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1. ARTICLE OF THE MONTH: RICHARD RORTY ON DEMOCRACY AND PHILOSOPHY
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Richard Rorty, who died on June 8, was among the most public of public intellectuals and the leading proponent of philosophical pragmatism. In one of his last articles, published in "Kritika & Kontext", Rorty set out to explain the relation between democracy and philosophy -- or rather, how this relation has been (mis)represented by Enlightenment philosophers from Spinoza to Habermas.

The Left, writes Rorty, typically understands democracy as exceeding mere representative government to include social egalitarianism. But it justifies this understanding on the basis of historical precedent -- the experience of poverty and humiliation -- while its opponents on the Right do the same when countering that the welfare state leads to over-regulation and over-taxation.

"Such polemical exchanges are pursued at a pragmatic level, and no theological or philosophical sophistication is required to conduct them. Nor would such sophistication do much to strengthen either side."

Claims for the centrality of reason in democratic society stem from the eighteenth century and the era of revolutions and universal human rights, when no such recourse to a history of democracy was available, Rorty argues. "We anti-foundationalists, however, regard Enlightenment rationalism as an unfortunate attempt to beat religion at religion's own game -- the game of pretending that there is something above and beyond human history that can sit in judgment on that history."

"Jefferson and Kant would have been bewildered at the changes that have taken place in Western democracies in the last two hundred years. For they did not think of equal treatment for blacks and whites, or of female suffrage, as deducible from the philosophical principles they enunciated. Their hypothetical astonishment illustrates the anti-foundationalist point that moral insight is not, like mathematics, a product of rational reflection. It is instead a matter of imagining a better future, and observing the results of attempts to bring that future into existence."

Richard Rorty
DEMOCRACY AND PHILOSOPHY

This article is available in English and Slovak:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-sk.html

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2. LITERARY PERSPECTIVES
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Literary criticism today is a very national affair. Almost all books reviewed in daily newspapers, weeklies, and journals are published in the same country in which the review appears. Single reviews or general overviews of books written in other parts of the world and not yet translated -- whether poetry, short stories, or novels -- are extremely rare.

There are several reasons for this development: the general decline of the literary institution, changes in the publishing business, and, paradoxically, even "globalization". But whatever reason one chooses to emphasize, the conclusion will be the same: there is an urgent need -- in the ideal as well as the practical or professional sense -- for a "re-transnationalization" of literary criticism.

Eurozine's series Literary perspectives aims to provide an overview of diverse literary landscapes, describing the current literary climate in specific European countries, regions, or languages.

Recently, Matt McGuire has focused on Northern Ireland. While the Northern Irish literary tradition is closely bound up with the experience of sectarian violence, he writes, contemporary poets and prose writers defy the assumption that "the Troubles" are all there is to the country's literature.

Slovenian novelists are developing original responses to the experience of transitional society, writes poet and critic Ales Steger. And in the Netherlands, observes critic Margot Dijkgraaf, novelists and poets with migrant backgrounds are introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire.

Read all Literary perspectives:
http://www.eurozine.com/comp/literaryperspectives.html

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3. NEW FOCAL POINT: CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP
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In the multicultural context of contemporary European and world societies, the concern with equality is increasingly being complemented by a concern with difference. The concept of cultural citizenship proves a vital instrument for rethinking identity and difference and more specifically, for conceptualizing a Europe where a concern with social and political rights includes the full recognition of minority groups and cultural diversity.

Eurozine's focus on "cultural citizenship" is centred on an article by Gerard Delanty, entitled "Citizenship as learning process", in which Delanty shifts the focus of citizenship onto learning processes and common experience and away from the "disciplinary citizenship" typified by "citizenship classes". Other contributions include Charles Taylor on democratic exclusion, Axel Honneth on recognition and racism, and António Sousa Ribiero on trans-border translation.

Read more articles in the focal point Cultural citizenship:
http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/culturalcitizenship.html

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4. NEW ARTICLES
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Sophie Boukhari
THE LONG WAIT IN MOROCCO
For migrants waiting in Morocco to enter Europe, the situation is bleak. It will take more than asylum status and the Geneva Convention to solve Africa's human rights problems.
04.07.2007

This article is available in German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-04-boukhari-de.html

Carl Henrik Fredriksson
THE RE-TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF LITERARY CRITICISM
Critical and public discussion of foreign literature in newspapers and magazines has traditionally served as a source of information and guidance not only for a broad readership, but also for "people in the business", for publishers and authors. When that discussion disappears, or loses its perspectives and becomes one-sided, this has consequences for the literary institution as a whole.
04.07.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-04-fredriksson-en.html

Siegfried Kohlhammer
"PUT THE PAST TO USE IN THE PRESENT!" THE NANKING MASSACRE AND THE POLITICS OF CHINESE HISTORY
The Nanking Massacre serves as the paradigm for the victim perspective in Chinese nationalism. The Chinese government strikes a balance between promoting anti-Japanese sentiment and maintaining beneficial relations with Japan.
03.07.2007

This article is available in German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-03-kohlhammer-de.html

Eurozine Review
"SPREADING THE WIT VIRUS"
"Roots" tries to turn foe into friend; "Osteuropa" re-reads the Gulag; "Mittelweg 36" cross-examines the secondary witness; "Arena" enters the DJ booth; "Merkur" critiques cultural criticism; "Revolver Revue" passes judgement on Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll"; and "Host" lists Georges Perec's obsessions.
03.07.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-03-eurozinerev-en.html

Gerard Delanty
CITIZENSHIP AS A LEARNING PROCESS. DISCIPLINARY CITIZENSHIP VERSUS CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP
In the dominant liberal discourse on citizenship, learning processes have tended to be reduced to citizenship classes. Gerard Delanty outlines a concept of citizenship that, rather than merely demanding cognitive competence, has a developmental and transformative impact on the subject.
30.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-delanty-en.html

Eurozine Editorial
CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP. INTRODUCTION
The concept of cultural citizenship responds to the multicultural context of contemporary societies, in which the concern with equality is increasingly being complemented by a concern with difference. Eurozine groups together texts articulating issues central to the concept.
30.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-eurozineeditorial-en.html

Margot Dijkgraaf
LITERARY PERSPECTIVES: THE NETHERLANDS. "PROFOUND HOLLAND" AND THE NEW DUTCH
The new need for security in the Netherlands is reflected in the work of two novelists in particular: Jan Siebelink, whose fiction evokes the "profound Holland" overturned in the 1960s; and Arnon Grunberg, whose portrayals of male disintegration withhold any such reassurances. But a parallel strand of contemporary Dutch literature sidesteps such concerns: novelists and poets with migrant backgrounds introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire.
29.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-dijkgraaf-en.html

Jamie Peck
THE CREATIVITY FIX
In Richard Florida's "creative city", the creative class dissolves the classical division between the productive bourgeoisie and the bohemian. But creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban socio-economic problems, not to solve them.
28.06.2007

This article is available in English and Swedish:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-peck-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-peck-sv.html

Ales Steger
LITERARY PERSPECTIVES: SLOVENIA. A HOLLOWED-OUT GENERATION
Slovenian novelists are developing original responses to the experience of transitional society, writes poet and critic Ales Steger. While male novelists take a hyper-realist, social-critical approach, their female counterparts are creating fictions only loosely connected to contemporary time and space. But first, an excursus into the Slovenian booktrade's current fad: the self-help manual...
27.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-27-steger-en.html

Ales Steger
POEMS
Even now you peddle the story of the Turks/At the gates of Vienna, dismantling their tents only as a ruse/And how masquerading as kebab vendors/Even now they're only waiting for the right moment/To leap out from their kiosks and cut your throats.
27.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-27-steger1-en.html

Louise du Toit
FEMINISM AND THE ETHICS OF RECONCILIATION
The failure of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission to do justice to women rape victims was not a simple oversight but is constitutive of the symbolic order dominating the political landscape of "liberal democracies".
26.06.2007

This article is now available in German, English, and Swedish:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-26-dutoit-de.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-16-dutoit-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-16-dutoit-sv.html

Matt McGuire
LITERARY PERSPECTIVES: NORTHERN IRELAND. SHAKING THE HAND OF HISTORY
Critic Matt McGuire continues Eurozine's Literary Perspectives series with a focus on Northern Ireland. While the Northern Irish literary tradition is closely bound up with the experience of sectarian violence, contemporary Northern Irish poets and prose writers defy the assumption that "the Troubles" are all there is to the country's literature.
21.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-21-mcguire-en.html

Alan Gillis
THE ULSTER WAY
Alan Gillis's poetry is concerned with an urban, technologized landscape and with the decommissioned individuals of contemporary Northern Ireland. It releases Northern Ireland from misreadings as an anomalous space, reconnecting it to a whole series of narratives that define twenty-first-century experience.
21.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-21-gillis-en.html

Bernard Magnier
THE PRESENCE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
The evolution of literary criticism, publishing, and readership
Africa’s growing role in western European culture is reflected in the increasing interest in its literature. Soon Kourouma will be shelved between Kafka and Kundera.
20.06.2007

This article is now available in Hungarian, French, and English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-20-magnier-hu.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-03-magnier-fr.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-03-magnier-en.html

Andrzej Tichy
THE SCREAM OF GEOMETRY (MODIFIED EXCERPTS)
"How can these cities, villages, and their people exist? How can they stand there selling tomatoes and speaking their language and drying their laundry without considering the infinite number of other places where someone else is standing, selling tomatoes or potatoes and speaking their language and drying laundry?"
20.06.2007

This article is now available in Hungarian, English, and Swedish:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-20-tichy-hu.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-02-21-tichy-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-02-21-tichy-sv.html

Eurozine Review
"RICH, EGOISTIC, AND SELF-CENTRED"
"Samtiden" punctures Norwegian hubris; "Esprit" looks at France's place in the new world; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) features a dossier on the Six Day War; "Fronesis" watches the fall and rise of the bourgeoisie; "Cogito" (Greece) poses a big question to philosophy; and "Magyar Lettre Internationale" remembers the taste of unfreedom.
19.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-19-eurozinerev-en.html

Birgit Menzel, Ulrich Schmid
THE EAST WITHIN THE WEST. IMPORTING POPULAR CULTURE
From Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" to Tetris and t.A.T.u., eastern European imports to Western pop culture have been camouflaged, adapted, or exoticized.
18.06.2007

This article is available in German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-18-schmidmenzel-de.html

Jiri Travnicek
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER. A SECOND READING OF MILAN KUNDERA'S "THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING"
Twenty-two years after it was first published in Czech, Jiri Travnicek discovers a new appreciation for the narration, characterization, and above all wisdom of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".
15.06.2007

This article is available in English and Czech:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-15-travnicek-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-15-travnicek-cz.html

Rainer Münz
OLD EUROPE. A LOOK AHEAD TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
With rising life expectancy, stagnating working-age populations, and low birth rates, Europe faces a demographic challenge over the next fifty years the likes of which it has never known.
14.06.2007

This article is now available in French, German, and English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-14-munz-fr.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-04-25-munz-de.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-04-25-munz-en.html

Andrej Dynko
SACRIFICIAL THERAPY. LETTER FROM A PRISON IN MINSK
"Being imprisoned feels like being pregnant: it's worrying at the beginning and at the end." Andrej Dynko, Belarusian opposition journalist and editor, spent ten days in prison last year on "hooliganism" charges. His prison diary has won him the Lorenzo Natali European Commission Prize for journalists writing on human rights issues.
13.06.2007

This article is now available in French, German, English, Belarusian, and Latvian:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-13-dynko-fr.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-13-dynko-de.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-04-03-dynko-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-04-03-dynko-be.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-05-29-dynko-lv.html

Thomas von Ahn
ON THE AIMS OF DISCOURSE. A RESPONSE TO GYÖRGY SCHÖPFLIN
Politically motivated narratives about the Hungarian past stand in the way of social consensus. Such a consensus would be an essential component of a society that was reconciled to itself, writes Thomas von Ahn.
12.06.2007

This article is available in German and English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-12-vonahn-de.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-12-vonahn-en.html

Richard Rorty
DEMOCRACY AND PHILOSOPHY
Moral insight "is a matter of imagining a better future, and observing the results of attempts to bring that future into existence". Richard Rorty, who died on June 8, was one of the most public of public intellectuals. In the recent ten-year anniversary edition of "Kritika & Kontext", he outlined the anti-foundationalist premise of his philosophy.
11.06.2007

This article is available in English and Slovak:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-sk.html

Meron Rapoport
WAS 1967 A VICTORY TOO FAR FOR ISRAEL?
The Six-Day War transformed Israel from relative poverty into a regional military superpower. It also began an occupation which has been slowly destroying the country’s meaning and identity -- and may yet dissolve its existence.
08.06.2007

This article is available in English and German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-08-rapoport-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-08-rapoport-de.html

Henry Laurens
1967: A WAR OF MISCALCULATION AND MISJUDGMENT
Few foresaw the 1967 war and none guessed that it would create a profound upheaval across the Middle East. The defeat of Egypt's Nasser and of Arab nationalism led to the emergence of political Islam and encouraged Palestinian resistance.
08.06.2007

This article is available in English and German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-08-laurens-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-08-laurens-de.html

Abdolkarim Soroush
ON REASON
Reason's greatest rival is not religion, but revolution, writes Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush. "The first resource that is squandered in a revolution is rationality and the last thing that returns is rationality. If it ever returns."
06.06.2007

This article is now available in Lithuanian, English, and Italian:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-06-soroush-lt.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-30-soroush-en.html
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-03-30-soroush-it.html

Maureen Freely
WHY THEY KILLED HRANT DINK
Following the protests at the murder of Hrant Dink, observers hoped that prime minister Tayyip Erdogan would be forced to take action against the growing wave of ultra-nationalism in Turkey. That nothing happened ought to be no surprise, writes Maureen Freely. After all, it's the State and not the government that runs Turkey. And what the State wants, the State gets.
06.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-06-freely-en.html

Martin Kloke
"THE ZIONIST STATE AS TOEHOLD OF IMPERIALISM". FORTY YEARS AGO THE NEW GERMAN LEFT TURNED ANTI-ISRAELI
Until the Six-Day War of June 1967, sympathy for the Israeli state reigned on the Left. All that changed as the APO began to regard the Jewish state as a "toehold of US imperialism". According to Martin Kloke, anti-Zionism is now embedded in German society.
05.06.2007

This article is available in German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-05-kloke-de.html

Eurozine Review
"TURNING POINT FOR THE LEFT"
"Merkur" sees the Six-Day War as turning point for the Left; "Reset" debates the Böckenförde dictum; "Host" searches for the traces of the Beat generation in Czech literature; "Kulturos barai" reads Lithuania's Robin Hood as nation builder; "The New Presence" finds Prague boring; "du" follows the Danube from the Black Forest to the Black Sea.
05.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-05-eurozinerev-en.html

Jörg Magenau
ON THE PRIVILEGES OF THE LITERARY CRITIC
Literary lunches aside, what are the critic's privileges? According to Jörg Magenau, it's all about accumulating others' experiences, about "being in the world", about avoiding the media's barrage of facts. And about having lots of books...
04.06.2007

This article is available in German:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-04-magenau-de.html

Mykola Riabchuk
BAD PEACE VS. GOOD WAR
Ukrainian democracy might be chaotic and immature -- but at least it's democracy. Nevertheless, there's still a lot to do before the country achieves anything like stability.
01.06.2007

This article is available in English:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-01-riabchuk-en.html