----------------------------------------------------------- EUROZINE NEWSLETTER 08.2007 ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article of the month: Beyond abyssal thinking 2. Leonhard Lapin in the Eurozine Gallery 3. New articles
----------------------------------------------------------- 1. ARTICLE OF THE MONTH: BEYOND ABYSSAL THINKING ----------------------------------------------------------- Modern Western thinking continues to operate along "abyssal" lines that divide the human from the sub-human, argues leading Portuguese social theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos in a far-reaching article. The line between "the West" and "the other", which continues to exist in the minds of many, leaves the other side as a space of non-existence, where democracy, human rights, and rule of law are ignored.
"The colonies provided a model of radical exclusion that prevails in modern Western thinking and practice today as it did during the colonial cycle. Today as then, both the creation and the negation of the other side of the line is constitutive of hegemonic principles and practices."
Santos observes a return of "the colonial" to the metropolitan spaces that were demarcated from the beginning of Western modernity as "this side of the line". "What used to be unequivocally this side of the line is now a messy territory cut through by a meandering abyssal line. The Israeli segregation wall in Palestine and the category of the 'unlawful enemy combatant' are probably the most adequate metaphors of the new abyssal line and the messy cartography it leads to."
The struggle for global social justice must be a struggle for global cognitive justice as well, where multiple knowledges are recognized. "The only way to capture the full measure of what is going on", writes Santos, "is a gigantic decentring effort. In order to succeed, this struggle requires a new kind of thinking, a post-abyssal thinking."
This article was published in Eurozine's "Decentring Europe" Focal Point: http://www.eurozine.com/comp/focalpoints/decentringeurope.html
Boaventura de Sousa Santos BEYOND ABYSSAL THINKING. FROM GLOBAL LINES TO ECOLOGIES OF KNOWLEDGES
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santos-en.html
----------------------------------------------------------- 2. LEONHARD LAPIN IN THE EUROZINE GALLERY ----------------------------------------------------------- Estonian artist Leonhard Lapin is the founder of suprealism, a "movement" that combines suprematism and realism. It mirrors the "suprealist world", where art is packaged for consumer culture. In his "Suprealist manifesto", he writes that "Suprealism brings popular kitsch into the art gallery and high culture to the masses; it introduces into art the naivety of the producer of kitsch while retaining the elitism of the professional artist."
See Leonhard Lapin's suprealist art in the Eurozine Gallery: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-gallery_lapin-en.html
----------------------------------------------------------- 3. NEW ARTICLES ----------------------------------------------------------- János Háy THE KID "The kids of the divorced repeat the divorce, the kids of the quarrelsome repeat the quarrels, so that everything can go on in the same unbearable fashion that people have become accustomed to for thousands of years..." In blackly comic vein, Hungarian playwright and poet János Háy narrates a web of dysfunctional loves and lives in town and country. 03.08.2007
This article is available in English and Hungarian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-03-hay-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-03-hay-hu.html
Pavel Janousek GENERALS ALWAYS PREPARE FOR THE PREVIOUS WAR. ON THE NEW PARADIGM OF CZECH LITERARY HISTORY The notion of the canon in Czech literary studies is being challenged by a relativist, postmodern approach to history. Its proponents claim this constitutes a revolution, though literary critic Pavel Janousek is sceptical. 02.08.2007
This article is available in English and Czech: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-02-janousek-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-02-janousek-cs.html
Adam Phillips THE FORGETTING MUSEUM An obsession with memory blinds us to the abuses of memory, and to the uses of forgetting, argues the British psychoanalyst and author 02.08.2007
This article is available in now available in Lithuanian, English, and German: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-02-phillips-lt.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-06-24-phillips-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-10-31-phillips-de.html
Markus Miessen THE VIOLENCE OF PARTICIPATION. SPATIAL PRACTICES BEYOND MODELS OF CONSENSUS An architectural response to the need to find a form of co-existence that enables conflict to work as a productive confrontation. 01.08.2007
This article is available in English and German: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-01-miessen-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-08-01-miessen-de.html
Eurozine Review "DEMOCRACY AND ITS OPPOSITE" Springerin talks to Jacques Rancière about democracy and the political; Artistas Unidos Revista introduces a writer, full stop; Kulturos barai warns of theoretical dogmatism; Osteuropa urges intellectuals to criticize European integration; The New Presence asks what the Czechs actually want from the State; L'Espill tracks Salvador Allende back to a clinic in Santiago; and du finds Amitav Ghosh disillusioned by what happened to the US. 31.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-31-eurozinerev-en.html
E. Efe Çakmak, Andreas Huyssen, Susan Neiman THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: ISSUES OF RESPONSIBILITY AND DEMOCRACY. AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN NEIMAN AND ANDREAS HUYSSEN Two public intellectuals discuss the role of the public sphere in guiding a politics of memory in relation to Turkey's fraught Armenian issue. 30.07.2007
This article is now available in Catalan and English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-30-huyssenneiman-ca.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-02-13-huyssenneiman-en.html
Dimitra Kondylaki DIMITRIS DIMITRIADIS, OR THE DESIRE FOR TEXT "Literature demolishes in order to renew, decomposes in order to recreate". On the Greek playwright and author Dimitris Dimitriadis. 30.07.2007
This article is available in French: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-30-kondylaki-fr.html
Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Navid Kermani "I WON'T BE AN UNCLE TOM". A CONVERSATION WITH NAVID KERMANI "Either I play my part and become a defender of Islam or multiculturalism -- or indeed a denouncer of Islam, whatever role I get landed with. Or else I write my books, with a view to people still reading them in twenty years, fifty years." German-Iranian author Navid Kermani speaks to Ali Fathollah-Nejad about European values and why he won't have anything to do with the Islam industry. 27.07.2007
This article is now available in German and English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-27-kermani-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-27-kermani-en.html
Elemér Hankiss TRANSITION OR TRANSITIONS? THE TRANSFORMATION OF EASTERN CENTRAL EUROPE 1989-2007 "Incomplete regime change", "interrupted revolution", "geo-political paradigm shift"... Accounts of the transition in eastern central Europe have tended to emphasize particular features to the exclusion of others. Hungarian political scientist Elemér Hankiss pieces together a mosaic of interpretations of transition. 26.07.2007
This article is now available in English and Hungarian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-26-hankiss-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-26-hankiss-hu.html
Jérôme Sgard NICOLAS SARKOZY, GRAMSCI READER. NEW POWER AND THE TEMPTATION OF HEGEMONY Nicolas Sarkozy has professed admiration for the Gramscian notion of "cultural hegemony" -- political domination via domination of ideas. The difference is that Sarkozy seeks hegemony not over ideas so much as values, writes Jérôme Sgard. 25.07.2007
This article is available in French: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-25-sgard-fr.html
Vicken Cheterian GEORGIA: TOO LITTLE CHANGE In Georgia, an elite of Rose Revolutionaries is working to impose social engineering on the rest of society. Just how democratic are Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili's "top-down" social transformations? 24.07.2007
This article is available in German: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-24-cheterian-de.html
Krystian Woznicki THIS BLOGGING BUSINESS NOWADAYS. SPECTACULARIZATION OF THE "BLOGOSPHERE" AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM The blogging movement's claim to empower the "netizen" is being undermined by the commercialization and professionalization of the "blogosphere". This necessitates a rethinking of the concept of citizen journalism, writes Krystian Woznicki. 23.07.2007
This article is available in German and English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-23-woznicki-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-23-woznicki-en.html
Matjaz Hanzek WHEN WILL WORDS BECOME ACTIONS? REFLECTIONS ON HATE SPEECH IN SLOVENIA Homophobia and xenophobia, falsely parading as free speech, have entered the Slovenian political mainstream. Slovenia's former Human Rights Ombudsman warns that it is only a matter of time before words become actions. 20.07.2007
This article is available in English and Slovenian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-20-hanzek-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-20-hanzek-sl.html
Zsófia Bán A BOX OF PHOTOS (CAPTIONS ON THE BACK) A man looks at photographs of his youth in pre-war Budapest. Above all he remembers his love, the seductive Jolika. Yet memory is tainted by sorrow as it becomes clear that this is a story of loss and displacement. 19.07.2007
This article is available in English and Hungarian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-19-ban-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-19-ban-hu.html
Erich Klein THE PATRIARCH OF MUSCOVITE CONCEPTUALISM. ON THE DEATH OF RUSSIAN ARTIST DIMITRI PRIGOV The Russian artist and writer Dimitri Prigov is dead. Erich Klein, his friend and German translator, remembers one of the most important poets of the late and post-Soviet era. 18.07.2007
This article is available in German, English, and Swedish: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-18-klein-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-18-klein-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-18-klein-sv.html
Eurozine Review "UNLIKELY BEDFELLOWS" "Krytyka" casts a wary eye at neighbouring Russia; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) revisits the Rose Revolution; "Esprit" outs Sarkozy and Gramsci as unlikely bedfellows; "Lettre Internationale" (Denmark) explores the space between fact and fiction; "Lettera internazionale" presents an alternative to unbridled economic growth; "Greek Political Science Review" watches Europeanization take effect; "L'Homme" asks who should do the dishes; "Multitudes" intervenes in the post-colonial narrative; and "A Prior Magazine" declares a state of uncertainty. 17.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-17-eurozinerev-en.html
Will Barnes CAPITAL CLIMES Today, an Indian child consumes one ninetieth of the energy of her American counterpart. Such comparisons discredit the consensus that it is simply the mass activity of "man" which is responsible for global warming. 16.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-16-barnes-en.html
Pajo Avirovic THE WIT VIRUS "We should put a wit virus into the established system of ethnic, religious, and linguistic exclusivism. This virus should emphasize the seemingly irrelevant, as opposed to things that seem great, essential, historic." Macedonian author Pajo Avirovic on how a joke goes a long way in a society riven by ethnic tension. 13.07.2007
This article is available in English and Macedonian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-13-avirovic-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-13-avirovic-mk.html
Denko Maleski THE MACEDONIAN SAFETY DILEMMA Macedonian politics is dominated by conflicting interest groups, each fearful of their annihilation by the other, writes Denko Maleski. 13.07.2007
This article is available in English and Macedonian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-13-maleski-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-13-maleski-mk.html
Isolde Charim HISTORICAL MYTHS NEW AND OLD A new myth in the making? A response to arguments that national experiences of eastern Europe have been suppressed in western European commemorative practice. 13.07.2007
This article is now available in French, German, and English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-13-charim-fr.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-09-30-charim-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2005-09-30-charim-en.html
Ulrich Schmid NON-LITERATURE WITHOUT MORALS. WHY VARLAM SHALAMOV IS NOT READ Despite the moderate success of Varlam Shalamov's Kolyma Tales, he was unable to follow in the slipstream of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The muted reception to Shalamov's writing about the gulag lies in its rejection of the slightest artificiality, says Ulrich Schmid. 12.07.2007
This article is available in German: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-12-schmidu-de.html
José Casanova RELIGION, EUROPEAN SECULAR IDENTITIES, AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION The rapid process of secularization in western Europe has not diminished the unease with which Europe considers Islam and Muslims in its midst. In this benchmark essay from 2004, José Casanova argues that the "Islam problem" is an indicator of the disparity between liberal and illiberal strands of European secularism. 12.07.2007
This article is now available in French, English, German, and Italian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-12-casanova-fr.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2004-07-29-casanova-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2004-07-29-casanova-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2004-09-21-casanova-it.html
Per Wirtén DOING THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY. IN DEFENCE OF MULTICULTURALISM Multiculturalism, long the bête noire of the Right, has come under increasing attack from the Left. But whether multiculturalism poses a threat to Enlightenment values or not, the real debate must be over how we interpret the term itself. 11.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-11-wirten-en.html
Rainer Bauböck WHO ARE THE CITIZENS OF EUROPE? The tension between freedom of movement and national self-determination of citizenship within the EU has the potential to create serious conflicts. 11.07.2007
This article is now available in German, French, English, Spanish, and Italian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-11-baubock-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-11-baubock-fr.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-12-23-baubock-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-12-23-baubock-es.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-02-26-baubock-it.html
Geert Lovink BLOGGING, THE NIHILIST IMPULSE Media theorist and Internet activist Geert Lovink formulates a theory of weblogs that goes beyond the usual rhetoric of citizen journalism. 10.07.2007
This article is now available in Swedish, Italian, English, and Danish: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-10-lovink-sv.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-10-lovink-it.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-da.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. 06.07.2007
This article is now available in German, Italian, English, and Slovakian: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-rorty-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-rorty-it.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-11-rorty-sk.html
Leonhard Lapin SUPREALISM Estonian artist Leonhard Lapin's work mirrors the "suprealist world", where art is packaged for consumer culture. 06.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-gallery_lapin-en.html
Leonhard Lapin SUPREALIST MANIFESTO "Suprealism brings popular kitsch into the art gallery and high culture to the masses; it introduces into art the naivety of the producer of kitsch while retaining the elitism of the professional artist." 06.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-lapin1-en.html
Leonhard Lapin SUPREALIST ART, SUPREALIST LIFE Suprealism is a "movement" pioneered by Leonard Lapin that combines suprematism and realism; it mirrors the "suprealist world", where art is packaged for consumer culture. 06.07.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-07-06-lapin-en.html
Märt Väljataga LITERARY PERSPECTIVES: ESTONIA. WAITING FOR THE GREAT ESTONIAN NOVEL While the Great Estonian Novel has yet to be written, the range of Estonian fiction is sufficiently wide to serve as an indicator of the hopes and fears, anxieties and obsessions, of post-communist Estonia (though try telling that to the local librarian). 30.06.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-valjataga-en.html
Jaan Kaplinski THE VISITOR One evening, the director of a zoological museum receives a visitor with a very unusual interest in the exhibits... 30.06.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-kaplinski1-en.html
Jaan Kaplinski FROM HAREM TO BROTHEL. ARTISTS IN THE POST-COMMUNIST WORLD Jaan Kaplinski's 1992 allegory of transition casts doubt on the reputations of artists and writers after the collapse of the USSR. 30.06.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-kaplinski-en.html
Andrus Kivirähk A BRAVE WOMAN Cynical and naive mentalities mix in an absurd short story by Estonia's most popular young author. 30.06.2007
This article is available in English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-30-kivirahk-en.html
Boaventura de Sousa Santos BEYOND ABYSSAL THINKING. FROM GLOBAL LINES TO ECOLOGIES OF KNOWLEDGES Modern Western thinking continues to operate along abyssal lines that divide the human from the sub-human, argues Boaventura de Sousa Santos in a fundamental article. The "Western" side of this line is ruled by a dichotomy of regulation and emancipation, and the other by appropriation and violence. The only way to capture the full measure of what is going on, writes Santos, is a gigantic decentring effort. The struggle for global social justice must be a struggle for global cognitive justice as well. In order to succeed, this struggle requires a new kind of thinking, a post-abyssal thinking. 29.06.2007
Tymofiy Havryliv LITERARY PERSPECTIVES: UKRAINE. LONGING FOR THE NOVEL In Ukraine, the demand for engagement with the recent past has produced a series of novels that are better described as autobiographies. But, asks Timofiy Havryliv, is autobiography equal to the task? 28.06.2007
This article is available in German and English: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-havryliv-de.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-havryliv-en.html
Tatiana Moura BETWEEN MICRO-WAR AND MACRO-PEACE. MASCULINITIES AND FEMININITIES IN GANG WARFARE IN RIO DE JANEIRO The use of child soldiers, small arms, new technologies, and new methods to obtain political control are among the characteristics of the "newest wars". Tatiana Moura analyzes "masculinized" actors within such wars and women's resistance to masculinized practices in contexts of "formal peace". 28.06.2007
This article is available in English and Portuguese: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-moura-en.htmlhttp://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-moura-pt.html