I am a PhD student and researcher at the University of Vienna (Doctoral program: Austrian Galicia and its Multicultural Heritage). My PhD project titled “Cultural Communication in the Habsburg Monarchy. The Case of Galicia-Silesia/Silesia-Galicia (1848-1914)” focuses on connections between Austrian Galicia and Austrian Silesia, specifically on associations (cultural and educational, mostly national orientated), migration (in the context of industrialization), family history (e.g. of national activists and their connections) and inter-regional communication in the muti-ethnic Galician–Austrian-Silesian border land from a trans-and intercultural perspective, with particular reference to the establishment of national movements and their impact on “everyday (cultural) hybridity” .
My main fields of interest are: inter-/trans-cultural communication, border regions and trans-border/interregional networks, cultural hybridity, migration, minorities, transnational history of Central Europe.
The text below is an example depiction of historical and socio-cultural phenomena, closely connected with transfer, networking and communication, that I am working on, in my project frame.
No Network – No Nation? A hybrid actor, a monolithic idea and inter-ethnic dynamics in the Galician – Austrian-Silesian border region
The Galician-Silesian border land was a multilingual (German, Polish, Czech, Silesian) and multi-religious (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish) transit region between two crown lands of the Habsburg Empire: the Austrian Galicia and Austrian Silesia. This border region made up a frame for a multiethnic, hybrid community on one hand and national movements (German, Polish, Czech, Silesian) on the other hand, from which the Polish movement draws special interest in this context. The emergence and highly complex mechanism of the Polish national network in the Silesian-Galician borderland can serve as a prime example of establishing a network through the interconnecting of actors (national activists), of ideas (primarily the idea of a nation) and of objects (e.g. newspapers).
Thanks to multiple strategies and a lot of effort Pawel Stalmach (1824 -1891) created the Polish national network between Silesia and Galicia from the very beginning, within the local multiethnic community. Stalmach was born in Austrian Silesia, went to a Czech primary school, then to a German secondary school, studied protestant theology in Bratislava where he decided to become Polish activist thanks to his Slovak friends. Shortly before his death, he converted to Catholicism to make the relationship to the catholic Galician Poles easier, bringing first Polish books to Silesia and establishing the first relationship with Polish people. As the first initiator and main actor of the Silesian-Galician Polish national relations, he created a fundamental network by organizing of associations, newspapers, festivals, schools etc., that played a crucial role in the establishment of Polish national movement in Silesia – he recognized that this approach was the only way to convince at least part of the hybrid local community to give up their multiethnic origins in favour of a monolithic national identity.
Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture. London-New York 1994.
Chris Hann; Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.): Galicia. A Multicultured Land. Toronto 2005.
Pieter Judson: Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria. Cambridge 2006.
Tomasz Kamusella: Silesia and Central European Nationalisms: The Emergence of National and Ethnic Groups in Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia 1848-1914. West Lafayette 2007.
Wolfgang Welsch: Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today. In: California Sociologist, 17&18 (1994/1995), pp.19-39.
Hi Agniecka,
Your topic sounds really interesting! I’m looking forward to learn more about transnational networks (especially intellectual) crisscrossing borderlands. Also, I am really curious whether such networks can be extended to other, far-away borderlands, since one could argue all turn-of-the-century European borderlands faced similar challenges: opposing claims to space, contested identities, struggles for categorization and homogenization.
During my PhD I plan to deal in a comparative perspective with both the Scottish Highlands and the Szeklerland. In both cases, similar to the marginality of borderlands, I draw on their remote geographic position and explore how this impacted local discourses on identity. I claim that contemporary elites in the borderlands drew on a common, transnational cultural baggage in forging local identities.
Do you think there’s a common borderland imagery in fin de siecle Europe? Did it draw on widely circulating cultural currents such as arts and crafts and folk art nouveau (e.g. Zakopane Style)? How did local elites respond to contending claims of appropriation, especially nationalist projects, of cultural elites from prominent urban centers, such as the Warsaw Positivists, the Tatra Society or Pawel Stalmach’s circle in Bratislava and elsewhere (and, why not, similar bodies in Budapest)?
I find the Galician case fascinating exactly because it reflects all these conflicting claims to its identity. Nevertheless, I’m not that familiar with it and I would like to hear more on that, especially – although I’m not sure this is part of your interest – the role of the local mountainous landscape in narratives of the regional Self. I am aware from Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory that the myth of the Polish forest was central to mapping partitioned Poland. But up to this point I only read a few articles on the Galician borderland by Patrice Dabrowski, David Crowley and Edward Manouleian. So, would be nice to hear more on these topics.
Dear Agnieszka, dzinki, I like your project a lot, perhaps not a surprise given my interests in borders and border lands, their perception as opposed to the actual function of borders (limitation of territory, establishment of a territorial regime). The introduction to your topic and interests sparked a number of questions – some related to networks or ideas & people on the move, some far more general.
On networks and nationalism: Classic texts tend to address nationalism in the form of phases or “movements” – not though the lens of networks (Anderson, Gellner, Hobsbawm – the latter in particular; the first two more through anonymous process of modernisation). In this respect the application of network (as a concept, a way of looking and studying connections) can be a very promising. National movements have often been studied through the same canonical texts and ideas – assuming they were disseminated widely, read, and perhaps understood. Leaders of national movements stand out. Networks work differently and need to be distinguished from movement. Networks are based around actors (like your P Stalmach) and tend to be “flat”, horizontal, non- (or less) hierarchical then a movement (lead by leader, party, society).
If this is a perspective you follow (nationalism in a region through a network and individuals), I would be interested to see the links? Are they purely regional and limited to it? If so, why? Or, are there much wider links to other networks or transfers from other networks working on similar ideas but geographically elsewhere?
On the notion of network and a case such as yours: What is the network? What is in it, what is not in it? Is your network defined by actors only? Or (following B Latour and object-based connections and agency) are ideas, newspapers (objects in general) included in the idea of the network? This partly relates to my comment above on movements and more widely to intellectual history. Strangely (as I see it, but this may be my ignorance) more traditional intellectual history as I see it focuses on the text (let us assume a text, freestanding or newspaper article, on Polish nationalism). Once the text is born and out, ideas spread – often anonymously, it is more assumed that texts are read and spread than shown (which, admittedly, can be hard; see R Darnton, how readers responded to Rousseau). This is where I see the potential benefit of applying network as a lens and tool for analysis as it may allow the actual making, spreading, disseminating of ideas through actors.
I have more thoughts on chronology, but I finish on this one here. Your language of “hybridity” and “borders” caught my attention. If your actors and network operate along a border and are hybrid – they are borderlandish and hybrid in relation to what? The centre? Vienna? A norm? Is this something your actors associate themselves with as the 19th century progressed, i.e. seeing them selves as decanter, not fulfilling the norm, being “nationally deficient”. Perhaps I misread this but could your project be decentred, i.e. placing your actors and their network at the centre of the story rather than the methodologically pre-detmermined language of hybridity (H Bhabha). Can you close your eyes and not think of the actual Habsburg, Prussian, Russian border, wipe them away and look at your actors and network without those borders in mind. What would the geography and spatiality of your network be like? Still a border? Still hybrid? Or devoid of any borders and decanter from any centres such as Vienna and state borders and entity in its own right?
Just some thoughts and very much looking forward to learning more. Martin Schaller could be an interesting person to speak to, though you may know him already.
Best wishes,
Bernhard