Should Russian literature be held accountable for creating a nationalist mood capable of inciting war on Ukraine? Calls for a halt on distribution include all works, whether colonialist or not. An Estonian perspective, built over five days in Ukraine, asks whether the Russian state is responsible for cancelling its own culture.
Articles
As the shock of war gives way to reflection, Ukrainian public discourse has turned to questions of the past, present and future: When did Russia’s war on Ukraine start? What is it doing to society? And how will it end?
War becomes the twin of communication: the development of media has not only changed how warfare is reported, but also how it’s fought. The working rule of the warriors is to spread strategic information and disinformation at every instant. And media workers are culpable too, for abusing the genre of breaking news reporting to magnetise audiences and advertisers, doing it at a great symbolic cost.
The performing arts suffered a crisis of identity during initial pandemic lockdowns. Enclosure replaced gestures of intimacy. Nomadic artistic practice, no longer able to physically engage with linguistic, geographic and social borders, faced new ‘territory’. Itinerant artists, used to constant travel, started thinking more locally.
Recommended topics
The names of us
How Russians are destroying national diversity in Ukraine
Afina, Usein, Maria, Jasim – a Greek Roumean, a Crimean Tatar, a Swede and a Turkish-Meskhetian, all from Ukraine, all living on the edge – when the attack on nationals, labelled minorities, is life-threatening, calling out the names of those who are in danger recognizes their plight and diversity.
At times a safe-haven, at others prison-like: when COVID-19 lockdowns restricted entire lives to the home all around the globe, perceptions of everyday space changed. But do our relationships with enclosed living, especially during quarantine, reflect pre-existing meanings of intimacy ascribed by psychologists and artists to the home?
The ‘cuir’ turn
Resignifying mutual aid in the struggle against trans necropolitics
Celebrating the start of LGBTQIA+ Pride 2022: in Brazil trans activists rearticulate language and identity, taking the political campaign trail to greater visibility, recognition and a sense of belonging, helping save lives through collective action and knowing disobedience.
Midnight dispatch
Night workers’ voices from the UK and Romania
Though essential to the functioning of key infrastructures and services, night workers face additional layers of precarity to their daytime counterparts. Their testimonies from London and Oradea convey a deep sense of insecurity, exacerbated by Brexit and the pandemic.
Eurozine review
In defence of Günter Wallraff
Merkur 2/2022
In ‘Merkur’: why Günter Wallraff’s 1985 bestseller ‘The Lowest of the Low’ appears scandalous by the standards of today’s racial justice discourse – but remains absolutely worth reading for its searing analysis of the exploitation of labour in wealthy democracies.
Dim prospects for European stability
New Eastern Europe 1–2/2022
In ‘New Eastern Europe’: why the West should not be fooled by Russia’s Cold War revivalism; whether Ukraine can turn the tables; and where now after the ruins of Ostpolitik?
Lotman’s signs
Akadeemia 2/2022
‘Akadeemia’ applies Lotmanian semiotics to today’s societal concerns. Including a holistic view of digital fragmentation, integrating ecology into the cultural sphere and creatively rethinking educational practices.
Focal points
With new variants mutating around the globe, COVID-19 is no longer a novelty. The pathogen is seemingly here to stay, inducing social, political and economic turmoil. This is not a crisis to emerge from quickly. It is a prelude to further emergencies linked to climate change-related transformations and environmental destruction. How will societies deal with its tangible effects? And which issues might be perilously left by the wayside? In this new focal point, supported by the European Cultural Foundation’s Culture of Solidarity programme, Eurozine and partners take stock of this public health crisis and its accompanying crises of values and meaning.
Traditionally, a young woman used to be presented with a bundle of goods to send her off with to adult life. Today’s bottom drawers aren’t necessarily tied to marriages, nor are they strictly material. Yet, the bundle one leaves the house with is as important as ever. In this focal point, we take stock of the notions our foremothers presented us with: women’s ideas and achievements that define our understanding of power, gender and violence, bodies, connection and agency.
The focal point presents the findings of the project ‘Eurasia in Global Dialogue’ being carried out at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM). The focal point is an extension of the earlier focal point, ‘Russia in Global Dialogue’ that ran in Eurozine and at the IWM from 2012–2018.
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, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.