Participants
Davor Beganović, University of Vienna
Nomadism and Periphery
In the contemporary theory one can find a number of approaches dealing directly with the problem of space. But there are two whose application seems to be adequate to describe the complex social and cultural processes taking place in Europe after the fall of the iron curtain. I would like to summarize these processes under the notion of nomadism and try to connect them with at times hectic movements from the periphery to the centre and back. The two theories come from Deleuze and Guattari on the one and Lotman on the other side. Lotman analyzes the whole of one cultural space under the notion of “semiosphere”. He inscribes some cultural unity in it, although it is impossible to oversee certain heterogeneity and asymmetry there as well. Heterogeneity could be defined by diversity of the elements and their different function and asymmetry is observable in the stream of translation connecting the centre with its periphery. It is a dynamic process and its possible reversion shows a change in the whole system. Deleuze and Guattari, on the other side, develop the figure of the nomad as a person able to cross the boundaries between the centre and the periphery, to extend space of the local, even to construct an absolutely local space. This enables him/her to avoid the boundaries, disclaim cultural constrictions that are engendered in the notion of state-dominated space, summarized in the concept of nomos. My paper aims to find a virtual interface between the two theories and use it as a productive starting point for examination of a new cultural space evolving in the West after the end of communism. As examples showing the usability of this theory, I will analyze the novels Apostoloff by German author Sybille Lewitscharoff and Everything is Illuminated by American author Jonathan Safran Foers.
