contributors

Articles by Kevin Deegan-Krause & Tim Haughton

1. Raoul Wallenberg: Myths and truths

   A hundred years have passed and Raoul Wallenberg is currently the subject of much publicity.

2. Fear and loatHing in lithuania

   As an EU-member, Lithuania has to a large extent set up institutional mechanisms to combat homophobia. It has implemented anti-discrimination laws that are roughly in line with EU norms. At the same time, the country does not allow same-sex marriage, fails to recognize same-sex partnership (or indeed any form of civil partnership), and does not allow homosexual couples to adopt children. A still greater problem, note the authors, is that the political and cultural climate remains deeply hostile towards homosexuality and towards recognizing the rights of individuals of a minority sexual orientation.

3. The land, the sea and the water in between On the liquefaction of culture

   Even though the sea is characterized by its transgression of all borders, the founding of Sealand has shown that one can transform the sea into some sort of land, into Sea-Land. Because the sea is dislocated, one can set up a location. Because it is not the realm of defined territories, one can declare part of it as a territory and thereby align it with the land and the terrestrial idea of a state. But if one does, it is no longer “sea” in the strong sense of the word,1 but rather a symbolic aggradation of the sea — just sealand.

4. Cia Rinne and the soundpoetic event Listening for other languages

   For many of its practitioners, creating sound poetry means vigorously demonstrating the here and now of the poem, which has no counterpart in text; encouraging the people in the audience to place trust in their own listening rather than look to a text for answers; and by extension challenging the idea of an object which lends itself to ownership, or can be saved to experience later.

5. The truncated road movie: Thomas Brasch and the Berlin Wall

   Brasch’s novella does two things: it presents lives smothered by incarceration, and it also places the reader on the other side of the barrier, as a witness to the road movie that crashes into the Wall.

6. Sofi Oksanen’s “Purge” in Estonia

   The post-Soviet Estonian politics of memory have centered on the themes of national suffering and heroism, which function as a “dominant narrative and state-supported memory regime”. The fixation on victimhood has served as a screen memory18 for avoiding questions about the Holocaust in Estonian territory and the collaboration of Estonians in Soviet rule.

7. Songs from Siberia The folklore of deported Lithuanians

   This article focuses on the texts of songs, poems, prayers, and jokes created by Lithuanians deported to Eastern Siberia in large-scale relocations from the Lithuanian Soviet Republic in 1948 and 1949.

8. In the shadow of Rumkowski

   The deportation of children, the elderly, and the sick transformed Łódź from a traditional ghetto to an industrial slave city and established the motto for which Rumkowski would become known: work is our only way out.

9. CREATING A “CASTLE OF LIGHT” THE FORMATION OF LATVIA’S UNIVERSITY DURING THE FIRST REPUBLIC

   The crucial matter of creating a Latvian “national” university in the aftermath of World War I may be seen as an example of the way this new nation was structured in both symbolic and practical terms. This academic institution provided an arena for rewriting the nation’s past history and recreating its folklore customs — both essential to Latvian culture.

10. WELL-EDUCATED BALTIC STATES MERGERS HAVE BECOME A NECESSITY

    In order to ascend another rung on the development ladder, all three Baltic countries are engaged in higher education reform. Latvia has the furthest to go.

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