Month: July 2013

Since mid-June, public spaces of downtown Sofia have been constantly in use by protesters against the current Bulgarian government. In this short paper, I offer a critical geographical reading of how these daily demonstrations have been orchestrated in the urban milieu, and how these performances strengthen, or in some cases weaken political and economic claims of the protesters (although the demands become quite elucidative if we look at them from the global context of post-socialist neoliberalism).

The debates concerning the present and future of China—an “emerging” power—always leave me unconvinced. Some argue that China has chosen, once and for all, the “capitalist road” and intends even to accelerate its integration into contemporary capitalist globalization. They are quite pleased with this and hope only that this “return to normality” (capitalism being the “end of history”) is accompanied by development towards Western-style democracy (multiple parties, elections, human rights). They believe—or need to believe—in the possibility that China shall by this means “catch up” (in terms of per capita income) to the opulent societies of the West, even if gradually, which I do not believe is possible.

 Since 2010, Orbán Viktor’s government symbolically announced an anticolonial war against Western capital. At the same time, it carried out major transformations in the 1989 system of political democracy, and started a campaign of economic centralization. Due to these, Hungary came under the spotlight of international discussions, as a model impersonating the fate of democracy in the context of the present crisis and controversial EU crisis management.

In the new Hungary-talk, Western liberals speak of nationalism, antidemocratic rule and, in the case of Jobbik, fascism.

Thursday, June 13, Ankara

I am waiting through an intense thunderstorm outside, periodically reading facebook posts from my students gathered in Ankara’s Kuğulu (Swan) Park, which has been the capital’s version of Istanbul’s Gezi Park, and from some at Gezi Park itself.  Erdoğan has announced that “this will be over within 24 hours” and has reportedly organized separate rallies in Istanbul and Ankara with the “fifty percent” that he has said “he will not be able to keep at home,” and some are worried that he is going to let these people loose on the demonstrators as he has done in Izmir where men in civilian clothes have been beating people with sticks, alongside the official police violence.