Established transitional narratives of “then and now” omit a central attribute of “normality” that existed during socialism: materiality, or the chance to establish oneself as an owner and maker of things. Elena Trubina suggests that it was eastern Europeans’ resourcefulness during times of scarcity that prepared them for the change and ensured the continuity of experience.
Opinion surveys conducted in the UK and Germany report a growing tendency among young Muslims to reject mainstream norms. Their affirmation of Muslim identity and its critique of decadent western culture is an act of dissidence, argues Jörg Lau. The reservations of the non-Muslim majority towards self-segregating practices can be understood as a sign that the Islamic critique of decadence has been understood and its moral presumption rejected. Nevertheless, some commentators maintain that if young Muslims reject society, they have been driven to do so. An act of self-exclusion is thus reinterpreted as the fault of the majority. This alliance between liberalism and religiosity is coming under increasing criticism, not least from Muslim women who know the value of freedom better than most.
The EU has long attempted to combat Hollywood’s “American cultural imperialism”. But it is difficult to label Hollywood in national-cultural terms. Hollywood and its cultural industry has been a globalized arena with practitioners and investors from most corners of the world for many years.
German author Feridun Zaimoglu, pioneer of the “Kanak” school of fiction (the migrant underworld described in the vernacular of its young male protagonists), has begun narrating from the Muslim woman’s perspective. In his latest novel Leyla, a Turkish woman tells about her life in Germany; while in a new work for theatre entitled Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black Virgins), young Muslim women talk openly about sex. In March 2007, Zaimoglu ruffled feathers when he gave up his place at an official conference on Muslims in Germany in protest at the non-attendance of young ordinary Muslims and criticized feminist former-Muslims for demonizing young Muslim women. With characteristic verve, he explained to Ali Fathollah-Nejad why the discourse in Germany operates double values when it comes to the questions of multiculturalism and integration.
The events of 9/11 introduced a “state of exception”. As a result, the social and political struggles of the de-classed now operate in a zone of indifference which threatens democracy.
In looking at the context of Lithuanian theatre in the 1990s, Rasa Vasinauskaite looks back at the aesthetic experience accumulated in preceding decades.
New wave atheism is aggressively antagonistic to religion. But, argues Richard Norman, it’s more fruitful to find common ground.
The Israeli Right nurtures the image of the nation as a bastion under eternal siege, but fails to see that Israel is laying siege to the Palestinians. Attending a family funeral, Göran Rosenberg observes how Israelis’ fears are exploited so that one version of Israel is furthered at the expense of another. The window of opportunity opened by the Oslo agreement has been closed for good, he fears.
In a media world with one eye on the bottom line and the other on the official line, it’s getting harder to publish or broadcast anything that doesn’t promise huge sales and attendant profits, and that doesn’t say or show what is approved. But it’s still possible.
Since the inclusion of Poland into the EU, Polish immigrants have come to represent a significant minority in the UK. But the tradition of travelling for work was established long before the fall of Communism. Will Brady looks at the influence of Polish immigrants on British society and how Polish immigration is reawakening dormant community values in Edinburgh.
As an Algerian novelist writing in French, Assia Djebar had to find a way to Arabize the language of the former colonizer; in doing so, she has cut the “umbilical cord” to her country of origin. Her writing, says Seloua Luste Boulmina, in an article based on her speech at the 20th European Meeting of Cultural Journals in Sibiu 2007, turns the tables on the post-colony. The question now is not, “Can the subaltern speak and write?”, but “Can the non-subaltern hear and read?”
As an Algerian novelist writing in French, Assia Djebar had to find a way to Arabize the language of the former colonizer; in doing so, she has cut the “umbilical cord” to her country of origin. Her writing, says Seloua Luste Boulmina, in an article based on her speech at the 20th European Meeting of Cultural Journals in Sibiu 2007, turns the tables on the post-colony. The question now is not, “Can the subaltern speak and write?”, but “Can the non-subaltern hear and read?”
Novelist and broadcaster Zinovy Zinik left his native Russia in the 1970s and moved first to Israel and then to Britain. Speaking at the Eurozine network conference in Sibiu in September 2007, he traced the history of the shadow as metaphor for exile through Evgeni Shwartz’s play “The Shadow” back to earlier fables by Hans Christian Andersen and Adelbert von Chamisso. The sum effect: a web of intermeshed émigré biographies and fictions spanning two centuries of political change.
Zimbabwean poet, novelist, and journalist Chenjerai Hove left Zimbabwe after falling foul of the Mugabe government. Here he recalls two incidents typical of the censorship that forced him into internal exile; and how, in exile outside his home country, he discovered new creative perspectives.
After the handover, Hong Kong has sought to brand itself as “Asia’s World City”. Several historical features have been demolished – or “reclaimed” – to make way for shopping malls, high-rise apartment blocks, traditional Chinese architecture, and tourist kitsch. The result, says Huilary Tsui, is just another Asian megalopolis. Nevertheless, a new culture of public opposition to heritage-hostile urban planning is taking root.