Cul Out of Sight by Cul Magazine

Breaking taboos

Telling secrets

cul Out of Sight

Interrogating norms

Exploring hidden history

Colofon

Independent anthropological magazine

Cul is connected to the Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology department at the University of Amsterdam.

Editors in Chief: Alex Dieker Morrigan Fogarty

Graphic Design: Alžbeta Szabová

Image Editors: Carme Ferrando Soriano

Helena Peters

Alžbeta Szabová

Text Editors: Eduardo Di Paolo

Iris van der Goes

Daria Nita

Mia Grassi

Neve Faulconer

Social and Travel

Coordinator: Amelie Clarke

Cover: Carme Ferrando Soriano

Cul magazine is always searching for new aspiring writers. The editorial team maintains the right to shorten or deny articles. For more information on writing for the Cul or advertising possibilities, email cul.editorial@gmail.com

Printer: Ziezoprint

Prints: 200

Printed: April 2025

ISSN: 18760309

Cul Magazine

Nieuwe Achtergracht 166 1018 WV Amsterdam cul.editorial@gmail.com

Editor’s note

Dear Readers,

It seems fitting that for an issue dedicated to that which is out of sight we reaffirm one of the purposes of this magazine. We are, of course, part of the Anthropology Department, but it mustn't shock the readers that many of us do not sit down to write with anthropology in mind. Anthropology is kept out of sight, but it is still present in how it influences our worldviews, our ideologies, and our understandings. Without the ever-present, ephemeral spectre of an anthropological education haunting our pens and keyboards, none of the articles in this magazine would come to fruition.

This is our second edition of the year. We have filled it with things left unsaid, things left unquestioned, things left forgotten in the dustbin of history only to be thrust back into the light for good or for worse; this is an edition about hope, about resilience, about persecution, about lies, about shame, and about that which stalks lurking in the night.

We invite you, dear reader, to invite the spectre in, to look at the haunting figures in the shadows of old picture frames and shrouding doorways and ask them to come in for a cup of coffee.

Best

Wishes, Morrigan Fogarty Alex Dieker

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Death, Silence and Vicarious Grief

Text & Image Patrick Sam-Lazarov

As long as I’ve known, loss has loomed over me in a peculiar way.

For most of my life, I lived within walking distance from Tuol Sleng, a secondary school-turned-prison where as many as 20,000 were killed. On the roads of Phnom Penh, many tuk-tuks have signs offering to take tourists to the Killing Fields, with pictures of human skulls placed on top of one another. Every January 7, the Cambodian government commemorates Victory over Genocide Day, but as a child, this meant little more to me than an extra day off of school. Surrounded by these sights, the genocide of the 1970s was everpresent in my life. While visually apparent across the city, in personal conversations, it is markedly absent. Even to this day, there are things that my family and I are learning about the ones we lost under Khmer Rouge rule.

I can’t help but feel that all the reminders of genocide around the city are depersonalised. Practically every Cambodian acknowledges the rule of Democratic Kampuchea as a national catastrophe, but it is out of the ordinary for survivors to openly talk about their individual experiences and pass down memories to their descendents — it’s a given that everyone has lost someone. When I was younger, my grandmother did tell stories of life under Pol Pot, but it was usually with the intent of entertainment. Whether they were about trying to catch frogs to eat or being startled by snakes, their tellings were full of laughter. Only once (as far as I can remember) has a story explicitly about grief come up. My memory has since clouded whose death it was. In other families, these topics may be completely shut off for discussion.

Violence has created a generational silence. Death lives on as emptiness, as blank spots in the family tree and family history. Everyone knows, but hardly any ever speak of it. Generational trauma is a complicated matter — how do you heal from it if it’s never discussed? How do you grieve for people you never knew, whose personalities you’ve never seen come to life, but who meant the world to those who raised you? What do you do when their biggest impact on your life has been through their absence? Do I have what it takes to hear what really happened?

I don’t have any answers to these questions yet, apart from that the first step is probably allowing myself to feel the emotions inside me. I often associate different emotions with particular spaces — physical places or social contexts where I am comfortable feeling and expressing them. Back in Cambodia, I didn’t feel that I had any when it came to grief over family members that died under Khmer Rouge rule. The silence is daunting — I would have to fight my spirit to attempt anything different.

However, once I came to Amsterdam, I started finding such spaces dedicated to personal experiences and memories of loss. The Holocaust Names Memorial on Weesperstraat, protests in support of Palestine along Rokin, and vigils for Gaza at the Dominicuskerk to name a few. These are spaces — both fixed and moving — where people gather, pay respects to the dead, and listen to stories told by the living. For the first time in my life, I found spaces where such painful loss was seen, and I allowed myself to feel. Intertwined in memorials for genocides far from home was my own sorrow at the blank spots in my family tree — tears for all the times the world already ended, though I could never tell you how.

There are times when I feel shame for grieving vicariously. It feels inappropriate because these are not spaces of ‘my own’, but I find it important to share because I don’t want to continue the silence in which I was raised. In that vein, this has been a short piece on my experience growing up in the aftermath of genocide. Discussing the pain and how to cope has always been difficult, and these thoughts have become all the more present watching the destruction of Gaza. The past haunts me through absence, and the present provides me only vicarious solace. And I doubt that I am the first to feel this way, nor do I think I will be the last.

Postscript: Shortly after writing the bulk of this piece, I had a call with my mom and found out that my grandma had two half-brothers that died under Khmer Rouge rule, and she never knew until the day before either.

What Winter Left

It began with little things. Little, insignificant things. Errors of the mind I chalked up to a stressful day or a hazy night out. I forgot my keys, my charger, the book I had meant to return to a friend. I never thought much of it. I never thought much at all.

It was February when I stepped through the double doors, back into the wicked sunshine. Snow protesting the weight of my boots, I hurried over the bridge. Red brick bled through the prints I left behind. Wind stung my nose, reminding me of something I had forgotten.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

There was someone next to me. I didn't know her name. Her lips were blue with cold. "Hm?" I buried my chin further into my scarf. "You were saying something." Her bare feet didn’t touch the snow. "Was I?"

"Yeah you said something about it being the first time for-"

Something pulled my gaze. A bird taking flight out of a nearby tree. Skeleton branches rattling in its wake.

I stopped. Drowning in a sea of thick golden honey, I pulled on my consciousness until we broke the surface. Once free of sticky sweet darkness, my vision cleared. I had one leg over the railing. Of course, this scared me. It never made the news. Why would it? I am still here, alive, whole. Nothing else happened after that day. Nothing as material as cold metal in my hands, at least.

Still, the edges are there. Blurry as they might be. My mind held together by jagged skylines and bits of cellophane. Time passed, as it tends to do.

I still see it. In passing car windows, the heel of a boot disappearing around a corner, the heaviness of a stare lingering too long. I think it will follow me always, watching, reminding.

Text Stella Blue Hadamer Image Alžbeta Szabová

The Glass Between Us

Text Hanna Ignaciuk

Image Carme Ferrando Soirano

We are sitting at our usual bar, engaged in a smooth conversation. We are not only friends; we are companions. They are the only ones I have since moving abroad, into this new context. I feel like we are the only ones in this world. Every day, every experience is shared. The moment we met, we clicked. We started co-existing. Sometimes, I feel like we are wired; we are bound to the same context someone else has tied us into.

The experience is intense and intoxicating—life seems complete. Nothing is holding me back from telling every detail about situations in my new life. We co-exist, and therefore, they have the right to know. Sitting at that table at that bar, we yap, yap, yap about minor details, slightly exciting affairs, and eye contact from the day. I tell them all about how I cried because someone did not show up. They express compassion, make me laugh and agree with my anger. We analyse the other person’s behaviour and feelings, and they help me interpret the emotion and plan what I should do next. I’m enjoying myself, drawn into my new life, stuck in my new reality.

Then there is a pause. Something that pulls me out. The conversation stops flowing for a nanosecond—someone takes a sip and breaks the stream. Maybe it was a phone ringing or someone asking if this seat was taken. The fantasy of being here and now is gone. The situation we talked about has an underlying layer that sticks and pokes at me, makes me insecure and reveals a trauma. A non-existent monster grows in my head, but I cannot verbalise it; a glass wall emerges between me and them. Suddenly, I find myself in a familiar

limbo I've visited too many times before. The unequal ratio between the intensity of our relationship and the shallowness of the extent to which we actually know each other, our histories, and the circumstances that formed us, creates a small abyss between us. We have just met, but we are the only people in the world. We need to share reality because we are the only ones there. We want to tell each other everything because only then do we feel close; we feel like we are not alone. However, there are moments when we hit the glass wall of not wanting to say what is happening because it connects to our past lives. The moment I get stuck and the glass blocks my passage, in silence, I want to scream, ‘It did not happen here! It's connected to my other life.’

For the first few months, I lived in this fantasy of having a family and inner circle. The rules are simple: We share every moment, live together, and give each other warmth, but we cannot talk deeply about emotions that disturb us, as most people do. The goal is to gain intimacy and intensity while not getting close at all. We walk with smiles painted on our faces, choosing paths together and remaining behind the glass walls. After some time, everyone wants to break another person’s wall or tries crushing into their own. The wonderland falls apart and becomes oppressive. It is said that sometimes you just need time and space. There is no space, but can the ticking clock be slowed down? I want to get out of my little matrix and share the context, and myself. I realise that the glass is ice that melts, that the things left unsaid and out of sight will reveal themselves with time.

Itching the Self Astray

Scabies Infestation and Abjection of the Skin

Text Tyler Mcamley Image Alžbeta Szabová

On a daily basis, we are confronted with our own skin. Though on the surface we may become desensitized to its appearance, if the eyes linger too long, we begin to spot pores, acne, wrinkles, or dryness that can bring a sense of disgust, even self-loathing. They exemplify the skin’s abject nature, which can often fade into the background of everyday life. This hidden abjection can be revealed in violent ways. The skin can be plagued by grave conditions that bring this abjection to the fore, through terrifying symptoms that not only unveil how disgusting the skin can be, but make it impossible to ignore. Among these conditions, scabies is an unforgiving infestation that triggers the abjection of the skin. To understand how abjection relates to the skin and scabies as a prime case study, we must first explore existing theories on abjection and skin philosophy.

Julia Kristeva describes the abject as “…something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object”. It requires rejecting or separating something as the Other (which Kristeva dubs as “primal repression” ), with this Other being inseparable from the one

who is aiming to reject. How does this impact self-perception? According to Kristeva, “The one by whom the abject exists is thus a deject who places (himself), separates (himself), situates (himself), and therefore strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing” . If the Other, or the abject, exists within oneself, the loathing and disgust accompanying the abject also begins to be directed at the Self, leading the Self astray. Kristeva personifies this abjection as a type of “alter ego” , as if it were a devil on one’s shoulder.

The skin, like the abject, represents a breakdown between the Self and the Other that displaces the Self. Arthur F. Bentley establishes the skin as a connector, rather than a separator. Similarly, Jean-Luc Nancy argues that the skin “a site of passage, transit and transport, traffic and transaction”. As a result of this permeability, the skin serves as a window to the outside world. Ali Shobeiri relates the skin to the Earth’s surface, describing it in terms of its liminality. Similar to the landscape, the skin is a boundary residing on both the internal and external plains, yet it is neither in nor out #. It is thus the main actor in the inner-outer dynamics of absorbing and releasing

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into the environment. These authors all theorize the skin as a “porous boundary,” meaning that it is the arbiter of passage between the Inside and Outside. Just like how the abject lets the Other be part of the Self, the skin lets the Outside be part of the Inside.

Finally, French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu brought forth the concept of “Skin-ego,” by which the skin is crucial for constructing a sense of self. He claimed that similar to how the skin wraps around the body, containing the organs, the “bodily ego” wraps around the “psychical ego” in a “narcissistic wrapping” that secures the “psychical apparatus” #. The skin is made into an analogy for the container of and physical tool for the inner psyche, making it a reference to imagine oneself, intertwining it with the development of a sense of self. Therein lies the ultimate link between the skin and abjection: If the skin is an important aspect of the Self, the abjection of the skin as a result of its porous boundary undermines this self-perception. Scabies exemplifies this process, bringing to light the skin’s abjection in a way that effectively leads the Self astray.

Taking several passages from the subreddit thread r/scabies, we can unpack on a small scale how living with scabies has deteriorated the Self. Behind each post is an individual being overcome by the Outside, exhausted by the presence of this Other “alter ego” of scabies symptoms. Each scratch of the skin swallows the individual into a spiral of self-rejection. As “dejects” or “strays,” they may feel alone or desperate, turning to the online community of this subreddit page in order to receive advice or discuss with others going through the same experience.

“I first started having itching around my waist and hips for a couple of weeks, then one night it was horribly intense. I noticed a burrow mark on the side of my hand and immediately treated… about two weeks go by and my skin starts going nuts. Suddenly my hands are insanely itchy in the morning… and I’ve got small white lumps coming up on my fingers and on the back of my hands. I start noticing what I think are new burrows and I treated again…” (Jorrrd77 2023).

“This [has] been going on for a month now, and it’s just making me absolutely miserable” (Jorrrd77 2023).

“I am still feeling prickles and bugs crawl on me after my two doses of ivermectin… It’s disgusting seeing all these black specs on my hands. I am embarrassed and so upset… What are these rashes/bumps on my arm? Please help.” (Ok-Air7446 2023).

Words and phrases such as “horribly,” “miserable,” “upset,” and “Please help” exemplify this sense of helplessness as a consequence of scabies symptoms, demonstrating the destabilized nature of the victims. Additionally, the word “embarrassed” reveals how abjection of the skin and Self impacts how the victim interacts with others. The individual behind this post may be apprehensive about sharing their experience outside of an anonymous online forum, afraid that others will perceive them just as abject-ly as they perceive themselves. Living with scabies symptoms thus brings to light the abjection of the skin, which breaks down the Inside-Outside boundary in

a way that renders the victim bewildered and afraid.

“I won’t let anyone touch me because I’m terrified of recontracting scabies. I’m a shell of my former self and I don’t know what to do… I can’t even talk to anyone about it because I’m so embarrassed about it. Before all this I was such a happy and confident person” (natbee4 2023).

“...I just feel dirty or like less human… I’m petrified of giving my friends or family it” (jmessenger05 2023).

“One of the worst parts of scabies is how long it takes to feel confident that it’s over. There are weird skin reactions, or residual eczema, sensitivities, and sometimes bacterial problems… It was a long, slow process of wondering, daily, if I was actually okay, having a tube of Permethrin in my hand and talking myself out of overtreating one day at a time” (rashyandtrashy 2023).

Under the r/scabies page, there are several posts concerning the “post scabies syndrome.” In this, the individual has theoretically completed their scabies treatment, yet is still experiencing symptoms of the scabies infestation. Though itching post-treatment is normal, the extent of this post-treatment itch and other side effects from treatment seem to vary from person to person. As a result, a somber cloud of uncertainty and dread lingers over the victim, who is unsure when it is best to newly repress the abject. As detailed in the third passage, it is a time-consuming process to even be capable of reaching the same level of primal repression of the skin’s abject nature as in the pre-scabies period; it is a long road to feeling “confident that it’s over.”

In these three passages, the process of Self-abjection has reached a level where the Outside not only occupies part of the Inside, but is in all-out war to overtake it completely, making the victim more Other than Self. Experiencing scabies for a long period of time, losing hope that it will ever disappear, paranoid about each irregular spot or itch on the skin, trains the victim to see the skin in solely its abject elements. Yet, as the skin is pivotal for self-conception, if the skin is seen as strictly abject, this leads an individual to wander further and further astray with regards to their own sense of Self. This can explain the comments about feeling “dirty,” “less human,” and “a shell of my former self.” In the first passage, the Reddit user even distinguishes between a Self pre-scabies and a Self post-scabies.

These only served as a few examples of the scabies experience, but this could open avenues to more research linking abjection and the skin, revealing how self-conception “strays” in light of this. Despite the arduous process it entails, there is still hope of overcoming this infestation. The Self may be led astray, the skin may become abject before one’s eyes, yet this will not last forever. With the right treatment, the skin will repair, and the Self will find its prominent place again.

To all individuals suffering from scabies, do not give up hope. It will get better.

TResilience in Trans History

Text Morrigan Fogarty

Image Carme Ferrando Soirano

his article serves two purposes, equal in their nobility. The first is an explanation of history: an attempted uncovering of a revolutionary point in time that has had its records and annals destroyed by fascism. The second is wild self-indulgence and fascination. Fair warning, I will be mentioning suicide. This is an article about trans history, about the first woman to receive a vaginoplasty, and about Weimar Berlin.

On the first of July 1919, Magnus Hirschfeld inaugurated the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Tiergarten, Berlin. Its purpose was clear: to serve as a research centre and museum of sexology, the first in the world. Hirschfeld, a Jewish gay man, was already well known for his work running the Wissenschaftlich-humänitares Komitee, an organization dedicated to the rights and recognition of queer people. The Institut was studying primarily queer people, with a focus on the disquieting and distraught crossdressers and so-called “transvestites” that seemed to haunt the Weimar Republic. It was at first a purely medical place, here intended in a negative way. The patient's humanity was not a concern beyond a pathologised focus on “correction”. Doctor Kronfeld, the head of the surgery department, in fact, was an advocate for “conversion therapy” in the case of transvestites. Homosexual love was accepted, but transition was not. This would soon change.

A year after opening, a young World War I veteran stormed into the Institut armed with a loaded pistol and a bottle of morphine. They had been denied medical castration and had plans to kill themselves, but instead demanded the institute operate on them. The Institut accepted, but when one Doctor Richard Mühsam went to perform the procedure, he refused to amputate their penis, and instead sheathed it in the abdomen. The patient, who had not consented to this, suffered from complications and horrific internal erections, and demanded the surgery be undone. The veteran falls off of the historical record here, little is known about their life afterwards except a brief letter written years later:

“Health’s good, I am at peace with myself, absolutely.”

In 1924, the Weimar Republic converted the Institut into a nonprofit, and appointed Hirschfeld as head. The advocates of conversion therapy left, and Hirschfeld instead promoted “milieu therapy”, which aimed not to correct but instead align the patient with who they wanted to be. The result of this approach was almost comical, doctors working at the Institut would now frequently write prescriptions telling their patients to attend queer bars in Berlin. This attracted queer people to the Institut, not only as patients, but also as doctors and nurses. There is a clear shift from Mühsam’s refusal to carry out surgery to Hirschfeld’s approach. Hirschfeld treated his patients with respect, and coined the word “transsexual” to describe people who wish to align themselves with a sex dif-

ferent than the one they were born with. It’s easy to see how such philosophy produced far more ethical results, and it led to Dora Richterova, a trans woman who lived and worked at the Institut, to receive the first vaginoplasty in 1931.

I want to start Dora’s story here, as so often the tales we tell about trans people end with surgery, as if from the moment we wake up in a hospital gown our lives are over. As if we are nothing but our desire to transition, and that this desire ends with surgery. Dora had friends, two trans women named Charlotte Charlaque and Toni Ebel. The three of them worked for Hirschfeld, both before and after surgery, and lived together. Charlotte was Hirschfeld’s English translator, Toni was a painter. The Nazis wanted to kill them all.

These three names are evidence that the lives of Hirschfeld’s patients were known, they lived as trans women and were subject to the world. Hirschfeld was a persistent advocate, and under his direction the Institut would host the likes of Margaret Sanger, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Bloch. In 1933, the Nazis came to destroy the institute archives. Countless records on the lives of trans people were destroyed, and the neighbouring queer institutes were sacked. The Nazis ran through the streets with an effigy of Hirschfeld's head on a pike. Hirschfeld, Charlotte, and Toni escaped. He would go on to tour in America and died in 1935 in France. Charlotte and Toni ended up in Bohemia where they wrote in exile. For a long time, it seemed like the Nazis had killed Dora.

In the 1939 census of Prague appears Dora Richterova. She was unmarried and worked as a lacemaker. Earlier, in 1934, the president of Czechoslovakia issued her a name change, making her legal name Dora Rudolfa Richterova. In 1946, ethnic Germans like Dora were expelled from Czechoslovakia, so she moved to Allersberg, Bavaria where she lived until 1966. Dora Richterova did not die at the hands of the Nazis. It’s hard to say what her life was like after 1933 as she existed in the margins of history, out of sight, but she existed and survived in spite of it all. The first trans woman to receive a vaginoplasty was not killed by fascism, she lived to be 74. Her life is now a mosaic, a puzzle to be pieced together, but one that paints a clear picture, that of the resilience and survivability of transgender people. The fascists tried to kill us almost one hundred years ago. It looks like they are trying again. In the memory of Dora I have this to say: they failed then, they will fail again.

ENDNOTES: 1. I use the name “Richterova” here to emphasise Dora’s Czech origins, the language adds -ova to female last names and while Dora herself was ethnically German it feels wrong to not include this touch as someone familiar with Czech naming conventions.

2. I have much to thank for the works of Leah Tigers and her article “On the Clinics and Bars of Weimar Berlin” and the YouTuber Avelo’s video “How Berlin Became A Trans Utopia” I suggest engaging with both if you care about trans history.

Out of Sight - Out of Mind

Text & Image Helena Peters

Dancing, drinking, drugs - a tool to feel free or is it clouding our judgement to ignorance, distraction and addiction?

An Unlikely Site of Resistance?

Discussing the ambiguity of the politics of “family” vis-à-vis state institutions

Text Bartosz Fingas

When I began my anthropological education, the family was one of the first objects of study. With time, I drifted away to phenomena occurring at a larger scale, and visible not only to an academic eye. But family never leaves me, both factually—indeed, there are people whom I call family—and as an object of deliberation. The thought exercise we are about to embark on accounts for one of the stories that an atomic family in liberal democracies can witness, a story greatly influenced by my positionality.

From the comfortable vantage point of the national scale, we descend. Looking for a family, we encroach upon its household. Slithering through its walls, onto the living room floor; searching under the pillows, diagnosing the water meters, examining the artwork on walls, peeking into bookshelves. Perish the thought that we find something taboo in the social order! Our gaze drapes, like a seamless and suffocating plastic blanket over shrubby woodland homesteads and densely populated apartment blocks. Our roots breach into rooms, personal computers, and all other spaces dedicated to worship, nutrition, entertainment, and care.

What I see in this ‘blanket’ is the prominence of the modern nation-state’s knowledge system, where knowledge about is usually connected with control over. This breeds feelings of suffocation and a sense of all-encompassing legibility. I cannot deny that while mass schooling has had a tremendous impact on the homogenisation of human thought, it has also brought wellness to many. Other forms of knowledge also follow channels not detached from modern institutions; take for example DIY or acting workshops relying on monetary exchange. That is not to say that society is devoid of exchange outside of market relations, far from it. But even those find themselves being recorded and remembered by states.

To trace us back to how we hounded a family space not more than a paragraph ago, I wish to recall the famous beginning scene from Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Harrison Ford’s notorious portrayal of a macho man with an objectified female lead is not key for me here, even though it is crucial to understand his movies. Rather, I want to lead us to his cruise through a military-dummy test town. Indiana very much embodies the adventurous spirit of the American people, whether he fends off occultist Nazis or relentless So-

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viet pursuers. However, when he walks through that dummy town he becomes the eyes of that state, capturing the life of a “model” suburb somewhere in the U.S. right before an atomic bomb collides with it.

I wish to locate our attention on the way family is portrayed. Throughout the scene, an unnerving illusion cannot seem to leave me—that the mannequins are alive. At any moment their bodies will animate and continue their day-to-day lives. Jones’ exploration of family spaces tells us something important, namely, that we cannot discursively tackle family as a model unit without peering into our own family relations. In this sense “family” in public society stands like a mannequin that reflects the viewer's experiences onto them. According to some, societies tend to make themselves akin to representations of family, with “family values” often uttered from podiums, or expressed in social categories. However, this view is limiting. Family-as-symbol can only get you so far because most of family life is out of sight.

It is what is behind closed doors that we, along with Indiana, have tried to penetrate. But both gazes freeze life. In order for the mannequins to start living we would need to exit the room. A natalist family, although arguably a non-natalist one as well, offers its members a reciprocal transfer of many forces, be they sentiments of love and affection, or hurt and trauma. The formative years of succeeding generations are imbued with the dynamics present in households. ‘The personal is

political’—under such a maxim family space, or its transfers of cultural capital, are both political and private, blurring the lines of clear-cut dualisms so important to modern ways of thought. However, these immaterial transfers are mistakenly nearly always labelled as keys to places of power. For I see in cultural capital not only predisposition for competition with the outside world, but also the seeds of emancipation, the tools to forge one’s own cosmology.

Still, economic inequalities very much rest on transgenerational wealth transfers. We find ourselves witnessing the bourgeois order contingent on money and resources moving hands between parents and children. The images of Barron Trump campaigning alongside his father send a shiver down my spine, the boy’s repulsive aura already resembling a Harkonnen invader at such a young age. Marxist and feminist scholarship has offered us a window into how family is collectively at interplay with broader society. Yet I cannot shake the feeling that family is one of the only places that, as of now, has the potential to resist commodification. A mental and physical space apt to fight against norms. A place for social change to occur. A place to breed autonomy to corporations, the state, corrupt and populist politicians. A place out of sight. This ambiguity of family life fascinates me. Its multivocal role within the politics of society will not soon come to an end. While we can be sure that its function in reproducing oligarchy and capitalism will not soon be reconciled with its potential in self-making of people resisting the system.

Images: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

The Hair, The Fur, The Blood

Text Morrigan Fogarty

Image Alžbeta Szabová

A slip of the razor and there is now blood drying on my face. I brush it off and my hand becomes aware of where my hair has become tangled in the fur of my coat. A coat given to me from someone who has only ever seen me as I want to be.

In the light of the moon the beasts’ bones crack, its form shifts, it has nothing left to hide as it assumes its new form, half man, half beast.

I have no makeup on, I have facial hair under my pale skin, trying to break through, a constant reminder.

It is no wolf, it is no man, it as at once both and neither, but it is free, free to do as it pleases. Until they come. The blood, fur and hair tangle, and I am kept safe in the meaning.

The Beast, the monster; it itself holds no meaning, no true form, only the transition, only the in between, its joy a reclamation of its freedom, its claim to humanity

A body out of sight, covered in scars and bruises, a body shifting and changing, a body destroying all that is sacred and holy. I do not walk with this skin like an imposter, I do not put on the airs of a woman and seek to fool anyone, I am what I am, a body cut and shaped into something greater than the circumstances of its birth.

What are they scared of when they see her? Her form, something going against what can be, something that never was and never can be yet is here, staring at them.

I see the townsfolk coming to slaughter her, to deny her what makes her human. To obliviate the Other and sublimate their own feelings of discomfort in the shunning of the freak, the beast, the unholy.

There is no gender for the Beast, it is something truly Other.

The whore androgyne must be killed not for its transgression of boundaries, but for its illustration of the fragility of boundaries.

It is in these forms, forms between states, that the states themselves crumble.

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I am no man, I have chosen this form so it suits me, and this cutting and shaping has cast aside the label of man, yet as ever is obvious, many would seek to deny me. I do not mean deny me of rights or privileges, I mean deny me of existence. I do not fit neatly into a category, I am feminine, but not too much, I refuse to change the voice I’ve had for years, I refuse to update my passport. My path is one of sufficiency not reliant on a sovereign.

I do not believe in divinity, and I do not believe in divine femininity. Those people, the TERFs, who cling to the rotting corpse of division between gender purport my existence to be that of a fool, or worse a predator. They are the ones that still cling to these ideals. They scramble to define themselves not as beings of choice, but beings granted some privilege from above, the privilege of being a woman whose woman-ness is unquestioned. I do not have, nor want such privilege, I carve my identity out of that body that I inhibit.

There is the beast, the werewolf, cursed to lose their form and become something unholy, unchecked, something truly wild. This is the monster I see myself in, not the suave and pristine vampire, so often attached to sexuality and reeking of gender, but a creature that casts aside categorization through itself. There are two paths in its meaning, shun the beast and the curse and become man, become out of sight through assimilation, or shun the man and become beast, out of sight in your queerness, in your otherness, neatly set aside into gender studies or pathologized into the medical sphere. I chose neither, I am not out of sight. I am here.

Staring at you.

I spend days cutting the hair, cutting the fur that covers my face, my body, and yet it grows back. Perhaps one day it will stop and a new beast will emerge, but for now I shave the hair and don the fur that I choose. The clothes, the skirts, dress, and coats that cover this skin are a transformation not from a curse, not from a blessing, but from myself.

This is a radical act, as evident by my homeland banning my presence. I am only allowed in if I hide that beastly part of myself, that womanly part of myself that I become through transformation, through transition. They hate me, they fear me, and they kill me, they’ve killed my friends, they’ve killed elders who have seen the world with my eyes and who I will never get to meet, never get to share a drink with, never get to cry with. But as these eyes see and cry for the world before them, as the fascist and liberals begin to gnaw their teeth and thrash out against the “Transgender”, I know that it is weakness that propels them. A weakness to cling to fake categories that give them the power to oversee, control, and understand us. I am not easily understood.

To those like me, those that hear them coming with their pitchforks, fire and swords I have but this to say:

Bare your teeth, sharpen your claws, love your friends and above all:

Carpe Jugulum

Economists Hate Him!

Text Alex Dieker

Image Carme Ferrando Soirano

Ilive in a world where finance is at once all-pervasive and taboo. To live a good life in, say, the Netherlands—or to live at all in the United States—monetary well-being is of paramount importance. Yet, one’s personal finances are always something “to be sorted out”. They are somehow external to our immediate lived experience, and we find it awkward to broach the topic of how much money we make. Going out for drinks with friends is a common pastime in Amsterdam, a way to strengthen old bonds and to erect them with strangers, yet when the time comes to pay the bill, how quickly arise those anxieties, the modest pleads to Tikkie. Financial institutions affect deeply every part of our consuming lives, yet we do not know the names of their leaders. When we bike past the Rabobank building we only pray that the wind eases up, graciously allowing a gear shift, not that their leadership will manage to divest from harmful agricultural practices and let us consume cheaper, healthier food.

which, although it appears as impersonal, hanging on by only a thread, is what essentially makes up our lives. To identify the concept of an ‘economy’ and then cast it aside is to paint over life itself.

The very concepts of finance and, more broadly, economics have been skewed, painted with an ugly green colour which distinguishes them from the rest of society. ‘The Economy’ is a reified entity which deserves its own newspaper section and academic study. One wins a U.S. federal election by convincing the public that the other party has mismanaged the economy, or that your leadership has harnessed the power of the American economic engine. When Friedrich Merz ‘wins’ the German election, it is the vote not of a body politik but of “Europe’s largest economy”. From the moment we awake to the time our lashes last flutter, our lives are guided by its forces, its ideology, and the people who shape it to their liking. To travel to a friend, take a walk at the park, buy a croissant at a shop, stream a video, go to a club, do an at-home workout… These are all “economic” activities.

But what is it, really? Let’s look at grocery shopping. We work to earn a wage, save a portion of it to buy food, and spend it at Albert Heijn; the farmer performs her own labour and ships foodstuffs away to packaging facilities; the supermarket workers receive a wage by completing the connection between us two, and the corporate entity at the top skims most of the green off the top. This whole process is repeated ad infinitum: the capitalist economy is not a ‘thing’ but a process, a set of relations. It is decisions we make every day. I am in conversation with the farmer, just as she is in conversation with her animals, just as the grocery store manager is in conversation with his workers. We are all connected by this system of trade

I contend that one of the most important ways to rectify our issue of political confusion and distress is to grab the sharpest scraper we can find and go to town removing the thick layer of forest green paint from the wall known as social life. Let us encounter the fourth wall of economic reasoning by drawing on Marcel Mauss’ The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. In this 1925 essay, we are greeted by a description of how gift exchanges around the world are meaningful as bonds of social relations. Because certain special objects contain within them a soul, the soul of the giver, we are in essence gifting a piece of ourselves to the receiver. This is a lot of pressure! So the receiver then becomes the giver, and a cycle of obligatory reciprocation ensues.

It is this set of obligations—to gift, to receive, and to reciprocate—which form the basis of social interests in the societies described by Mauss. When we shift to analysing our modern capitalist society, the difference in obligatory deeds could not be more drastic. We are not obliged to maintain ties through a complex web of sharing shiny jewellery or precious shells, but through the propagation of the motion of capital. I exist in order to consume certain goods, to reproduce my body and mind in order to produce more things for others so that they might (you guessed it) consume and produce more. But there is no process of gifting, so there is no true bond created between myself and my economic interlocutors. We are dependent upon people we will never meet.

‘The Economy’ as a thing stretches its tentacles everywhere,

STAFF ARTICLE

yet our current set of economic relations seems to be about as impersonal as one can imagine. The astute reader might recognise a contradiction here—human beings are inherently social creatures…How has a system of blatantly impersonal relations survived to this day? One can take this conversation in plenty of directions, but recently I’ve been focusing on the political constraints on the people of the West; we have the core intelligence to remake our lives for the better but suffer under consciously imposed political propaganda—ahistorical, orthodox economics as a “science”—and a restrained electoral system whereby the only medical fix to a dying social and environmental body is a modern Dutch doctor telling us to just take a couple of Paracetamol.

Sure enough, a patient who receives inadequate treatment for such large issues is bound to either shrivel up in defeat or lash out in anger and confusion. The wave of farmer’s protests in Europe and the concomitant rise of right-wing populist parties is here an important case. In the Netherlands, the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) and the powerful PVV have stormed to power in regional and national elections,

respectively, after thousands of tractors clogged major highway arteries and sprayed manure on city halls. The policies to restrict the nitrogen pollution from that very same cow poop were seen to be an imposition of rule by the Randstad (think ‘coastal elites’) on farmers specifically and the rural country in general. Our political discourse sees the BBB as a backlash against climate action when it could (and should) be seen also as a release valve for the steaming political frustration with the commodification of farmland and the dispossession of farmers from leading a sustainable way of life, a process which began many decades ago and is exacerbated by financial institutions like the Rabobank. If we could discuss right-wing populism not as perverted but as a genuinely understandable reaction to a system with no alternative, then we could properly address its dangers and work to heal the sickly societal body which gave rise to it.

The first step is to see ‘The Economy’ as either an illusion or an over-generalisation—certainly not a reified entity. It must be one or the other.

A Mosaic of Us

Text Iris van der Goes Image Alžbeta Szabová

The following article contains imaginative sexual content, including but not limited to non-consent, hints of voyeurism and vanilla sex…Consider this a fair warning to buckle up!

In my book club, we read Want by Gillian Anderson. People from all over the world sent her their sexual fantasies through letters, which she collected and published. This book serves as the direct inspiration for this article. I found myself intrigued by the range of the fantasies: some are wild and rough (and illegal), while others are soft and sweet. It made me question my fantasies, something that feels so private. I hold an enormous amount of respect for the women who sent in their deepest thoughts. I am also a lover of Amsterdam and its inhabitants. I want to highlight Amsterdam's sexuality. Not the men’s, which can be found in the red light district, in the many toy shops or with one click on a computer in almost every household. I wanted to look for the women exploring their pleasure with a partner, who are frustratingly fingering themselves after a disappointing one-night-stand, who want to be caressed and bruised like an overripe apple. I asked them for their secrets, their fantasies, their inner sexual voice. Of course, these women answered.

I have collected little crumbs from the sexual desires of those who live in Amsterdam. Mostly hidden behind closed doors or private corners, these little bits highlight the fluidity and complexity of sex. The stories range from fantasy to reality and from the secret to the discussed. While the topic of sex and sex-positivity has gained more traction and tolerance, it is still considered a taboo topic. But as Journalist Caitlin Moran once said: “I just think that’s something we need to drag screaming out into the light and discuss. Because taboos are where our fears live, and taboos are the things that keep us tiny. Particularly for women.” Sex and intimacy can be weird and scary. Your fantasies might feel strange or abnormal. You blunder and fail, laugh and try again (or never do it again). You might feel ashamed or shy, you might not even know what you like. I want to thank the women who decided to participate in this little love letter to ourselves. May we drag it all into the light.

“They are nameless. They are broad and restrictive. I am mere pray. They hunt for me to try and corner me. I run. My heart is pumping, my legs shake, my core is pulsing. I am afraid. But oh so excited. They will find me and they will hurt me. Not too much, but just enough to know I shouldn’t have run. That I’m being punished for my resistance. I feel a fear draped in a sense of safety and trust. My breathing quickens. The only thing I am aware of is the heartbeat in my ears and the crea- king of the leaves as they come closer. When they find me, they will take me against the trees, the bark sticking into my back uncomfortably, painfully. But there is no way to escape anymore, one hand on my throat, the other gripping my hip. I am completely vulnerable to their will. It will be too much, and at the same time not enough. I will want more, but do not know how to ask for it. They will tighten their hand and give me more. So much more.”

“With my current partner, I’ve figured out I’m super into filming us doing the deed. It’s kind of surprising to me, because I’m not super confident about my looks, but I think seeing myself totally letting go and not caring is good for my self-confidence. It’s hot to be able to see myself how they see me”.

“Last year, at my company's annual meeting—held at an external location in Belgium this time—there was a party in the evening with an open bar. I was chatting with colleagues when my eye caught a guy walking by with a whole collection of name tags on his collar. I asked if those were all his personalities, he laughed, and that’s how we started talking. It turned out he worked for the Belgian branch of the company. What started as lighthearted flirting and lots of laughter turned into endless chatting and dancing to Roxy Dekker. At some point, he asked if I wanted to go outside with him. We walked out together, finding ourselves in a large botanical garden with different enclosed areas surrounded by tall hedges. As soon as we found a secluded spot, he pulled me closer and started kissing me intensely. We had both had a few drinks, so we didn’t hold back. We almost forgot that a colleague could walk by at any moment. His hands began exploring my body while my fingers ran through his curls. Before I knew it, his hand slipped into my pants, and not long after, his were off. He sat down on one of the stone ledges, and I straddled him. It was a little awkward and sometimes even uncomfortable, but the tension and the risk of getting caught made it all the more exciting. Afterward, we straightened ourselves up and casually walked back to our colleagues, who—for all I know—had no idea what had happened. I never would’ve thought something like this would happen at a company meeting, but I’m definitely not complaining…”

“I often fantasize about making love on a warm summer evening in the mountains of a sunny country, while my beloved whispers how much they love me. I imagine an evening where the sun slowly sets, and a soft breeze caresses my skin. Together, we stand on the balcony of a secluded mountain cabin, overlooking a breathtaking landscape that stretches endlessly before us, bathed in the golden glow of the sunset.

His arms slowly wrap around my waist, his lips find my neck, leaving gentle kisses behind. A whisper in my ear: “You look so beautiful in this light.” His hands explore my body with patient, loving intensity. He slowly turns me around, looks deeply into my eyes, and lifts me up, carrying me inside while his mouth never leaves mine.

Inside, it’s warm, the atmosphere intimate. He carefully lays me down on the bed, his hands tracing softly from my shoulders downward, his lips following in a trail of delicate kisses—my neck, my collarbone, my breasts, my stomach… Slowly and seductively, until I crave nothing but his touch. His fingers dance over my skin, seeking out my most sensitive spots, while he senses and teases my desires with a mischievous smile.

But then, just as I surrender completely to his tenderness, the energy shifts. He pushes me onto my back, firm yet playful, and whispers, “I don’t just want to love you gently… I want to consume you completely.” His grip tightens, his breathing grows heavier. He pulls me up, leads me to the wooden wall of the cabin, and presses me against it with an intoxicating roughness. His hands slide beneath my thighs, lifting me effortlessly, my legs wrapped around him as he presses my body against his. The excitement rises—the thought that someone could catch us, the tension between tenderness and raw desire… And then, just when the intensity becomes almost unbearable, he carries me back to the bed. He throws me onto it, his eyes burning with desire, and in a husky voice, he says, “I only want you.” What follows is a night full of passion, where tenderness and fierce longing blend together in perfect harmony.”

“Disrespect and feelings of inferiority make me mad. Tell me I ‘have to’ do something and I start brewing on the inside. It’s almost a hilariously stark contrast. The moment I’m intimate with someone, it’s perhaps the greatest contributor to my pleasure. The feeling of being - bluntly put - an object. Something that deserves this air of inferiority. Something that serves. Serves somebody. Whether it manifests itself in how I’m addressed or how I’m 'used', it doesn’t matter. It feels like an outlet for always ‘being strong’. At that moment, I do not have to be. Yet this sense of pleasure only comes with partners where I feel a sense of comfort. I know that outside of this setting, they don’t see me as something submissive. Something that listens and is obedient. I only exist like that in the space between the head and foot of a bed.”

“My fantasy is inspired by Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I am Lady Constance living in the English countryside in the 1920s with my boring upper-class husband. But then there is Cook (Jack O’Connell), the gamekeeper who lives in a hut on my land. His skin shines 24/7 from all the hard work. Sometimes I run into him when I take a walk along the river. He is rude to me at first, he doesn’t seem to notice me. It’s not a surprise to me that this (beautiful) lower-class man has prejudices about me, after all, I am the lady of the house. The cold winter makes way for spring. I run into him more and more often during my walks, which I take to escape my boring marriage. On a sunny spring day, I ran into Cook again. He walks with me. We walk closer to each other than is necessary. My hand sometimes touches his. I don’t dare make eye contact. We arrive at his hut in the woods. From here on it quickly gets steamy. He starts kissing me and I respond eagerly. I pull (or rather tear) his shirt open. He lifts me with his muscular worker arms and puts me on the wooden kitchen counter. He starts to go down on me with an intensity which already almost makes me cum. Our sex session continues on the floor of the hut, where we have very passionate vanilla sex. We cum at the same time. After he declares his love to me, we fall asleep in each other's arms. The secret sex affair continues for weeks. We do it everywhere: along streams, rivers, against trees, in the tall grass. In the end, I leave my small-dick-energy husband and marry Cook. Together we live in a small house in the woods surrounded by nature. We live hornily and happily ever after.

Love, Lady Constance”

Daria and the Park

Text & Image Helena Peters

The other day, my friend Daria—whom I met in this magazine team—asked if I'd like to come to the park. She wanted to write an article about the parks of Amsterdam, how they are used, and how they are out of sight. What followed was not formal research, but a relaxed discussion between two good friends.

As we chatted, we each realised that we share a busy schedule. Keeping ourselves busy with studies, work and socialising makes it hard to find a minute to walk through a park. Our simple stroll carried an important message: Be an interlocutor rather than an observer. Take some time off, meet with friends, have fun, and follow your passions.

When we walked, I took some pictures without realising they’d capture exactly that feeling. It was only a 30-minute walk, but the sunny day and the quiet of the park reminded me how important it is to slow down and appreciate what’s around you.

So trust me—go for a walk in a park.

Tolerating ¿Hidden? Churches IN THE CITY

Text Eduardo Di Paolo Image Helena Peters

While cruising through the city during the last Open Monumenten Dag, I marvelled at how many houses in the centre, utterly regular in appearance, were, in reality, churches. Their main identitary trait is, in fact, their hiddenness; they are now remnants of the bygone era of tumultuous 17th-century Dutch religious politics. Their opaque covertness represents the historical turn of the tide in the region, which saw Catholicism being usurped as the main religion and solidified its minority role in the public sphere in favour of a now-omnipresent Reformism (within which Calvinist currents remain paramount). Contrary to a virtual totality of European cases in which—after the wave of wars and repressions which followed the Reformation of the Christian Church, the faithful of the dominated creed were prosecuted and annulled—the newly established Dutch Republic distinguished itself through practices and policies recognised as tolerant. This trait, which emerged in opposition to the oppressiveness of the previous monarchic catholic rulers, firmly attached itself to the myth of the nation and has become rooted in the image of ‘Dutchness’. In front of these church houses, though, whose main characteristic is furtivity, I see a tension between the absolute ‘good-ness’ of tolerance and the clandestinity it enforces. However, I do not see this as a contradiction, but rather as a testament to the layered complexity of the concept of ‘tolerance’, whose effective material virtues have been reified and, thus, obfuscated by centuries of overtly political instrumentalisation, nationalistic pride and finally rendered an incoherent blob of unique moral righteousness, unfailingly taken at face value.

This imaginary of Dutch tolerance has roots which predate the realization of the first Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (originated in 1579): anachronistic accounts of a reconstructed past of unbowed liberty and virtuous tolerance started surfacing profusely during the Spanish rule of the lands, starting from the 16th century. Ancient roots of it, corroborating these traits as inherently Dutch, were found among the Batavians, a Germanic tribe which revolted against the foreign dominion of the Roman Empire in 69 A.D. It was, then, only logical that the Reformed Christian faith would reach such heights of popularity specifically in Holland, where freedom of conscience had been part of its soul for millennia, if you looked hard enough. This indomitable storied past, in unison with the new attuned spiritual lymph of Calvinism, promoted an unsubdued Netherlands, capable, and made for, overthrowing the empire looming over them. The political rule of Philip II of Habsburg, whose main intent was to scale up gewetensdwang—the forcing of consciences—was especially illegitimate in the land of “exceptional lovers and advocates of their liberty and enemies of all violence and oppression”, as Willem van Oranje—Pater Patriae, Vader des Vaderlands gloriously stated. The Dutch Revolt, fueled by these ideas and drawn out for decades, resulted in the overthrowing of

Spanish Catholic Rule in the Netherlands and the creation of the Dutch Republic. As a result, starting from the 1580s, the Reformed Church became the privileged Church and the only public one; Catholic worship was banished from the public plaza and its Church was dispossessed of its buildings in favour of either the new public one or the newborn government. Catholics, though, were still able to profess their faith privately, under the veil of their own domestic roof. Thus, the eventuality of a degeneration of what Karl Popper has later described as ‘the Paradox of Tolerance’, according to which a society tolerant of intolerance would eventually be bested by intolerant forces, was slayed and Dutch liberalism prevailed.

While the non-Calvinist cult was limited to a supposed invisibility to the national community and its rituals atomised, only allowing for familial worship, there was room (albeit very shadowy) under the scope of the law to make space for an enlarged religious congregation. Able to maneuver under the ostensibly tolerant Hollanders, groups of Catholics started to meet in increasingly larger numbers: their secret meetings were itinerant and quiet, replacing the loud church bells of the Oude Kerk with shushed prayer. As time went on, though, secrecy started to become more of an outwardly scenic fiction than an underground society. Chants started getting louder, and the rooms of prayer that hosted the community turned larger, more adornate and sedentary. This tacit permissiveness has materialised in schuilkerken - ‘hidden church’ in Dutchlike Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, "Our Dear Lord in the Attic"; masses were celebrated starting from 1661 in the house of a German merchant in the current Red Light District. At the beginning of the 18th century, after approval of the local government was obtained, with the deal sweetened by large payments and constant deposit of taxes, walls were torn down, artists brought in and the chapel of the regular-looking house made into a proper church on the inside. The rich baroque of the interior was ‘let’ exist thanks to that same doctrine of tolerance.

But this principle remains defined as ‘acts of allowing or accepting things that one disapproves of or dislikes’, whose guidelines are always defined by someone recognised as entitled to decide what is in proper taste and what, in turn, cannot be tolerated. What crosses the line is very often debated publicly, and because of its contentiousness, we have many records of it; for example, in 1691, the Amsterdam City Council mandated:

4) To avoid giving any offense, they promise that the entrance to the new permitted assembly place shall be behind, on the Burgwal, where it is less offensive

(5) They promise not to tolerate any sleds being parked in front of

IN THE CITY

the assembly place

(6) it is to see to it that at the end of services no one stands around in front of the assembly place waiting for another person

(7) The undersigned shall take great care that his services begin and end at such times that no offense will be given by [Catholics and Reformed Protestants] meeting each other when coming from and going to church

(8) The undersigned shall see to it that Catholics not pass through the street in a troop, nor with rosary, church book, or other offensive objects apparent, when going to or coming from the permitted assembly place.

The political character of ‘tolerance’ entails a constant dispute over where the boundary of acceptableness is drawn. Often, the point through which the line is painted can be pushed, with enough economic incentive. It is not a case that these churches were allowed to expand only when merchants or wealthy patrons could afford to pay a tax to the city, making them welcome enough to practice their confession. The entwined financial quality of the phenomenon with the rise of a proto-capitalist liberal economy is confirmed in the guidebook of the abovementioned "Our Dear Lord in the Attic", which presents what is now a museum as: “a token of the liberalism of the mercantile Dutch in an age of intolerance.”

Exactly because of the fact that tolerance has been seen as a particularly innate Dutch quality, the opposite has often been held as true: that intolerance, the negation of Dutchness itself, must be a foreign vice. As mentioned above, religious authoritarianism was the defining characteristic of the Spanish regime, being repudiated for that exact reason. Subsequently, though, an anxiety-ridden xenophobia was directed towards Southern Calvinists, those who left the lands still held by the Habsburgs towards Holland. They were seen as representatives of an ideal of a similar theocratic despotism, just as intolerant as the Catholic Spanish. Thus, as the burgemeester Hooft remarked, “The management of affairs should be in the hands of persons of a prudent, steady, and peaceable disposition, which qualities, I believe, prevail more among the natives than among those who have come here to live from other lands.” Political power is better kept between ‘us’.

It will not be a shock to you that tolerance as a political tool has been reused incessantly ever since, especially thanks to the geopolitical primacy of the nation-state and the romanticisation of its values and rhetoric. While tolerance has been time and time again an ally of genuine openness and acceptance, its essence is not of pure goodness. As with any political instrument, it must be perennially questioned and examined. Most recently, intolerance of intolerants has been used to shield away from the moral national community whoever can be objectified as ‘Muslim’, for the sake of the protection of the saint values that have made the nation. Even as schuilkerken are now semi-obscure representations of a distant past, they continue to incarnate the dilemmas of tolerance and hiddenness.

Further Reading: Huijser, Anneke en Theo Bakker. Schuilkerken in Amsterdam: De Belangrijkste Schuilkerken der Katholieken, Doopsgezinden en Lutheranen.

Kaplan, Benjamin. 2002. “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe”. The American Historical Review 107, no. 4: 1031–1064.

Kaplan, Benjamin. 2019. Reformation and the Practice of Toleration: Dutch Religious History in the Early Modern Era. Boston: Brill.

Lenarduzzi, Carolina. 2024. “Tuning Catholicism in the Dutch Republic: Catholic Soundscapes in a Calvinist Society, c. 1600–1750”. In Early Modern Toleration, edited by Jaap Geraerts. London: Routledge.

All of this for a cup of coffee

A review of Felvidek (2024)

Text & Image Alžbeta Szabová

You see a castle outside your window catching aflame, screaming in the distance. You run to the local lord and he would love to help but… how about a game of cards first? You haven’t had a bath in weeks, the Hussites are pillaging the lands, and the guards seem to have extra mouths on their bodies. Or maybe it’s just the alcohol talking. It is 15th-century Slovakia. You are a traumatised knight returned from the Balkan crusade. Your wife just left you. Worst of all, there’s a well-meaning priest who is checking up on you, and he wants you to be sober.

Over the past few years, I have been increasingly drawn to art sustained by small and loyal communities and created by a handful of people; if not by a single dedicated individual. It is probably the coldest take possible that small indie productions are where the best and most creative and interesting art emerges. Whether it's webcomics, podcasts, pixel art games or movies, you get met with things which revolutionise mediums, put to shame big studios and resonate with people to a degree which cannot be countered by mainstream productions. As a child, I was blown away by the graphics in my video games getting more and more realistic, happy to be sucked into a world for thousands of hours, never able to see all of it. Now I have less time on my hands but I also appreciate different things. A reasonable price and small file size for one—I don't have 80 euros to spare or 300 GB free on my computer! Mostly, however, I prefer smaller games because they can surprise me. It is a strange medium, in which stories are told through various forms, a lot of them incomparable with each other. They don’t need to appeal to everyone, they can get weird, mess with genres and explore topics you are not used to seeing.

Felvidek is a pixel JRPG-style game which takes only a couple of hours to complete. Its plot revolves around an alcoholic knight, traumatised by participating in a crusade, and his priest companion, as the two of them try to solve a mystery of a strange new cult. As qawah (which we would now call coffee, a fact my wife missed and thought people are drinking strange demonic potions instead of the regular boring bean juice we all know and love) trade comes to Felvidek, its beans are being used to transform people into monsters for an unknown purpose. As the detective duo investigates, the small weird occurrences slowly unravel into eldritch cosmic horror and a battle in which angels and demons fight through the people involved. However, the core motivation of the protagonist has nothing to do with this. He wants his wife back, and he wants the ennui infecting his life after the war to go away. The story ends melancholically and unceremoniously, and life goes on as usual. It is an epic great tale at the end of which nothing has really changed. It also has an amazing soundtrack.

It has been described as “alternative history” and “fantasy”, but I would disagree with both labels. First, alternative history is something along the lines of “What if the Dutch colonized all of America instead of the British” not “What if people turned into big bouncing eyeball monsters and you’re also Slovak when this happens”. Second, unlike in fantasy, the setting and world are grounded in realism, which the magical invades to accentuate the ongoing conflicts. Sure, it still can be classified as fantasy since it has supernatural beings in it, but the world in the game is profoundly unmagical. If all of the monstrous was to be written out, it could simply be replaced by a different ‘Other’. Because of this, despite the contentiousness of the label, I would call this game Lovecraftian in its themes and depictions.

That is also because xenophobia is an underlying theme through most conflicts, and the effects of violence as well as its normalisation and mundanity can be felt in most of the driving motivations of its characters. The game is thoroughly uninterested in exploring the supernatural side of its central enemies because it seemingly doesn’t matter much to the protagonist knight nor to the villagers and common folk of the game whether the thing out to get you is a proto-Protestant group or the teeth monster. There is no moment of passing through the looking glass, of encountering the fantastical and having your world completely shifted. There is no distinction between a foreign invader or an actual monster to the inhabitants of this world because, in their perceptions, it makes no difference to the loss, hopelessness and fear that they go through. The protagonist enters the story numb and destroyed by war and violence, and some extra teeth or tentacles do not make much difference. And yet the story manages to avoid the usual pitfalls of most Lovecraftian stories—it distinguishes between the people’s prejudices and reality, and allows humour and humanity even amongst all the viscera. We see different marginalised characters take advantage of people’s racist expectations or actively go against their stereotypes. It can be hard to portray an antisemitic world without writing an antisemitic story, and Felvidek manages to do that and includes the bad of the world without legitimising or excusing it. Every time I braced myself for an uncomfortable situation, the game did better than I expected it to do.

I chose to write about Felvidek for a simple personal reason: it is the only Slovak game I know about. And unlike something like “The Witcher”, which gets less Polish with every release, the games’ origin and setting are strongly tied together. There are dozens of indie games I could recommend to people and feel confident in my endorsement; Felvidek is not one of them. Nevertheless, I can’t stop talking about it. It feels like it’s the first thing in forever coming from my country which doesn’t make me embarrassed. And it makes me incredibly homesick. I imagine there’s a handful of joke mechanics which do not

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land with a foreign audience, such as why you spend the game gathering bottles of Alpa. The main issue why I don’t know if I can recommend this game to non-Slovaks is because it is hard for me to imagine how this game gets translated. Every character speaks with heavy regional accents, sometimes switching completely to Hungarian, German or Czech based on their background, and you can tell a person’s education and role in society based on it. Very few people speak “proper” Slovak (nor had they at the time the game takes place—the language wouldn’t be codified for another 300 years), making the game at times hard to understand as characters communicate in archaic or region-specific dialects.

Behind the issue of language, however, is a more indescribable specific feeling the game invokes in me. After a couple of years of living away from home, I have gotten used to having to pull up Google Maps and point at where I come from every time I meet someone new. People ask you where you’re from and when you answer they half-smile awkwardly and mumble something like “That’s nice”, “Is that in Europe?”, “Sorry, I don’t know anything about it”. The lady officiating my wedding called me Russian and friends I’ve had for years still call me Slovenian half the time. I don’t really get offended—it's unfair to expect people to memorise every small nation in the world. But it does sometimes feel like it isn’t real. It’s not that I wish to feel some sort of national pride, it just feels strange when no one knows that your home even exists. I miss the familiarity.

This is why I am excited about the game: it might not put Slovakia on the map for a lot of people, but those who do interact with it will get a small insight into a messy and complicated history. The plot of the game interrogates a part of history people are uncomfortable with. We can see the Hussite raids, the lords speaking Hungarian, and the Germans moving in to practically create the mining industry. We can see the country as a crossroads of many groups of people, influenced from all sides in different ways. Slovakia has been a part of the Hungarian empire for almost a thousand years, but that’s not really how my history was taught to me. As Benedict Anderson describes in Imagined Communities, nationalism is a recent phenomenon. To legitimise nations, history gets re-examined and reframed, a grand narrative is woven in which the state must exist and should exist because it’s always been there. Cultural icons are claimed by states which did not exist at the time, and in the case of Slovakia, I can’t think of almost any historical figures we are not fighting over with Czechia or Hungary. The Frankish king Samo was Slovak at the beginning of Slovak history and so were the Moravian kings Svetopluk and Mojmir, the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and countless painters, artists, and the like. There was no Slovakia in the 15th century, but it’s insulting to people that a videogame set in that time is called by a Hungarian name because we want to have always been Slovak. It's fiction, but it feels dangerous to let go of it. After all, opposing these legitimacy

claims is used to justify invasions and occupations.

Its name is a contested term- “Felvidek” is today’s Slovakia but back then it wasn’t. The term translates to “Upper Hungary”. While we haven’t been part of the Hungarian empire since 1919, the history is still sharp; we are by no means about to get invaded tomorrow, but there’s not an insignificant number of Hungarians bitter about losing their territory. If you google the game’s name you will probably get a lot of links to weird fascist Facebook groups. Slovak politicians are also insane about this: you can find videos of Jan Slota in 1999 yelling about marching with tanks upon Budapest and proudly proclaiming that he is a “Hungarian racist”. The creator of this game took some heat for this, especially since the term “Felvidek” is also anachronistic—no one in the 15th century would refer to the Slovak region that way. But on an artistic level, I like the name and the controversy. I like the historicity despite the inaccuracy because it would be ridiculous to call the game “Slovakia”. It would be even more ridiculous to call the game “Hungary”. This way the title is tied to a specific geography while remaining historical and unfamiliar. I like the controversy because I don’t know where I stand. Is it okay to call your game after a term weird nationalists use when they dream of bringing back the days of the empire? What about if it's quite silly and most people don’t care? When does it get dangerous?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I like that this game decides to embrace its messiness instead of hiding from it. I like that it’s made with love and that it’s new and different and exciting, and that it is funny and grounded and unpretentious. I love that it’s full of weird guys and cool monsters and that you can stop in the middle of combat to quickly eat some porridge so you can survive a fight against a god. It’s silly, it’s cute. I have changed my mind— go play it; I’m recommending it.

What destination?

A review of The Brutalist (2024)

Text & Image Morrigan Fogarty and Alžbeta Szabová

TThe Brutalist (2024) is an elegy detailing the struggles of assimilation, the times of European emigration to the United States, and how the totalising force of discrimination leaves migrants to America, destitute, and fundamentally silenced. It also has a strange relationship to Zionism and no understanding of Central Europe. Spoilers follow.

Adrien Brody stars as László Tóth, unable to properly pronounce his own last name and supported by a language-enhancing AI, the actor is still unable to convincingly show us any signs of Hungarian identity. The same goes for co-star Felicity Jones, who simply has her Hungarian lines dubbed over. This is a fitting encapsulation of the issues central to the film: It wants, on one hand, to portray authenticity (Brody allegedly “learned Hungarian” for the film) and on the other hand, is fine not having any Hungarian actors, and instead uses the nationality of its characters as a simple marker, telling the audience (quite ironically) that they are just strange European Jewish foreigners. This is not to say that the film is bad—the cinematography and core message at the core of the film are fantastic—but there are issues.

The overarching plot of the film is as follows: We are shown László as he arrives in America in 1947, unbeknownst to him, his wife and niece are alive in Hungary (being forcibly interrogated by mysterious Hungarian forces, again a strange choice, as there is no discussion of post-war Hungary) and he sets off to create a life for himself. László, his wife, and his niece are all survivors of the Holocaust, and this provides a central reason for their separation. But as László begins his life in America, this aspect of his identity is completely ignored, instead focusing on how his life goes awry and his eventual employment under Harrison van Buren. Van Buren is an interesting character in and of himself: a wealthy industrialist whose ambition is encapsulated by strange notions of old money, cultural representations of power and vanity projects. After his employment, László is told he can have his wife and niece brought to America.

The film cuts for a brief intermission, and afterwards, László sets out to work on a massive architectural vanity project for Van Buren. He is seen having to defend his involvement in the project and it’s unclear if the locals who oppose this construction are being antisemitic, anti-communist, or just anti-immigrant. The film makes no choice to interrogate this. The movie doesn’t fully properly explore how identity and discrimination are interrelated, which unfortunately stands against the overall theme of the film, in that the migrant identities must fall to the assimilative forces of American culture. The Hungarians are never shown to be, well, Hungarian. Instead, the film opts to reify their Jewishness overshadowing other factors of their identity. This almost works in the film's fa-

vour—we hear how László was trained at Bauhaus in Dessau, and how his works will stand the test of time in Budapest. It’s comical that every mention of his life, before the film starts, seems tailored to an American audience who will understand these references, suggesting a need for László to portray his life in Hungary in a specific, understandable way.* The film doesn’t properly comment on this, to its detriment. That, and the film's possible Zionist messages.

Zsófia, Laszlo's niece, is a Zionist. In one scene years later she announced that she and her new husband are moving to the state of Israel. László is not a Zionist. He reacts negatively, he asks why they can’t stay in the United States; if they are not also Jewish if they do not go to Israel; if Zsófia’s new husband even recognises László ‘s wife Erzsébet (who converted to Judaism) as Jewish. This is the first time we hear Zsófia speak. It introduces a whole new element to the story, one that makes the focus on László’s Jewishness make sense. It invokes a conversation about how Jewish families felt in 50’s America. They were exploited and degraded. Why not move to a country that purports to be built for them? The film doesn’t talk about Palestine. It does not talk about the Nakba. Zsófia says Israel is safer than America, László disagrees, and he is then destroyed by America as the film continues. Ultimately, the film is about the rot of America and the horrors inflicted on people trying to come to a new country to make a better life. It is not a film about Zionism. It’s easy to see how this scene, this conversation is relevant to the lived experience of Jewish immigrants to America. Israel is mentioned one more time in the film proper. At one of the lowest points of the film, Erzsébet overdoses on heroin, and László rushes her to the hospital. After recovering she says she’s moving to be with Zsófia and László responds that he will “follow her”.

In the next scene, we see a stronger Erzsébet, who after being confined to a wheelchair is now walking into the Van Buren estate. She walks into their dinner, and in front of the Van Buren family relays to them that she has learned Harrison Lee Van Buren is a rapist, and that he raped László on their trip to Italy, a brutal scene that we see earlier. The reaction of the Van Burens is the most phenomenal moment in the film, here we have a perfect encapsulation of the United States. The

*Another example is László’s wife Erzsébet’s disability. When László sees her for the first time after she comes to America, she tells him that she has lost the ability to walk due to “the Famine”. As there has been no famine in Hungary since around the 13th century, this appears to be the writers conflating more known events from Eastern Europe’s history (like the Ukrainian Famine of the 1930s) together, not bothering to get the time and place right. A more favourable reading is that she is simply referring to the Holocaust - but then the word ‘famine’ feels out of place.

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weakened downtrodden find their voice, speaking to those who have abused them unabated, and how do those in power respond? In two ways, the son becomes outraged and violent, attacking Erzsébet, and Harrison Lee Van Buren vanishes, never to be seen again. It shows the fascism at the core of America, it shows how, when confronted with the brutality of its own existence, when its horrid actions are exposed to light the American Empire can only respond in two ways: violence, or self-destruction. What a fantastic ending. Unfortunately, the film has an epilogue.

During the epilogue we see Zsófia speaking at a conference for architects in Italy in the 1980s. She is speaking for László, who we see old and frail in a wheelchair. She gives a pithy speech, ending with a strange pop-psychology remark about how “it's not about the journey, but the destination”. What a strange thing to say, when we have seen how the journey has been nothing but horrid actions undertaken against the downtrodden. Is this the journey she speaks of? And what is the destination? It’s hard not to read it as Israel, to ignore the fact that it sounds like Zsófia is now saying that all of

the horrible things that happened on and off-screen are fine, actually, because the state of Israel exists now and the Jewish people don’t have to suffer as László did. What a weird way to interpret the story we just sat through! This is not entirely supported by the film. It’s very possible to read this epilogue as nothing but more brutality. László is weak and old, and we see that he didn’t go to Israel. The architecture being exhibited is all built in America. So then, is the film saying something else, that we valorise and interpret the horrors of the past to justify horrors in the present? Are we supposed to think about Israel's actions in Gaza, and think “Oh, maybe this film is actually anti-Zionist!”. I don’t know. It’s ambiguous, and while that might get the film some praise, I think it’s cowardly. I want a movie that takes a stand, not one that leaves me wondering if the creators of the movie even watched their own film. I feel so strongly about this because otherwise, I think the film is a phenomenal takedown of the myth of the United States. Even with that it still leaves a strange sour taste.

Rating:

walking through

Text Chengzhi Xu

Such is the life!

walk walk and fall and walk and get up Again and again is the sound of life

Trampling And falling up and down the Sounds of life

Striding up the ceiling ‘Tis the sound that Carries us, Falling and getting up the Stairs the sound of Trampling yes no yes no

Decisions made Too soon Or late

Such is the sound of life!

Waking sleeping, And waking again the Restless nights, The pre exam Insomnia.

The sound of life Brushing pass

Us the sound so soon

Parted the sound Of us muted us the spirit!

The sound of us dwindling The souls parting.

The sound of life, The you the Others, The pause the Laughters. the sound of life echoes in Our ear (Your ear His ear Her hear Their ear.)

POETRY CORNER

Strong and weak And turmoil and Clear.

And of dualities And complexities And the un-grasped and grasped concepts

(the unknown Knowns known \\unknowns unknown unknowns.)

The categories, The formless The cannot be said and Expressed through Words the Attempts, the courage. The human spirit.

Such is the sound of life.

Haunting

Text

& Image Sandy Minďaš

I’m a ghost haunting this house. Or am I the house? Haunted by ghosts? Am I both?

I’m walking these rooms, different, it’s past long gone. Yet they speak to me in a dead language. I haunt their ghosts

I shiver, not from cold.

There is a memory forgotten in these walls. I want to remember.

Places change, but the ghosts stay the same. I go from room to another, I go from place to another. I haunt them desperately trying to find what’s no longer here.

I’m singing the song we liked, I’m laughing at a joke you once said, I’m looking at the fields we loved, I’m crying over the photos you took. I’m haunting your ghost.

I am no ghost, ghosts cannot feel pain. And I am no house, houses cannot feel love. I feel both.

I’m still walking this world, a human making metaphors for his grieving heart. A human writing poems for people who cannot read them.

Letters to the Editors

This year in the Cul there has been a shift in our approach, as we have much more clearly delineated spaces to be filled by both our team of editors, and you the reader.

To this end, we’ve added in a section for unadulterated (but somewhat moderated) comments.

Angry? Despairing? Lost? Joyous? For any emotion could ignite in you a spark so bright you must release the smoke of your fire in the form of a poorly written grammatically incorrect paragraph that you can then send to us at cul.editorial@gmail.com and we will be compelled by the forces of journalistic integrity to include it in the next edition of the magazine.

No one has wrote in to complain about the first edition, so this section has been filled with vaguely on-theme film photos from the graphic designer since no one can stop her from doing that.

But know that these pages can serve as your canvas, and if something here piques your interest let us know and we will get your writings both to our team and posted in the third edition of the Cul.

P.S. If this edition has left you with no strong words or feelings for our writers, mail us photos of your cats or dogs instead. We will not put them in the magazine, but it will brigten our day.