Articles

We live in a world where the borders between one language and another, between reality and non-reality, between the human and the non-human, are all being denied. As a reminder of difference and an openness to encounter, translation can be an antidote to the nihilism of borderlessness.

Throughout history, Belarusians have turned to their rich folklore traditions in harsh times. What may appear as a period of cultural stagnation is often a moment of resilience and creative revival. And the current wave of Belarusian folk texts, music and dance is no exception.

A combination of geopolitics and economic pressure is weakening the political will behind the European Green Deal, with the EPP leading the deregulatory offensive. Forests in particular risk becoming collateral victims of a rightwing U-turn.

The sharp drop in support for Ukraine in Italy has less to do with the traditionally Russia-friendly economic policy of the Italian right, and more with the anti-Americanism rooted in the political culture of the Italian left, which now articulates itself as pacifism.

Putin’s crack-down on dissent at the beginning of his third term was a watershed moment for Russian journalism. While the majority of critical reporters were forced to leave, those that remained morphed into regime propagandists. How to explain their political subservience?

Whether billionaires or bankrupts, Americans who pursue excess risk isolation: the national obsession with amassing dollars leaves tycoons alienated and destitute socialites pitied. D. H. Lawrence’s short story of fanatical money-making points to the hallucination of riches bringing love and happiness.

While civilizational rhetoric in the West reflects a sense of threat, globally it is recognition-seeking. Common to all civilizationalisms, however, is a blurring of the distinction between authoritarianism and democracy.

As propagandists of a patriarchal order, tradwives perpetrate harm. But harm is being enacted on tradwives too. So why do some feminists see tradwifery as self-empowerment?

The glorification of storytelling to define who we are or save the planet induces aversion in some: philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the obsession ‘story-selling’. Do digitally packaged stories restrict how we perceive our often rambling, fragmentary lives? Could alternatives be found in open, porous and incomplete narratives, even when confronting death?

The 33rd European Meeting of Cultural Journals will take place from 7–9 November 2025 in the Slovenian–Italian cities of Nova Gorica/Gorizia, a ‘borderless’ European Capital of Culture in 2025. The conference is co-organized with Razpotja magazine.

Former Index editor Jo Glanville pays tribute to a journalist who introduced a western audience to a diverse range of writers and artists

Democracy in the US is under threat from within. Racial nationalism – a throwback to unresolved tensions from the American Civil War – has found new impetus under Trump, forcing civic nationalism into a corner. Will the immutable longevity of the American Constitution be its paradoxical undoing? And how might the US recover from its emerging dictatorship?

Eurozine is deeply saddened by the death of Judith Vidal-Hall, editor of Index on Censorship from 1993–2006 and a longstanding member of Eurozine’s advisory board. We recall the deep and lasting mark she made on the network.

The guarded approach of this year’s Berlin Biennale towards expressions of pro-Palestinian solidarity left artists and art public alike with the sense that what is currently permissible in Germany’s cultural sector is not enough.

Russian art museums and galleries, navigating Putin’s censorship, either conform or risk closure. Dissenting cultural workers are sacked, artists arrested. Pro-war propaganda is both sardonically replacing exhibitions once celebrating Soviet Ukraine in Russia and eradicating Ukrainian culture in the occupied territories.

Under the Netanyahu government, Israel has aligned itself with an autocratic international whose goal is to transform sovereignty into state impunity. The war on Gaza inaugurates a global era in which consensus itself has lost legitimacy.