Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen.
more
MicroMega 21.11.2011 (Italy)
Berlusconism is not over yet, opines Paolo Flores d'Arcais, one of the most prominent and persistent Berlusconi critics among Italian intellectuals, in an extensive MicroMega dossier on the Italian change of government For a long time Berlusconi's power had not been based on the fact that he was the head of government. "His 'core power base' lies in his monopolisitc grip (increasingly Orwellian) on television, in the web of the laws tailored to suit him and which ensure his impunity (although he would have been found guilty ten times over in a court of law), and in the snare of criminal, derivative and manipulative systems of power (secret service departments, corrupt dignitaries, corporate management with close ties to the government and huge interests in the oil and defence sectors, mafioso milieus, and despots from foreign countries...), through which he established his political and personal power and created a virtual parallel state."
Magyar Narancs 10.11.2011 (Hungary)
In his writings and lectures Randolph L. Braham, an American Holocaust researcher with Jewish-Hungarian roots (his parents and relatives were murdered in Auschwitz), repeatedly alerts Hungarians about their failure to confront the Holocaust. In an interview with Pal Daniel Renyi, Braham explains why: "Like other poor Central European countries, Hungary never assumed responsibility for what happened to its Jewish communities in 1944. Instead, the attempt is made to lay the responsibility on the German Nazis and the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party of the Szalasi period [October 1944 to end of the war]. This does not change the fact that the deportation and annihilation of the [440,000] Hungarian Jews took place between between March and July 1944, when the country was still ruled by Reichs-administrator Miklos Horthy and the Sztojay government... If they don't gain an understanding into what happened in this country between 1918 and 1945, and particularly between March and July 1944, the generation that is now coming of age will be unable to form a free, democratic country. A democratic society cannot be founded on lies." According to Braham, the new Hungarian constitution encourages turning a blind eye to the subject: "According to its preamble, Hungary was robbed of its autonomy between March 1944 [the invasion of the German Wehrmacht] and 1990.
Slate.fr 21.11.2011 (France)
Jacques Attali, the influential former advisor to Mitterrand, sends a warning to Angela Merkel in Slate.fr: Either she must agree to the purchase of defaulted European bonds by the European Central Bank and the issuance of European bonds...or she will end up holding the smoking gun of Europe's suicide. In doing so, he rids us Germans of our most cherished illusions. Demystification No. 1: "German is not head of the class of the Union, who winds up having to pay for the sins of all the others. Its public debt is close to 82 percent of its gross domestic product, practically as bad as France. Ten of its banks, all owned by the government, which provide twenty percent of the credit outside of the financial markets, are currently in very poor condition. Germany's energy consumption will increasingly rely on Russian gas, which today represents 37 percent of its imports. Its demographics are so catastrophic, that Germany will already have less inhabitants than France in 2060, and 44 percent of the Germans are over 65 in comparison to 35 percent of the French, which will make it particularly difficult for Germany to repay its debts." Ouch!
Elet es Irodalom (Hungary) 18.11.2011
The government is stepping up its efforts to redefine Hungarian history, criticises media expert Peter György. For example, the "People's Stadium" built in 1953 is to be torn down, in order to purge any memories of football under socialism: "Removing the People's Stadium from the urban infrastructure not only erases the period of socialism. It takes away a space that could make the notion of home into a palpable, everyday and also historically reflective experience...In this manner it destroys the sense of home that all people who are forced to live in times of risk, fear, and globalisation dearly need."
Frankfurter Rundschau 21.11.2011 (Germany)
In the Frankfurter Rundschau columnist Mely Kijak believes, yes, racism in Germany does have a wider base than just the NPD and the "Brown Army Faction" of Zwickau. In a study by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation a third of people surveyed believed that Germany had too many foreigners. A similar Europe-wide study came to similar results. Why has has there been so little coverage from the side of the murder victims and their families? "A high-ranking politician has yet to turn to the families of the victims in humility and shame, begging their forgiveness. Nor have any journalists apologised for their prejudiced and descriminatory news coverage on the situation of the immigrant population over the years."
Al Ahram Weekly 17.11.2011 (Egypt)Â 
In a conciliatory gesture, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood tends to be compared - also in the West - with the Turkish Justice and Development Party. Azmi Ashour has his doubts. Erdogan's party operates in a secular society of the past 90 years. There is no such thing in Egypt, just the opposite: "The duality between [Mubarak's] regime and the Muslim Brotherhood worked to reproduce the type of individuals who believe solely in their own views and who can entertain no opposing opinions. Indeed, this exclusionist culture has long been the chief flaw in the mentality of the Muslim Brotherhood elite, which not only identified the ruling regime as their enemy but also everyone else who did not stand squarely on their side."
Also: Nehad Selaiha recalls the Syrian dramatist Saadallah Wannoos in conjunction with a student theatre production.
Highlights from the Anglophone Press
Prospect investigates the parasitical relationship between computer games and film and reprints Carys Davies' short story "The Redemption of Galen Pike", which has just won the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. The Atlantic investigates why Pakistan is the "ally from hell" and explores the secrets to Oprah Winfrey's success. (See also last week's fascinating photography series on 1970s America in crisis.) The New York Review of Books lauds the Metropolitan Museum's new exhibition of Islamic art and faces some painful realities in business journalist Michael Lewis' new book "Boomerang". The Columbia Journalism Review chronicles a newspaper that "did everything right" but still failed to master the new media turn. In Guernica, Israeli journalist Amira Hass tries to explain the consequences of the Occupation to her fellow citizens. And Capital New York profiles the internal conflicts complicating the Huffington Post-AOL deal.
RSS
Twitter
The Republicans are waging a war against women, the New York Magazine declares. Perhaps it's because women are so unabashed about reading porn in public - that's according to publisher Beatriz de Moura in El Pais Semanal, at least. Polityka remembers Operation Reinhard. Tensions are growing between Poland and Hungary as Victor Orban spreads his influence, prompting ruminations on East European absurdity from both Elet es Irodalom and salon.eu.sk. Wired is keeping its eyes peeled on the only unassuming sounding Utah Data Center.
In Telerama, Benjamin Stora grabs hold of the Algerian boomerang. In Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic tells the Venetians that they should be very scared of Chinese money. Bela Tarr tells the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung that his "Turin Horse", which ends in total darkness was not intended to depress. In die Welt, historian Dan Diner cannot agree with Timothy Snyder's "Bloodlands": National Socialism was not like Communism - because of Auschwitz.
In Perfil author Martin Kohn explains why Argentina would be less
Argentinian if it won back the Falklands. In Il sole 24 ore, Armando
Massarenti describes the Italians as a pack of illiterates sitting atop a
treasure trove. Polityka introduces the Polish bestseller of the season:
Danuta Walesa's autobiography. L'Express looks into the state of
Japanese literature one year after Fukushima.
In Merkur, Stephan Wackwitz muses on poetry and absurdity in Tiflis. Outlook India happens on the 1980s Indian answer to "The Artist". Bloomberg Businessweek climbs into the cuckoo's nest with the German Samwar brothers. Salon.eu.sk learns how to line the pockets of a Slovenian politician. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Navid Kermani reports back impressed from the Karachi Literature Festival. 
In La Vie des idees, historian Anastassios Anastassiadis explains why we should go easy on Greece. Author Aleksandar Hemon describes in Guernica how ethnic identity is indoctrinated in the classroom in Bosnia and Herzogovina. In Eurozine, Klaus-Michael Bogdal examines how Europe invented the Gypsies. Elet es Irodalon praises the hygiene obsession of German journalists. And Polityka pinpoints Polish schizophrenia.
The New Republic sees a war being waged in the USA against women's rights. For Rue89, people who put naked women on the front page of a newspaper should not be surprised if they go to jail. In Elet es Irodalom, historian Mirta Nunez Daaz-Balart explains why the wounds of the Franco regime never healed. In Eurozine, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev see little in common between the protests in Russia and those in the Arab world.
In Letras Libras Enrique Krauze and Javier Sicilia fight over anarchy levels. In Elet es Irodalom Balint Kadar wants Budapest to jump on the Berlin bandwagon. In Le Monde Imre Kertesz has given up practically all hope for a democratic Hungary. Polityka ponders poetic inspiration and Wislawa Szymborska's "I don't know". In Espressso, Umberto Eco gets eschatological.
Poland's youth have taken to the streets to protest against Acta and Donald Tusk has listened, Polityka explains. Himal and the Economist report on the repression of homosexuality in the Muslim world. Outlook India doesn't understand why there will be no "Dragon Tattoo" film in India. And in Eurozine, Slavenka Drakulic looks at how close the Serbs are to eating grass.
In the French Huffington Post, philosopher Catherine Clement explains why the griot Youssou N'Dour had next to no chance of becoming Senegal's president. Peter Sloterdijk (in Le Monde) and Umberto Eco (in Espresso) share their thoughts about forgetting. Al Ahram examines the post-electoral depression of Egypt's young revolutionaries. And in Eurozine, Kenan Malik defends freedom of opinion against those who want the world to go to sleep.
Il Sole Ore weeps at the death of a laughing Vincenzo Consolo. In Babelia, Javier Goma Lanzon cries: Praise me, please! Osteuropa asks: Hungaria, quo vadis? The newborn French Huffington Post heralds the birth of the individual in the wake of the Arab Spring. Outlook India is infuriated by the cowardliness of Indian politicians in the face of religious fanatics.
In Nepszabadsag the dramatist György Spiro recognises 19th century France in Hungary today. Peter Nadas, though, in Lettre International and salon.eu.sk, is holding out hope for his country's modernisation. In Open Democracy, Boris Akunin and Alexei Navalny wish Russia was as influential as America - or China. And in Lettras Libras, Peter Hamill compares Mexico with a mafia film by the Maquis de Sade.
Are books about to become a sort of author-translator wiki, asks Il Sole 24 Ore. Rue 89 reports on the "Tango Wars" in downtown Buenos Aires. Elet es Irodalom posits a future for political poetry. In Merkur, Mikhail Shishkin encounters Russian pain in Switzerland. Die Welt discovers the terror of the new inside the collapse of the old in Andrea Breth's staging of Isaak Babel's "Maria". And Poetry Foundation waits for refugees in Lampedusa. 
Technology Review sees Apple as the next Big Brother. In Eurozine, Per Wirten still fears the demons of the European project. Al Ahram Weekly features Youssef Rakha's sarcastic "The honourable citizen manifesto". Revista Piaui profiles Iraqi-Norwegian geologist Farouk Al-Kasim. Slate.fr comments on the free e-book versions of Celine's work. And Die Welt celebrates the return of Palais Schaumburg.
Andre Glucksman in Tagesspiegel looks at the impact of the Putinist plague on Russia and Europe. In Letras Libras Martin Caparros celebrates the Kindle as book. György Dalos has little hope that Hungary's intellectuals can help get their country out of the doldrums. Le Monde finds Cioran with his head up the skirt of a young German woman. The NYT celebrates the spread of N'Ko, the West African text messaging alphabet.
MicroMega cheers recent landmark Mafia convictions in Milan. Volltext champions Hermann Broch. Elet es Irodalom calls the Orban government’s attack on cultural heritage "Talibanisation". Magyar Narancs is ambiguous about new negotiations with the IMF. Telerama recommends the icon of anti-colonialism Frantz Fanon. Salon.eu.sk quips about the dubious election results in Russia, and voices in the German press mark the passing of Christa Wolf. And in the Anglophone press Wired profiles Jeff Bezos, while the Columbia Journalism Review polemicises the future of internet journalism.