Articles

Gaby Zipfel, editor of “Mittelweg 36” and pioneer of Eurozine, came to the European Meeting of European Cultural Journals in 1992 expecting to be the only woman among seasoned male professionals. And so she was – but that didn’t matter.

That the questions surrounding woman, women, gender, or even sexual difference is found at the heart of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive work shows that they constitute an obstacle. Starting from the fact that the tradition in part structured and built itself on an exclusion of women and of the feminine, and deconstructing this history, he opens a space favourable to the coming of the other. By appealing to the voice of the other, he engages the perchance of a reorientation of discourse, history, and the tradition.

Contact and friendship with the publishers of European cultural journals has helped Samuel Abrahám, founding editor of “Kritika&Kontext”, realize his goal of publishing a liberal journal in post-socialist Slovakia.

Writer and journalist George Blecher’s first European meeting of Cultural journals was in Berlin in 1989. He has been coming back ever since – despite his being neither an editor nor a European.

Olivier Corpet was present at the European meetings of cultural journals from the very start. Writing in 1986, the founding editor of “La Revue des Revues” reported on a movement that was steadily gaining momentum.

For Walter Famler, editor of the Viennese journal “Wespennest”, the European Meetings of Cultural Journals have been an inducement to carry on in the journals business – and an opportunity to pursue a variety of less official interests.

Antonin J. Liehm, editor of the Czech magazine “Litérarní noviny” until 1968 and founder of “Lettre Internationale”, has been at the forefront of numerous attacks on the “provincialism of major cultures”. One theme has persisted throughout: the idea of an international magazine.

Chocolate cigarettes, AIDS, and homes for battered wives. Hanna Hallgren conducts a critical, poetical search for the European identity.

How would you bring up a child if you took the lessons from postmodernism literally? The young Swedish writers Athena Farrokhzad and Tova Gerge present a postmodern parenting guide, a matricide or an infantile declaration of passion. Please read it biographically.

Pär Thörn, one of Sweden’s most acclaimed young writers, studied the discussions between the executive managers on the web forum www.ledarna.se (“the executives”). The result of his copy-pasting was the following text.

Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled on authors’ love lives and penchant for designer handbags, yet there is more edifying material out there if one listens carefully. Hans Koppel’s satire of suburban lifestyle, for example, or the social critique of experimental writers Per Thörn and Ida Börjel. A new edition of Lars Gustafsson’s science fiction proves he is still in a league of his own, while Magnus Hedlund’s fiction exploring of the boundaries of human existence is so powerful that it seems inadequate to describe him as a “Swedish writer”.

“Laughter distorts the body and is testimony to lack of control” is one explanation for why there is almost no laughter in ancient Greek sculpture. The question was posed by Yannis Tsividis to archaeologists, art historians, classical philologists, and curators. Their replies raise as many questions as they answer.

Ukraine’s pro-western government coalition has collapsed after only one year. Viktor Yushchenko’s victory in the elections in September 2007, called after the pro-Russian “parliamentary coup”, represented an opportunity for the gradual improvement of democratic institutions, writes Mykola Riabchuk. The latest crisis is yet another symptom of the political “pluralism by default” that undermines Ukraine’s long-term democratic consolidation.

Having condemned hyper-sexualized culture, the American religious Right is now wildly pro-sex, as long as it is marital sex. By replacing the language of morality with the secular notion of self-esteem, repression has found its way back onto school curricula – to the detriment of girls and women in particular. “We are living through an assault on female sexual independence”, writes Dagmar Herzog.

The Bronze Soldier controversy in Tallinn in April 2007 encouraged the view that there is an integration problem among the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia. However the crisis was more a product of the fears of national conservative sections among the Russian and Estonian populations in the face of an increasing convergence of the aspirations of both groups, writes Martin Ehala.

How should the West react to Russia’s unrestrained pursuit of national interest? A policy of engagement defined as a focus on national interest, and a radical turn from value-based foreign policy to nineteenth century Realpolitik, is not a workable option for relations between Russia and the West, argues Ivan Krastev.