Nonfiction
The Problem With Travel
Later this year I’m travelling to South-East Asia for three months, and I feel gut-wrenchingly guilty about it. It’s not only because of the carbon emissions involved in flying, nor the chequered and problematic history of white people journeying through Asia over the centuries. Since long before Elizabeth Gilbert ate, prayed, and loved around the globe, people from one place have travelled to another place, returning with souvenirs, stories and “new” ideas. It’s tempting to view this dissemination as a holy form of multiculturalism that celebrates social, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic difference, but I think that this belies a much shadier truth: self-interest in all its forms is the bedrock of travel.
5 November 2018
Explainer: The US Midterms
This week in America, on the first Tuesday of November, a very different race will stop a very different nation. It is a race with much more at stake. It is a race to majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. It is, among other things, a race to be Governor in 36 states, to legalise recreational marijuana in Michigan and to give ex-felons the right to vote in Florida. This Tuesday, America votes in the midterm elections.
4 November 2018
Silent Bodies
It is only recently that McAllister returned to perform, for the first time since becoming artistic director, in the Australian Ballet’s production of The Merry Widow in Melbourne. On a stage saturated by diamond-studded dresses and scarlet curtains, McAllister appears as Njegus, the bumbling secretary to the ambassador. Pantomimic and slapstick, the fantasy is in full swing—and McAllister knows how to play the game. The audience drinks deeply from his perfectly timed winks and silly walks, revelling in the comedy.
24 October 2018
I Do Not Have a White Name
So, no, I do not have a white name. I wish other non-white people didn’t either. Our names are beautiful. They speak of our roots, cultures, homes we so dearly love. I would rather repeat my name thrice than cut it to make someone else more comfortable.
24 September 2018
The Welfare State Is Homophobic
Queers are outraged about the proposed regulation of poppers—and the restriction of its recreational use. And rightly so. The arguments against these regulations are convincing—it’s your body and your choice to ingest whatever substance you like. But every new prohibition on social behaviours comes from somewhere and we should ask what made regulating poppers possible in the first place, to properly critique these immoral policies.
14 September 2018
No Pens, No Paper
Demitra Lazarakis on why education matters to her Art by Nicola Dobinson I remember a moment vividly from when I was around 15 years old. I had spent the afternoon with my grandparents— Grandma Cornelia and Grandpa George, γιαγιά and παππού in Greek. On this particular day, I noticed one of my grandma’s […]
12 September 2018
Hello My Name Is…
Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.” Although, he was probably referring to white names because we all know that Rose rolls off the tongue a lot easier than Mishti does.
27 August 2018
For & Against: Lockout Lockheed
IMAGE by David Zeleznikow-Johnston FOR by Lockout Lockheed Students at the University of Melbourne ought to be informed about a lot of things. First, that their university is making secretive deals with transnational arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and BAE. Second, that these partnerships incentivise war by institutionalising and normalising the presence of weapons […]
14 August 2018
Flystrike
By the end of it, Mary didn’t feel any love toward the sheep. She didn’t want to hold their slimy bodies, cold and wet, abandoned by their mothers. Most didn’t even know how to suckle properly. She had given up trying to help lost lambs.
13 August 2018