“The eastern European ’68ers formed the backbone of the democratic opposition and dissidents, whereas we, the somewhat older ’56ers, only joined in with certain reservations, because we had a closer acquaintance with defeat.” The Hungarian writer György Konrád takes an ironic look at the ’68ers from the perspective of a participant in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Nationalist mobilization was responsible for the escalation of the crisis over the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn in April 2007, writes Tonis Saarts. The EU accession process over, Estonia’s dominantly rightwing party politics has found a new rallying cry: the threat of Russia.
In a speech delivered on the twentieth anniversary the Lithuanian national reform movement Sajudis, Romualdas Ozolas, one of its founding members, reviews the intellectual situation in Lithuania today. He argues that an ideologized empiricism, all too redolent of Marxism, has made a comeback. Instead, the European tradition of abstract thought as mastered by Kant must show the way in thinking about the State.
The playwright and essayist László Végel writes despairingly on Serbian politics as a member of the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, northern Serbia. Despite vigorous campaigning in Vojvodina by Viktor Orbán (leader of Hungary’s centre-right Fidesz party), ethnic Hungarians in Serbia have been abandoning the minority parties and voting for the more liberal, Belgrade-based parties in Serbia. At the same time, they unconditionally support the Right in Hungary itself.
That the questions surrounding woman, women, gender, or even sexual difference is found at the heart of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive work shows that they constitute an obstacle. Starting from the fact that the tradition in part structured and built itself on an exclusion of women and of the feminine, and deconstructing this history, he opens a space favourable to the coming of the other. By appealing to the voice of the other, he engages the perchance of a reorientation of discourse, history, and the tradition.
Contact and friendship with the publishers of European cultural journals has helped Samuel Abrahám, founding editor of “Kritika&Kontext”, realize his goal of publishing a liberal journal in post-socialist Slovakia.
Writer and journalist George Blecher’s first European meeting of Cultural journals was in Berlin in 1989. He has been coming back ever since – despite his being neither an editor nor a European.
Olivier Corpet was present at the European meetings of cultural journals from the very start. Writing in 1986, the founding editor of “La Revue des Revues” reported on a movement that was steadily gaining momentum.
For Walter Famler, editor of the Viennese journal “Wespennest”, the European Meetings of Cultural Journals have been an inducement to carry on in the journals business – and an opportunity to pursue a variety of less official interests.
Eurozine has expanded the scope for bringing together intellectuals from eastern and western Europe – a concern as relevant today as it was directly after 1989, writes Transit managing editor Klaus Nellen.
Johan Öberg, former editor of Swedish journal “Ord&Bild” and organizer of the Gothenburg meeting in 1992, recalls the network’s successes and failures – and retells a strange story about a legless Finn.
Gaby Zipfel, editor of “Mittelweg 36” and pioneer of Eurozine, came to the European Meeting of European Cultural Journals in 1992 expecting to be the only woman among seasoned male professionals. And so she was – but that didn’t matter.
Pär Thörn, one of Sweden’s most acclaimed young writers, studied the discussions between the executive managers on the web forum www.ledarna.se (“the executives”). The result of his copy-pasting was the following text.
Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled on authors’ love lives and penchant for designer handbags, yet there is more edifying material out there if one listens carefully. Hans Koppel’s satire of suburban lifestyle, for example, or the social critique of experimental writers Per Thörn and Ida Börjel. A new edition of Lars Gustafsson’s science fiction proves he is still in a league of his own, while Magnus Hedlund’s fiction exploring of the boundaries of human existence is so powerful that it seems inadequate to describe him as a “Swedish writer”.
Antonin J. Liehm, editor of the Czech magazine “Litérarní noviny” until 1968 and founder of “Lettre Internationale”, has been at the forefront of numerous attacks on the “provincialism of major cultures”. One theme has persisted throughout: the idea of an international magazine.
Chocolate cigarettes, AIDS, and homes for battered wives. Hanna Hallgren conducts a critical, poetical search for the European identity.