Utopia, vieraantuminen ja itäisen Euroopan muutos

Författare

• Henri Vogt

Abstract

Alienation is, in many ways, the antithesis of utopia. Life without utopia may lead to alienation, a fullfilled utopia may lead to alienation, or a utopia may turn out to be completely different from what one had dreamed of – and this may lead to alienation. The 1989 Revolution was a utopia par excellence in Eastern Europe; it was a national utopia born out of national alienation. However, what came after the Revolution was a great disappointment for many: they lost their jobs, they saw the old communists resurfacing in the world of business, or they simply realised how extremely poor they were. Also, and more importantly from the point of view of this essay, they understood how utterly incomplete even their old utopian horizon, the western world, necessarily was and is. All this may have led to very specific forms of alienation, and to forms which seem to be extremely difficult to analyse for the traditional social sciences. The best descriptions of post-revolutionary alienation can actually be found in fiction. Therefore, in the latter part of this essay, we will present two novels that fabulously illuminate this new estrangement of Eastern Europeans. In relation to these novels, we will try to make a conceptual distinction between two specific modes of alienation: the diachronic and the synchronic. Both these modes, however, are deduced from the same essential question: How can East meet West in the new circumstances? But before turning to this literary analysis, we will shortly prescribe some, as they appear to me, typically Eastern European forms of alienation before and after the Wall came down, such as being a dissident and the Nischengesellschaft.