Trevor,
It is good seeing you being provocative and stirring in a complacent academic culture. Polemics never hurt any one, and philosophy can sure do with some fiery polemics to breath some life back into it's corpse.

Good old Nietzsche. His spirit lives on.

I have to admit that I love the idea of philosophy turning against itself (well, more accurately, its own participation in society) and mutilating itself in the name of the liberating power of reason.

Of course what Adorno and his claim that culture after Auschwitz is garbage has to do with Australia today is anybody's guess. You can see the import for Germany. But Australia? I presume it is saying more than reality television is garbage. But what?

The academic scene you hang about in is all too Europhile for my taste. They talk about the great thinkers, great books and the western heritage, but they fail to make their cultural heroes speak in the Australian idiom. This smacks of the politics of cultural cringe to me, coupled to an elite academic culture living on imported fruit that acts to sanction the status quo. That to me is the affirmative character of high culture (including philosophy) in Australia.

Philosophy in Australia --Medlin's Australian materialism included--does not express human suffering in Australia, not did it even articulate this need.