Political biology
DESIRE: About the intersex subject and revolutionary impatience. A resistance made possible by the 'potentia gaudendi', the reserve of unrestrained 'pleasure potency' which constitutes the basic assumption of the philosophy of desire from Reich to Deleuze and Guattari. 'Polemical non-fiction'? Paul B. Preciado takes up Engels' confrontation with the norms of "the family, the state and private property".
ChatGPT – an impersonal paradigm shift?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Is it only now that individualism, the cultivation of individuals, with new technology such as ChatGPT, is about to change?
The cultural intifada
JENIN THEATRE: Recently many Palestinians were killed in Jenin. What does Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation entail in today's desperate situation? For The Freedom Theater in Jenin, the answer is still a cultural intifada. A performance is now being shown at the Human festival in Oslo.
A mirror image of the Cuba crisis
WEAPON SUPPORT: If the West gives more weapons to Ukraine, it only means that Russia's will continue to escalate the war. The consequence of the arms support is clear: It will not lead to Ukrainian victory, but to the destruction of Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of young Russians and Ukrainians killed.
Should we send weapons to Ukraine, and to Israel?
SCENARIO: MODERN TIMES here tries out an imaginary scenario to compare two irreconcilable conflicts. It is up to the reader to make up their own mind as to what this might mean.
Iconic paintings and photographs
Role models: In public Latin America, the addiction heroes Bolívar and San Martin or Che Guevara and Evita are either idolized or satanized through paintings and photographs. This book takes a closer look at why.
Permanent state of emergency
ESSAY: The power goes out, exchange rates fluctuate, bread prices explode, fuel disappears. There are also still traces of the explosion. Yet Beirut's hard-pressed citizens time and again manage to find a foothold in chaos. And the chaos is contributing to Beirut never becoming a clean-up city.
Muslim elites, exercise of power and terror
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?
The limits of our way of life
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.
Agamben: A burning house
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.
End Times Thoughts
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?
Camille, Hannah, Lisa, Pauline and Flora
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 adaptive autocrats
AUTHORITARIAN: What happened after the height of freedom ideals, the fall of the Iron Curtain and Bill Clinton's fusion of liberal politics with market forces? Today, the Chinese's mastery of original Western technology and surveillance seems limitless.
The Chinese dream: "Our time has come."
USA / CHINA: Is the current systemic divide between the US and China insurmountable? According to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: "Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should, cooperative when it can, and hostile when it has to." On the other hand, China is now led by a man who, according to book author Kevin Rudd, has considerable intellectual resources . Under his leadership, China has grown into a superpower.
When two people have ended up sharing the fear of each other
ISRAEL: Ami Ayalon has been at the forefront of Israel's military actions. As naval commander and as head of the country's internal security service he had a creeping sense that the country he so passionately defended was maneuvering into a strategic impasse.
Why do we resort to bombs and guns?
WAR: Christopher Blattman's long-term project has been to explore the reasons why conflict between groups and nations erupts into war.
Politically correct decolonization ideology?
MODERNIZATION: The Nigerian professor Olùfèmi Táíwò looks at power relations between the formerly colonized and colonialists. All states strive to adapt modern institutions to their own history, cultural context and ideological climate. But can the demand to decolonize the language become absurd?
Why is love political?
PSYCHOLOGY: Love is not a project of isolation, but a project of freedom, according to Seyda Kurt: The freedom to be able to choose for oneself is about radical tenderness, about justice.
To reclaim democracy
DEMOCRACY: MODERN TIMES has chosen two angles on the same book. What about community-led initiatives as a contribution to the European Green Deal?
Concealment, secrecy, intimidation
ABUSE: Three men in their forties informed their former school, the Jesuit Canisius College in Berlin, about how two priests had sexually abused them decades ago. This led to countless disclosures – not only of the abuse itself, but of the church's consistent secrecy.
Can the forests come crawling back?
NATURE: Afforestation is the cozy climate solution everyone likes. Fred Pearce believes it is far more important to fight logging and rather let the forest grow back on its own. He points out that with 25 per cent more trees, these would be able to pull as much as 200 billion tonnes of CO000 out of the atmosphere – enough in itself to keep us below the target of a 2 degree temperature rise by 1,5.
A voluntary forced relationship
PSYCHOLOGY: Is narcissism a social demand on the individual – that we must become more than what we are?
What really characterizes NETFLIX?
Netflix: Media professor Amanda Lotz provides some interesting perspectives on the global streaming services' business models and Netflix's success.
How the majority's opinions are created by the media
PUBLIC: Precht and Welzer want more "well-intentioned disputes" about views – not social media's definition, personorientering and arousal production. Their book has been met with everything from total rejection and hesitant acceptance to detailed criticism.
We lack faith, not faith in God, but faith in the world
PHILOSOPHY: The immune democracy. According to the Italian philosopher Donatella Di Cwesare, there exists today a political culture ruled by the fear of the foreigner and the future, a sham democracy in favor of security, control and short-term competitive considerations. And those who consider themselves "liberal" today have suffered greatly in standing up to the irrational impulses and decisions that govern the market and the pursuit of short-term profit.