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.
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Le Monde 28.10.2011 (France)
The columnist Caroline Fourest is deeply ambivalent about the developments of the Arab Spring. "It is the reactionary powers who have been the first to harvest the fruits of the revolution", she writes regarding the electoral victory of the Islamists in Tunisia and the Islamist statements by the interim government in Libya. "Does this mean it would have been better if Gaddafi had gone unpunished for the bloodbath in Bengasi? Of course not. The United Nations would have gone under if this had happened, and with it the idea of universalism, without which there can be no human rights. Tomorrow, thanks to the UN, those who supported the 1973 resolution for intervention in Libya have the legitimacy to demand that the new Libyan government respect these rights. And this also goes for women's rights." Her next comment would seem to be directed at Bernard-Henri Levy: "However, it is time to put an end to the imbecilic war romanticism, which looks lovingly at every rebel. And to tell the truth about those who were once the oppressed and have become the oppressors."
On 25 October the paper published a speech by Jürgen Habermas on the current situation in Europe: "We must make Europe more democratic!": "In the short-term the crisis demands the greatest attention. But beyond that the political actors should not forget the construction faults at the root of the monetary union that cannot be solved other than through a corresponding political union: the EU simply lacks the necessary competence to harmonise the national economies."
Neue Zürcher Zeitung 28.10.2011 (Switzerland)
J.M. Coetzee is known for his reluctance to talk to the media, but Angela Schader managed to elicit a few words from the Nobel literary laureate about his writing, literary criticism and South Africa. And the return of religion. "One fact that continues to surprise and worry me is that religion is making a return in forms that are so hostile to the intellect. It's as if centuries of intelligent and often profound theological thinking (I am referring here to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the only one with which I am really acquainted) had had no effect; as if none of this had made its way out of the universities and theological schools into the lives of the average believer."
Merkur 01.11.2011 (Germany)
Thomas E. Schmidt investigates how the Greens have reintroduced nature into political culture, among other things in the form of a Rousseauism that has been sublimated over time: "The subject of naturalness, of political reconciliation with nature, can no longer be asserted by a privileged class that in the course of history overrides society's dialectical contradictions. This must now be carried out by the individual within democratic culture. The Green is classless. And he denies Leo Strauss' analysis of 'Natural Right and History' according to which the entry of the natural person into the political sphere revolutionises the state. The Green, in other words, becomes a party politician. The solution, however, remains: once a citizen, now an individual. And this will be achieved not by republican virtue, but through subjectivity and engagement."
In his column on educational sociology, Jürgen Kaube doubts that schools can compensate for the inequality and injustice of society. (Here a piece of reportage from The Smithsonian that ascribes the successes of Finnland's schools to their policy of viewing every child as an individual challenge."
Il Sole 24 Ore 30.10.2011 (Italy)
Alongside the present day calamities, working through its fascist past threatens to become a stumbling block for Italy. With the publication of Giovanni De Luna's book "La repubblica del dolore" on remembrance in Italy, Piero Ignazio fears that the idea of the Italian nation will be torn apart. "In the absence of common memory and therefore of collective actors who can speak publicly in the name of the Italians as a whole, we have made do - as befits the national character - with a 'privatisation of remembrance' (and also of suffering). Two different factors have influenced this: the availability of TV as platform for individual destinies, individual victims; and the spirit of narcissism in which the ego stands above all else. In his final chapter De Luna recounts a television anecdote about how after programmes like 'La mia guerra' on Rai Tre in 1990 more than 10,000 letters were sent in by viewers offering to be interviewed (...) Today's Italy is the victim of thousands of personal and individual confessions which break apart the nation's common ground, and it has no idea how it should find its itself again."
Magyar Narancs 20.10.2011 (Hungary)
According to media theorist Peter György the statement by the writer Akos Kertesz that the Hungarians are "genetically subservient" (more here) might correspond on a formal level with racist criteria, as the columnist Sandor Revesz put it; but beyond formal logic this evaluation makes little sense: "What happened to Akos Kertesz, the unanimous excommunication from left and right, the miserable people's front [...] shows that we still don't want to talk about the things that we must finally discuss. The point is not what was done to our Hungarian forbears by others, but what they did to themselves. And what we continue to do to ourselves today."
Polityka 28.10.2011 (Poland)
Polish children's book illustrators are world famous, writes Sebastian Frackiewicz (here in German). "But in Poland, telling stories with pictures is not always appreciated, as can be seen in the example of comics. 'I once showed the dummy copy for 'Granny Knits' to a well-respected director of a state museum', [its author] Marta Ignerska recalls. 'She made the following remark: Is is not strange that you have more illustrations per page than text? What exactly am I paying for when I buy this book? It's something you read rapidly and then have no need for after that.'"
Highlights from the Anglophone press:
The New Yorker reports on the "technology of paranoia" in post-Gaddafi Libya. In the London Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra pinpoints Niall Ferguson, who has shifted from sabre-rattling neocon to collapse theorist, as the man to watch. Salon attempts to rescue literary translators from invisibility. And in Eurozine Laszlo Földenyi tries to put his finger on the colour of the Danube, the most paradoxical of rivers.
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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.