Postmodernism was conceived largely by the Left as a safeguard against totalizing ideologies. Yet today, it has been appropriated on behalf of an encroaching neo-totalitarianism of the Right. Is French literary theory to blame? And can a philosophy of dissent developed in communist eastern Europe offer an antidote?
In the latest article from Eurozine partner journal Transit’s landmark 50th edition, Elitza Stanoeva surveys the hopes, dreams and disillusionment of politics in Bulgaria since 1989 – and includes a few personal insights.
Delivering this year’s Democracy Lecture, organized by ‘Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik’, Wendy Brown describes how neoliberalism has fomented a populist revolt that, in the figure of Trump, culminates in a plutocratic authoritarianism.
Historian Timothy Snyder, in conversation with Simas Čelutka of the Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis, discusses how to approach problematic works of political theory. In addition to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Snyder has recently studied the works of Ivan Ilyin, a twentieth-century Russian writer whose ideas are influencing the Kremlin’s current world-view.
In a deeply personal reflection on identity, emigration and dispossession, writer Mykola Riabchuk surveys the recent history of his native Ukraine. He also describes the work of Vladimir Rafeenko, published in Eurozine for the first time in English on 21 August 2017.
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?
Eurozine is pleased to publish a new literary voice from Ukraine, Vladimir Rafeenko, who appears here in English for the first time with a chilling short story about the conflict in Donbas. Translated from the Russian by historian Marci Shore.
Democratic citizens are not born, they must be made – but we are not doing a good job of this, writes Mark Lilla. As identity politics wreaks havoc in America, he challenges the liberal left to come up with a vision that embraces citizenship.
Women have been playing a key role in the recent Polish protests. Irma Allen relates their stories and reports that, despite intimidation and social pressure, this time they won’t be silenced.
In a prescient and extraordinarily lucid essay, published in ‘Transit’ almost 25 years ago and only now published in English in the Slovak journal ‘Kritika & Kontext’, political philosopher Charles Taylor develops a normative definition of democracy that avoids the pitfalls both of liberal individualism and authoritarian collectivism.
Samuel Abrahám, editor-in-chief of Eurozine partner journal Kritika & Kontext, relates his attempts to translate a text by Czech author Milan Kundera into Slovak, and ponders Kundera’s prophetic words on the value of privacy.
Is there anything democratic about ‘illiberal democracy’? The temptation to dismiss its proponents as illegitimate is clear but, as Jeffrey C. Isaac argues, it was by openly examining and addressing their claims to act for ‘the people’ that previous authoritarian political movements were successfully challenged.
Half a year in, the furious tempo of the Trump presidency is being maintained – and even heightened – with ever more baroque cast members rotating through the White House. George Blecher attempts to make sense of it all – with a little help from Tacitus and Suetonius.
In the first of a series of articles from the landmark 50th edition of Transit (to be published in September), author Slavenka Drakulić casts a rueful glance over the expectations – some fulfilled, many frustrated – of the generations that have lived through the changes since 1989.
Last month, EU leaders met in Trieste and dutifully reaffirmed their commitment to the nations of the Western Balkans. Just as they did last year. And the year before. But this process is going nowhere, write André Liebich.
Writing in the 1940s and 50s, political theorist Hannah Arendt saw in the nascent European project an opportunity for political transformation in the aftermath of totalitarianism. But she also foresaw some of its potential weaknesses, writes Peter Verovšek.