Freedom as Fetish

Recent Marxist political theory has foregrounded freedom as normative commitment. This paper re-stages the break between slavery and capitalism through which slavery's natural bondage is supposedly superseded by the compulsions of market dependency. Capitalist social practices depend upon our freedom whilst inculcating a system in which domination and freedom are interdependent. But this interdependence leads to a double-bind: if freedom is reducible to social practices, we acquiesce to unfreedom; if not, we appeal to an ahistorical essence. I consider whether the double-bind can be diffused by exploring freedom's fetish character as a real phenomenon enacted in practice because we are implicated in the commodity as both free and passive object to be exchanged. But I suggest that slavery is not then excisable but remains as fetish character internal to the freedom of the worker as presupposition: freedom for the worker is guaranteed by the practical enaction of slavery's impossible negation

Colour me Pink! ​Being inspired by the Zandra Rhodes' Colourful Heritage Project

On Thursday, 6th February 2025, the University for the Creative Arts, Library & Learning, and the Colourful Heritage Project hosted a webinar introducing the Zandra Rhodes’ Colourful Heritage project. The webinar highlighted the vibrant fashion images and educational resources now freely available for educational use. The project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, offers a unique platform for students and educators to explore the influential work of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. The webinar attracted art librarians, visual arts researchers, educators, fashion historians, curators, and museum/gallery staff, interested in learning about Rhodes' legacy and how to inspire future generations of designers and creatives. The Colourful Heritage project emphasizes engagement with fashion heritage and skill-building opportunities, particularly for underrepresented learners in Medway, Kent. The webinar introduced participants to the expanded Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection, which now includes textiles, headpieces, hats, jewellery, and iconic pieces such as the cape worn by Freddie Mercury. The webinar also included discussions on copyright rights and the use of the collection, visual literacy, and 'slow looking' techniques for better understanding garments and fashion collections. The event concluded with a reflection and Q&A session, offering attendees a chance to engage directly with the speakers. Further details about the Colourful Heritage project and the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection can be found on the website: https://mylibrary.uca.ac.uk/colourfulheritag

Thematic analysis in an artificial intelligence-driven context: a stage-by-stage process

Although a substantial body of research has explored the application of thematic analysis within qualitative enquiry, considerable variation remains regarding how scholars might operationalise the method. More importantly, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced additional complexity to the expanding corpus of secondary data. The volume and evolving characteristics of AI-generated content necessitate a critical re-evaluation of existing analytical frameworks. In response to these emerging challenges, this study develops a carefully constructed and theoretically grounded thematic analysis framework to support researchers in conducting analysis within an AI-driven context. Drawing on a previous framework, it highlights the flexibility of thematic analysis and its capacity to generate rich, contextually grounded insights, particularly in the synthesis of existing knowledge through secondary data analysis. This paper proposes the RIPES (Reflexivity, Interpretation, Procedural consistency, Evaluation, and Situatedness) model, outlines the key stages of conducting thematic analysis, examines its application to secondary data, and evaluates both the benefits and the challenges associated with this approach in qualitative enquiry. It aims to assist researchers and practitioners in critically engaging with both primary and secondary data while maintaining methodological integrity within an increasingly technologically mediated research environment

Advancing sustainable development goals through green inclusive leadership in hospitality industry: a dual study perspective

Implementing green innovation is paramount for the luxury hospitality industry in accomplishing its sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, identifying the key drivers that enable green innovation (GI) is essential for promoting sustainable development. Existing literature on luxury hospitality management has overlooked exploring the key factors that drive green innovation. This study leverages the natural resource-based view to examine the mediating roles of green dynamic capability and green environmental orientation in the relationship between green inclusive leadership (GIL) and green innovation. The research further examines the effect of GI on a hotel’s environmental performance and a hotel’s green image. The theoretical model was evaluated through two distinct studies focusing on Italian employees in the hospitality sector. The findings underscore the significance of GIL practices with environmental initiatives to promote sustainable GI. Expanding the GI debate offers compelling insights that might help hotel professionals make informed strategic decisions contributing to SDGs

Care as counterinsurgency

In Louisiana in 2021 a group of Black fathers gathered in the form of Dads on Duty to pre-empt increasing violence amongst their children at a local high school. Activist and writer Harsha Walia hailed this as community-based care exemplifying abolition in practice. This coheres with a recent focus on care as a political project providing an antidote to anti-Black violence. However, this case is instructive in foregrounding the limitations of a politics of care insofar as care is sutured into the continuation of policing and violence. With Fanon’s concept of incomplete death, I consider whiteness’ orienting tensions between the drive to annihilate Blackness and simultaneously to maintain Blackness as a source of exploitable value and the rights and privileges for whites. If care operates in this space of incomplete death, then care-politics becomes a survival program that conciliates anti-Black violence that would render impossible its abolition

‘Boys and girls of every age. Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?’ – Uncanniness and The Nightmare Before Christmas

This article explores The Nightmare Before Christmas through the critical framework of the Freudian uncanny, incorporating such issues as animation, authorship, audience, genre, and seasonal holidays. The uncanny is initially identified in the film’s macabre cast of animated corpses, and the stop-motion process which brings these puppets to life. More significantly, the uncanny is understood as the intellectual uncertainty implicated in blurring distinctions, whereby a quality shifts into its antithesis. The homely becomes unhomely, the familiar unfamiliar, the festive night transforms into a frightful nightmare. The Nightmare Before Christmas is characterised by such ambivalent dynamics. Despite contrasts between the family friendly Disney studio, and the darker creations associated with filmmaker Tim Burton, Gothic qualities which define the latter have traditionally characterised the former, with its history of dancing skeletons, haunted houses, and animated objects. Ambiguity concerning the film’s intended audience further enhances its uncanny status. The combination of animation and horror, while seemingly at odds with the genres’ respective audiences of child and adult spectators, accords with established traditions within children’s media which frequently incorporate horror elements. For adult viewers the stop-motion aesthetic evokes nostalgia memories of spooky childhood entertainment which easily assume an uncanny register. Finally, this article considers the extent Christmas and Halloween, while seemingly distinct, share common qualities upon which The Nightmare Before Christmas plays

The subject, the worker, and the slave reification, capitalism, and the divestment of reason from freedom

This article traces a line of thought through a reading of Lukács to suggest that the promise of Enlightenment modernity to emancipate thought from extrahuman authority is an impossibility because the problem of sovereignty returns in the form of the problem of freedom. The authority to make ourselves responsible, and act according to norms of our own making is the keystone feature of philosophical modernity. But this capacity to self-determine requires that the normative compels itself alone. This is a central problem for social pragmatism, which claims heir to Kant and Hegel’s enlightenment. Lukács exacerbates this, pointing both to how capitalism enmeshes us within its sociomaterial systems and how this foregrounds worker’s practical enactment within those systems. This casts doubt on the possibility of detangling norms from power required for autonomy. But rather than follow this line of thought, Lukács foregrounds the split subjectivity of the worker as the material limit of determination. Instead, in confrontation not with the figure of the worker but the slave as reified and naturalised category we might disarticulate reason from freedom in pursuit of the immanent disentangling of thought from the problems of sovereign authority that modernity promised

pp.18-21, NGV Magazine, Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, no.54, September-October 2025.

The NGV has acquired a 1956-57 work by British artist Marlow Moss, Composition yellow, blue, black, red and white (fig.1) – a rare and increasingly sought-after oeuvre – it is the first Moss work to enter a public collection in Australia. Identifying works by Moss, with slightly differing perfunctory titles and varying measurements (in inches in London and New York, and centimetres in Europe) is not without difficulty, but there are two aspects that make this particular work stand out: its elongated vertical format; and its use of all three primary colours in addition to black and white. In the context of the stringent grammar of Neoplasticism such features hold significance. The tall narrow canvas is discussed amongst scholars as having originated with Moss before being adopted by Mondrian and Jean Gorin, alongside other contributions to the language, such as doubled, coloured and truncated lines. Some perceive a ‘tragic’ character in the verticality, corresponding to Moss’s feelings about the wartime political situation, expressed in letters. It is also, in the gendered lexicon of Mondrian, masculine – as opposed to supine femininity. This codification, intended or not by Moss, takes on special resonance when invoked alongside the series of photographic portraits of Moss taken by Faan, aka Stephen Storm, and indeed Moss’s masculine dress and appearance in everyday life as documented by photographs and contemporary accounts

Contemporary art in the conflicts of globalization

Sole authored monograph