Articles

Poland’s ‘Holocaust law’ criminalizing any claim that Poles shared responsibility for Nazi crimes has caused major rifts with its foreign allies, above all Israel and the US. Yet the international indignation is also selective, writes André Liebich.

This paper attempts to analyse the methods of organising the work and life of participants in contemporary circulation of the arts (artists, curators, critics, freelancers) which I explain with the use of the category of structural opportunism.

Poland’s predominantly state-owned forests cover a third of the country’s territory and are heavily endowed with national mythology. Anthropologist Agata Agnieszka Konczal explores connections between Poland’s forests and collective memory, and the role of Polish foresters as ‘guardians of the nation’.

The city of Matera will be a European Capital of Culture in 2019. At the heart of a deprived area that was once a byword for southern Italian poverty, it has undergone major changes since 1945, thanks to government intervention and growing tourism. Mariavaleria Mininni looks at how its prospects continue to change.

Russian theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov, arrested in August 2017 for alleged fraud, is the victim of the cultural backlash following Putin’s re-election in 2012, writes Marina Davydova. His case is a lens through which to understand Russia’s problems.

Between post-human globalization and nationalist withdrawal, the ecological question pushes us towards the earthly ground. Traditionally rejected as reactionary, ‘the question of belonging to a particular soil’ has suddenly become urgent for the Left. An interview with Bruno Latour (1947–2022).

The implicit link between immigration and crime has found its way into the political mainstream in Europe, write lawyers Laetitia Sanchez Incera and Maria Vittoria Salvatori. Safeguarding the individual becomes a challenge to the ‘politics of fear’.

Democrats have forgotten whatever promises they made to listen to their opponents, establishment Republicans have been left aghast, and not even Trump’s core support has seen much in the way of reward. As Trump’s star begins to wane, the polarization will increase, predicts George Blecher.

Rapid advances in machine learning have prompted much debate about the sinister implications of ‘black-box’ algorithms. Yet fears about the opacity of computer code are as old as software itself, writes Kathrin Passig. Indeed, black boxes are all around us, not just inside our computers…

This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) was marked by a row over a new Polish law that would criminalize any suggestion that Poland was responsible for Nazi atrocities. In a prescient speech delivered just days earlier, historian Ferenc Laczó observes that the Europeanization of Holocaust remembrance still has a long way to go.

Following the first wave of the #MeToo movement, a new phase of reflection has set in. Here, four authors and journal editors from the US and Europe assess #MeToo’s achievements and potential, but also its limitations in changing a culture of sexual harassment.

After controversy at last year’s book fairs in Gothenburg and Frankfurt over the participation of far-right publishers and the question of who was – and who should be – allowed to attend, ‘Index on Censorship’ asks four thinkers and decision-makers to explain their stance on the issue.

Throughout its recent political upheavals, Ukraine has looked to Europe as a beacon of liberal democracy. Yet Europe has been unwilling to reciprocate, as it did with other countries in the socialist bloc. This has held back not only Ukrainian development, argues Andrii Portnov.

A battle for the future shape of Russia’s education system is under way. Not only is the Kremlin increasing its control over what it considers the correct version of the country’s history, there are also signs of a gradual ideological turn towards promoting the glorification of Joseph Stalin.