AustLit

'This multi-generic bilingual piece is sourced from our Journal off-beat (forthcoming), begun in the aftermath of the 2019 Paris International Poetry Festival. It was brought to a conclusion on 22 March 2020 after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The March entries convey how hope wrestles with despair and confusion. We sensed that the pandemic symbolised a warning of something worse to come. This is reflected in the liquefying of the text in journal entries and poetic responses from mid-March onwards. At that point Maurice Blanchot’s The Writing of Disaster became a backdrop for making sense of the global crisis which, like the idea of the apocalypse, seemed to arise from the unknown with an inkling towards endless deferral. Unlike Blanchot’s book, however, ‘The unwriting of disaster’ proclaims the continuing relevance of art in our lives and confirms how writing deepens our connection as human beings.' (Introduction)

'This paper takes up the onto-poetic device of the ‘subhabitual’, riffing off the Deleuze of Difference and Repetition, where he outlines three modes in which time synthesises. It proposes that, despite the ‘living present’ (the time of habit) being the most basic of Deleuze’s times, certain shared and acquired behaviours prevalent in digitalised, pandemic and/or neoliberalising moments may undermine it. This loss of the basic present, furthermore, isn’t offset by and doesn’t usher in an opening onto either of Deleuze’s other two temporal modes. The paper goes on to consider the later Foucault’s interest in practices of care-of-the-self as pertaining to ethical obligations. Foucault’s self-care practices may be read (almost slant to his earlier analyses of discipline) as pertaining to the performing of behaviours or acts that are the conditions for the capacity for ethical, even emancipatory, behaviours. Complicating this, however, Byung-Chul Han’s recent concerns about Foucault’s earlier lack of scepticism for entrepreneurialism cast a subtle light across the notion of capacity. The paper seeks to begin a disambiguation of kinds of capacity: Deleuzian-Spinozan; late-Foucauldian; and those ‘capacities’ for auto-exploitation that go under the name of being-productive in neoliberal compliance-speak. It argues for actions that might refuse (at least sometimes) to comply with, or which can abstain from, logics that — after Simon Springer — we might dub neoliberal. Creative-writing-as-practising offers itself as one of these — perhaps a practice of care-of-the-self, definitely a valid shape for practising.' (Introduction)

'Australia’s 2019—20 summer bushfires, known as ‘Black Summer’, directly caused the deaths of 33 people; 3 billion animals were killed or displaced, and over 3,000 homes destroyed, in Australia’s hottest and driest year on record (Commonwealth of Australia 2020: 5). In New South Wales, 7% of the state burnt and 26 lives were lost (NSW Bushfire Inquiry 2020). In the Shoalhaven, where these photos were taken, the ‘Currowan Fire’ ignited on 26 November 2019 on the northern edge of Eurobodalla Shire burned north for 74 days across 499,621 hectares, spanning four Local Government Areas (LGAs), destroying 312 homes (286 of which were in the Shoalhaven LGA), damaging another 183, and causing the death of three people near Conjola and Sussex Inlet on New Year’s Eve. The Currowan Fire was extinguished on 8 February 2020 (SBS 2020; NSW Bushfire Inquiry 2020).' (Introduction)

'In 2019, we (Kim Williams and Lucas Ihlein) were invited to take part in NIRIN— the 2020 Biennale of Sydney. Artistic director Brook Andrew commissioned us to create a project focused on plastic. Andrew’s vision involved artists at every level of the festival — from publication design, to food, education, and even transport infrastructure — and, with our project, an intervention into the Biennale’s environmental impact.' (Introduction)

'This paper presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between a cognitive scientist (Steven Langsford) and a researcher in the field of creative writing (Amelia Walker). The dialogue concerns a proposition that ecopoetry encourages people to become more open to mind styles that differ from their own and can thereby help support what Félix Guattari (1989) termed the mental ecology by facilitating interaction between people whose mind styles differ from one another. In contrast with models of evolutionary literary criticism that champion competition and selection, a Guattarian approach emphasises collaboration and variation, arguing the need for humans to work together with one another and with beyond-human beings to support diversity and thereby promote stronger possibilities for survival and wellbeing on the collective scale. A diverse mental ecology supports environmental sustainability and collective survival because it enables the raising and consideration of a broader range of approaches to problems including but exceeding environmental crises. The chapter connects these ideas with research concerning Bayesian inference, rational speech act (RSA) theory, and the benefits of strategy diversity in scientific communities.' (Publication abstract)

'Walking the dog with my smartphone led me to compile a series of photos of faces in trees over four years from 2016. These regular walks were the refresh I needed from my PhD research into property development pressures on Queensland’s Gold Coast. As I became adept at recognising faces in trees, I found my research veering toward consideration of ways of seeing culture in nature. In this personal essay, I contemplate frameworks for understanding how humans and trees might sense and communicate with each other. I draw on emotional geography, deep ecology and nature writing, responding to Robert Macfarlane’s exploration of landscape, Annie Dillard’s spiritual connection with trees and to poems and fiction in which trees are characters. The series of sixteen photos taken on the Gold Coast and in Canberra is a precursor to a poetical response to faces in trees.' (Introduction)