A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, a public whose freedom has been dictated by science is showing signs of scepticism. ‘Esprit’ examines the vexed relations between science and public opinion when scientific truth no longer inspires unquestioning trust.
‘Public Seminar’ assesses the politics of shame: how Afropessimism challenges the established meaning of privilege; the questionable religious fervour of antiracists; and when global human rights ‘naming and shaming’ backfires.
‘Passage’ focuses on literature about work, highlighting the underrepresented: women whose work aligns with giving life; Greenlanders’ voices overwhelmed by Danish writers; working class authors extricated from tedium. Plus: literature on agricultural policy and farmers’ demos.
Out on the town at night, ‘dérive’ uncovers queer constellations after gentrification, bars as living sculptures facing suffocating lockdowns and the persevering nightlife of Sydney, London and Shanghai.
‘Varlık’ asks how art confronts disaster, both social and environmental: on the use of post-human technology and actors; creative resilience; the multi-perspective Anthropocene; slowing down to combat anxiety; art as propaganda; and communal viewing under pressure.
‘Leviathan’ focuses on Max Weber: from Philip Manow criticizing Weber’s theory of political legitimacy political rule to Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey’s views on his ‘intellectual marriage’. Also a Weberian theme: Brazil, and its contemporary right-wing shift.
‘Osteuropa’ focuses on environment and environmentalism in Russia. Including articles on coalmining in the Kuzbass; garbage and governance; the environmental history of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras; and literary ecology, classic and contemporary.
In ‘New Eastern Europe’: why the 2021 Duma elections will be a stress-test for Putin’s centralized regime; the revelations of a former Belarusian policeman; and whether Biden will be better for eastern Europe than Obama.
A special issue of ‘Internazionale’ focuses on Italian emigration since the Risorgimento: including articles on how the Belgian, German and Brazilian press saw the new arrivals, their problems and achievements.
‘Mittelweg 36’ takes a praxeological perspective on digital technology: how selfie culture has changed our actions and interactions; why digitization is a mixed blessing for women; and what datafication does with our everyday lives.
In ‘Krytyka’ (Ukraine), Mykola Riabchuk explains why Kundera’s concept of Central Europe was about excluding anything east of Prague – and why recent developments have proven it redundant. Also: the literature of the Maidan and its folkloric origins; and Mykola Khvylovy’s Soviet orientalism.
In ‘New Humanist’ (UK): the colonial roots of Australian anti-environmentalism; the singularity myth and the limitations of the fascism debate; and where Christopher Hitchens’s disciples have ended up.
‘Czas Kultury’ looks at Poland’s constitutional crisis and anti-European drift: why liberals need to do more to communicate rule of law; how the politicization of the judiciary destabilizes society; and why democratic countries need creative challenge.
Russian journal ‘New Literary Observer’ focuses on the utopianism of the Soviet avantgarde: why ’20s architecture remained on paper; on urbanist versus de-urbanist futures; and how memorials constructed memory in real time.
Belgian journal ‘La Revue Nouvelle’ explains how we can learn from the idiot: on inefficiency as resistance to surveillance capitalism; cosplay’s seriously transgressive fun; and life hacks as a way to beat collective mind control.
Welsh journal O’r Pedwar Gwynt asks what the literature of independent Algeria reveals about cultural duality; how the Welsh experience of fragility is relevant to Europe; why women read real crime; and whether Jan Morris was best when writing about home.