Crossculture – serie

1. 2 Culture and Identity in a Postmodern World Michel Foucault’s statement that: “The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition” (M. Foucault 1986: 22) heralded a new approach to identity in the contemporary world by suggesting that one’s identity is formed not as a result of the cultural and national values and history one has inherited, but rather as a result of the different spaces through which one travels. In other words, one’s identity is no longer perceived as an inherited construct but rather as something flexible that changes as one moves through the more fluid spaces of the contemporary, globalized world and internalizes a mixture of the different cultures and ideas that one encounters. The idealized contemporary traveller will thus effortlessly cross national and cultural borders and negotiate a constantly changing and flexible identity for himself. Andy Bennett argues that it is no longer even possible to conceive of identity as a static entity, forged from a communal history and value system, because all of the traditional certainties on which identity formation were based in the past have been fatally undermined by a postmodernist flux and fluidity: “Once clearly demarcated by relatively static and ethnically homogenous communities, the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of everyday life are now highly pluralistic and contested, and are constantly being defined and redefined through processes of relocation and cultural hybridisation” (A.

The collapse of communist systems in South East Europe resulted in a landscape to be newly arranged. Diverse forces compete to capture the popular energies released by the embrace of old and new identities. Deficits of modernization in a post communist nexus have deepened cultural asymmetries and challenge EU integration in new ways. Drives to rule of the “strong hand”, feod-like patron-client relations, “self-orientalization” as result of dilettante “social engineering” and unrealistic cultural politics increase the entropy of transition. Plamen K. Georgiev discusses the most controversial issues of a possible accession of Turkey into EU and its impact on a number of collective identities as Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia, vulnerable to Islamic fundamentalism, but also new breeds of nationalisms. This comparative study prompts apt ideas for EU coordinated national politics, fostering its cultural homogeneity and integrity in a global world of rising risks and new responsibilities.

Based on culture as a complex system of rules it is too obvious that each rule has a particular range which is only exceptionally congruent with national or natural borders. In general, cultural exchange is not limited by political borders or rivers, forests, seas, or mountains. Those areas are rather transcultural, which is especially true for markets and towns. Dealing with cities like Buenos Aires or Riga, regions like Podlachia (Poland), Northern Ireland, or Bukovina, and the area of the Danube river the case studies give evidence for this thesis.