Transatlantic Central Europe
While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used, repositing the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. What has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that "Central Europe" once evoked? In the early years of the transition era, the liberal humanist perspective shared by Havel, Konrád, Kundera, and Michnik was quickly replaced by an economic liberalism that evolved into neoliberal policies and practices. The author follows the trajectories of the concept into the present day, reading its material and intellectual traces in the postcommunist landscape. She explores how the current use of transnational, web-based media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers.
1127851503
Transatlantic Central Europe
While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used, repositing the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. What has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that "Central Europe" once evoked? In the early years of the transition era, the liberal humanist perspective shared by Havel, Konrád, Kundera, and Michnik was quickly replaced by an economic liberalism that evolved into neoliberal policies and practices. The author follows the trajectories of the concept into the present day, reading its material and intellectual traces in the postcommunist landscape. She explores how the current use of transnational, web-based media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers.
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Transatlantic Central Europe

Transatlantic Central Europe

by Jessie Labov
Transatlantic Central Europe

Transatlantic Central Europe

by Jessie Labov

Overview

While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used, repositing the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. What has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that "Central Europe" once evoked? In the early years of the transition era, the liberal humanist perspective shared by Havel, Konrád, Kundera, and Michnik was quickly replaced by an economic liberalism that evolved into neoliberal policies and practices. The author follows the trajectories of the concept into the present day, reading its material and intellectual traces in the postcommunist landscape. She explores how the current use of transnational, web-based media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9786155053290
Publisher: Central European University Press
Publication date: 04/10/2019
Pages: 246
Product dimensions: 6.26(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Jessie Labov is a Resident Fellow at the Center for Media, Data, and Society at Central European University, Budapest.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

List of Maps xi

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction: Movements of Texts across Borders 1

Part 1 Cross Currents and Its Transatlantic Central European Imaginary

Chapter 1 The Political-Cultural Journal: The Case of Cross Currents 17

Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture 17

Distribution and Diaspora 23

Why The New York Review of Books? 28

The Postcolonial Intersection 33

Cross Currents as Essay and Encyclopedia 40

Chapter 2 The Debate over Central Europe-from Jews to Yugoslavia 55

The Domains of Central Europe 55

Larry Wolff's Invented Eastern Europe 60

Divergent Definitions of Central Europe: Milosz and Kundera 63

Flight from Byzantium: Kundera vs. Brodsky on Dostoyevsky 74

The Lisbon Conference: May 7-8, 1988 79

The North-South Axis Returns: Central and Southeastern Europe 89

Two Yugoslav Entries: Vladimir Dedijer 96

Two Yugoslav Entries: Danilo Kiš 101

Part 2 Further Essays in Contesting Geography and Redefining Culture

Chapter 3 Borders, Editors, and Readers in Motion 111

The Need for New Geographies 111

Interwar Hungary beyond Its Borders 112

Giedroyc and Grydzewksi, Part I: Parallel Routes from Independence through War 127

Giedrocy and Grydzewski, Part II: Polish Émigré Publishing after the Second World War 138

Reading Kultura from a Distance 145

Towards an Extraterritorial Literature 151

Chapter 4 Transmedial Work-Arounds after 1989 153

Moving beyond Text and Context 153

Abuses of the Helsinki Accords in Yugoslavia (1989) 155

The Case of Radio 692/62-92: From Analog to Digital Practices (1990s) 167

Ukraine, Belarus, and beyond Central Europe (2000s): From Online to Offline Work-Arounds 178

Conclusion: Redefining Transatlantic Central Europe Today 187

Bibliography 195

Index 211

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is an ambitious book, full of original and fascinating material on the institutional history of certain publications, key individuals, and disciplines. It features an innovative and compelling GIS-based study of the Polish émigré journal 'Kultura', which introduces digital humanities methodology to a subject area where it it not typically found. Labov's analysis of the postcolonial dimensions of the famous Lisbon conference of Central European and Russian writers brings theory into dialogue with geopolitical identities; she also convincingly argues that the fate of Yugoslavia was fundamental to the destruction of the idea of Central Europe for the generation of thinkers who championed it. Transatlantic Central Europe offers a unique mosaic of theoretical reflection, geopolitical intervention, and literary and cultural history."—Russell Scott Valentino

"Labov combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies in innovative and illuminating ways to understand the concept of Central Europe through its diasporic extensions across the Atlantic. She traces the financing and political impact of important literary journals such as Cross Currents, whose contributors (including Czesław Miłosz, Milan Kundera, and Danilo Kiš) insisted on a common-sense approach to their "minor" cultures in the face of flattening totalitarianisms and postmodern obscurantism. In her most significant theoretical contribution, Labov rejects the "Orientalist" implications of "Balkanization" to advance a nuanced analysis of the relationship between "Central Europe" and Southeastern Europe driven by a careful reading of Kiš and Vladimir Dedijer. Drawing on a relational concept of culture, Labov questions the concept of a "nation" in a territory defined by its "in-between-ness." Characteristic of this complex, cogent book, Labov's re-examination of the sad destiny of the dissident movement at large brings much needed insight to the region's post-socialist setting."—Tomislav Z. Longinović

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