BORIS BUDEN

Author and publicist. Studied philosophy in Zagreb, and cultural sciences at the Berlin Humboldt University. During the 1990s, he worked as an editor for the magazine Arkzin, Zagreb. His essays and articles encompass the fields of philosophy, politics, and culture and art criticism. His translations into Croatian include two books by Sigmund Freud. Buden is the author of Barikade, Zagreb 1996/1997, Kaptolski Kolodvor, Belgrade 2001 and Der Schacht von Babel, Berlin 2004 (Vavilonska jama, Belgrade 2007), Zone des Übergangs, Frankfurt/Main, 2009.

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A discrediting view

Images from the East are generally perceived as documents from another culture. This cultural difference, however, is a product of the hegemonial – Western – view itself, which interprets the post-communist East predominantly as a (time)space of cultural retardation/delay, seeking to find confirmation of its own cultural supremacy. Therefore only those images from the East are accorded the status of an authentic document, which manage to trigger the usual stereotypes of the post-communist discourse. The Western view enjoys them only to the degree, to which they allow narcissistic mirroring. Are these images aware of this threat? What can they do to escape this trap? Which strategies can they rely on in order to subvert a view that threatens to rob them of their documentary and esthetic credit?