Call for Papers: Contradictions/Kontradikce 2026

Nationalism and Internationalism

The widespread return of right-wing nationalism presents new challenges to left theory and practice. In the present as in the past, the left has responded to rising nationalism in diverse ways, leading to splits and realignments alongside attempts to counter or appropriate nationalist claims. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), as in other parts of the world, competing forms of nationalism have been re-legitimated with a rhetoric of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, drawing on the leftist tradition of postcolonial thought, even while the latter is frequently condemned along with alleged leftist dangers like “wokism”, “gender ideology”, and “cultural Marxism”.

Yet while the problems of nationalism are widely criticized, alternatives to right-wing nationalism still lack deeper theoretical grounding, developed in rigorous analysis of contemporary nationalist developments and of historical debates about the meaning of internationalism in its various forms.

We look for papers on the following topics:

  • historical transformations of nationalism and the emergence of new nationalist forms, including left-wing forms of nationalism;
  • forms of left-wing internationalism, their shortcomings and potential; comparisons between internationalism in imperial centres and in hegemonic culture, and internationalism in marginal places and communities;
  • differing conceptions of universalism relating to internationalism,
    including cosmopolitanism, globalism, humanism, post-humanism, more-than-human perspectives, and planetarity;
  • the specificity of nationalisms and internationalisms in CEE,
    reflecting the theoretical legacy of CEE socialist and anarchist movements in global context, and the relationship between nationalism and postcolonial theory and post-dependence studies when reinterpreted and applied to CEE;
  • the relationship between feminism and nationalism, including the appropriation and instrumentalization of feminist themes in nationalist discourses, femonationalism, homonationalism, the role of gender and sexuality in current inter/nationalism(s), queer/feminist critiques of nationalism, and nationalist aspects of feminist discourses in CEE;
  • critiques of nationalism from the left and left attempts to synthesize aspects of nationalism and socialism;
  • questions of class interest, relating nationalism and internationalism to economics and proletarian solidarity;
  • issues of the imagination: if nations are "imagined communities," how is the international community imagined? And is it possible to imagine nations outside their nationalist framings? (Consider also the role of art, literature, philosophy, and culture in imagining the international; education for nationalism versus education for internationalism.) 

Send abstracts (around 300 words) to kontradikce@flu.cas.cz  by 15 June 2025. Complete drafts of articles are due 31 October 2025. See submission guidelines here.

We accept submissions written in English, Czech, or Slovak.

 

Inquiry: Anarchists and the War in Ukraine 

For our issue “Anarchism in Central and Eastern Europe”, we approached several active anarchists, theorists, and academic experts on anarchism, as well as anarchist collectives, with questions about one of the most burning and controversial topics in contemporary anarchism – the anti-authoritarian movements’ relationship to the war in Ukraine. The result is an inquiry that, while not representing all variants and offshoots of the anarchist movement, presents a diverse range of positions on this issue.

The inquiry will also be published in printed form in the second (English) issue of Contradictions 7/2023.

 

Contradictions: A Journal for Critical Thought

Contradictions assesses and creatively revives radical intellectual traditions of Central and Eastern Europe, bringing them to bear on the historical present and bringing them into international discussions of emancipatory social change.

Contradictions is published in two issues a year, one in English and one in Czech and Slovak. Submissions are welcome in any of these three languages (English, Czech, or Slovak).

Available for order from our publisher Filosofia; content of back issues online and archived in the Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences.