[spectre] European Meeting of Cultural Journals

[geert lovink]

The 16th European Meeting of Cultural Journals
Europe and the Balkans: Politics of Translation
Belgrade, October 24-­27 2003

The 16th European Meeting of Cultural journals will take place during the
Belgrade International Book Fair, October 24­27, and is organized by
Eurozine and its Serbian partners Belgrade Circle and Belgrade Women's
Studies Center. More than 70 editors and intellectuals from Europe's
leading cultural journals will participate in this event and the
programme includes seminars and debates as well as an exhibition
displaying journals from more than 30 countries.

The theme of this year's meeting is Europe and the Balkans: Politics of
Translation. It has become a commonplace that the dynamics of
globalisation, while leading to a growing homogenisation are producing at
the same time important dynamics of fragmentation and segmentation. In
other words: borders are not disappearing, they are instead multiplying
and being moved to different locations.

In this context, the question of translation has become a politically and
culturally absolutely crucial question. Indeed, the notion of translation
can be regarded as a central metaphor for some of the most pressing tasks
confronting us at the beginning of the 21st century. It points at how
different languages, different cultures, different political contexts,
can be put together in such a way as to provide for mutual
intelligibility but without having at the same time to sacrifice
difference in the interest of a blind assimilation.

Translation, in this sense, is about the creation of new cultural and
political maps, the establishment of shared territories and of points of
articulation, the development of a border reason, as opposed to the
simple acceptance of the reason of the borders. It is about the right to
be different, whenever homogenisation would mean an offence, and the
right to be equal, whenever the dwelling upon difference would be
synonymous with oppression or with the prevalence of power politics.

The central topic of the 16th European Meeting of Cultural Journals ­
Politics of Translation ­ will thus provide the opportunity to
conceptualise and discuss questions such as multiculturalism, the
universality of human rights, the global rule of law, global governance
and the cultures of democracy; issues that are of great importance also
in the region where this year¹s meeting takes place: the Balkans.

PROGRAMME
Participants have received a detailed programme for the conference. Three
of the panel debates are open to the public:

BALKAN AS METAPHOR
Saturday October 25
10.00-13.00
Hotel Metropol (Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra 69, Belgrade)
Panel discussion: Alexander Kiossev, Roger Conover, Milica Bakic-Hayden,
Rastko Mocnik, Ugo Vlaisavljevic
Moderator: Dusan Bjelic

The need to demount the Western-centred stereotypical image of the
Balkans, as well as the Eastern mechanism of self-orientalization, is
urgent. Balkan. Somewhere between a tragedy and a myth, a place and a
condition, the term is perhaps best understood as a metaphor. Drawing on
the recent book Balkan as Metaphor, intellectuals from different fields
focus on the way in which the concept of "the Balkans" is used to define
attitudes towards issues such as nationalism and multiculturalism, and
explore taboos related to ethnicity, religion and Europeanness.

POLITICS OF TRANSLATION
Saturday October 25
15.00-17.00
Hotel Metropol (Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra 69, Belgrade)
Panel discussion: Joy Sisley, José Lambert, Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes
Moderator: António Sousa Ribeiro

The notion of translation can be regarded as a central metaphor for some
of the most pressing tasks confronting us at the beginning of the 21st
century. It points at how different languages, different cultures,
different political contexts, can be put together in such a way as to
provide for mutual intelligibility but without having at the same time to
sacrifice difference in the interest of a blind assimilation. European
experts and intellectuals from different fields discuss ways in which
translation provides a "third space² where different languages,
discourses, practices can meet.

CULTURES OF DEMOCRACY
Sunday October 26
11.00­13.00
Hotel Metropol (Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra 69, Belgrade)
Panel discussion: Roger Conover, Ugo Vlaisavljevic, Rastko Mocnik
Moderators: Obrad Savic and Dasa Duhacek

With the collapse of communism the conception of democracy, or democratic
culture, so fundamental to Western political discourse, suddenly lost its
stable meanings. However, many Western intellectuals failed to notice
this dramatic change and simply interpreted the collapse of communism as
a confirmation of the universality of democratic culture. The panel
"Cultures of Democracy" will try to explore the validity of the notion of
international democratic cultures. Specifically in the context of the
Balkans, the unilateral demand for an implementation of a transnational
democracy runs the risk of producing a systematic democratic deficit
inside the realm of the nation-state. The subordination of the
'nation-state' to the 'world market' has produced a specific political
effect on the small Balkan nations: they still believe that the
nation-state remains the primary location for a postponed democracy.