Welcome to the Word FactoryWhy are university managers excited about AI? Detailing the industrial and intellectual conditions of AI’s uptake, Andrew Dean argues that the disavowal of aesthetic judgement has helped pave the way for the acceptance of natural language as data....Andrew Dean3 Dec. 2024
Through a Glass, DarklyReviewing John Morrissey’s collection of short stories, Mykaela Saunders shows how the author’s flexible use of speculative fiction suspends the reader between allegorical explorations of colonisation and an investment in the weird and beautiful.Mykaela Saunders14 Dec. 2024
Self UnhelpedReviewing books by two of the world’s leading psychoanalytic writers, Christian R. Gelder explores the challenge that psychoanalysis poses not only to conventional understandings of self and sex, but also to the prevailing therapeutic culture.Christian R. Gelder4 Dec. 2024
Her Own WitnessA painter best known for her portraiture, Celia Paul has committed her own life and likeness to the page. Reviewing Paul’s turn from pigment to prose, Isabella Gullifer-Laurie notes the solitude that is the other side of the artist’s ambition.Isabella Gullifer-Laurie28 Nov. 2024
Ways of BeingAnthony Macris reviews two books that afford an intimate glimpse into the formation of two intellectuals, George Kouvaros and Nikos Papastergiadis. In their stories, Macris sees the pathos and prodigiousness of the changes wrought by modernity.Anthony Macris17 Feb. 2025
Conflicts of InterestWhere are the boundaries of a subculture? Who decides? In his review of Cher Tan’s book of essays Peripathetic, Max Easton addresses the conflicts and convergences of interest that make up life and culture outside, or indeed under, the mainstream....Max Easton17 Feb. 2025
Through a Glass, DarklyReviewing John Morrissey’s collection of short stories, Mykaela Saunders shows how the author’s flexible use of speculative fiction suspends the reader between allegorical explorations of colonisation and an investment in the weird and beautiful.Mykaela Saunders14 Dec. 2024
GHOSTED!John Mateer reviews Rex Butler and ADS Donaldson’s ambitious attempt to re-write Australian art history from a transnational perspective, illuminating the conceptual and categorial dilemmas that have beset the discipline since its inception.John Mateer12 Dec. 2024
Prosthetic DesirerDrawing on the work of Andrea Long Chu and Jacques Lacan, Luara Karlson-Carp argues that the allure of AI consists not so much in a fantasy of limitless satisfaction as in a dream of abdicating desire for and in an increasingly dislocated world.Luara Karlson-Carp13 Dec. 2024
Welcome to the Word FactoryWhy are university managers excited about AI? Detailing the industrial and intellectual conditions of AI’s uptake, Andrew Dean argues that the disavowal of aesthetic judgement has helped pave the way for the acceptance of natural language as data....Andrew Dean3 Dec. 2024
Slow FeelingLyn Hejinian, one of the leading Language poets, passed away in February 2024. On the one-year anniversary of the publication of Allegorical Moments, Kate Fagan sounds an elegy to a lifetime’s work of resisting closure and cultivating community.Kate Fagan15 Nov. 2024
Discontinuous ConnectionsOn its fiftieth anniversary, Matthew Lamb argues for the significance of Frank Moorhouse’s The Electrical Experience, a work of fiction that showcased its author’s experimental technique as well as his intellectual engagement with media theory.Matthew Lamb11 Nov. 2024
Settling ScoresIn the wake of the women’s World Cup, Ruth McHugh-Dillon speaks to Ellen van Neerven about playing sport on Indigenous land and the challenges – of classification and acknowledgement – laid down by their latest book, Personal Score.Ruth McHugh-Dillon, Ellen van Neerven28 Aug. 2023
Unveiling through artCigdem Aydemir is a Sydney-based contemporary artist whose work primarily engages with the topic of veiling and the way in which Muslim women are commonly depicted and perceived in Australian society.Kobra Sayyadi28 May. 2023
Murnane's Signposts‘Does telling literature to get fucked mean you are articulating a new understanding of what literature is and what it can do vis-à-vis its apparent opposite, which might be something like “life”?’Joseph Steinberg27 Nov. 2022
Sumud: A Conversation with Paula AboodEvery project is a valuable project. My first questions are always, ‘What do you need?’ ‘What do you want?’, ‘What do you need me to do?’Roanna Gonsalves16 Oct. 2022
