Articles

Seventy years after the end of World War II, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko, the fight for hegemony in Europe continues – disguised as a conflict of historical master narratives. The beginning of the current round of memory wars in the post-Soviet space can be dated back to 2005, when the sixtieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany turned into a loyalty test for the politicians of neighbouring countries.

In a world where the natural and the unnatural emerge as shifting configurations of matter and meaning, cultural theory can and should expand its frame of reference beyond what the “natural sciences” have left over, to embrace the spectrum of phenomena in which culture is cultivated.

To some, writes Sebastian Huempfer, a republication of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” symbolizes a triumph of liberty over hatred. To others, it demonstrates how much forbearance liberal democracies demand from their most vulnerable citizens and how much space they give to their own enemies.

In the event that the West musters even a semblance of unity in response to the destruction of eastern Ukraine, Mark N. Katz has some suggestions as to possible courses of action. Not that any of these can be considered in isolation from Vladimir Putin’s possible goals.

Four activist scholars report on the multi-billion euro Belgrade Waterfront development in Serbia. As the government’s deficit reaches an all-time high and radical cuts in public financing are being forced through, this is a project, they write, that looks like economic suicide.

Siberia survives as a single name for a territory covering two-thirds of Russia. Yet it comprises well over a dozen regions, republics and territories. Look at how the borders of Siberia were defined, writes Mikhail Rozhanskiy, and you grasp the imperial nature of Russia’s social space.

If Spain did not have an agonistic democracy before, it does now. Podemos was only founded in 2014. But following its rise, a war over meanings, resources and power has broken out, writes Manuel Arias Maldonado. So what exactly are the generals thinking?

For many European countries even to start thinking about Russia as a threat, 20 years after the Cold War ended, requires a paradigm shift. So says Anne Applebaum, as she sees political leaders who made their careers in conditions of European peace flounder in the current military crisis.

In an article first published prior to the 19 April capsizing of a wooden fishing boat and consequent drowning of around 800 migrants in the Mediterranean, Judith Sunderland and Bill Frelick warn about the EU’s preference for border enforcement over the creation of safe, legal channels into the EU.

When a group of claimants in the UK took on Google for invasion of privacy, they had little idea that the case would become a landmark in the fight to tame the Internet giant’s intrusion into our lives on the Web, writes Judith Vidal-Hall.

Parading under the banner of a common front for freedom, governments worldwide have embarked on a security clampdown whose political fallout could be more damaging than the threat it seeks to banish, writes Simon Davies.

As Walter Benjamin once remarked, “every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution”. A statement that events in Ukraine after the Orange revolution go some way toward confirming, writes Mykola Riabchuk; not that a sudden reversal of recent trends remains out of the question.

Russian responses to the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris reveal the contradictions of political and social trends in today’s Russia, writes Nikolay Mitrokhin; with the most dramatic response being the unprecedented political killing of leading opposition politician Boris Nemtsov.

A highly individualist identity politics is clearly one of the mainstays of the culture of the new capitalism. But, asks Jacob Mukherjee, could this also be precisely what constitutes a barrier to the formation of a collective political subject in the first place?

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” However, what if remaining silent is unacceptable? Then Wittgenstein’s famous dictum no longer helps, writes Stefan Auer. Then one narrates stories, even cinematic ones.