The main issue surrounding the ugly events on New Year’s Eve in Cologne soon turned out not to be the assault of women per se, but the fact that perpetrators were, in police parlance, of “Arab and north-African appearance”. However, writes Slavenka Drakulic, it may well be that the tears of the women in Cologne that night bring bigger changes to Germany and Europe than anyone could have anticipated, least of all the women themselves.
The Slovak writer and artist Matus Ritomsky provides some insight into the mood in Slovakia, as the debate about events in Cologne and other cities in Germany on New Year’s Eve continues across Europe.
Leading artists, curators and practitioners in the creative industries discuss the prospects for intellectual resistance in the most precarious of circumstances: where state institutions tend to strangle much-needed social critique and one must use every available resource to avoid submitting to one’s own fatigue.
Europe has become steadily more introspective since the financial crisis broke out in 2008, writes Andrew Wilson. Moreover, with the refugee crisis and the Paris attacks grabbing European and global media attention, and Russia suddenly becoming an ally in the fight against ISIS, it seems that Ukraine has become a topic of the past. But should the West lose focus, Ukraine’s chances of success will be very slim.
Filmmakers who push back at social conventions take risks with their careers and, sometimes, frighten their audiences. Nikki Baughan speaks to leading directors Susanne Bier (Denmark) and Haifaa Al Mansour (Saudi Arabia) about the importance of using the big screen to challenge ways of life.
The Treaty of Rome was the Copernican revolution in the history of European democracy, the moment at which nationalism and the nation were consigned to history. Since the Lisbon Treaty, however, national self-interest has returned to Europe, so that today the question is: who will determine Europe’s future – the universal or the one-dimensional European?
From the archive | With Facebook facing ever-growing scrutiny, Eurozine revisits Mark Frary’s report for ‘Index on Censorship’ on how tech companies decide which news items you see online.
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.