The classic liberal distinction between war and peace has expired. Markets have learnt the lesson that gut reactions matter, but political institutions of liberal democracy are still lagging behind. What we need is a politics of empathy, William Davies argues.
Rightwing literature reappeared in Poland after 1989, having been absent from cultural life during communism. Since 2010, political polarization has caused its significance and visibility to increase. But what defines rightwing literature in Poland? A typology of its motifs and genres, from anti-communism to anti-modernism, historical revisionism to sci-fi.
Index on Censorship looks at machismo as a political category. Resisting the suffocation of dissent in the era of the internet means standing up ‘for the principles of freedom and democracy all the time, not just when they affect you’, comments editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley.
The Orbán regime’s ‘war on gender’ and scapegoating of scholarly dissent rely on long-lasting popular animosity toward independent intellectuals. Unfortunate patters of academic withdrawal, dating back to state socialist times, make it even harder to resist populist pressure.
The Conservative victory in the UK election was driven by hatred of a broken political process inflamed by disinformation and media cynicism, argues Adam Ramsay of openDemocracy. Britain’s prime minister made politics awful, then asked people to vote it away.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline based a literary reputation on transgression. He was a prototypical troll, contemptuous of the truth, indefatigable in saying the unsayable, and couching his hatred in irony. And like trolls, he poses a dilemma: engage or ignore?
In response to political pressure, digital platforms are abandoning their laissez-faire approach to content and allying with legacy media to provide ‘reliable’ news and information. But this is the wrong way to create the conditions in which disinformation becomes vulnerable to challenge.
Can we rethink bots and algorithms so that they become tools that work for us, instead of an invisible, oppressive system that tries to deceive us? How can we redesign the ‘social’ in a way that doesn’t allow trolls to permanently disrupt our thinking and behaviour?
Index on Censorship looks at machismo as a political category. Resisting the suffocation of dissent in the era of the internet means standing up ‘for the principles of freedom and democracy all the time, not just when they affect you’, comments editor-in-chief Rachael Jolley.
In Flemish journal rekto:verso: post-digitality and the new normal, invisible labour and the internet; gaming as public sphere; and the radical self-absorption of Instapoets.
In Welsh journal O’r Pedwar Gwynt: Iris Murdoch in Russia, the lessons of J.M. Coetzee, narcissism and politics, and stories from both sides of the Berlin Wall.
The focal point presents the findings of the project ‘Eurasia in Global Dialogue’ being carried out at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM). It is edited by Clemena Antonova at the 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 and was edited by Tatiana Zhurzhenko. Further texts have been contributed by journals in the Eurozine network.
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.
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 the division. Today, the hopes and ambitions of those heady days can be viewed as unrealistic at best. But is talk of a new East–West divide justified? A new Eurozine focal point asks what happened to ’89 in the intervening years.
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.
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.
