Skip to content Menu
The Burning Archive

The Burning Archive

essays, notes and poetry against cultural decay

Sidebar
  • Home
  • About the author
  • About the Burning Archive
  • My poetry collections
  • My reading archive
  • On governing
  • The infinite conversation
  • Best of the Burning Archive

Tag: bureaucracy

Posted on February 17, 2021

13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat

In early 2017 I wrote a series of posts – or let us call them essays – on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. I wrote it still aiming…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 21, 2020

Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies

My repost today comes from 22 April 2018, and seems relevant to the difficulties we are experiencing in our distressed republics today. I also posted something of a follow-up post…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 17, 2020December 28, 2020

On human frailty in governing

Today I am reposting this piece from July 2019, following the 2019 Australian election. It is newly relevant today as the American republic wrestles with how to save its crumbling…

Continue Reading
Posted on July 7, 2019

On human frailty in governing

Once ten years ago I gave answers to one of those personal profile questionnaires that aimed to help people know more about their colleagues at work. It asked questions like…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 9, 2018

Reflections on 2018 – 1. self-portrait at 55

The year is drawing to a close, so time to begin reflecting on what the year’s stream of images, texts and events meant to me. Where has this year left…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 6, 2018

What I am reading… on governing and imagination

amzn.asia/0CNwQ94 from John Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell

Continue Reading
Posted on July 8, 2018

The tragedy of the modern university

Jordan Peterson has proposed the creation of an alternative to the modern university that offers free or low-cost education rooted in the true traditions of the liberal humanities, stripped of…

Continue Reading
Posted on June 17, 2018June 17, 2018

Bureaucratic utopianism

Bureaucracy is not meant to be Utopian. After all, is not bureaucracy the home of the conformist, the cynical realists, the domesticator of conflict, the administrator of dreams, the banality…

Continue Reading
Posted on April 22, 2018April 29, 2018

Cultural fragmentation and the collapse of authority in Western democracies

During the week I was discussing with a young colleague at work the preparation of a briefing. I gave them some guidance and some encouragement: the briefing did not need…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 29, 2017

More reflections on 2017: The end of history revisited

In 2017 Francis Fukuyama published two podcasts providing a retrospective account of his essay, “The End of History” (1989) which was later published in more extended form as the book…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 17, 2017

More reflections on 2017: persistence, terror and Das Schloss

Persistence Twelve months ago I was approaching Christmas and the end of a liberating period of long service leave. It was a period of leave that rejuvenated my writing and…

Continue Reading
Posted on December 3, 2017December 3, 2017

On revenge

“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts…

Continue Reading

Posts navigation

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Next Page

Categories

  • culture (97)
  • history (100)
  • literature (127)
  • music (2)
  • Personal story (81)
  • psyche (1)
  • quotations to write by (28)
  • the real world today (119)
  • Uncategorized (31)
  • What I am reading (11)

Tags

Adam Phillips America Australian politics blogging bureaucracy civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture decay democracy Donald Trump election Empire Essays featured Fernandez-Armesto Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing history Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible literature lockdown machiavelli madness music philosophy poetry political decay politics power Prose public service quotes Russia Russian history society terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel Wallace Stevens Weber writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

Archives

  • About the author
  • About the Burning Archive
  • Best of the Burning Archive
Start a Blog at WordPress.com.
Top
Follow The Burning Archive on WordPress.com

Recent musings

  • Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments February 24, 2021
  • The persistence of the Mahabharata February 21, 2021
  • Sponges, metamorphoses and psyche February 18, 2021
  • 13 ways of looking at a bureaucrat February 17, 2021
  • Sound and fury told by the American cultural “elite” February 16, 2021

Tags

Adam Phillips America Australian politics autobiography Bakhtin Blanchot blogging bureaucracy change China civil war coronavirus cultural decay culture culture wars death decay democracy Donald Trump dream election Empire Essays Ezra Pound featured Fernandez-Armesto Foucault Franz Kafka Fukuyama governing Harold Bloom history history of emotions Hopkins identity politics impeachment Ivan the Terrible Kierkegaard literature lockdown machiavelli madness Melbourne memory music Nietzsche philosophy poetry political decay politics power progressive politics Prose public service quotes reading Russia Russian history samizdat society Solzhenitsyn Symborska terror travel trust in government Vaclav Havel violence W.G. Sebald Wallace Stevens WB Yeats Weber William Dalrymple writing year in review Zbigniew Herbert

What is the burning archive?

The burning archive is my symbol for our cultural condition, and my own experiment with a new literary form. Read more here

My burning archive

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×