The notion that India has much to offer Europe spiritually but little politically has been prevalent for centuries. However, a history of multiculturalism is incomplete that does not include the Mughal emperor Akbar’s enlightened and inclusive view of society and religion, revived in the Indian constitution of 1950.
Articles
We don’t do information
The cultural journal’s perspective
Ever since the 2008 crisis, cultural journals have been facing increasing financial, political and market pressures. Ann Ighe reviews the issues affecting Eurozine partner journal editors who met funding representatives on what became the eve of European COVID-19 lockdowns.
(Im)Possible solidarities
Transnational feminist politics and the erotics of resistance
Can street protests communicate justice for all? Political theorist Nikita Dhawan criticizes global movements where only ‘certain individuals are well positioned to express their aspirations’.
Choosing silence
Protest and performativity
Some musicians choose not to perform in support of others. Others do so to highlight their own plight. But their silence needs an audience: ‘For disruption to work, there must be witnesses with thwarted expectations.’
Recommended topics
The body and the meat-grinder
Cultural representations of war disablement
For the physically disabled, curiosity and passing glances can seem to stigmatize and mark out. Is our gaze yet another tool of oppression? Can we find words for injury that do not wound the injured? Do texts and images help? Piotr Krupiński calls for more voices to be heard.
Textiles are more than just yarn – they are memory. Migrants pack them in their bags to recreate the homes they have lost. Burcu Sahin explores the timeless language encoded in stitching.
Commoning the city
Reinventing togetherness
Instead of uniformity, commoning urban spaces offers an inclusive life, open to differences. Through self-managed initiatives, the ‘right to the city’ becomes the right to collectively produce it through creative cooperation.
Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in Ireland’s general election in February ended the century-long dominance of the ‘Civil War parties’ in the Republic. On the left, the victory was celebrated as providing a ‘mandate for change’. But Sinn Féin’s image problem remains an obstacle. Unjustly so?
Eurozine review
Language and loneliness
O’r Pedwar Gwynt 1/2020
Ekphrasis on the edge of catastrophe: why literary descriptions of works of art allow the world to reappear; people of the sea, people of the land: on the cosmopolitanism of sailors; and what AI means for the Welsh language.
A voice to teachers
Czas Kultury 1/2020
Why the controversy around education reforms in Poland is about much more than pay; on the historical role of nursery-school teachers; Polish nationalism’s attitude to literary ‘nest-foulers’; and how dark secrets constitute community.
Cautious predictions
Letras Libres 5/2020
Why, post-pandemic, we will need a new debate about the welfare state we want; Marxist responses to the crisis between ‘zombie apocalypse’ and ‘viral new dawn’; and why democracy relinquished is democracy reclaimed with difficulty.
Focal points
Like sustenance and sex, society can’t be reproduced without shelter. That is why today’s housing crisis is so central. Contributions to this focal point look at both the winners and the losers of the crisis: the people profiting from the financialization of housing and those reimagining the right to the city.
The technoliberationism that accompanied the early days of the web now belongs to myth. Deleting Facebook is the new rebellion. Surveillance capitalism is the buzzword. Regulating is radical. Technology critique today starts with Big Tech’s power.
Disinformation is not the cause of illiberalism but its medium. The great majority of it is home grown. Thinking about ‘what to do’ about disinformation means understanding information as a public good. Abandoning a purely reactive strategy will stand democracies in better stead.
When the Cold War came to a sudden end thirty years ago, the two halves of Europe declared in unison their intention to overcome the legacy of division. Today, the hopes and ambitions of those heady days may seem unrealistic. But is talk of a new East–West divide justified?
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.