March 3rd, 2010 | Published in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Media, Politics, Women | 245 Comments
I don’t know what qualifications you need to be a public intellectual. I think you get such a gig because readers of The Age have voted for you, or something. But apparently playwright Louis Nowra is one. In 2007, he wrote a short book, Bad Dreaming, which to put it mildly, met with some legitimate [...]
September 25th, 2009 | Published in Australiana, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology | 72 Comments
On Saturday, I penned some thoughts on the series in The Australian on the Australian left, riffing off the first article by Tim Soutphommasane. Among other things, I queried the practice of addressing a discourse about left politics to the presumed centres of power, describing those who do that sort of thing as “court philosophers”. [...]
August 21st, 2008 | Published in Australiana, Culture, Disasters, Feminism, Howardia, Indigenous, Policy, Race, Sexuality, Sociology, Women | 111 Comments
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/on-rage.jpg" align=left Well, as I noted on another thread about Germaine Greer, I’ve bought and now read On Rage. I’d like this post to stick to discussion of the merits of her arguments, which I continue to think has been something largely absent from most of the debate to date. I also think that [...]
August 19th, 2008 | Published in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Film, TV, Video etc | 34 Comments
One of the rather egregious questions on last week’s Q&A asked the panel to comment on why there was no contemporary political fiction of the stature of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s. As with a lot of the queries posed on Q&A, it’s a bit of a silly one, but it did remind me that we discussed political [...]
August 16th, 2008 | Published in Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Indigenous, Masculinity, Media, Politics, Race | 232 Comments
As a bit of a follow up to the discussion of Germaine Greer’s latest book On Rage here, I was interested to see Gary Sauer-Thompson observe that most of the reaction (and there’s been tons of it) to her writing and various speeches and appearances in the press has completely avoided the issues she actually [...]
August 15th, 2008 | Published in Culture, Education, Ethics, Health, History, Howardia, Indigenous, Politics, Poverty, Race | 15 Comments
In the wake of discussion of Andrew Forrest’s proposal for the creation of 50 000 full time jobs for Indigenous Australians (discussed here at LP) and Germaine Greer’s remarks on the continuing force of history in shaping Indigenous responses to state initiatives (discussed here and see the video of last night’s Q&A), I thought it [...]
August 14th, 2008 | Published in Books, Writers & Writing, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, Indigenous, Media, Policy, Race | 46 Comments
Occasional guest poster at LP, Marcus Westbury, is on Q&A tonight – ABC1 at 9.30pm. Let’s hope he can get a word in between the pompous comedy stylings of Greg Sheridan, and the litterateur/Macquarie Bank shill Bob Carr. Germaine Greer will also be a guest. Greer has just released a new essay in book form [...]
September 12th, 2007 | Published in Books, Writers & Writing, Notices, Women | 28 Comments
I haven’t posted a lot here (or anywhere, really) for a couple of months mainly because I’ve been working on organising a very beautiful conference which is happening in Melbourne in late November. Getting an event like this together is a phenomenal timesink (I’m so glad we decided not to go for the extra day), [...]
September 4th, 2007 | Published in Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Media, Politics | 196 Comments
Cross-posted at Audrey and the Bad Apples. Those cheeky monkeys over at Zoo magazine have done it again! Pushing the envelope with his ‘dare to be different’ competitions, Zoo’s editor Paul ‘Show Us Your T*ts’ Merrill has come out with this response to those pesky (and, it has to be said, hairy) feminazis who got [...]
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
