by Howard Prosser
This interview with Martin Jay took place in January 2025. The conversation focuses on the conceptual elements of his book Magical Nominalism: The Historical Event, Aesthetic Reenchantment, and the Photograph (2025). The discussion traces the place of nominalism within philosophy and in connection to Critical Theory, history, and art.
by Rex Butler and A.D.S. Donaldson
UnAustralian art is the art of our present, those missing years since 1970 in McLean’s book. But the real point – to say this for the last time and to conclude – is that we have always been like this. This history has been written for a long time, just not in the name of “Australia”. Those stories we tell of immigrants and expatriates from the past read as though they could have happened yesterday, and we can identify with them as if they were ours. We are all first of all non-national, non-Australian, So many of us, nearly all of us, are immigrants.
by Brendon O’Connor
The challenge ahead for the Democrats is the question of how the best aspects of the Harris campaign, with its multiracial openness and pro-women’s rights agenda, can be incorporated into a more Left-wing Democratic Party. The crushing defeat for Harris is an opportunity for the Democrats to develop policies that offer real solutions to America’s many social and economic problems.
by John Lechte
This year, 2024, marks the 50th anniversary of the original French edition Julia Kristeva’s epoch-making volume, La Révolution du langage poétique. L’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle: Lautréamont et Mallarmé (1974) (Revolution in Poetic Language. The Avant-Garde at the End of the XIXth Century: Lauréamont and Mallarmé). The work was originally defended in 1973 in Paris as a doctorat d’état ès lettres. On the panel were Jean-Claude Chevalier (supervisor), Henri Lefèbvre, Pierre Albouy and Roland Barthes. The thesis was awarded the highest honour: mention très bien avec félicitations du jury.
by Howard Prosser
This is a tale of friendship. Or, more accurately, it’s a reflection on how a friendship based on a few meetings can amount to a lot. I am sure many of us have had a version of this experience. The friendships made during a stint living elsewhere. Or those incidental meetings and interactions with someone at infrequent events which, though it never quite blossoms into something more, we can still define as friendship.
by Ivan Vladislavić
It was more of a performance than a ‘lecture’. Peter played Marx and one of his colleagues played Weber, and they argued about class and other things. A young woman took issue with their focus on the classic texts. Why bother to read them? You can learn the same stuff by watching The Sopranos – and it’s more entertaining. She was very stubborn about this, which they enjoyed.
by Jeffrey C. Alexander
For many decades, Peter has been not only a thought partner but also an intimate friend, a thoughtful friend, a friendly fellow thinker, the other side of a personal and intellectual relationship I cannot think to be without.
by María Pía Lara
This reflection is tied up with the memoir written by my dear friend Peter Beilharz (2020), Intimacy in Postmodern Times: A Friendship with Zygmunt Bauman. Indeed, Peter’s process of understanding himself not only allows us to learn about him as a person and as an intellectual, but it also explores some important dimensions of his sociological thinking in connection with his friend.
by Eric Ferris
Peter, like my mentor and friend Chris and Bauman (from books), offered me versions of a relationship to teaching and learning – a relationship between teachers and learners – that I can, and will, carry and pass on. This is a ‘how’ and ‘why’ I met Peter, and a glimpse at part of the ‘what’ that underpins my respect for Peter.
by Lorenzo Veracini and Dan Tout
Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social ‘laboratory’. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an ‘experiment’. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was ‘new’ (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to shut all disturbances out – the value of the data and experiments depends on it.
thesis eleven 