2024: Volume 8: Issue 1
■ Sijtze de Roos
Before I go on introducing the content of this issue, I may have to introduce myself again. You may wonder what I am – seemingly all of a sudden – doing on this page, reserved for your usual chief editor Agnes Turner. The reason is this: because of her increased academic responsibilities, Agnes could no longer responsibly combine her professorial duties with the editorial chairmanship of this magazine. We regret letting her go, but not before thanking her for the two successful issues that appeared under her leadership. We wish her all the best for the future and we are sure we will meet her again in the ANSE community, or perhaps as author. And so it was that the ANSE board asked me to temporarily take over the position of chief editor. While we look for a definitive solution, my editorial board colleagues and I will do our best to serve you. And we will of course keep you informed about further developments on this front.
And now: what do we have on offer this time? We live, I’m afraid, in a troubled world. The turbulence around - and within - us outmaneuvers our attempts to solve the many interlocking problems we are confronted with and overwhelmed by. We are threatened by self-inflicted climatological disaster, while at the same time wars and terrorism rage seemingly unstoppable all over the planet, in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, where not? Millions of people suffer brutal oppression at the hands of tyrannical regimes – Uyghurs in China, Russians under Putin, Sudanese by warring warlords – or fall victim to mercenaries, terrorists and fanatical fundamentalists of a sickening variety of perverted faiths.
Under these circumstances, it may seem out of place - preposterous even - to limit ourselves to the methodical aspects of our trade. Don’t we lock ourselves up in the imaginary safety of our middle-class bubble, isolated from the harsh reality outside, focused on the purchasing power of the rich middle classes? Aren’t we too concerned about the private preoccupations of the wealthy bourgeoisie to whom we sell our services? What are we actually doing to restore the balance that the world as a whole so desperately needs? How can we stay away from extreme right- and leftwing populism, from self-possessing consumerism or from political-religious radicalism? How to restore the damaged center?
And how urgently the centre needs restoring. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”, wrote the Irish poet W.B. Yeats more than hundred years ago, “the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats, in: Finnegan: 1989)1.
The centre cannot hold. Or could it? What we do need is conviction. In this issue we therefore present another fine array of articles and vignettes on the Summer University of last year in Budapest. Each and every one of our authors shows how important and necessary it is to take time, to pause, to think, to feel and to reflect in the midst of a world that pushes us further and further into situations we never wanted to be in and we can hardly control. As the world is unstable and uncertain, we must learn to be steadfast in our work, as citizens, as political subjects and in our personal lives. As supervisors and coaches, we ourselves are pushed around in this world too; often against our will. We share the same sense of alienation and uncertainty that our contemporaries are experiencing. That is exactly why we can - and must - support everyone who asks for it, or wherever it may be necessary. In order for our services to have at least some beneficial effect, we must master our means, methods and techniques. It is important that we know what we are doing,
where, why, for whom and how. Now that is precisely what the ANSE Summer University in Budapest was all about last year. And by extension the content of this issue.
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