Twilight Zones: Regional Otherness in Comparative Framework

This bloc presents articles on the representations of Eastern and Central Europe and  Latin America.  The Introduction by Attila Melegh sets up connections between different representation strategies and argues that there are different periphery techniques in handling the representation of Eastern Europe as the twilight zone of the West.  The idea of Central Europe is a framework which Easternises certain areas of the former Eastern Europe.  This idea contains elements of self-defeat due to the mechanic use of the East-West dichotomy.  A somewhat similar dual strategy can be observed in the Latin-America representation of Spanish and Portugese encyclopedias, in which the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers are idealised while the natives are rejected. This rejection is remarkable even in comparison with the racist representation of Anglo-Saxon encyclopaedias.  The Introduction argues that such a periphery mechanism can also be seen in the cognitive handling of one of the „Roma” scandals in Hungary.  Dóra Mester’s study entitled Bear dance analyses the representation of Russia in influential Anglo-Saxon economic weeklies and newspapers with regard to the stock-exchange crises in 1998.  The essay utilises a comparative framework (the representation of Brasilia and the Western Self) and argues that a civilisation-discourse created in the period of Enlightenment has recently been revitalised and Russia is more clearly the constitutive other of the West than Brasil.  The article by Iver B. Neumann is part of his book The Uses of the Other: The East in European Identity Formation.  Neumann argues that in the nineties Russia has been represented as a student and a country whose classification has been problematic for Western “taxonomic” practices.  This might produce the idea of Russia as a monster and, together with the identity imbalances, this implies serious international political consequences.  Katalin Dancsi’s study entitled Locked between East and West: Locating Central Europe on Map of Concepts explores how the theme of Central Europe is represented in the important articles by Péter Hanák, George Schöpflin and Timothy G. Ash.  These three texts were significant contributions to the debate on Central Europe in the mid-eighties, whose main objective was to stabilize an independent position for Central Europe and to overwrite the notion of the divided Europe.  The thematic structure of the texts is explored via concept network analysis, with a focus on the location of the topics of Central Europe, East and West.  The study concludes that the East–West dichotomy dominates the worldview of all the three texts. This involves two elements: acceptance of an insecure `in-between` position for Central Europe and the construction of Eastern Europe as a counterpoint to the West.  Vera Várhegyi’s article entitled Double Bonds analyses the techniques of representation of Latin America in encyclopaedias edited in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.  There were two reasons for choosing encyclopaedias: they appeared as the collection of canonised notions and they represent a genre created by the Enlightenment, a movement that initiated the construction of regional otherness in Europe.  Várhegyi shows that at the end of the sixties a special, double representation of Latin America appeared in the English and French encyclopaedias. This representation consists in two steps: making Latin America alien and, within it, emphasising the alienness of the colonising nations: Spain and Portugal.  As a counter-representation, the Spanish and Portuguese encyclopaedias praise the colonisers and further alienate the „natives of Latin-America”.  The concluding essay by Claude Karnoouh is also a translation of a chapter of his book.  This essay does not focus on the issue of representation, although it definitely rejects the dominant East-West dichotomy as used in present day social and political analysis.  As a way out of East-West dichotomy Karnoouh argues that the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe was not due to mismanagement by the elite but it failed in the moralising logic as opposed to the hidden history of „totalizing” capitalism, which knew no such moral and socio-political constraints.  This makes Eastern European societies similar to the Third World ”uprooted” much earlier by Western capitalism.