Articles

What role should Norway play on the world stage? Le Monde diplomatique (Oslo) met the Norwegian foreign minister at the beginning of the new year to discuss his vision for Norway’s foreign policy. “I want to seize the opportunities where Norway can really make a difference,” says Gahr Støre. He emphasises that he has no desire to politicise Norway’s position as an “energy nation”, but points out that parts of Norway’s foreign policy are nonetheless based on “taking care of traditional interests” and that the interests of Norwegian industry provide opportunities to influence authoritarian regimes. He stresses that Norway cannot use its oil wealth to create a better world, but that the international political development and the climate changes pose major dilemmas. “The international economic system needs to be changed,” says Støre.

“It is almost as though freedom and flexibility is being designed out of the Internet, where previously they were essential.” Gus Hosein of Privacy International on how the Internet is turning into a data goldmine for governments that want to keep track of their citizens.

The Turkish government’s move to lift the ban on headscarves in universities is part of an ongoing discussion on a new constitution that has the potential to decide the country’s future and would potentially introduce democratic change. With a view to EU membership, too, the constitution must find a post-Kemalist form.

The controversy surrounding Benedict XVI’s speech in Regensburg in 2006 centred around what Muslims claimed was his misrepresentation of Islam. However, as Olivier Abel points out, the Pope’s criticism was directed less at Islam than at Protestantism, with its twofold spectres of sectarian utopia and consumer individualism. Nevertheless, in asserting that his Church alone was following the right path, the Pope was simply fulfilling his role: the real scandal was the way the speech, with its anti-rationalism, was warmly received by so many intellectuals.

How does the European Union handle the relationships between confessional faiths and the unified body that it is striving to bring about? Being inherently pluralistic, it is incumbent upon the EU to develop a new form of secularisation.

Impoverished German children dream of the USA; one Greek person in four is behind with their most basic bills; sixty per cent of the poor in Romania have outdoor toilets. Cracks are appearing in Europe’s beloved image of itself as the egalitarian alternative to the United States, writes Per Wirtén.

When “stand-up philosopher” Slavoj Zizek calls for “repeating Lenin” or praises Robespierre’s defence of terror, some observers might be tempted to ask whether his entire intellectual oeuvre is not just some kind of act. No, says John Clark. “It’s not just a pose; it’s a position.”

The first victory of populism in Bulgaria, argues Svetoslav Malinov, was the rejection of the conservative constitution by liberals shortly after independence in 1879. In the contemporary period, it has been the rhetoric of former tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who became Bulgarian prime minister in 2001, that set the precedent for the rightwing populism currently purveyed by Volen Siderov, leader of the Ataka party. Despite Siderov, xenophobia is not a dominant feature of Bulgarian populism. Instead, populism in Bulgaria feeds off two phenomena: “a pure hatred of political parties” and the constant emphasis in the public discourse on an alleged contrast between ordinary people and the political elite. This goes so far as to make the elite subservient to the people, an attitude for which Malinov coins the term “radical demophilia”.

Toni Negri discusses the significance of urban space for new forms of opposition. The city, he says, is where the “political diagonal” intersects the “biopolitical diagram” – where people’s relation to power is most pronounced. Negri’s interlocutors are involved in exploring “soft” forms of activism, urban projects that create collectivities on micro, neighbourhood levels. Negri is critical of “soft” forms, however, preferring rupture and revolution over accumulation and gradual change.

David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries have attracted massive audiences around the world, but have sometimes failed to endear themselves to academics. Laurie Taylor turns the microscope on to the man who’s brought us life on earth, in the freezer, under the oceans, and in the undergrowth.

Press and publishing concentration in France is extraordinarily high. Allegedly, French ownership sees off foreign competition; in fact, the owning corporations are international. Media monopolization is not only a French issue, however: throughout Europe and the US, profitability has become the bottom line. So why is there barely any protest from within the sector itself?

This month sees the English publication of Imre Kértesz’s little-known novella “Detective Story”. Kértesz’s translator Tim Wilkinson introduces the work and, placing it in the context of Kértesz’s oeuvre, embarks on some detective work of his own.

The works of the baroque sculptor known as Master Pinzel are famous and plentiful. But little is known about his life. Perhaps looking at the time in which he lived can give us a better picture of the person behind the art.

The faults in Europe’s universalism, especially when confronting its colonial history, have nurtured a variety of critical perspectives in the West. Talking to French magazine Esprit, theorist Achille Mbembe says that postcolonial thinking looks so original because it developed in a transnational, eclectic vein from the very start. This enabled it to combine the anti-imperialist tradition with the fledgling subaltern studies and a specific take on globalization, he says.

Now that “normalization” has come to seem a fact in post-communist eastern Europe, it might be asked why the word “normal” was so close to people’s hearts. How does its meaning in the context of transition compare to western usages of the word? A Begriffsgeshichte of the concept of “normality” reveals meanings that are multiple, historically changeable, contradictory, even oxymoronic.