As Donald Trump appals and captivates the world in equal measure, another New York businessman is quietly positioning himself for power. American democracy might face even more of a threat from a figure with a record of real success in business and politics, argues fellow New Yorker George Blecher.
Interviewed in feminist history journal L’Homme, influential historian of science and gender Londa Schiebinger talks about biological determinism in modern science and education, the impact of diversity on the contemporary natural and human sciences, and agnotology – the study of culturally-induced ignorance.
Chris Marker was a political filmmaker, however anything but doctrinaire. Throughout his oeuvre, a critical and moral sensibility goes hand in hand with technical experimentation, narrative improvisation and cinematic self-reflection. Above all, Marker was a ‘joueur’, writes Carole Desbarats.
The ’68 movement in Germany originated in shifts of culture and lifestyle before turning political, and even violent. The historical contribution of ’68ers is not limited to what happened in the 1960s and 70s, argues Aleida Assmann; in the 1980s it was formative in the emergence of a new Europe.
Data-driven political marketing and electoral hacking follow a similar principle: focus on the weakest link, whether susceptible individuals or voting machines in swing states. On what the Cambridge Analytica scandal reveals about the new arts of political campaigning.
There is little hope for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia during the World Cup. However, Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike will not have been in vain if it causes people to question the platitude that ‘sport is above politics’.
In May, fifty years on from the events of 1968, the ‘The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW’ project reflected on the political and cultural heritage of the revolt and struggle of that year. In particular, the project’s curator and the head of Kyiv’s Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) Vasyl Cherepanyn asks, where is the idea of internationalism today?
The international order has never been tidy or complete, always having had lands with contested sovereignty. The breakdown of empires is the most common catalyst for producing new aspirant states. The post-Soviet space is especially rich in these territories, as Thomas de Waal explains.
In 2008, Belgian journal ‘La Revue Nouvelle’ published an interview with Arkady Babchenko, in which he explained why his experience of serving in the Russian army in Chechnya had motivated him to become a war reporter. In light of Babchenko’s recent staged murder, in order to foil a genuine assassination plot, the interview makes for chilling reading.
Much of the language used in corporations is meaningless. What’s more, it is meaningless by design. Bullshit can be profoundly dangerous and make people despair – but it can also help them make their way in the world, reports André Spicer.
David Reich’s pioneering study of ancient DNA might have caused some ructions among social scientists – but it’s set to revolutionise our ideas about human migration and identity, reports Peter Forbes.
The events of 1968 are intimately connected to the student and worker protests in France in May of that year. But the 1968 movement had greater long-term impact elsewhere, notably in Italy and the United States, argues Sidney Tarrow.
May 2018 marks thirty years since an event of central importance to Lithuanian culture: the National Youth Theatre’s month-long American tour. Taking place as Lithuania began to shake loose of Soviet control, it was the first commercial tour of the USA by any group of professional artists from Lithuania – and further reinforced the legend of the theatre’s enigmatic star, director Eimuntas Nekrošius.
Magazines played an important role in German feminist discussion of the 1970s and ’80s. Among them, ‘Die Schwarze Botin’ stood out for its formal radicalism and intellectual originality. Critical of apolitical and affirmative tendencies in the women’s movement, it saw itself as a site both of theoretical reflection and of aesthetic experimentation. Katharina Lux on a forgotten document of New Left feminism.
In 2014 Ukraine suddenly became a major focus of the western radical Left. The subsequent degree of overlap between radical-left and far-right interpretations and activities of the events in Ukraine has been striking. How to explain this? A good place to start, argues Kyrylo Tkachenko, is Germany.
Prominent advocates of life-hacking – self-optimization through the lessons of computer programming – have started promoting Bitcoin. Noam Cohen, author of Silicon Valley exposé ‘The Know-It-Alls’, explains why: ‘Bitcoin is the ultimate financial-hack, an individualistic short-cut through the intrusions of government we call regulation and taxation.’