Has it become "essential" to control Culture?

 

My article in the Portuguese newspaper "Público" regarding Culture being considered "non essential" by politicians at the same time that they manifest an urgent need to control it. Here's the translated text

Canaries in the coalmine and democracy fitness

Dedicated to good friends and colleagues in
Leiria, Coimbra, Figueira da Foz.

Greek columnist Thodoris Georgakopoulos wondered how do we, the citizens, recognise that a line has been crossed, that we have slipped into a place where democracy has ceased to exist. He was referring to a May article in The New York Times, which I had read too, entitled “How will we know when we have lost our democracy?”. Based on that article, Georgakopoulos questions: “Is a country considered a democracy when the people who govern it hunt down their political opponents and put them in prison? When they are indifferent to solving the country's problems and instead are only concerned with maintaining and strengthening the client state? Is a country democratic in which all the media are owned by financial interests that are financially dependent on the government? Or one in which all state wealth is distributed to regime loyalists?”.

A culture of revolution and some old-fashioned values

Kristin Cabot’s sad, self-aware, penetrating look in a photo in The New York Times reminded me of two things: how upset I felt last summer with the way “the world” (it was indeed the whole world) reacted and treated her when being caught on Jumbotron in the arms of her boss at a Coldplay concert; and how I never thought about them (and her) again after those first few explosive days.

Wishing for peace

Nemo, 2024 Eurovision winner (Copyright AP Photo)

A few days ago, regarding Donald Trump's abhorrent reaction to the murder of film director Rob Reiner and his wife, Portuguese journalist Patrícia Fonseca commented that, a few (not many) years ago, a reaction of this type would have initiated an impeachment process. This time, there were many people who classified Trump's attitude as unworthy of the office he holds. However, the truth is that there’s a kind of anesthesia around what Trump says or does, as if it were something natural or inevitable, as if it were not possible to demand decency. The same happens with other politicians and so-called "influencers," thus normalising hate speech or not challenging misinformation. With all the damage this causes, I believe it is not due to a lack of sensitivity that most people do not react, but to a lack of a sense of agency. We don't react because we think it's not worth it, because nothing will change.

It's a matter of scale. The awareness that, while we cannot change the world, we still have the power – as individuals and, above all, as a collective – to dream, to work for the world we wish to belong to, and to make things happen.

Hope lies in the dark. Dignity lies in togetherness.

 

Photograph: Jordi Boixareu/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
(Taken from The Guardian)

 

I believe that 2025 was nothing we could have imagined. The signs were bad, only we couldn’t have predicted how bad. I often thought that finding the courage to read the news every day became an act of resistance of some kind. There are a few things that repeatedly came to my mind in different meetings, conferences, discussions with friends and colleagues.

Caring for the future

My speech yesterday at Forum Esfera(s), organised by the University of Coimbra. Read here

Are European cultural institutions immune to political pressure?

A year and a half ago, I moderated a discussion with the then director of the American Library Association (ALA), Emily Drabinski, and with Julia Lesser, from the project CHAPTER - Challenging Populist Truth-Making in Europe: The Role of Museums in a Digital ‘Post-Truth’ European Society. I will come back to Julia below, I would like first discuss what Emily shared with us on that occasion.

In 2024, when we spoke, pressure groups in the US, such as Moms for Liberty, had tried to remove 2452 books from school and public libraries (according to ALA, which also reported that between 2001-2020, the average was 273). The books mainly refer to LGBTQIA+ characters or themes, as well as racism, equality, social justice, the American Civil War or religion. Many reports referred threats against librarians and layoffs, as well as the serious mental health problems that these professionals faced. I then asked Emily if we are exaggerating when we react in our countries to the slightest sign of censorship, intolerance, verbal violence in the cultural sphere. “Absolutely not,” she replied. “We got where we are because we kept giving space.”