What should European politicians be focusing on in the forthcoming year? Europe needs to adjust to an increasingly multipolar world order, under pressure from US retrenchment and threatened military withdrawal, Russian cyber and trench warfare, and China’s technological dominance.
Crises tend to correlate with intense literary activity, but not necessarily with intellectual perspicacity. Our picks of 2025 have clearsightedness in abundance – as do all the articles Eurozine has had the privilege to publish in the past year.
The Dayton Agreement put an end to the war in Bosnia and laid the grounds for today’s divided state. But what appeared as the triumph of the liberal order had been preceded by three years of political deadlock, with western policy driven primarily by media coverage of the atrocities.
Despite the uncertainty of recovery from ongoing war, Ukrainians are confronting Russian destruction and de-construction with daily acts of reconstruction. Marginalized landscapes, histories and stories are being rediscovered through a grassroots resistance founded on loss, where language and naming reclaim cultural foundations.
Perceptions of Chinese tech are changing: ‘Made in China’, once synonymous with cheap, replica production, has morphed into ‘Cool China’, showcasing glamorous hypermodernism. Silicon Valley’s growing reverence for its rivals illustrates the US’s competitive rush and its autocratic turn. But avant-garde Chinese cultural narratives no longer seek to reflect the West.
Is Charlie Kirk’s assassination-turned-martyrdom unofficially disestablishing the US constitutional clause against the government forming a national religion? And how astute would it be for diverse American sects to align their religious beliefs with Trump’s call for retribution? Even Pope Leo XIV has condemned the administration’s ‘unchristian’ policies.
We live in a world where the borders between one language and another, between reality and non-reality, between the human and the non-human, are being denied. As a reminder of difference and an openness to encounter, translation can be an antidote to the nihilism of borderlessness. [Slovenian version added]
Throughout history, Belarusians have turned to their rich folklore traditions in harsh times. What may appear as a period of cultural stagnation is often a moment of resilience and creative revival. And the current wave of Belarusian folk texts, music and dance is no exception.
A combination of geopolitics and economic pressure is weakening the political will behind the European Green Deal, with the EPP leading the deregulatory offensive. Forests in particular risk becoming collateral victims of a rightwing U-turn. (Lithuanian version added)
The sharp drop in support for Ukraine in Italy has less to do with the traditionally Russia-friendly economic policy of the Italian right, and more with the anti-Americanism rooted in the political culture of the Italian left, which now articulates itself as pacifism.
Putin’s crack-down on dissent at the beginning of his third term was a watershed moment for Russian journalism. While the majority of critical reporters were forced to leave, those that remained morphed into regime propagandists. How to explain their political subservience?
Whether billionaires or bankrupts, Americans who pursue excess risk isolation: the national obsession with amassing dollars leaves tycoons alienated and destitute socialites pitied. D. H. Lawrence’s short story of fanatical money-making points to the hallucination of riches bringing love and happiness.
[Welsh version added]
While civilizational rhetoric in the West reflects a sense of threat, globally it is recognition-seeking. Common to all civilizationalisms, however, is a blurring of the distinction between authoritarianism and democracy.
As propagandists of a patriarchal order, tradwives perpetrate harm. But harm is being enacted on tradwives too. So why do some feminists see tradwifery as self-empowerment?
[Welsh version added]
The glorification of storytelling to define who we are or save the planet induces aversion in some: philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the obsession ‘story-selling’. Do digitally packaged stories restrict how we perceive our often rambling, fragmentary lives? Could alternatives be found in open, porous and incomplete narratives, even when confronting death?
The 33rd European Meeting of Cultural Journals will take place from 7–9 November 2025 in the Slovenian–Italian cities of Nova Gorica/Gorizia, a ‘borderless’ European Capital of Culture in 2025. The conference is co-organized with Razpotja magazine.