Categories
All posts Interviews

Whiteness: “Race,” Capitalism, US, Eastern Europe

Interview excerpt: “For us, in our part of the world, one of the most breathtaking aspects of the history of the Haitian Revolution is that the Polish battalion sent there by the French switched sides and supported the uprising. Mind you, some of the Polish survivors ended up settling there, and there are even today proud Haitians who claim, partly, Polish family heritage.

There are many intricacies to this story. My point is that, in the late-18th, early-19th century, it was still possible for east European subjects to experience a political, moral and emotional identification with Black people and the objectives of the latters’ armed struggles against colonial rule and slavery. This, by the way, was not unique to Poles—there is ample evidence of similar positions in Hungarian history as well.

By today, this political, moral and emotional identification has become almost impossible.”

Categories
All posts

In the Name of the Constitution: Ethnic Minorities and Technologies of Disenfranchisement in Bulgaria

Note from the editors: Starting next month Bulgaria will assume the presidency of the Council of the European Union. To acknowledge this momentous occasion, this month LeftEast will carry two texts by Jana Tsoneva analyzing the politics of contemporary Bulgaria. This article originally appeared in July on the Serbo-Croatian portal Bilten and is republished here […]