Adopting a postmodern approach, this essay examines Michel Houellebecq’s first novel Extension du domaine de la lutte from a Baudrillardian lens. Specifically, this investigation explores how Baudrillard and Houellebecq’s dystopian tableau of the hyperreal erosion of human sexuality offers invaluable insights into the new human condition in the post-truth era. In a realm of spectacle that appears to know no bounds in the age of (dis-)information, they deconstruct the mind-numbing, erotic fantasies that have eclipsed the real in the indoctrinated imagination of consumer citizens. The crimes against reality that Baudrillard and Houellebecq decry are not harmless fantasies, but rather these pervasive simulacra have real-life consequences. Specifically, they persuasively posit that our very humanity and corporality have been stripped away by erotic simulations representing a libidinal utopia that has never existed anywhere. Submerged underneath a tsunami of simulacra that have profoundly impacted all human relations in consumer republics, we find ourselves in uncharted, perilous waters as the sea continues to rise with each passing day.
This article examines the figure of the 'sympathetic' tramp and complementary tramp pair, as it develops from popular entertainment into modernist theatre, culminating in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. It traces a line from music-hall and comic traditions - such as Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt and the Danish cartoonist Storm P. - to the bowler-hatted duo of Vladimir and Estragon. These earlier partnerships often consisted of mismatched companions: one slightly more authoritative, the other more passive or childlike but frequently philosophical. Together they formed a comic unit defined by dependency, repetition and shared misfortune. Beckett draws on this tradition but reduces it to its bare essentials. Vladimir and Estragon are not just tramps; they are a vagabond pair, a pseudo-couple whose identity depends on their continued presence together. They quarrel, embrace, threaten to part and then remain. Their bowlers and boots become key stage objects linked to memory, identity and thought. This is especially the case of Lucky, whose hat enables his chaotic monologue. By placing Godot within the tradition of comic double acts, the article argues that Beckett's tramps operate on two levels at once: comic entertainers and philosophical figures through whom Beckett explores the failure of language, philosophy through physical comedy and the conditions of human existence.
This article examines how BrexLit narrativizes a ‘Nazi complex’ embedded in British cultural memory through its literary representation of Brexit discourse. Rooted in traumatic recollections of Nazi authoritarianism, this complex combines a moral rejection of totalitarian violence with a latent reproduction of exclusionary Nazi logics, generating a paradox that BrexLit repeatedly interrogates. On one hand, novels represent Brexit-related tropes such as the ‘Fourth Reich’ and the ‘Kalergi Plan’, exposing how they recast the European Union as an oppressive force and Brexit as a moral act of resistance. On the other hand, these texts reveal how Brexit discourse itself, marked by the pursuit of racial purity, echoes the exclusionary logic of Nazi ‘blood and soil’ ideology. By situating such rhetoric within broader narrative contexts, BrexLit exposes how Brexit discourse reproduces the very authoritarian impulses it claims to oppose, thereby destabilizing its moral authority and historical legitimacy.
This paper explores how Romanian New Wave cinema (RNW) reflects the temporal condition of a nation suspended between pre- and post-revolutionary eras while negotiating its place in Europe. Following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, Romania symbolised a redemptive return to Europe, yet disillusionment soon defined its national consciousness. Films by directors who came of age during this transition register a cultural response to unmet promises and to Europe as both destination and deferred ideal. Films including The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), and Tales from the Golden Age (2009) depict a shared experience of waiting: for care, truth, and modernity. Through experimentation and historical reflexivity, they critique a 'politics of hope' that prolonged past conditions. We identify a 'provisionality of transition', marked by frustrated futurity and acute temporal awareness, positioning RNW as both symptom and critique of Romania's liminal present.
This introduction argues that Eastern European ideas of Europe were central to the production, contestation, and redefinition of European identity from the 1980s to the present. It charts the history of the ‘eastern ideas’ for the European project over the past four decades, which moved from a mildly enthusiastic, yet ambivalent, ‘return to Europe’, to a sceptical and equally ambivalent ‘after Europe’. The second section discusses the paradoxical condition of the region: its liminality and ambiguity have often situated it both within and outside Europe, which occasionally has been refracted through a racial lens of Eastern Europe being ‘White / not quite’. The introduction then foregrounds Eastern European ideas of Europeanness before ending with a plea to include otherwise neglected ideas about Europe and Europeanness in the broader gamut of ‘the idea of Europe’. In all, the introduction sheds new light on the intellectual and political genealogy of contemporary tensions in debates about Europeanness and its meanings.
Carnival in Germany has produced distinctive traditions that imagine and perform 'Chineseness', most prominently in Bavarian Dietfurt's 'Chinese Carnival' and Cologne's carnival association Ihrefelder Chinese. Drawing on costumes, paper lanterns, dragons, invented names, and in Dietfurt's case, even a symbolic emperor - until recently accompanied in both traditions by yellowfacing - these festivals have been granted recognition as intangible cultural heritage and celebrated as markers of local identity. Situated against the backdrop of German-Chinese relations and the history of German colonial activity in China, marginalised in public memory, the article critically examines how these practices (re)produce and (re)frame ideas of China and the Chinese within German cultural life. By tracing their development and recent adaptations, the discussion highlights the tensions between safeguarding cherished traditions and confronting the problematic legacies, representational strategies and racialised stereotypes that continue to shape them.
Since the 1980s, politicians and intellectuals in the Yugoslav regions of Istria and Vojvodina have revived narratives of a culturally diverse and hybrid Europe, drawing on imperial images that portrayed both regions as 'Europe in miniature' and cultivating a pro-Habsburg, occasionally nostalgic, remembrance culture. Communities expelled or decimated after 1945 returned in literature and political discourse as symbols of 'old Europe'. By contrast, the Yugoslav model of multiculturalism gradually lost its appeal. In the 1990s, many authors criticised the rise of nationalism, described by Milan Rakovac as 'provincial national egoism', while reimagining both regions as historically more progressive and multicultural than the postnational Europe that was supposed to emerge. 'Our Germans' and 'our Italians' became emblematic of efforts to affirm both regions' place in Europe. This article analyses these dynamics through the contrasting perspectives of Milan Rakovac from Istria and L & aacute;szl & oacute; V & eacute;gel from Vojvodina as a productive lens for comparison.
This article reads Pajtim Statovci's Bolla (2019; trans. 2021) as a mythologically structured exploration of enforced invisibility and the politics of the gaze in late-Yugoslav and post-war Kosovo. Moving beyond the surface narrative of a forbidden queer relationship between an Albanian and a Serb, it argues that the Albanian Bolla myth functions as the novel's organizing principle rather than a decorative metaphor. Arsim is read as a Bolla-like subject whose ethnic marginalization, heteronormative regulation, and self-closeting generate an escalating "becoming-monstrous" whose rare moments of visibility are catastrophic instead of emancipatory. Drawing on Sartre, Foucault, Fanon, Mulvey, and Sedgwick, the article reconstructs a theoretical architecture of the gaze and re-reads the folklore's internal logic through close analysis of key scenes. It argues that Bolla shows Balkan nationalist and heteronormative regimes to be producing the monstrosities they themselves cast as deviant and threatening.
In February 2024, an old Soviet-era bus stop with a colourful mosaic, located in St & abreve;uceni, not far from Chisin & abreve;u, was set to be demolished and replaced by a modern, "European" glass-and-metal structure. Reactions were divided, and the demolition was stopped. The debate has not only been one about heritage or infrastructure: it mirrors Moldova's current dilemma. The country has long experienced everyday Europeanisation through migration, exchange, and remittances, also given that many citizens hold Romanian passports. Still, Moldova remains geopolitically caught between the European Union and post-Soviet influences, marked by uncertainty and an uneasy past. The dispute over the bus stop highlights the conflict-ridden nature of Moldova's pro-European transformation: high expectations, political tensions, and a legacy often pushed aside. As a lens, it offers insight into the hopes and risks associated with the current transformation processes.
"I want Albania like Europe" was the slogan of the student protest that followed the demise of the communist regime in Albania in 1990. During this period, students were seen as the main agents of social change. Despite considerable social, political, and economic changes, Albania remains one of the lowest-income countries in Europe. While many local economists and politicians continue to use EU accession as the benchmark for the country's well-being, inhabitants increasingly face precarity and uncertainty, with alternative scenarios often seemingly non-existent and coated with passive attitude. Although this passivity seems to be the prevailing mindset, certain grassroots collectives have sought ways to reshape the uncertainty of daily life. I argue that through their practices and tactics, they aim to remit already familiar structural remnants such as the nexus of house-land-kinship, translating them into collective commons that have the potential to lead to alternative futures.
As an emerging concept, AfroSwedish encompasses the multiple racialized and minoritized identities of Swedes with African ancestry. An AfroSwedish identity is often negotiated in relation to childhood experiences of racism, attempts to reconcile Swedishness with African origins or ancestry and eventually reconnecting with African roots. This article examines two memoirs, Slumpens barn: Den osannolika ber & auml;ttelsen om n & auml;r Sverige m & ouml;tte Gambia by Amat Levin and "S & aring;na som du ska inte va h & auml;r" by Marika Carlsson, which centre on living as a person of colour in Sweden with African origins or ancestry. AfroSwedishness as a community of sorts and an emerging shared identity for Swedes with African ancestry are narrated differently in the memoirs, with Carlsson's memoir presenting a more critical stance and Levin's a more celebratory perspective, indicating that reconnecting with parental homes and reconciling experiences of racism with pride in one's heritage are deeply personal processes despite the pronounced political dimension. The identity work performed by the memoirs goes beyond personal narration, encouraging Swedes from all backgrounds to critically examine and acknowledge race and experiences of racism.
This article examines the educational and reading programs developed by the New Right in Germany and France as part of a broader far-right meta-political strategy aimed at reshaping cultural and ideological hegemony. Focusing on non-party actors such as think tanks, publishing houses, and educational initiatives, the study compares the German Neue Rechte and the French Nouvelle Droite with particular attention to their institutional frameworks and their shared emphasis on literature and reading practices. The analysis reconstructs how these movements contest the legitimacy of public education while establishing alternative pedagogical infrastructures that target audiences from early childhood to adulthood. By curating reading lists, anthologies, and educational formats, the New Right seeks to appropriate canonical literature and reframe it within an ethno-nationalist worldview. The article highlights transnational parallels and points to the strategic role of guided reading in far-right cultural politics.
Despite numerous European Union policy frameworks aimed at approximating countries of Eastern Europe to the European Union, the latter routinely distances itself from the region, actively (re)constructing Europe's others. This article analyses the reactions of the European Council and the European Parliament to the 2020 crackdown on civilian protests in Belarus through a close reading of 25 press releases issued between May and November 2020, complemented by a retroactive reading in light of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Belarus's complicity in the war. The reading is combined with an analysis of Belarus's position within Europe's symbolic geography and the consequences this position entails for the European Union's response. Although the European Council and European Parliament initially differed in their reactions, their discourses ultimately converged and culminated in European Union sanctions. Across both institutional narratives, Belarus is consistently rendered and reified as non-Europe while simultaneously constructed as Europe's other.
The article examines the internalisation of narratives that position the post-Yugoslav Balkans as Europe's 'Other' within the region itself, through the lens of self-colonisation, understood as the adoption of civilising discourses and the disavowal of local pasts in the pursuit of 'Europeanness'. Drawing on post-socialist and decolonial scholarship, we explore how the post-Yugoslav Balkans not only respond to but actively participate in the production of Europe's symbolic geography. Using qualitative data from interviews and focus groups conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we examine how citizens articulate, contest, and negotiate visions of Europe across socioeconomic, political, and cultural registers. Our analysis reveals a complex and often ambivalent relationship with Europe, expressed through the concept of Balkansplaining, a decolonial tool that centres lived experiences and regional epistemologies. By focusing on Balkan subjects, we uncover potential spaces of epistemic resistance and alternatives to dominant visions of Europe, thereby opening avenues to reimagine it.
This article explores Pfeijffer's novel Grand Hotel Europa using Derrida's concepts of autoimmunity and hospitality, showing how openness to the Other can be potentially both risky and generative. Pfeijffer depicts a continent trapped in a deadly nostalgia: mass tourism has turned it into a giant theme park in a suicidal autoimmunity which tends to destroy the very authenticity which attracts it in the first place. Pfeijffer also critiques Europe's fortress-like migration policies as (self)destructive, not only harming would-be migrants but provoking an autoimmune implosion of the very values which supposedly underscore the European integration project. In contrast, he frequently frames immigration as an opportunity for Europe, as a potentially positive autoimmune opening to a renewal of economic and cultural energy.
Two recent 2019 Italian films, Federico Bondi's Dafne and Stefano Cipani's Mio fratello rincorre i dinosauri, subvert the ways that people with disabilities have traditionally been characterized onscreen. Whereas much of Italian cinema has marginalized impaired individuals and utilized them as metaphors for some social concern, these films depict their characters with Down-Dafne and Gio, respectively-as deeply connected to their communities. They therefore thrive in areas where people with intellectual and developmental impairments have typically struggled, such as in the workplace, at school, or at home. Instead, it is the ostensibly able-bodied characters, Luigi and Jack, who develop various impairments that result in their increasing isolation, ostracization, and Othering. I contend, however, that Luigi and Jack's temporary experience as disabled individuals and, consequently, their limited, yet firsthand knowledge of the ways that people with disabilities are treated, facilitates empathy for, and an eventual reconciliation with, Dafne and Gio. More than an effort to normalize disability through an attempt to dispel common misperceptions about the abilities of people with Down, Dafne and Mio fratello rincorre i dinosauri succeed in capturing the humanity of their disabled characters, effectively humanizing disability. Similar depictions of people with impairments, and with Down specifically, have heretofore been absent from Italian cinema and thus open the door to more positive and perhaps more authentic representations of disability.
