Sanya Velkova

Self-identification between the East and the West:
the Greek characteristics of the Balkan phenomenon
at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries

Summary

The text treats the issue of “situating” the Greeks’ national self-identification between the understanding of the historical past, belonging to the East, and the historical present/future correlated to the West.

The sources, on which the report is based, are original texts by philosophers, historians and intellectuals from the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, as well as studies and commentaries by contemporary culturologists, historians and philologists. The second kind of sources is new, unknown and often radically re-evaluates and re-arranges the schemes and constructions of the end of the 19th century.

The spatial and temporal “stretching” of the topic allows the pinpointing of characteristic moments in its development, outlining of the common points, as well as a new interpretation of the set of problems related to Occidentalism.