The Norwich Radical - January 2025 Issue
Welcome to the January 2025 Issue of The Norwich Radical! The start of the year is ever a time of potential, a time for the new. And as we're learning anew at the outset of 2025, the new can be frightening - or it can look quite a lot like something old that we thought was behind us.
Many eyes have been focused on the US over the past week, as the actions of not-so-new oligarchs suck on all our attentions with a sickening gravity. It is valuable to remain informed about the specifics of how dangerous and unpredictable people are enacting their power, if we are to resist those actions. But it is also wearying. New ceasefire, same lack of justice; new government, same corruption; new fascists, same salute.
But elsewhere, in the people and art that are always already making the world before the warmongers and executive orders get to it, we can see real potential. In this issue, Jonathan Lee brings us a new look at Brussels, beyond the bureaucratic bubble; Sunetra Senior experiences a new lens on modern struggles through Psychic Cyberpunk art practice in Czechia; and new contributor Silvana Lamb reveals the radical potential for class struggle implicit in the Gothic. We also spend a little time indulging in reflection, as members of the team share some of the media that affected them most in 2024.
You can support our work financially by visiting our Steady page to set up a recurring donation. If you'd like to volunteer with us as a writer, editor or artist, or to pitch a one-off piece, you can reach us at thenorwichradical@gmail.com.
January 2025 Issue - Contents
THINGS WE LOVED IN 2024
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BRUSSELS LOVE STORY - THE LEFTIST CASE FOR THE CAPITAL CITY OF EUROPE
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PSYCHIC CYBERPUNK IN LOCAL CZECHIA
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THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF GOTHIC FICTION IN UK CLASS STRUGGLES
THINGS WE LOVED IN 2024
by The Norwich Radical contributors
To kick off the new year, and taking advantage of the release date for the issue being at the end of January, we at the Norwich Radical decided to bring together various contributions from the team looking back at media and arts we enjoyed from 2024. The brief was simple: a few hundred words at most, make it clear what type of media you're spotlighting, and give it a radical angle if you can, even if the angle is 'utterly selfish self-care in uncaring times'; the one other note was that the chosen works did not have to be from 2024, simply something we came across and enjoyed during the past year.
BRUSSELS LOVE STORY - THE LEFTIST CASE FOR THE CAPITAL CITY OF EUROPE
by Jonathan Lee
Brussels is the worst city in Europe.
Or so says a broad consensus of dubious online voices, right-leaning ideologues, and wealthy labour migrants who prefer to call themselves ‘expats.’ Often maligned at home and abroad by liberals and illiberals alike, the city is lambasted for being stiff and boring yet simultaneously unsafe and menacing. Brussels is dirty while also being overly bureaucratic. It is a woke liberal la-la land, whilst also being fertile ground for homegrown European jihadists. It is polluted, perpetually on strike, and with terrible drizzly weather thrown in to boot. At the same time, the city has also quite literally become a byword for haphazard urban redevelopment (Brusselisation) as well as regulatory globalisation (the Brussels effect), not to mention the common use of ‘Brussels’ (presumably always in size 72, Impact block lettering) as the eternal, big brother bogeyman for the jingoistic, Eurosceptic right all across Europe.
PSYCHIC CYBERPUNK IN LOCAL CZECHIA
by Sunetra Senior
Welcome to De/Formation: an art exhibit which took place at the indie electronic bar, Papir, in the Czechia region of Liberec just before the NY. The minimalistic metal-clad venue complemented the plainly confrontational nature of the material in the show. The place also serves up a mean take on the Moscow Mule which helps experiencing the art although going in stone-cold sober would certainly be as effective.
THE RADICAL POTENTIAL OF GOTHIC FICTION IN UK CLASS STRUGGLES
by Silvana Lamb
Why does Gothic fiction appear to speak so strongly amid periods of social and economic upheaval, and what makes it so enduringly captivating?
With its gloomy hallways, dilapidated mansions, and spectral hauntings, the Gothic genre has long enthralled viewers as a means of delving into the murky depths of human existence. Yet, beneath its eerie atmospheres lies a profound potential to critique and illuminate the economic and social disparities that define class struggles.
In the context of the UK’s tumultuous history of industrialization, deindustrialization, and austerity, Gothic fiction serves not just as escapism but as a medium for radical critique, blending the psychological and the political in ways that resonate with Marxist theory and directly engage with the realities of British class struggle.
It has been a strange start to a new year, no doubt about that. We still aim and strive to provide a look at what resists, at what still stands despite everything else burning, eroding, being swept away. We hope you find solace in what you love, in those you love, and know that you are loved too.
In Solidarity,
The Norwich Radical Team
