Vive la république européenne? Reading <i>The European Balcony Project</i> as artistic counter-public

Continuum · 2024-02-16

The article first contextualizes the European Balcony Project (EBP), a manifesto written by authors Ulrike Guérot, Robert Menasse, and theatre director Milo Rau who subsequently put it up for discussion in various public fora. On 10 November 2018, artists and citizens performed the manifesto and proclaimed the European Republic from (theatre) balconies and public places in 25 European countries. They encouraged a dialogue that sought to promote a more diverse public sphere. In my reading, the EBP emerges as a contemporary version of Oskar Negt's and Alexander Kluge's public counter sphere, as a real and imaginary community in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk in an arena of discursive interaction and democratic practice. By reading the texts in the context of a political avantgarde project, I show how the interventions aim to set a counterpoint to the resurgence of nationalism and promote a vision of a democratic continent based in shared values. My article thus illustrates how public art performances such as the EBP contribute to the thickening of imaginative relations throughout Europe and might aid in the construction of a larger European cultural identity.

Die Welt als Dorf: Neue Heimatromane von Dörte Hansen und Juli Zeh aus<i>ecocritical</i>Perspektive

Monatshefte · 2022 · 3 citations

• Humanities
• Humanities
• Art

This essay focuses on the question of how relationships between humans and nature, <i>Heimat</i> and the provinces are negotiated narratively and aesthetically in <i>Mittagsstunde</i> (2018) by Dorte Hansen and <i>Unterleuten</i> (2016) by Juli Zeh. I read both novels as part of a new <i>Rural Criticism</i> that seeks to problematize human life in the Anthropocene and is committed to the critical interpretation of contemporary histories and realities. Both texts illustrate the urgent ecocrit-ical problems that the process of our civilizing nature, its economic utilization, and the climate crisis have engendered. I show that in the novels, weather, natural spaces, the protection of the environment, and alternative energies serve as catalysts for moving the plot forward. At the same time, these phenomena illustrate the close enmeshment of the characters with the surrounding natural world and the way it shapes their identity. Ultimately, I argue that while both texts can be read as manifestations of <i>solastalgia</i>, they also represent aesthetic approaches to climate change and environmental destruction that could aid in the establishment of a New Climatic Regime (Bruno Latour). (ASB, in German)

Contents

2022-12-06

Regenerating Europe in Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt

2022-12-06

Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Einheit 1989–2000. Fremdheit zwischen Ost und West.<i>Von Arne Born. Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2019. 652 Seiten. €39,80</i>.

Monatshefte · 2021-03-26

Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Einheit 1989–2000. Fremdheit zwischen Ost und West. Von Arne Born. Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2019. 652 Seiten. €39,80. Fittingly published in the year of the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Arne Born’s Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Einheit

Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Einheit 1989–2000. Fremdheit zwischen Ost und West. <i>Von Arne Born. Hannover: Wehrhahn, 2019. 652 Seiten. €39,80</i>.

Monatshefte · 2021 · 2 citations

• Geology

Fragile Realities: Discussions among Writers about Contemporary Europe

Colloquia Germanica · 2020 · 1 citations

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Political Science

The essay analyzes recent responses by intellectuals to the discourse of “crisis” concerning Europe’s unity and its future, which has been dominating discussions about the European project. It first surveys the European Writers Conference held in Berlin in 2014 and interprets its Manifesto, then analyzes a series of letter exchanges between European authors that was published in 2016-17. Both of these endeavors, which have involved about sixty writers from inside and outside of the E.U., give insight into how intellectuals view the current state of Europe and how they configure what might be called a European cultural identity in the twenty-first century. Through a dialogue that promotes the significance of a public sphere in and about Europe, the projects showcase the difference between political and cultural discourse. They are read here as an attempt to reestablish a European Republic of Letters that should play a prominent role in the continuation and reorientation of the European cultural project.

Europe in Contemporary German-Language Literatur

Colloquia Germanica · 2020-01-01