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Eurozine is participating in the Documenta 12 magazines project, which links over 90 print and on-line periodicals worldwide. Read Eurozine's contributions to the documenta leitmotifs "Modernity" and "Bare Life" here.
Is modernity our antiquity?
New towns on the Cold War frontier
How modern urban planning was exported as an instrument in the battle for the developing world
modernity The New Towns designed by Constantinos Doxiadis were supposed to inculcate democracy in the Developing World. Today, these urban neighbourhoods have become something quite different to what the architect anticipated: Baghdad's Sadr City being a striking example. [German version added] [ more ]
Shopping town USA
Victor Gruen, the Cold War, and the shopping mall
modernity Victor Gruen's "shopping towns" were supposed to strengthen civic life and alleviate women's lives. But within a decade they had become the architectural expression of the policy of gender segregation underlying the US postwar consumer utopia. [Lithuanian version added] [ more ]
What is bare life?
Made in Washington
Spatial practices as a blueprint for human rights violations
bare life Will the US Supreme Court's ruling that the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay violate both US military law and the Geneva Conventions prevent governments from creating a legal "meta-level" where spatial and physical humiliation becomes everyday practice? [ more ]
Drowning by numbers
The non-reproduction of New Orleans
bare life After the actual hurricane that hit New Orleans in late August 2005 came the second hurricane of neo-liberal looting. The vacuum left by the evacuation of the working-class population and the storm’s destruction of infrastructure produced the dream conditions for economic "restructuring". [ more ]
Martyrdom, patria, and the cult of dead warriors
Maleness and soteriology in war
bare life The battle of Langemarck in 1914, in the course of which up to 20 000 German soldiers died, became a powerful myth of youth, honour, maleness, and martyrdom for National Socialism. The fascist slogan "Death lives!" expressed the transformation of biopower into "death power" in the racist model of the nation. [ more ]
Perfecting the human being
Death and immortality in post- and trans-humanism
bare life Post- and trans-humanism's relentlessly utopian responses to the "problem of mortality" are the flipside to Günther Anders' diagnosis of "Promethian shame". [ more ]
Bodies on the market
Mercenaries, organ trading, and a history of body history
bare life An examination of the commodification of the body in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including slave trading and the use of mercenaries, provides a framework for a history of the body in the contemporary context of private military enterprise and organ trading. [ more ]
Biopolitics, ethnic cleansing, and the sovereignty of the people
A sketch
bare life Racism as biopolitical selection criterion is a defining feature of modern mass murder. [ more ]
The city of Kinshasa as verbal architecture
bare life Kinshasa, with its nine million inhabitants the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, epitomizes contemporary urban chaos. Given that Kinshasa's infrastructure is either non-existent or doomed to disappear, how can one grasp what holds the city together? [ more ]
Imminent ruin and desperate remedy
Calcutta and its fragments
bare life Calcutta's longstanding communist government is ingratiating the city to Western investors. By evicting squatters and street vendors from public spaces in the name of sanitation and Western norms, it is robbing Calcutta of its vital tradition of urban commons. [ more ]
More focal points
Olympic indifference
The Beijing Olympics 2008 are unusual insofar as not one country has boycotted them. This, despite the fact that the political dimension of the Games has seldom been more controversial. Are we seeing a new kind of "Olympic indifference"? With this in mind, Eurozine compiles articles on sport, politics, and protest. [ more ]
Shared space, divided society
Migration is part of modern society, meaning more and more people of different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds live together in Europe. The multitude of perspectives and experiences represents an enormous resource, but as cultural conflicts inherent in today's urban societies become visible, doubts are also raised about the value of diversity. [ more ]
1968: Beyond soixante-huite
Forty years on, the differences between the 1968 uprisings in western and eastern Europe move into ever sharper focus. "In retrospect, the great event of '68 in Europe was not Paris, but Prague. But we were unable to see this at the time." Including articles on '68 in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, France and West Germany. [ more ]
Illiberal Europe?
Parliament or the soapbox? Populist politics are enjoying renewed success in Europe, above all in the former socialist countries. Ivan Krastev, G.M.Tamás, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jacques Rupnik and others investigate the rise of "democratic illiberalism". [ more ]
Cultural citizenship
The concept of cultural citizenship responds to the multicultural context of contemporary societies, in which the concern with equality is increasingly being complemented with a concern with difference. Contributors include Gerard Delanty, Axel Honneth, Rainer Bauböck, Ivaylo Ditchev, Charles Taylor, Rada Ivekovic, António Sousa Ribeiro. [ more ]
Decentring Europe
Any reinvention of the concept of Europe that takes into account the complexities inherent in Europe's place in a globalized world must contain a critique of Eurocentrism. Learning from the South, i.e. absorbing the full critical impact of alternative approaches may be a key element in the rethinking – and unthinking – of "Europe".[ more ]
The future of war
Are wars that are fought between nations a thing of the past, and are the future challenges more a case of ethnic strife, break-up of failed states, secession and civil wars? In a special focal point, Eurozine analyzes the changing face of warfare in the twenty-first century, in which terrorism and new security threats have profoundly transformed the way wars are conducted. [ more ]
The city as stage for social upheaval
From the western European city to the Third World megacity, one is able to observe how a single principle asserts itself in the social structure of the urban space. That principle – privatization – is geared towards the concentration of wealth and assets on an increasingly global scale, a manoeuvre its beneficiaries seek to naturalize. [ more ]
Big Brother goes global
Post 9/11, governments are increasingly tailoring "international standards" to ratify domestic policies that intrude on civil liberties. Welcome to the phenomenon of "policy laundering". [ more ]
Changing Europe
As political Europe turns 50, the questions about its future are as open as ever. A special focus featuring some of Eurozine's most outstanding contributions on the European project: From analyses of the current crisis to a hilarious parody of Brussels' literary ambitions. [ more ]
Post-secular Europe?
Is religion a public or a private matter? Can there be such a thing as a European Islam? If so, what characterizes it? What role can religion – or religions – play when it comes to the emergence of a European solidarity? [ more ]
European histories: Towards a grand narrative?
In order for there to be solidarity within the enlarged EU, it will be necessary to develop a broader historical consciousness that includes both western and eastern experiences. [ more ]
Europe talks to Europe: Towards a European public sphere?
The European integration project has made the discussion about transnational spaces for cultural and political debate acute. Can there at all be a common Europe without a pan-European public sphere? [ more ]
Politics of border making and (cross-)border identities
Have borders become irrelevant with the project of a united Europe? No, just the opposite. On the dilemmas of border building and cross-border cooperation in the EU and its neighbourhood. [ more ]
Freedom of speech and the Danish cartoon controversy
Free speech is a fundamental human right and a central tenet of democracy. Or is it? Reactions to the Danish cartoon controversy show that liberals are re-evaluating what the right to free speech entails. [ more ]
Politics of translation
Translation today is as much about the translation of cultural, political, and historical contexts and concepts as it is about language. [ more ]
Conferences
Changing places (What's normal anyway?)
The 20th European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Sibiu, 21-24 October 2007
Under the heading "Changing places (What's normal anyway?)", the Eurozine network conference 2007 in Sibiu, Romania, addressed the challenges facing societies, literature, and the media as the need for change meets the urge for normality. Read the conference texts here. [ more ]
Friend and foe. Shared space, divided society
The 19th European Meeting of Cultural Journals
London, 27-30 October 2006
Speakers at the 19th European Meeting of Cultural Journals opened up the discussion on cultural diversity in two directions: first, as it is experienced in the physical urban space, and second, as it is reflected in the mirror of the media. [ more ]
Neighbourhoods
The 18th European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Istanbul, 4-7 November 2005
Contributions on the notion of neighbourhood and the Turkey-Europe question from a range of intellectual and geographic perspectives. [ more ]
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