Exceptionalism and Provincialism: Re-Thinking the Antipodes

by David Roberts

Peter Beilharz captures this ongoing process of exchange, fed by the flow of people, goods, capital and ideas between the old and the new worlds, between metropolitan centre and open frontier in terms of cultural traffic. Cultural traffic in turn can be understood both in the direct and wider sense as translation. As the act of relocation, transformation and recreation, translation epitomizes the idea of supplementarity and in turn the question of identity. In the following, I shall be thinking with and against Peter’s thinking of the Antipodes with the idea of translation in mind.

A Meeting of Minds: Peter Beilharz, Public Intellectual and Friend

by Philippa Mein Smith

Over the past two decades Peter Beilharz, Thesis Eleven’s Founding Editor, has inspired me and clarified my thinking and direction on two themes that have infused my work ever since we met: first, the concept of the Antipodes; and second, the idea of cultural traffic. I am grateful to know ‘Peter B’, an internationally celebrated critical cultural theorist and one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals, as a collaborator and friend. It is a comfort, too, to find that friendship and collaboration continues effortlessly as it evolves through time due to Peter B’s continued engagement both with me, and with my former students and colleagues from the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Puzzling Australia

by Peter Murphy

I think that what happened to both of us separately but in unconscious tandem in the 1990s says a lot about the intellectual framing of Australian society and history. We both, unwittingly, without any preconception of this, moved away from a politicised interpretation of Australian society (typical of much of Australian historiography) toward a view that placed art and aesthetics at the centre of social analysis.

Postcards from the Covid-19 pandemic

by Simon Marginson

The Covid-19 pandemic is instructive for social theory. It is like a gigantic experiment. It is not a controlled experiment, but a universal condition that enables differentiation on the basis of time and space, both geographical and discursive. It is possible to compare society before and during the pandemic, and also to compare the political and social evolutions and manifestations of society-under-pandemic-conditions in different nations and regions.

Two Australias

by Tim Soutphommasane and Marc Stears (Sydney)

For the most part, the Australian government’s response has been effective in suppressing the numbers of infection since the virus was detected here in March 2020. There are, however, signs that we are now seeing a more worrying new phase of conservative ideological ascendency in Australia.