Projects
In my project I intend to focus on intellectual networks activating across the Iron Curtain in order to contribute to the reconstruction of the dynamic of Cold War cultural exchanges and to challenge the conceptual assumptions underpinning the anti-communist taxonomies.
My aim is not just to contrast networks of data gathering with the taxonomical processing of the data, but also to analyze the very process of inferring dichotomies and separating the truth from lies as an inter-discursive confrontational practice unfolding along (and not in spite of) informal trade-offs and ideological trespassing. I attempt therefore to enhance a meta-critical approach to the classifying and documenting of “resistances” as well as of “truthful” behaviors under Communism by investigating the practice of “observing”, “monitoring” and “commenting” on “deviances” by external and internal critical agencies during the Cold War (such as Radio Free Europe and the Security Police). The analysis of transnational cultural agents acting as informative collaborators will be confronted with the critical reading of the bureaucratic archival data belonging to the agencies feeding upon their very mobility. System theory and historical epistemology will provide the tools for the understanding of the paradoxical dynamic of the reproduction of classificatory schemes through the systemic and systematic trespassing of cultural, ethical and political borders within an information poor environment.