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Emerging from the ruins of the former Soviet Union, the literature of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is analyzed from the fruitful perspective of postcolonialism, a theoretical approach whose application to former second-world countries is in its initial stages. This groundbreaking volume brings scholars working in the West together with those who were previously muffled behind the Iron Curtain. They gauge the impact of colonization on the culture of the Baltic states and demonstrate the relevance of concepts first elaborated by a wide range of critics from Frantz Fanon to Homi Bhabha. Examining literary texts and the situation of the intellectual reveals Baltic concerns ...
This book offers an in-depth discussion of how postcolonialism entered the Baltic cultural and literary domain and what difficulties it had, and often still has, to face while encountering local and international cultural and literary discourses. Initially viewed as entirely alien to the Baltic (as well as Eastern European) academic milieu, postcolonial studies have recently started to overcome previous academic prejudices and take shape in this part of the world. This study provides timely insights into Lithuanian prose writing and analyzes some of Lithuania’s best postcolonial literary texts. The author examines novels written during the last decade of the Soviet period as well as some more recent writings produced in the post-Soviet era. The book will be useful to cultural historians and literary scholars interested in the past and present of Eastern European and Baltic cultures and societies.
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism" that was published in Humanities
The resurgence of religiosity in post-communist Europe has been widely noted, but the full spectrum of religious practice in the diverse countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been effectively hidden behind the region's range of languages and cultures. This volume presents an overview of one of the most notable developments in the region, the rise of Pagan and "Native Faith" movements. Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe brings together scholars from across the region to present both systematic country overviews - of Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Ukraine - as well as essays exploring specific themes such as racism and the internet. The volume will be of interest to scholars of new religious movements especially those looking for a more comprehensive picture of contemporary paganism beyond the English-speaking world.
This book illustrates that the idea of a 'national' literature is profoundly problematic. Chapters on boundaries and crisscrossing show how a nation and its writers' works do not exist in isolation from their history. Stressing migration and (inter)cultural dialogue, authors explore how the characters in the texts establish a sense of belonging both within the context of migrations and within the context of Lithuania since its independence. The final series of essays in this book discusses Lithuanian literature abroad that is in translation.
This volume widens the field of Soviet literature studies by interpreting it as a multinational project, with national literatures acting not as copies of the Russian model, but as creators of a multidimensional literary space. The book proposes a reconsideration of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of literary field and analyzes the interactions of literature, power, and economics under the communist rule. The articles selected include theoretical discussions and case studies from different national literatures presenting different structural elements of the Soviet literary field, as well as phenomena created by the complexity of the field itself, such as the Aesopian language, state of emergency literature, or compromise as the essential element of the writers’ identity.
Emerging from the ruins of the former Soviet Union, the literature of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is analyzed from the fruitful perspective of postcolonialism, a theoretical approach whose application to former second-world countries is in its initial stages. This groundbreaking volume brings scholars working in the West together with those who were previously muffled behind the Iron Curtain. They gauge the impact of colonization on the culture of the Baltic states and demonstrate the relevance of concepts first elaborated by a wide range of critics from Frantz Fanon to Homi Bhabha. Examining literary texts and the situation of the intellectual reveals Baltic concerns ...
This collectively written monograph is the first work to provide a broad history of the relationship between Eastern Europe and the decolonising world. It ranges from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, but at its core is the dynamic of the post-1945 period, when socialism's importance as a globalising force accelerated and drew together what contemporaries called the 'Second' and 'Third Worlds'. At the centre of this history is the encounter between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on one hand, and a wider world casting off European empires or struggling against western imperialism on the other. The origins of these connections are traced back to new forms of international...
Exploring life writing from a variety of cultural contexts, Haunted Narratives provides new insights into how individuals and communities across time and space deal with traumatic experiences and haunting memories. From the perspectives of trauma theory, memory studies, gender studies, literary studies, philosophy, and post-colonial studies, the volume stresses the lingering, haunting presence of the past in the present. The contributors focus on the psychological, ethical, and representational difficulties involved in narrative negotiations of traumatic memories. Haunted Narratives focuses on life writing in the broadest sense of the term: biographies and autobiographies that deal with trau...
How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.