Sound, drums and light

The foundations of outsider environmentalism

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  • Published 20170801
  • ISBN: 9781925498417
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

IN MY LATE-TEENAGE years, I found myself for a time hovering on the border of bogandom. In those long-gone days of the mid-1980s, the bogans of Perth’s foothills could be identified by a clear dress code: flannelette ‘x-brand’ outer shirts, black T-shirts (often with the AC/DC band logo), black desert boots, black jeans and black heavy cotton ‘battle jackets’. And yes, the mullet was the preferred haircut.

The word ‘bogan’ itself was in common usage, but only to describe a kind of social identity and, as I recall, without any implicit disparagement. Bogans tended to be the toughest kids at my school and those most likely to get into physical fights, but my recollection is that they were not generally the bullies. Despite my weedy bookishness, I found myself in the bogan penumbra through some mates who were even more bogan than I was, including a couple who were the real deal – battle jackets and all. My no-doubt unconvincing foray on the fringe of boganness went as far as owning a couple of flannelette shirts and, in retrospect, the photographic evidence suggests a hint of mullet. I possessed at least one copied AC/DC cassette tape, with track titles carefully written out on the inner paper cover.

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The inspirations of radical nostalgia

There is nothing natural or inevitable about the ‘decline’ of history and the broader arts and humanities, any more than there is the destruction of nature. Neither are passive or natural processes; both occur as a consequence of deliberate decision-making made in accordance with ideological preferences, usually supporting the material objectives of the vested interests that systematically corrupt our democracy and society.
Redeeming universities and other public institutions requires sustained political effort. The decline of academic history can be reversed through ending the ideological sway of neoliberal managerialism in universities, the allocation of reasonable levels of resourcing, and the provision of job security and professional autonomy to sufficient numbers of historians, plus time and space to learn for their students. Loss of historical consciousness, unlike extinction, need not be forever. With air returned to their lungs once more, the disciplines preoccupied with human purpose and meaning, fostering habits of critical thinking, are amenable to full resuscitation.

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