NEO-FASCISM: Do many still have fascist longings today, or can one always blame seductive leaders? A closer dive into the 100-year-old Italian fascism and its descendants says something about the dangers we are now likely to face.
The attachment: The articles in this appendix of ORIENTERING shows which problems are linked to cities and poverty, pandemic, war, conflict, energy, food, flight, floods and fear.
Hell: Is it possible to simultaneously touch on four major themes, such as sin and evil, the desire for knowledge and conquest, relationships and competition, or the fear of death itself? Let me try in this essay – about Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Dante.
In this summer issue, as MODERN TIMES's editor, I publish a selection of articles that probably reflect different opinions than most people have about the war in Ukraine.
AFRICA: What can a book say about Boko Haram or the porous border between today's Cameroon and today's Chad? Or about the pre-colonial kingdom of Kanem-Bornu?
FUTURE: Environmental disasters, global warming, crisis of civilization and planetary apocalypse have given rise to ideas about the doom of the earth and the end of time. Through a radical anthropology, a couple of authors make an attempt to restore our faith in the world.
PHILOSOPHY: Italian Giorgio Agamben describes and envisions different courses for our thinking than today's more technologically nihilistic will-driven production paradigm. Two books delve into other possibilities than the 'fire' he believes we find ourselves in. In this essay, Astrid Nordang tries to bring out some of this complicated material.
PHILOSOPHY: While postmodernism involved an explosion, today's posthumous condition, according to Marina Garcés, involves a liquidation of all possibilities – an implosion. Yes, are the hopes we cling to today just market-adapted needs for hope?
WOMEN: Art done by men is simply given more attention: in collections, in exhibition programs, in art literature, in the art market. But what about the large number of female artists over the past 500 years?
The Israeli embassy goes out to Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse's book Eyes in Gaza calling it an "anti-Israeli pamphlet" and a "low target in scandalous releases". Erik Fosse giggles at the criticism.