Stephen Muecke

On the cover of Mick Taussig’s new book, video artist Juan Manuel Echavarria performs a rather clever metaphor for the disintegration of the state. A floral pottery platter with the legend Republica de Colombia para siempre (‘The Republic of Colombia for ever’) is progressively broken up until it is nothing but a pile of white powder: the state as drug cartel. Taussig is an expatriate Sydne ... (read more)

Australia is exceptionally rich in parrots. Why? Many Australian plants have hard, woody seed capsules because of adaptation to seasonal aridity, low nutrient soils and wildfire. Parrots can be seen as flying nutcrackers. Australia does not, however, have any woodpeckers. Why? Well, read the essay. George Seddon is well-known as an environmentalist and academic. Western Australian readers wil ... (read more)

Literary theory is in for an exciting time in Australia. While the Leavisites in the older English departments were wondering what happened to the British ‘Great Tradition’, literary studies went General and Comparative in the 1960s, establishing a fertile context for the development of genuine theoretical developments such as those brought about by the encounter with structuralism, phenomenol ... (read more)

If it is the case that we can no longer avoid the effects of living under conditions of globalisation, then increasingly that spatial dimension governs our lives. Look not, therefore, deep into the history of our individual nations or localities to explain what is going on, but lift your eyes to the horizon, and beyond, where a devastated city may be smouldering. Within minutes, a local politician ... (read more)