Eurozine Editorial

Regional differences seem to be the common denominator between the players of Project Europe. In an attempt to understand how the European vote is formed, we put some of the underlying issues on the map.

Few articles in the recent past can have been vilified so heavily by so many intelligent people than Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The end of history’. Now, thirty years on, the article is worth re-reading. Because, unless one is nostalgic for an orthodox version of dialectical materialism, it is hard to find anything to strongly disagree with. On the contrary.

‘A battle of generosity’ has broken out as the world watched the Notre Dame of Paris burn.The devastation was narrated live in the style of a disaster movie. Self-appointed champions are now rushing to take lead roles: that of the main donor, or the politician from afar who knew better what should have been done.

How we mark historical anniversaries says as much, if not more about our perception of the present as it does about the past. This familiar axiom has interesting results when we apply it to how the revolutions of ’89 have been remembered in each decade since.

Born in the ’80s in eastern Europe, I grew up among unkept promises which everybody refused to be accountable for. We were told we were going to be free, and later this alleged freedom was used as an argument to shut us up when criticizing political misrepresentation.

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.

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.

What started thirty-five years ago as an informal meeting of European editors became the basis for Eurozine, founded in 1998 as an online cultural journal and editorial network. To celebrate this double anniversary, Eurozine has published a print anthology spanning the project chronologically, thematically, generically and geographically.

Cultural journals have played a crucial role in the formation of the public spheres in Europe and beyond. Yet their future form and sustainability is by no means clear. Looking at journals’ history helps understand where they are headed. Introducing a new Eurozine focal point in collaboration with the Working Group on Periodicals Research.

Themes discussed at the 28th European Meeting of Cultural Journals, held in Tartu, Estonia, 20-22 October 2017.

Against the background of civil protest in Ukraine, the production of the public sphere was the subject of three days of debate at this year’s Eurozine conference, held in Oslo from 29 November to 2 December, and co-organized and hosted by the Norwegian Association of Journals and Eurozine partner journal Syn og Segn.