Stranger Cities: Australian Creation and the Ambidextrous Mind, a Profile of Portal Modernity

Peter Murphy is Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University and James Cook University, Australia. His books include Science Fiction and Narrative Form (2023), The Political Economy of Prosperity: Successful Societies and Productive Cultures (2020), Limited Government: The Public Sector in the Auto-Industrial Age (2019), The Collective Imagination: The Creative Spirit of Free Societies (2012), Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (2004) and Civic Justice: From Classical Antiquity to the Modern World (2001).

• AcknowledgementsList of Figures and TablesIntroduction: A Placid Society1 Quantum Creation1 Quantum Creation2 Topological Imagination3 Doubling4 Color Music2 Four Temperaments1 A Relaxed Steeliness2 Do Not Forget to Laugh3 Classic and Romantic4 The Four Temperaments5 Grandiosity versus Limits3 Creation Australis1 The Australian Creation2 A Modern Odysseus3 Value, Shape and Beauty4 Utility and Ornament5 A Society of Cities4 Australian Imaginaries1 Ways of Seeing2 The Beautiful and the Sublime3 Antinomies4 Introvert and Extrovert5 Realists and Romantics1 Political Romanticism2 Cycles of Romance and Reality3 History, Authenticity, Nature4 Anti-politics5 Movements and Moralists6 From History to Geometry6 Portal Metaphysics1 Entry and Exit2 Ancients and Moderns3 Creating Worlds4 Metaphysics of Creation5 Truth, Truths and Ambidexterity6 Where Is the Homeless Mind at Home?7 Steel and Glass8 Enigmatic Shadows7 Stranger Architectonics1 The Portal City2 Strangers and Citizens3 Cities, Nations and Empires4 Structures and Proportions5 True Lies6 Nature and Convention8 Epic Mythistory1 Gallipoli2 Epic Mythistory3 Atrocity in Modernity4 Enigma and Fortune5 Character and Ideology6 What Kind of People?9 Modern Sacreds1 Secular and Sacred2 Cultural Modernization3 The Envy of Creation4 Portals and Paradoxes5 Liquid StoneReferencesIndex