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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The text represents a theoretical basis of the project. Starting from the modern notions of the myth (N. Frye, R. Barthes, M. Eliade, J. Lotman), analytical psychology (C. Jung, E. Cassirer, Е. Erikson,) and nation (H. Kohn, E. Hobsbawm, E. Gellner,B. Anderson, E. Kedourie, A. Smith) it offers a definition of identity. Potential collective bearers of identity are discussed - ethnic, religious and confessional, social, minority, gender, and age gropes, etc.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The text examines the applications and usage of the faith as a factor for building of the national identity. The faith can be complete and determining factor in the shaping of identification fundament and identification strategies only when a high level of its assimilation/confession is reached, as well as a certain standard of understanding, which should be ready of mass diffusion and the settling in great community's consciousness.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The first part of the article is a short summary of the factors that formed attitude of Bulgarian national revival people towards the Jewry. During the Revival as it was during the whole Ottoman period the negativism towards them prevailed. Thou it had its deep ground in the very Christian religion tradition, that negativism was featured by real social-economic and political motivation also - the Bulgarians were antagonized from the more privileged statute the Jewry enjoyed in the Ottoman state, from the non-agrarian "parasitic" occupation of the Jewish population, from its underlined loyalty to the sultan's power, etc. The negativism towards Jewry was also fed with the active "import" of anti-Semitism from neighbor Orthodox countries and Russia. And at the same time for Bulgarians the 19th century was an epoch of acquiring the contemporary bourgeois values and breaking the medieval religious attitudes. That process was stimulated by the reform acts during the Tanzima period, which founded certain favorable legislation and institutional atmosphere for gradual transition of Bulgarians and Jewry from the stage of "parallel co-existing" to that of adequate, unembarrassed from religious and ethnic prejudice communication.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
For several centuries the Balkan region has been regarded as a zone of fraction between the Orient and Europe, between Islam and Christianity, where nothing is actually Christian, nor is it Islamic, a mysterious area where everything is possible. Not so long ago the discourse about the Orient concentrated around and treated mainly the interests of the big colonial empires in the East and their reflection in scholarship and letters, in the image of the
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The observation of the otherness is a self-understandable segment of the research of each type identity. No matter of the techniques for self-description used, whatever "substantial" immanent differences to point out, an "I" - or a given "we" - inevitably postulates the presence of limits, beyond which acts are non-own. In fact "the otherness" is always so insistently being "here" and "now" that "the same" can be thought as its derivative - namely the inscapableness of the living with "the otherness" alienates "me" from their invisibility of nature, non-reflexive datum, mould their cognitive signs, manage the making of language thorough with they become objective, cognizable.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Dramaturgy during the period of Bulgarian Revival takes part in the attempts of defining the subject of the national community. With regard of the common sense of the nation it has legitimating and normative function. The historical dramaturgy legitimates Bulgarians through recalling their own past as a state. In the same time, together with the dramas, witches are commenting upon events of the latest times, it determines the concepts to of praise-worthy and disgraceful behavior from the point of view of defended or violated community honor.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Without having the pretence to outline all interrelated aspects of Balkan neighborhood, this text aims at reflecting upon the concept of difference with respect to the representation of Greeks, Turks, Serbs and Romanians in Bulgarian periodicals from the time of National Revival.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The text is an attempt to defend a new perspective to the study of Bulgarian Catholics, which opposes to the widely spread but incorrect idea that they are a united monolithic community. The author’s discussion of the history of the Catholic church outlines the different historical and cultural situations of the formation of the Catholic communities, the different circumstances of their association with Pome, the condition of their extend and development, as well as their relations. The analysis brings into sharp relief the different trajectories of the Catholic groups (communities) and the resulting differences between them. It leads to an understanding of the foundations of the group identities.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The paper deals with the topic of “women’s identity” in the modern Bulgarian culture. It begins with theoretical considerations, regarding “women” and “identity” by presenting opinions of scholars such as Joan W. Scott, Denise Riley, Judith Butler. Then the author turns to the Bulgarian traditional culture as a repository of misogynist views and studies the explicit and implicit meanings of its messages. She proceeds with the representations of women in the 19th and early 20th C Bulgarian literature, written by both male and female authors. The last part of the text discusses the representation of women in contemporary Bulgarian history textbooks and shows how sexist images of women are transferred via school education in the present day Bulgarian society and culture.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The text is based on the broad concept of ideology (ideology not merely as a devotion to a cause but also ideology as a network of practices and beliefs; ideology as a fruit of subconscious images of the other and to oneself; ideology even as a manner of dressing and style of bearing...), established by Louis Althusser and leaning on the Lacan’s psychoanalysis and on the postmodern research related to the otherness, to the marginal groups and
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Western Literature covers a huge area of problems about civilizations’ development and as a part of this by no purpose becomes bearer of memory which settlement on the Balkans is certified starting from 18th Century. Due this, the Western stereotypes about Bulgarians (concerning their origin and medieval state, faith and peaceful way of life) are welcomed in our writings.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Neighbor between peace and war: Bulgarian literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its image of its neighboring countries
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Isolé par sa situation géographique à l'extrémité orientale de l'Europe, par les siècles d'occupation ottomane puis la fermeture imposée par le régime communiste, le peuple bulgare a eu longtemps le sentiment qu'il devait prouver à cette Europe qu'il en fait partie intégrante par sa culture, sa religion, son mode de vie, et c’est sans doute l'une des raisons pour lesquelles certains mythes identitaires perdurent, aussi bien dans les mentalités collectives que dans la littérature.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Throughout the twentieth century, ethnic structures continued to coexist under supranational political organizations not only because of historical legacy of imperial organizations transcending national identities and boundaries, but also due to the ideological coalitions among states aiming at the unification of peoples around common causes and/or cohesive interests. Both were true in the Balkans as a result of the integration of Ottoman nationalities into the imperial system of rule through partially autonomous millets until the end of the nineteenth century, and the functional organization of the Balkan nationalities around the ideology of political unity and military defense due mostly to the requirements of the Cold War.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Au cours de la formation de la mythologie nationale bulgare apparaissaient les figures de l’Autre, auxquelles nous nous identifiions et nous nous comparions. En tant que mythologie secondaire, la mythologie nationale redéfinissait constamment le sujet de l’identité de l’Autre et déterminait, suivant le mécanisme universel de formation des images mutuelles, les traits changeants de l’image de nos voisins ou des peuples plus éloignés.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Au cours de la formation de la mythologie nationale bulgare apparaissaient les figures de l’Autre, auxquelles nous nous identifiions et nous nous comparions. En tant que mythologie secondaire, la mythologie nationale redéfinissait constamment le sujet de l’identité de l’Autre et déterminait, suivant le mécanisme universel de formation des images mutuelles, les traits changeants de l’image de nos voisins ou des peuples plus éloignés.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The first part of this article introduces the reformulation of historical information and method to suit the requirements of the new political order in Turkey during the founding years of the Republic (1930s). This operation, initiated by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), started with history textbooks aimed at forming a standardized nation-state identity in the new generations. The intellectual origins, the premises, the aims, some specific features and the eventual,
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The study of the image of the neighbour on the Balkans is a temptation and object of work for many humanitarian scholars. To claim exhaustiveness, however, would be outdone, despite the persistence of some specialists. That is why, and also in order to avoid the delusive impression of "roundedness" of the subject, I present my observations on the Bulgarians' and Greeks' ideas of each other over a comparatively long period of time, deliberately preserving the formal fragmentariness of the expose.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
L’object de cet article est de reconstruire l’image dont les Bulgares du XIX sciècle ont des Tsiganes. Sur la base des données du folklore, de la littérature et de la presse périodique on peut suivre transformations de cette image qui sert à l’établissement de l’Etat-nation bulgare et de l’identité nationale bulgare.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The author traces the image of the Rumanians and Rumania in the modern Bulgarian literature. The sources such as travel notes, memoirs, school textbooks, histories, etc. inform us not only for the direct impressions, but also about the stereotypes and the undirect notions of the Bulgarians. The differences between the societies and the contradictions between two neighbor states are a precondition for the emerging of negative stereotypes.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
This essay dwells on the notion of ‘cultural hero’ and its place and development in the modern Bulgarian culture. It is defined as ‘a signifying image or name within a given society’. The main point of the argument is that cultural heroes are personified emblems of their respective social systems, forming together a kind of a value-laden shared language. Another point is that the average cultural hero of the Bulgarian tradition is, mostly, a collective
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
In this article, which presents numerous examples from the Balkan literatures, we would like to emphasize the significance of the problem of the religious syndrom in the Balkans and its distortion throughout 20th century. All positive universal messages of religion, such as religious ethics and patience, today have been lost and given way to the Western logic of nonexistence of limits and of overcoming obstructions by means of violence.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
This paper deals with the texts of the culture that mythologise the tradition of the Bogomiles. Their strategies of small sacred histories of the Bogomiles share one common feature - treating the Bogomiles instrumentally they condemn them to be unrecognised. The contradictory interpretations of the ideology of the Bulgarian neo-Manichaeism, quasi-reconstructions of the gnosis of the Bogomiles,
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Western Literature covers a huge area of problems about civilizations’ development and as a part of this by no purpose becomes bearer of memory which settlement on the Balkans is certified starting from 18th Century. Due this, the Western stereotypes about Bulgarians (concerning their origin and medieval state, faith and peaceful way of life) are welcomed in our writings.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The paper tries to generalize the insights into the forming of the Serbian and Croatian standard languages in the first half of the 19th century in order to show:
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Balkan identities were formed in the context of building the nation-states and were marked by some common features due to the common space and common temporal co-ordinates. The processes of self-consciousness and identity building go through “inclusion” and “exclusion”, by outlining the differences between “Us” and “Them”. The extremely compound ethnic mosaic inherited by the Ottoman State and by later migration processes has complicated the forming of national identities in the Balkans.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The different in his own culture. Marginals and outsiders
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The paper traces in detail the controversies concerning Europe among different groups of the Greek society during the examined period. The problems connected with the image of Europe among the Greeks is important for the rationalization of their notion about themselves, about the Greek identity. The first point of view is connected with the Enlightenment and lays special emphasis on the following of the European patterns, whereas the second one places in the foreground the role of the Greek (antique and Byzantine) culture in the process of the origination of the notion of Europe.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Balkans' 20th century was framed by wars: at its beginning there were the two Balkan wars and the World War I while the 1990s Yugoslav wars marked its end. The latter entered our everyday lives very often through media. The media focused on the "age-old hatreds" in the Balkans: the people have always hated each other and whatever tolerance and coexistence there was had been imposed by the communist regime. On the other extreme is the myth
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Der Beitrag sieht voraus die aktuellen Gebrauchsweisen des “Projekt”-Konzepten zu beobachten und sie als einen Bestandteil der Mitteleuropa-Diskussion zu praesentieren. In einer historischen Perspektive zeichnet sich die Mitteleuropaidee (vom Friedrich Naumanns Einschliessen dieser Idee in der Diskussion ueber die Ziele des Ersten Weltkrieges bis zum konzentrischen geopolitischen Ausdehnen Ostmitteleurops nach 1989) mit einem
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
K pochopení vývoje balkánských národů je nutno si uvědomit zásadní rozdíly, které provázely jejich vznik ve srovnání s národy západoevropskými a středoevropskými. V západní Evropě vývoj probíhal dvěma způsoby: buď nejprve vznikla centralizovaná monarchie a její poddaní se pak postupně stali novodobým národem (Francouzi, Angličané, Dánové, Švédové apod.), nebo došlo na základě určitých prvků (nejčastěji používání stejného literárního jazyka) k sjednocení malých států obývaných stejným etnikem do jediného státního útvaru (Německo a Itálie). Ve střední Evropě byl vývoj jiný: v mnohonárodnostních monarchiích (habsburské či ruské) se nejprve středověké etnické národnosti transformovaly v moderní národy, přičemž jednotícím prvkem nebyla zpravidla existující státní organizace,[1] ale uměle vytvořený spisovný jazyk nebo náboženská příslušnost.[2] Proces tvorby uvedených národů probíhal tak, že národní program, hlásaný inteligencí, byl postupně akceptován širokými vrstvami obyvatelstva, které se postupně stratifikovalo, takže v rámci vznikajícího národa se vytvořila úplná sociální struktura (tj. existovaly zde všechny sociální skupiny). Takto vzniklý národ v další fázi začal požadovat politickou autonomii, přistoupil k budování vlastních politických struktur, a nakonec prosadil v příhodné politické konstelaci vnik vlastního národního státu.[3]
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Ce que je fais est indubitablement une remythologisation. Je tente d’expliquer l’histoire de la société et son avenir, l’avenir de l’homme, par son passé le plus reculé, où se cache la vérité qui l’a poussé de l’avant… Le mythe n’est pas la vie passée au crible de la pensée, il est le vécu exprimé en images.
Borislav Pekič, La Toison d’or
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The danger from entering into totalitarianism is connected with political government crisis. This statement is totally contrary to Marxist theory that totalitarianism is a product of the sound authority power. Throughout the history reveals that totalitarianism has been introduced whenever the authority is losing its power. When the danger strengthens, the authority employs the manner of violence in order to handle with it.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Analyzing the reception of Romanian literature in Bulgaria, (especially that of Panait Istrati and Liviu Rebreanu) gives me the possibility to define the term "Balkan literary identity". Examples from the period between the two World Wars show that it is a singular term, that it is an external term (coming from abroad), including the idea of exotics, of verbal narration, of Oriental, and passionate conflicts. In fact, it is much more an external image, a stereotype,
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
This paper aims to illustrate the functionality of the term "sites of memory" with reference to the study of two national canons with overlapping time-space continuum. I use the term as defined by A. Szpocinski (1986) but I give it a "territorial" dimension. By "sites of memory" I understand a past space-time continuum that embraces past events and their participants. Even in biblical times, places were named after events so to record for posterity their spiritual character (E. Dressler, 2003). The Akeda, or the offering of Isaac, took place on the Mount of "har-ha-Morija", which means "the Eternal One watches".
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Bulgarian literary critics of the 1930's century became the material basis of the article, where the analysis of the problems concentrating around certain concepts has been done. The texts in question are treated as the evidence of the new cultural identification formation in the time when Bulgaria regained its independence.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
V. Zarev’s Поп Богомил и съвършенството на страха (1998) is one of the attempts - representative for the contemporary Bulgarian culture – at a revaluation of the heretic tradition of Bogomilism. It is at the same time a noteworthy opinion in the discussion which concerns the Mediaeval neo Manichean tradition in Europe. Zarev’s protagonist is the orthodox priest Bogomil, founder of a gnosis; the author attempts a deconstruction of a heresiarch’s myth, functioning in Bulgarian culture. While subordinating the world presented to the rules of a post Modernist discourse, Zarev is not content with a diagnosis of an inner rift in Bulgarian culture, its being torn between the two incoherent Weltanschauung paradigms (Christianity and Bogomilism) which had supposedly led to the destabilization of the Bulgarians’ moral horizon. For in Zarev’s world of axiological void, the “last word” belongs to the myth of Bogomilism as the forerunner of heretic movements, the hermetic and enlightenment tradition in Europe.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The conquest of an important even holy town is well-known historical event and it generates grate number of interpretations in different texts. They bear different meanings but the textual corpus not only survives but even expands and governs the thinking of different communities - states, regions, religious or ethnic groups, etc. In this sense the conquest of the Town is essential element of various mythical structures, presented in Holy Scriptures and
classical texts. Such important events are the fall of Babylon, of Troy, of Rome, later of Moscow, etc. The myth about the fall of a holy town is typical example of a traumatic (even apocalyptic) plot.
The Bulgarian Narrative about the Fall under Ottoman Rule: A Historical Canon with no Messianic Myth
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The text aims to analyze the Bulgarian way to narrate the fall under Ottoman rule. It searches for answers to the questions of why the historical narrative is constructed in such a vague and elusive way, why there is no messianic figure or epic event in the collective memory, why the literary canon is so indifferent toward this topic. In order to rationalize this peculiarity the analysis scrutinizes the initial formation of a normative narrative about the fall under Ottoman rule. It covers the period 1830s-1870s and is focused on three main areas: 1) textbooks on Bulgarian and Ottoman history; 2) publications in the press relating to the topic in question; 3) literary production devoted to the end of the Bulgarian kingdom in 14th c.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
The Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the 14th and the 15th centuries had interrupted in many aspects the natural development of the Balkan peoples. The author focuses on the idea of the interrupted statehood and analyses the ways it infiltrates the national identity building process of both the Serbs and the Bulgarians. The subject of exploration is the myth-making interpretations of the "fallen statehood" (in the cases of the Kossovo Polje battle and the
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
La présente communication essaie dégager les principaux problèmes, aussi bien que les mécanismes de la formation des stéréotypes concernant le temps ottoman. En prenant en considération le rapport entre l'histoire des concepts et l'histoire sociale nous essayerons dans notre étude de remonter à la naissance de la terminologie employée par les Bulgares pour désigner la domination ottomane aussi bien que de suivre son évolution.
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Balkan Identities in Bulgarian Culture from the Modern Times (19th -20th centuries)
Learning to be Greeks through the appropriation of historical time, language identity and space symbolism
I awoke with this marble head in my hands
which exhausts my elbows and I do not know where to
set it down.
It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the
dream.
Our lives joined thus and it will be difficult to part
them.
George Seferis, Mythical Story
