All posts by sz szilu84

Two men against history A comparative analysis films by Miklós Jancsó and Andrzej Wajda

The death of Miklós Jancsó provides a tragic apropos to evaluate the universal implication of the oeuvre of the great leftist director, who was always critical towards the world of capitalism. The Polish author comparatively analyses two movies of Wajda and two movies of Jancsó to conceptualize gripping aesthetical conclusions that introduces the two great directors into the context of both national and universal movie culture.

The early period of the Hungarian folk-dance movement – social ideology or national art?

The beginnings of Hungarian dance-house movement in its present form were in the 1970s. Nevertheless, it has important precedents already between the world wars and after WWII. There are no such widely known legendaries about these earlier folk dance movements, but it is still important to study them from the aspects of cultural- and social histories and of the history of ideas as well.

The Holocaust in the area of the Western Group of Occupation Forces. Account of the Solicitor Division of the State Protection Authority in the case of Nándor Pápai, 12th of January, 1950.

The participation of the Hungarian occupying troops in the Nazi genocide in the Soviet territories lately has got into the focus of attention. A nation-wide debate has emerged in Hungary, and it shows that it could be rewarding to deepen the researches among the documents kept on the shelves of the Hungarian archives as well. This document is an account of an investigation by the Hungarian authorities after the war about the sequential mass murders. It reveals that despite the former statement of the literature, the troops of the Western Group of Occupation Forces actively took part in the Holocaust.

No. 100 | (Winter 2013)

Table of contents
  1. The past and future of Eszmélet. Frequent readers answer the question of the editors
  2. Eleonora de Lucena, Mészáros István : Barbarism on the horizon. An interview with István Mészáros by Eleonora de Lucena
  3. Szalai László, Lugosi Győző, Búr Gábor : Repression is cawing in a murder. Győző Lugosi talks to Gábor Búr and László Szalai
  4. Szigeti Péter, Andor László, Krausz Tamás : Capitalism has not been created by the EU… Lászó Andor answers Tamás Krausz and Péter Szigeti
  5. Szigeti Péter : Constructing the Political. The Problem of Political by Carl Schmitt, Marx, Weber and the Neo-Marxists
  6. Tütő László, Terbe Teréz : Transition Movement
  7. Peter North : Surviving Financial Meltdown: Argentina’s Barter Networks
  8. Eszterhai Viktor : The Guanxi in Asian Interstate Relations. Rethinking the China-centred Feudal Aid System
  9. Chris Hann : Time’s Arrow in Tázlár (and in Anthropology)
  10. Zolcsák Attila : The Chilean Student Movement
  11. Farkas Péter : In Defence of System-based Critical Economics
  12. Bartha Eszter : “I am Hungarian but a European”
  13. Tütő László : Two Insurrections
  14. Szarka Klára : Capa 100
  15. Appeal for an Egalitarian Europe
  16. Stéphane Madelaine, Vincent Liegey, Christophe Ondet, Anne-Isabelle Veillot : Degrowth Project, Manifesto for an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance

Historical Conditions and Limits of “Free Spiritual Production”

"This is why the meaning of free spiritual production cannot be understood in an idealistically absolutized sense, no matter how great the temptation might be to do so. For even in the work of the greatest intellectual figures be they creative artists or theoreticians [… it] continues to respond […] to the actually given conditions by making its own significant impact upon the emerging transformations of the existent. Nonetheless 'free spiritual production' is free in the genuine sense – and for the same reason also carries a great responsibility as an intellectual enterprise – precisely in the virtue of its undeniable active role in intervening, for better or worse in the unfolding historical process of which it is an integral part."

The article is the 4.1 chapter "Material Transformations and Ideological Forms" of the book Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness Vol II  by István Mészáros. Monthly Review Press 2011.