Long Reads

Eun-joo Lee reports on the Global Easts conference, organized by the Critical Global Studies Institute (CGSI) and the Global Easts Consortium, which took place at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea from 17 to 19 January.

What is the connection between oil, war, and the climate crisis? In this Long Read, Alexander Etkind explores the tendency of authoritarian petrostates, such as Russia and Iran, to launch wars and to downplay climate change.

James Morris explores Anca Parvulescu’s and Manuela Boatcă’s book Creolizing the Modern: Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires (Cornell University Press, 2022), arguing that if to “creolize” is in part to complicate and challenge national mythologies, then it is important to confront nationalism’s racist language.

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) elicited two critical reviews on the pages of the CEU Review of Books. Here Kundnani responds to Ferenc Laczó’s and Raluca Bejan’s Long Read pieces. 

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) propositions that white ethnic nationalism is at the basis of European identity. In her Long Read, however, Raluca Bejan unwraps several issues that she argues make Kundnani’s argumentation flawed.

Gábor Egry reflects on the blurred boundaries between historical and subjective writing and on the historical in the autobiographical through Ignác Romsics’s “egohistory”, Hetven év – Egotörténelem 1951-2021 [Seventy years – Egohistory, 1951-2021, Vol. 1] (Helikon Kiadó, 2022).

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) provides a strong critique of the European Union and what he claims is its rootedness in “imperial amnesia”. Ferenc Laczó in his Long Read, however, writes that Kundnani’s narrow perspective on western Europe leads to him overlooking the ongoing history of imperialism within the geography of Europe, namely Russian imperialism.

Réka Krizmanics reviews the volume Socialism Goes Global edited by James Mark and Paul Betts and discusses the long-term prospects of globalizing Eastern Europe as a subfield.

Jasmina Lukić remembers her friend, the writer Dubravka Ugrešić through her literary work and reminds us to “believe in the magic of literature”.