Kundera article in New Yorker

[John Dunn]

Unfortunately I haven't got access to the original article, which the New Yorker has not made available on-line, but I am not going to let a little detail like that stop me. . . 

In fact, the artificiality of 'Slavonic culture' is a notion that my Czech colleagues in Glasgow have been whispering into my ears for some time, which makes me think that the idea already has some currency in Czech academic circles.  Can someone enlighten us further on this point?

And in this spirit at the end of an experimental course on Globalisation, which we put on last year as part of our Slavonic Civilisation degree programme, I asked our students whether there was anything that could be identified as being specifically and uniquely 'Slavonic'.  Though several partial answers were suggested, it was difficult to find a full answer that went beyond language.

On the other hand, I think, pace Robert Orr, that there is a common Celtic cultural identity that goes beyond  language and which is reflected in such events as the Celtic Connections music festival and various Celtic film festivals. And I believe that the Turks tried to foster a common cultural identity among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia after 1991, though I am not sure what success they have had. Perhaps these are exceptions to the general rule.

And, curiously, the one place where a common Indo-European identity does appear to work is the Caucasus: the Russians are and traditionally have been closer to the Armenians and the Ossetes than to other nations (including the Georgians, to whom they have most in common in religious terms).  

John Dunn.    


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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