Kundera article (cont.)
Andrey Shcherbenok
avs2120 at COLUMBIA.EDU
Fri Jan 12 15:53:31 UTC 2007
Slavoj Zizek once noted that almost every country in Europe has
traditionally perceived itself as the outpost of the civilized "West"
bordering with oriental barbarians on the East. Indeed, to extend Zizek's
examples, in their own self-conception Great Britain is, of course, more
civilized than continental Europe, France has to defend European values
against barbarian oriental Germany, Slovenia is an outpost of the West
against the oriental orthodox Serbia, Germans, of course, regard countries
like Slovenia or Poland as essentially Eastern, Poland sees itself as the
desperate defender of civilization against the barbarian pressure of the
oriental Russian Empire, Ukraine is, as we know, part of Europe, unlike its
oriental neighbor on the East, and Russia more often than not perceived
itself as the essentially Western country protecting Europe from the attacks
of Mongolian hordes and exporting European civilization to Central Asia et
al. So, I believe Kundera's article is just another instance of the same
speculative way of thinking, made more urgent by the struggle of the new
members of the EU not to be regarded second-rate compared with the EU's
older members.
Andrey Shcherbenok
Columbia University
-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Peitlova Katarina
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 6:31 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Kundera article (cont.)
Such people might start with Russian
> (as a language), and proceed to other Slavic languages, including Czech
> -- which would be made much more accessible by prior studies within
> the same language family (Slavic).
It's rather curious : if I want to study Japanese language I should at
first study Chines? I don't think that everybody should at first learn
Russian language if he wants to know Czech,Slovak,Polish,Serb,Croat - and so
long - other Slavic languages. There's really abyss between Russian and
Czech. First and not least the alphabet / cyrillic against latin. We should
finally recognize that nowadays doesn't exist old geopolitical "division"
of part of Europe to so called "EAST " and "WEST" .I can't hear anymore
how Italian TV news program continues to call "paesi dell'est" non
distinguishing the existence of present political changes after 1989.
Division "EAST" and "WEST" was purely political - it came in usage after
second WW 1945. Nobody called Czechoslovakia ,established in 1918,
"EAST". It was and still is geografically the Central part of Europe . So
STOP with this EAST! And I think that even Kundera is trying to call
attention to this problem : that Czechs with their culture,literature
and story don't make part of "oriental" Russia.
PhDr.Katarina Peitlova -Tocci
Italia
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