Presentations by Streams

The memory of origins is an oxymoron. Neither do we fully know these beginnings (of nations, religions, states, or perhaps of humanity) nor have they been preserved in our – even cultural – memory. Lost in the mists of the far past, these origins are both the mythical basis on which communities are built and simultaneously objects of archaeological, historical, and linguistic research, especially since the emergence of the era of nationalism. Although it seems trivial, we rarely pay attention to a simple fact: as far as human memory and history reach origins, they are celebrated. They are an essential element of an “invented tradition,” an “imagined community” such as a nation. In Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the twentieth century brought a whole series of such (millennium) anniversaries, studies of beginnings, political uses of origin stories, and conflicts over precedence in a given territory. Intellectuals were involved in many of these activities. They created or supported (national, religious, state) imagined communities, re-constructed traditions, and created a social memory of origins. Taking this argument as a starting point, this panel aims to trace such narratives of origins, anniversary events, and, above all, the role of intellectuals in their creation. We call for papers that would track, but simultaneously not limit themselves, to the framework we have envisioned above. We focus on modern Central Europe and the Balkans and have chosen intellectuals as “our heroes,” consciously restraining from defining them into narrow frames. We believe this openness will only serve better to the aim of this panel.