Is New Zealand's political settlement beginning to fray?

Is New Zealand's political settlement beginning to fray?

It seems that political struggle is back, acting as the bridge between a persistent sense of unfairness and the hope for something better, helping solve the antagonism between the historical and the utopian. ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born,’ argued the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, ‘[and] in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ – Morgan Godfery, editor, 'The Interregnum'

Two words: Donald Trump. This is a book for anyone who has ever been alarmed by, or despairing of, the state of contemporary political structures, institutions and thinking. And for anyone who hasn’t. It is also a vigorous rebuttal, and a convincing one, to the notion that we do not in this country have the passion, the capacity, or the intellect to envisage our way through the extreme challenges of the age.

In this vital BWB Text, writer, commentator and trade unionist Morgan Godfery has assembled 10 of the sharpest emerging New Zealand thinkers – academics, activists, policy analysts, economists, lawyers and former politicians among them – to speak to the ‘morbid symptoms’ of our times: climate change, the increasingly precarious nature of work, social injustice and inequality, and a debilitating mainstream political discourse, to give but a few examples. And to offer some pointers towards a more optimistic future.

As Godfery writes in his introduction, ‘interregnum implies that we are in a time of uncertainty, a space between dominant ideologies. This book argues that the interregnum can be confronted only through struggle, underpinned by love and but also a fierce desire to radically reshape politics.’ Together, the essays it contains present a fresh, invigorating and intelligent challenge to the establishment and its shibboleths.

From the bipartisan perspectives on contemporary politics by former Green MP Holly Walker to Rhodes Scholar Andrew Dean’s forceful treatise on speech and silence in the public realm and Max Harris’s intriguing presentation of the ‘politics of love’, this Text is the stimulating beginnings of a reimagining of our future, and of thinking new ways towards it, by young writers who feel they have no choice in the matter.

The Interregnum is a passionate plea for fresh ideas, thought and debate on the world these authors have inherited and will help to shape. As such it is a compelling exemplar of the living history, critical thinking and great writing that Bridget Williams Books, and this BWB Text series, consistently look to champion.

ENDS

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