Lefteast
PhD student, Doctoral School of Political Science
Department of International Studies Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
This paper takes up the emergence of far-right patrols in Hungary in 2011 and provides an interpretation that is centered on security as a need, a practice, and a discourse. The argument is that these patrols used a logic of spectacle in order to legitimize their security agenda, an agenda that was driven by both symbolic and explicit violence.
Subversive Festival 2013, 2nd Balkan forum 12-14 May 2013, Zagreb, Croatia
Panel: Against capitalism, nesting orientalism, conceptual ghettos and self-imposed colonialism: regional emancipatory projects in the Balkans/West Balkans/Eastern Europe/Central Europe
time and place: Saturday, May 12th Hall II, 12:00 – 13:30
panelists: András Szépe (Position Working Group,HU), Dan Cirjan (Central European University, HU), Matija Medenica (Marks21,SE), Raja Apostolova (Social Center Xaspel, BG)
organizers: Agnes Gagyi (Position Working Group,HU) & Mariya Ivancheva (Social Center Xaspel, BG)
The panel focuses on regional taxonomies and conceptual ghettos of the Balkans/West Balkans/Eastern Europe/Central Europe.
(This is the text of the CriticAtac conference delivered in Bucharest, April 18, by Dr. Attila Melegh, senior researcher at Demographic Research Institute in Budapest and associated professor at the Corvinus University)
When we look at the East European scene and ask what organized real left we have (not the liberal, cynical opportunistic one) the picture looks very bad. By the real left I mean the open and organized critique of capital: companies, technologies and related institutional structures which organize and regulate social and economic reproduction with intense, global and competitive exploitation of resources, consumer markets and workers.
Your trajectory has been an unusual one: a dissident libertarian philosopher under Communism in both Romania and Hungary, who has emerged as one of the foremost left critics of the capitalist order in eastern Europe, and author of a striking set of essays on the historical and cultural legacies and contemporary dynamics of the region. Could we start by asking about your original personal and intellectual formation, in Gheorghiu-Dej’s and Ceaușescu’s Romania?
“Two men who defined post-Soviet Russia died within eight days of each other last month, both suddenly and far from home. On 16 March the body of Vladislav Mamyshev was found floating in a swimming pool in Bali. His death was blamed on a heart attack. He was 43. Better known as Vladik Monroe, Mamyshev was a pioneer of performance art in Russia, his status that of a sort of post-Soviet Warhol crossed with RuPaul. In the late 1980s he had hung out with the St Petersburg art group Pop Mechanika, who were famous for such stunts as going on TV to argue that Lenin was a mushroom, using the language and pseudo-logic of Soviet history programmes – at the time an unthinkable provocation.
“Monday, May 4 marks the 30th anniversary of arguably the most significant event in post-war British politics: the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher.
The dominant narrative – accepted even by many who consider themselves to be on the left – is that Britain’s economy in the 1970s was in such dire straits that our country urgently needed a change of direction.
Britain, in this account, was the ‘Sick Man of Europe’. The unions and inflation were out of control.
East versus West is once again a hot topic in Romania. Or rather a superficial repositioning – which doesn’t mean that it has a lesser influence over public agenda setting – in the never-ending battle between Europeanizers (white collars, hard-boiled capitalists, entrepreneurs) and Traditionalists of all denominations (nationalists either of Interbellum persuasion or converted during Ceauşescu’s reign).
So great was the fear in January 2012, when dangerous ideas like “down with the privatizations” or “down with the IMF” abounded, that each of us gave it whatever meaning we could.
This article deals with the connection between manele and the criminal world in Romania. Although I finished it more than a year ago, I hesitated a long time before publishing it – it seemed that these things, though known, wouldn’t necessarily do justice to my favourite musical genre and would certainly upset those who work in the industry, especially the “lăutari”. Nonetheless, I believe that the identity of the genre cannot be understood without reffering to its complex connections to the heroes of the subterranean economy, that the triumphant rethoric of pimpin’ (“şmecherie”) and the anxious one of mistrust, both deeply rooted in the heart of the genre, cannot be understood otherwise.
“The video was originally presented at an event organized by the initiaitve Danes je Nov dan (Slovenian for Today is a new day) on 25 March 2013. Danesjenovdan.si is a newly born platform to collect and discuss ideas and questions effecting numerous people. When a certain problem reaches enough attention, the founders of Danes je Nov dan organize a real-life event to discuss it. The event on which this video was presented was about Student Unions is Slovenia, and about their possible alternative working methods, such as the structure used by Hallgatói Hálózat.”
