Författaren som omskolades till orakel
När 1998 års mottagare av den tyska bokhandelns fredspris, den tyske författaren Martin Walser, utlöste ett ramaskri genom sitt tacktal stod det klart att fredspriset inte är ett litterärt pris vilket...
View ArticleHelt enkelt komplicerat
“Det går helt enkelt inte att förstå det här landet. Inte ens om man är en tränad österrikare som jag”, suckar Walter Famler uppgivet när bilisterna på gatan utanför restaurang Zum Friedensrichter...
View ArticleWhy do we all love to hate Haider?
The prospect of Jörg Haider’s Freidemokraten participation in the Austrian government aroused horror in the entire spectrum of the “legitimate democratic” political block in the Western world: from the...
View ArticleNär alla talar med en röst
I en signerad artikel på Dagens Nyheters ledarsida den 8 juni 2000 bemöter Joachim Berner de anklagelser som riktats mot sättet på vilket DN har rapporterat kring bedrägerimisstankarna mot förre...
View ArticleDigital antiprovinsialism
När vi publicerar texter av internationella journalister, essäister och författare händer det inte sällan att vi får frågan varifrån dessa texer är hämtade. Så var det också när förra numret kom ut....
View ArticleThe Racist Albatross
“God save thee, ancient Mariner From the fiends that plague thee thus! – Why look’st thou so?” – “With my crossbow I shot the albatross.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, ll....
View ArticleKulturradikalismen och den praktiska nordismen
När Henrik Berggren den 1 september 2000 tillträdde posten som ny kulturchef på Dagens Nyheter valde han att i sin programartikel använda beteckningen “kulturradikal” för att spegla sina ambitioner och...
View ArticleDe tre E:na och det försvunna F:et
När Sverige den 1 januari tar över ordförandeklubban i EU kommer man att vilja tala mycket om miljö, sysselsättning och östutvidgning. I en fixering rakt motsatt den Georges Perec ger prov på i romanen...
View ArticleEurosedelns symboliska densitet
Om ett år kommer euron att vara den naturliga – och så småningom den enda – valutan i de flesta av EU:s nuvarande medlemsländer. Om man ser lite närmare på dessa europeiska sedlar och mynt förstår man...
View ArticleThe Morning After
Finally, it has happened – the long awaited implosion of the Milosevic regime. Where are they now, all those who claimed that the NATO bombardment only strengthened Milosevic’s hold onto power, would...
View ArticleLitterär utblick: Tjeckien, andra delen
Kanske kan man säga att det mest utmärkande draget inom den samtida tjeckiska litteraturen är en strävan efter maximal autenticitet. Memoarer och dagböcker tillhör de mest populära genrerna bland både...
View ArticleLitterär utblick: Tjeckien, första delen
Den tjeckiska litteraturen är liksom den svenska eller holländska en liten nations litteratur. Dess utveckling har dessutom flera gånger blivit tragiskt avbruten. Första gången under barocktiden när...
View ArticleMarx’s Mole is Dead!
“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” Ani Di Franco “Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be...
View ArticleAn Arendtean Scaffold for Thinking About Terrorism
I The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September, 2001 and the United States’ response to those attacks with a total “war on terrorism,” whose primary targets are individuals and groups...
View ArticleIs this the way to go?
Over the last decade it is estimated that more than 2500 would-be immigrants died trying to get into Europe. That is many dead, but not many immigrants for a continent of over 350 million people. Whom...
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A barbarian in Beirut
Beirut. Beyrouth. Bairout. Beryt. Berytos. Berotai. The name itself has the power to tame this chaos without beginning or end that is the city. The name and the city are locked in a life and death...
View ArticleHernando de Soto and the mystification of capital
Hernando de Soto’s book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else has become something entirely unique: a bestseller from the field of Development Economics....
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The rebirth of religion and enchanting materialism
A while ago, I was talking to a friend about religion. We agreed that we both were atheists. But he added: “I am a Jewish atheist”. I myself would have to specify my own position in a corresponding...
View ArticleThe new ecology of war
“The future of warfare lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, industrial parks, and the sprawl of houses, shacks, and shelters that form the broken cities of our world. We will fight...
View ArticleThe first man
There is one text in which Nordic culture appears to begin and end. What is it about? Let us examine the first paragraph of this creation story, the Genesis of the Nordic text: The long, long road over...
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You’re so cool!
Like many Latin American authors, Laura Restrepo’s biography includes dramatic politics. Politically active in her own country, Columbia, she participated in the Spanish resistance to the Franco regime...
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The border fortification as symbol of freedom
On 9 November 2009, the world’s news media turned its gaze toward Berlin. There, political leaders from all of the victorious powers of World War II – Prime Minister Gordon Brown from the United...
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The face of the masses, the gaze of the masses
“Power struggle has assumed new forms,” wrote Ernst Jünger in his introduction to a compilation of photographs published in 1933. Jünger and his editor Edmund Schultz were groping for the zeitgeist...
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Extractivism above all?
The Skouries forest in Chalkidiki has been at the centre of a hotly contested dispute between the mining company Hellas Gold, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Eldorado Gold, and local...
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Carpets and ceramics
People are formed by cultural heritage, or what others presume their cultural heritage to be. Cultural heritage is, in turn, formed by people. Some don’t need to explain who they are or where they come...
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The legacy of 2015
On my way to Brussels, walking through the airport, the unbearable lightness of my EU citizenship made itself felt with singular clarity. The airport floor was smooth and bright and there was nothing...
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Only love can save those who are infected with anger
[Seated in front of the camera] Which way do I look? … Life itself gives birth to all my themes. At first, as you know, it turned into several books. A history of that period of time, the Red time,...
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‘The long historical struggles over the geographies of our lives’
Håkan Thörn (for Ord & Bild): For the past 50 years, Leftists all over the world have been living more or less in the shadow of 68. Still today, any discussion about the past, present and future of...
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Headwinds and tailwinds
It is cheering to look out over a series pastorum, as the Church puts it – a congregation of shepherds. Although here, the congregation is made up of editors – a series redactorum. Realising just how...
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Pro-European sentiment vs political fragmentation
After the surge of support for the far right in last September’s general election in Sweden, it took an unprecedented four months of wrangling to establish a minority government of the Social Democrats...
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Cracks in the future
An event, a date. A brief moment of violence and deliverance: the world stumbles, loses its balance and recovers. Political conversations converge on that extraordinary moment. Soon enough, the...
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An Indian writer discovers Europe
After the rupture caused by World War Two, Britain began to drift further away from Europe. The Fifties and Sixties were the decades of the Movement poets in English literature, with Philip Larkin,...
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Texts without words
We settle down in the yard to shelter from the heat. This is Koza Han, the silk bazaar in Bursa, my mother’s hometown and, under our parasols, we sip Turkish coffee while my mother tells me about the...
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Alchemizing old hates
In January 1556, the Emperor Humayun tripped over his cloak and tumbled to death down a flight of stairs in Delhi, bequeathing a fragile kingdom to his thirteen-year-old son, Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar....
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The less we care about healthcare workers
Just four decades ago, young men were dying in secluded hospital rooms. Saying a final farewell to loved ones was strictly forbidden. A year or so earlier, many of them had been fit and well,...
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A chronicler of human complexity
Ord&Bild: The first question is straightforward: what makes the work of James Baldwin relevant today? Cultural, artistic and political perspectives are equally relevant! Douglas Fields: The Irish...
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The ‘cuir’ turn
This article was first published in Ord&Bild 3/2021. ‘Corpas’, instead of the masculine ‘corpos’ for bodies, ‘cistem’ rather than ‘system’: Brazilian trans activists, socially, culturally and...
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The alchemists of Ludwigshafen
Food comes first in the order of humanity’s needs. Then come not only morals (Brecht), but also all the subtleties of advanced gastronomy. From this simple perspective, food is fuel: the fats, proteins...
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