By banning the Russian contestant from performing at the Eurovision song contest in Kiev in May, Ukraine has damaged its international reputation – which is precisely what Russia intended. While an apolitical response would have been impossible, cleverer options were available.
Humanitarian discourse on asylum seekers and the criminalization of immigrants, though apparently exclusive, combine to produce the foreigner as an absolute ‘Other’. A critique of ‘migration management’ in Belgium.
The Muslim presence in European cities is often concealed through formal restrictions on mosques and other signs of religiosity. Yet Muslims are also exposed as threats to the public order. Claiming full rights to participation in public space means confronting the divided political geographies of visibility, argues Luiza Bialasiewicz.
Trump’s most likely reaction to the defeat of his healthcare bill will be to seek revenge on his political opponents. But if he takes his role seriously, he may decide to rally cross-party support for some of his more positive campaign promises, writes George Blecher.
The late Robert Silvers, co-founder and editor of the ‘New York Review of Books’, was aptly characterized as ‘the author who doesn’t write’. A tribute to a one of the most important actors in the global intellectual public sphere from two of Eurozine’s co-founders.
Events in Ukraine have prompted the Kremlin to promote an official state ideology for the first time in post-Soviet history. The past takes on increased significance in legitimizing the regime, while attempts at critical historical reflection are actively repressed.
Something unbelievable is happening in Belarus: people, especially in the provinces, are protesting, despite their fear of political repressions. Meanwhile, in the urban centres, a pop-cultural movement has begun seeking a new Belarusian identity. Against the background of economic crisis and tensions with Russia, the regime is being forced to rethink its neo-Soviet cultural policy.
Following the disappointment of Obama, what is the way forward for the campaign against the criminalization of black people across the United States? Affinities between Black Lives Matter and traditions of community organizing show the potential for new coalitions, argues Julien Talpin.
In Central and Eastern Europe, a myriad of nationalists and populists are able to exploit what Richard Rorty called ‘the fear that there will be not enough to go around’. Yet liberal democracies are more resilient than they appear at the present moment, argues Samuel Abrahám.
The repair of everyday objects is a way of healing the wounds of post-socialist transition and of building affective bonds, where the market forces people to think of each other only as rational and expendable actors. Francisco Martínez talks to Estonians practitioners of ‘remont’ about their motivations.
The Polish intellectual and diplomat Adam Daniel Rotfeld played a key role in creating a new system of international security in the enlarged European Union. He contributed to settling the Transnistria conflict in the 1990s, helped resolve the political crisis in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution in 2004, and co-chaired the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters. How does a professional crisis manager and architect of European security see the international conflict around Ukraine and the future of Ukrainian–Russian relations? Rotfeld spoke to Piotr Kubasiak at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Vienna).
“I spent my childhood in a dystopia, which I detested with my whole heart, and I now live in a utopia.” Lithuanian author Marius Ivaškevičius explains why Brexit felt to him like a betrayal, why Europe remains a beacon of hope for people living under authoritarian regimes, and why, despite the sceptics, the European idea will prevail.
Yaşar Nezihe was the first Muslim woman to have her unveiled photograph published in the Ottoman press, the first socialist poet to compose a Turkish poem about May 1, and the first woman to write for the journal of the Communist Party of Turkey. Murat Batmankaya recalls her perseverance in the face of patriarchal oppression, material need and political adversity.
When ideological assumptions are shaken, fact loses its authority. Silvio Berlusconi was the first to channel this dynamic into a contemporary form of populism. From the archive.
In the wake of the US presidential election, the severity of the crisis facing liberal representative democracy is clear. The need for a civil domain has never been greater, argues sociologist Pascal Gielen. What options are left to creatives still prepared to imagine a better world?
Constitutional conflicts, foreign policy upheavals and media spats: one frenetic month into the Trump presidency, Americans are still in a state of shock. With the madness set to continue, it’s time for a petrified opposition to start making some noise.