Overthrow a dictator in the Arab world today and you’re far more likely to spark civil war than a liberal democracy. So the West shouldn’t be militarily engaged at all, says Michael Walzer. For it cannot create democratic polities where there is no social or cultural basis for democracy.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, a movement of Russian nationalists attempted to reshape the USSR in a Russian-patriotic spirit. Alexander Mikhailovsky considers the reception of this movement among intellectual circles at the time and whether its legacy still plays a role in official Russian politics today.
There is a real need to debate the post-Soviet space less as a single region and more in terms of individual autonomous entities, writes Taciana Arcimovic. Recent discussions in Narva made a valuable contribution toward meeting this need. Arcimovic reports on the first of five conferences organized by the platform Neighbourhood in Europe: Prospects of a Common Future. The conference series continues in Minsk from 7 to 10 December and Kharkiv from 10 to 12 December.
The twentieth century unleashed the spectre of statelessness into the world. Lyndsey Stonebridge explores how the modern history of refugees has shaped not only the lives of the stateless but also the lives, rights and securities of those who think of themselves as happily at home.
In an article first published shortly after the 13 November Paris terrorist attacks, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed addresses the twisted logic of extremist ideologies; and how to break the continuum of violence that such ideologies seek to perpetuate.
Hannah Arendt once remarked that the rights of man proved to be unenforceable in postwar Europe. Currently, observes Valeria Korablyova, the refugee crisis looks like proving the idea of Europe itself to be unenforceable. So what will remain if equality and solidarity finally fail to become the principles of cooperation between EU member states now riven by common fears?
In 1983, Hal Foster edited a seminal collection of cultural criticism, The Anti-Aesthetic. So how is it that Foster now sees real possibilities in the aesthetic? And could it be that, in lieu of a defining human marginality, a version of the human might yet be resurrected?
Without a proper understanding of the way the global (data) economy actually works, we can’t effectively reinvent our culture. So says Geert Lovink in conversation with István Józsa. Lovink’s solution: while building independent infrastructures remains of primary importance, net criticism needs updating and upgrading, before it becomes subject to deletion.
On Friday 13 November, Paris suffered an unprecedented set of terrorist attacks less than a year after those targeting Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. Once again, we review the responses of Eurozine partner journals, associates and authors.
He and his family fled Iraq for Poland in the 1970s, never to return. Basil Kerski knows from firsthand experience that integration can be a long and difficult process, but it usually enriches receiving societies and new arrivals alike. As further migrations and intercultural encounters undoubtedly await Europe, Kerski argues in favour of European solidarity.
Today, bordering operates at all levels, writes Don Flynn: from the geopolitical bordering that expresses the changing balance of power between states; to the reconfiguration of state administrative procedures at the behest of economic and technological imperatives; to the experience of the border as it impacts on everyday lives.
In a response to Edit András’s recent article on Hungary’s contemporary art scene, artist Orshi Drozdik takes exception to the art historian who passes judgement on the artist without stopping to consider either the artist’s oeuvre or the true circumstances of the artist’s life.
There is now a need to readdress urban commons through the lens of the digital commons, writes Dubravka Sekulic. The lessons to be drawn from the free software community and its resistance to the enclosure of code will likely prove particularly valuable where participation and regulation are concerned.
Eastern European states are expected to renounce their post-totalitarian victim status and re-gained national homogeneity in order to show solidarity with western Europe in the refugee question. No wonder that they resist, writes Slavenka Drakulic.
Belarus, Estonia, Russia and Ukraine: four countries whose destinies are tightly interwoven. Now the S. Fischer Foundation, the German Academy of Language and Literature, and Allianz Cultural Foundation have created a transnational platform for discussing the most pressing country-specific topics in a common European context.