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Articles published in Eurozine
Correspondence
The first-ever publication in Mittelweg 36 of correspondence between theology student Hans-Jürgen Benedict and Hannah Arendt, dating back to 1967-68, represents something of a sensation. It offers a precise insight into Arendt's evaluation of the student movement. [more]
Hannah Arendt and the student movement
Notes on the correspondence between Hans-Jürgen Benedict and Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt's evaluation of the student movement was "multivalent", writes Wolfgang Kraushaar in the introduction to a telling correspondence. Arendt appeared to be "torn between the progressive impulses and the off-putting tendencies of the '68 rebellion". [more]
Nation and world society
The nation remains the accepted form of political organization in the "world society". Nevertheless, nations are "post-sovereign" in that they admit that the nation constitutes "neither a group nor a community", nor "classes that form themselves as such". [more]
Corruption as metaphor
Facts, perceptions, interpretive patterns
Corruption has increasingly become an issue for political agendas and public debates. Yet a comparative study of perceptions of corruption in Germany and Romania suggests that value judgments are involved, writes Dirk Tänzler. [more]
"The trauma must remain inaccessible to memory"
Part III
In the final part of Harald Weilnböck's essay on poststructuralist borrowing of the concept of psycho-trauma, the author draws some troubling conclusions from Dr Goodheart's excursus into poststructuralist trauma theory. Could an interest in ensuring that "the trauma remains inaccessible to memory" be affiliated to institutional structures of power, control, and exclusion? [more]
"The trauma must remain inaccessible to memory"
Part II
In the second part of Harald Weilnböck's essay on poststructuralist borrowing of the concept of psycho-trauma, Dr Goodheart is confronted with an example of "trauma-therapy bashing" and the notion of "loyalty towards the dead". Feeling vaguely threatened, he begins to wonder whether the humanities' approach to trauma is more than just innocuous nonsense. [more]
"The trauma must remain inaccessible to memory"
Part I
In a long and thought-provoking essay, Harald Weilnböck examines poststructuralist borrowing of the concept of pyscho-trauma and finds it distorts the clinical understanding of the term. In part one, the fictional Dr Goodheart puzzles over the assertion that "trauma must remain inaccessible to memory" and analyzes a "hermeneutical assault" on Hitchcock's "Marnie". [more]
Branded but not a slave
On the work of Varlam Shalamov
Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales is the stylistic counterpart to Solzhenitsyn's cosmetic account of the Gulag. Michail Ryklin defends the existential authenticity of what Solzhenitsyn criticized as a fiction "without the expression of authorial subjectivity". [more]
In view of the occasion
A war that began with a lie and must end in disaster
In Iraq, like in Vietnam, the US military is in thrall to ideological warriors in civilian dress; and in Iraq, like in Vietnam, morale has disintegrated among troops fighting a war without fronts. Bernd Greiner examines the US military's unwillingness to learn from its mistakes. [more]
On the role of the media in asymmetric conflicts
Focusing on military history and media studies
"The act of violence is always an act of communication", writes Thorsten Loch. Both sides in today's "asymmetric" conflicts make use of global channels of information: the stronger side tries to legitimate wars while the weaker side attempts to use the international press to beat the west at its own game. [more]
Holographic wars
On the "real time" of the object
The absence of images of contemporary war is the result not so much of censorship as that "war" in a certain sense no longer exists. "Predator" -- the drama of a battle both to destroy an invisible enemy and to give that enemy a form -- questions the status of the images that war must fall back on in order to remain "war". [more]
Richard Rorty
An obituary
Richard Rorty can be placed alongside Hume, Montaigne, and Wittgenstein in a tradition of dissident philosophy, writes Jan Philipp Reemtsma. All wanted to put an end to the traditional philosophical discussion, but have become, in one way or another, part of the philosophical establishment. [Turkish version added] [more]
Democracy and philosophy
Moral insight "is a matter of imagining a better future, and observing the results of attempts to bring that future into existence". In "Kritika&Kontext", Richard Rorty (1931-2007) outlines the anti-foundationalist premise of his philosophy. [Turkish version added] [more]
Feminism and the ethics of reconciliation
The failure of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to do justice to women rape victims was not a simple oversight but is constitutive of the symbolic order dominating the political landscape of "liberal democracies". [German version added] [more]
Fascism
A definition by way of orientation
An increase in the use of a "generic" definition of fascism has seen the term being conflated with communism, even when those to whom it is applied clearly rejected such an association. [more]
Elements of a grammar of massacre
Intention is a misleading concept when defining genocide. An alternative model is needed "at whose centre lies the imaginary, which forms and reforms the social body according to the measurements of its fears". [more]
Biopolitics, ethnic cleansing, and the sovereignty of the people
A sketch
Racism as biopolitical selection criterion is a defining feature of modern mass murder. [more]
Israel's secular myth
The Holocaust after its secularization
After the Eichmann trial in 1961, the Holocaust no longer meant the European Jews' failure to defend themselves but the most recent chapter in the historical struggle against adversity. The Six Day War brought a new sense of vulnerability and cemented the Holocaust as a secular myth for the entire Israeli society. [more]
Zinedine Zidane or games of belonging
Zinedine Zidane is a figurehead around which young Muslims in France and Germany form a sense of community. The footballer's style of play is a direct expression of the immigrant experience; even the head-butt had an instructive value. [more]
In Algeria: Apprenticeship in a sociological laboratory
Pierre Bourdieu in conversation with Franz Schultheis
"I was lucky enough to witness problems of metaphysical consequence pose themselves in concrete life." Pierre Bourdieu describes how his period in Algeria informed his understanding of concepts such as work, leisure, and career. [more]
The rhythm of society
The Algerian experience as basis for Pierre Bourdieu's sociology
"The modern economy lives solely with an eye to the future. The past is something to be overcome and destroyed, the present is interesting only as the starting point of the future." [more]
Consider the form!
Political scientist Tom Lampert in conversation with Heinz Bude and Thomas Medicus
Tom Lampert on his book One Life, eight biographies based on archive material from Nazi Germany that resist clear-cut moral and formal distinction-making. [more]
"Zu Gast bei Freunden"
How the Federal Republic of Germany learned to take sport seriously
The ideologically motivated sporting policy of the GDR during the Cold War period prompted the FRG to begin using sport as an opportunity for national self-representation. [more]
The vague country (Jeron al-Homos)
Here the sun is sometimes dark from all the light
The extreme location of Jeron al-Homos, situated between an Israeli army checkpoint and the "fence" around Bethlehem, lays bare the function of borders and the mechanisms of power. [more]
Bodies on the market
Mercenaries, organ trading, and a history of body history
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]
Civil society and the state monopoly on the use of force
On the interconnection of violence and civility
Civil society is often the result of state-sanctioned violence in the past. This suggests that some hard decisions must be faced regarding the stabilization of conflict-ridden regions. [more]
Not being able to stop
Richard Nixon's Vietnam policy as a paradigm for the Cold War
Why do heads of state insist on deciding conflicts through force, against the counsel of their advisors? What lies behind their unwillingness to use exit options? An analysis of the Nixon administration's conduct in Vietnam yields insights. [more]
Neighbourly relations as a resource for violence
Neighbourhoods' potential for violence can be instrumentalized by politics, be it in surveillance regimes or ethnic-national movements. A popular comic strip delivers an insight into the tensions inherent in neighbourly relations. [more]
On the dark side of history
Carlo Ginzburg talks to Trygve Riiser Gundersen
"I consider literary modernism first of all as an attempt to discover new forms of truthfulness. In that respect it is highly relevant to me as an historian." On the problems of relativism and the duty of the historian. [more]
What does genocide actually mean?
Thoughts on a problematic concept
Genocide as defined by international justice polarizes victims and perpetrators. In Rwanda, crimes were committed by Tutsis and Hutus; yet only the former are deemed victims. Does the legal definition of genocide play into the hands of power? [more]
Aligning the social
Comments on an ongoing debate
Demonized as "social bureaucracy" or used as a bulwark against global capitalism: what the modern welfare state is lacking is intellectual defence. Two recent studies fill the gap. [more]
Violence and participation
Civil society in the age of bellicosity
In nineteenth-century nation-states, social participation and organization was intimately linked to an aggressive war machinery. Any analysis of civil society must take account of this history of bellicosity. [more]
Displacement as an issue of German self-understanding
How the postwar West German state, in making the displacement of sections of the population integral to its self-definition, effectively tabooed the subject. [more]
New anti-Semitism?
Change and continuity in anti-Jewish attitudes
Klaus Holz on the resurgence of anti-Semitism and the fundamental questions it raises towards Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Zionism. [more]
The rationality of unreasonableness
Don Quijote from a psychoanalytical view
Psychoanalysts and poets alike have to restore order to a person's inner chaos and look for sense where common sense reaches its boundaries. Léon Wurmser portrays Don Quijote, the paradigm of a person in conflict, as emblematic for psychoanalysis. [more]
"Shut up or piss off!"
Neighborhoods in the Basque Provinces
The Basque conflict exemplifies the case of an ethnic conflict turned into a purely political one, where an artificially created "ethnic" divide serves specific political interests. [more]
The high noon of the welfare state
As the state is abandoning its former function of securing social cohesion, new forms of social vulnerability are emerging. [more]
Protest-chronicle
24 - 30 August 1973: "The 'gastarbeiter', the new German proletariat, revolted."
Turkish workers' protest in the Ford-factory: the first multicultural strike in Germany. [more]
Discords in the French laicity
The ban on religious symbols in French schools reveals a crisis of the laicity. [more]
Integration through attraction
Mass consumerism as cultural relationship to the world
Has mass consumerism become the ultimate integrative social tool? [more]
"Border talk," hybridity, and performativity
Cultural theory and identity in the spaces between difference
Friedman argues in this essay for a more transgressive, open understanding of the notion of hybridity within contemporary American cultural studies. [more]
International Criminal Jurisdiction
Guarantee of greater security and peace or political shadow-boxing?
Gerd Hankel on the history of the International Criminal Court. Why does the US not acknowledge the court and what are its prospects and limitations? [more]
Adorno's America
A closer look at Adorno's ambivalent relationship to his second home, America. [more]
Suicide bombings: A literature review
On the sociological, political and economical dimensions of suicide bombings. [more]
Human resources and human capital
A critique of biopolitical economics
How much are we worth and how big is the income the state generates from us? Ulrich Bröckling deals with ideas of human accountancy. [more]
Sociology as a profession
Homage to Pierre Bourdieu
On the four dimensions of social space. [more]
About the notion "Handlungsspielräume"
How would you decide? Jan Philipp Reemtsma looks at "options for action" in borderline situations. [more]
Taking Bourdieu into the field
An interview with Loïc Wacquant
On Wacquant's collaboration with Pierre Bourdieu. [more]
Post-memory, received history, and the return of the Auschwitz code
Is the aesthetic obsession with the Holocaust a reflection on facism or an extension of it? [more]
How Capitalism went Senile
Is capitalism losing its progressive dimension, turning destructive instead? Michael Hardt and Samir Amin, two of the main critics of today's capitalism, talk about the future of the system, the movements resisting it and the alternatives they propose. [more]
The Scar of Ulysses
The Wounds of the Modern and the Crisis of the Eyewitness
How can history be described adequately? Is there any space for individual psychic entities after 20th century's war trauma? Christian Schneider starts his survey with Ulysses' experiences of violence and ends with Sebastian Haffner's memories. [more]
The Limits of the Anti-Globalisation Movement
The anti-globalisation movement is so variegated that a decisive profile would be difficult to define. Wolfgang Kraushaar writes that one can, however, find one definitive aspect: its limits. [more]
Spatial relations as a major dimension of global inequalities
In the light of economic globalization and the emergence of transnational social spaces, the nation state no longer serves as a sufficient framework for studying inequality, argues Anja Weiß. [more]
A History of the Anti-Globalisation Protests
A historical background to the globalisation protests: from the first G7 meeting in Rambouillet, 1975, to the G8 in Genoa, July 2001. [more]
The Shift from a Civilian to a Wartime Society
The long-term impact on American society of Pearl Harbor is substantial, writes Bernd Greiner. The changes are grounded more in economics than in ideology. [more]
The Sociology of Islam
Georg Stauth's Islamische Kultur und moderne Gesellschaft does not deal with the principles of Islam or the goals and acts of fundamentalist Islamic groups and networks. Instead, it focuses on the ways and forms in which the modern ideas of Islam spread and circulate. Stauth's essays, says Nikola Tietze in a review written before the attacks of September 11th, make it possible to reflect on the social consequences of a politicised Islam. [more]
Blood, Sperm and Tears
Sexual Violence in War
The societal condemnation of sexual crimes as a war-time practice is slowly growing as the victims raise the courage to speak out. [more]
Muslim Experiences
Identities between tradition and emancipation
After extensive interviews with young Muslim men, Nicola Tietze finds that their social reality is quite another from the conventional expectation of behaviour guided by religious tradition. [more]
The Search for Normality Lost
Helmut Kohl and Hans Magnus Enzensberger as two representative success-stories of postwar West Germany - one a critic, one the epitome of bourgeois "normality". On the meaning, importance and development of an "average" in West Germany. [more]
The Order of the Shapeless
The social and political construction of racism in French society
In order to analyse racism in French society, one needs to let go of the idea of a "societal crisis", Lapeyronnie writes. He says that first the social interaction that goes hand in hand with racism needs to be understood as a given societal structure. [more]
The Phantom of a Homogenous Society in the German Border Regions
An Introduction in Interviews
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Smashing Guitars
Gustav Metzger, the Concept of the auto-desctructive Work of Art and its Consequences for Rock Music
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The Racist Albatross
Social Science, Jörg Haider and Widerstand
Racism is an inescapable part of our history, of our present and of ourselves. Only when we realise this can we also understand the role of racism in the world-system, and only then are we able to interpret the successes of the populists and the extreme right – as well as the resistance that these successes have triggered. [more]
You'll never walk alone
American war crimes in Vietnam
The reaction of politicians, the press and the army towards pictures of war crimes from Vietnam bear startling parallels to the impact of the Abu Ghraib prison pictures from Iraq. [more]
Jeder könnte, aber nicht alle können
Konturen des unternehmerischen Selbst
Vom Siegeszug des selbstständigen Unternehmertyps in der Ära des neo-liberalen Kapitalismus. [more]