Journal of European Studies

This article reads Pajtim Statovci’s Bolla (2019; trans. 2021) as a mythologically structured exploration of enforced invisibility and the politics of the gaze in late-Yugoslav and post-war Kosovo. Moving beyond the surface narrative of a forbidden queer relationship between an Albanian and a Serb, it argues that the Albanian Bolla myth functions as the novel’s organizing principle rather than a decorative metaphor. Arsim is read as a Bolla-like subject whose ethnic marginalization, heteronormative regulation, and self-closeting generate an escalating “becoming-monstrous” whose rare moments of visibility are catastrophic instead of emancipatory. Drawing on Sartre, Foucault, Fanon, Mulvey, and Sedgwick, the article reconstructs a theoretical architecture of the gaze and re-reads the folklore’s internal logic through close analysis of key scenes. It argues that Bolla shows Balkan nationalist and heteronormative regimes to be producing the monstrosities they themselves cast as deviant and threatening.

As an emerging concept, AfroSwedish encompasses the multiple racialized and minoritized identities of Swedes with African ancestry. An AfroSwedish identity is often negotiated in relation to childhood experiences of racism, attempts to reconcile Swedishness with African origins or ancestry and eventually reconnecting with African roots. This article examines two memoirs, Slumpens barn: Den osannolika berättelsen om när Sverige mötte Gambia by Amat Levin and “Såna som du ska inte va här” by Marika Carlsson, which centre on living as a person of colour in Sweden with African origins or ancestry. AfroSwedishness as a community of sorts and an emerging shared identity for Swedes with African ancestry are narrated differently in the memoirs, with Carlsson’s memoir presenting a more critical stance and Levin’s a more celebratory perspective, indicating that reconnecting with parental homes and reconciling experiences of racism with pride in one’s heritage are deeply personal processes despite the pronounced political dimension. The identity work performed by the memoirs goes beyond personal narration, encouraging Swedes from all backgrounds to critically examine and acknowledge race and experiences of racism.

This article examines how BrexLit narrativizes a ‘Nazi complex’ embedded in British cultural memory through its literary representation of Brexit discourse. Rooted in traumatic recollections of Nazi authoritarianism, this complex combines a moral rejection of totalitarian violence with a latent reproduction of exclusionary Nazi logics, generating a paradox that BrexLit repeatedly interrogates. On one hand, novels represent Brexit-related tropes such as the ‘Fourth Reich’ and the ‘Kalergi Plan’, exposing how they recast the European Union as an oppressive force and Brexit as a moral act of resistance. On the other hand, these texts reveal how Brexit discourse itself, marked by the pursuit of racial purity, echoes the exclusionary logic of Nazi ‘blood and soil’ ideology. By situating such rhetoric within broader narrative contexts, BrexLit exposes how Brexit discourse reproduces the very authoritarian impulses it claims to oppose, thereby destabilizing its moral authority and historical legitimacy.

This article examines the figure of the ‘sympathetic’ tramp and complementary tramp pair, as it develops from popular entertainment into modernist theatre, culminating in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It traces a line from music-hall and comic traditions – such as Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt and the Danish cartoonist Storm P. – to the bowler-hatted duo of Vladimir and Estragon. These earlier partnerships often consisted of mismatched companions: one slightly more authoritative, the other more passive or childlike but frequently philosophical. Together they formed a comic unit defined by dependency, repetition and shared misfortune. Beckett draws on this tradition but reduces it to its bare essentials. Vladimir and Estragon are not just tramps; they are a vagabond pair, a pseudo-couple whose identity depends on their continued presence together. They quarrel, embrace, threaten to part and then remain. Their bowlers and boots become key stage objects linked to memory, identity and thought. This is especially the case of Lucky, whose hat enables his chaotic monologue. By placing Godot within the tradition of comic double acts, the article argues that Beckett’s tramps operate on two levels at once: comic entertainers and philosophical figures through whom Beckett explores the failure of language, philosophy through physical comedy and the conditions of human existence.

This article examines the educational and reading programs developed by the New Right in Germany and France as part of a broader far-right meta-political strategy aimed at reshaping cultural and ideological hegemony. Focusing on non-party actors such as think tanks, publishing houses, and educational initiatives, the study compares the German Neue Rechte and the French Nouvelle Droite with particular attention to their institutional frameworks and their shared emphasis on literature and reading practices. The analysis reconstructs how these movements contest the legitimacy of public education while establishing alternative pedagogical infrastructures that target audiences from early childhood to adulthood. By curating reading lists, anthologies, and educational formats, the New Right seeks to appropriate canonical literature and reframe it within an ethno-nationalist worldview. The article highlights transnational parallels and points to the strategic role of guided reading in far-right cultural politics.

This article focuses on the discourse on pacifism and Latinity in the Italian periodical Cronache della civiltà elleno-latina (1902–1907), founded by Angelo De Gubernatis. Under the leadership of Crispi in the 1880s and 1890s, Italy embraced expansionism, colonialism, and pro-German attitudes, which strained its relations with France. In stark contrast to this militarism, the Cronache championed a vision of Italy rooted in liberal and democratic ideals. The periodical advocated for a peaceful international order to enhance Italy’s position in modernity. In doing so, it proposed an anti-belligerent macro-nationalism based on the dissemination of the values of Latinity: harmony, peace, and order. Specifically, I analyze how the periodical used the historical relations between France and Italy to construct a myth of a new Latin Renaissance. This Renaissance envisioned a profound epochal transformation, a new beginning in European history characterized by peace, unity, and solidarity among Europe’s nations.

The article explores the conditions necessary for a narrative recounting of past events to become memorable and incorporated into collective memory. The analysis is focused on the role played by artistic remediations in creating such memorability. In Romania, as well as in other East Central European countries, the production of memorability and the management of the resulting collective memories are interlinked with the narratives of communism that dominate the memorialisation of the recent past. The article reviews several examples of acts of dissent, based on their representativeness and the existing literature, and question the memorability of dissident acts by considering the memory discourse on communism and the involvement of different agents of memory. It also interrogates the use of the Romanian secret police (Securitate) files in artistic productions, examining this acknowledgement of the role played by the Securitate in creating the narratives of the communist past. Two artistic productions based on reworkings of the Securitate files are analysed: a documentary theatre play staged by Gianina Cărbunariu, Uppercase Print (2013), and Radu Jude’s 2020 film of the same title, both presenting the story of Mugur Călinescu. The article argues that these productions question mainstream frames of memory by revisiting the narratives and biographies created by the Securitate files and give new, artistically mediated voices to victims, perpetrators and collaborators.