[Bilimsel Haber] Images and Counter-images East and West: Expectation and Observance

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

*Images and Counter-images East and West: Expectation and Observance*
*Location:* 	Slovenia
<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=Slovenia>

	

	

	

Images and Counter-images East and West: Expectation and Observance
International Workshop
Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana
13-14, October 2006
Co-organizer: Pasts Inc., Institute for Historical Studies, Central
European University, Budapest

The archives of the Cold War are essentially ‘enemy archives’. This is
true in various senses of the term: records of the period were based
upon the constant observation of the communist or capitalist other,
trying to understand and predict what the ‘enemy’ was seeking for and
aspiring to. This phenomenon was generated by a fundamental drive of
identification: since the ‘civilization of communism’ openly declared
itself the anti-theses of capitalism, it had to assess what capitalism
was to construct its own identity. This became equally true in the West
with the outbreak of the Cold War. The crucial aspect of Western
identity was the manifest conviction that those societies embodied the
anti-theses of communism: the genuine legacy of Occidental civic
democracy. These ideologically informed public political rhetoric,
however, created certain sets of expectation towards the observed that
influenced typical genres of observation reports. What should the
Eastern traveler recognize in the West: the moral deterioration and the
poverty of the exploited or, alternatively, the land of freedom and
wealth? What did the Western gaze catch in the East: oppression and
slavery or the alternative model to the immorality of consumerism?

These are the major questions our conference would like to address by
re-thinking the process of producing images and counter-images of East
and West during the Cold War. How were these depictions and descriptions
created? Who were the observers – who could travel to the other part of
the globe? How were the difference among the perspectives of political
delegations, business travelers, sport and art groups constituted? How
was the situation affected by the extension of mass tourism and leisure?
Which were the genres of formulating these observations: party meetings,
club reports, company guides, private communication? What are the
sources of getting access into these types of discourse? How were these
images represented in forms of art: literature or film? What were the
relationships between prescriptions for seeing, expectations and report?
How travelers were prepared themselves for the journey into the land of
the Other: what were the role of travel guides, maps, tourist bureaus
and agencies?

The workshop is part of the Eastern European Regional Seminar in Recent
History, that between 2003-2006 was co-sponsored by the Higher Education
Support Program of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, and initiated
and managed by Pasts, Inc. Center for Historical Studies. The Regional
Seminar series is the primary contribution of the Central European
University to the largest all-European network of contemporary history,
EURHIST XX. This network was established in Budapest in May 2003 and
took further developments in Potsdam in May 2004 in order to identify
common bases for the wider European discussion in the major problems of
recent history. Its broader aim is to lead historical discourse in the
continent to a further Europeanization of historical research concerning
the 20th Century.

If You are interested, please, send and abstract (cc. 300-500 words) and
a CV to the following address:

Peter Apor, PhD
Co-Director
Center of Comparative Recent History
Pasts, Inc. Institute of Historical Studies
Central European University
Budapest 1014
Nador u. 11.
Hungary

Aporp at ceu.hu

	<mailto:aporp at ceu.hu>
Visit the website at http://www.ceu.hu/pasts