Lefteast
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 […]
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’ – […]
In hopes of drumming up support among nationalist-minded citizens in advance of regional elections, police are conducting abusive crackdowns on immigrants. Shadows of people suspected of violating immigration rules in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013 (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP) If the past week is any indication, the plight of Russia’s illegal migrants may be about to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Left and the London protests two years on: “On a cold Saturday evening last March, the huge crowd queuing on a damp street corner in Bethnal Green looked like they were waiting in line for a club. Pumping music with African drumming riffs could be heard inside the venue, and outside the crowd of […]
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 […]
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). […]