Please note: next Eurozine Review out on 10 April 2013!

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IL MULINO 1/2013
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The South absolutely needs to re-examine its accounts with the North in order to find out if there are debts to pay or credits to receive." In "Il Mulino", Italian historian Paolo Macry wants to give a voice to the "Mezzogiorno" (the South of Italy) by unravelling the history of the relationship between North and South. This with a view to liberating the South from its status as "the ghost that haunts a declining Italy", and get rid of prejudices and flowery phrases like: "Without the burden of the South, the North could be at the same level as Germany."

Not only does Italy have to reconsider historically settled parameters defining the roles of North and South; it must also be conscious of the fact that in the face of the economic crisis, the role of the less productive southern periphery changes radically: "During a whole century it was the victim, now it is the guilty one". However, Macry continues:

"From a distance, Italy can be considered a successful country. Economically poor and politically marginalized in 1861, at the end of nineteenth century it entered the club dei grandi. This success has its roots in the meridional part of the peninsula. Not only in terms of fiscal contribution, migration flows, consumer market, intellectual resources and so on. The South fulfils another strategic function within the history of the country: it has brokered political stability. […] Ministerial, national and moderate, the South constitutes the political counter balance of the 'Northern winds' that stir up tensions within the country."

After the elections: In an online focal point, Il Mulino collects opinions on the recent elections in Italy. Young doctorate student Nicola Pedrazzi sees in the Beppo Grillo "movement" a "new '68". The protagonists and activists of the M5s movement are young people: "They are the ones who constitute the cultural humus and the technological arm of the movement. They are the ones who have been elected." Beppe Grillo gave political expression to the general discomfort of a young generation who had enough of being "consumers and passive spectators of a political, institutional and economical decline inherited from their parents".

Another commentator, Raimondo Catanzaro, is "dazzled" by the same movement. He is enthusiastic about the representation of political discontent that cannot be ignored – in spite of its sometimes "confused character, programmatic contradictions, dangerous populist traces and strong anti-European tendencies".

The full table of contents of Il Mulino 1/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/ilmulino/issue/2013-03-11.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-03-13-macry-it.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/macry.html>
<http://www.rivistailmulino.it/news/news/index/NewsCollection>/News:NEWS_COLLECTION:3

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MITTELWEG 36 1/2013
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"What went wrong?" asks political scientist William Scheuerman with regard to Obama's mediocre humanitarian record in the war on terror. Scheuerman is convinced that the "US presidential government's latent monarchist attributes have played a decisive role in generating far-reaching policy and legal continuities between Bush and Obama. Unless US Americans take a more critical look not only at President Obama's disappointing record in the war on terror, but also at the institutional idiosyncrasies of US presidential government, dramatic humanitarian improvements in the ongoing – and seemingly endless – US war on terror are unlikely to occur."

Democracy and markets: At the G-20 summit in Mexico in June 2012 German chancellor Angela Merkel stated, "We need more Europe, because the markets expect us to close ranks". The Italian elections a few months later, as the return of Berlusconi loomed large on the horizon, prompted her to advise against allowing this perfectly normal democratic process to cause any commotion in the markets. Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund would haven been delighted if the EFSF "was immediately signed. Unfortunately […] things do not happen in that way, things take time and have to go through parliamentary processes".

Such statements litter the media, as the notion of democracies conforming to markets becomes increasingly ingrained amongst politicians and "experts". German philosopher Lutz Wingert elaborates four reasons as to why this idea must be criticized and proposes limiting the power of market actors to promote autonomous democratic policymaking.

Cosy relationships between regulatory bodies and economic elites come at the expense of parliaments; they also distribute responsibility for losses unfairly. And in any case, price signals from the market hardly offer a sound basis for policymaking. The model seems less efficient and less intelligent than it is made out to be, not least because reaching consensus in a democratic polity involves so many more dimensions. Meanwhile, weak parliaments discuss smoking bans and how to deal with truants, as governments settle legal bills with transnational commissions and corporate advisors.

History ethic: Reinhard Mehring celebrates the oeuvre of German historian Reinhard Koselleck (1923-2006). Numerous posthumously published editions – notably Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte – reassess the timeliness of his work, which is founded on the connection between remembrance and responsibility.

The full table of contents of Mittelweg 36 1/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/mittelweg36/issue/2013-02-18.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-03-07-scheuerman-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/scheuerman.html>

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BLÄTTER FÜR DEUTSCHE UND INTERNATIONALE POLITIK 3/2013
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The president of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, spoke to Victor Orbán on the phone again. Is this, in the light of the new amendment of the Hungarian constitution, a sign that the European Union is increasing its pressure on the Hungarian parliament? In "Blätte"r (Germany), Robert Hodonyi and Helga Trüpel strongly criticize the EU's "political half-heartedness":

"These constitutional amendments in Hungary are handled as purely formal infringements of EU law; no political statement, like that of the European parliament, has been made. Therefore, the EU can only delay or partly check the antidemocratic reforms of the Hungarian government."

Nevertheless these interventions were welcomed by the opposition and civil society in Hungary, which, after a "state of shock" following the 2010 elections, is now experiencing a "renaissance of the political that extends far beyond the classic milieus of critical intellectuals", write Hodonyi and Trüpel. Yet whether the opposition alliance "Együtt 2014" (Together 2014), along with the Hungarian Social Democratic Party MSZP, meet with success in confronting Orbán is far from clear:

"The EU cannot simply put its hands in its lap until the election; [it must] increase the pressure on Orbán's government once again. Not only will this put some wind in the sails of the new Hungarian opposition, but also in those of Hungarian democracy as a whole."

Also: Ian Buruma calls on the UK to be the "democratic grit" in the EU; Arne Heise advises the eurozone not to go on building on the ruins of neoliberalism; and Ulrike Lembke hopes that the current debate on sexism at least leads to the re-politicization of sexuality.

The full table of contents of Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/blatter/issue/2013-03-11.html>

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GLÄNTA 4/2012
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In "Glänta" (Sweden), Nancy Bauer talks to Johanna Sjöstedt about feminist philosophy and how difficult it is for women to take hold and assert themselves in philosophical institutions:

I was "lucky and got a good job right away. However, I have been offered full time jobs that were partly in philosophy and partly in women's studies. The university that is ranked in the top three of PhD programs in philosophy in the United States was very interested in hiring my husband and offered me a job too, which was split between philosophy and women's studies. I turned them down. I think it's really important for women to stay in philosophy. The percentage of women in philosophy is appallingly small; in the US the percentage of women with secure tenure stable jobs is about 15 to 18 per cent. I think the field suffers from a lack of the brainpower, the interest, and the particular experiences that women bring to it."

Kittler's last tape: In a the last interview German media theorist Friedrich Kittler gave before he died last year, he tells E Khayyat that his relationship to Heidegger was complicated, but that there is no "political connection" (the interview has also been published in Boundary 2):

"You are probably suggesting, already at the outset of our conversation, that there has to be a relationship between what people have come to describe as Friedrich Adolf Kittler's 'reactionary thoughts', on the one hand, and a certain conservatism ascribed to Martin Heidegger, on the other. I can tell you in advance that the kind of 'political connection' you mention existed between Heidegger, Derrida, and, for instance, de Man, and perhaps one can read the traces of this political connection in their and also their allies' works. It was Derrida himself, actually, who wrote about 'our innocence' in his defence and/or refutation of de Man's conservatism. I would never consider myself a member of a club of innocents, even if I were considered one."

Amnesia: Nicklas Hållén on how Belgium deals (or fails to deal) with its colonial past and Alia Malek on the history of Syria as a never-ending chain of black outs and revisions.

The full table of contents of Glänta 4/2012
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/glanta/issue/2013-03-06.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/bauer3.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/sjostedt.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-03-08-bauer-en.html>

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SARAJEVO NOTEBOOK 39/40 (2012)
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In an issue focusing on the problem of masculinity in the Balkans, Sazana Çapriqi finds that entrenched masculine privilege, rigid gender roles and a literal and metaphorical patriarchy are endemic to the region. Tracing the history of male hegemony in the region through folklore, myth and Greek epic and drama, she explains that Balkan women have not succeeded in developing "their own narratives told from their own point of view. Instead, they have adopted male narratives and in the absence of their own language they have learned to speak man's language."

Citing the traditional figure of the "sworn virgin", a woman who has fully adopted a male role and a male identity, as the most striking illustration of Balkan women's historic failure to overcome the overwhelming dominance of male discourse, Çapriqi concludes that women are faced with a patriarchal tradition "so deeply ingrained that at times it seems virtually impossible even to challenge it".

Turbo-folk: Approaching the subject from a very different angle, Zoran Cirakovic asks why the stereotype of Serbian masculinity as violent, homicidal and genocidal should have become embodied in the figure of Ceca, a female singer of the popular music form known as turbo-folk. Diagnosing a fundamental distrust of the "lower orders' shared by both the nationalist right and the modernizing left", he finds that the intemperate attacks on this music express a "fear of the subaltern population which can be recognized in many developing countries where modernisation is not only delayed but emphatically uneven".

Drawing on post-colonial theory, Cirakovic claims that the neoliberal project of creating a westernized, "modernist Serbia" ignores the existence of alternative modernities that might answer local needs and draw on local traditions. Turbo-folk, the "embodiment of Serbness", is an inclusive and cosmopolitan, syncretic form that could stand as an avatar of such an alternative modernity. Controversially, he scents a dangerous trend in Serbian political discourse with the deprecation of masculinity and valorization of a femininity which "subjugates and marginalizes people of both sexes who are misfits in an ideological framework presented as desirable ('European') and culturally and ethically superior".

Also: An extensive and wide-ranging selection of poetry by Roma authors from throughout the region, in Romani and other languages.

The full table of contents of Sarajevo Notebook 39/40 (2012)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/sarajevonotebook/issue/2013-03-12.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/capriqi.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-03-13-capriqi-en.html>

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NAQD 30 (2012)
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"NAQD" (Algeria) marks the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian independence with a special issue of essays offering a panoramic view of political change in Africa over the last half century. New material complements the reproduction of speeches by Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara and Cheikh K'uma Ndumbe.

The tone is anything but triumphalist. Daho Djerbal's introductory article speaks of disenchantment, despotism and oppression, frontiers shifting at the whim of foreign interests, and of solidarity against colonialism being replaced by fratricidal conflict. His account of Algeria's road to independence perceives the roots of present-day conflict in the independence movement's uncertainty, including over which political party, block or power to entrust with the project. The perennial controversy about whether the liberation movement's goal should be citizenship or nationhood is also revisited.

Fifty years of African decolonization: The jaundiced view of African independence is reasserted by Achille Mbembe:

"Too many countries are still at the mercy of despots whose sole aim is to maintain a lifelong grip on power. Consequently, most elections are fraudulent. Lip service is paid to the basic procedural aspects of the quest for power, but control is maintained over the most important levers: bureaucracy, the economy and, above all, the police and militias. Since the possibility of removing the government through the ballot box is practically non-existent, the only means of opposing any indefinite hold on power is assassination, rebellion or armed uprising."

Unless the culture of extraction and predation that characterizes the exploitation of raw materials in Africa is radically changed and brought under African control, Mbembe sees little reason for hope. Whilst international indifference is also at fault, if Africans wish for true democracy, they must setup transnational networks of solidarity, a "moral grand coalition".

Independence: Congolese writer and actor Papy Maurice Mbwiti advances a comparable outlook in his poem "Et si on te disait 'indépendant'?":
So, if someone said "independent" to you…?
I'd say World Bank, African
Development Bank, International
Monetary Fund,
[…]
I'd say mass monetary control
injection of foreign currencies,
growth rate, fixed rate, floating
rate, parallel rate, official rate
[…]
I'd say corruption, misappropriation,
[…]
(If we had to name indépendants,
do you really think you'd be included?
Come off it!)

More about NAQD
<http://www.eurozine.com/associates/naqd.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/mbembe.html>

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HOST 1/2013 and 2/2013
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The first two issues of "Host" (Czech Republic) in 2013 assess the Czech literary production of the past year. Literary critic Dora Kaprálová feels that most of current Czech fiction predictably and timidly sticks to established confines, "displaying social empathy, sometimes posing as a social worker or psychotherapist, or sometimes as a private chronicler's diary correcting recent historical mistakes".

This applies to the two most successful books of 2012: Katerina Tuckova's pseudo-documentary Zítkovské bohyne (The Goddesses of Zítkov), which "offers the reader a satisfaction similar to browsing a glossy issue of National Geographic"; and the novel Nemci (The Germans) by Jakuba Katalpa, who plays safe following two previous, more experimental novels. Kaprálová detects "an inclination to moderation and traditional narrative […], with not enough radical intimacy, inwardness and ingenuity".

Women literature: In February's issue, the journal's editor-in-chief Miroslav Balastík charts the genetic and generational transformation of Czech fiction in response to a controversy stirred up by critic Jirí Penás. In an article entitled "Spiderwomen and the poor fat fly" and published in the daily Lidove noviny, Penás admitted that he can't abide the recent crop of books by women authors. Meanwhile, Jakuba Katalpa explains in a Host interview why she chose a much simpler language and style for her latest novel: "My earlier books were experimental, fragmented and quite demanding on the reader; I was curious whether I could handle a classical, traditional narrative".

Book of the Year: Literary scholar Lucie Tucková presents the Book of the Year for 2012, a mix of biography, historical and documentary study, film script and perhaps even poetry: Jako bychom dnes zemrit meli. Drama zivota, knezstvi a mucednicke smrti cihostskeho fararre P. Josefa Toufara (As if we were to die tomorrow. The drama of the life, priesthood and martyrdom of Father Josef Toufar). The 47-year-old priest was imprisoned by the communist regime and beaten to death in 1949 when 20 witnesses reported that a wooden cross moved several times in his local church. The book's author Milos Dolezal comments: "Apparently something has ripened that has a crucial message for this mushy historical moment and relativizing society of ours, something that the martyred priest was meant to witness with his life and death".

The full table of contents for Host 1/2013 and 2/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/host/issue/2013-02-19.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/host/issue/2013-03-04.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/balastik.html>

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VARLIK 2/2013
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"Varlik" scrutinizes the boom in Turkish literature. As publishers proliferate and novels find their way to supermarket shelves, has quality improved too? And what to make of the rise of "creative writing" courses and studios?

While the domestic market may not yet be able to sustain the "army of writers" seen in Europe and America, the last 20 years have delivered more writers than ever before, writes Baris Acar. Few of the practitioners the journal invited to comment were impressed by the fledging creative writing classes: "A relationship can be seen between the rise in these courses and the increase in courses for hobbies like cooking and/or vocational courses", comments Sibel Ercan. Still, it is the "good fortune of today's shining writers that they do not have to struggle to publish their first works in the same way as Oguz Atay or Hasan Ali Toptas did".

While literary agent Nermin Mollaoglu draws attention to the huge surge in the number of publishers and a simultaneous fall in the number of copies in first print runs, Huseyin Kiran discerns a shift to consumerism: "What is profitable is quantity, not quality; that's what produces profit and what bourgeois capitalism knows best. If there's a crisis, it's not one of the book market or of art. In my heart I feel that not producing quality is a crisis of humanity, and why should readers or writers be excluded?"

There is indeed no guarantee that quality rises with quantity, says Basar Basarir, and the market can push writers into "less restrained, more popular gestures." Still, "what does it matter? The flood recedes, the sand remains".

Banned books: Tozan Alkan recommends Emin Karaca's Vaay Kitabin Basina Gelenler! (Wow, look what's happened to books!) to anyone keen to "get to know the 'proud achievements' of our cultural life". Karaca covers the history of outlawed books, bookshops and publishers, from late Ottoman-era bans on Milton, Zola and Dante to today's cases against William Burroughs and Chuck Palahniuk. Even if the 1980 military coup brought the worst period, today is not much better, with 47 books banned, tried or pulped in 2012. Alkan notes that most of these dealt with the Kurdish issue.

Also: Feridun Andac reviews Yasar Kemal's Ciplak Deniz Ciplak Ada (Naked sea, naked isle), the fourth book in the "Island Story" series; Hande Sonsoz interviews Terry Eagleton; and Nesrin Aydin Satar examines critical responses to Elif Safak's Iskender.

The full table of contents of Varlik 2/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/varlik/issue/2013-03-11.html>

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LA REVUE NOUVELLE 1/2013
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"La Revue Nouvelle"'s January-February dossier, published in association with the 2011-12 Report of the League of Human Rights, contains eleven short articles that focus primarily on Belgium. The issues raised resonate across the European Union: the right to free expression, especially in the context of the economic crisis, the digital age and the perceived threat posed by the growth of European Islam.

Under the heading "L'Expression sous pression" ("Expression under pressure"), writers deplore the attempts of governments and other agencies to control means of communication (the Internet), to repress ideological dissent, to subvert parliamentary democracy and to deny access to information.

Pierre-Arnaud Perrouty argues that the proliferation of channels of communication provides no guarantee of the freedom of content: conservative views, conformism, prudery, religious beliefs and the commercial interests of service providers all impact on true freedom of expression. Just take the way "Pussy Riot" was punished in Russia, he exemplifies, or the efforts of an Islamic organisation over a period of a decade to persuade the UN to adopt an international law against blasphemy.

Anne-Julie Wilcox shows why the threat to neutrality and freedom of expression arising from the ACTA proposal (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) have not gone away: "It should be scarcely necessary to point out that legislation to protect ownership of intellectual property is, basically, an exception to the generally accepted principle of freedom of exchange and competition in commerce and invention. Whilst ACTA itself was rejected in July 2012 by the EU Parliament, the Commission subsequently submitted CECA, a bilateral EU-Canada agreement that included many of the offending ACTA articles."

The full table of contents of La Revue Nouvelle 1/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/revuenouvelle/issue/2013-03-04.html>

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RES PUBLICA NOWA 20 (2012)
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In the new issue of "Res Publica Nowa" (Poland), Erik Peterson's landmark essay "Monotheism as a political problem" from 1935 provides the central impetus for exploring the relationship between religion and politics in the modern world.

With reference to classical, Judaic, and Christian traditions, Peterson argues that any justification of absolute rule based on drawing parallels between earthly leaders and the power of an omnipotent deity is incompatible with the essence of Christian teaching. His ideas on political theology still provoke intense debate.

The spiritual dimension: Globally, politicized religious faith is gaining in strength, observes RPN editor Wojciech Przybylski. Politicians are acutely aware of the leverage religion can offer in the acquisition of personal power. In Europe, the ideas of nineteenth-century Spanish politician Juan Donoso Cortes are still cited to vindicate dictatorship and the political appropriation of religion to secure social stability. Poland is "struggling with his grim heritage even today", Przybylski writes.

Public discussion of the principles of social justice is suppressed to protect an unofficial balance between the two ruling systems in the country: the religious and the secular. Yet political organisation is based on rational procedure, rules and mechanism, while religion is founded on intuition, passion and feeling. And, in the political arena, religious faith can be destructive and dangerous. The spiritual dimension must be acknowledged and discussed, but politics should never be subordinate to religion.

The static and the dynamic: Ariadna Lewanska reflects on concepts of freedom and mysticism in the writings of the interwar French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose work was included in the Catholic Church's list of prohibited reading (Index Librorum Prohibitorum). Bergson differentiated between the "static", narrative-based religions characteristic of closed societies – which function to stabilize or protect the group – and the potentially "dynamic", free and creative religion of an open society. Lewanska argues that Bergson's ideas found expression in Poland during the 1970s and 1980s, where the reforming independent trade union movement, Solidarity, was driven by deeply shared moral perceptions.

Also: Jan Burzynski discusses the contemporary social relevance of Henrik Ibsen's work and Laszlo Rajk reflects on the difficulties of establishing new foundations for democracy and tolerance in Hungary.

The full table of contents of Res Publica Nowa 20 (2012)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/respublica/issue/2013-03-13.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/przybylski.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/lewanska.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/rajk.html>

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MERKUR 3/2013
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Without the experience of Cold War dissidents, the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 could never have taken place, writes political scientist Helmut König in "Merkur" (Germany). It is therefore crucial that the record of their endeavours, from the texts of intellectuals and the underground printing presses to the spontaneous protests, is preserved. However, König's article, entitled "In praise of dissidence", is anything but a straightforward eulogy. In examining the currents of history swirling around events in Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the DDR, König sounds the depths too.

One of his principle concerns is the relation between political action or the state on the one hand, and freedom on the other – especially given that critiques of or protests against political regimes were considered more or less futile in the face of the brutal reprisals they routinely incurred. König highlights György Konrád's book Antipolitik (1985) as a key text for understanding the mindset of dissidents. Therein Konrád states: "Eastern Europeans identify politics with lies." The corollary of which was that "freedom only ever begins first then, where politics ends". König is not uncritical of this stance, and paints a dramatic picture of its tragic potential:

The dissidents "situate themselves in a metaphysical tradition that since Plato has held political action as an inferior way of going about things – because it is not concerned with the truth, it is always dishonest, it happens in the realm of shadows, a world of mere appearances, where the majority may well feel at home, but where the philosopher, devoted to the truth of ideas, has never been suffered and is, in the end, like Socrates, put to death, or remains at the very least forever alien."

Farewell to appearances: Ingo Meyer dispatches with large swathes of postmodern theoretical approaches in assessing the state of aesthetics among scholarly circles of the day. Yet, for all its drawbacks, the unprecedented complexity of the theoretical landscape has provided much of value too: "one should not insist too eagerly upon the ominous indeterminacy of the aesthetic, for as a whole, our theoretical situation is more comfortable that forty or even twenty years ago". However, much more in-depth work remains to be done if more than merely scratching the surface of received ideas is to be achieved.

The full table of contents of Merkur 3/2013
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/merkur/issue/2013-03-04.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-03-05-konig-de.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/konigh.html>