Eastern European states are expected to renounce their post-totalitarian victim status and re-gained national homogeneity in order to show solidarity with western Europe in the refugee question. No wonder that they resist, writes Slavenka Drakulic.
Belarus, Estonia, Russia and Ukraine: four countries whose destinies are tightly interwoven. Now the S. Fischer Foundation, the German Academy of Language and Literature, and Allianz Cultural Foundation have created a transnational platform for discussing the most pressing country-specific topics in a common European context.
Not only is it time to modernize the humanities but also to humanize technology, says Lev Manovich, new media theorist and professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Manovich explains how to use big data to question the way we think about and study culture.
The image of a single face pouting at the camera on a phone clumsily extended to the perfect angle: this is just the beginning of the story, writes Nishant Shah. Every selfie triggers an avalanche of data that is generated, collated and consolidated beyond your imagination or control.
Entering trans-human areas always requires a certain courage and decidedness, just like any serious ethical action, writes Esa Kirkkopelto. And a trans-human ethics may well provide an answer to the claim of transformation that planetary crises impose upon our lives today.
How to restore legitimacy, once the state has been captured? Elena B. Stavrevska reports on developments in Macedonia during the past year, concluding that rather than looking westward for a sustainable solution, citizens should continue with their own efforts to determine the country’s future.
What exactly does it mean to be a creature of language and desire? Psychoanalysis is careful to distinguish animal need, which can be fulfilled, from human desire, which can never be satisfied. But in the cultural sphere, argues Lilian Munk Rösing, the human/animal divide swiftly becomes blurred.
Decades after first encountering Anglo-Saxon perspectives on democracy in occupied postwar Germany, Jürgen Habermas still stands by his commitment to a critical social theory that advances the cause of human emancipation. This follows a lifetime of philosophical dialogue.
For decades the West has denied Africa access to western markets, writes economic historian Andrea Franc in an article first published in Schweizer Monat. Meanwhile, subsidized western agricultural surpluses have destroyed African economies. The human cost of this can now be seen along the full length of Europe’s southern shores.
Mass migration is not merely the result of geopolitical and economic factors, but of cultural triggers too. Moreover, says Ivaylo Ditchev, borders themselves must be subject to a public debate about what kind of borders we want where, rather than arbitrary decisions made by the powers that be.
The current crisis is generating the myth of borders as controlled, says Seyla Benhabib. But this is only a myth. It is a fact that states are escaping their obligations under international and European law; while migrants themselves may be helping to keep the social peace between classes.
Accommodate the current influx of refugees, or accept more suffering and tragedy, and risk a humanitarian disaster in the Balkans. The options could scarcely be clearer, says Jakub Patocka. But in the absence of a strong independent media in central and eastern Europe, the public debate has gone awry.
We’re actually entering an era where censorship becomes harder and privacy easier, says Jamie Bartlett. At the same time, we need a strong, publicly supported intelligence architecture. But in a post-Snowden world, the intelligence agencies must become more rather than less open.
Dirty money from the East has become a resource for dozens of European structures and politicians. Sergii Leshchenko reports on some of those that are only too happy to open their doors to a Ukrainian oligarch willing to invest millions in cleaning up his image.
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish painter, stage designer and theatre director. Kantor’s daughter Dorota Krakowska talks about how Kantor sought to end the taboo code that supported the erasure and denial of history in postwar Poland.