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NEW HUMANIST 3/2014
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Cultural studies may have become a victim of its own success, writes Caspar Melville in a return to the pages of "New Humanist" (UK), the journal he edited from 2005 to 2013. As one of the discipline's founding fathers Stuart Hall feared, it has become something of "a machine for generating cultural theory, rather than a method of using theory to understand the world" – a world impoverished by the loss of Hall early this year, along with Richard Hoggart, another of the discipline's pioneers.

The generation shift is palpable: from what Melville describes as the "scathingly moralistic" riffs on "British working-class youth in thrall to American popular culture" in Hoggart's 1957 classic Uses of Literacy, through Hall's deconstruction of the popular and reflections on "new ethnicities". Now, the graduates of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies that Hoggart and Hall founded 50 years ago adorn the top tier of universities in Britain, America, Australia, Taiwan and Singapore.

However, concludes Melville, those who consider the idea of culture as a site of struggle "anachronistic, carrying as it does such a strong whiff of the culture wars of the 1970s, all patchouli and crisis and sit-ins and futile calls for revolution", may want to think again. Because being "alive to the growing inequalities and iniquities of the global economy" means that "Hall's model of culture as a site of struggle makes more sense than ever. And the stakes in this struggle, as Hall reminds us time and again, couldn't be higher – nothing less than the conditions of possibility for human freedom."

Pacifism a humanist value? In every issue New Humanist poses a "Big Question" to its readers. "Is pacifism a humanist value?" was the Big Question this summer, to coincide with the previous issue's theme of war and peace.

In the light of Russia's aggression in Ukraine and the brutality of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the response of a reader named Joshua couldn't be more topical: "Pacifism is, I think, a humanist value […] but on the scale of values it falls slightly below equality and freedom. Bertrand Russell agreed with the Allied involvement in World War II, and Einstein even helped kill a few Japanese with his mathematical work on where to strategically place underwater explosives. […] Both of these great humanists and great pacifists understood that there are some things worth fighting for."

The full table of contents of New Humanist 3/2014
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-melville-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/melville.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/newhumanist/issue/2014-09-01.html>

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MITTELWEG 36 4/2014
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"Mittelweg 36" (Germany) publishes the text of a lively discussion that took place in May, on events in Crimea.
The legal scholar Reinhard Merkel classes Crimea's breakaway from Ukraine as a rather messy secession. However, while "Russia's military coercion was illegal" under international law, "it was no kidnap, no annexation", certainly not by the standards of Saddam Hussein's intervention in Kuwait. That Crimea became part of Russia broke Ukrainian law, continues Merkel, but Russia is not bound by Ukrainian law. The distinction is crucial, since it makes military action against Russia unjustifiable. Besides, says Merkel, Russia's actions in Crimea are in comparison to American intervention in Iraq "feather-light" from an international law perspective.
Western double standards come in for further critique. Despite the differences between Crimea and Kosovo, Merkel disapproves of the West's response to events in Crimea in light of its immediate applause for the secession of Kosovo, which he considers "at least as dubious" as Crimea's.

Jan Philipp Reemtsma contends that western double standards cannot excuse Russia's conduct. Furthermore, he objects to the way in which Kyiv was prevented from protecting minority rights in Crimea and that therefore one would probably have to consider this an annexation, which would have important consequences, for example, the justification of "armed resistance and above all emergency military aid".
Perhaps the point raised in the discussion by jurist Gerd Hankel concerning events that continue to unfold now in Donetsk and Luhansk is most poignant: "This could of course be a rather more rigorous repeat action of what came to pass in Crimea. Was that not a preliminary exercise?"

Also: The issue features several articles on World War I and its aftermath. Friedrich Kießling urges us all to abandon the blame game concerning the outbreak of the War; Bernd Greiner on the sustained relevance of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August; and Tim B. Müller on the wave of democratization that broke over Europe after WWI.

The full table of contents of Mittelweg 36 4/2014
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/mittelweg36/issue/2014-09-01.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-reemtsma-de.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/merkel.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/reemtsma.html>

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KULTURA LIBERALNA 289-291 (2014)
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In interview with "Kultura Liberalna" (Poland), Martha Nussbaum insists that liberalism needs love:
"Sure, there are infinitely many types of love, and some are good and some bad. I make it very clear that a specific set of political norms – including support for health, education and welfare, and including equal respect among differing groups – is the starting point. Then the argument is that these norms will not remain stable without a particular type of love, which includes compassion but is somewhat stronger than compassion is usually taken to be. Only love will make people willing to sacrifice their own self-interest for the sake of the well-being of others, as my norms require."

Equally, those liberals who "cede the strong emotions of patriotism to their opponents, they are making a bad mistake". As for the hypocrisy with which European states invite migrant workforces to make up for the decline in population but then treat these migrants badly, Nussbaum says it's "like inviting guests to a dinner and then throwing them rotten food." And as for the French burqa ban, Nussbaum insists that if argued for consistently, then it would necessitate banning "numerous practices in the majority culture."

An attack on French culture: In a complementary interview with Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher takes issue with Nussbaum's excesses of tolerance. Finkielkraut disputes her claims that French cultural policy is anachronistic, firmly stating that permitting Muslim women to wear burqas and allowing the "Islamization of Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods would be a fatal mistake", constituting "an attack on the culture of the host country."
In response to the failings of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism as well as the unprecedented advances of the Front National, Finkielkraut hopes for "a true and authentic, reflective and self-critical hospitality".

More debate: Ivan Krastev emphasizes the relevance of the Nussbaum-Finkielkraut debate "at a moment when political Islam is on the rise and the future of the EU is in doubt" (291). The debate widens with contributions from Charles Taylor and Olivier Roy.

The full table of contents of Kultura Liberalna 289-291 (2014)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/kulturaliberalna/issue/2014-09-01.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/nussbaum.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-nussbaum-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/finkielkraut.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-finkielkraut-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/krastev.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-krastev-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/Taylor.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/roy.html>

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ESPRIT 8-9/2014
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While economic globalization made the free market economy a clear winner over planned economies with little ado, on the political field, "strategic globalization" has hardly made itself felt. So says vice-president of the institute Notre Europe, Nicole Gnesotto, in "Esprit" (France). One of the reasons is the EU's structural incapacity to establish a global political plan:

"Vladimir Putin is situated between the twenty-first globalized century and the power relations of the 1930s, while the post-national, post-strategic and irenic European Union has done away with the power of reflection and of global politics. The resulting strategic cacophony makes it difficult to muster the anticipation necessary for the prevention of crisis and impedes the pursuit of a common diplomatic language necessary for fruitful negotiations between Putin and Obama, between Israel and Palestine, between China and Europe."
Gnesotto discerns a pressing and painful issue in the reluctance to use force on the side of occidental democracies and the "explosion of primitive, tribal, mafia-style, dictatorial or terrorist violence":
"Paradoxically, there is a golden thread of atrocities and savageries that passes through different African, Middle-Eastern and Asiatic scenes […] and therefore Europe too, as a result of the pull of jihad."

The Chinese Dream: Alice Béjà deals with the young Chinese Dream formulated by president Xi Jinping in 2012: "The communist regime continues to encourage the growing prosperity of its citizens by associating the dream of material success with both the reinforcement of national sentiment and a hardening of the repression of dissidents. For this dream is first of all the dream of a party: to stay in power at all costs."

Also: Peter Trawny, editor of Martin Heidegger's Black Notebooks, takes a stand on their anti-Semitic content.

The full table of contents of Esprit 8-9/2014
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/esprit/issue/2014-08-25.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/beja.html>

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MERKUR 9/2014
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"Journals react much faster to intellectual trends than the cumbersome baggage of monographs", writes Philipp Felsch in "Merkur" (Germany). Felsch takes the founding of the German journal "Tumult" in the late 1970s as a case in point. German intellectuals had grown awfully tired of theory in the wake of the student movement but a whole new body of French thought urgently required a German publisher.
Intellectual figures like Frank Böckelmann (former situationist), Hans Zischler (actor and co-founder of the publisher Merve), and Foucault translator Ulrich Raulff founded a new magazine that favoured hybrids of text and image akin to those already seen in French Traverses. A "new language of theory" and a new "theory design" were born.

Decelaration and going without? Werner Plumpe highlights the weaknesses of Thomas Piketty's critique of capitalism, particularly Piketty's suggestion that a few tax raises will put everything back on track. Plumpe ranks the helplessness of such a solution alongside current discussions of the "decelaration of the world" and limiting economic growth, which the German economist considers somewhat of a luxury in the great scheme of things. Besides, just what is it exactly that we're supposed to go without, "the mobile phone assembled in Taiwan, the T-shirt from Bangladesh, the ceramics from Vietnam or the Christmas tree decorations from China?"
"Going without economic growth that is falsely considered to have become senseless" may represent a meaningful moral choice on a personal level but cannot be "ethically justified" economically: "A good life is not a question of economic abstinence that would only make individual lives harder. When countries stop doing what they best know how to do, they not only cause harm to themselves, but also to their trading partners, who profit from these country's high productive capacity."

The full table of contents of Merkur 9/2014
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/merkur/issue/2014-09-01.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-felsch-de.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/felsch.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/plumpe.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/piketty.html>

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PASSAGE 71 (2014)
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The increasingly fictive nature of money after the 2008 financial crisis informs the treatment in "Passage" (Denmark) of money as a literary trope.

The literary form par excellence for investigating the dark forces of economy seems to be the satire. In the light of which, Dennis Meyhoff Brink explores European satires during the twelfth century. 900 years of money troubles ensue in further articles on Swift, Goethe, Flaubert and Dostoyevsky, authors who merge in this issue with contemporary Crunch Fiction.

Imagining the loss: Mikkel Bolt explores in an introductory essay just what a difference a crisis can make. Bolt takes as his point of departure John Ashbery's 2009 poetry collection Planisphere, quoting:

"Yet it's hard not to imagine the loss.
I think, though I can’t be sure,
that all this is being added to my bill.
Woe betide us! We shall never pay,
though, not in a million years. Everything is promise."

Bolt comments: "Ashbery's poetry tells us something about financial capital and the economic bubble. It shows us the closed universe, created by neoliberal capitalism, this strange accelerating and simultaneously dead time."

Material reality: Jørn Erslev Andersen turns his attention to the main female characters of Madame Bovary and The Idiot. Emma Bovary and Nastassya Filippovna both dream of a perfect – in a material sense – life. But they get trapped in an inescapable circle of debt and greed. Erslev Andersen concludes:
"Emma and Nastassya demonstrate, each in their own way, that everything can go wrong when the relation between dream, a compensatory urge for luxury and the real world's inexorable realities – in the form of greedy loan sharks, banks and cold-minded men like Rogozhin with enough money on their accounts – fails to gel with the rules dictated by high, really high, capitalist interest rates. A driven imaginary dream meets the real through symbolic economic power."

The full table of contents of Passage 71 (2014)
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/passage/issue/2014-09-03.html>

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NY TID 35 and 36/2014
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Last year, 18-year-old Danish poet Yahya Hassan stirred a fierce debate about Islam with his first collection of poems. The book, simply called POEMS, has meanwhile sold over 100,000 copies in Denmark – unprecedented in a country of 5.5 million inhabitants. In his poetry, Hassan, the son of Palestinian immigrants, describes the milieu in which he grew up, characterized by crime and violence in the suburbs of Århus. But he also criticizes the religious hypocrisy of his Muslim father and the generation he represents.

In interview in Helsinki-based weekly "Ny Tid" (issue 35/2014), Hassan tells Otto Ekman why he is fed up with being reduced to an "Islam critic": "My critique of Danish youth detention centres wasn't discussed at all in Denmark. Obviously that issue is less interesting than criminal Muslims," he spits ironically.
The label "migrant literature" makes him at least as angry: "I hate that concept! I have no clue what 'migrant literature' is. The very word 'immigrant' is absurd and the way it's being used is absurd. I'm born in Denmark, my parents were forced there by circumstances that were out of their control; it's not like they decided to move to Denmark of all places just because they liked the weather. By lumping people together in such a broad and unspecific category you deprive them of their individuality and their historical context. You create a faceless mass, which is much easier to ignore and avoid taking seriously."

Also: In this week's issue (36/2014), historian Anders Björnson can't hide his fears of a new powerful Germany. What or who, he asks, will be able to stop German power ambitions when "the UK in the near future turns its back on Brussels"?

More about Ny Tid
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/nytid.html>

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DIALOGI 5-6/2014
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It's not long now until the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia, remarks Matic Majcen in "Dialogi" (Slovenia). And as today's world of "economic liberalization […] races towards its own vision of (a reckless) utopia", Majcen finds himself looking to the Left for "a type of utopia based on a deeper reflection on the ethical dimensions of social coexistence".

"If we wanted to look for the closest equivalent to the actual realization of the leftist conceptualization of utopian thought", he continues, "we would most likely need to go to the village of Marinaleda in Andalusia, Spain". A self-sufficient success story with just under 3000 inhabitants, Majcen explains how it offers a choice. For living in Marinaleda means you may be free of multinationals but not manual labour, seven days a week. So either you can "have a strongly compromised but actualized version of utopia that blurs the non-physical identity profiles of digital modernity, or continue to dream about a perfect society on paper and in writing."

The full table of contents of Dialogi 5-6/2014
<http://www.eurozine.com/journals/dialogi/issue/2014-09-01.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2014-09-03-majcen-en.html>
<http://www.eurozine.com/authors/majcen.html>