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.
more
At the time of "The Satanic Verses" when the fatwa was pronounced on a famous author, here and there on the radio and television, at dinners and between the lines of editorials, fine minds were asking whether it was a good book. Other, more blunt ones, were already talking about provocation.
Today we are asked to consider whether the cartoons of a prophet published in a Danish paper five months ago are in fact any good. One is tempted to say the cartoons and the question of their artistic value are hardly worth considering at all. We are told they are stirring up hatred. Here too we would like to say that hatred is neither in our values nor in our hearts. And how can we be responsible for stirring up hatred in others, when hatred is a spontaneously combustible fuel?
Those older than us will no doubt be feeling a strong sense of deja-vu. It seems that for the fine minds at the time of the Munich Agreement, the German people were not to be humiliated at any cost, to save the pride of this grand nation which had suffered ever since its defeat in 1918, etc. This was a strange way of showing our consideration for our German friends, by leaving them in the hands of a power that would oppress them, lead them into endless wars, make them stoop to ignoble acts and, adding insult to injury, demonise them and literally split their country in two, for the Devil divides.
We are asked to make an aesthetic, moral and sentimental judgement on a matter that goes to the heart of the basic principles of our democracies. The right of men and women to live freely is not the credo of religions, and it will never be.
What is at stake is not just being free to make mistakes. The truth is that we are free to commit blasphemy. There is something rather disconcerting about having to remind people in France in 2006 that we have the right to commit blasphemy, that picking on the parish priest has long been a national sport.
Nowadays we hear the question "Have you seen them?", just like we used to hear "Have you read it?" about Rushdie's book. But regardless if we have seen them or not, nothing can justify the mix of outraged reactions by those sincerely hurt, by politicians only too happy with this windfall and by new prophets holding out the menace, and the promise, of war. When the president of the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié pour les peuples decides to press charges against the papers guilty of complicity with the blasphemers on the pretext that the cartoons are "anti-Muslim racism", we ask: what race are we talking about? Is Islam genetically transmittable? What do the hundreds of thousands of immigrant men and women think about this, those who once again are identified with a religion they very often do not even practice?
We are not to be duped: on the one hand we have cartoons which went totally unnoticed almost six months ago, and on the other we have ultra-religious parties which win the elections in Palestine and the threat from Iran (how to judge the Iranian provocation? As useful? As useless?)
We are writers. We come from different horizons and have different origins. We belong to different social groups and religious heritages. We have singular destinies, individual convictions and – yes – sexual preferences.
It is difficult not to see that in the war now being waged by the Christian fanatics in America and the Muslim fanatics in the Middle East, the anger and the frustration will fall upon the moderate lay countries.
Soon, in France like in Denmark, the liberty to publish will be denied us in the name of respect for this or that god. If we give in, the libraries will be burned that house Voltaire, Sade, Ovid, Omar Khayyam, Proust and all the rest. And there is no doubt that the popes, the grand rabbis and the grand muftis will all be there to dance at this grand auto-da-fé.
*
Salim Bachi, Jean-Yves Cendrey, Didier Daeninckx, Paula Jacques, Pierre Jourde, Jean-Marie Laclaventine, Gilles Leroy, Marie NDiaye, Daniel Pennac, Patrick Raynal, Boualem Sansal.
The letter was originally published in French in Le Monde on February 13, 2006. It was published in German in Perlentaucher.
Translation: jab.
RSS
Twitter
Why the Russian youth have tolerated the political situation in their country for so long and why they are no longer tolerant. The poet Natalia Klyuchareva explains the background to the protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on December 10th. Image: Leonid Faerberg
Filmmaker and theatre director Andres Veiel disagrees with the parallels currently being drawn between left-wing and right-wing violence in Germany. The RAF is the wrong model for the Zwickau neo-Nazi group, the so-called "Brown Army Faction" responsible for a series of murders of Turkish small business owners. Unlike the RAF, this group never publicly claimed responsibility for their crimes. Veiel is emphatic - you have to look at the biographies of the perpetrators. An interview with Heike Karen Runge.
Germany has been rocked by the disclosures surrounding the series of neo-Nazi murders of Turkish citizens. In the wake of these events, Former GDR dissident Freya Klier calls for an honest look at the xenophobia cultivated by the policies of the former East Germany, where the core of the so-called "Brown Army Faction" was based. And demands that East Germans finally confront a long-denied past. (Photo: © Nadja Klier)
In response to the arson attack on the offices of the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on November 2, Danish critic and semiotician Frederik Stjernfelt is nauseated by the opinions voiced against the publication, especially in the British and American media. Why don't they see that Islamism is right-wing extremism?
Activist and author, Andri Snaer Magnason is among the Icelandic guests of honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. His book and film "Dreamland" is both an ecological call to action and a polemic. "The politicians took one of the most beautiful parts of Iceland and offered it to unscrupulous companies," says the author in a critique of his native country. By Daniela Zinser 
In their book "Lügendes Licht" (lying light) Thomas Worm and Claudia Karstedt explore the darker side of the EU ban on incandescent bulbs. From disposal issues to energy efficiency, the low-energy bulb is not necessarily a beacon of a greener future. By Brigitte Werneburg
The malice of the American media in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a symptom of sexual uptightness that borders on the sinister, and the feminists have joined forces with the religious Right to see it through. We can learn much from America, but not when it comes to the art of love. By Pascal Bruckner
Published a year ago, the controversial book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany is doing away with itself) by former banker and Berlin Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin sparked intense discussion. Hamed Abdel-Samad asks: what has the Sarrazin debate achieved beyond polarisation and insult? And how can Germany avoid cultivating its own classes of "future foreigners"?
A Dutch action group for free will wants to give all people the right to assisted suicide. But can this be achieved without us ending up somewhere we never wanted to go? Gerbert van Loenen has grave doubts.