Frivolous people think that human progress consists of a quantitative increase of things and ideas. Certainly not. Real progress lies in our ever more intensive perception of five or six basic mysteries.

Liberty is one thing and liberation another. Liberation is a phenomenon of external life. Liberty is a phenomenon of internal life. True liberty starts with moral revival.

To Bulgarians, democracy came as liberation from the ossification of Communist society, from the platitude of a discourse in which everything was an "announced conclusion." It was intoxicating to say and do things that previously had been taboo, such as free elections, a multi-party system, roundable debates, strikes, candlelight vigils in squares, or a fire in Communist Party headquarters. This study is not devoted to the subject of whether liberation has succeeded in evolving into liberty as civic responsibility and moral choice. It rather focuses on another dimension of the change, namely, now that passions over new themes are subsiding, intellectual discourse is increasingly centered on such perennial topics as the question of Bulgarian cultural identity.

Concerning the own/alien issue, our present reflections seem to dialogue with the pre-Communist rather than with the Communist age. For example, an anthology of interwar texts entitled Why Are We What We Are? was recently published. The first edition quickly sold out, indicating that the current flood of translated literature has not quenched the thirst for reflection on the "own." Current journals are also reprinting articles from the first half of the century. This purposefully constructs an intertext in which old and new texts meet in intellectual reflection as well as literally on the pages of one and the same journal, an intertext that makes it possible to trace changes in thematization and reveal both difference and similarity between former and present discourses on Bulgarian cultural identity.

Penelope asks Ulysses, who is disguised as a beggar, "Who art thou of the sons of men, and whence? Where is thy city, and where are they that begat thee?" Such questions outline a definite understanding of man in which individual and collective identity interrelate, which is why the query about the particular person is worded in the terms of ancestors, in terms of the native land. This article analyzes the conditions that orient an understanding of national identity into the terms formulated by Penelope, making other possible formulations socially irrelevant.

What do Bulgarians consider to be inherently their own, the epitome of their identity?

Tongue of my ancestors who trod this earth,

Tongue of great woes and age-old lamentation,

Tongue that the woman spoke who gave us birth

Language is the umbilical cord connecting us to the past, our ancestors and our forefathers. It preserves, bears and passes down memories over the centuries, and is a symbol of life passed on to us by our mother, our motherland ("tongue that the woman spoke who gave us birth"). Language bears the cross of historical suffering ("Who is there has not heaped abuse on you, / Fair tongue, or not refrained from wicked slanders?"), but it is also an expression of joy and delight in the beauty and wealth vested in it:

. . . what charm, what might

Lies in your speech, so supple and refreshing,

What scope in your rich tones, what splendor bright,

What swift and lively power of expression" (ibid.)

Language is conceived as the pivot of ethnic self-identity; language alone is capable of expressing spirituality. "If I pray in an (unknown) language, my soul prays but my mind remains barren" (The Life of Constantine the Philosopher). Language weaves the fibers of communication, generating a sense of understanding and community. "If I do not understand the meaning of the words, I will be a stranger to the speaker, and the speaker will be a stranger to me. . . . [I]n church I would rather say five comprehensible words so as to teach the others" (ibid.).

The creation of an alphabet and literature in the mother tongue is a cultural phenomenon of capital importance for all peoples. This is emphasized and elevated to an extent that demands self-sacrificial commitment. "The mediaeval biographers describe the salvation of native books as a fearless and sacrificial battle" (Bogdanov et al. 1991:169). "Immersion" in the language is a duty, a way of self-realization through merging with the community. "The language of the writer is not only his confession, but is foremost a device for solving major national and social tasks," and writing "a duty to the truth and to language" (Germanov 1992:13, 17). One’s moral commitment to language is expressed in the way the discursive is bound to the epistemological, in the way the writer’s language is bound to the duty to speak the truth. Language is for writing the truth, not merely for writing.

Eastern Orthodoxy is one’s "own" through its positive presence as much as through its absence. When present, its significance has been weakened by various procedures, such as presenting it as a power intervention that failed to change the Bulgarian’s intrinsically pagan Weltanschauung. "An ancient faith was shaken and destroyed without being adequately replaced by another. . . . Christianity [was] petrified in the formalism of a dogma incompre-hensible to the masses" (Mutafchiev 1934:359).

Another way to weaken the significance of Christianity is to ascribe heresy the same, if not higher, status as the canon. The most eloquent example of this is the Bulgarian’s adulation of the Bogomils.

A third operation refers "faith" to secular subjects. "This is the god Botev worships: the god of reason, defender of slaves" (Penev 1942:155). Intellectuals and writers correlate the Bulgarian mentality with the earthly visible rather than with the transcendent eternal. Desacralization of the beyond is thus supplemented by sacralization of the earthly. "[T]he spirit of the nation is the divine principle and divine power of the people" (Yanev 1933:343).

The own/alien ambivalence is also implied by the Bulgarian’s notion of the beyond. The Bulgarian does not experience the beyond as a transcendence but as a boundary which can be crossed and which divides two worlds that, while admittedly different, are not that different.

He has drawn the entire heavens, along with the Lord God [Diado Gospod, literally, Grandfather God], down to earth. And we often see this elderly gray-bearded

"master of the heavens" . . . drop in on masters of the earth . . . or contend with some daredevil. When the Bulgarian peasant ascends the heavens, he tells how . . . the Lord God is something of a mayor, discharging his official duty quietly and kindly. Up there it is exactly the same as down here (Slaveikov 1923:58).

 

The drama of unattainable transcendence, the experience of faith in an ideal other who demands suffering, is not inherent in the Bulgarian. "In his yearning and ideal he never lets go, never goes beyond this world. To him the kingdom of heaven is here on earth" (Yotsov 1934:64). The ideal is assimilated by being brought "down to earth." While part of its sanctity has thereby been taken away, so has part of its alien nature.

In the mine/alien coordinate system, nature is neither level nor symmetrical. Bulgarians are highlanders. They feel at home on land that is high, independent, free as the wind and hard to access. "The Balkan Range was too low for me, the dark words too narrow, the sun too pale!" (Sheitanov 1925:254). Slaveikov emphasizes the "intimate" bond between the Balkan Range and the history of Bulgarians. "In the age of bondage . . . to take a breath of fresh air the Bulgarian would withdraw to the Balkan Range, seeking shelter in its barely accessible recesses. And he would leave the fertile plains to his masters" (Slaveikov 1923:50). The highlander (Balkandzhiya) is not a regional but a spiritual identity, designating one who is lofty in the Bulgarian spirit, not one who merely lives on high ground.

In the Bulgarian discourse on nature, we find neither the instrumental modern attitude that assimilates nature by subordinating it, nor the opposing Rousseauesque call to return to the fold of nature, both of which thematize nature within the culture/nature dichotomy. There is fusion rather than opposition, attraction rather than contrast, destiny rather than instrumentality. Nature is "a space experienced as destiny" (Yanev 1934:345).

Nature is assimilated through experience rather than through action, and it is not external to, but rather an organic part of, the social. These ties between nature and the social reside in the realm of the spiritual, not in the field of the material such as geography, resources or energy. "[T]he soul of a people `rests in the native land’" (Yanev 1934:346). Theirs is not a power relationship, like use or conquest, but rather a holy relationship: "the native land is untouchable and holy" (ibid.). Love does not take its subject literally but transforms it, and this affective metamorphosis turns land into skies, flight and liberation. "The love of Bulgarians for the land is one of the best forms of love for liberty" (Hristov 1939:459).

Land, people, kin and individual are linked together into a single "organism." These separate parts develop and blossom only if they are nourished by its life-giving fluids. "We can hope to produce something in the field of poetry only when we nurture this flower so that it too grows and develops from the juices of our soil" (Tsaneva 1992:103). The classical poet Slaveikov agrees, and present-day commentary emphasizes the same organic metaphors. "The finest flowers in Slaveikov’s work grew on our native soil, nourished by the fluids of Bulgarian national culture" (Tsaneva 1992:103).

This organism is alive and viable only as long as it is intact. Not only is its dismemberment painful, so too is the mere thought and premonition of dismemberment:

Problematizing the organic bond with the motherland is dramatic for both the poet and the contemporary literary critic, who borrows his vocabulary from the organic view of the ethnic idea. The motherland is "live flesh," an organic whole ("own, integral") that incorporates both those it attracts and those it alienates ("each one"). She can be good ("mother") or evil ("stepmother"), but even when questioned, the native country is there, visible and stable in her almost litany-like naming ("Fatherland," "Motherland"). The commentary is affective, the words strong and passionate ("shameful," "painful," "ripping off").

The physical body is a symbolic body to the philosopher, but philosophers are also inclined to turn the symbolic body into a physical body, such as when the Motherland becomes a mother or the Balkan Mountains. Culture thus becomes nature, the latter having the advantages of objectivity, stability and non-arbitrariness. As an organic body sets the functions of its parts "in order," making both their relationships and their pre-coded character look natural, what is actually culture-based comes to seem unproblematic, self-evident, and "natural." "The intelligentsia is predestined to represent the nation (Katsarski 1992:72).

From Plato’s Symposium (1982, vol. 2:442-445) we remember Aristophanes’s myth of the Androgynes who, with indomitable force and valor, dared to challenge the very gods. Furious, Zeus punished them by splitting them in two. Yet the halves pined away for each other and longed to come together again, even if fusion at times brought death. This is one of the most eloquent "corporeal" metaphors of the idea that differentiation is inferiority, imperfection, dissatisfaction. Association is well being, and smoothing out differences and attaining integrity are harmony and achievement. Many thinkers since Plato have conceived the social within the perspective of fusion. Our understanding of "own" is within the same perspective. The well-being of the individual is inconceivable and impossible without the well-being of the community, and only the latter is conceived as having the attributes of completion and perfection.

[T]he nation is the fullest and most perfect community. . . . [T]he well-being of each one of its members is conceivable and possible only as part of the well-being of the nation and only he who preserves its spiritual and physical integrity makes real progress (Mutafchiev 1940:392).

 

Conceiving the "own" in terms of an organic body has several import-ant implications. For example, the links are based on "blood" rather than on contract or agreement. "Blood" is something you are born with rather than something you choose, involving predestination rather than freedom. Belonging to the "own" is determined by birth, not by self-determination.

In 1932, Spiridon Kazandzhiev discussed two types of relationships between the individual and collective consciousness, namely, coordination and contradiction. The archetype of the former is Collective Man, and of the latter, the Individualist. Harmony between individual and collective makes the former "complete," whereas their disrupted unity makes the latter "fragmentary and dismembered." "The first case has always been considered normal, and the second morbid" (Kazandzhiev 1932:164).

The patriarchal community is the life-world of collective man. It guarantees an objectified "animate" world consisting of domesticated animals, manmade tools, and the full labor cycle that is subordinate to the individual. This world has been assimilated by tradition and ordered through the life of the traditional community. "The worldview of the patriarchal consciousness is found in tradition; the world is constructed and solved" (Kazandzhiev 1932:167). Modern society distances materiality from man, mediating his relationships with it through an ever-increasing number of mechanisms, ideologies, technologies and bureaucracies. Man thereby loses not only the materiality but also the wholeness of his world, and he himself becomes relegated to its partial functions. The world becomes more and more different and "alien."

In 1994, Bogdan Bogdanov wrote about the two types of welfare, that of status and that of change. Holistic consciousness is inclined to transform and adjust every organization (company, party or foundation) to the model of the organic community. In this informal "warm, acute and non-conventional" relationships prevail, in order to lock in its own space, where time is the slow time of security.

The open mind, however, proceeds from self-reflection on "alienness," both that of others as well as one’s own. The individual is not autonomous vis-à-vis one’s community, but rather is inclined to regard both oneself and the community as "other." One becomes free in constructing one’s identity, moving within a network of material mediators, rival ideologies and numerous communities.

For Kazandzhiev, the future man is possible only through the collective since "he cannot take spiritual values from anywhere else" (Kazandzhiev 1932:173). For Bogdanov, the solution is departure from the non-differentiated communal consciousness that does not distinguish cultural dispositions from concrete political motivations, is incapable of leaving "the slow time" of the familiar, and is not inclined to open up to the other.

Both Kazandzhiev and Bogdanov regard the community, the collective or holistic whole, as "the real own." The former views the community as a thing of the past which, although it is now absent, should be reasserted as a model of the future. The latter thinks in terms of the paradigm of multi-dimensional time, where past, present and future are intertwined and, influencing each other, weave the fabric of culture. The last half-century has problematized the value of "our own," but it has not substantially changed it. Even as the ideal of communal unification as the supreme source of meaning has begun to crack, this very process of cracking has itself begun to provide a model since it is a rift, an openness. In the one case, value is attached to what is mine, while in the other it is ascribed to mine/alien, the awareness of their difference, and their face-to-face confrontation.

I would like to go a step further in this analysis and examine why "mine" is referred to the communal in such a permanent and existentially significant way. Simmel concludes in The Philosophical Testimony that Europe’s great discovery is objectivity.

The East knows no objective price, but only the evaluation of two people who are bargaining; no objective right, but just the ruling of the judge; no morality that judges objectively, but "he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." Plato discovers the objectivity of the spirit, Roman law the objectivity of law, Catholicism the objectivity of a religion about which Jesus knew nothing (Simmel 1990:299).

 

The nation is one of the "staunchest" forms of the objectivity of modernity, happily combining ontological and axiological predicates. The nation is not only objective, it is also necessary. And being both objective and necessary, it is a locus of well-being.

I would here like to put forward the hypothesis that the nation has come to replace faith. As secularization has increasingly deprived modern man of reliance on the beyond, the nation has begun to quench the thirst for transcendence, for realities that transcend the separate individual and guarantee meaning.

Paradoxically, this supreme expression of objectivity is perceived not only externally in the stability of its reality independent of the separate individual. The national is rather interiorized and experienced as the most cherished and intimate relationship. The discourse which describes it is highly emotional, amorous and even sexual, using such terms as "affection," "love," "aspiration," "devotion," "faithfulness," "flesh," "blood" and "body."

Schütz notes that the most important feature of sexual relationships is the incomparably deeper way in which the partners experience their Us as distinct from each of themselves and their partner. He writes that, "Not only is the subject experienced more or less directly, but also the very relationship, the targeting of the subject, the bond" (Schütz 1970:190). We develop together, mature together in this very Us - the Me/Other relationship.

This is one of the keys to understanding the sustainability of the communal as "own." It is assimilated objectivity. It is objective as the framework of a guaranteed world, but it is also assimilated in the relationship.

I believe that this is precisely what has escaped the analytical notice of even such profound liberal thinkers as Bogdanov. He emphasizes that the relationship between individual and community is mediated by such impersonal mediators as artifacts, technology and ideologies. However, the notion of the "own" as an Us-relationship does the very opposite in that it eliminates distance by experiencing the relationship as direct. An Us-relationship is not simply direct but also mutually beneficial, a relationship in which we "mature" together.

The own/alien relationship is an integral part of any reflection on selfhood, but the "own" can be unproblematically evident only in its pre-reflexive experience. The first attempt at realizing, understanding, and defining the identity of the "own" presents us with the question of its limits and its opposite, namely, the "alien." The "alien" is relevant to the "own" since the former is not merely different from the latter, but is significantly different. Eager to discern our cultural identity, we measure it not against the African or the Eskimo, but against Russia or Germany. In this sense, the "alien" has a positive content and is a specific form of interaction. As Simmel writes (1990:402), "The inhabitants of Sirius are not real strangers to us, at least not in the sociologically relevant sense; they are beyond near and far."

We differentiate various forms of the "alien," some of which we might desire and others that we would avoid. Both are relevant to ownness since they delimit its borders, that is, the line that divides ownness from its other, be it a negation or an ideal.

The "alien" is relevant to the "own" in another sense as well, namely, as constituting the "own." For example, Bulgarians are not devout believers, but in their relations with Turks they consider themselves Eastern Orthodox Christians. Stated otherwise, encounter with the "alien" topicalizes or even forms dimensions of identity that would otherwise remain latent or non-definitive of our own life-world.

Simmel observes that the ideal of the Frenchman is the perfect Frenchman, the ideal of the Englishman, the perfect Englishman. The ideal of the German is the perfect German, while his opposite, his other, his supplement, is the Italian (Simmel 1990). Similarly to the German, the self-reflection of the Bulgarian is inseparable from reflection on his or her opposite. Unlike that of the German, however, our own opposite is multi-faceted: Orient or Occident, Russia or Germany, Byzantium or Rome. The Bulgarian is certain neither of what he is himself nor of what exactly is his other, but his quest for the "own" is invariably and inevitably associated with reflection on the "alien." Part Two of this study deals with various hypostases of what is "alien" for the Bulgarian.

Which aspect of the "own" transforms itself into its opposite category of the "alien" in the easiest and most sustainable way? What is alien-ated and why?

K. Gulubov distinguishes three stages of the increasing alienation of the intelligentsia from the people. Typical of the first stage is Aleko Konstantinov, who not only has embodied in Bai Ganyo the intellectual’s inclination to find only shortcomings in the Bulgarian people, but also has the self-confident conviction that his vocation is to reform the people. The gap between the intellectual and the people is further widened by Pencho Slaveikov, son of the prominent national revival figure, Petko Slaveikov. He still loves his people, but he loves them "as an idea," "contemplating [them] from the high tower of his individualistic seclusion, occasionally announcing his revelations" (Gulubov 1934:229). The symbolist and individualist, Teodor Traianov, not only lives with a yet greater sense of superiority, he is even "alien" to any love for the people whatsoever.

There are two criteria for appraising the alienation of the intelligentsia, namely, (non)love of, and distance from, the popular. Invariably, the people remain significant as a point of departure:

The leaders of the people have become "rulers" of the people. And they are guided not by the destiny of the people, but by their personal ambition, their personal selfishness. . . . All parties have by now been discredited once and for all . . . all incumbent "political activists" have nothing to do with the people (Milev 1921:183-185).

 

Few periods of modern Bulgarian history are inconsistent with this definition.

What is relevant to this analysis is not so much the broad sphere of validity of its pessimistic appraisal but, rather, the alternative. Geo Milev expresses his mistrust towards politicians as well as the political. If the latter mistrust was not as categorical as the former, he would have indicated how political relations themselves could be positively developed, such as new political ideas, more efficient forms for selecting political representatives, and so forth. Instead, it is proposed that formal representative political relations be replaced by direct, narrow, organic relations that substitute "sons" for "rulers." "It is time — high time! — that the people produced from its depths its pure and honest sons. They alone will bring its renewal" (Milev 1921:185).

The impersonal nature of economic ties is even less consistent with the image of an "own" that does not have the features of formal rationality. "Taxes have not been seen as a contribution to the community, but as a slavish burden" (Sheitanov 1933:272). Any mediation, whether it be institutional or political, is unilaterally interpreted as distancing, as alien-ating. It entails "forgetting," that is, a loss or rejection of knowledge of the original unity. When mediation itself becomes an irrefutable reality, organic relationships are taken over by the mediators themselves, and parties, foundations and administrations are established on the basis of nepotism, common birthplaces or "old-boy networks."

If organic relationships of kinship are so ubiquitous, that is because there are no alternatives, no other types of relationships to weld the social together. Such alternatives do exist de jure, but de facto; their efficiency is weakened by their classification as "alien" or "imported." Katsarski (1992:75), for example, speaks of the "allochthonous or foreign origin of institutions in Bulgarian society." Indeed, the very idea of the formalization and codification of social relations is assumed to be "non-ours" and, therefore, arbitrary. Foreign observers are struck particularly by the disrespect for law and the underdeveloped sense of lawfulness of both ordinary citizens and rulers. Jirecek, for example, notes that "The laws effective in the country are not a product of a centuries-old development of law but an imported commodity" (as quoted by Penev 1942:150).

The pronounced alienation of the intelligentsia and of the political class is indicative in two respects. On the one hand, the spiritual and political elite are themselves torn between the own/alien dichotomy. They have the clear possibility of being the "own" by becoming an exponent of the original identity, of ethnicity. But this position rules out both the modern perspective that speaks the "universal" language of scientific rationality, as well as the post-modern perspective with its own particular way of speaking. Yet the intellectual has no possibility of being both "own" and "other." "Other" means having not only the freedom to "express" oneself, but also the freedom to discover new horizons; not only the freedom to be loyal to one’s "own" world, but also to create a world; not only the freedom to express truth and beauty, but also to err. Freedom in such a case is realized necessity par excellence.

On the other hand, the "own" remains unproblematic and is essentially on the side of the communal, while that which has split away from it is problematic and must be demonstrated. "The people has its own typical image, but what is the image of the intelligentsia?" (Petkanov 1932:416). In this respect, the "own" remains somewhat hermetically sealed within its essentiality, primacy and necessity. The intelligentsia’s potential to create otherness, spiritual horizons and alternatives thereby remains underestimated. So, too, does the potential of the "own" to constitute itself in interaction.

It is notable that the primacy of the communal is not seen as the totalizing homogenization and subordination of the individual, but rather as the interaction in which the individual attains a higher individual meaning through harmony with the community and unity with others.

Recent years have seen the appearance of a new figure of the "own" as "alien," a figure that results from the application of mainly two post-modern procedures that deconstruct national identity.

The first of these procedures involves the thematization of the constructed nature of national identity. It has thus been extensively argued that national identity is rooted in historical facts, having been cultivated through narratives and myths by historians, politicians, journalists, teachers, and writers. This perspective emphasizes the deformations that have resulted from the national historical narrative. These include absolutizing continuity insofar as interruptions and breaks would question the unity of the people as agent; outlining a specific "relief" where achievements stand out and periods of downfall are passed over; and appropriating whatever truth and justice are to be found in the inevitable collisions with others, who are only "occasionally allies, but in most cases enemies" (Daskalov 1994:28).

The second procedure involves a dismantling of the foundations of national pride and self-esteem that is ironic to the point of sarcasm. This begins with the anthropological peculiarities of Slavs, whom "some romantic author of textbooks, who must have preferred blondes, fell for as blue-eyed and blonde" (Daskalov 1994:29), and ends with some "bewitched and sacralized" image of the Balkans through which Bulgarians try to glorify themselves.

This post-modern critique primarily targets the narrative nature of national identity. As Daskalov has put it, "We narrate and continue narrating myths about ourselves, narrating ourselves as myth" (Daskalov 1994:44).

My own epistemological position is close to the one under consideration in that the latter ensures a productive critical distance, an opportunity to transcend "the range" of national identity, thereby turning national identity into a subject of reflection, critique and cognition. But I do not accept the absolutizing of its basic theses, namely, that concerning the construction and mythologizing of national identity and that concerning the narrative nature of national identity. The former underestimates the fact that construction is specific to all social formations, and it also ignores the achievements of historiography in the ways it shifts the emphasis from "hard" facts to historical narratives. The latter, on the other hand, has not assimilated Ricoeur’s profound observation that all types of identity, and not just national identity, are narrative (Ricoeur 1990).

It should be noted that the post-modern reflection on Bulgarian national identity is still in its very early stages, far from the extremes of total deconstruction. The process of dismantling has not yet reached, nor does it aim to, the core of either the Me or the Us, nor is it meant to make us "strangers to ourselves." It rather aspires to break the fusion of the individual with the community and, widening this break, to enable the individual to approach the latter not only with the pathos of glorification but also with the irony of critique, as well as identify him/herself in ways not prescribed by the community.

A quarter of a century after we Bulgarians received our alphabet, we already had a literature that none of the other "new" peoples could boast of, along with an "amazingly intensive" literary activity that made Bulgaria under Tsar Simeon as the most important center of the Eastern Orthodox Slavic world. If literate Bulgarians were few and far between immediately after the Liberation, the educated Bulgarian of only a few decades later lived with the broad spiritual interests of contemporary European civilization (Mutafchiev 1931, 1938).

What inspired these periods of meteoric rise in Bulgaria’s spiritual development? Why were they always followed by a fall that was just as sudden, dramatic and irreversible? Formulating and explaining those paradoxes comprises the conceptual center of Peter Mutafchiev’s philosophy of history. Not only is our historical path paradoxical, so too, at least at face value, is the explanation, namely, the influence of Byzantine and, later, West European culture. In fact, both the rise and fall have one and the same reason, that is, the assimilation of the "alien." But while adopting ready cultural models saves the effort of slow accumulation and accelerates cultural progress, imitation is not creation.

Assimilation of the "alien" is a dramatic interaction. Typically, the Bulgarian experiences this drama in two opposite ways. In the first, the "alien" subject to assimilation is a matter of choice:

Our ship of state has had to sail through the dangerous straits of Scylla and Charybdis. Charybdis once was Catholic Rome and Scylla, Eastern Orthodox Byzantium. Then Rome was replaced by Austria and Byzantium was succeeded by Russia (Sheitanov 1925:266).

 

East and West are perceived not only as geopolitical realities but also as two different spiritual principles, that is, "the technical mind" of Europe and the "magic spirit" of the East (Sheitanov 1925:268). Except for the period when the Iron Curtain veiled one member of this dichotomy and made all reflection pointless, the debate has run through our entire modern history, unabated to this very day. Today the dichotomy is NATO or Russia.

In the second case, there is no choice. The "alien" seems "natural," "obvious," "normal," and is not subject to reflection: Communism before, democracy now, modernization at the turn of the century. The important point is how a definite "alien" is accepted uncritically and presented as not being subject to choice — although there is always a choice, even if only in the selective way in which the "alien" is assimilated. For example, modernity was perceived at the turn of the century as scientific and technological rationality rather than economic rationality. Poets and essayists sang praises to technology, which they saw as the "offspring of pure reason," the "power of the will," and the "ideal symbol of perfection and style" (Mutafov 1920). At the same time, it was explicitly emphasized that the Bulgarian did not seek profit, but rather cultivated the land from affection and duty, and that his attitude to it was substantial and not instrumental.

But the "alien" that has been easily assimilated can easily become alien once again — from which comes the drama. Nothing seems more "alien" than Marxism to the post-Communist intellectual who has promptly assimilated liberalism, former "universal" explanatory principles such as class theory having been totally obliterated from his intellectual memory in short order.

The debate between the supporters and opponents of a given idea is often partisan. However, it is precisely those engaged in such debate who introduce the "alien" into the dialogical field, where "alien" is plural, not singular, and does not "absorb" the "own" as "universally valid" and "necessary" but rather comprises a spectrum of possibilities. Paradoxically, a critical distance does not increase the gap between "own" and "alien" but rather enables them to approach each other in a reflexive process that makes difference a subject of choice and empathy.

There are two types of "otherness" that are alien to the Bulgarian. The first indicates an "alien" which is banned from the own/alien relationship insofar as it is not only opposed to "mine" but is "alien" per se. Here the "alien" is not merely different from my culture, it is not considered to be culture at all. The second indicates an "alien" which has invaded "mine" to the point that it has taken over; here I become "alien" to myself.

The first case, brilliantly analyzed in Tsvetan Todorov’s, The Conquest of America (1982), is typical of the dawn of modernity. Its chief figure is the colonizer. When the Spaniards set foot on the American continent, they discovered not cultures, but rather objects of conquest, domination and destruction. The "alien" in such a case is not "worthy" of interest, but only of ownership and subordination; it is the absolute external, and the attitude to it is instrumental. There is nothing positive in it and in a certain sense it is a "non-relation" (Simmel).

The second case, discussed by Camus (1979) and Kristeva (1991), is typical of late modernity, and its main figure is the foreigner, the wanderer, the stranger to oneself. For such a figure, the process of alienation is the only way out. As Kristeva (1991:28) asks, "How could we prevent ourselves from submerging in common sense unless we emigrate from our own country, from our language, from our sex, from our identity?" When the "alien" thus lives within us as the hidden face of our own identity, it is deontologized and has neither its own fixed space nor time. Its space is a transition lacking the stability and comfort of repose, which is doomed to the perpetual motion of a train or an airplane, and its time is postponement, which is not submersion into a flow but rather the vulnerability of a present that is "temporary" (Kristeva 1991).

But the Bulgarian sees the "alien" as a positive relationship, as other rather than as "alien." Indeed, the very passion and activity of the pro-Slav/pro-Western debate shows how relevant these cultural parallels are to our self-determination and how much they contribute to a number of arguments in favor of cultural interaction. The Bulgarian attitude to the other culture fluctuates between the two poles of the "alien" as model and the "alien" as antipode. The "alien" must be assimilated in the first case, while in the second it must remain beyond the limits of ownness. Either way, the other is an object of cognition and interest:

The distant ideal would be to reconcile within ourselves German objectivity, the conscientiousness and depth of German thought, with the lively French style; to counter crude Bulgarian pragmatism with Russian moral idealism; to defeat dry dogmatism with the free forms of English creativity; to rationalize and ennoble our limited individualism with the general publicness and universal spirit of France. If we only could! (Penev 1924:143).

 

This thought, which is one of my favorite quotations from Boyan Penev, summarizes two opposite messages, namely, the practical unattainability of cultural synthesis and its viability as an ideal, both of which are very typical of the Bulgarian attitude toward the "alien." The "alien" is brought near by being entwined within a dialogical sphere where it is articulated, where certain of its dimensions are valued more highly than others and "distinguished" as worthy of assimilation. Cultures are here relativized to the point that they are deprived of attributes such as "absolute," "lofty," and "universal." At the same time, and this is most relevant to our attitude towards the "alien," the Bulgarian does not indulge in the degree of cultural relativism that is synonymous with indifference, where the existence of differences is merely assumed and not engaged in productive interaction.

The intellectual discourse on Bulgarian cultural identity is differentiated in regard both to the diversity of positions and to theoretical controversies. If during the first half of the century the debate centered on the opposition between traditional and modern, between race and culture, at the end of the century it centers on post-modern/modern (the traditional not being obsolete), on politics/culture. If during the interwar period there was a powerful call for the intelligentsia to be a loyal exponent of the popular, at present there is an ever greater drive to affirm the status of intellectuals and emancipate them, each of them being entitled to his or her "own" speech.

Educational discourse reacts flexibly to political changes, but it is much more resistant to the way in which the "own" is constructed. In this discourse, the "own" categorically implies the call of blood. Land, mother, and motherland are the figures which make organic metaphors "natural" and introduce the attitude that the "own" is destiny and predestination, rather than choice and reflexive empathy.

The intellectual and educational discourses not only sound different, at times they are in open contradiction. At the very time when schools sing hymns to the Balkan Range, the latter is de-mythologized by the sarcastic wit of the post-modern intellectual (Daskalov 1994).

Schools cultivate the basic patterns of interpreting the "own" and provide the main stockpile of knowledge for fleshing them out. But while the socializing effect of the school is incomparably broader than the esoteric discussions carried out at universities, the latter enrich reflection upon the "own." Discussants there play the role of "the stranger" (Schütz) who observes things "from the sideline," raises questions, and to whom the self-evidence of the community seems but a myth. But while the elements of the "own" might indeed seem to be myths from the perspective of historical facts, from the perspective of experience they are significant.

Deconstructive pathos should also be self-reflective and capable of distinguishing its subject. It is "constructive" in a positive sense when it reveals the falsification of history as a means for creating national mythology. When it starts deconstructing its very "own," however, the stakes are different, involving alienation, deprivation of the comfort of transcendence in the name of the quest, going out from oneself and one’s "own," and entering into the diverse but "cold" world of numerous differences. Deconstruction can thus also be "constructive" but not in a negative sense for, when it deconstructs the myth of the "own," it lays the foundations for the myth of the "alien."

I would say that extremes provoke extremes. Over-commitment to the idea and metaphor of the "own" as an organic body triggers positions that do not simply "loosen" bonds, but present them as inconceivable. Communal unification does not lead to diversification of identities, but to their dismantling. Foucault is now one of the greatest intellectual fashions in Bulgaria, but "concern for oneself" (Foucault 1994) is yet to be thematized in the Bulgarian reflection on ownness.

Levinas distinguishes two forms of collectivity, namely, shoulder-to-shoulder and eye-to-eye collectivity. The former is a communal collectivity that says "Us," a collectivity in which the subject is eager to identify with The Other, both being submerged in the collective presentation and common ideal. The latter, an I-You collectivity, is the eye-to-eye relationship in which The Other is both proximity and distance. S/he is close enough to be conceived of and desired as a partner within a common intersubjective space, but is distant enough to prevent his/her difference from dissolving in the collectivity (Levinas 1994).

We need the "own" as locus of meaning and values that transcend us. We also need the "alien" as a stimulus for realizing and valuing difference. And we particularly need the own/alien relationship as an interaction that rules out both the indifference of cultural relativism and the aggressiveness of the instrumental "use" and subordination of the other. This is a type of interaction that does not annihilate, but rather preserves autonomy within a common dialogical field.

1. From Ivan Vazov, translated by Peter Tempest.

2. Toennies’s distinction between "community" (Gemeins-chaft) and "society" (Gesellschaft) is familiar. The careful reader will note that "community" is often used in this text, albeit in reference to modern phenomena. This is not due to the writer’s conceptual imprecision but rather to the subject of study: not the specificity of Bulgarian society but the way of thematizing "the own", a way in which "society" revitalizes certain dimensions of "the community."

3. Translated by Peter Tempest.

Note: The references from the anthology Why Are We What We Are? are quoted with the year of the initial publication and the pages from the anthology. The same approach is applied to all reprint publications.