2005 Lionel Murphy Memorial Lecture: Recovering the Human: The Disappearance of People in the 21st Century.

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DATE : Tue, 21 Oct 2005 19:30:00 EST
Entered in Database : 2005-10-22 00:30:00
length : 29000000
Link to the Show / Show Notes

Queue jumpers, illegals, aspirational voters, insurgents, lefties, conservatives, wets, dries, radicals and anarchists. At some stage the language of the public sphere forgot the human. Real people have been removed from public discussion and have been replaced with metaphors, "real speak" and ciphers. A new set of codes have emerged in which the hopes and suffering of real people are replaced by accusations of individual weaknesses, unpreparedness or unwillingness to change or adapt.This new code of the public sphere seems to remove people and replace them with abstractions devoid of humanity. How do we recover the human? How do we re-humanise debates around welfare, work, disability, national security, poverty and community development?How do we reinject real people into the public sphere and allow their voices to be heard?In trying to find the humanity in each news story and current affair report, Shane Elson finds himself asking "but where are the people?"In this Lionel Murphy Lecture Shane will reflect on his own journey through the maze that is fatherhood, marriage, work, rest and play.Using touchstone events in his own life Shane will engage with contemporary issues that have perplexed, amused and absorbed him as he grappled with this question.

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