Categories
All posts

Call for Solidarity: STOP FAR RIGHT VIOLENCE IN UKRAINE!

CALL FOR SOLIDARITY: STOP FAR RIGHT VIOLENCE IN UKRAINE! On September 11, another activist of libertarian student union “Direct Action” was attacked by three masked neo-Nazi. The  attack happened in Kyiv in a public place in the city centre.  Three thugs approached the activist and asked if he was gay.  Then the two offenders started […]

Categories
All posts

A response to Mary Taylor

To your questions: 1) The parties of the ruling coalition, BSP and DPS, are the parties that most vehemently opposed the Gerb regime. BSP was the only consistent opposition in both ideology and practice, throughout the 2009-13 period. And since January 2013, DPS came out with the most vociferous critique so far against Boiko Borisov […]

Categories
All posts

Syria and the Glass Bead Game

As the civil war in Syria has unfolded over the last two and half years while I’ve been teaching general humanities courses in Ankara, the one question I’ve heard most often from students cued into the conflict is, “what business does America have in Syria?”  It is an interesting question that, oddly, has not gotten […]

Categories
All posts

Exploiting the Barbarians

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’ – […]

Categories
All posts Insert Video

VIDEO: A talk with Sandro Mezzadra in Budapest

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 […]

Categories
All posts

Talk by Don Kalb: Socialism, Postsocialism, Neoliberalism – Interconnections in CEE

Within the framework of the summer school “Between (post)socialism and (neo)liberalism”, held in Sofia at the fridge & Xaspel, on July 21st Prof. Don Kalb (Central European University, Budapest) gave a talk on the topic “Socialism, Postsocialism, Neoliberalism – Interconnections in CEE”. The talk was held in a dialogue with Volodymyr Ischenko (Ukraine) and Florin […]

Categories
All posts

Racism in Malta

Economic turbulence is an especially fruitful ground for racist sentiments; the rapid growth and electoral success of far-right parties and movements across Europe since 2008 testifies to this. With this article I want to address the problem from the perspective of the situation in a peripheral EU member: the island state of Malta. Its small […]

Categories
All posts

The question is one of counterhegemonic praxis

Maryia Radeva in response to some questions posed by Mary Taylor Quite a few leftist intellectuals have recently discussed the discursive mobilization of the “middle class” in the last waves of protests in Bulgaria and worldwide (Ivancheva, Medarov, Seymour etc). It is not what I want to return to here. Instead, I’d like to bring […]

Categories
All posts

Protests in Russia and Bulgaria: anti-populism, “false consciousness” and the tasks of the left

The several days spent in the atmosphere of the Sofia political protests predictably led me to compare them to the Russian experience of 2011-2012. Despite the significant contextual differences, these two movements could be seen as part of а single—but to an even greater degree—a potential East European protest wave. As such, its analysis and […]

Categories
All posts

Terminal 2: The joke is on us

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). […]