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Articles published in Eurozine
Twelve theses on WikiLeaks
Vindictive, politicized, conspiratorial, reckless: one need not agree with WikiLeaks' modus operandi to acknowledge its service to democracy. Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens see indications of a new culture of exposure beyond the traditional politics of openness and transparency. [Estonian version added] [more]
Copyleft and the theory of property
A battle is underway between the supporters of intellectual property and the defenders of "the commons". Mikhail Xifaras traces the history of the concept of "exclusive rights" and evaluates the emancipatory claims of the copyleft movement today. [Estonian version added] [more]
Tricolour – three colours of justice
The modern notion of justice linked to ideas of human rights and democracy is highly complex, pulling in different directions. Cornelia Klinger explains how "justice" as we understand it today can be inferred from the conceptual trinity of the French Revolution. [Estonian version added] [more]
The politics of no alternatives or How power works in Russia
An interview with Gleb Pavlovsky
In interview with "Transit", former dissident turned "political technologist" Gleb Pavlovsky talks about the workings of political power in the former Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. [Polish version added] [more]
The crisis and the end of liberalism in central Europe
Even as the state took over large portions of the private banking sector in the US and UK, politicians in central Europe were singing the praises of Anglo-Saxon market liberalism. They are the last orphans of Bush and Cheney, writes Jacques Rupnik. [Estonian version added] [more]
Liberté, égalité and fraternité in a post-communist and globalized world
Utopian designs for the ideal society are both impractical and dangerous. Only by finding the right balance between the "holy trinity" of the French Revolution may the world steer its way through the challenges of libertarianism and laissez faire, writes Rein Müllerson. [more]
Literary perspectives: Sweden
Beyond crime fiction, handbags and designer suits
Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled, among things, on authors' love lives and penchant for designer handbags. Yet there is more out there if one looks: Hans Koppel's satire of suburban manners, for example, or Magnus Hedlund's explorations of human perception. [Estonian version added] [more]
As the fog lifted
Literature in eastern central Europe since 1989
In the twenty years since the fall of communism, literature has been lifting the fog that had settled over the expanses of eastern central Europe. A survey of the post-'89 wave of eastern European literature by Suhrkamp editor Katharina Raabe. [Estonian version added] [more]
Manual for postmodern childrearing
How would you bring up a child if you took the lessons from postmodernism literally? [Estonian 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. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Literary perspectives: Austria
Anything but a "German appendix"
Austrian novelists are still referred to as Germans despite recent critical and commercial success. From the new narrative "miracle" to the darkly humorous "writer's novel", Daniela Strigl finds a contemporary Austrian scene at the top of its game. [Estonian version added] [more]
Literary perspectives: Ukraine
Longing for the novel
In Ukraine, the demand for engagement with the recent past has produced a series of novels that are better described as autobiographies. But, asks Timofiy Havryliv, is autobiography equal to the task? [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]
European waistlines
Swedish poet Ida Börjel confronts us with our favourite and most insulting national prejudices about ourselves and our European neighbours. But does she confirm them? [Estonian version added] [more]
The scream of geometry
(modified excerpts)
"How can these cities, villages, and their people exist? How can they stand there selling tomatoes and speaking their language and drying their laundry without considering the infinite number of other places where someone else is standing, selling tomatoes or potatoes and speaking their language and drying laundry?" [Estonian version added] [more]
Literary perspectives: Lithuania
Almost normal
The literary field in Lithuania has established itself since independence, despite vastly smaller print runs. Today, a range of literary approaches can be made out, from the social criticism of the middle generation to the more private narratives of the post-Soviet writers. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Literary perspectives: Denmark
The contemporary literary reservation
Committed, critical writing in Denmark is emerging from its sheltered existence in a literary reservation, in doing so collapsing the boundaries between the literary field and the broader public sphere, writes Andreas Harbsmeier. [Swedish version added] [more]
Crouching tiger hidden dragon: Which will it be?
As China's star rises, attitudes to the new global superpower range from fearful to hopeful. Are we looking at the end of the world as we have known it, or will the Middle Kingdom redefine the market economy and democracy in its own image? Rein Müllerson argues the toss. [more]
Three histories
The narratives of the Estonian peasantry, the Baltic German gentry, the Swedish nobility or the Soviet functionaries, although running parallel, do not have a common addressee. The solution is a synoptic approach, says Tonu Onnepalu. [more]
The forgetting museum
It seems self-evident that commemoration averts recurrence of that which is being commemorated. Yet an obsession with memory blinds us to the abuses of memory and to the uses of forgetting. [more]
From spring to autumn
The Estonian media post-independence
The Estonian media has disappointed hopes that it would be a model of its kind in the post-Soviet space. Estonia's size means personal sympathies override political views, while a tiny market makes advertising sales paramount. [more]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
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]
Right of Berlusconi
Italy's fascists, hooligans and radical Catholics
The extra-parliamentary far-Right is once again in a position to influence Italian politics. Karin Priester surveys the ideological background of the far-right spectrum in Italy and the careers of its leading figures. [more]
The Bronze Nights
The failure of forced Europeanization and the birth of defensive nationalist democracy in Estonia
The EU accession process over, writes Tonis Saarts, Estonia's rightwing party politics has found a new rallying cry: the threat of Russia. [more]
The birth of the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia
The Bronze Soldier controversy in Tallinn in April 2007 was more a product of the fears of national conservative groups than an integration problem among Estonia's Russian-speaking minority, writes Martin Ehala. [more]
Counter-revolution against a counter-revolution
Eastern Europe today
In order to defend social relations before 1989 without losing face, the middle classes in former socialist countries portray the neoliberal destruction of the welfare state as the work of communists, writes G.M. Tamás. [more]
The geopolitics of memory
The controversy around the statue of the Soviet soldier in Tallinn in April 2007 provided a striking demonstration that memory politics is less about the communist past than about future political and economic hegemony on the European continent. [more]
The reluctant anthropologist
An interview with Maurice Bloch
"Anti-anthropologist" Maurice Bloch talks in interview about the abuse of anthropological expertise by developmental ecologists; about the contradictions of "collective memory"; and about whether anthropologists can address "life's big questions". [more]
Literary perspectives: Estonia
Waiting for the Great Estonian Novel
While the Great Estonian Novel has yet to be written, the range of fiction in Estonia is wide enough to serve as an indicator of the post-communist country's hopes and fears, anxieties and obsessions. writes the editor of "Vikerkaar". [Russian version added] [more]
Anyone at home?
In pursuit of one's own shadow
Zinovy Zinik traces the history of the shadow as metaphor for exile through Evgeni Shwartz's play "The Shadow" back to earlier fables by Hans Christian Andersen and Adelbert von Chamisso. The sum effect: a web of émigré biographies and fictions spanning two centuries. [more]
Incompatible memories?
The commemoration of WWII in France and Estonia
It is Estonia's commmunist past that distinguishes its commemoration of the Second World War from the French. Reconciliation of conflicting outlooks is possible among historians but remains wishful thinking in wider public opinion. [more]
Historicizing the traces of memory
François Dosse warns of the dangers of exaggerated commemorative events, contrasting them with the patient "work of memory". The ideas of Paul Ricoeur serve as a reminder of the historian's duties in the wider context of practical human activity. [more]
Politics of memory
The commemoration of the Franco-Prussian War, the Second World War, and the Algerian War are examples of how the nationalist construal of the past has given way to an internationalized model known as "presentism". [more]
Latvian history in the process of democratization
The Latvian example shows that the existence of competing interpretations of the past and debates about how these should be institutionalized are core parts of a society's transformation to democracy. [more]
Post-communist literatures: A postcolonial perspective
Post-Soviet narratives share the theme of arrested development found in postcolonial rewritings of the western European Bildungsroman, says Estonian literary critic Piret Peiker. [more]
Nationhood, modernity, democracy
Manifestations of national identity in modern Europe
The authority of states is increasingly eroded by the decline of party politics and effects of globalization. In this context, articulations of ethnic identity will find ever stronger expression. [more]
Why study literature?
Literary studies in Estonia has taken a crash course in twentieth-century theory. With mixed results, says the editor of cultural journal Vikerkaar. Now literary critics should stop baffling one another with jargon and aim at a wider readership. [more]
"Ach Europa"
Questions about a European public space and ambiguities of the European project
National media prove remarkably resilient to attempts to create a European public sphere, while transatlantic communication flows continue to dominate. What does this mean for the future of the much talked-about European public sphere? [more]
Energizing the European public space
There is only one path open to meeting the challenge posed by a heterogeneous collective of nationally oriented viewers, listeners, and readers: a European public space spearheaded by already established national media. [more]
Europe loses ground
Cultural media from the perspective of the Internet
European newspapers must finally pay attention to the power of the Internet. [more]
What composes a people's memory?
Estonia is in bad need of thinking about its national identity, says Jean-Pierre Minaudier. It draws solely upon its rural, "purely" Estonian roots and tends to blend out its German, Swedish, and communist past -- in contrast to the French memory, which integrates all its historic periods. [more]
Knowing the city
Interview with Rob Shields
Urban studies will help to shape the cities of tomorrow. [more]
Interview with Robert Darnton
From the 18th century enlightenment to the current revolution in Internet publishing. [more]
Estonian places of memory
The climax of Estonian national history: June 1919 and the battle of Wenden. [more]
An invisible wall
The hidden factor of Belarusian reality
Who is to blame for the political stagnation in Belarus? [more]
Globalization: for nature or against nature?
Jaan Kaplinski on advantages and disadvantages of globalization and his passionate commitment to rural life. [more]
Myth and philosophy
An Interview with Donald Phillip Verene
Donald Verene on the necessity of philosophy as a means to self-understanding. [more]
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