On the strengths and weaknesses of academic social critique

The pragmatist renunciation of sociology's critical exclusivity is reversed by Luc Boltanski, as capitalist "displacements" and new forms of domination demand the return to a critical method. On Boltanski's critique and its limits. [more]

Democracy "live"

The marketization of the media combines with digital technology to create a political order determined by public opinion, writes Ivaylo Ditchev. For political decision-making, the question whether opinion is right or wrong becomes secondary to its legitimacy as a form of feedback. [more]

The linguistic turn and other misconceptions about analytic philosophy

Some common notions about analytic philosophy -- for example that it is uniformly anti-metaphysical -- are clearly misconceived. However the impression that analytic philosophers are essentially linguistic philosophers is not entirely false and hence less easy to refute. [more]

Rethinking resistance

Feminism and the politics of our selves

Is accepting the Foucaultian claim that the subject is constituted by power tantamount to denying the possibility of emancipatory resistance? Not necessarily, argues Amy Allen, taking a detour via Habermas to articulate a politics of opposition to gender subordination that is both individual and collective. [more]

Between mimesis and non-existence

Lithuania in Europe, Europe in Lithuania

Cultural and political life in Lithuania is marked by what Homi K. Bhabha, speaking of postcolonial nations, called "ironic compromise". The Lithuanian is "almost a European but not quite". [more]

Global museums in the twenty-first century

The Guggenheim foundation and the rhetoric of cultural planning in Vilnius

The fact that a Guggenheim museum is being planned for Vilnius is indicative of the conviction that "de-provincialization" can only be achieved by taking part in global projects. Meanwhile, the cultural demands of the local population go unheeded. [more]

The non-efficient citizen

Identity and consumerist morality

Consumerism grounded in indebtedness means financial dependence as opposed to democratic freedom. In the consumerist system, the individual who asserts him or herself through authentic freedom is regarded as a non-efficient citizen. [more]

An amorphous society

Lithuania in the era of high post-communism

"High post-communism" in eastern Europe is defined by efforts to control collective memory, political discourse dominated by abstract concepts, and the cult of entertainment -- a view from Lithuania. [more]

Made in Bulgaria

The national as advertising repertoire

In Bulgarian political discourse, to talk of the nation means to talk non-politically. Advertising makes visible this depoliticization of the national. [more]

"Why Nietzsche today"

Despite the major criticisms to be made of Nietzsche's philosophy, his writing on morality and politics continues to raise important issues, writes Bela Egyed in an introduction to a series of texts first published in Kritika&Kontext. [more]

"Emancipation is not an all or nothing affair"

Interview with Nancy Fraser

Critical theorist Nancy Fraser outlines in interview her concept of "parity of participation" and emphasizes the centrality of the politics of interpretation in any dialogue about justice, such as that between western feminism and Islam. [more]

Privileged partnership, less democracy?

If the enticement of full EU membership is removed, can the EU achieve its goals for Turkey? This question is made all the more pressing by a renewed perception in Arab countries of "Ottoman" Turkey's belonging in the global Muslim community, writes Claus Leggewie. [more]

Soul craft

On Nietzsche's teaching of self-overcoming

Nietzsche's writing on solitude and friendship belies the impression his philosophy preferred the ecstatic over the measured way of life. For Nietzsche, self-overcoming required both, writes Horst Hutter. [more]

Mobile citizenship?

The "new mobility" implies new freedoms as well as new privations. The biographies of Bulgarian migrants reveal how the horizon of departure has become a basic dimension of the world. Mobility, writes Ivaylo Ditchev, will need to be taken more seriously in the anthropology of citizenship. [more]

Nietzsche's anti-democratic liberalism

A Nietzschean politics is less a critique of political events so much as a diagnosis of the forces and tendencies driving them -- and therein lies its liberalism, writes Béla Egyed. [more]

What does Nietzsche mean to philosophers today?

Excessively sensitive, anti-liberal, and irrelevant, or radical, prescient, and misunderstood? Six philosophers answer Kritika&Kontext's questions on Nietzsche. Their responses make one thing clear: Nietzsche still divides opinion. [more]

The heaviest burden

Nietzsche and the death of God

Nietzsche's response to having lost faith, but not being able to live without it, was to invent the figure of a new creator -- someone who could bring together Man and World once again. In order to do this, man had to begin to think through his own existence: the heaviest burden of all. [more]

National populism versus democracy

Given the failure of the leftist projects of the twentieth century, it is telling that far-right populism is more anti-democratic in the new democracies of eastern Europe than in the West, writes Antony Todorov. Is populism identical to the crisis of democracy or rather a symptom of it? [more]

Questioning authority

Nietzsche's gift to Derrida

Nietzsche's deconstruction of authoritarian subjectivity shares much with Derrida's postmodern critique of the subject as privileged centre of discourse. Alan D. Schrift discusses Derrida's Nietzschean refusal to "hypostatize the subject". [more]

Radical demophilia

Reflections on Bulgarian populism

Populism in Bulgaria feeds off two phenomena: a pure hatred of political parties and the constant emphasis in the public discourse on an alleged contrast between ordinary people and the political elite. [more]

Populism in Eastern Central Europe

Directly after the fall of communism, hopes burgeoned for democracy in the "new" Eastern Central Europe. What does the current climate of populism mean for these hopes and how does it affect these countries' relations with the EU? [more]

Right turn

Polish politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century

Alternatives to the anti-communism and national conservatism of Poland's two main rightwing parties are barely offered by a Centre-Left tarnished by corruption scandals. With new elections set for 21 October, it seems unlikely that Poland will alter its course rightwards. [more]

The populist moment

Unlike the extremist parties of the 1930s, the new populist movements do not aim to abolish democracy: quite the opposite, writes Ivan Krastev. What we are witnessing is a conflict between elites suspicious of democracy and increasingly illiberal publics. [more]

Justice and communicative freedom. Thoughts in connection to Hegel

Rather than the redistribution of resources, social justice depends on recognition, for which Axel Honneth identifies three forms: emotional concern, moral respect, and social esteem. [more]

Racism as a defect of socialization

Axel Honneth in interview

The recognition paradigm is indispensable to an understanding of the origins of racism and to the education of young offenders. [more]

Gaze and acknowledgement

A social theory of recognition must include an analysis of social stigmatization at a pre-discursive level -- that of the gaze and perception. [more]

Recognition is a basic mechanism of social existence

An interview with Axel Honneth

Axel Honneth on the heritage of the Frankfurt School, the conflict between neo-Marxism and recognition theory, and the ambivalence of the European Left towards democratization in the post-Soviet space. [more]

The urban imagery of George Orwell

Vittore Collina on the transition from the "city of men" to the "city of stone" in the Orwellian imagination. [more]

Wasted potential: The cultural periodical in Bulgaria after 1989

After 1989, cultural periodicals could have played a crucial role in forming a public sphere in Bulgaria. Instead, they must fight for a share of the market alongside an opportunistic mass media. [more]

A postmodern grid of the worldmap?

An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman

How can contemporary social theories be used to describe our dimensions of human existence? [more]

Democratic exclusion - and its consequences

Democracy as a political model demands, more than anything else, inclusion. However it also contains a dynamic of exclusion. Charles Taylor asks how this tendency can be counteracted. [more]

Monoculturalism as prevailing culture

The absence of ethnic minorities from Bulgaria's public life. [more]

Conversion to Islam as a trope in Bulgarian historiography, fiction and film

Through what genre is a nation's collective memory best transmitted? [more]

The university between facts and norms

Alexander Kiossev analyses the issues surrounding the current debate about the state and role of the University in Bulgaria. He finds that the issues are acute for universities beyond Bulgaria, too. [more]

Transnational movements and the question of democracy

Social movements can provide an early warning system to mainstream politics. But once institutionalized, their lack of democratic mandate raises problems of legitimacy. This paradox must be negotiated if democracy is to respond to the global situation. [more]

Europe and its Shadow

In a study of Bulgarian history teachers' perceptions, the view emerges that Europe's borders remain political, that "the West" are the stakeholders - and resentments and desires emerge as a result. [more]

Turkey and the EU: The Ultimate Challenge

Introduction to Critique & Humanism 27 (2008)

Stilian Y. Yotov hopes that the issue on Turkey and the EU will help the political parties in Bulgaria to determine their positions or at least to declare them publicly and unambiguously. [more]