Those who stand up against human rights violations face high stakes. When the Ukrainian Helsinki Group openly challenged the Soviet Union’s poor track record despite the 1975 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, young dissidents soon became political prisoners. The price for being a non-conformist was steep yet encouraged solidarity, paving the way to Euromaiden.
Articles
The horrifying right to one’s own context
Seven rules of culture warfare
Anybody can become a cultural warrior, even unwillingly. With common grounds diminishing and liberals and conservatives dead-set against each other, is the Left doomed to fail?
Macron’s vision of a liberal state quickly gave way to states of emergency and the organization of private life around the pandemic. Far from fading into the background, state power is omnipresent in France, boding ill for the presidential election campaign.
Surviving a life lived on the edge can be down to chance. And only those lucky enough to look back will be able to slowly piece together the sequence of events. The personal narrative that results, when honest, is nevertheless remarkably recognizable.
Recommended topics
Trumpism treated the US constitution as means to an end: the assertion of white supremacy. But to respond by venerating the constitution is to misunderstand Trump’s anti-elitist appeal. If the US constitution is to be claimed for democracy, it must be democratized itself.
An art exhibition conjures up the silent spectre of the Holocaust in Hungary to explore apparently incompatible recollections, confront contradictory perspectives and engage with conflicting narratives.
Many of the early twentieth-century champions of eugenics were social democrats and feminists. All shared a belief that science and technocracy could re-engineer society for the better. Attempts to institutionalize eugenics coincided with the emergence of welfare states and infrastructure to monitor the ‘feebleminded’.
Many women’s experiences suggest obstetric violence is commonplace, from the overuse of caesarean sections to the risks of vaginal delivery. Putting women at the centre of decision-making about their own bodies ahead of ideological or financial medical priorities is imperative.
Eurozine review
A key country
Osteuropa 4–6/2021
Osteuropa focuses on the ‘key country’ of the Czech Republic: with articles on the state of democracy and the transformation of the party system as mirror of wider processes. Also, an overview of a thousand years of religious history, and the new-old national self-image in film.
Ankara on its own terms
Varlık 10/2021
‘Varlık’ devotes an issue to Ankara, the deprecated capital: including articles on Republican theatre in the 1930s; the political symbolism of Atatürk monuments; and urban history in Anafartalar Street.
The domination of dilettantes
Kultūros barai 9/2021
In ‘Kultūros barai’: why the pandemic has brought out the worst in Lithuania’s politicians; whether there is such a thing as an individual common good; and how the Jewish history of Žagarė reaches into the present.
Focal points
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.
Is the term ‘fascism’ applicable to an authoritarian politician like Trump? Does the label ‘anti-fascist’ gloss over crucial controversies surrounding the term? And is Weimar a useful comparison when thinking about anti-democratic tendencies in the US, in the EU and globally? A new focal point in collaboration with Public Seminar.
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.