Centres-Peripheries

As a sequel to the expiring FWF-project 14727, the main purpose of the proposed research project is the analysis of intercultural and power relations within the Habsburg-Monarchy after the compromise of 1867. The main focus will be set on the problems of cultural asymmetries labelled by notions like "centre" and "periphery". Although these concepts are mainly used in politics, economy and social science in regards to the European Single Market or globalisation or in the field of Urban Studies, it is now, after the cultural turn in the humanities, possible to operate with the notions "centre" and "periphery" in connection with cultural relations. While centres are places where a great part of the symbolic production of a particular culture is actually located (publishing houses, media, exhibitions, museums etc.), the periphery mainly functions as the object of this production - or the place of setting. Therefore, cultural, economic, political and social peripherisations often go hand in hand without necessarily being congruent. These positions are subject to historical changes and highly dependent on a given context: Phenomena like second cities or regions located around a centre, which may appear to be peripheries when seen in relation to metropolitan centres, can become centres themselves in a different context. On the other hand, according to a given context, centres may appear to be places of minor cultural importance. The unique political, social and cultural fabric of the Habsburg Monarchy implies the use of the concepts, "centre" and "periphery", in their plural forms - in order to take account of the ambiguity of these notions in the present context. The very fact that symbolic and narrative complexes, like "urban" vs. "rural", "wilderness" vs. "civilisation", are embedded in the relation of centre and periphery adds to the peculiarity and volatility of the overall frame of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The emergence of new urban (cultural) centres, like Budapest, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, or Lemberg/L`viv, or united regions of centre quality, like the Vojvodina, have to be connected with this context. Regardless of geographical attributions, we can also detect `internal peripheries` by the examination of linguistic, ethnic, gender-specific and religious differences. Cultural hegemony and political-economic dependencies are interrelated. In close connection with the social and ethnic emancipation and modernisation efforts, they produce the pathos of "liberation" and "rebirth" on part of the disadvantaged. The proposed project will focus on several language cultures in order to cope with the cultural complexity of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It will analyse the relation of the single system "culture" and the social space that is also symbolically tagged. Additional knowledge of languages on part of the Austrian and Hungarian collaborators, an international board and networks as well as accompanying workshops and conferences will facilitate a mutual and manifold examination of the theme.

The project`s aim was to investigate diverse `spaces` of the Habsburg monarchy 1867 and 1918, and assumed, in the wake of the `spatial turn`, that several spatial aspects - of territorial as well as of symbolic spaces - would overlap. Especially, those concepts and strategies of spatial organization and construction were taken into consideration, that were known to be relevant historically for traveling, migration and gender both in the centers and at the peripheries. The transdisciplinary and specifically cultural questions of images of the Self and the Other, of memory and gender, as they had been analyzed in the previous project (Herrschaft, ethnische Differenzierung und Literarizität. Fremd- und Selbstbilder in der Kultur Österreich-Ungarns 1867-1918), have now been refined and made concrete. In three methodological-theoretical workshops on migration, gender studies and space/place the team intensified its research efforts and expanded it transdisciplinarily in close internal cooperation. This resulted in clear thematic focuses for the six researchers of the team: migrants to Vienna from the southeastern provinces, gender constructions of internal migrants, discourse on the Danube, images of Montenegro in Austro-German literary texts resp. images of Austria in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well as the ethnography of Bukovina. A stronger turn towards history and anthropology as well as specifically targeted invitations to the concluding conference helped sharpen the transdisciplinary profile of the project. The findings of the project differ both from classical literary studies in taking in more of the contemporary historical context, but also from conventional studies in the history of ideas and political history. All over the project`s duration two volumes were published, that are dealing with the women`s movement in the Habsburg Monarchy and with the conflictual condition of centers and peripheries. Numerous invitations to international conferences and the response to the two volumes (there will be a second issue of the Centers/Peripheries volume soon) bear evidence to the actual relevance of the project`s topics. The project has proven that an interdisciplinary cultural approach is capable of delivering a substantial contribution to a new and differentiated picture of the Habsburg Monarchy. The topic of the project`s research belongs, among subjects with a distinctly Austrian outlook, to the most relevant ones today, in this transdisciplinary field, as numerous contacts with international colleagues and institutions have shown. Thereby, both new approaches and new research results should be noted - such as in the fields of gender and migrants` history, but also regarding the analysis of historical peripheral spaces (Bukovina, Southeastern Europe). Six monographic studies on the abovementioned sub-topics can be presented, whose probing into the research material is informed by the latest debates in contemporary Kulturwissenschaften, centered around the concepts of space, boundaries, identity construction, center and periphery. Each of these studies is venturing into unexplored realms and they are all significant contributions to a specifically Austrian perspective in Kulturwissenschaften. What the research publications demonstrate, is that the team has managed to modify and differentiate its own methodological assumptions, as in the case of postcolonial theory. The political significance of the research project consists mainly: in the intensified cooperation with universities abroad in Western, but especially in Central Europe; regarding European integration, in an equal part of the new Central European democracies in this process; in overcoming traditional nationalist discourses, as they can still be found in the media today.