----------------------------------------------------------- EUROZINE NEWSLETTER 11.2006 ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article of the month: Orhan Pamuk on Neighbourhoods 2. 19th European Meeting of Cultural Journals in London 3. Arche awaits court hearing 4. Hungary 1956: The first time as tragedy... 5. New partners: dérive, Host, and Greek Political Science Review 6. New articles
----------------------------------------------------------- 1. ARTICLE OF THE MONTH: ORHAN PAMUK ON NEIGHBOURHOODS ----------------------------------------------------------- In an article based on his opening statement at the 18th European Meeting of Cultural Journals, held in Istanbul in November 2005, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk specifies cultural journals' place in the contemporary media landscape. In their search for readers, he says, many journals are tempted to imitate the language and interests of the big media. The attention this might gain will always be short-lived, warns Pamuk. In order to remain "a space where culture resists", cultural journals must not become like their big siblings.
Turning to the main theme of last year's Eurozine meeting -- neighbourhoods -- Pamuk raises another warning finger. Although we celebrate and strive for good relations with our neighbours, especially in international politics, the concept of neighbourhood is problematic. "Living in a modern city," says Pamuk, "essentially means being liberated from the pressure of having neighbours." The neighbour is someone who -- if we don't love him -- checks on us, even spies on and denounces us. To open the door to one's neighbour also means to open it to the prying and controlling eyes of society.
In such a context -- where the neighbour represents the need to get along not only with one's fellow citizens, but also with the state, the police, the army -- the concern with what the neighbour might say causes "everyone to keep their controversial thoughts, their dissent, to themselves".
This warning is, of course, based on personal experience. Last winter, Pamuk stood trial for having "publicly denigrated Turkish identity". The court in which his case was heard is situated directly opposite the house of Pamuk's grandmother -- in his very own neighbourhood. But Pamuk is never one-dimensional: his caution against giving up one's identity just to please one's neighbours must also be interpreted in the light of Turkey's bid for EU membership.
Orhan Pamuk NEIGHBOURHOODS. OPENING ADDRESS TO THE 18TH EUROPEAN MEETING OF CULTURAL JOURNALS
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-13-pamuk-en.html
----------------------------------------------------------- 2. 19TH EUROPEAN MEETING OF CULTURAL JOURNALS IN LONDON ----------------------------------------------------------- Last weekend's 19th Meeting of European Cultural Journals -- held in London -- saw a record number of speakers and participants representing over thirty different countries. "Friend or foe: Shared space, divided society" was the title of the conference, which saw editors of Europe's leading cultural journals converge on this "city of transit" to bring highly varied -- and often widely diverging -- perspectives to this most current of topics.
From the "phobocity" and the ubiquitous siren that announces London's new climate of fear to the banlieue, cipher for institutionalized exclusion and the failures of republicanism; from the Polish plumber and the spectres he evokes to the radically moderate independent Muslim press -- papers were unfailingly stimulating and informative. Articles based on the panels are soon to be published in Eurozine -- watch this space.
Find more details and the complete programme online: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-09-29-newsitem-en.html
----------------------------------------------------------- 3. ARCHE AWAITS COURT HEARING ----------------------------------------------------------- Valer Bulhakau, editor of Belarusian Eurozine partner "Arche", told editors attending the 19th Meeting of European Cultural Journals in London that "Arche's" operations have been suspended by the government since September. As reported by Eurozine, "Arche's" offence was to publish political material, thereby going beyond its brief as a history journal. Penalizing the journal on technicalities rather than banning it outright is typical of a strategy of the Belarusian authorities that also includes choking off the distribution of the independent press.
An appeal lodged at the commercial court is due to be heard on 3 November, when "Arche's" fate will be decided. On behalf of over sixty European partner journals, Eurozine has sent a letter protesting "Arche's" suspension to the Belarusian ministry of information.
----------------------------------------------------------- 4. HUNGARY 1956: THE FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY... ----------------------------------------------------------- In the public mind, the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 have been inseparable from the angry demonstrations over Ferenc Gyurcsány's leaked "We lied in the morning..." speech. The political battle over rightful ownership of the legacy of '56 has dovetailed with a general sense that democratic structures have yet to fully take hold in Hungary.
Articles dealing with '56 and its dubious "action replay" include Peter György on the political posturing of today's politicians and Roger Martelli on the Suez connection; renowned socialist historian François Fejtö on power relations in international communism and a unique eye-witness account by Jean Magnard. Not least are two previously untranslated fictional excerpts from novels by Gábor Németh and Endre Kukorelly, two of the most interesting writers at work in Hungary today.
----------------------------------------------------------- 5. NEW PARTNERS: DÉRIVE, HOST, AND GREEK POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW ----------------------------------------------------------- The month of October has seen three new and very diverse journals enter the Eurozine network.
"dérive" is a Vienna-based journal of urban research that has been published quarterly since 2000. It considers itself an interdisciplinary platform for urban research, with topics ranging from architecture and regional planning to sociology, political science, and new media.
"Host" is a Czech literary journal that emerged in 1985 as a samizdat journal. It is now published 10 times a year and has become a unique literary periodical in the Czech Republic, providing topical information about both Czech and international literature.
The newest addition to Eurozine is the "Greek Political Science Review", issued biannually by the Hellenic Political Science Association. It publishes theoretical and empirical articles from all subfields of political science and international relations as well as reviews.
Read more about "dérive", "Host", and the "Greek Political Science Review", including their current issues: >>http://www.eurozine.com/journals/derive.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/journals/host.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/journals/grpolsci.html
----------------------------------------------------------- 6. NEW ARTICLES ----------------------------------------------------------- Siegfried Kohlhammer CULTURAL BASIS FOR ECONOMIC SUCCESS Why are there rich and poor countries? The relative prosperity of immigrant groups internationally suggests that it isn't geography, climate, or economic policy that decides the success of a country, but culture. 02.11.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-11-02-kohlhammer-de.html
François Fejtö HUNGARY, FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION The great Hungarian socialist chronicler of eastern European totalitarianism writes on the revolution in the context of Hungarian history and of the power relations of international communism. 25.10.2006
This article is available in French: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-25-fejto-fr.html
Stefan Auer HANNAH ARENDT, TOTALITARIANISM, AND THE REVOLUTIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE: 1956, 1968, 1989 Hannah Arendt wrote about the '56 revolution as if it had been successful. Nevertheless, her insights remain relevant to an understanding of '56 and the memory of it after 1989. 25.10.2006
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-25-auer-en.html
Jean Magnard BUDAPEST IN FLAMES A reportage from the barricades of Budapest originally submitted to Esprit in 1956. 25.10.2006
This article is available in French: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-25-magnard-fr.html
Gábor Németh 1956. AN EXCERPT On 23 October 1956, the author was almost shot twice... Before he'd even been born. 25.10.2006
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-25-nemeth-en.html
Endre Kukorelly RUIN: A HISTORY OF COMMONISM. AN EXCERPT A bitter meditation on the legacy of the Soviet regime and the impossibility of adequately remembering the scale its brutality. 25.10.2006
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-25-kukorelly-en.html
Péter György FIFTY-SIX REMIX If the Right in Hungary has made it possible for all those disgruntled with the Gyurcsány government to cast themselves as heirs to the revolution, the Left is guilty of having failed to take '56 seriously enough. 24.10.2006
This article is available in English and Hungarian: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-24-gyorgy-en.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-24-gyorgy-hu.html
Roger Martelli CORRESPONDING CRISES IN AUTUMN 1956 In Budapest, the USSR insisted on Soviet ascendance -- in the Suez Crisis, the US established itself as postcolonial regulatory power. 23.10.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-23-martelli-de.html
Edouard Glissant THE NECESSARY RELATION BETWEEN HERE AND THERE "The border is an invitation to enjoy difference: it makes a pleasure of variety. When necessity and misery force people to violate borders, then that's just as scandalous as the reasons for their misery." 20.10.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-20-glissant-de.html
Jean-Pierre Laurant ESOTERICISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The crisis of European consciousness following the French Revolution and the imperial wars ushered in a "new science" that permitted spiritual speculation unburdened by the dogma of religious exegesis. 19.10.2006
This article is available in French and Turkish: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-19-laurant-fr.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-19-laurant-tr.html
Denis Duclos PROUD OF THE CONCRETE Rap romanticism's dream of escaping the suburbs goes hand in hand with "pride in the concrete". Youthful energy provokes institutional oppression and sets in motion an inevitable mechanism of hate. 18.10.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-18-duclos-de.html
Barry Stocker CONTRADICTION, TRANSCENDENCE, AND SUBJECTIVITY IN DERRIDA'S ETHICS On Derrida's ethical philosophy and its indebtedness to Kierkegaard, Levinas, and J. L. Austin. 17.10.2006
This article is available in English and Turkish: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-17-stocker-en.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-17-stocker-tr.html
Hans-Georg Wieck DEMOCRACY PROMOTION AT A DEAD END. EUROPE IS FAILING IN BELARUS European charters for democratic reform have run aground in Belarus. Expressions of solidarity are not enough: Europe needs to adopt the US strategy of promoting the opposition directly. 16.10.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-16-wieck-de.html
George Blecher A NATION LIKE ANY OTHER. WESTERN EUROPE HOLDS ISRAEL TO IMPOSSIBLE STANDARDS Since the conflict with Lebanon, there has been a sense among Western intellectuals that Israel has crossed some moral boundary line. But western European rhetoric holds Israel to impossible standards of perfection. 13.10.2006
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-13-blecher-en.html
Constance DeVereaux, Martin Griffin INTERNATIONAL, GLOBAL, TRANSNATIONAL: JUST A MATTER OF WORDS? In the last fifteen years, "international" has given way to "transnational", suggesting something more fluid, beyond the concept of nation. Lurking in the newer term may also be a threat to the legacy of the international age. 11.10.2006
This article is available in English: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-11-devereauxgriffin-en.html
Henrik Lebuhn ENTREPRENEURIAL URBAN POLITICS AND URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN LOS ANGELES. THE STRUGGLE FOR URBAN FARMLAND IN SOUTH CENTRAL The community garden campaign in South Central L.A. is a local movement that resists contemporary entrepreneurial urban policy. 09.10.2006
This article is available in English and German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-09-lebuhn-en.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-09-lebuhn-de.html
Ramin Jahanbegloo, Danny Postel IDEAS WHOSE TIME HAS COME. A CONVERSATION WITH IRANIAN PHILOSOPHER RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO "For me as an Iranian philosopher, thinking differently is a form of going beyond the challenges of my daily life in Iran. It's an opening up to the world which goes hand in hand with the act of being free." 06.10.2006
This article is available in English and Italian: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-06-postel-en.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-06-postel-it.html
Obrad Savic MEMORY OF WAR CRIMES: CAN VICTIMS SPEAK? Milosevic was guilty not only because he led a collective criminal enterprise, but also because he demanded that ethnic justice nest in sovereign national law, which he then turned against international law. 05.10.2006
This article is available in English and Serbian: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-05-savic-en.html>>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-05-savic-sr.html
Klaus Ronneberger THE ART OF GETTING USED TO NOTHING. PRECARIOUS LABOUR IN FLEXIBLE CAPITALISM While the majority is unprepared for the disappearance of conventional salaried labour, artists and freelancers have got used to precarity. They are the avant-garde of a development that will become the norm. 04.10.2006
This article is available in German: >>http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-10-04-ronneberger-de.html