Tożsamość w Europie Środkowej

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Centrinė Europa; Rytų Centrinė Europa; Kultūrinis kanonas; Tapatybė; Civilizacija; Kultūrinė tautybė; Inteligentija. Keywords: Central Europe; East-Central Europe, cultural canon; Identity; Civilization, cultural nationhood; Intelligentsia.

ENThe notions of Central Europe and East-Central Europe (in opposition to Naumann’s Mitteleuropa), as well as Europe médiane, have replaced after the fall of Communism the term Eastern Europe, which was in universal use since the war. The metaphors offered by Miłosz, Kundera, and Braudel inspired the studious historical works of Halecki, Kłoczowski, Wandycz, Bibó and Szűcs, and Snyder, which, in turn, have revealed from their longue durée point of view a cohesiveness in the structures and identities of nations situated “between Germany and Russia;” the three historical kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The distinctive identity of this region was expressed in the nineteenth century under the influence of Herder’s philosophy and Romantic poetry, by the figure of a “national poet” and the idea of “cultural nationhood,” which was distinct from the “nation state” associated with the Enlightenment paradigm. National “culture canons” and the “paradigmatic” type of identity of these countries were the result of specific cultural patterns. Meanwhile, a positional (“syntagmatic”) type of identity prevailed in bourgeois Western states. The transformation of countries after the fall of Communism, the political liberalization and pluralization of opinion, as well as the lack of a clear identity discourse in the West, have to some extent inspired the evolution towards politics of memory – an affirmation of the “paradigmatic” identity, which is not necessarily well suited for the conditions of modernity. [From the publication]