Eurozine Review

Estonian mag ‘Vikerkaar’ considers the most extreme form of social distancing: solitude. Including articles on modernity and masturbation, solitary confinement in Estonian prisons, and a one-man newspaper.

Italian journal ‘Il Mulino’ turns to mountain matters: why a ‘metromont’ approach is better than green infrastructure; neo-ruralism and the limits of lifestyle politics; and the ecologically ‘delicate’ way to holiday.

‘Dutch Review of Books’ profiles Holland’s teflon PM, whose chances of re-election in March appear undamaged by the childcare benefits scandal that forced his resignation last month. Also: books on Suriname and the history of the Dutch slave trade.

In Swedish journal ‘Ord&Bild’, a literary reportage from the frontline of the gig economy; why the comparison with the AIDS pandemic is only apt to a degree; and a way out of the dead ends of left critique of work.

In Soundings, cultural historian Patrick Wright calls Brexit the conclusion of a forty-year culture war, beginning when the memory of WWII turned inwards; also, debate on the wisdom of left nationalism to win back the errant Labour voters in England’s ‘Red Wall’.

Flemish journal rekto:verso asks what pleasure is and can be in times of lockdown. Including bad jokes and political inertia; the corruption of the carnivalesque; and ‘Black joy’ vs. grim capitalism.

The Belgian journal Culture & Démocratie on notions of ‘home’: Anna Tsing questions perceptions of security after imperial extractivism; Toma Muteba Luntumbue considers the plurality of contemporary collective identity; and Hamedine Kane writes on exile.

La Revue nouvelle publishes a 75th-anniversary retrospective, reactivating the archive through commentaries. Including dialogues on sexual liberation, prisoners’ rights, postcolonial Africa, paraliteratures, theatre and screen, and scientists vs. the rest.

In Hungarian literary journal 2000: the central-eastern European comic tradition and the humourlessness of nation-builders; why intellectual housewives don’t post food-selfies; the aesthetics of video calls and the social psychology of isolation.

Osteuropa publishes a handbook on Belarus: including the economic foundations of Lukashenka’s authoritarian system; forms of Belarusian protest culture since the ’90s; Russia’s influence; EU neighbourhood policy; accounts of police violence; contemporary prose and poetry; memorial culture and much more.

‘Dutch Review of Books’ publishes the winner and runners up of the Joost Zwagerman Essayprijs 2020. Also: the rightwing media campaign against the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema; on Nazi collaborator and Yad Vashem-honouree Hans Georg Calmeyer; and millennial fiction.

‘Il Mulino’ focuses on German reunification: including Jana Hensel on why 1990 wasn’t celebrated in the East, and Naika Foroutan on the Basic Law’s unfulfilled guarantee of pluralism. Also: Andreas Voßkuhle on the Federal Constitutional Court’s PSPP ruling.

‘L’Homme’ asks what happens to gender relations when the sensorium is upset by war, intercultural contact or changes in consumption. Also: harrowing accounts of sexual violence in locked-down India, alleviated by spontaneous expressions of solidarity.

‘Vagant’ explores intellectual landscapes of the New Right: including Thilo Sarrazin, Monika Maron and Michel Onfray. Also, a conversation with Danish novelist Olga Ravn Ravn about dominant attitudes to motherhood.

In ‘Merkur’, the return of the rabble: why populism is all about undesirable feedback – and how to break the loop. Also: New Right politics of history in the recent Hohenzollern restitution controversy.

In ‘Wespennest’: how Austria’s historically multilingual literature has been complemented by a range of idioms from beyond the former Empire; and why Europeans should reclaim English as the Franco-Germanic hybrid that it is.