Papers by Alexander Kiossev
The Disintegration of “Power/Knowledge”: Post-Socialist Studies as Decolonial Studies? A Personal Point of View. Part 3: Part 3: Soft and Hard Variants, 2024
The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colon... more The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colonial studies" through the perspective of my own academic biography. A long period of time, about 30 years, is examined, during which the previous research and political agenda of post-colonialism gradually transformed into decolonial activism and academic trends — with the resulting risks. The critical investigation focuses on the increasingly widespread application of post-colonial and decolonial studies in the study of the Second, socialist and post-socialist, world. It is argued that during this methodological shift from the totalitarian to the decolonial paradigm, key Foucauldian concepts disintegrate, and the very production of specific and concrete scientific knowledge is annihilated.
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The Disintegration of “Power/Knowledge”. Post-Socialist Studies as Decolonial Studies? A Personal Point of View. Part 2: The Socialist Expansion of Post-Colonial Studies
The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colon... more The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colonial studies" through the perspective of my own academic biography. A long period of time, about 30 years, is examined, during which the previous research and political agenda of post-colonialism gradually transformed into decolonial activism and academic trends — with the resulting risks. The critical investigation focuses on the increasingly widespread application of post-colonial and decolonial studies in the study of the Second, socialist and post-socialist, world. It is argued that during this methodological shift from the totalitarian to the decolonial paradigm, key Foucauldian concepts disintegrate, and the very production of specific and concrete scientific knowledge is annihilated.
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The Disintegration of “Power/Knowledge”: Post-Socialist Studies as Decolonial Studies? A Personal Point of View. Part 1: Post-Colonialism, Balkanism and Self-Colonization
The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colon... more The series of three interconnected articles analyzes the development of the field of "post-colonial studies" through the perspective of my own academic biography. A long period of time, about 30 years, is examined, during which the previous research and political agenda of post-colonialism gradually transformed into decolonial activism and academic trends — with the resulting risks. The critical investigation focuses on the increasingly widespread application of post-colonial and decolonial studies in the study of the Second, socialist and post-socialist, world. It is argued that during this methodological shift from the totalitarian to the decolonial paradigm, key Foucauldian concepts disintegrate, and the very production of specific and concrete scientific knowledge is annihilated.
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Preliminary Theoretical Remarks For nearly two decades, we have witnessed a new condition of Bulg... more Preliminary Theoretical Remarks For nearly two decades, we have witnessed a new condition of Bulgarian literature (although it is hardly restricted to Bulgarian literature alone), which could be defined as "the globalization of the national literary field." And it is not a matter of what we see on the surface, i.e. that many Bulgarians, some of them living abroad, write their fiction or poetry in foreign languages, mainly in English. In fact, the overall mode of operation of the field in question has changed. Pierre Bourdieu defines the literary field as a network of reciprocal positionings and distinctions between writer's roles, practices, and styles-in other words, as a shared space where each writer's standing obtains its specific meaning in a network of entangled relationships, distinctions, positions, and oppositions. 1 What he is referring to is a self-sufficient and isolated, immanent space, a French or even a "Parisian" writers' community, that produces differential social meanings and roles internally. However, during the previous longue durée of Bulgarian literature, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, the factors, which created such a network of relationships, were not limited to concrete writers' roles and the differential topography of literary groups. Key normative elements of the social imagination, which transcended the isolated self-sufficiency of the field and all of its internal relationships, were crucial in the production of meaning. Back then, all Bulgarian literary roles and positions indispensably found their meaning not only in internal mutual juxtapositions and differentiations but in an inevitable relation to external cultural norms and models.
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A comparative history of literatures in European languages, 2007
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John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 2006
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A comparative history of literatures in European languages, 2004
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Rethinking Heritage, 2003
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Ботев: Глобализацията на кръвта- сп. Критика и хуманизъм, кн. 56 бр1Б2022; Глобалният тату-патриотизъм. В: 30 години специалност Културология, Стр. 271 – 310.
Първата част на настоящия текст е запис на лекция, прочетена по покана на гл. ас. Сирма Данова и ... more Първата част на настоящия текст е запис на лекция, прочетена по покана на гл. ас. Сирма Данова и д-р Ана Алексиева в рамките на техния курс "Чий е Ботев?". Тя беше представена на 15 януари 2020 на студенти от специалността "Българска филология". Текстът на лекцията беше свален от Виляна Соколова и редактиран от автора. Той прецени, че трансформацията му в статия ще изисква сериозни усилия и предпочете да запази устните реторични похвати на лекцията, надявайки се, че това не нарушава научните качества на текста. Втората част е изследване на глобалния контекст на подобни татуировки.
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GRAND NARRATIVES AND IMAGINED COMMUNICATION LITERATURE AND THE SYMBOLIC PATTERNS OF EMANCIPATION It
It is well known that national literatures were one of the channels for the development of modern... more It is well known that national literatures were one of the channels for the development of modern publicity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The communication between civic subjects, regardless of any estate hierarchies, started in the French aristocratic salons at the time of absolutism, when bourgeois men of letters like Diderot and Rousseau were invited as arbiters of good taste; it was proliferated in the German literary and scientific societies, in the British tea and coffee clubs meeting for the discussion of popular novels-to multiply a few decades later in the literary supplements of mass newspapers, in the growing network of loan libraries, publishing houses and literary magazines. This prompts us that publicity should only be discussed in its sociological and national plural form. In the era of early modernity with its worldwide, universal aspirations, literary communications multiplied, written in various vernaculars in the context of various readerships with their respective horizons of expectations. In the early 18th century the practice of corresponding in Latin which used to bring together Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam was already dying. On the other hand, Goethe's dream of a world literature had another 250 years to happen. So, the shared intellectual privities of the humanists had already disintegrated while the actual literary and public communication existed in the form of peculiar micro-publicities: in the salons of certain rulers, in some literary circles, in a number of limited and non-overlapping distribution networks, in local newspapers or magazines, in local debates, small circulations and the limits set by the national language. In fact, although later these micro-publicities turned into national macro-publicities, their multiplicity was a phenomenon that far outlasted the era of modernity. The national literatures did indeed foster the modern public communication-yet before the time of globalization, satellite TV, CNN and WWW, they formed comparatively limited and isolated communication circles which hardly associated with each other. Not only at the time of emerging national cultures but even later the transliterary and transcultural communication was comparatively limited and mediated for a number of reasons: mostly, the educational and cultural institutions were supported by the nation-state which codified the
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Wetung und KanonMathias , 2010
Alexander Kiossev: „Visible Hands“: Selbstkolonisierung und Kanonbildung von oben
(an Beispielen ... more Alexander Kiossev: „Visible Hands“: Selbstkolonisierung und Kanonbildung von oben
(an Beispielen aus der bulgarischen Literatur). s.55-77
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The label “The Balkans” shares with other cliches a kind of automatic essentialism – it is a geog... more The label “The Balkans” shares with other cliches a kind of automatic essentialism – it is a geographic metonym that presupposes the existence of a nongeographical referent. In political debates, journalistic essays, and everyday conversations this is a self-evident, unquestionable presumption: The name’s usage indicates that the Balkans exists as a region with a certain identity established by certain common features. One can ask what exactly these relevant features are – are they historical? cultural? political? – and this will be one possible “politics of questioning.” Unfortunately, it shares the presumptions of the cliches.
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Reading Research between MIcro- and Macroperspectives
Alexander Kiossev is a professor of modern era cultural history, director of Sofia University's C... more Alexander Kiossev is a professor of modern era cultural history, director of Sofia University's Cultural Centre of and editor-in-chief of Piron electronic magazine. Kiossev has focused his research on reading, the cultural history of communist totalitarianism and autobiographical perspective on history. He has published several books and edited numerous
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Narrating Life, 2018
This text describes the complex and methodologically discordant context of contemporary autobiogr... more This text describes the complex and methodologically discordant context of contemporary autobiography studies, an exceptionally rich field of research. Its unity turns out to be unstable; it consists of different traditions and is marked by a rupture between the humanities and social sciences. The latter leads not only to scattering and non-dialogical methodological and technical research approaches, but also to radically different formulations of the objects of study. 'Chinese walls' gradually emerged between scholars in the humanities, who study published autobiographies and memoires, and social scientists, who devote their efforts to oral stories collected through interviews in concrete situations. The text discusses the complex methodological, philosophical, and practical conflicts and dilemmas stemming from this unfavourable separation and forms its own position situated between the dominant scholarly and political attitudes. Alexander Kiossev is a professor of the cultural history of modernity, director of the Sofia University Cultural Centre, and editor-in-chief of the online journal Piron. His research interests lie in the field of surveys of reading, the cultural history of Communist totalitarianism, and autobiographical studies. He has published several books and edited multiple
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Papers by Alexander Kiossev
(an Beispielen aus der bulgarischen Literatur). s.55-77
(an Beispielen aus der bulgarischen Literatur). s.55-77