Demanding The Impossible

Demanding the Impossible asks what has become of the ideal and myth of resistance. It searches for the power of ‘no’ and ‘enough’.

Combining elements of fiction, history, reportage and analysis, Sylvia Lawson examines the way the spirit of wartime resistance resurfaced in Paris in the insurrection of May 1968, when a rare unity of intellectuals and industrial workers woke a complacent society.

She chronicles moments of resistance: the story of intrepid Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered for her opposition to the Russian oppression of Chechnya; the highly contentious Northern Territory Intervention and Aboriginal dispossession; East Timorese and West Papuan resistance to Indonesian domination.

Resistance is about more than protest in the streets; it’s about writing and art-making, music and filming, and not least about the way ordinary people keep going.

As the Arab Spring unfolds and the Occupy Wall Street initiative has spread round the world, a resistant tradition has been actively inherited: the right to protest and rebel against greed and injustice, to claim public space, to recreate the active, convivial city.

About the Author

Sylvia Lawson is one of Australia’s most acute and eloquent cultural and political essayists. Her work includes the prizewinning collection How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia, The Archibald Paradox: A Strange Case of Authorship and the novel The Outside Story, which is centred on the Sydney Opera H ouse. She is currently film critic for the online and print journal Inside Story.