From Region to Culture, from Culture to Class

Abstract

The paper articulates a sort of dialectic of the ruling culturalist discourse that is currently cast on the East European region. The opening moment analyses the culturalization of the Eastern region's identity and its impact on the continental map. The second stage will shift the perspective to the particular level of the Eastern region itself, where an account of the events surrounding the Romanian “coup d’e´tat” from the summer of 2012 will track down the effects of the culturalist discourse in the internal social dynamic of the region, and its gradual overlapping with the class divide. Finally, once the issue of class is touched, the very adventures of the culturalist discourse will take us back to the transnational level, where the culturalist discourse could overcome the structural issue of class struggle.

Keywords:

• post-communist Romania
• culture
• class
• economic crisis
• discourse

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Since the writing of this essay, significant events have been unfolded in Eastern Europe, that, on the one hand, seem to contradict the recent irrelevance of the region in world politics as it is claimed here, and on the other hand largely overshadow the significance and repercussions the case study discussed in this essay (the Romanian referendum in August 2012). However, if we were to confront our critical analysis of the culturalist ideological deployment with the unfolding of crisis in Ukraine, the argument for the relevance and the extreme material efficiency of the culturalist ideological frame seems rather confirmed by the tragic events. For what else should one read in the spectacular developments in Ukraine, if not, on the one hand, the spontaneous, yet interested on both parties, culturalist reading of a geopolitical and economic issue (the choice between EU and Russia as Ukraine’s main exchange partner framed as a cultural civilizational clash between the land of the free and the empire of authoritarianism), and, on the other hand, the extreme, immense efficiency of this cultural mystification – its degeneration into a virtually enduring civil war – civil also in the sense that the stasis of the nation is lived and performed as an internal civilizational split. As for the question of whether this new “Cold War”, as it is called, brought the Eastern European region back into the spotlight of historical and geopolitical relevance, this is debatable: true, Eastern Europe is no longer merely the internal periphery of Western capitalism, it is, or at least seems highly likely to become, the contested area between two assertive capitalist empires. It might be more relevant on a global stage; it’s not necessarily more honourable.

2. In other words, there is nothing inherently specific to the Eastern European region in this culturalist treatment; as it will be shown later, this reading is rather mobile and can be extended or applied also to other (semi)peripheries – such as Southern Europe.

3. As Fleming (2000) rightly pointed out, “Hermann Keyserling’s wry observation, ‘If the Balkans did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them’, was perhaps understated. Even though the Balkans do exist, they must be invented anyway. Simultaneously and tautologically, then, the Balkans are both fully known and wholly unknowable”.

4. See the already consistent bibliography produced by this anthropological turn: Dunn (2004); Humphrey (2002); Mandel and Humphrey (2002).

5. Unfortunately, this culturalist explanation of continental economic divisions creates a situation where even the resistance to the EU’s economic policies is couched in cultural terms, even in the works of some of the best contemporary critical theorists – see Agamben’s (2014) recommendation that the solution lies in replacing the hegemonic German culture with the Latin one (“The Latin Empire Should Strike Back”, http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/3593961-latin-empire-should-strike-back).

6. As Lapavitsas pertinently deconstructed this cultural construction, the reason for Germany’s surpluses and higher competitiveness is not the moral superiority of the German workers, their dedication and workaholism, but the pressure and squeezing of their wages (Lapavitsas et al. 2012). Hence, the cultural opposition between Germany and Greece conceals in fact a particular dynamic of class struggle – more on this in the closing paragraphs of the article.

7. The moralizing intentions and culturalist bias of the official political economy of the EU obviously lead to contradictory policies. See, for example, the EU’s recommendation to Greece that it should increase the legal limit for working hours: this move, which effectively increases the unemployment rate, thus amplifying one of the problems it was supposed to solve, is nevertheless legitimized on the basis of its culturalist underlying idea, according to which the problem with the Greeks is that they are too lazy and do not work enough. For an extremely relevant discussion of the moralizing trend in the contemporary discourse of economics, see Fourcade et al. (2013), especially Wolfgang Streeck’s piece.

8. Again, the cultural mystification of the class division did not come out of a clear blue sky. The primal scene of the Romanian nascent democracy was the infamous street battles in June 1990, opposing the anti-communist intellectuals, who were protesting against the staying in power of the old communist nomenklatura and its reluctance to modernize and Europeanize the state, and the miners, who intervened in order to defend the elected government, but also the rights and workplaces they enjoyed under socialism. Thus, the social conflict has been couched in cultural terms from the very beginning, as a conflict between the European and democratic culture of the enlightened middle class, and the corrupted culture of passivity and collectivism of the working class. The intellectuals took a beating in 1990. But everything since then, and especially the austerity measures implemented lately, have been seen by them as a well-deserved vengeance over their uncivilized opponents, and as a necessary lesson on the virtues of liberal individualism and social Darwinism.

9. Not incidentally, a similar position and recommendation have been expressed by financial capital through the voice of Morgan Stanley, in relation to Southern Europe: the economic problems of the Southern countries are actually political problems, rooted in the excess of democracy and anti-fascism that, for historical reasons, has been inscribed in their Constitutions (http://www.constantinereport.com/jp-morgan-to-eurozone-periphery-get-rid-of-your-pinko-anti-fascist-constitutions/).