LefteastRaia Apostolova is from Sofia and a Ph.D. student at the Central European University, Budapest.
Note from LeftEast editors: An early version of this interview on the monograph The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela (Stanford University Press, 2023) appeared in the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, and in Bulgarian at the pages of our kindred ELMO member platform dVERSIA. We publish the pre-print with some modification. The book explores […]
Political theorist Chantal Mouffe speaks about populism and its relation to democracy, models of left-wing populism and the strategies opened to the left at this historical juncture. Chantal Mouffe is professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. She is a cowriter of the seminal Hegemony […]
The following article first appeared at Novara Media. We know that a good director contrasts the foreground and the background of movie scenes in order to show us details that otherwise would go unnoticed. These details are what make the movie complete by virtue of their potential to change the perception of what we consider […]
What specific challenges has the position of your country on the refugee corridor between the Mediterranean and Western Europe brought in the past months, in relation to numbers of refugees transiting (issues such as asylum laws, transport, border control)? Curiously, Bulgaria, despite its geographical location, has not experienced the same number of border crossings as for example we witness […]
How much are our lives worth? €1 billion, according to Germany’s Green Party. So high a pledge is reminiscent of a racket, in which a potentially dangerous situation is artificially created so as the mafioso can pretend that s/he is able to protect the victims under threat. The story that follows is that of a […]
source: New Left Pesrpectives The pre-term elections in Bulgaria scheduled to take place in October come in the midst of a deep political crisis and social disarray. Bulgaria’s right oriented vote in the past two decades has cost the country low budget redistribution, non-existent public services and social destabilization. Thousands of Bulgarian workers commence on […]
On October 21st in Munich, Germany a group of about 30 Bulgarian migrants were pushed into a backyard by 20 police officers from the Financial Police (Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit [FSK]). The incident took place in the neighborhood around the Central Train Station, where many try to find work as daylaborers, pushed to do so at street […]
Perhaps the most pointing allegory of unfreedom in liberal thought is the one that depicts the chained, immobilized body of a slave. The allegory of the chained slave simultaneously positions the “free” subject as a moving, mobile subject. In a similar manner, one of the main principles behind the implementation of the ‘European project’ – […]
Interviewers: Raia Apostolova and Mathias Fiedler On June 22 a group of migrants declared a hunger strike in Munich, Germany. The strike struck at the heart of the European Empire which in the last decades has been the source of the migration policies responsible for the production and further reinforcement of the European Apartheid and […]
Perhaps one of the most common jokes that are circulating lately in Bulgaria is the one that depicts emigration as the most relevant escape from the politico-economic crisis. The joke goes something like this: Question: “What are the possible exits out of the crisis?” Answer: “Terminal 1 and Terminal 2” Author: Christo Komarnitski. Source: (http://www.ideyazabulgaria.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4264:-2013-&catid=55:karikaturi&Itemid=107). […]