Merkur reflects on the debate on antisemitism and postcolonialism;
New Humanist debates the ethics of wild west genetic engineering;
Kritika & Kontext visits Husserl in Moravia;
Critique and Humanism situates populism;
and Dialogi says clenched fists don’t make political theatre.
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Merkur
7/2020
(Germany)
Merkur reflects on the debate on antisemitism and postcolonialism
Seen by some as the most significant discussion on antisemitism in Germany since the ‘historians’ debate’ of the 1980s, the controversy surrounding Achille Mbembe has been heated. Critics — including Germany’s commissioner for antisemitism and columnists at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — have cited Mbembe’s proximity to, if not direct support of the BDS campaign, and have accused him of relativizing the Holocaust by drawing comparisons between Nazism and Apartheid. Mbembe has rejected the assertion as racially motivated, and other leftwing intellectuals, with varying degree of nuance, have also dismissed it as unfounded.
In Merkur, Cristina Nord, head of the Berlinale Forum, admits to having been astonished by the antisemitism accusations. But on closer engagement with the arguments, she felt a conflict between two basic ethical principles: absolute solidarity with the Jewish community and the duty to resist racism. Drawing on her own experience of intercultural project work, particularly of encounters with other memorial approaches to the Holocaust, Nord argues that both sides ‘need to pause and reflect about themselves’.
‘Mbembe would come closer to his project of opposing divisions and the politics of enmity were he to extend it to Israel; were he to learn to understand the country in its complexity. The more harshly the debate around him is conducted, the less the likelihood that this will happen.’
Art history: The Emil Nolde exhibition in Berlin in 2019 has shaken the consensus that despite his antisemitism and NSDAP membership, the painter’s work was essentially unpolitical. Art historian Charlotte Klonk and FAZ editor Patrick Bahners discuss how Nolde’s paradoxical inclusion in the ‘degenerate art’ exhibition of 1938 allowed his reputation to be restored after 1945. Arguing for a fundamental reassessment of his oeuvre, Klonk and Bahner draw attention to parallels between Nolde’s famous sunflower paintings and his biblical paintings, both of which operate a ‘binary scheme of strong and weak, useful and harmful, natural and unnatural’.
Music: David Wagner recounts his visit to the 2019 Wagner festival in Bayreuth. To the sounds of ‘Lohengrin’, ‘Tannhäuser’ and the ‘Meistersänger’, the social spectacle unfolds, as it does every year. Even as a young man, Wagner recalls, he made a pilgrimage to the festival. Just like the Wagnerian heroes in search of the Grail, he aspired to artistic success, social advancement, redemption — all of which seemed to be embodied in Bayreuth.
More articles from Merkur in Eurozine; Merkur’s website
New Humanist
Summer 2020
(United Kingdom)
New Humanist debates the ethics of wild west genetic engineering
In 2018, the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui stunned the world by announcing he had produced genetically modified human babies using the Crispr-Cas9 technique. By disabling the CCR5 gene, He’s intention had been to give the babies resistance to HIV. But the ‘breakthrough’ was not well received by the scientific community and, in the face of unwelcome global attention, the Chinese authorities sentenced He to prison in December 2019.
Unethical and unscientific, Jiankui’s experiment was a ‘reckless leap into the unknown’, writes Cal Flyn in New Humanist. But it ‘had the effect of propelling the global discussion around how human genome editing technologies should be developed and regulated’. While China has tightened up its ethical guidelines, countries like Russia and Mexico remain laissez faire about genetic research. The Russian molecular biologist Denis Rebrikov has already declared his intention to produce genetically modified babies. ‘It’s not clear how quickly his plans might come to fruition. What is clear is that reproductive science tends to progress, with or without our consent.’
Inherited trauma: Studies on the descendants of Holocaust survivors have suggested that trauma may be inheritable, either through second-hand exposure or even genetically. The same could apply to ‘the devastating impact of slavery, imperialism and oppression’ to which black people have been subjected, providing an explanation for their over-representation in the British psychiatric system, writes Ayo Awokoya. Socio-economic conditions, cultural disconnection and (institutional) racism all add up to a complex picture where epigenetics is only a malleable factor among the many involved. ‘Perhaps trauma can be passed on, but its hold isn’t absolute.’
Pacifism in Russia: For many rural Russians, a military career is still seen as inherent to masculinity and the only way to improve social status. Such militarizing machismo risks overshadowing Russia’s tradition of pacifism, dating back to the late-eighteenth century, writes Maxim Edwards. The Chechen War was the ‘last blast’ of Russian pacifism; recent polls found that 87 per cent approve of the army’s actions. However, this has as much to do with perceived improvements in conditions in the Russian military as with support for the Crimean annexation. Plans for professionalizing Russia’s conscript army ‘could have repercussions for the military’s exalted place in Russian society’.
More articles from New Humanist in Eurozine; New Humanist’s website
Kritika & Kontext
58 (2020)
(Slovakia)
Kritika & Kontext visits Husserl in Moravia
Kritika & Kontext, published by the liberal arts college BISLA in Bratislava, dedicates its new issue to the life and work of philosopher Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, focusing on his native context and reception in eastern Europe. The trilingual issue (Slovak, Czech and English), edited by Samuel Abrahám, Ludger Hagedorn, Klaus Nellen and Jaroslava Vydrová, is part of various commemorative events that had been planned to take place in Husserl’s Moravian hometown of Prostějov (then Proßnitz) in April 2020, but had to be postponed for one year due to the Corona pandemic.
Life and thought: After an introductory essay by Ivan Blecha on Husserl’s relationship to Prostějov and Jewish life, a range of contemporary phenomenologists from East and West — Andrzej Gniazdowski, Michail Gubser, Julia Jansen, Sandra Lehmann, Sebastian Luft, Hans Rainer Sepp, Marci Shore, Jan Sokol, Christian Sternad, Anna Varga-Jani, Nicolas de Warren, Anna Yampolskaya — answer questions about the background of Husserl’s thought, its impact on the twentieth century and its relevance today.
As Anna Yampolska puts it, ‘Husserl did not create a philosophical system — instead, he shaped a philosophy according to which such systems are no longer necessary. His phenomenological method applies directly to our experiencing of the world; it makes the world appear as an experience where meaning is constituted.’
Context: Concerning the cultural environment from which Husserl came, Nicolas de Warren writes: ‘Freud, Mahler, and Husserl, can be seen as responding to what Ernest Gellner has dubbed the Habsburg Dilemma, namely how to institute a universal language and mode of thinking from regional languages and particular forms of thinking, of how, in other words, to maintain a multilingual Empire united under one national language.’
Contemporaries: Testimonies of contemporaries of Husserl — from his wife Malvine to Masaryk, Jan Patočka, the Polish writer and enfant terrible Stanisław Witkiewicz (Witkacy) and the Russian philosopher Lev Shestov. The latter two are introduced by the historian Marci Shore. To Witkacy, she writes, ‘Husserl was committing a fatal error: he “constantly passes over the body and gazes at the world through eyes hanging in the air.” “Husserl,” he wrote, “has no body”.’ And, quoting from a letter: ‘“Husserl, a truly inspired madman whose mistakes are worth a hundred times more than all the correct assertions of academic pseudo-prudes too squeamish for introspection in psychology.”’
Also: Essays by contemporary Slovak philosophers František Novosád, about the complex relationship between Husserl and Heidegger, and Jaroslava Vydrová, who retrieves echoes of Husserl’s thought in twentieth-century arts. The issue is concluded by a presentation of ‘Projekt Husserl’, created by the artist Miloš Karásek.
More articles from Kritika & Kontext in Eurozine; Kritika & Kontext’s website
Critique and Humanism
51 (2019)
(Bulgaria)
Critique and Humanism situates populism
In Critique and Humanism, philosopher and sociologist Stefan Popov analyses the political semantics of ‘populism’. One type of usage, he writes, sees populism as political PR or party marketing. This widespread but superficial definition understands populism in terms of tactics. A second usage, common in the media and parliamentary debates, sees populism as hypocritical and calculating conduct. This, too, is uncritical, reducing populism to an external form. A third usage conceives populism as an ideological platform combining a certain set of values — whether traditional versus modern, rural versus urban, ethnic versus societal, or substantive versus procedural.
A fourth understanding of populism, which Popov advocates, is situational and goes beyond PR-strategies and political technologies, but also beyond platforms, ideologies and party organizations. ‘The environment systematically generates populism, silencing the appeal of reason, and giving voice to messages that we begin to call populist. Populism as a situational structure provides interpretative keys with respect to the decline of the traditional liberal-democratic divisions, the crumbling grammar of the left-right opposition, the visible weakening of civic energies and readiness for action. It offers a lens through which to see the life cycles of the left-right division, especially in eastern Europe.’
Russian media: Maria Lipman follows the development of Russian media during Putin’s presidency, offering a complex picture in which the repressions of the past decade run parallel to a ‘new vibrancy’ enabled by the rapid expansion of internet technologies. Tracing the story further back, Ilya Yablokov describes how the ethos of journalistic independence that flourished in the USSR during glasnost degenerated into political partisanship and commercial opportunism.
Technology and disinformation: Sidney Tarrow writes on how deep fakes are being used to damage the reputation of political leaders, interfere in elections, and undermine faith in the veracity of public discourse. Concerted action is the only way to nip this new danger to democracy in the bud, he argues. And Marietje Schaake argues that Europe must take the lead in pioneering a rules-based system for Big Tech in which the public interest matters.
More articles from Critique and Humanism in Eurozine; Critique and Humanism’s website
Dialogi
3–4/2020
(Slovenia)
Dialogi says clenched fists don’t make political theatre
In Dialogi, outgoing Vienna Volkstheater director Anna Badora talks to Blaž Gselman about clashes between the theatre’s remit to innovate and its commitment to cater to a traditional Viennese theatre-going public:
‘In a city like Vienna, there is still a class that calls itself leftwing. And when you put a red star on the roof or a clenched fist, and put on a production saying: “we’re the heroes!” and “the evil capitalists”, then you’re always very successful with this class. But I find that outdated. Right and left have changed, and that is why the left are in trouble today. Because they hold on to certain clichés that are outdated.’
‘When we came, we thought that our way of thinking was genuinely leftwing. But often it wasn’t to the liking of what are sadly very entrenched social structures. It’s all about who belongs to whom. Whoever thinks in a more nuanced way falls between two stools. But this nuanced thinking, or rethinking, is what we need today — not just in the theatre but in society. Without it, we won’t make it. Without it, there is no future. Clenched fists don’t help much anymore.’
Walkouts: Matic Majcen sees actress Adele Haenel’s high-profile walkout of the French Césars in February — a protest against convicted sex offender Roman Polanski winning Best Director — as a key moment the global #MeToo movement. Afterwards, the entire board of the César Awards resigned, promising future reforms and modernization. Their action illustrates ‘the effect of informal punishment in a symbolic moment of absolute rejection’.
Punditocracy: Ksenija Vidmar Horvat considers the commentariat’s negative impact on science’s reputation; Dejan Jontes connects changing perceptions of journalistic objectivity with the rise of politician-experts on Slovenian TV; Bojan Musil and Nejc Plohl show how pseudoscience’s exploitation of advertising affects psychology and psychotherapy; and Tadej Praprotnik investigates how media visibility has become an indicator of individual competence.
More articles from Dialogi in Eurozine; Dialogi’s website
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