editorial | Nathan Hollier

INTELLECTUAL ACTIVISM

The first thing you notice is the gentle music, like a lullaby or perhaps the introduction to a Sunday afternoon arts show. Don’t you just feel like stretching out and having a cup of tea? Then there are some Decent People, in Real Workplaces; bosses and workers talking casually, evenly, to each other. They look basically the same, and like lots of other people you’ve seen: good ordinary folk. There are some messages: short and simple, in solid white lettering on a soft orange background. The message becomes clear: these workplace changes are about fairness, making things simpler, bringing people together where they can talk as equals: restoring community, really. Like the old days. And existing ways of working and levels of pay have got the strong red stamp of a government guarantee. Yawn, stretch, feel like an early night.
    Unless of course you went to primary school. In which case you’ve probably been watching this breathtakingly expensive government television advertising campaign for the new workplace changes and the ‘Fair Pay Commission’ – give me a break – with that weird feeling, somewhere between outrage and resignation, that is perhaps the defining feature of emotional life for many people in contemporary Australia. This has all been going on for so long. Both sides of parliamentary politics are in it up to their necks (as testified recently by Mark Latham and Barry Jones). A degree of resignation is probably necessary to keep one out of jail and from overdoing the Zoloft. But you can’t help feeling disgusted: 1. we’re being screwed; and 2. we’re being lied to about it.
    And so you do something, if you’re an activist, or you say something, if you are an intellectual with a conscience, or you do and say things, if you’re energetic, and you sit back and wait for the response. You know what it will be: outrage (of the John Howard ‘I’ve never been so affronted in all my life’ variety), followed by denunciation (of the Andrew Albrechtsen/Janet Bolt defender of ‘common sense’ variety), if you’ve made a political impact or got some publicity; or silence, if you haven’t.
    In one sense it has never been easier to be an intellectual. There is so much official bullshit around you hardly know which contradiction to point to first. ‘No-one predicted a social disaster following Hurricane Katrina’, says George Dubya. Right. As Peter Holding documents in this issue, practically everyone who’d ever had cause to consider the safety of New Orleans had predicted just that. Moreover, as Holding outlines, the humanitarian disaster is a direct reflection of the nature and structure of American society, a social model which our leaders are falling over themselves to introduce here. Similarly, as Heather Benbow suggests, all you have to do nowadays is wear a hijab and you automatically qualify as a dangerous subversive. According to Bronwyn Bishop, of course, people wanting to wear hijabs, because it makes them feel comfortable, are like those other people who wanted to feel comfortable; that’s right, the Nazis! Contenders everywhere for the ‘Facile Comparison of the Millennium’ award could be seen exhaling and shaking their heads in resigned defeat.
    But in another sense both genuine intellectual work and political activism have never been harder to practice. The sheer volume of corporate and government spin is daunting. The control of the mass media by the far right has never been more universal. University academics have never been under more pressure to step back from progressive politics. Right-wing think-tanks and journalists have never been so organised and active in denigrating structural analysis and progressive values. The criminalisation of dissent continues apace, with police paramilitarisation, the exponential strengthening of ASIO and other secret police agencies, and new ‘anti-terror’ legislation targeting ‘thought-crimes’, enabling ‘preventative detention’ and legitimating the further steady erosion of civil rights.
    Here, Christos Tsiolkas talks openly with Patricia Cornelius about his struggle to bring together personal, political and aesthetic interests and desires. His new novel, Dead Europe, as contributors to our symposium suggest, is a profoundly innovative and revealing account of contemporary life. Radical historian Marcus Rediker discusses his attempt to fuse social justice and intellectual concerns, with Rowan Cahill. Joy Damousi and Ken Gelder respectively survey the state of Australian labour history and cultural studies, disciplinary areas that in part grew out of activist concerns. Anthony Langlois engages with the intellectual contribution of Chandra Muzaffar, an important Malaysian Muslim thinker and campaigner. And RW Connell provides a sorely needed critical overview of the intriguing and inspiring, if sometimes frustratingly abstruse, Antonio Negri.

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