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Quite a bit in the genesis of the modern use of the term if you look at the debates in the seventies and eighties. Quite prominent a theme in fact in the contributions of your co-national, Gyorgy Konrad.

I must admit I had no clue. Intrigued, I started off for a search; and so far I find there was apparently a so-called "Central Europe Debate", in which Konrád participated; kicked off by Milan Kundera's 1984 essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe", positing that in Central Europe is a part of the West kidnapped by the East, where intellectuals fight for European values against Soviet-Russian "de-Europeanisation", and that Central European intellectualism was the real center of European civilisation. That's strong tobacco indeed. Apparently, his strongest critic in the ensuing debate was emigrant Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. I am still reading.

(At any rate, while I may have absorbed Cewntral Europe myths created by the eighties dissident movement, I doubt my geography class curriculum was influenced by Konrád & co.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sat May 10th, 2008 at 04:58:14 PM EST
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