Individual projects
As part of the Sofia Visiting Fellowship Dr Litina will be exploring the attempts for the lifting of the Schism between the Bulgarian Church (1872) and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople between 1932-1935, investigating the involvement of the Bulgarian State in the decisions of the Bulgarian Church on this issue, as well as the involvement of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which had played a crucial role in the efforts to prevent the Schism six decades earlier, and finally the role of international diplomacy in these negotiations within the wider context of the British Mandate in Palestine and the Middle East (1922-1948). Dr Litina will be consulting mainly unpublished documents preserved in Libraries and Archives in Sofia, including the Central State Archives in Sofia (ЦДА), the Ecclesiastical Historical and Archival Institute of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as well as ecclesiastiical journals of the Bulgarian Church and articles published in the national and local Bulgarian Press. It is hoped that the results of the research will shed further light on this subject in particular and on the history of Bulgaria and the Balkans in the 20th century in general, highlighting the important role of ecclesiastical centres of power in shaping political developments in the region.
My research explores the link between the collection and storing of social knowledge and the exercise of state power in Wallachia from the late 17th to 1831. Focusing on the emergence, content and especially employment of registers in administration and justice and on the collection of geographical information, I contend that the nature of the Wallachian state during the mentioned period was significantly altered. On the one hand, the development of means of storing information increased the infrastructural reach of the state. On the other, the centralization of administrative knowledge constituted the state as an impersonal, impartial and objective entity, detached from the person of the prince and from sectional interests. By making these two claims, my study goes against two bodies of literature: the historiography on the Phanariot period and the theories of early-modern state formation.
The project historicizes the project of Southeast European studies in order to shed light on its role in the successful coalescing of trans-ideological Balkan identities in times of bi-polarism. Regional scholarly collaboration was the product of multi-leveled and -directional appropriation. The process took place both laterally (absorbing contemporary trends in other geographical areas, Western Europe, UNESCO, the postcolonial states) and diachronically (integrating national and European culture of the past). It became the foundation of the new identity of the local political regimes and of the re-invention of the Balkans from 1960s onwards. Starting with the sixties, social scientists from countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, and Turkey (along with representatives of other twelve countries), under the umbrella of the AIESEE (the International Association for Southeast European Studies), established a milieu of interaction that allowed them to formulate regional scholarly discourses and narratives that could escape the mark of periphery. AIESEE was funded by UNESCO and local Academies of Sciences (Romania and Bulgaria were its most active advocates). By early 1970s, this scholarly endeavor even functioned as model for similar enterprises in other geo-cultural regions (Scandinavian countries, North Africa, etc.). The project of Southeast European studies emancipated regional epistemic and political discourses through the integration of validated traditions and international postcolonial cultural practices. It simultaneously projected and legitimized ethnocentric topoi onto the Balkan and European stage. Perceived alterity was addressed by agreeing on what set apart the Southeast in either Europe or the bipolar world; and, by consenting, at least for a while and only to certain extent, not to challenge new, postwar epistemically-founded particularlisms.
My project analyzes the politics of European business ventures in the Ottoman Empire between 1850 and 1880, a time of risky enterprises that attracted the attention of governments and business milieux alike with the promise of producing social progress and high financial profits. By exploring how such ventures compelled both the European and Ottoman partners to readjust their strategies and expectations, the project brings into question the conventional assessments about the European origin of development and about Ottoman backwardness. As an alternative, it investigates how such businesses stimulated political elites in Europe and the Ottoman Empire to reconsider their states’ power, and the new ventures’ impact on the domestic and international political order. To analyze such transformations of vision, the project examines how networks of British, French and Ottoman businessmen and politicians who pursued railway ventures in the Ottoman Empire lobbied for these popular 19th century enterprises and dealt with competitors, scandals and failures.
Key words: railways; development; business networks; government; Ottoman Empire; Britain; France
The research project is focused on the fluid forms of radicalization of religious subjective attitudes emphasizing an "experience without intermediaries". My first main goal will be to analyze in a sociological perspective the segmentation of the religious field in Bulgaria in the post-communist context, with a focus on the most widespread syncretic forms of religiosity of a pre- and non-Christian inspiration (neo-paganism, Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age) and the practices aimed at "holistic well-being". I will deal with the reception of these movements, specifically of their content and practices, among Bulgarian women with a high educational and cultural capital. I will concentrate on the specific features of holistic spirituality in two age groups: that of women aged between 25 and 35 and women between 55 and 65. My second main goal will be to study whether, and in what respects, the new forms of women's spirituality are coupled with the modern health technologies of "spiritual healing and perfecting of the psychological potential". This means I will be interested not only in the choice of religious content that Bulgarian women make but also in whether their choices actually lead to a change in their way of life.
My first basic hypothesis is the assumption that the new forms of religiosity, of "searching for oneself", can be fruitfully studied among Bulgarian women in terms of the reflective-biographical dimension of religion. This implies that the approach to the study will be focused on the "points of religious conversion" in the life trajectories of women, and on the family traditions in which they were formed or from which they have pushed away. This biographical perspective is expected to show that, in the age of late modernity, self-perfection and self-observation are interpreted not only in terms of the "dynamics of proving oneself", but also in the context of a re-enchantment of the world. My second hypothesis is that, while in Western countries women's striving for a sustained, enduring achievement of personal autonomy and freedom from paternalistic control is implicitly taken to be a tool for feminist social critique, in post-communist Bulgarian society it is rather a result of a "sense of distinction" with respect to the traditional religions, and of the free choice of a lifestyle, conceived of through the categories of the consumption of religious goods.
Drawing inspiration from cultural theory of modernity by Charles Taylor, according to whom different local forms of self-understanding determine different outcomes of modernizing processes, the project focuses on a common ground between the concept of general equality, espoused by proponents of radical Enlightenment, and the idea of liberty cultivated by Polish noble republicanism. Convergence of these seemingly irreconcilable perspectives in political treaties of half-forgotten political writers of the eighteenth century like Michal Wielhorski, Adam Wawrzyniec Rzewuski and Wojciech Turski resulted in a vision of alternative modernity that differed in some important respects from programmes of contemporary Polish mainstream reformers. It rested on the assumption that civic capacities do not depend on wealth and therefore civic and political rights should be extended beyond nobility. It brought also a stark defence of decentralised state and decisive condemnation of Western colonial practices of the period. By discussing such an alternative modernity the project aims to challenge persistent image - forged in the epoch of Enlightenment by Western philosophers along with travel writers and recurring to this day in many historical accounts of the region - of static eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, where servitude remained unquestioned and unreflected upon by ruling elites.
Presentation of the project will start with a discussion of its theoretical background, mainly basic premises of Taylor's cultural theory of modernity and the concept of hybridity borrowed from postcolonial theories. Theoretical introduction will be followed by outlining key problems covered by the project and a more detailed analysis of the idea of general equality in Polish reception of radical Enlightenment.
Recognition of group rights implies the development of conceptual frameworks and institutional arrangements able to guarantee the representation of national diversities in the socio-political life of the state. Moving from this consideration, a set of research activities and joint projects have been initiated in the last years with the aim to debate alternative socio-political arrangements able to address the problem of inclusion of National Minorities/Communities. Particularly relevant in this trend of investigations is the new momentum gathered by the discussion of the National-Cultural Autonomy Principle as an alternative to the territorialization of ethnicity.
The National-Cultural Autonomy Principle stands on the interpretation given by Karl Renner of the contrasting nature of state and nation, and on his criticism of the ‘territorial principle' presumed to underlie the construction of the modern Nation-State.
The research wants to investigate the Ottoman Millet System and to discuss its structure and functioning in relation to the idea of National-Cultural Autonomy advanced by Austro-Marxists at the end of the XIX century. The specific objective of the analysis is to present similarities and differences of the two models, especially addressing their conceptual foundations and structural organization. The Millet System and National-Cultural Autonomy will also be examined in relation to the idea of segmental/functional autonomy advanced by Lijphart in his definition of Consociational Democracy. The result of this comparison will be discussed within the broader framework of the above-mentioned debate on Non-territorial arrangements as instruments of management of diversities in multinational states.
The Birth of the Concept "Personality" and the Problem of Identity, and Their Impact on the Transition from Medieval Ontotheology to Modern Critical Theory
The aim of my research is to examine if there is a direct relation between the reconstruction of the concept of the knowing subject itself and the transformation of the definition of the main subject of philosophy. I will try to show, that there is dependency between the new way of understanding the single unique human being not just as an individual real representation of a finite created nature, but also as self-conscious cognitive subject, capable of knowing the being qua being as first cognizable, independently from knowledge of Gods existence, but nevertheless dependent upon him for its being, as far as it is not being per se, and the transition from the traditional ontotheolgy of the scholasticism to the newer metaphysics as transcendental ontology by John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and later to its transformation by Francisco Suárez (1548 - 1617) and Christian Wolff (1679 - 1754) into Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy, based on the notion of transcendental apperception.
In order to demonstrate the above explicated thesis, following the principles of hermeneutics, I will examine the major transformation within the epistemological theories of the late scholasticism and the early modern critical philosophy, showing, that this shift is a result not from some abrupt change of methodology, but is caused by the essential difference between two concepts of "self". That is why I claim, that the important transition, which should be carefully examined from the view point of history of philosophy, is the one, focused on this fundamental reversal: how and when the guaranteed by God finite identity and unity of the knowing subject is transformed into self-sufficient self, independent of any absolute infinite ontological guarantee. Both methodological approaches - the one of Scotus and the one of Kant - are in a very narrow sense "critical", as far as they examine the conditions of human knowledge. But the concepts of the knowing subject, the idea of person in general, are substantially different, that is to say, the great change in epistemology from ontotheology to transcendental philosophy lies not in the methodological turn, but rather is produced by the redefinition of the concept of person and the new idea of identity and unity of the self, which one can clearly distinguish within Kant's theoretical framework, in opposition to Scotus, where we do have ontology, but also have an intellectual being, fully depended on the absolute being of God.
Fashioning Fashion in Socialist Bulgaria
The project will inquire into the paradoxical status of fashion under socialism, more specifically of fashion in clothing in socialist Bulgaria. Socialist authorities had a rather ambivalent relationship with fashion throughout the regime - on the one hand, fashion was ideologically incompatible with socialist ideals, it was considered a repugnant and unwanted remnant of the decadent, bourgeois, capitalist society; on the other hand, it was deliberately employed as an ideological tool in the shaping of the "new socialist man", inculcating socialist moral values and virtues. Fashion was subject to the pragmatic considerations governing the centrally planned economy of production and distribution and its deficiencies, at the same time it played an instrumental role in promoting socialist "consumer culture", especially from the 1960s onwards, and, unwittingly, in encouraging some black market practices. Fashion under socialism in Bulgaria, even if tied up to the Soviet fashion model, was struggling to emancipate itself from Western fashion by resorting to the invention of a specific national style in accordance with the formula "national in form, socialist in content", incorporating motifs borrowed from the "traditional" folk costume. All the same, popular imagination remained fascinated with Western fashion and commodities, as a result producing a variety of alternative fashion practices, some of which persecuted by the authorities.
The project will pursue a historical reconstruction of the changing dynamics of the "system of fashion" in the years of socialist rule in Bulgaria (1944-1989) by critically examining the various agencies shaping fashion and the complexity of institutional, ideological, economic, social, and cultural factors brought into play. The project will furthermore attempt to uncover how the system of official and unofficial (or alternative) fashion practices used to function in socialist Bulgaria. In this way, it will shed light not only on how the ideological guidelines were set and imposed from above, but also on how they were adopted and "domesticated" from below.
With my research I propose a closer look at the beginnings of the national style in Bulgarian architecture, focusing on the end of the 19th century, when architects write about a local Byzantine style and plan neo-byzantine buildings. It has become a common trope in academic literature to mention a relationship between the national architectural styles of Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia and their Byzantine heritage, but this relationship has not been thoroughly investigated. Even if the architects in all three countries share a common view of themselves as the inheritors of Byzantine architecture and the continuators of it through the national styles they create, it seems to me that there are important nuances in what they understand when referring to “Byzantine architecture” and its appropriateness as a source for their own projects, built or theorized. In a period when “Byzantine” itself was a nebulous notion, the elusive, fluctuating, sometimes overlapping manner in which East European architects refer to it, at the intersection of the Western view of the Byzantine and its local instrumentalizations might shed light on both how an architectural style is conceived as being “national”, and how it is seen by its contemporaries to succeed or fail in this attempt.
Controversies around how should a national style look like emerged in Bulgaria during the last decade of the 19th century. If in the interwar period architects tend to question the relationship of such a style with its possible vernacular sources, just before the turn of the century it is believed that the national style should stem from the Byzantine one. What could this proposed “Bulgarian-Byzantine” style be has not yet been studied, as far as I am aware. The question is pertinent, because, at the time there is no general agreement concerning what the Byzantine style would be. The literature on the Byzantine architecture becoming a subject of interest to art historians and architects, and on the invention of the “Byzantine style” (in connection with a short-lived “Romano-Byzantine style” and the “Romanesque style”) is quite recent and concerns mostly the French and German art history of the second half of the 19th century. The way in which these newly “discovered” styles were taught in Western art academies, how this knowledge was translated and adapted in the countries where the Byzantine heritage existed, and the interdependencies between Western and Eastern-European scholarship on Byzantine architecture are still problems to be investigated. Which were this style’s characteristics – what made a medieval church to be considered “Byzantine”, for example – was something still to be decided upon; also, it was not clear if this style should be regarded as an “Oriental style” or an “European” one. In any case, the invention of the “Byzantine style” in German and French art history is closely connected to, influencing and being influenced by the creation of various neo-byzantine styles. Both the scholarly interest in the Byzantine architecture and its adequacy for the creation of a new style – be it national or not – have different meanings, depending on the context: for Jewish communities in Germany, building a neo-byzantine synagogue was a way of asserting their “Orientalness” differentiating them from the German milieu in which, at some point, they believed they assimilated themselves to a too large degree; for Otto I of Greece it was an argument in support of the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in accordance with the Megali Idea; in the Bulgarian case, this is still a question to be answered. But one can notice that when referring to the “local Byzantine” heritage as a starting point in the creation of a national style, Bulgarian architects tend to privilege the Rila monastery, built during the 18th and the 19th centuries, as one of the most accomplished examples. The selection of this monastery is, of course, motivated by the fact that it was built during the glorious epoch of the “Bulgarian Revival”; however, the fact that it was possible to consider an 18th-19th century building as a “local Byzantine” could have been, to a certain extent which needs to be evaluated, facilitated by the fact that Byzantine art itself was treated by German and French art historians and architects as fixed in an almost atemporal medievalness.