Boris Vezjak

Boris Vezjak looks into Peter Handke’s controversial Nobel Prize using the analogy of a pizza: whether one should only care if it tastes good and not about the morals of the chef. Isolationists only refer to tastiness, while holists’ criticisms don’t necessarily invalidate the award.

Philosophy: what is it good for? ‘It‘s complicated‘, says Dialogi editor Boris Vezjak, as he asks what can be done about a field of enquiry that seems so detached from the world.

Editors from the Eurozine network offer initial responses to the outcome of the European elections. First up are views from Bologna, Berlin and Maribor. As the Union itself seems less precarious than before the vote, new coalitions form to safeguard the climate on the one hand and nationalistic interests on the other.

Eurozine’s series of reports on national debates in Europe in the run-up to the EP elections continues. Views from Maribor, Vilnius and Paris suggest that, amidst the European ennui, the green shoots of grass roots democracy may be showing.

The success of a hardline nationalist in last month’s parliamentary election in Slovenia represents another advance for the forces of illiberalism in central and southern Europe. In alliance with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, European ‘illiberals’ are using vilification of the Other as a route to power, argues Boris Vezjak.

The protests of 2012 and 2013 in Slovenia seem to have drawn a blank. People did realize the urgent need for a different kind of politics and more honest leadership of the country, writes Boris Vezjak. But they did not offer ideas for concrete improvements.

The legacy of the European Capital of Culture project of 2012 in Maribor is characterized by the project’s steady implosion, writes Boris Vezjak. After the hype and the corruption, and in the absence of any new infrastructure whatsoever, the city has learned its lesson.

Protests at the end of 2012 in Slovenia caught the attention of international newspapers. Boris Vezjak asks what the goal of this “uprising” – suddenly a universally popular concept – is, and whether it might represent more than merely an isolated incident.

A year has passed since the last parliamentary elections in Slovenia. And so it is time for an inventory and first impressions of what this “triple left” government, as it is called, headed by Borut Pahor, has accomplished, to look at what expectations have been met and what haven’t. To be more precise, we are interested in only one issue in these and similar assessments that are offered in all kinds of places on these occasions.

Not long ago, a journalist from the Slovenian newspaper Vecer wrote that while culture does not rank among the top priorities of Maribor’s city leaders, they are nevertheless more than happy to boast about the European Capital of Culture (ECC) project for 2012.

In 1997 the circle of right-wing intellectuals from the “Slovenian Spring”, for the most part associated with Nova Revija, signed an appeal called “The hour of European truth for Slovenia”, and considerably later, an initiative called “Something must be done”.