissent and Disengagement: Canberra Student Protest Against the Vietnam War

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 po...

From Vietnam to Now: Has the Student Activist Disappeared?

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 Freed...

Wake Up Call: Fighting the Neoliberal Global Order in Latin America

“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 Monet...

On Moral Obligations to Future Generations

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 c...

Religion and Borrowing in the New Age

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 originat...

Slow and Quiet Resistance in Yangon: An Analysis of Daniel Zvereff’s Album ‘Chinthe’

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) ...

Kashmiriyat

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...

Biocide Resistant Crops and the Capitalist World-System

Readers be warned: bringing up genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at a dinner party could just be the 21 st  century equivalent of bringing up feminism or conscientious objectio...

Humour as Resistance: “Star Wars first, the Sacred War can wait”

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 ...

Knowing More, Knowing Less

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 prev...

Resistance and Resilience in a Portland Abortion Clinic

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 h...

Resisting the Logic of Fear in the Age of Terrorism

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 attack...

The Role of Radical Publishers: An Interview with PM Press founder Ramsey Kanaan

–  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, foun...

Seeking Refuge: The Climate Change Emergency

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]  Mo...

Placeless Proletariat

‘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 of...

Power Presence and the Public: Women’s Online Social Movements in the Middle East

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 righ...

The Managerial University: A Failed Experiment?

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 ‘man...

It’s Getting Hot in Here: Time for a New Normal

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...

Is Kurdish Rebellion a Left Wing Cause?

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 oppos...

‘Cultural Appropriation’: Maybe our Discussion is the Problem

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 se...

Reinvigorating The Roots of Realism

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 ...

The Destruction of Difference: Paternalistic Australian Policies

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 remo...

Bearing Witness: Three Digressions Through Art

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 postu...

Going In

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 th...

“If We’d Had Women, We’d Have an Agreement”

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 ...

The Clamour of Political Beings

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 e...

When Dust Gets in Our Eyes

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...

The Silent Subjects of Mental Illness in India

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 humanitari...

Affirming Difference in ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’

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 resista...

A Different Kind of Wave: A Creative Essay

“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 crea...

The Apocalypse is Easy: Limitations of our Climate Change Imaginings

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...

How to Create a Demos

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 t...

The Greek Crisis: A Democratic Deficit

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 ...

Power and Participation

In Australia marriage equality waits impatiently for political sanction. Already, it has received the sanction of society, with public opinion polls consistently showing majority s...