Regimes of Historicity and Discourses of Modernity and Identity, 1900-1945, in East-Central, Southeastern and Northern Europe

The Regimes of Historicity project focuses on the comparative analysis of the various ideological traditions thematising the connection between modernity and historicity – a connection lying at the core of modern identity narratives in the post-romantic era (1900-1945) - in three “small-state” regions: East-Central, Southeastern, and Northern Europe. The choice of ideologies as the vantage point of our research involves visions of past and future, of continuity and discontinuity in a wide spectrum of twentieth-century social and political thinking about modernity and identity. Above all, we plan to concentrate on the ways these traditions have been shaped and interpreted by the different branches of the humanities and the newly formed social sciences. This will make it possible to reconsider the usual metaphors rooted in temporal dimensions that are used for non-core Western cultures, such as asynchrony, backwardness, catching-up, whose moral and normative implications have been at the core of modernist and anti-modernist discourses ever since the dawn of the twentieth century. The process of cultural appropriation and mediation will be a central axis of investigation pointing to the complex interplay of local traditions and “imported” ideological packages. Extending two regional comparative paradigms – the long-standing Südostforschung and the more recent Nordic Spaces research – the project undertakes a comparison across historical regions testing for regional peculiarities and common European phenomena. This is also seen as opening up the possibility for formulating heuristic regional typologies, looking at the specific mechanisms of framing modernity in Southeastern, Central and Northern Europe.

As it is known, the entire discussion of regional differences (e.g. between East, West, North, Centre, Southeast, etc.) has been typically framed in terms of temporality – in notions such as backwardness, overtaking, progress and so on. Our reconstruction of the patterns of historicity - of the temporal visions historical actors held of their own contexts – seeks to challenge the centre-periphery backwardness narrative and render a more balanced picture of historical difference. We also see our research as offering an alternative to post-colonial narratives, which focus on the fundamental difference of the European core and the other, in that in our case the whole framework of otherness is relativised and fine-tuned. Comparing the various peripheries to each other could give us a certain insight into the issue of legacies – into the way tradition is framed in a Protestant, Orthodox or Muslim context; or in the long-term impact of competing post-imperial and nation-state models of framing the past. We thus hope to develop a relativised but not necessarily relativist vision of political modernity capable to substantiate the vision of multiple modernities and thus open up the discussion of how imported models and local traditions are related to each other.

The two-year research agenda will be accomplished via four closely interrelated components that allow for the deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the theoretical problems in focus: Senior Fellowship Programme, Junior Fellowship Programme, Extended Colloquia and Guest-Scholar Programme. The Regimes of Historicity Fellows will work on their individual case studies and come together for joint working sessions, colloquia and conferences to discuss each others’ findings in the multidisciplinary and international environment provided by the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia. The core group of 10 junior scholars who will be selected via an open Call for Applications will be supervised by the project convenor Prof. Dr Diana Mishkova and the senior Fellows – researchers with extensive experience in the thematic field.

The project is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Germany and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, Sweden.