lawyer and poet, lectures at the University of Warsaw, Poland.
Both materially and politically, eastern Europe has never been closer to the West. At the same time, the post-communist myth of western superiority has lost its power. As imitation gives way to defiance, a new set of political challenges emerges, writes Jarosław Kuisz.
In ‘The End of History and the Last Man’, Francis Fukuyama famously argued that the global spread of liberal democracy signalled the conclusion of humanity’s sociocultural evolution. In view of populism, inequality, Islamism and mass migration, how has Fukuyama’s thought developed in the intervening twenty-five years?
In societies with colonial histories and that are traditionally open to the world, there is widespread tolerance of diversity at a fundamental level. So says Aleksander Smolar; who is afraid that, for Poland, the smallest step towards adaptation will be a dramatic struggle.
A ban on the burqa in a country such as France, if applied consistently and without bias, would lead to bans on numerous practices in the majority culture, insists Martha Nussbaum. But while tolerance is essential, what liberalism really needs right now is love and compassion.
There is no place for multiculturalism in France, says Alain Finkielkraut, let alone full-face veils; any concession that allows the Islamicization of Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods is a fatal mistake. What is required is a true and authentic, reflective and self-critical hospitality.
An anti-gender campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church in Poland made gender a permanent fixture on the front pages of Polish newspapers as 2013 drew to a close. Karolina Wigura and Jaroslaw Kuisz introduce a new series of articles from Kultura Liberalna.
The recent publication of the private diary of Witold Gombrowicz provides unparalleled insight into the life of one of Poland’s great twentieth-century novelists and dramatists. But this is not literature. Instead: here he is, completely naked.
Jaroslaw Kuisz comments on two iconic Polish films that show the brutality, fear and loneliness that have accompanied the new political order. In Wladislaw Pasikowski’s “Psy” (Pigs, 1992) a former security service agent turned respectable post-communist policeman resolves to avenge the death of three colleagues. And in Krzysztof Krauze’s “Dlug” (Debt, 1999), two young businessmen, trapped into life as mobsters, commit murder, then confess.
