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European histories: Concord and conflict
Introduction
Focal Point In recent years, the possibility of a "grand narrative" that includes both East and West in a common European story has been discussed intensely. In a new Focal Point, Eurozine seeks to broaden the question beyond the East-West historical divide. How are contested interpretations of historical and recent events made active in the present, both uniting and dividing European societies? [ more ]
Cooperation
Partner This Focal Point represents an ongoing cooperation between Eurozine and the European Cultural Foundation and is related to its "Narratives for Europe" project.
New articles are added continously.
NEWS The European Cultural Foundation has just launched its own project website "Narratives for Europe". A place to "collect and share those stories – whether comforting or confronting – that keep Europe moving forward." [ more ]
Thinking Europe
The failure of European intellectuals?
narratives Intellectuals have been accused of failing to restore a European confidence undermined by crisis. Yet calls for legitimating European narratives reflect the logic of nineteenth-century nation building, argues Jan-Werner Müller. [French, German and Italian versions added] [ more ]
Where were you when Europe fell apart?
intellectuals Too many Europeans have too long avoided the question of Europe, says Swedish writer Per Wirtén. To prevent the EU from turning into a "post-democratic regime of bureaucrats", intellectuals need to stop mumbling and take the fear of Europe seriously. [ more ]
The hour of the expert
economic history What constitutes economic expertise? Looking at how European politics has answered this question over the last four centuries, Werner Plumpe argues that, at any given time, economic expertise is judged according to its coincidence with the conjuncture. [ more ]
In praise of dissidence
dissidents There is much to celebrate in the history of Cold War dissidence, writes Helmut König. Which is why it is crucial to recall just how the Peaceful Revolution delivered its heritage of freedom, from the thinkers and the underground printing presses to the impromptu protests. [ more ]
political violence and memory
Memory displaced
Re-reading Jean Améry's "Torture"
holocaust Jean Améry, writing in 1965, famously called torture "the essence of the Third Reich". Why did Améry, the Holocaust survivor, emphasize torture over the annihilation of the Jews? His choice can be understood in the context of debate on the Algerian war, argues Dan Diner. [ more ]
Imperial violence and national mobilization
holocaust Lutz Raphael advances an interpretative paradigm for European history in the first half of the twentieth century that focuses on Europe's global interdependencies - and will enhance our understanding of the era's world wars, unrestrained violence and ideological confrontation. [ more ]
Recent history and the new dangers of politicization
colonialism With the past ceasing to be a body of knowledge and becoming a public issue, a new form of political influence has exerted itself upon historians, warns Pierre Nora. In France, the subject of colonialism is particularly controversial. More than ever it is crucial historians retain critical distance. [ more ]
The death throes of Franco
Spain's new reckoning with the dictatorship and Civil War
Spain Initiatives by the Zapatero government to break the pact of silence about the crimes of the Franco regime and the brutality of the Civil War signal a new era in Spanish memory politics. Yet there is a way to go before Spain is unanimous about its past, writes historian Julián Casanova. [ more ]
Presente!
Western martyrdom and the politics of memory and death
martyrology What is the connection between the mediaeval hunt for relics and the idolization of Benno Ohnesorg? Or between Cromwell and Nietzsche? Western ideologies of martyrdom are active to this day in instrumentalizing the dead for the purposes of the living, writes Michael Azar. [ more ]
Genocides?
An interview with historian Ugur Ümit Üngör
genocide The comparison of genocides is neither a crude equation nor an equivalence of evil, argues historian Ugur Ümit Üngör. Rather, comparative study enhances understanding of individual cases and counters political manipulation of genocide under hierarchies of uniqueness. [ more ]
Paradoxes of memory
amnesty Forgetting violence was long seen as a condition for long-term peace after war or civil war. But the amnesty clause is only realistic when certain rules of war were upheld, writes Helmut König. Wherever people cannot forget, only remembrance remains. [ more ]
Memory's minor theatre of war
The Leningrad blockade in German memory
WWII The siege of Leningrad claimed around 1 million lives, largely through starvation. Yet Leningrad has occupied a minor place in the German memory of WWII: well into the 1970s West German schoolbooks were reproducing versions of events established by the Nazi generation. [ more ]
The war of 1812
How Russia rescued Europe
european histories As Napolean's army disintegrated upon retreating from Russia, the Russian Empire rose from the ashes of Moscow as the "saviour of Europe". Historians Anna Ananieva and Klaus Gestwa recall how a new European order materialized and became the object of reminiscence. [ more ]
Earlobe, or The millstones of ideology
Conflict and resolution in literature
Literature Today's literary and political climate in Hungary reminds László Garaczi of the communist 1980s. In an atmosphere compulsively and perversely imbued with politics, it is difficult to speak intelligently about the issues of the community. [ more ]
European identity
The last crusade
Values The claim that Christianity embodies the bedrock of European cultural values simplifies both the history of Christianity and the roots of democracy, argues Kenan Malik. Ironically, the defenders of "Christendom" draw on the same politics of identity as Islamists and multiculturalists. [ more ]
After the revolutions: Europe and the Arab world
Mediterranean Europe's view of the revolutions in the Arab world is bedevilled by archaic, post-colonial attitudes. If we cannot shed these, argues Franco Rizzi, we shall remain on the sidelines and watch the Arab awakening turn into a twilight of renewed discontent. [ more ]
Migration, patriotism and the European agendum
An interview with historian of ideas Pierre Manent
interview A European patriotism can be generated only through political acts that create a sense of solidarity, says historian Pierre Manent. If invocations of Europe are to be anything but vacuous, Europe must be decisive in defining its interests and demarcating its boundaries. [ more ]
Contesting the origins of European liberty
The EU narrative of Franco-German reconciliation and the eclipse of 1989
European identity Despite western Europe's initially lukewarm response to the people's revolutions of '89, the EU now claims them as a cornerstone of "European identity". Yet historical gaffes have exposed the pitfalls in attempting to create an all too tidy narrative of Europe's twentieth century. [ more ]
European identity: Historical fact and political problem
European identity An historian can define European identity descriptively, as Krzysztof Pomian demonstrates in a tour of European culture since the first millennium BC. But the real controversy lies elsewhere, in the political question: what of the European past is worth preserving? [ more ]
Migration and diversity
Continuities denied
Explaining Europe's reluctance to remember migration
migration Why does Europe find it so difficult to remember the facts of migration, both voluntary and forced? Reluctance to address the more noxious aspects of collective European identity impedes an engagement with migration history, argues Claus Leggewie.
[ more ]
Migration: Europe's absent history
migration Although migration has a long history in Europe, it tends to be treated solely as a present-day issue. Why the reluctance to historicize the subject? Particularly since migration history offers a way to replace narrow, national narratives with one that is properly European. [ more ]
Words and deeds
hate speech The cultural editor of "Jyllands-Posten" argues that the erroneous presumption that anti-Semitic propaganda was directly responsible for the Holocaust resulted in a post-war consensus on banning hate speech that ended up its own worst enemy.
[ more ]
Europe invents the Gypsies
The dark side of modernity
European histories Social segregation, cultural appropriation: the six-hundred-year history of the European Roma, as recorded in literature and art, represents the underside of the European subject's self-invention as agent of civilizing progress in the world, writes Klaus-Michael Bogdal. [ more ]
Europe's narrative bias
European narratives Democracy, humanism and diversity have little to do with a "European inheritance". Yet EU cultural policy instrumentalizes cultural heritage to promote common identity. This narrative bias needs to be challenged, says Erik Hammar.
[ more ]
Racism in a post-racial Europe
racism Critique of culturalism as a polite form of Eurocentrism is to be distinguished from the new wave of anti-multiculturalism, argues Alana Lentin. Ostensibly aimed at the illiberalism of multiculturalism's "beneficiaries", the latter expresses intolerance of "bad diversity". [ more ]
Thinking Europe without thinking
Neo-colonial discourse on and in the western Balkans
colonialism EU member states draw upon a reservoir of colonial discourse to assert superiority over the extra-European Other; western Balkan states compensate by turning the same discourse against neighbours lower down the ladder of EU accession, writes Tanja Petrovic. [Italian version added] [ more ]
Multiculturalism and the politics of bad memories
Multiculturalism Behind the recent attacks on multiculturalism is a false memory of stability disrupted by the arrival of people of other cultures, writes Markha Valenta. A row over the absence of non-white characters in the detective series "Midsomer Murders" says a lot about our idea of "home". [ more ]
A voyage towards the "other"
the other History has a long fuse and memory often betrays the past. For Yudit Kiss, a journey across borders and through no man's lands brings that past alive and reminds us of what we have lost, in particular the diversity of the past and the beauty of the "other". [ more ]
Politics of memory
Seven circles of European memory
Circles of memory Europe's collective memory is as diverse as its nations and cultures and cannot be regulated by official acts of state or commemorative rituals, writes Claus Leggewie. The most significant challenge for a European memory is to reconcile "competing" memories of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Yet other historical experiences must also be integrated: memories of wartime and expulsion, of colonialism and immigration, and not least of the "success" of the European Union. [ more ]
Haunted museums
Ethnography, coloniality and sore points
museology The troubled relationship between modernity and its colonial past haunts the ethnographic museum. But do new museums of world culture provide a plausible alternative? Or do they achieve little more than securing their own survival? [ more ]
Heroes into victims
The Second World War in post-Soviet memory politics
memory In post-Soviet societies, narratives of suffering have overtaken heroic triumphalism. Tatiana Zhurzhenko examines reasons for this shift, asking whether new victim narratives reconcile former enemies or provide additional opportunities to articulate hostilities.
[ more ]
Why the EU's "harmonization machine" should stay away from history
23 August Memory laws are the wrong way for Europeans to remember and debate their difficult
pasts, argues Claus Leggewie and Horst Meier. Europe needs a pluralism of memory
policies. That is why 23 August is a good candidate for a truly pan-European day of
remembrance. [ more ]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
reappraisal Auschwitz and the Gulag are generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter. But they are only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come, writes Timothy Snyder. [ more ]
Unreliable narrators
Witness accounts and the institutionalization of European history
narrative A preference for witness accounts in European museums creates a blandly affirmative surface under which narrative authority continues to operate. Questions of reliability aside, is a witness-based history even able to fulfil the necessary task of narrating Europe's political identity? [ more ]
The revenge of memory?
memory politics Devotion to "historical truth" can become an easy target for political manipulation. Deconstruction of national myths equates not to the destruction, but to the rethinking of the symbolic meaning of history. [ more ]
The Balkans and Hungary
Standards of evasion
Croatia and the "Europeanization of memory"
Croatia Poised on the verge of Union membership, Croatia has replaced the historical revisionism of the 1990s by a memory politics avowedly based on "European standards". Yet is the Europeanization of memory synonymous with a critical approach to the national past? [ more ]
Tinplate and gilt
The memory landscape of the SFRY
Balkans Our view of the past is tarnished by our ancestors' suffering or success. Svjetlan Lacko Vidulic approaches post-Yugoslav memory via family history, on the premise that talking openly about inherited bias can break down fossilized patterns of thought and promote inter-memorial dialogue. [ more ]
A few "easy" steps towards reconciliation
Balkans Laissez faire reconciliation in the Balkans will never work, writes Slavenka Drakulic. Symbolic gestures by politicians are well and good, but a substantial change in social attitudes can only be achieved through the institutional promotion of tolerance and collaboration. [Italian version added] [ more ]
The Turul bird and the dinosaur
Hungary Following the political logic of pop-cultural palaeontology, Hungary's resurgent far-Right excavates archaic cultural identities for the youth of today. Mythical symbols of national strength fill the historical void felt by post-'89 generations, writes Zsófia Bán. [ more ]
Telling the stories of dissent
Vaclav Havel's contested legacy
Havel From pacifist to cheerleader for US foreign policy, from dissident thinker to purveyor of "political kitsch", Vaclav Havel was a figure that divided opinion. Nevertheless, right up to his death, Havel continued to pursue a consistent ideal, writes Stefan Auer. [ more ]
When personal integrity is not enough
Herta Müller and Gabriel Liiceanu discuss language and dissidence
dialogue Talking to the philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu in Bucharest in October 2010, the novelist Herta Müller defended her often unpopular view that the preservation of personal intellectual integrity alone was inadequate as a form of political resistance during communism. [ more ]
The logic of accusation has no end
Adam Michnik and Andrei Plesu discuss "resistance through culture"
dialogue For Adam Michnik, resistance to communism took many forms: reproaching another for their lack of heroism is impossible. Talking to Andrei Plesu in Bucharest in February 2011, he called for an end to the logic of accusation and warned against instrumentalizing the quarrel with communism. [ more ]
Between past and future
Central European dissent in historical perspective
dissidence The Marxian severance of dissent and toleration has obscured the liberal roots of eastern European dissidence, argues Barbara Falk. Where Lockean liberalism emphasized toleration of religion and other dissenting practices, Marxism sees dissent solely in terms of class struggle.
[ more ]
Blessed be the day
Bosnia Bosnian novelist Alma Lazarevska remembers the siege of Sarajevo obliquely, as the background to a personal loss unconnected to the plight of the city. She thereby implicitly critiques the politicization of the siege, which is commemorated this year. [ more ]
European histories 1
Further reading 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. The first Eurozine focus on this topic: European histories (1): Towards a grand narrative?. [ more ]
More focal points
Media landscapes: Western Europe
Despite the Internet's growing significance as vehicle of freedom of expression, public service broadcasting and the press will remain for some time the visible face of the watchdog on power. In western Europe, the traditional media need to prove they are still capable of performing this role. [ more ]
The bonfire of the universities
The uni's burning! The slogan was everywhere in the German-speaking space last winter, as the protests at the University of Vienna set off a wave of similar strikes, first at Austrian universities, then beyond: in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Z?rich... 2009/10 saw further protests at universities in Athens, Zagreb, Marseilles and London. Eurozine surveys a debate enflaming (not only) Europe. [ more ]
Climate of change?
Social agreement about the necessity of radical ecological change may be unprecedented, yet rhetoric and reality go their separate ways. As ambitions for a legally-binding agreement at the Copenhagen recede, serious doubts arise about the efficacy of multilateral climate deals and the assumptions behind cap-and-trade.[ more ]
Dilemma 89
Twenty years after 1989, most former communist states in central and eastern Europe are members of the EU. Yet the transition from closed to open societies is far from "complete". '89 not only historic moment of liberation, but also political and social dilemma for the present day. [ more ]
The malady of infinite aspiration?
Sound in principle or sick at heart? Articles on the financial crisis, compiled under Durkheim's memorable phrase. Including: Jacques Rupnik, Ralf Dahrendorf, Daniel Daianu, Mircea Vasilescu, Heiner Flassbeck, Olivier Mongin. [ more ]
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.Tamas, 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 Baub̦ck, Ivaylo Ditchev, Charles Taylor, Rada Ivekovic, AntĚŇnio 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 ]
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 ]
Documenta 12 magazines
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.[ 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
European histories
The 22nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Vilnius, 8-11 May 2009
Under the heading "European Histories", the 22nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals explored the role of history and memory in forming new identities in a Europe in change. [ more ]
crosswords X mots crois?s
21st European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Paris, 26-29 September 2008
The 21st European Meeting of Cultural Journals 2008 in Paris explored the theme of multilingualism in Europe in terms of language policies, migration, translation and the European public sphere. Read the conference texts here. [ more ]
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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