Great pretender

Feminist icon, anti-Catholic fabrication – or just a woman battling in a man's world? The German film "Die Päpstin" has already been written off by the Italian Bishops' Conference as a hoax. Sally Feldman explores reasons for the power and tenacity of the myth of Pope Joan. [more]

The populist radical Right: A pathological normalcy

According to the conventional view, the far-Right in Europe is antithetical to the values of liberal democracy. New research showing that far-Right ideology is a radicalization of mainstream values has a major impact on how rightwing populism is understood, writes Cas Mudde. [more]

Aid wars

Humanitarian activists' refusal of politics, combined with their willingness to identify with politics, elicits doubt and even scorn from human-rights critics. Susie Linfield evaluates the controversial debate on the future of humanitarianism. [more]

Look at my dress

When I was 22 I wanted to find a different way of writing about being a man, says Norwegian novelist Geir Gulliksen. It should be possible to be as gentle as a boy or as reckless as a girl. But gender stereotypes have not changed as radically as we think. [more]

Cultivated mixture

The attraction of opera -- the sanctuary of bourgeois culture -- to critical artists has to do with its formal strictures, argues Diedrich Diederichsen. Opera's high degree of "definition" provides a counterpoint to the variety of non-European-white-heteromasculine perspectives. [more]

The depths of the Golden Age

The Soviet past in Georgia's textbooks

The memory of socialism in Georgia is a contradictory one. Some romanticize it as a golden age of stability, others construe it as foreign rule. The textbook has become the link between politics, pedagogy and history. How the past is construed is in flux. [more]

Are newspapers still relevant?

It is not the Internet that is responsible for the "crisis of the press", but subordination of journalism to the market, writes the political editor of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". For the first time since 1945, German journalism risks becoming trivialized. [Polish version added] [more]

Loving the enemy: Al-Qaeda's vision of the West

9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed exploited his trial to remind the court of its human rights obligations, while Osama bin Laden's statements include appeals to religious pluralism. Al-Qaeda's use of liberal categories is central to its rhetoric, writes Faisal Devji. [German version added] [more]

Culturalism: Culture as political ideology

The multiculturalism debate has changed the political fronts. The Left defends minority cultures while the Right stands guard over national culture. Both are variants of a culturalist ideology, argue Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt. [Polish version added] [more]

On the post-city

As the ideological frenzy of modernism gives way to "content management systems", and as global megacities render obsolete the urban grid and its certainties, societies of discipline become societies of control. Daniel Miller cracks open the password protected "post-city". [Polish version added] [more]

Literary perspectives: The Netherlands

"Profound Holland" and the new Dutch

While the work of novelists Jan Siebelink and Arnon Grunberg reflect the new need for security in the Netherlands, a parallel strand of contemporary Dutch literature sidesteps such concerns: writers with migrant backgrounds are introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire. [Estonian version added] [more]

The re-transnationalization of literary criticism

Critical discussion of foreign literature serves as a source of information not only for readers but also for the "trade". When that discussion disappears or becomes one-sided, this has consequences for the literary institution as a whole. [Estonian version added] [more]