Current projects:

"Intellectuals and Revolution: The East-Central European Renaissance 1976-1990"

Book project

The “Age of Extremes” has yielded relatively few uplifting stories which suggest models of a positive social transformation and peaceful transition to democracy. The most successful ones include the dissolution of apartheid in South Africa, women’s emancipation movement, and the 1989 revolution in East-Central Europe. The Eastern European transformation is perhaps the most unique revolution in the history of humanity. Not only did it initiate a massive anti-totalitarian revolution but led to a peaceful transition to democracy in the region which was meant to remain in the Soviet bondage forever.

            Influential interpretations of the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism tend to emphasize the “fatigue of the system” and technological underdevelopment as the main causes of the collapse of the Iron Curtain. This book project draws attention to the neglected, morally charged, intellectual visions which empowered the revolution of 1980-81 and then the Autumn of 1989. It discusses Polish “Solidarity” not just as a workers’ uprising but as the fruit of a sustained, imaginative effort of the cultural elites. The main questions are: What has been the intellectuals’ role in the unique, “dialogic revolution” which started with the establishment of KOR (Committee for Workers Defence) in 1976 and finished with the break-up of the Soviet system? What are the limitations of the dialogic modus launched by the Polish intellectuals as an instrument of peaceful transition to democracy? 

            The book revaluates the main strains of the European civilizational critique in the light of the anti-humanist turn in Western Europe and the Eastern European “oppositional humanism” which informed the anti-totalitarian revolution.

"The Power of the Powerless Today"

International seminar 20-21 October 2007, Oslo University

The aim of the seminar is to set Vaclav Havel’s notion of the “power of the powerless” in the present context. The main questions are: What does it take to organize a peaceful opposition to an authoritarian power in a situation where there seems to be no hope of change? What is the role of local and international actors in this process? (internal dissidents, intellectuals, NGO’s, United Nations, etc). What can we learn from the Eastern European experience of totalitarian rule? What has happened to the ideas of solidarity, human rights and dialogue at the beginning of the twentieth century? Is it possible to revitalize them at the time when both the power of international corporations and the aggressive Islamic fundamentalism create new forms of disempowerment? 

Previous projects:

“Moral Communities and the Challenge of Modernisation: A Comparative Approach”  
Project, September 2001 – December 2005

“Humanism for the 21 Century”
International Seminar  3-5 June, 2004, Oslo University

 “Solidarity etter Solidarnosc: Møtet med Lech Walesa”
International Seminar 5 October 2005, Oslo University