CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

"Post/Colonial" Approaches to Central Europe: Power, Ethnicity, and Culture 1848-1918

Organisers: Clemens Ruthner and Wolfgang Müller-Funk

Ruthner, Clemens (University of Antwerp, Belgium) CENTRAL EUROPE GOES POSTCOLONIAL: NEW CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACHES TO THE LATE HABSBURG EMPIRE (1848-1918)
The Post/Colonial Studies of Said, Bhabha, Spivak and others could provide an intriguing new basis for cultural studies dealing with the past and present of Central Europe. My paper will examine the following questions: 1) Is there such a thing as an internal colonialism in Central and Southeastern Europe around 1900 (regarding the Austrian-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia, Habsburg rule in the Western Ukraine etc.) 2) Is it only the cultural repercussions of imperial rule in Austria-Hungary that show certain similarities to symbolic forms, as we know them from colonial empires? 3) What are the advantages of a "postcolonial" view on Central European history?

Millner, Alexandra (Literary scholar, Vienna, Austria) ETHNICITY, CLASS AND GENDER: A FEMINIST CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH TO AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN CULTURE (1867-1918)
In Austro-Hungarian female writing around 1900, we confront many literary texts and essays with a definitely feminist impact: Privileged women campaign for "equal rights" for those women they see as oppressed (e.g. prostitutes). The paper will discuss various feminist cultural studies theories (by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Teresa de Lauretis etc.) adequate to approach both the subject and the object of investigation and differentiate between them. Tracking the female subaltern that is neither the producer nor the recipient of these texts, the paper will examine the notions of ethnicity, class and gender.

Müller-Funk, Wolfgang (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom) POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES: THE AUSTRIAN ROOTS OF ZIONISM
This lecture analyses the roots of the Zionistic discourse in the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire not at least as a reaction to a growing anti-Semitism in all parts of the Monarchy. It presents a close reading of the utopian novel "Altneuland" by Theodor Herzl, who for a long time was a writer and cultural critic in the context of Viennese Culture. Carl Schmitt's terminology "Land" (territory) and "Meer" (sea) will be used to differentiate between two forms of domination and ruling power: a territorial and inner-European and a maritime and global. The Austrian Monarchy represents the conservative type of continental domination against the concept of the nation state. Zionism, however, confronts us with the "grand recit" (Lyotard) of progress, civilisation and (post-) colonialism in a very specific way. In Herzl's novel, the colonist represents, on the one hand, the type of a coloniser, but on the other, a continental type who goes back to his territorial roots.