Configurations of Postcoloniality and
National Identity: Inbetween Peripherality
and Narratives of Change

Zepetnek, Steven Tötösy de

doi:10.1353/com.1999.0012

Cited by 18 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…emphasizing the concept of "post," many adopted what has come to be known as "the narrative of change." 72 From their perspective, 1989, and not 1918 or 1945, had been the real turning point. Bukovina had been neglected, destroyed, but it was changing; it had recovered; it had returned.…”

Section: "Europe's Shatterzone": Return From the Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking Forwards through the Past: Bukovina’s “Return to Europe” after 1989–1991

Fisher

2018

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures

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This article is part of the special cluster titled Bukovina and Bukovinians after the Second World War: (Re)shaping and (re)thinking a region after genocide and ‘ethnic unmixing’, guest edited by Gaëlle Fisher and Maren Röger. Over the course of the 1990s, the region of Bukovina, once the easternmost province of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, gained unprecedented visibility abroad. This was the case in German-language space in particular. There, Bukovina became the subject of newspaper articles, books, films, and exhibitions; travel and tourism to the area developed; political agreements and partnerships were even established between German or Austrian and “Bukovinian” regions. These initiatives, across “East and West,” across the former Iron Curtain, were meant to bridge the former divide. But many were based on proclaimed historical and cultural connections: as the widespread slogan read, Bukovina “returned to Europe.” In the process, historical Bukovina, by then split between Romania and a newly independent Ukraine, was not so much rediscovered as resurrected, reconstructed, and reinvented on the basis of existing ideas and assumptions. This raises a range of questions: why Bukovina, why in these countries, and why then? In this article, I identify different groups of actors, trends, and phases in the popular resurgence of Bukovina after 1989–1991 and highlight their origins, differences, and interactions. By tracing the activities and narratives of some of the key actors of the reinvention of the region after 1989–1991, this article explores the tensions between visions of the past and visions of the future in Germany, Austria, and Europe after 1989. It thereby also contributes to a critical reflection on the meaning of the wider “return to Europe” of Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War.

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Section: "Europe's Shatterzone": Return From the Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking Forwards through the Past: Bukovina’s “Return to Europe” after 1989–1991

Fisher

2018

East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures

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“…Enacting the identity of a genuine "cultural traveler" (Nowicki), placed on the "in-between peripheral" space (Zepetnek, 1999), the direct effect of constructing a conflictive textual identity as in Norman Manea's or Herta Müller's works oscillates with Tănase's narrative -between "confused attitude, non-authenticity, unhealthy fascination accompanied by repulsion: these are the facets of the complex feelings of these writers coming from the Other Europe, who often tried, even if they not always succeeded, to make peace with the West" ("attitude confuse, inauthenticité, fascination malsaine accompagnée de répulsion: telles sont les différentes facettes des sentiments complexes éprouvés par ces écrivains venus de l'Autre Europe qui ont souvent tâché, sans toujours y parvenir, de se réconcilier avec l'Occident" [Nowicki,293]). In Tănase's book, the "ego-graphic" pilgrimage between the retrieved identity and the European alterity, adopted as a reference, dissolves the distance between a totalitarian history narrated now and the interiorized perspective of the one "reliving" post-traumatically and cathartically the personal experience of ideological captivity.…”

Section: Memory and Identity-focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'

Ifrim¹

2017

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

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East Central Europe as a Historical and Conceptual Space: On the Production of Knowledge from an (Historical) Area Studies Perspective

Kraft

2023

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies

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This chapter takes a historical look at the emergence and transformation of the concept of East Central Europe. In doing so, a dual perspective is adopted. On the one hand, it is necessary to ask for historical justifications for the specific state of the region’s “in-between-ness” at least since the early modern times. On the other hand, it will be reflected how the political and scholarly discourse about an imagined region, or a region characterised by socio-economic or political-institutional structures contributed to produce knowledge and to solidify the specific disciplinary take of “area studies.” The aim is to question the apparent aporia between structuralist essentialism and constructivist approaches and, above all, to work out to what extent East Central Europe can be used to produce theories for modern regional studies (instead of just being used as a testing ground for theories developed elsewhere). This seems to be even more important because the region, especially since the historical upheaval of 1989, has been placed in a perspective of catching up that assumes a linear temporality and does not do justice to the intrinsic value of East Central European spaces of experience.

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Configurations of Postcoloniality and National Identity: Inbetween Peripherality and Narratives of Change

Cited by 18 publications

References 20 publications

Looking Forwards through the Past: Bukovina’s “Return to Europe” after 1989–1991

Looking Forwards through the Past: Bukovina’s “Return to Europe” after 1989–1991

Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'

East Central Europe as a Historical and Conceptual Space: On the Production of Knowledge from an (Historical) Area Studies Perspective

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