‘The novel enjoys a freedom that no other literary genre enjoys. This is a privilege, and perhaps also a guarantee of its sustainability, on condition that we know how to make the most of that freedom.’ The novelist Javier Cercas talks to ‘Symbol’ about experimentation and the genre, history and fiction, and his influences in the Spanish language tradition.
Digital computation is engendering a new common world and new configurations of reality and power. But this ubiquitous, instantaneous world is confronted by the old world of bodies and distances. Technology is mobilized in order to create an omnipresent border that sequesters those with rights from those without them.
Opening up urban spaces can result in ugly and difficult sites, but inclusion is more important than beauty. A city should not be user-friendly. It should be a place where you learn how to deal with a difficult situation and with other people – that is what makes a city really open.
Every so often an article gets under your skin. Reading it, one is both exhilarated and unsettled. It is something that cannot be ‘unread’. Eurozine’s latest editorial introduces the highlights of the past two weeks.
Two years after global economy crashed in 2008, austerity politics swung into action. Using Greece as its example, a transatlantic alliance of right-wing fearmongers, conservative political entrepreneurs and centrist fiscal hawks abandoned stimulus and instead turned the screw.
After getting into a fight, a homeless man collapsed on a pavement in Rome; a few days later he died in hospital. Neither the police, the judiciary nor the media seemed interested in the case. In a country where five million people live in absolute poverty and fifty thousand are homeless, it was symptomatic of how Italy treats its needy, writes Giuseppe Rizzo.
The internet is, as a medium, fundamentally changing our conception of the political. By removing speech from its social context, it has blurred our sense of the unsayable; by uncoupling us from our real-life community, it has made us shameless; and by fetishizing fact, it has undermined the legitimacy of shared reason. All help explain the extraordinary success of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump’s achievements thus far have been rhetorical. But whether Democrats can take advantage of his weakness remains doubtful. Following the longest government shutdown in US history, Trump is now threatening to declare a national emergency – a move dreaded by even his supporters.
‘Esprit’ re-reads Claude Lefort on disquieted democracy; ‘Mittelweg 36’ analyses authority and its opponents; ‘Merkur’ fears for German parliamentarism; ‘dérive’ surveys the urbanist precursors of 1968; and ‘Vagant’ considers nostalgic Russians and melancholy Norwegians.
‘L’Espill’ asks whether democracy would be better off without the EU; ‘Ord&Bild’ re-reads China’s Cultural Revolution; ‘Syn og Segn’ seeks sustainable solutions for Norwegian architecture; ‘Vikerkaar’ explores credit and debt beyond economics; ‘Res Publica Nowa’ discusses the parlous state of Polish NGOs; and ‘Symbol’ talks to Javier Cercas about the novel.
‘New Eastern Europe’ reflects on public intellectuals; ‘Letras Libres’ portrays Mexico’s new historian-president; ‘Osteuropa’ warns of confessional polarization in Ukraine; ‘Index on Censorship’ reports on birthing regimes and reproductive rights; ‘Esprit’ is cautious of the campaign against post-truth; and ‘Revue Projet’ forms new critiques of consumerism.
Internet technologies are being used in ways that raise far-reaching questions about the resilience and sustainability of democratic systems. And they have fundamentally impacted on understandings of the political, transforming democracies from within.
Cultural journals have played a crucial role in the formation of the public spheres in Europe and beyond. Looking at their history helps understand where they are headed. A Eurozine focal point in collaboration with the Working Group on Periodicals Research.
Fake news has become big news. Post-truth is the new paradigm. Respect for facticity is becoming, by all accounts, a commercial anachronism. And behind it all, the spectre of an illiberal international waging ‘info-war’ against western democracies.
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, this focal point – in cooperation with the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) – explores the new challenges facing the young democracy and its place in Europe.
Journals met in Vienna for the 29th time: 2018 was a twofold anniversary: 35 years since the first European Meeting of Cultural Journals in 1983, and 20 years since the foundation of Eurozine as an online publication
The housing crisis sweeping across Europe concerns the majority of millennials. Unaffordable rents and prices raise a question about the actual purpose of cities. Read a compilation of our articles on urbanism, housing and cities.
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.
