Why should you write about Eastern Europe, or: Why should you write about “the Other”?

Abstract

Much recent cultural criticism points out the ways in which “writing about ‘the Other’” perpetuates, justifies and participates in the creation of “real-life” relations of domination and oppression between the “authors” (located in the center(s) of power and knowledge) and their “subject matters.” This paper takes a different approach and explores theliberating potentials of “writing about ‘the Other.’” Completed in the spring of 1991, in the wake of changes in Eastern Europe from the fall of 1989, this paper gives a loose mapping of the nascent Eastern European cultural constellations, as well as an elaboration of the position of a “native” intellectual, in order to circuitously come to the point from which it can articulate the ways in which “Western” writing about “Eastern Europe” can create liberating interventions in the struggles going on in Eastern Europe.