Introductory Questions

The European integrative process has not only intensified the relations between the economical and political pre-eminent powers and the new Eastern-European members, but furthermore it triggers the exchange between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ peripheries of the continent. All EU-members are presented to a much greater degree now in the media and the official discourses of the other members. The increase in mobility of the people adds to a growing density of the inter-peripheral relations in Europe.

With respect to this, the conference Peripheral Identities pursues two aims. On the one hand it is aimed at sparking an interdisciplinary discussion on the topic of mutual representations of the Eastern and Western peripheries and semi-peripheries of Europe. On the other hand, the lectures and presentations scheduled so far impose questions of the construction of national identity in countries which readjust their cultural localisation between the memory or – respectively – the suppression of their past and their European present. Contributions will concentrate on the examples of Poland, Romania, Russia and the Czech Republic as well as on Portugal and Spain.