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The Commitment to Nation in Literary History

There is such a thing as an Australian literature; but we have achieved it only at the cost of not seeing ourselves as we are … I don’t mean that a history of the novel in Australia should modishly ‘move into that crucial space between the local, the national, and the global, therefore; simply, that [...]

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Editions from Elsewhere?

For quite a while, I’ve been shaping up my response to the recent Productivity Commission Research Report ...

Asides

• "[N]eoliberalism is simply an assertion that the unintended consequences obtained from the selfish acts of maximising individuals in the marketplace will produce the best outcome. [But] standing in the way of a society that democratically plans the satisfaction of human needs are the vested interests of those who profit from this circuit of capital."  Adam Hanieh in The New Imperialists, 2006. #
• "[T]he production and consumption of culture have become imbued with commercial values and marketing messages.  Brands have become the most powerful means of forming and spreading culture."  Clive Hamilton in The Freedom Paradox, 2008. #
• "The logic of the consumption of culture militates against the maintenance of the deep coherence of religious and cultural traditions.  The vast appetite for things ... requires that symbols, beliefs, and practices be removed from their original contexts.  Their retrieval enables them to live on, but they are enacted within a fundamentally different logic. ... Traditions are pillaged for their symbolic content, which is then repackaged and recontextualised in a way that jettisons their communal, ethical, and political consequences.  Traditions are valued as sources of poetic and imaginative imagery, while their systems of logic, systems of doctrine, and rules of practice are dismissed for their rigidity and exclusivity."  Vincent Miller in Consuming Religion, 2008. #
• "The blind eye is simply the path of least resistance.  Without a firm conviction, any guilt that might arise from habitual consumption will dissipate in a self-imposed ambiguity." Ben Scott in Culture Works, 2001. #

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