Articles

The reactions to the Austrian conservatives joining forces with the FPÖ can be attributed to the established political parties¹ need for a common enemy. In the “post-political era” the choice between Left and Right has lost its meaning, says Slavoj Zizek. The return of the extreme Right is the price that the “Third Way” of social democracy is paying for its renunciation of any radical political project.

I sitt tacktal för den tyska bokhandelns fredspris deklararerade Martin Walser att han fått nog av “instrumentaliseringen av Auschwitz”. Men när Walser själv bortser från den politiska sprängkraften i sitt tal och samtidigt gör anspråk på att tala med författarens auktoritet, bidrar han i själva verket till den cyniska instrumentaliseringen av litteraturen, skriver Lothar Baier.

In a fascinating addendum to Native Son (1940), the novelist Richard Wright talked about “the deep fun” of writing the book, and his sense that the nightmarish but weirdly comic saga of an illiterate black killing an upper-class white was universal.