Philip Luke Johnson
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phillegitimate.bsky.social
Philip Luke Johnson
@phillegitimate.bsky.social
Studying how gangs and govts do things with words. Teaching students to do things with words. Very occasionally doing things with words. Lecturer @ Flinders Uni
Updates: https://philipljohnson.com/
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Bora Chung asking the big questions in “The Midnight Timetable.”

(Many thanks for the translation to @antonhur.com)
October 28, 2025 at 10:14 AM
I taught a little module on Ned Kelly for three years, but never read one of the most famous tellings of his story. Finally doing so and it’s an adjectival delight.
October 15, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Have to give it to @themonthly.com.au for nailing 3/3 #Auspol cover story titles. All three covers going straight to the pool room.
October 1, 2025 at 6:42 AM
Is this some kind of snarky new CAPTCHA trick?
July 1, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Nothing captures #Adelaide better than all day coffee and breakfast served until 1:30pm.
June 1, 2025 at 12:20 AM
Just recorded a whole damn lecture and found out the microphone is busted. I’m trying to make my serious little point about discourse, the transcription software is giving it’s all, and yet 🥟 🕺🥟 🪩 🥟🕺
March 4, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Only today, one year and one day after I first arrived at the Flinders Uni campus, I learned that our library actually does have books.
February 19, 2025 at 1:41 AM
📣 New article alert 📣

Organized crime usually maintains a low profile, but sometimes these actors go very public. This study looks at how they represent themselves when they do.

"Criminal Communication: Public Representations, Repertoires & Regimes of Criminal Governance"

doi.org/10.1017/S153...
February 6, 2025 at 12:36 PM
My 2024 was bookended by Enrigue’s “You Dreamed of Empires” and @yuriherrera.bsky.social’s “Season of the Swamp.” Hoping to start 2025 with a review that looks at how these novels take gaps in the historical record and pack them with color, sense, humor.
January 1, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Back to Mérida for research, which means back to xtabentún for the evening heat.
November 14, 2024 at 6:10 AM
Revisited Vandermeer’s Authority after 8 yrs. It’s the middle of the Southern Reach trilogy, but I wanted to try it as a standalone. Still such a creepy take on stultifying government bureaucracy, on slowly encroaching horror, on how to process the unknowable.
October 5, 2024 at 6:05 AM
Now that Mayor Adams has been indicted, this seems like a great time to return to the acknowledgements of The World We Made by @nkjemisin.bsky.social
September 26, 2024 at 1:31 AM
With apologies to US readers, look at the magnificently creepy cover of the Aus/UK edition of Woodworm. Fits the creaking, crowded space of the novel, someone always watching (in the house, in the town…).
September 24, 2024 at 1:06 AM
Ok this number is not very impressive but wait until you see my invite code tattoo.
September 17, 2024 at 9:49 AM
Told myself I was absolutely, under no circumstances getting back into Pratchett’s Discworld novels unless I could find them with the original John Kirby cover art. This was supposed to stop my buying more books. And yet here we are…
September 15, 2024 at 6:33 AM
Todo!
August 9, 2024 at 2:43 AM
Anyway, everyone should read Rivera Garza’s “Grieving” or “Dolerse,” one of the very best reflections on the early years of the war on narco trafficking (sorry political scientists, this does it better).
August 9, 2024 at 2:17 AM
The arrest of Mayo #Zambada has me thinking about Cristina Rivera Garza’s essay “The War We Lost.” Zambada kept a much lower profile than other cartel bosses (looking at you, Chapo Guzman), but did give one interview – and one posed photo - to Proceso magazine in 2010 (that’s him on the right)...
August 9, 2024 at 2:00 AM
Love it when these signs are referencing one particular bird.
May 22, 2024 at 3:19 AM
Not sure how it happened, but I’ve ended up simultaneously reading three absolutely awesome books.

📕Bring the War Home by Kathleen Belew (for teaching)
📗Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista (for research)
📘Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James (for fun)

So much great storytelling!
May 16, 2024 at 11:18 AM
@tkingfisher.bsky.social Figured you might need photographic evidence of a bin with its chickens.
April 13, 2024 at 1:48 AM
Hello old friend.
March 21, 2024 at 12:28 AM
All moved in to my Adelaide apartment.
March 8, 2024 at 2:49 AM
First day at the new campus of my new uni. I can’t believe they went with this over “Experiment and Experiment Replicably.”
February 28, 2024 at 3:42 AM
One-way flight from New York to Australia. Feels wild to be starting a new job and new chapter of life, and to be doing it (somehow, unexpectedly) in my home country.

This book has been sitting on various shelves in various Brooklyn apartments for years. The perfect accompaniment for this flight.
February 17, 2024 at 5:08 PM