Magdalena Garbacik-Balakowicz
Report on the International Conference (download pdf)
IDEGEN – STRĂINUL – STRANGER
The Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania housed an international interdisciplinary conference entitled IDEGEN – STRĂINUL – STRANGER at its Miercurea Ciuc, Romania campus on 21-24 April 2017. The event was organised jointly by the Department of Humanities, the Department of Social Sciences, and the Workshop for the Study of Modern Mythologies of Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, in cooperation with the Society of Cultural Anthropology, the Romanian Association of General and Comparative Literature and the International Society of Hungarian Studies. The conference hosted the presentations by 115 scholars from different academic backgrounds (mainly European – Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Serbian, Slovak – but also American and Japanese). The presentations were delivered in three languages (Hungarian, Romanian and English).
The opening plenary lecture was given by Joep Leerssen, an established scholar affiliated with the University of Amsterdam (European Studies, Chair of Modern European Literature). The presentation, titled “The Campfire and the Hearth: Stranger vs Domesticity”, dealt with mapping cultural ethnotypes and discussed particular sociotypes as playing a crucial, formative role in developing stereotypes. Prof. Leerssen listed and discussed four stages of forming cultural stereotypes in Europe from the past until today: first there was the “Herodotus to Constantine” phase, when the Other meant Persians and barbarians; this was followed by the European Christendom phase, when the Muslims were perceived as the Other; the third phase, “Europe as Civilisation”, saw the Other as the Savage, and finally the phase of self-interrogation referring to Europe in the 20th century. In this latter phase the interest in national characters has shifted to the direction of a more critical approach in analyses of self–other dynamics, proposing studies based on identification as a central concept in the characterization of social and cultural nationalities. The lecture was a great introduction both to the theory of imagology, as a critical analysis of stereotypes existing in particular cultures, as well as to the topic of the conference, which in the intention of the organisers was meant to explore foreigner discourses and their representations in a present-day Europe. On the second day the plenary lecture was delivered by István Povrdák from the University of Szeged (Vallási Kultúra Kutatócsoport) and the Workshop for the Study of Modern Mythologies. His lecture, titled “Mit kezdjünk az idegenekkel, pláne, ha nem evilágiak?” (What shall we do with the strangers, especially when they are extraterrestrials?) focused on a very specific aspect of the myth of strangers, namely on the aliens, i.e. the extraterrestrial beings, and their symbolic representations in society and media.
The conference topic encouraged to consider the implications of the myth of strangeness in culture, media and politics from many different perspectives. The conference call addressed the narratives of these myths in universal culture, its origins in the light of cultural, economic, political and psychological factors. The main focus included, but was not limited to, considerations of: the (un)known stranger, the picture/image? of stranger in literature, folklore, film and media, the stranger and social stereotypes connected to him/it, the stranger and migration, minorities versus majorities, the stranger as an alien, foreign languages and their strangeness, we as strangers to others etc.
Connected to these questions, the sessions covered a wide spectrum of topics in the following fields: Anthropology, Contemporary Literature, English Literature, Linguistics, Communication Studies, and an Interdisciplinary Session was also included. The speakers addressed the concept and aspects of strangeness, as seen from the perspective of their particular fields. Strangeness and closeness, one of the most vivid antinomies, constitute to a great extent the world of today in the perspective of both politics, as one of the main factors in (re)establishing the new wave of nationalisms in many European countries, and the Humanities, as an interdisciplinary question raised by many research centres as a reflection of today’s world. This broad-scale issue found its reflection in the diversity of presentations: from the picture/image? of strangeness in national literatures and folklore, problems of linguistic barriers in communication and religious movements involved in xenophobic agitation, through dialect and minority issues, the issue of economic migration and political refugees, to the symbolic representation of strangeness and the problem of alienation in school education. These topics were analysed on various examples from different regions of Europe, different nationalities, ethnic groups and languages. As an example of such a huge array of thematic diversity, we mention just a few from over a hundred presentations: Narratives to a stranger under the political influence in Slovakia: Hungarian minority research by an anthropologist who is not “at home” delivered by Yuko Kambara Yamane (University of Kitakyushu, CEU), Passive constructions – strangers among L1 speakers of Hungarian? delivered by Enikő Tankó (Sapientia University), Az “idegen” fogalmának értelemtartalma a kortárs antropológiaelméletben: kritikai paradigma és a lokális színtér [The notion of the concept of “stranger” in contemporary anthropology theory: critical paradigm and local scene] delivered by Gábor Biczó (University of Debrecen), Constructing a Stranger in Ritual Abuse Panic delivered by Rafał Smoczyński (Polish Academy of Sciences), Ki az idegen? A személység problematikája Grecsó Krisztián Mellettem elférsz című regényében [Who is the stranger? Personality in the novel Mellettem elférsz by Krisztián Grecsó] delivered by Andrea Balogh (Partium Christian University).
The conference resulted in a fruitful international debate, which did not only focus on theoretical aspects of the archetype of stranger, but also gave a great opportunity to exchange the scientific and cultural experience of scholars from different cultural backgrounds and ipso facto giving them the occasion to reflect on their own “strangeness” and try to overstep it.
The publication of the official volumes is planned for November 2017.
Apart from more traditional sessions, a virtual session also took place, see:
https://stranger2017blog.wordpress.com/
For the full programme of the conference and the abstracts see:
https://stranger2017blog.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/stranger_abstracts.pdf