Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Self-historicization Strategy of Phenomenology in Central and East European Context

Jaroslava Vydrová

Wednesday 6 September 2023

12:00 - 12:30

 

In Central and East European context, the phenomenological movement developed in a peculiar way. This research has been undertaken by a number of researchers oriented to historical, thematical and methodological questions (W. Plotka, P. Eldridge, A. Varga and others). The circumstances also affected the strategies of preservation of memory during the Communism in form of individual self-historicization, while phenomenology forcibly moved into unofficial, marginal sphere. A lot of attention is currently paid to similar research in field of humanities and arts, since it allows for thematic and methodological enrichment and innovation as compared to main current of thematization of historicity. A parallel, alternative space where phenomenology unfolded brings alternative forms and media of preservation, too. A need also arises to make present and preserve the phenomena which could, in the course of time, disappear from cultural memory and the history of ideas. These are, however, specific, local phenomena, such as private archive, private seminars, autobiographical poetics, censorship and erasure in the official history contra personal diaries, hybrid forms of thematization (philosophy, art, and subversive practices).

 

The approaches to history in Central and East European phenomenology such as local thematization of historicity and phenomenology thereby allow one to disclose the operation of the phenomenologist in particular historical situation as well as new phenomena related to dynamics of center/periphery and plurality of traditions and mediums which were developed in this space. This specific space of thinking can be disclosed as marginocentric, as a “node” connecting various motifs and creating hybridization. This strategy, developed especially in literary theory and thematization of space (J. Neubauer – M. Cornis-Pope, Ch. Sabatos and others), can be used in our case, too, and it brings about new stimuli and challenges to genealogy and reconstruction of history of phenomenology.