Neither Centre nor Periphery: Rethinking Postcoloniality through the Perspective of Eastern Europe

Gáti, Daniella

Abstract

Is Eastern Europe part of “the West?” Left out of the interpretative frameworks of the postcolony, yet also failing to qualify as “properly” European, Eastern Europe troubles the neat directionality of West-centric history but also the critical responses that have challenged it. This essay argues, first, that postcolonial theory does not adequately account for regions like Eastern Europe; and second, that being between East and West has significant individual and collective psychological ramifications. While it troubles identity in the progressive imagination of Péter Nádas’s novel Parallel Stories, it also undergirds the increasingly aggressive racialization of Hungarianness in the political ideology of Viktor Orbán. Ultimately, rigid binaries shore up far-right agendas by underwriting racialized, exclusionary projects of imagining the nation.

Citation

Gáti, D. (2023). Neither Centre nor Periphery: Rethinking Postcoloniality through the Perspective of Eastern Europe. Critical Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12746

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 4, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Sep 24, 2023
• Publication Date: Sep 24, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 11, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 25, 2023
• Journal: Critical Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 0011-1562
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12746