Populations and Policies in a Younger but Faster-Aging East Central Europe: The Political Demography of Missed Opportunity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Vanhuysse ◽  
Jolanta Perek-Bialas
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Political Demography ◽  
Missed Opportunity

scholarly journals State of Exception: The Birthplace of Kafka’s Narrative Authority

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Biti
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Narrative Authority ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
European Nation ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Collateral Effects

Across the postimperial East Central Europe, whose geopolitical space was reconfigured on the model of West European nation-states, unprocessed human residues proliferated as the collateral effects of politically guided national homogenizations. These positional outsiders, who were prevented from becoming legible within the newly established political spaces, take center stage in Kafka’s narratives, not only in the form of their characters but also their narrators and ultimate authority. They passionately attach themselves to the zones of indistinction, which the modern societies’ “egalitarian discrimination” has doomed them to, thus trying to turn their enforced dispossession into a chosen self-dispossession. I argue that Kafka’s narratives owe their elusive ultimate authority precisely to this persistent translation of the political state of exception of his agencies into their literary state of exemption. They are at constant pains to transfigure the imposed state of exception through its peculiar fictional adoption, but Kafka’s ultimate narrative authority nevertheless takes care to keep an edge over their efforts. It is precisely this never-ending gradation of subversive mimicry in Kafka’s works that his postcolonial successor J. M. Coetzee most admired.

scholarly journals Transformacja w sztuce w postkomunistycznej Europie

2019 ◽  
pp. 409-435
Author(s):  
Magdalena Radomska
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The World ◽  
Western View ◽  
The Cold War

The paper focuses on the ways of visualizing political and economic transformation in the works of artists from post-communist Europe mainly in the 1990s. Those works, which today, in a wide geographical context, may be interpreted as problematizing the idea of transformation, were often originally appropriated by such discourses of the post-transformation decade as the art of the new media and technology (Estonia), performance (Russia), feminism (Lithuania), body art (Hungary), and critical art (Poland), which marginalized the problem of transformation. Analyses of the works of artists from Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia make it possible to determine and problematize the poles of transformation in a number of ways, pointing at the inadequacy of those poles which traditionally spread from the end of totalitarian communism to democracy identified with free market economy. By the same token, they allow one to question their apparent antithetical character which connects the transformation process to the binary structures of meaning established in the period of the Cold War. The presented analyses demonstrate that the gist of the transformation was not so much the fall of communism, which is surviving in the post-1989 art of East-Central Europe due to the leftist inclinations of many artists with a Marxist intellectual background, but the collapse of the binary structure of the world. Methodologically inspired by Boris Buden, Susan Buck-Morss, Marina Gržinić, Edit András, Boris Groys, Alexander Kiossev, and Igor Zabel, they restore the revolutionary character of 1989 and, simultaneously, a dialectical approach to the accepted poles of the transformation. An example of ideological appropriation, which may be interpreted as problematizing the political transformation, is Trap. Expulsion from Paradiseby the Lithuanian artist Eglė Rakauskaitė. The first part of the paper focuses on Jaan Toomik’s May 15-June 1, 1992, interpreted in the theoretical terms proposed by Marina Gržinić and Boris Groys as a work of art that visualizes the concept of post-communism as excrement of the transformation process. Placed in the context of such works as In Fat(1998) by Eglė Rakauskaitė, 200 000 Ft(1997) by the Hungarian artist Kriszta Nagy or Corrections(1996-1998) by Rassim Krastev from Bulgaria, Toomik’s work is one of many created at that time in East-Central Europe, which thematized the transformation process with reference to the artist’s body. Krastev’s Correctionsproblematizes the transformation as a process of self-colonization by the idiom of the West, as well as a modification of the utopia of production, one aspect of which was propaganda referring to the body, changing it in an instrument that transformed the political order into a consumerist utopia where bodies exist as marketable products. The part titled, “The Poles of Transformation as a Function of the Cold War,” focuses on A Western View(1989) by the Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov and This is my blood(2001) by Alexander Kossolapov from Russia. In a theoretical context drawn from the texts by Zabel, Buden, and Ekaterina Degot, Solakov’s work has been interpreted as problematizing the transformation understood as refashioning the world, no longer based on the bipolar division into East and West. The paper ends with an analysis of Cunyi Yashi, a work of the Hungarian artist Róbert Szabó Benke, which problematizes the collapse of the bipolar world structure in politics and the binary coding of sexual identity. In Szabó Benke’s work, the transformation is represented as rejection of the binary models of identity – as questioning their role in the emergence of meanings in culture. 

scholarly journals Záh Felicián ügye Mügelni Henrik német nyelvű krónikájában

PONTES ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 131-143
Author(s):  
Bagi Dániel
Keyword(s):  
German Text ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
New Approaches

The assault of Felician Záh on the royal family in 1330 was one of the most mysterious and painful aff airs of medieval Hungary. The case itself and Felician of Zah’s motivation to commit the crime are depicted in several nearby contemporary and later sources, but only a part of them discusses the reasons for the commitment of the crime. One of the earliest texts presenting both the events and the motivations is the Chronicle written by Henry of Mügeln, one of the most recognized Meistersingers of the 14th century. Henry of Mügeln is one of the first authors, who accuses Queen Elisabeth of Lokietek and her brother, the later Kasimir III the Great of Poland, to be involved into the events. The present paper gives an analysis of the German text, trying to give new approaches to its interpretations. Furthermore, by inserting the chronicle into the political circumstances in East Central Europe in the 14th century, the paper tries to explain the motivation of the author and his possible sources.

scholarly journals Narratives of Cruel: Cristian Mungiu’s Cinematic Work and the Political Imaginary of East-Central Europe

Res Historica ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 531
Author(s):  
Constantin Parvulescu
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Political Imaginary ◽  
Lauren Berlant

Celem poniższego artykułu jest przedstawienie sposobu opisu stanu pomniejszych kultur Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w filmach Cristiana Mungiu. Rozważania te zostały oparte o pojęcia <em>okrutnego optymizmu </em>oraz <em>impasu</em> autorstwa Lauren Berlant. Analizie poddano filmy <em>4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days</em> (2007), <em>Beyond the Hills </em>(2012) oraz <em>Graduation</em> (2016). Pod uwagę wzięto w szczególności strukturę narracyjną wspomnianych dzieł, płeć bohaterów, uwarunkowania społeczno-ekonomiczne wpływające na ich byt, a także poetykę mediów audio-wizualnych prezentowaną w zakończeniach filmów. Autor argumentuje, że filmy Mungiu stanowią krytykę mapowania wyobrażeniowego na terenach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej zapoczątkowanego w czasach zimnej wojny, która prezentuje narody zamieszkujące te tereny jako skazane na nieustanne przebywanie w stanie zagrożenia, a co za tym idzie, niewygasającą potrzebę obrony, co naraża je na przeżywanie nieuniknionych cykli politycznych nadużyć. Propozycja rozwiązania przedstawiona jest w powolnych, skłaniających do przemyśleń zakończeniach filmów. Wskazują one na rozwój sytuacji politycznego zawieszenia, która jako zakłócenie statusu quo może pozwolić wyobraźniom politycznym na stworzenie rozwiązań bardziej kreatywnych, pozwalających uniknąć wspomnianych cykli. Przerwa ta wiąże się z pamięcią wydarzeń roku 1989, a także historyczną otwartością, która emergowała w owym czasie. Jako polityczny paradygmat kultur środkowo-wschodnioeuropejskich, zawieszenie jest strategią, która pozwala na zmianę postawy wyobrażeniowej wobec początku roku 1989.

Theories of Language

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Fellerer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Implications

This chapter identifies key notions about the nature and workings of language and their wider political implications in Europe from around 1789 to the first decades of the nineteenth century. There are at least three formations, aesthetic and philosophical, linguistic, and political. Even though treated under separate headings for ease of exposition, they are meant to meet in this introduction in response to more granular surveys. The political dimension in particular tends to be left to historians or to philologists who deal with that part of the continent where it first gained real prominence: East and East Central Europe. Thus, after the first two sections on aspects of philosophy and early linguistics, where the focus is on Germany with France and England, the third section on language and nation moves eastwards to the Slavonic-speaking lands, to finally return back, albeit very briefly, to the West. The main purpose of this survey to provide introduction and guidance.

Regional Governance and East Central Europe: The EU, NATO and the Consolidation of Democracy

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-292
Author(s):  
SHARON L. WOLCHIK
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Political Realm ◽  
The Eu

Over a decade has passed since the heady days of 1989 and 1990 when communist governments fell one after the other and almost all political parties taking part in elections shared the same goals: Democracy, the Market, and Back to Europe. In December 2002, the efforts of the new leaders of these countries to ‘return to Europe’ bore fruit in an event that many had in 1989 regarded as too farfetched to imagine, the invitation of most of the countries in the region to join the EU in 2004 or 2007. The culmination of a decade-long process of harmonization and negotiation, this invitation symbolized the success of these countries in instituting political democracies and market economies. But how complete is this process, particularly in the political realm?

Kneeling at the Altar of (Il)-Liberalism: The Politics of Ideas, Job Loss, and Union Weakness in East Central Europe

2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Vanhuysse
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

As East Central Europe is fast approaching the end of its second decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, new studies of postcommunist politics and society can increasingly benefit from a longer historical perspective. We can now replace the “history of the present” lens that was typical of much research in the highly volatile 1990s with accounts that more extensively compare the most fundamental trends emerging from the decades before and after 1989–1990. In this spirit, both books under review make substantive and historically well-informed contributions to our understanding of the politics of work and workers in Central and Eastern Europe. In The Defeat of Solidarity, David Ost develops a gripping account of the progressive and interlinked defeats of labor interests and liberal democratic politics in Poland from the 1980s up to the present day. In Constructing Unemployment, Phineas Baxandall offers a theory of the political meaning of unemployment, applied mainly to the case of Hungary from the late 1940s until the end of the 1990s.

scholarly journals Place Marketing in Hungary: The Case of Debrecen

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Kozma
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Marketing ◽  
Marketing Activity ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Active Policy

After the political transformations in East-Central Europe local authorities were forced to realise that they have to employ more active policy, and consequently, the use of place marketing became more popular. The study examines one particular city in Hungary, Debrecen, and concentrates on two areas. First, it presents what methods were employed in an attempt to attract economic players and tourists, and to increase the satisfaction of existing target groups. Secondly, it evaluates the steps taken: how characteristic were the tools used in Debrecen in other Hungarian cities, and what positive and negative features of marketing activity can be identified.

A Savage Magnificence: Ottomanizing Fashion and the Politics of Display in Early Modern East-Central Europe

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Jasienski
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
The Impact

This article examines the impact of Ottoman fashions on the clothing worn by men in early modern Poland and Hungary, and argues that fashion was an optimal tool for advertising political allegiance. Ottoman garments were coveted by the nobilities in East-Central Europe, and often displayed in portraiture, because they were imbued with associations of anti-absolutism and autonomy, even if the Ottomans themselves were reviled as invasive infidels. However, the legibility of the political statement these fashions made was limited to their local contexts—when viewed by foreigners they were perceived as exotic and Otherly. Various factors enabled the popularization and subsequent politicization of Ottomanizing styles, including the Polish and Hungarian nobilities’ self-fashioning as Eastern, and 
the widespread availability of Ottoman and Iranian commodities through import, as war booty, and through local imitation. This essay hopes to expand our understanding of the range of early modern responses to the Ottoman East, while challenging the notion of Europe as a uniform entity to which it was opposed. 


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