The transition of communist Eastern Europe to capitalist
democracy post-1989 and in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars has
focused much scholarly attention - in history, political science
and literature - on the fostering of new identities across Eastern
European countries in the absence of the old communist social and
ideological frameworks. This book examines an important, but
hitherto largely neglected, part of this story: the ways in which
the West has defined its own identity and ideals via the
demonization of communist regimes and Eastern European cultures as
a totalitarian, barbarian and Orientalist "other." It describes how
old Orientalist prejudices resurfaced during the Cold War period,
and argues that the establishment of this discourse helped to
justify transitions of Eastern European societies to market
capitalism and liberal democracy, suppressing Eastern Europe s
communist histories and legacies, whilst perpetuating its
dependence on the West as a source of its own sense of identity. It
argues that this process of Orientalization was reinforced by the
literary narratives of Eastern European and Russian anti-communist
dissidents and exiles, including Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz
and Milan Kundera, in their attempts to present themselves as
native, Eastern European experts and also emancipate themselves and
their homelands as civilized, enlightened and Westernized. It goes
on to suggest that the greatest potential for recognizing and
overcoming this self-Orientalization lies in post-communist
literary and visual narratives, with their themes of disappointment
in the social, economic, or political changes brought on by the
transitions, challenge of the unequal discursive power in East-West
dialogues where the East is positioned as a disciple or a mimic of
the West, and the various guises of nostalgia for communism.
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