Narrating Post/Communism

Narrating Post/Communism PDF Author: Natasa Kovacevic
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134044143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The transition of communist Eastern Europe to capitalist democracy post-1989 and in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars has focused much scholarly attention - in history, political science and literature - on the fostering of new identities across Eastern European countries in the absence of the old communist social and ideological frameworks. This book examines an important, but hitherto largely neglected, part of this story: the ways in which the West has defined its own identity and ideals via the demonization of communist regimes and Eastern European cultures as a totalitarian, barbarian and Orientalist "other". It describes how old Orientalist prejudices resurfaced during the Cold War period, and argues that the establishment of this discourse helped to justify transitions of Eastern European societies to market capitalism and liberal democracy, suppressing Eastern Europe’s communist histories and legacies, whilst perpetuating its dependence on the West as a source of its own sense of identity. It argues that this process of Orientalization was reinforced by the literary narratives of Eastern European and Russian anti-communist dissidents and exiles, including Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, in their attempts to present themselves as native, Eastern European experts and also emancipate themselves – and their homelands – as civilized, enlightened and Westernized. It goes on to suggest that the greatest potential for recognizing and overcoming this self-Orientalization lies in post-communist literary and visual narratives, with their themes of disappointment in the social, economic, or political changes brought on by the transitions, challenge of the unequal discursive power in East-West dialogues where the East is positioned as a disciple or a mimic of the West, and the various guises of nostalgia for communism.

Narrating Post/Communism

Narrating Post/Communism PDF Author: Natasa Kovacevic
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134044143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
The transition of communist Eastern Europe to capitalist democracy post-1989 and in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars has focused much scholarly attention - in history, political science and literature - on the fostering of new identities across Eastern European countries in the absence of the old communist social and ideological frameworks. This book examines an important, but hitherto largely neglected, part of this story: the ways in which the West has defined its own identity and ideals via the demonization of communist regimes and Eastern European cultures as a totalitarian, barbarian and Orientalist "other". It describes how old Orientalist prejudices resurfaced during the Cold War period, and argues that the establishment of this discourse helped to justify transitions of Eastern European societies to market capitalism and liberal democracy, suppressing Eastern Europe’s communist histories and legacies, whilst perpetuating its dependence on the West as a source of its own sense of identity. It argues that this process of Orientalization was reinforced by the literary narratives of Eastern European and Russian anti-communist dissidents and exiles, including Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, in their attempts to present themselves as native, Eastern European experts and also emancipate themselves – and their homelands – as civilized, enlightened and Westernized. It goes on to suggest that the greatest potential for recognizing and overcoming this self-Orientalization lies in post-communist literary and visual narratives, with their themes of disappointment in the social, economic, or political changes brought on by the transitions, challenge of the unequal discursive power in East-West dialogues where the East is positioned as a disciple or a mimic of the West, and the various guises of nostalgia for communism.

The Post-communist Condition

The Post-communist Condition PDF Author: Aleksandra Galasi?ska
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027206287
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on discourses in one national context of post-communist transformation. Proposing a macro-micro approach to discourse analysis and transformation, it examines a spectrum of topics including Polish history, with its 'interpreters'; changes in political bodies and the media, policies of the Catholic Church and the Institute of National Remembrance; xenophobia and anti-Semitism, with the emergence of unemployment and homelessness; experiences of new gender relations and migrations. In effect, drawing upon unique sets of data, the book shows how post-communist transformation can be understood through analyses of the changing public and private discourses. It shows Polish post-communism as a fragile and uneasy transformation, with people and institutions struggling to make sense of it and of life within it. The volume will be of interest to a broad range of social scientists: discourse analysts, sociologists, modern historians and political scientists, as well as to the informed lay public.

Civilization's Wild East

Civilization's Wild East PDF Author: Nataša Kovačević
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
I examine the discursive conditions that prompt Nabokov, Milosz, Kundera and others to present themselves as native, 'Eastern European' experts and emancipate themselves and their homelands as 'civilized, ' 'Enlightened, ' or 'Westernized.' Importantly, the authors' articulations of such seemingly oppositional identities create discursive openings for recognizing and analyzing the Orientalist discourses that seek to contain them. These are valuable for deconstructing the basic concept of 'Eastern Europe, ' and exposing Eastern Europeans' preoccupation with their reflections in the Western mirror and the concomitant tradition of self-Orientalization.

American Representations of Post-Communism

American Representations of Post-Communism PDF Author: Andaluna Borcila
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317807103
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
With the televised events of 1989, territories of Eastern and Central Europe that had been marked as impenetrable and inaccessible to the Western gaze exploded into visibility. As the narratives of the Cold War crumbled, new narratives emerged and new geographies were produced on and by American television. Using an understudied archive of American news broadcasts, and tracing their flashes and echoes through travel guides and narratives of return written by Eastern European-Americans, this book explores American ways of seeing and mapping communism’s disintegration and the narratives articulated around post-communist sites and subjects.

Post-Communist Malaise

Post-Communist Malaise PDF Author: Zoran Samardzija
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 081358714X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Post-Communist Malaise examines political modernism within the context of post-communist Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It focuses on how select cinemas from the regions critique European unification and how they represent related issues like the transition from communism to free-market capitalism, the Euro crisis and austerity, and the rise of nationalism and right-wing politics.

Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures

Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004303855
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
An analysis of post-communist identity reconstructions under the impact of experiences such as migration and displacement, collective memory and trauma, and cultural self-colonization. The book facilitates a mutually productive dialogue between postcolonialism and post-communism, mapping the rich terrain of contemporary East-Central European creative writing and visual art.

Staging Postcommunism

Staging Postcommunism PDF Author: Vessela S. Warner
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609386787
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe was never the same after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the transition to a postcommunist world, “alternative theatre” found ways to grapple with political chaos, corruption, and aggressive implementation of a market economy. Three decades later, this volume is the first comprehensive examination of alternative theatre in ten former communist countries. The essays focus on companies and artists that radically changed the language and organization of theatre in the countries formerly known as the Eastern European bloc. This collection investigates the ways in which postcommunist alternative theatre negotiated and embodied change not only locally but globally as well. Contributors: Dennis Barnett, Dennis C. Beck, Violeta Decheva, Luule Epner, John Freedman, Barry Freeman, Margarita Kompelmakher, Jaak Rahesoo, Angelina Ros ̧ca, Ban ̧uta Rubess, Christopher Silsby, Andrea Tompa, S. E. Wilmer

Writing Postcommunism

Writing Postcommunism PDF Author: D. Williams
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137330082
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Moving through the elegiac ruins of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav disintegration, Writing Postcommunism explores literary evocations of the pervasive disappointment and mourning that have marked the postcommunist twilight.

Post-Communist Poland - Contested Pasts and Future Identities

Post-Communist Poland - Contested Pasts and Future Identities PDF Author: Ewa Ochman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135916004
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book explores the reinterpretations of Poland’s past which have been undertaken by Polish national and local elites since the fall of communism. It focuses on remembrance practices and traces the de-commemorating of communism to examine the ways in which collective remembering and forgetting shapes present power constellations in Poland and impacts on foreign and domestic policy. The book outlines the detail of the new hegemonic national myths which are being established but also investigates fragmentation and diversification of commemorative practices at the local level that has the most potential to challenge the dominant vision of national Polish identity, historically centred on martyrdom, heroism and independence, as less relevant to Poland’s new aspirations for the future.

Postcolonial Perspectives on Postcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe

Postcolonial Perspectives on Postcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe PDF Author: Dorota Kołodziejczyk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317286006
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
A quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and from the vantage point of a post-Cold War, globalised, world, there is a need to address the relative neglect of postcommunism in analysis of postcolonial and neo-colonial configurations of power and influence. This book proposes new critical perspectives on several themes and concepts that have emerged within, or been propagated by, postcolonial studies. These themes include structures of exclusion/ inclusion; formations of nationalism, structures of othering, and representations of difference; forms and historical realisations of anti-colonial/anti-imperial struggle; the experience of trauma (involving issues of collective memory/amnesia and the re-writing of history); resistance as a complex of cultural practices; and concepts such as alterity, ambivalence, self-colonisation, dislocation, hegemonic discourse, minority, and subaltern cultures. Taken together, this volume suggests that some of the methodological instruments of postcolonial criticism can be fruitfully applied to the study of postcommunist cultures and, conversely, that the experience of the Soviet brand of imperialist rule in the form of communism in East-Central Europe can function as an ideological moderator in Third-World oriented, Marxist-inspired, postcolonial discourses. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.