Articles

With German-bashing now firmly established as a European Volkssport, Dublin Review of Books editor Enda O’Doherty turns to the semi-barbarous German language; only to find that in the right hands, or expressed through the right vocal cords, German is indeed a very beautiful language.

As part of a special issue of “Springerin” on anti-humanism, Timothy Druckrey reflects on the role of apparatus in a system that incorporates and monetizes virtually every form of transaction via omnivorous detection algorithms that mine personal data.

The first printed newspaper appeared 150 years after Gutenberg, as the postal service replaced the messenger and news began to spread faster. Yet the format developed slowly, as Müller shows in a history of print media that concludes with the Internet age.

The suggestion that the division of the social product is as urgent a problem as its overall growth has led to political economy returning to both history and current politics, argues Charles S. Maier. High time, then, to analyse deprivation, wealth and inequality on a world scale.

As part of a special issue of “Host” on attitudes to murder in real-life and literary contexts, the American writer David Nemec reveals a sub-plot to a notorious unsolved murder case in which real life remains stubbornly resistant to fiction.

Contemporary architecture seems to have forgotten about the walls as a protection against external heat; they heavily rely on air conditioners instead, which not only use extreme amounts of electricity but also create urban heat islands, thus worsening the microclimate. A better solution is to revisit traditional architectural solutions, such as the Tulou roundhouses, which can inspire less demanding contemporary technologies.

Class has not disappeared. Instead, a more fragmented global class structure has emerged alongside a more flexible open labour market. This prompts Guy Standing to forge a new vocabulary capable of describing class relations in the global market system of the twenty-first century.

The minimalist stories and comics of Etgar Keret have won many readers in Israel, Poland, Hungary, China, the United States and a dozen other countries. In late October 2012, Keret visited Riga, where he met with the readers of his book of short stories, The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories. Later he entertained a smaller audience at the residence of the Israeli ambassador.

Nicholas Bradbury made his literary debut this year with the novel “Market Farm”, a reworking of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” for the free market era. He talks here about influences for his satirical take on the current financial crisis and potential grounds for hope for the future.

Social movements give validity to the rearguard, to the intellectual construction of a model that resists both attacks and criminalisation, writes Juan Luis Sánchez. And as hundreds of people continue to be made homeless every day in Spain, the demonstrations can be expected to continue.

Today, the same arguments once used against Jews, and then against South Asian and Caribbean immigrants, are now raised against Muslims and east Europeans. However, Kenan Malik finds some comfort in reviewing the facts of the matter. He then tackles the illusions.

Harsh measures imposed on Cypriot political and financial authorities to address bank failures reveal, once again, that the entire architecture of the EU is in tatters. The geopolitics surrounding the Greek Cypriot crisis is pulling the EU further apart and into the unknown.

If millions of students in Turkey were offered cultural journals, it could transform the sector. But culture is threatened, not least by a crude desire to secure popularity, argues Turgay Fisekçi of “Sözcükler”. The result: sclerosis and, in the end, the same writers appearing in the same journals.

Even if journals are interested in current affairs, they should go to the root of the matter and present alternatives, writes Turgay Özçelik of “Kültür Mafyasi” – a journal that began online and just launched a print version: “We need to shed light on what mainstream media choose not to see”.