Presentations by Streams

When talking about cultural transfers, we usually mean mutual processes between two actors that enrich those who take part in them, and aim at connecting rather than dividing, as well as processes in which there is a linear transmission of ideas, concepts, customs between their senders and recipients. Considering Eastern and Central Europe, the most obvious direction of cultural transfer is from the West to the East.

In our panel, however, we want to significantly complicate such an optimistic image of cultural transfers as sharing the Western ideological wealth. First, we want to identify and describe a dialectical and sometimes even contradictory relationship between the parties involved in them. In our opinion, such ambiguity is typical of cultural transfers occurring in Central and Eastern Europe as the world’s semi-periphery. Secondly, we want to emphasize that the cultural transfers may also involve concepts that serve to subordinate others, for instance colonial and radical nationalistic ideas. Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez will demonstrate a cultural transfer between German and Polish radical nationalistic feminists in the beginning of the 20th-century. Elżbieta Kwiecińska will show how Max Weber's idea of the German civilising mission to establish capitalism was appropriated by Roman Dmowski, an integral nationalistic politician and Stanisław Szczepanowski, a liberal economist who supported self-civilising of rural Habsburg Galicia. Piotr Puchalski will discuss the transfer of (post)colonial concepts between British, Polish, and African officials in West and East Africa during World War II, suggesting the ways in which discourse about race and German atrocities was used for political purposes by each group. Katarzyna Roman-Rawska will analyse antitotalitarian, anti-imperialist utopia of Russian futurist, Velimir Khlebnikov. The main point in our research are cultural transfers as an element shaping social practices, influencing institutions, national movements, identities, and culture.