The Political Languages of Anti-Modernism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1945
Level:
Master's Course Status:
Elective CEU credits:
4 Academic year:
2011/2012 Semester:
Winter Start and end dates:
9 Jan 2012 - 30 Mar 2012 Host Unit:
Department of History Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area:
Social and Political History in a Comparative Perspective CEU Instructor(s):
Balázs Trencsényi Teaching assistants, administrators, etc:
Zsofia Lorand Additional information:
The course combines an introduction into the major methodological developments in the history of political ideas with a thematic overview of political thought in our region roughly between 1900 and 1945. It uses the excerpts, previously unavailable in English, provided by the collective project Regional Identity Discourses in Central and Southeast Europe (1775-1945). The collection of these texts makes it possible to analyze and compare ‘in depth’ various ideological traditions that were formative of the national discourses of Central and Southeast Europe.
The course will focus on the various manifestations of radical identity-politics and criticism of modernity, which became prominent in the interwar period in Europe. All this can be described as the emergence of an anti-modernist discourse. Obviously, anti-modernism cannot be equated with a-modernity. It was rather an internal critique of modernity, often drawing on par excellence modernist cultural resources, albeit assuming an extremely conflicting stance towards some of the phenomena associated with political modernity. The classes will analyze both the Western intellectual traditions and the ways these themes became appropriated by East-Central European intellectuals. While traditionally this analytical framework was used to describe predominantly rightist projects (Konservative Revolution, etc.), the scope of the class makes it possible to link the neo-conservative and fascist ideological projects to some of the left-wing subcultures of the period, which also formulated a rather ambiguous vision of the institutions and discourses of political modernity. The class, with the help of the teaching assistant, will also take a look at the similar ambiguity of the feminist discourses, the first wave of which reaches its peak in the region in the interwar period, as well as the gender discourses of the various movements, subcultures and individuals. The primary and secondary literature is selected to provide representative case studies for comparative purposes. Learning Outcomes:
The goal of the course is to develop a comprehensive and critical understanding of political modernity and the intellectual traditions challenging it. Bringing together the more encompassing models of interpretation with a context-sensitive approach of situating the texts in their cultural-political setting, the participants will develop their skills of doing comparative research in the East-Central European setting based on textual and contextual analysis. Apart from the methodological gains of getting a deeper insight into the ways history of modern political thought is written in Western and East-Central Europe, the main expected result of the course is providing an overview of East-European intellectual history between the turn of the century and the end of WWII, placing it in a broader European framework, and developing a framework of interpreting the discourses of nationalism, historiographical and literary canon-building, and the transformation of political culture in our region. Assessment :
Progress in the course will be evaluated as follows: Seminar Presentation 30% of the overall grade Term Paper 50% Class Participation 20% In each class, one of the students will be invited to present (in 10-15 minutes) a chosen original excerpt in the context of other available primary sources and also using the relevant secondary literature. The term paper is a fifteen-page piece on a topic suggested by the student and accepted by the instructor, based on the comparative analysis of at least two national contexts. Class participation means regular attendance, in-class comments and questions related to the weekly topics and readings. Full description:
Course Agenda
One: History of Political Ideas: Strategies of interpretation
The class is introducing various national and “transnational” traditions of writing intellectual history
Readings (the first two are obligatory, plus choose one text):
• Michael Freeden, Ideologies and political theory: a conceptual approach (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1996), 47-91. [
pdf]
• Iain Hamphsher-Monk, “The History of Political Thought and the political history of thought,” in: Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, eds., The history of political thought in national context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001),159-174. [ pdf]
• Michael Freeden, “Concepts, ideology and political theory,” in Carsten Dutt ed., Herausforderungen der Begriffsgeschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003), 51-63.[ pdf]
• Stefan Collini, “Disciplines, Canons and Publics: The History of ‘The History of Political Thought’ in Comparative Perspective,” in: Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, eds., The history of political thought in national context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 281-302. (optional) [ pdf]
Two: The Conceptual Framework: Modernism, Reactionary Modernism, Konservative Revolution, Anti-Modernism
An overview of the main paradigms of interpretation of radical political ideologies of the interwar period
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose 2 texts):
• Roger Griffin, “Tunnel Visions and Mysterious Trees: Modernist Projects of National and Racial regeneration, 1880-1939,” in Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling eds., Blood and Homeland. Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007), 417-456. [ pdf]
• Andreas Huyssen, “The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde—Technology—Mass Culture” and “Mass Culture as Woman: Modenism’s Other”, in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986), 1-15, 44-62 [ pdf]; [ pdf]
• Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 31-90. [ pdf]
• Emilio Gentile, The Struggle for Modernity: Nationalism, Futurism, and Fascism (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003), 1-10, 41-77 [ pdf]
• Emilio Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1996), 153-162. [ pdf]
• Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-49. [ pdf]
• Elizabeth A. Flynn, Feminism Beyond Modernism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2002), 1-14. [ pdf]
Three: Politics in a New Key
An analysis of the roots of radical identity politics in the context of the turn-of-the-century rise of anti-liberalism, mainly focusing on Central Europe
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose one text and read the excerpts):
• Carl Schorske, “Politics in a new key” in Fin-de-siecle Vienna: politics and culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 116-180.[ pdf]
• Karen Offen, “On the French Origin of the Word Feminist and Feminism”, Feminist Issues (later called Gender Issues), Volume 8, Number 2, 45-51. [ pdf]
• Marius Turda, The idea of national superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 37-66.
• Michel Winock, Nationalism, anti-semitism, and fascism in France (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1998), 85-102, 111-130.[ pdf]
• Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German right : radical nationalism and political change after Bismarck (Ann Arbor, 1980), 160-206. [ pdf]
• Fritz Stern, The politics of cultural despair: a study in the rise of the Germanic ideology (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974, c1961), 267-298.[ pdf]
• Ann Taylor Allen “Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 1085-1113 [ pdf]
• Kevin Repp, Reformers, critics, and the paths of German modernity : anti-politics and the search for alternatives, 1890-1914 (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2000), 19-66.[ pdf]
• Excerpts by Gustave Le Bon in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 134-145. [ pdf]
The New Vision of History and Tradition
An overview of the emerging new paradigms of anti-evolutionist historical thinking, which had a decisive impact on the new anti-modernist discourse in a Western European context
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose one text):
• Michael Sutton, Nationalism, positivism, and Catholicism: the politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics, 1890-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 46-76. [ pdf]
• David Gross, The past in ruins : tradition and the critique of modernity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 92-106.[ pdf]
• Herman Lebovics, True France: the wars over cultural identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1992), 135-189.[ pdf]
• Roger Woods, The conservative revolution in the Weimar Republic (London: Macmillan, c1996), 59-110.[ pdf]; [ pdf]
• T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in Conservative texts: an anthology, edited with an introduction by Roger Scruton (New York : St. Martin's Press, 1991), 85-93. [ pdf]
• Excerpts by Charles Maurras in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 239-263.[ pdf]
Four: Totalitarianism and Bio-politics
The relationship of radical identity-politics and anthropological-biological paradigms
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• George L. Mosse, “Fascism and the Intellectuals,” in: The fascist revolution: toward a general theory of fascism (New York : H. Fertig, 1999), 95-116. [ pdf]
• Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and antihumanism in imperial Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2001), 135-146. [ pdf]
• Benoit Massin, “From Virchow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and Modern race Theories in Wilhelmine Germany,” in: George W. Stocking, Volksgeist as method and Ethic (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 79-154. [ pdf]
• Martin Travers, Critics of modernity: the literature of the conservative revolution in Germany, 1890-1933 (New York : P. Lang, 2001), 87-110. [ pdf]
• Zeev Sternhell, Neither right nor left: fascist ideology in France (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996), 213-265. [ pdf]
• Ingo Haar, “German Ostforschung and Anti-Semitism,” in: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch eds., German scholars and ethnic cleansing (1920-1945) (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 1-27. [ pdf]
• Kevin Passmore, “Introduction” and “Europe”, in idem. ed. Women, Gender, and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP 2003), 1-10, 235-268 [ pdf]
•Ann Taylor Allen, “Feminism and Eugenics in Germany and Britain, 1900-1940: A Comparative Perspective”, German Studies Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Oct., 2000), pp. 477-505[ pdf]
Five: (first half:) Left-wing projects of contesting and redefining modernity
Overview of left-wing ideological experiments trying to incorporate the anti-modernist challenge
Mid-Term Overview – The Emergence of Radical Identity Politics in Interwar Europe
Open discussion of the main themes raised in the trans-European contextualization and an overview of interpretative paradigms involving Eastern Europe
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Richard Wolin, The seduction of unreason : the intellectual romance with fascism: from Nietzsche to postmodernism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), Ch. IV, “Left Fascism: Georges Bataille and German Ideology,” 153-186. [ pdf]
• Jay M. Winter, “Socialism, Social Democracy, and Population Questions in Western Europe: 1870-1950”, Population and Development Review, Vol. 14, Supplement: Population and Resources in Western Intellectual Traditions (1988), pp. 122-146
• The College of Sociology (1937-39) / [texts by Georges Bataille ... [et al.] ; edited by Denis Hollier (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 43-46, 73-84, 143-156. [ pdf]
• Antonio Gramsci The modern prince and other writings (New York : International Publishers, 1957), 135-165. [ pdf]
• Richard Bellamy and Darrow Schecter eds., Gramsci and the Italian state (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1993), 137-161. [ pdf]
• Excerpts by Georges Sorel in The French right (from de Maistre to Maurras), edited and introduced by J. S. McClelland ; translation of Maurras (New York : Harper & Row, 1971), 117-131. [ pdf]
Six: Fin-de-siècle and beyond – the Paradigm-Shift of Conservativism in East-Central Europe
The impact of the fin-de-siècle paradigm sift of olitical mobilization and its local contexts
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Brian Porter, When nationalism began to hate: imagining modern politics in nineteenth-century Poland (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000), 189-232. [ pdf]
• Marius Turda, The idea of national superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 142-158. [ pdf]
• Rett R. Ludwikowski, Continuity and change in Poland : conservatism in Polish political thought (Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 197-230. [ pdf]
• William O. Oldson, The historical and nationalistic thought of Nicolae Iorga (Boulder [Colo.]: East European quarterly, 1973), 60-117. [ pdf]
• Alex N. Dragnich, Populism in Serbia,” in: Joseph Held, ed., Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society. (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, 1996), pp. 219-244. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
1. R. Dmowski, Ideas of the modern Pole (1902)
2. Nicolae Iorga, The National Culture and its Surrogates (1903)
3. A.C. Popovici, At the Crossroads of Two Worlds (1908)
4. Alexandros Papadiamantis, Eastern Chanter, (1893)
5. Nikola Pašić, - Speech of Nikola Pašić at a rally in Zaječar
Seven: Agrarianism, anti-liberalism, ethnic protectionism
The rise of anti-liberal political projects in the region
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• John R. Lampe “Illiberal directions” in: Balkans into Southeastern Europe (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 105-140. [ pdf]
• Dubravka Stojanović, “Rural Against Urban: Anti-Urban Discourse and Ideology in Early Twentieth Century Serbia” in: Ethnologia Balcanica 2005/9, 65-80. [ pdf]
• Philippe Schmitter, “Reflections on Mihail Manoilescu and the National Consequences of Delayed Dependent Development on the Periphery of Western Europe,” in: Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), 117–173. [ pdf]
• Miklós Lackó, Populism in Hungary: Yesterday and Today,” in: Joseph Held, Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society. (Boulder, Co, 1996), pp. 107-127. [ pdf]
• James R. Felak, "At the price of the Republic": Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, 1929-1938 (Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 177-208. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
6. Babanzâde Ahmed Naim, On Nationalism and Turkism (1913)
7. Dezső Szabó, Tomorrow’s nationalism (1938)
8. Durych, Jaroslav, The mission of the Czech state (1923)
9. Josef Tiso, Speech on Andrej Hlinka (1930)
Eight: Crisis of Values – East and West
Philosophical, political and literary projects seeking to reconsider European civilization and symbolic geography
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Zigu Ornea, The Romanian extreme right: the 1930s (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1999), 75-130. [ pdf]
• Roumen Daskalov, “Populists and Westerners in Bulgarian History and Present.” Central European History Department Yearbook (Budapest: Central European University, 2002) 113-142. [ pdf]
• Mac Linscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade: the Romanian roots, 1907-1945 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988), 881-930. [ pdf]
• Jerzy Jedlicki, “Polish concepts of national culture,” in: Ivo Banac and Katherine Verdery, eds., National character and national ideology in interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven : Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1995), 1-22. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
1. Ion Dragoumis, Neo-hellenic Civilisation, (1914)
2. Nichifor Crainic, The Meaning of Tradition (1935)
3. Lucian Blaga, The Mioritic Space (1934)
4. Naiden Sheitanov, Bulgarian Worldview, (1942)
5. Mircea Eliade, The Manifesto of the Young Generation (1927)
6. Nikolaj Velimirović, Serbian nation as servant of God, (1938)
7. László Németh - In minority (1942)
8. Mihály Babits - Mass and nation (1938)
Nine: In Search of a New Left
Leftist projects seeking to transcend the traditional social-democratic agenda and their interference with anti-modernist cultural and political projects
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Daniel Chirot, “Neoliberal and Social Democratic Theories of Development: The Zeletin-Voinea Debate Concerning Romania’s Prospects in the 1920's and Its Contemporary Importance,” in: Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), 31–52. [ pdf]
• Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a nation, breaking a nation: literature and cultural politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 67-127. [ pdf]
• James Felak, “Slovak considerations of the Slovak Question: The Ludak, Agrarian, Socialist and Communist Views in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in John Morison, The Czech and Slovak experience (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 136-62. [ pdf]
• Miklós Molnar, From Béla Kun to János Kádár: seventy years of Hungarian communism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 50-83. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
1. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, The meaning of individual in social progress and the tragedy of mentally handicapped (1936)
2. Ivan Hadjiiski, An Optimistic Theory of the Bulgarian Nation (1937)
3. Vladimir Dvornikovic, Epic man, or are we anachronism in Europe, (1937)
4. Branko Merxhani, Organization of the chaos (1930)
Ten: Women’s Movements and Feminism between Traditionalism, Anti-Modernism and Socialism
(choose three texts):
Melissa Bokovoy – Carol S. Lilly, “Croatia, Serbia and Yugoslavia”, in Kevin Passmore, ed. Women, Gender, and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP 2003), 91-123 [ pdf]
Maria Bucur, “Romania”, in Kevin Passmore, ed. Women, Gender, and Fascism in Europe, 1919-45 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP 2003), 57-78 [ pdf]
Krassimira Daskalova, “Bulgarian Women’s Movement 1850-1940”, in Edith Saurer, Margareth Lanzinger, Elisabeth Frysak, ed. Women's Movements: Networks and Debates in Post-Communist Countries in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Köln: Böhlau, 2006), 413-438 [ pdf]
Agatha Schwartz, Shifting Voices: Feminist Thought and Women's Writing in Fin-de-Siècle Austria and Hungary (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, c2008), 3-34 [ pdf]
Susan Zimmermann, “How they became feminists: the origins of the women's movement in Central Europe at the turn of the century”, in CEU History Department Yearbook 1997/98 (Budapest: CEU), 195-236 [ pdf]
Katherine David, “Czech Feminists and Nationalism”, Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1991) [ pdf]
Excerpts from the Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms : Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova and Anna Loutfi (Budapest - New York: CEU Press, c2006)
Primary source excerpts TBA
Eleven: Conservative Redefinitions of modernity: In search of a new authority
Overview of attempts to strike a middle way between radical anti-modernism and traditional evolutionary vision of history – also the emergence of an anti-modernist critique of totalitarianism
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Maciej Janowski „Three historians,“ in: Central European University History Department Yearbook 2001-2002, (Budapest 2002), 199-232. [ pdf]
• David Kelly, The Czech fascist movement 1922-1942 (Boulder, Col.: East European Monographs, 1995), 1-35. [ pdf]
• Milos Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People's Party, 1918-1939 / (New York : Social Science Monographs, 1995), 8-20. [ pdf]
• Steven Béla Várdy, Modern Hungarian historiography (Boulder [Colo.]: East European Monographs, 1976), 104-120. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
1. Gyula Szekfű, - Three generations and what follows (First ed.: 1920, Revised ed.: 1934)
2. Heinrich von Srbik, Österreich im Heiligen Reich und im Deutschen Bund, (1936)
3. Petar Mutafchiev. Philosophy of the Bulgarian History, (1931)
4. Karel Kramář, Five lectures about the foreign policy (1922)
5. Živojin Perić, Conservatives
Twelve: The anti-modernist Revolution
The question of the identity politics of authoritarian and semi-totalitarian regimes in the region
Readings (the first is obligatory, plus choose two texts):
• Ivan T. Berend, Decades of crisis : Central and Eastern Europe before World War II (Berkeley, Cal. : University of California Press, 1998), 300-337. [ pdf]
• Marta Petreu, An infamous past: E.M. Cioran and the rise of fascism in Romania (Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 146-174. [ pdf]
• Leon Volovici, Nationalist ideology and antisemitism: the case of Romanian intellectuals in the 1930s (Oxford, England: Published for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Pergamon Press, 1991), 95-150. [ pdf]
• Sandra Prlenda, “Young, Religious and Radical: The Croat Catholic Youth Organizations, 1922-1945,” in John Lampe and Mark Mazower, eds., Ideologies and national identities : the case of twentieth-century Southeastern Europe (Budapest : CEU Press, 2003), 82-109. [ pdf]
• Jon V. Kofas, Authoritarianism in Greece: the Metaxas regime (Boulder : East European Monographs, 1983), 52-82. [ pdf]
Excerpts:
1. Manifesto of the Camp of Great Poland (1926)
2. Janko Janev, Philosophy of the Motherland, (1934)
3. Ioannis Metaxas, Speech on the occasion of the inauguration of public works, (1937)
4. Emil Cioran, Transfiguration of Romania (1939)
5. Emanuel Vajtauer , Czech mythos (1943)