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Recommendations Snapshot

A sample of things I've recently recommended - sorted into the following broad interest areas (each updated & trimmed sporadically):

Speculative & Reflective Art forms

Films and Series:

  • Series, 6 episodes (2023): In Limbo has a lightly entertaining pace and tone while delivering unexpectedly nuanced representations of the diverse ways in which mental health challanges are navigated, including - content warnings and spoilers - depression, suicidal ideation, sucide, grief, and addiction. (On ABC iview)
  • Series, multiple seasons (2019-2023): Total Control - fictional political drama, set in Winton (a small town in QLD), Canberra, and Sydney. Offering a compelling exploration of, and commentary on, the short-sightedness that drives our political systems including - content warnings and spoliers - deaths in custody and police brutality (key theme), racist slurs (frequent), and sexual assault (briefly). (On ABC iview)
  • Series, multiple seasons: Rurangi (2021-2023) - a nothing about us without us production that starts with Caz Davis returning to a remote dairy community in the hope of reconnecting with his once-best-friend, ex-boyfriend, and estranged father - none of whom have heard from him since before Caz transitioned. Content warnings for key themes of hiding grief following the death(suicide) of a secret lover, racism, transphobia, and homophobia. (On SBS among other places).
  • Series: Wrong Kind of Black (2018) - based on the on the life and stories of Boori Monty Pryor, with content warnings for suicide (key theme), racist slurs and violence (frequent), and police brutality (graphic).
  • Film: The Best of Enemies (2019) - based on a true story about the use of the Charatte process as a Restorative Community Planning Process. While there are few details about this process shown in the film, the plot is apparently historically accurate in terms of the success of the process and there are some snippets from the related documentary at the end.
  • Series: Arkitekten/The Architect (2023) - a dystopian satire highligting how systemic housing inequalities incentivise individualistic survial choices at the expense of collective well-being by following architect Julie's journey to convert empty underground car parks into residential buildings in downtown Oslo. (On SBS).
  • Film: Sorry to Bother You - dystopian, thought-provoking, exploration of an alternate present-day version of Oakland where telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success, propelling him into a universe of greed.

Written stories:

  • The Year Without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer 2023 - a short story published as text and audio in Uncanny Magazine, 11 November 2023
  • Fifteen Days on Mars, by Ambelin Kwaymullina - short story, published in Unlimited Futures (2022)
  • The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Lecki - Ancillary Justice, 2013 by Ann Leckie - also see Ancillary Sword, 2014, and Ancillary Mercy, 2015. Science fiction using the notion of artificial intelligence to explore themes such as non-human agency and experiences of navigating distributed and embodied identities while also opening up space for critical engagement with gender norms, societal relational expectations, and entrenched colonial violence.
  • Short story: The Evening and the Morning and the Night, by Octavia E. Butler (1987). A speculative exploration of inheritable disease - dealing with reactions to stigma, the sense of inevitability, medical ignorance, and the potential for resistance. Also, and more well-known, Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy - Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rights (1988), and Imago (1989) - exploring notions of power, consent, inter-species communication, and gender.
  • Short story: Eye of the Storm, by Kelly Eskridge (1998) - found in the Beyond Binary collection (2012) edited by Brit Mandello.
  • Novel: Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (2019) - a speculative fiction novel about interstellar colonialism. I found it slow to start but appreciated the exploration of a range of concepts, including resilience (surviving having your lands stolen and peoples enslaved), settler complicity (in justifying genocide and reinforcing the bureaucratic foundations that fuel it), and personal responsibility (for interrogating how to live on stolen land after finding yourself unavoidably there). Similarly, while I found Claire G. Coleman's more recent novel Enclave more slowly paced than I usually seek out, I really appreciated this exploration of the concept of dystopian enclaves existing within broader positive futures (and the ways in which our view of potential futures are limited by the view of the present we're exposed to).

Visual art

Concept Explorations

A section for highlighting non-specialist presentations of topics from my field of research (dynamics of knowledge generating practices), and perspectives from fields of research I find personally relevant (outlier and marginalised experiences, decolonising practices, intentional relationship and community-building practices, etc.,).

"Gardens lean into this – there is no “final version” on a garden. What you publish is always open to revision and expansion. Gardens are designed to evolve alongside your thoughts. When you first have an idea, it’s fuzzy and unrefined. You might notice a pattern in your corner of the world, but need to collect evidence, consider counter-arguments, spot similar trends, and research who else has thunk such thoughts before you. In short, you need to do your homework and critically think about it over time."

  • The Future is Disabled (2023) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - available both in the paper book and audio book formats

"This abundance of disabled intimacies is the polar opposite of the ablest care rationing of the world. I want to swim in its deep sea of care possibilities" (p.104)

"They say we all have the same number of hours in a day – but this is not true for those of us who are chronically ill. On a bad day, I might only have one or two lucid hours of ability that I have to use carefully: To work? To see and care for loved ones? To shower and make a meal? To attend medical appointments? To do chores? To create? To protest? Even on a good day my body cannot do all of these things – no matter how much I’d like to…For most people, rest seems to be an impossible fantasy. For people with chronic illness, especially chronic fatigue and chronic pain, it’s more of a dull acquiescence."

  • ‘Access Magicians in Cyberspace: Care as a Festive Practice’, wrtten by Lisa Prentice (2021) in BlackFlash Magazine (blog) based on a conversation that emerged from the 2020 Allied Media Conference event, Remote Access: Witches N Glitches, organized by Kevin Gotkin, Aimi Hamraie, Yo-Yo Lin, Jerron Herman, and Ezra Benus

Discusses 'access magic' to highlight the importance of access as an intentional practices of collective relational processes - a practice that can help prefigure better futures if we all participate), and the practice of being 'access doula' as supporting the transitional experience of navigating changing access challenges (rather than treating lack-of-access as a static problem solved through various commodities), and the value of linking acces doula practices to the history of doula practices (rather than allowing 'doula' to become a catch-all for care-work).

"Most disability doulaing comes from within communities, but especially in the wake of the pandemic many disabled people — new to the identity or otherwise — live in deep isolation. If someone is the only disabled person they know, it can be hard to get the support needed. In that case, it might make sense to seek out a disability doula."

“Reparations must mean more than restitution for past harm. True reparations means repairing our relations. We must not only make amends for past harm, but reorganize the very nature of our economy so as to create new relationships going forward. The measure of the success of that reorganization is the well-being of those upon whose lands, bodies and legacies the Extractive Economy was built. And to achieve that, our movements must center the vision and leadership of those communities…”

  • 'Friendship as Anti-Capitalism' by Ala Newport (2020), in Chain Reaction Issue 141, pp36-37)

"Friendships… exist outside the hetero-patriachial family structures that support a capitalist economy. Strong friendships provide support networks that reach outside of the codes of marriage and family, offering alternative ways of surviing and thriving together. The nuclear family and gender roles have long been tools of the ruling class tha uphold the capitalist system and so friendships, along with queer relationships, relationship anarchy, and gender justice, can be said to disrupt structures of oppression"

"We have built a society in which it is almost impossible to make individual choices that are ethical and not harmful. Don’t let the dissonance between what you believe is right and what options are available to you, shrink your idealistic hopes for the future… what is needed today is a combination of recognising that our actions will often fall short of our values, and that we need ways of sitting with the trouble, that do not lead us to shrink our values to match what we are capable of. That our cultural narratives of avoiding and moving away from psychological discomfort, may lead us to shrink our worlds to increasingly small mental safe havens that result in the self being a shrinking enclosure. That instead we need to address moral injuries with future oriented forms of psychologies and approaches, such that we can grow out of stress and discomfort, rather than being shaped by, a mere reaction to and limited by the dissonance that comes with being a human being in today's world."

"A dirty fact is that consent is harder and requires more work the more layers of power differentials we are traversing. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t traverse difference, our collective survival absolutely depends on it–it’s just that it can be really fucking hard (and really powerfully beautiful and fun!)."

"what people call 'female Autism' is not actually a phenomenon of gender. It’s a phenomenon of erasure. What people usually refer to as female Autism is in actuality something I like to call masked Autism — a manifestation of the disorder that arises from racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism just as easily as it arises from sexism."

  • An interview with Rupa Mayra and Raj Patel about their book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice on the Upstream podcast called 'Decolonizing Medicine', published Jun 15, 2021.
  • Disability Justice for the Apocalypse: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha Gets Us Together on the How to Survive the End of the World Podcast (2019)
  • Seeing White - a podcast by John Biewen, Chenjerai Kumanyika, and Celeste Headlee (2017) - highlights how the concept of race functions to maintain the system positioning white people as a group for the purpose of accruing benefits through the exploitation of others outside that group. The podcast includes explorations of the historical context within which the concept of racial superiority was created to justify enslaving people from the African continent within a context where slavery was considered justified for many other reasons, but not previously by racial supremacy (e.g., see Episode 2.2). It also highlights the more recent history of how attempts to 'bargain with white supremacy' resulted in the legal boundaries of whiteness in the U.S., being explicitly narrowed (e.g., see Episode 2.10). These and other aspects of history are offered to demonstrate that racism is not the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding or outdated/bad science, but an explicitly created tool used to set-up a system for accruing advantages to a small portion of the population (white people) by exploiting others. Viewed in this way, racist stereotypes can be seen as emerging within this system, not as the cause of it (e.g., see Episode 2.14). In highlighting the role of racism as a tool, this podcast highlights the many reasons that white people have a responsibility to dismantle the system that maintains the exploitation that their privilege relies upon - for an overview of this arguments, see John Biewen's Ted talk: The Lie that Invented Racism. Also see why race is no longer considered a valid scientific concept and consider how these examples from the U.S., parallel the use of white supremacy as a tool in other settler-colonial countries (e.g., the explicit ‘White Australia’ Policy).
  • Carolyn D’Cruz's (2020) book Democracy in Difference: Debating key terms of gender, sexuality, race and identity aims to deepen alliances between academics and activists by reminding us of the complexity and insecurity of the concepts we presume when we engage in public debates. This analysis draws attention to abstract concepts (such as democracy and objectivity); concepts of embodied experiences (such as disability, race, and gender); concepts for specific practices and ideologies (such as conservatism, capitalism, and the enlightenment); as well as concepts that emerged within critical studies of difference (such as intersectionality, performativity, and biopolitics). Many of these are concepts that people either take-for-granted (e.g., race), mischaracterise (e.g., intersectionality), or develop a fixed understanding based on a single context of use (e.g., capitalism). In response, D'Cruz highlights the "mess of historical struggles" within which these concepts each acquired the meanings they currently hold. This approach draws attention to the uneven playing field created by public debates. For example, so called even-handed commentaries that suppress the diverse forms of knowledge attached to the conditions of existence experienced by those who fall outside the default categories of mainstream media. While academic in tone, this book offers historically situated concepts for use by individual activists and organisations seeking strategies for dealing with difference that go beyond tokenism - including in the contexts of community development, legal practices, and journalism.
  • Ryan S. Gustafsson: 'On the Uses of 'Home' for thinking Trans Embodiment' - audio-recording from the Philosophies of Difference 2018 Panel on Trans & Queer Theory at the RMIT City Campus, Melbourne. I was recently reminded of this recording, having heard this live at the time and referenced it many times since. In particular I often think about the exploration of varying notions of home in relation to navigating the world as a non-binary transperson. This articulation of various notions of home were influential in my appreciation of the communities within which I can retreat and be 'at home' such that I then have the energy to engage with the broader society (without needing to habituate to the experience of being 'out of place' within that content).
  • Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times by carla bergman and Nick Montgomery (2017). A book that draws together examples of people offering everyday and organized resistance to the status quo - including within youth-led movements, anti-violence education, queer kinship practices, Black liberation, Indigenous resurgence movements, and multiple strands of anarchism - to develop the concept of joyful militancy as a strategy for sustaining collective transformation.
  • The rise of the Aboriginal superhero from the anti-racism crusader in Basically Black to the dreadlocked Avenger, Manifold, on AWAYE! with Daniel Browning. Broadcast: 15 Aug 2020.
  • Video on Decolonising Coffee Through Flavour Profiles by Ārāmse, 2021, via SSB.
  • Open Economic Networks discussion on the Local-Gossip Podcast, Episode 5
  • Documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. Highlighting the importance of collective action for sustained resistance and community-building, featuring historical footage and interviews with activists who attended Camp Janed and went on to set up the first Center for Independent Living, and were involved in the 504 sit-in in 1977 (which was supported broadly, including by the Black Panthers who provided food), and other actions in the fight for including accessibility within the movement for civil rights in America.
  • An interview with Alok Vaid-Menon about the history of cross-dressing laws and the racism that underpins the gender-binary expectations entrenched in fashion.
  • Blak poetry special on AWAYE! with Daniel Browning. Broadcast: 18 Jul 2020 - including discussion of the recently released collection Firefront, edited by Alison Wittaker.
  • The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” blog post by Deanna Zandt (2019)
  • We will not cancel us & other dreams of transformative justice book by adrienne maree brown (2020) - see my review here.
  • Meet the parenting expert who thinks parenting is a terrible invention - article by Irene Caselli/Lynn Berger (The Correspondent, 2020) and of interest as a potential addition to broader intentional relationships discussions due to the various critiques (of the nuclear family and neo-liberal structures etc) that highlight how adult/child relationships can also emerge via default expectations of the respective roles patents and their children play in relation to each other (and how this can structures how each can relates to others within their broader communities.
  • Interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer - author of Gathering Moss (2003) and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2014) - by James Yeh (The Guardian, 2020)
  • Mike Mena's intro linguistics video based on Ofelia Garcia & Li Wei - Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (2014) explaining the difference between code switching (between languages) and the practice of translanguaging
  • An interview with Alok Vaid-Menon on how Anne Hollander's book Sex and Suits helps to position the history behind gendered fashion as relevant to the current uses of fashion to fight against the gender binary and racism - Episode from July 21 2020, on the Bloomsbury Academic Podcast.
  • Simon(e) van Saarloos (philosopher/artist/author/activist):
    • performing a lecture at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft - a meandering yet carefully crafted exploration of the notion of scientific objectivity and the related practices of categorisation and measurement within the broader contexts of sexism, racism, colonialism, mononormativity (and many other tangential notions) (Jan 2020).
    • in conversation with the Multiamory cres on Episode 248 about their book 'Playing Monogamy' (Nov 19, 2019)
    • extending this conversation, and talking histories in the 'Open Call project', with Tristan Taormino on Sex Out Loud podcast (July 20, 2020)
  • The Kooriculum™ Indigenous Science Program, by IndigenousX (2020) - a series of activities for each year group K-6 developed in consultation with a number of current and former educators that builds upon the Australian Curriculum: Science, and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) Science Elaborations.
  • Podcase episode: This river is a Person – Maori knowing meets Western science where Natasha Mitchell (host) talks with Daniel C. H. Hikuroa, Kura Paul-Burke (Ngāti AwaNgāti Paul-Burke, Craig Stevens, and Clare Wilkinson (Broadcast: 28 August 2020).
  • Podcast episode: Gamilaroi astrophysicist Karlie Noon on making science accessible on AWAYE! with Daniel Browning. Broadcast: 15 Aug 2020.
  • Video: 'Digital Sovereignty' huh? Recorded Talk by Jaya Klara Brekke and Dan Hassan at Dat Conference 2020.
  • Article: Making Meaning of Decolonising by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 2017
  • Article (with audio option): Sexual dinosaurs, by Cordelia Fine 2020
  • Podcast Episode: Ethics of Web Design with Morten Rand Hendriksen on Running Wild with Christine 2018.
  • Article: This is Fine: Optimism & Emergency in the P2P Network, by Cade Diehm 2020

"We can no longer marvel at the novel interactions afforded by peer-to-peer technologies, nor perform political theatrics within these networks. We need to lay aside our delusions that decentralisation grants us immunity – any ground ceded to the commons will be met with amplified resistance from those who already own these spaces. When this happens, every single arrogant tradeoff, every decision made in ignorance that assumes a stable march towards progress without regression will be called to account. Without cohesive organisation, mobilisation to harden security and privacy and without a sincere commitment from protocol designers to revise their collective assumptions, the push back from incumbent power will leverage each and every socio-technical flaw in each and every network. The fallout and trauma for increasingly digitalised communities will unquestionably dwarf the 2000s Copyright War. If there is no collective worldview reset, the peer-to-peer movement will remain a historical novelty, a technological bauble and thought experiment for detached technologists unable to understand the political gravity of their tools, and whose life work will never withstand the attacks against it."

Engaging with the Current State of the World - News & Analysis

"I don’t believe shelter should ever be a for-profit system. … But to the extent that it is, it must accept its own terms: that the investor bears the risk of property devaluation. … By requiring tenants to ask permission to make minor changes (another irony since landlords are allowed to let the house slip into decrepitude), these changes reinforce the unequal power dynamic between landlord and tenant, and the view that renters are liabilities in their own homes—a deeply classist attitude thoroughly inflected with racism, ageism and ableism."

"Hope is not thinking positive thoughts. Hope is not self-delusion. Hope is clinging to the life raft and kicking, even when there is no sight of land. Hope is a muscle. Like most muscles, it hurts like hell at first, but it gets easier as you get stronger, and you get stronger the more routine, seemingly pointless work you put into it. It is possible. It’s not easy. It takes the sort of work, every day, of doing what needs to be done to care for yourself, your community, your society, even when you resent having to do so and would rather lie down for five minutes or five months or the rest of your life. That’s hope. It’s not a mood. It’s an action. It’s behaving as if there might be a future even when that seems patently ridiculous."

"… people are having to live their lives without the support of so many systems that have partly or fully broken down, whether it’s schools, hospitals, churches, family support, or other systems that we relied on. We need to recognize that we’re grieving multiple losses while managing the ongoing impact of trauma and uncertainty."

… Meet two computational epidemiologists who collect data from unusual places to work out the what, who and how of pandemics and public health [and] Sydney University's Adam Dunn [who] uses Twitter and other data sources to understand how we all respond to misinformation. They join Natasha Mitchell to talk medical misinformation, COVID-19, Big Data, and Black Lives Matter in science.

Better-futures Resource Lists

This section has become long enough for it's own page focusing on resources for resisting the current inequitable and unsustainable systems we've inherited, and creating alternative practices that contribute to better-futures

Notes:

Started in 2020, I am sparodically maintaining this list as a personal reminder that, due to the pandemic, I lost touch with many wonderful people with whom my relationships are currently structured around incidental conversations (such as those that emerge in the spaces we share by virtue of being part of the overlapping networks of care within our respective communities). One of the things I value in those incidental conversations are those moments of connection that emerges when we realise our shared excitement in a specific book/film/article and start making recommendations for new avenues of exploration to each other from there.

I sometimes share these lists to provide examples of my influences when sharing any of my resource-curating projects. If I've given you this, or you happen to stumble upon this and recognise your influence on me, know I value you - I hope something in these lists reminds you that, while we may not have connected recently, I look forward to exploring these potential connections when we next meet.

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E. T. Smith
I am a researcher and resource curator using this space to draft and share early-versions of projects. For context, see: https://hackmd.io/@Teq/Bio
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Teq

This bio is intended as a context-specific introduction to contextualise the resource-sets and writings I share publically.

May 26, 2025
Housing as a Collective Responsibility

The following resource set is intended to support discussions on the concept of housing as a collective responsibility. For more detailed resources, please enquire about the ongoing research project into existing collaborative models/approaches I’m conduting to support a potential working group for developing housing justice focused approaches to collaborative.

May 16, 2025
Transformative Approaches to Conflict Resolution

image of a flower growing out of a concrete block and destroying the concrete to free it's root, from: https://ncph.org/history-at-work/how-should-we-respond/

Nov 11, 2024
Acknowledging Country as an Ongoing Process

This statement is a living document. While initially written to accompany a specific publication, in early August 2020, multiple versions emerged as I’ve learned more about the historical and ongoing practices of land custodianship. This process is ongoing, and, with each updated version of this statement, I aim to intentionally re-commit to my pledge of following the lead of First Nations peoples in my efforts to contribute to better futures. Latest revisions: Feburary 2023.

Nov 1, 2024
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