Eurozine articles

"There is no need for the western political artist to sail the seven seas looking for injustices to denounce. Inequality and exploitation saturate the ground on which we stand, they are in the grain of everyday life." Conceptual artist Victor Burgin on documentary art as the "new doxa".

Between 1941 and 1989, Hungary's hand-tied politicians were at the mercy of the Great Powers and their struggle for hegemony in Europe. A study of US diplomatic documents shows the extent to which realpolitik determined US policy on Hungarian national independence.

Are publishers prepared for challenges posed by the dematerialization of the printed word? Pascal Fouché, author of an encyclopaedia of the book, on digitization and the new balance of power in the book trade. [English version added]

The profound shift of the image of men in western culture has not been sufficiently discussed, writes Walter Hollstein. Misogyny has long been a recognized subject to which the public is continuously re-sensitized; "misandry", however, has yet to be addressed.

The media has colluded with self-promoting but marginal Muslim clerics to create a cycle of self-reinforcing myths around the Mohammed cartoons. The fear of causing offence undermines progressive trends in Islam and strengthens the hand of religious bigots. [Romanian version added]

The Bologna Process is typical of a new dynamic of inclusion and exclusion in post-national Europe. Not only must the assumption be challenged that access to knowledge can be controlled via monetization, the reforms must also be placed in the context of Europe's selective border regime.

Lithuania's capital is close to the heart of many different groups and nationalities who have at one time or another called it "home". Better that they unite in their love of the city than fight for isolated fragments of its magical, multi-layered past, writes Tomas Venclova. [English version added]

"The Hungarian Quarterly" finds self-interest at work in US policy on Hungary; "Osteuropa" says home is not where Jobbik is; "Transit" seeks the better secularism; "Blätter" considers Obama's worst-case climate scenario; "Varlik" enrols at the Nazim Hikmet University; "Akadeemia" reads Wittgenstein and Heisenberg; "Merkur" sees in theatre proof of Germans' cultural citizenship; and "Studija" welcomes the new simplicity in contemporary Latvian painting.

The neurological turn in recent web criticism exploits "the obsession with anything related to the mind, brain and consciousness". Geert Lovink turns the discussion to the politics of network architecture, exploring connnections between the colonization of real-time and the rise of the national web. [Norwegian version added]

"Home is the place one feels attached to culturally and that in a political sense does not repel one. For people like me, home is beginning to cease being home." Laszlo Kornitzer describes the political climate in Hungary after the elections.

The symbolic Berlin wall toppled on the anniversary of 1989 was historically inaccurate in one important respect: the dominoes were painted on both sides. Unity, clearly, was more important than remembering, writes Jacob Kimvall.

Much of the art of the past twenty years in Latvia has slavishly imitated Soviet artistic trends. However the twenty-first century has seen a welcome return to the "new simplicity": painting and a measure of realism.

The much anticipated US financial regulatory bill, passed at the end of last month, is a compromise between government regulators and Wall Street, writes George Blecher. As for solving the even more pressing problems of the US economy, the bill offers no new solutions.

The primary aim of education is to nurture the ability to reflect, to develop new ideas, and to implement these collectively. Cognitive "multilingualism" is the only way to prevent the specialization of knowledge narrowing our horizons to an extent that results in structural irresponsibility.