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Drastic measures
Journals digest "Ord&Bild" digs up the pure gold hidden offshore; "openDemocracy" watches UK political system go into a nosedive amid EU referendum storm; "Kultura Liberalna" speaks to Dubravka Ugrešic; "Mittelweg 36" immerses itself in global migration history; "Il Mulino" calls for more cultural entrepreneurship; "Kulturos barai" analyses higher education and its discontents; and "Glänta" offers a whole range of alternative currencies. [ more ]
Who speaks for Europe?
The UK referendum as a pan-European affair
Analysis Intervening in the UK referendum debate is fraught with difficulty for EU actors, writes Andrew Glencross. This is not least because they are largely deprived of their most common rhetorical device: appealing to a normative commitment to European unity for the sake of continental peace. [ more ]
The great theft
A conversation with Dubravka Ugresic
Interview In a frank discussion with Kultura Liberalna's editor-in-chief, the post-Yugoslav writer Dubravka Ugresic considers the state of European values a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A lack of serious public forums, says Ugresic, has resulted in a lack of democratic thought. [ more ]
Higher education and its discontents
A conversation with Jon Nixon
Universities The audit culture resulting from neoliberal policies has had a deleterious effect on all sectors of society, and no less so on the universities, says higher education expert Jon Nixon. Clearly, the logic of austerity constitutes an existential threat to the great humanistic traditions of scholarship. [ more ]
From right to favour
The moral economy of asylum in contemporary society
Migration The so-called European refugee crisis is revealing a situation rather than provoking it, says anthropologist and physician Didier Fassin. Without minimizing the problem, Fassin argues that it is crucial to understand the degree to which it is constructed as such by politicians and the media. [ more ]
Creativity, technology and the state
A conversation with Joel Mokyr
Interview History shows that a country may possess as much creativity and technological innovation as it is possible to have, but a restrictive state will kill off all potential resources, says Joel Mokyr. The economic historian and recipient of the 2015 Balzan Prize speaks to Emanuele Felice. [ more ]
From the archives
West vs. East all over again
Opinion Central Europe no longer exists, only East and West, as it used to be. That is the condensed version of the combined wisdom of many western analysts and commentators these days, writes Erik Tabery, editor-in-chief of the Czech weekly "Respekt". [ more ]
Article of the month
When is speech dangerous?
Analysis Even the mainstreams of democratic societies are vulnerable to destructive and dangerous sentiments in the midst of crisis, writes Jonathan Leader Maynard. But with radicalising calls to extremism at the forefront of public debate, what impact might speech have on violent behaviour? [ more ]
Network news
New Eurozine partner: Ny Tid (Norway)
News The Norwegian monthly "Ny Tid" has joined the Eurozine network. Through an international and critical lens, "Ny Tid" examines global conflicts, migration, surveillance and environmental issues. The publication's wide-ranging cultural section stands out for its sustained focus on documentary film. [ more ]
Referendum time
The Dutch referendum: A view from Ukraine
Opinion Ahead of the immanent referendum in the Netherlands on the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, publisher and translator Zaven Babloyan reflects on political misunderstandings, a lack of solidarity and literature as the last hope. [ more ]
Yes to security in Europe
Dutch referendum Russia has adopted an open policy of dividing the European Union and undermining the security of its members, of which the Dutch referendum questioning the Association Agreement with Ukraine is but a small part. Timothy Snyder provides the background to the 6 April referendum. [ more ]
Europe's borderless future
Europe: The reconstruction of the Free World
Rights A borderless Europe may seem like a distant prospect at the moment. But as struggles for universal access to the global commons beyond the nation-state intensify, it is bound to become a necessity, say Ulrike Guérot and Robert Menasse. [ more ]
A new Eurasian paradigm
Geopolitics If the European Union wants to remain relevant in global affairs, it must be active along the new Silk Road, writes Adam Balcer. It must look to a Eurasia that goes beyond Russia and the former Soviet republics, and formulate an eastern policy concerned primarily with China, Turkey and Iran. [ more ]
The European legacy in Africa
(The African legacy in Europe)
Essay The unholy alliance of bureaucracy and race, a pernicious legacy of imperialism, is very much alive today. So says Vlasta Jalusic, who urges reflection on the implications of this for a world system in which both Africa and Europe are marked by genocides of the none-too-distant past. [ more ]
The supreme emotion
A conversation with Patrick Boucheron
Power Historian of emotions Patrick Boucheron provides a brief political history of anger. In the Middle Ages, anger was the prerogative of the powerful and the notion of a righteous anger of the people far less pronounced than today; which helps explain the current premium put on empathy. [ more ]
Narrating the South Caucasus
A survey of recent literature
Politics Literature on the South Caucasus tends to overindulge in diagnoses made from afar and the ritual repetition of conflict narratives. This causes Andreas Heinemann-Grüder to stress the need to conduct much more field research, not least when it comes to comparative politics. [ more ]
Democracy Defender Award
Our efforts can achieve unexpected results
Human rights Oleksandra Matviychuk of Kyiv's Center for Civil Liberties received the Democracy Defender Award in Vienna on 23 February 2016. In this, the text of her acceptance speech, Matviychuk considers the so-called "Ukraine crisis" a direct reflection of a global crisis in the post-war world system, in which human rights are being eroded worldwide. [ more ]
Neighbourhood in Europe
A sense of community
Or, in defence of the citizens' nation
Constitutional patriotism A critical analysis of nations and nationalism is as crucial now as it ever was, argues Bruno Schoch. But so long as it protects civil liberties and cultivates a constitutional patriotism, then a nation of free and equal citizens remains an ideal worth striving toward. [ more ]
Bosnia in Ukraine
Or, how to break the devil's leg
Essay Firstly, you have to talk to your enemy even in the middle of a war, writes Senad Pecanin. Secondly, that dialogue will not be at all easy or pleasant; and thirdly, it is worth trying, since when it does take place, it is almost certain to yield useful results. [ more ]
Ukraine in European dialogue
Reforms in Ukraine
Between old legacies and a new social contract
Change With president Petro Poroshenko and prime minister Arseniy Yatseniuk having lost their image as radical reformers of late, Iryna Solonenko says it is up to Ukraine's new reform-minded actors in both government and civil society to secure a new social contract. However, the challenges they face are formidable, as the legacies of previous regimes persist and resistance to change among the old guard remains fierce. [ more ]
Back to the future in Ukraine
Cultural policies two years after Maidan
Tactics The Maidan protests have given Ukraine a chance to stop and look at its future, and plan it the way she wanted to, writes Kateryna Botanova. Now it's becoming apparent how to make the revolutionary shift from continual fighting, distrust and questioning of legitimacy to mutual support, collaboration and growth. [ more ]
Read also All articles in Ukraine in European dialogue
Technoscapes
The white shadows
Drones, warfare and contemporary culture
Cultural analysis Perhaps the most serious problem with drones is not the state of mind they create in their operators, writes Arne Borge of "Vagant" (Norway); but that war has given way to never-ending police action, where the police force is no longer subject to common law. [ more ]
Read also: Ragnild Lome's Archimedean points
Facebook rescues the world
Data mining In Facebook's recent efforts to corner the Indian market, Daniel Leisegang discerns a new digital colonialism. Where yesterday's colonizers offered glass beads in exchange for gold, today's offer free but radically restricted Internet access in return for the data of the (unwitting) masses. [ more ]
Read also: The avant-garde of digital capitalism
Jean Améry Prize
2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing
New essay collection To coincide with the awarding of the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, Eurozine publishes essays by authors nominated for the prize, including by a representative selection of Eurozine partner journals. [More]
A defence of ardour
Belief in art In honour of Adam Zagajewski receiving the Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, we publish Zagajewski's defence of ardour. That is, true ardour, which doesn't divide but unifies; and leads neither to fanaticism nor to fundamentalism. [ more ]
The closing of an open society
Political analysis As the struggle between democracy and a dream of some kind of return to the past deepens in Europe, Adam Zagajewksi contemplates the passage between ideas and action in the real world, wherein lies the old European – and not only European – wound. [ more ]
The human heart of sacred art
Humanism The humanist impulse not only liberated the sense of transcendence from the shackles of the sacred, it also transformed the idea of transcendence itself. Kenan Malik on the humanization of the transcendent in art and literature, from Dante to Rothko. [German version added] [ more ]
The Yugoslav Atlantis
Cultural inheritance Like Yugoslavia, the European Union may well prove a failure in the long run, unless it can prevent the dominance of its most powerful member states. Hence the continuous need to find ways of embracing difference without giving up the cultural tradition in which one was born and raised. [ more ]
Read also: In memoriam: Ales Debeljak (1961-2016)
East, or, the veins of this land
Cultural landscapes In this excerpt from Andrzej Stasiuk's latest book, one of Poland's leading writers and critics explores what drove him to realize a lifelong dream, and strike out ever further eastwards, away from his childhood home. As Stasiuk remarks, he always was attracted to places "that lie at the end of the line, spaces from which you can only ever return". [ more ]
Country, war, love
Excerpts from the Donetsk Diary
Conflict Just weeks after Ukraine's parliament voted to remove Viktor Yanukovych from office, the country's eastern regions descended into a senseless war, marking a grave new low in relations with Russia. Historian Olena Stiazhkina reflects powerfully on how the conflict has compromised Ukraine's attempts to take its destiny into its own hands. [ more ]
The art of aging in Christian life
Belief One almost wonders what Christianity has added to Roman writers' reflections on old age, writes Andrei Plesu. The answer: a much greater emphasis on transcendence. But how might the dimension of transcendence contribute to a better understanding and use of old age? [ more ]
Read also: All essays in the 2016 Jean Amery Prize collection
European politics
Patterns of illiberalism in central Europe
A conversation with Anton Shekhovtsov
Transition It was not long ago that the countries of eastern and central Europe served as a model of successful democratic transition for Ukraine. But today, Poland's turn to the right has refocused attention on the roots of the region's illiberal democracies. Anton Shekhovtsov considers the implications of these developments for Europe as a whole. [Russian version added] [ more ]
The case for Europe
A conversation with Donald Tusk
Interview Since becoming President of the European Council in December 2014, Donald Tusk has witnessed economic crisis in Greece, the conflict in Ukraine and the largest influx of migrants and refugees into Europe since World War II. He has also struggled to reach a compromise with the British government to avert a possible Brexit. About all of this and more, Tusk speaks to Michal Matlak. [ more ]
Read also Michal Sutowski on DiEM25
Migration, memory & media
Aspirational maps
On migrant narratives and imagined future citizenship
Belonging The wave of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa is threatening to unravel the very foundations of European ideas of full citizenship, asylum and refuge, says Arjun Appadurai. But there must be a richer cultural road to legal and bureaucratic solutions currently being debated. [ more ]
Borders are back in fashion
Security The fascination of a borderless world has rapidly worn off in an age of accelerating mobility, writes Ivaylo Ditchev. As forms of mobility become increasingly collective, the crisis of the liberal border-machine deepens and political decision-making is thrown into disarray. [ more ]
No time to lose hope
Central Europe at breaking point
Opinion There is a genuinely European future for central Europe, insists Michal Koran. But it won't come to fruition without a frank look at the deficiencies that accompanied the transformation of central European societies during the last two decades. [ more ]
No place like home
A concise history of statelessness
Essay The 20th century unleashed the spectre of statelessness into the world. Lyndsey Stonebridge explores how the modern history of refugees has shaped both the lives of the stateless and the lives, rights and securities of those who conider themselves happily at home. [Swedish version added] [ more ]
Pristina: Departure city?
Urban life As in so many cities on the European periphery, Kosovo's capital Pristina is fundamentally shaped by emigration. Jonas König explores the departure city, where provisional structures become long-term solutions, and translocal spaces and networks are ever-present. [ more ]
Climate change
On the anthropology of climate change
A conversation with Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Interview Mainstream literature on globalization tends not to take the uniqueness of each locality seriously enough, says Thomas Hylland Eriksen. He explains how the anthropology of climate change is responding to the need for an analysis of the global situation seen from below. [ more ]
After COP21: Averting climaticide
Climate justice At a round-table discussion held by "Revue projet" shortly after December's UN climate conference in Paris, experts discuss the prospects for lasting climate justice. Can the new dynamic exhibited at the negotiations in Paris translate into real commitment to averting climate meltdown? [ more ]
Russia
The haunted house
Contemporary Russia between past and past
Revisions Twenty-five years after the USSR's collapse, writes Maria Stepanova, history has turned into a kind of minefield, a realm of constant, traumatic revision. As a result, Russia is living in a schizoid present where the urgent need for a new language is far from being met. [ more ]
Read also All articles in the focal point Russia in global dialogue
Digital cultures
100 billion rows per second
The culture industry in the early 21st century
Big data When Adorno and Horkheimer wrote "Dialectic of Enlightenment", interpersonal interactions were not yet directly part of the culture industry. But now that they are, it would be wrong to assume that the technologies of the big data revolution come with built-in ideologies, writes Lev Manovich. [ more ]
The total archive
On the function of not-knowing in digital culture
Humanities From Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" to Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail", it's the gaps in characters' knowledge that are decisive in propelling the plot forward, writes Andreas Bernard. But now information is permanently available, narrative and imagination will never be the same again. [ more ]
From data to Dada
Reinventing our culture in the Internet age
Interview We must understand how the global (data) economy works, says Geert Lovink, if we are to effectively reinvent our culture. So, while building independent infrastructures remains of primary importance, net criticism needs updating and upgrading, before it becomes subject to deletion. [ more ]
The paranoid style in the digital era
Debate Half a century after Richard Hofstadter described "the paranoid style in American politics", Marc-Olivier Padis of "Esprit" discerns a similar phenomenon in the French media. In an article first published in early November, Padis objects to the weakening of the norms of democratic debate. [ more ]
Mud and mush and bits
Why there's no such thing as digitalization
Philosophy Either digitalization is celebrated as capable of rescuing the world or damned as the beginning of the end, write Kathrin Passig and Aleks Scholz. But a more nuanced approach is both possible and desirable, including to the categories "digital" and "analogue" themselves. [ more ]
Legal hacking and space
What can urban commons learn from the free software hackers?
Commons The urban commons must be readdressed through the lens of the digital commons, writes Dubravka Sekulic. The experience of the free software community and its resistance to the enclosure of code will prove particularly valuable where participation and regulation are concerned. [ more ]
The quantified selfie
Control The image of a single face pouting at the camera on a phone clumsily extended to the perfect angle: this is just the beginning of the story, writes Nishant Shah. Every selfie triggers an avalanche of data that is collated and consolidated beyond your imagination or control. [ more ]
Art & Literature
The reel world
Film Filmmakers who push back at social conventions take risks with their careers and, sometimes, frighten their audiences. Nikki Baughan speaks to leading directors Susanne Bier (Denmark) and Haifaa Al Mansour (Saudi Arabia) about using the big screen to challenge ways of life. [ more ]
Stories of self-discovery
Francophone Vietnamese literature
Narrative identities Pham Van Quang examines recent developments in Francophone Vietnamese literature. Life in exile and the resulting quest for identity tends to inform the semi-autobiographical novels published of late, which throw new light on issues of individual and collective memory. [ more ]
After the canon?
A conversation with Hal Foster
Critique In 1983, Hal Foster edited a seminal collection of cultural criticism, "The Anti-Aesthetic". So how is it that Foster now sees real possibilities in the aesthetic? And could it be that, in lieu of a defining human marginality, a version of the human might yet be resurrected? [ more ]
His master's voice
The human/animal divide in Pixar's "Up"
Film Psychoanalysis is careful to distinguish animal need, which can be fulfilled, from human desire, which can never be satisfied. But in reconsidering just what exactly animates humans, Lilian Munk Rösing argues that the human/animal divide swiftly becomes blurred in the cultural sphere. [ more ]
Not war, not peace
Post-sovereign narration and contemporary literature
Literature New asymmetric wars, non-governmental actors, humanitarian interventions, coalitions of the willing and preemptive actions: all these have erased notions that once helped distinguish war from peace. Associated developments in the German literary sphere have been no less radical. [ more ]
A bizarre kind of loyalty
Dorota Krakowska in interview
Theatre This year marks the centenary of the birth of Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish painter, stage designer and theatre director. Kantor's daughter Dorota Krakowska talks about how Kantor sought to end the taboo code that supported the erasure and denial of history in postwar Poland. [ more ]
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