Поколения, поколенчески дискурси и колективни времена : Употреби на генерационните деления в България през втората половина на ХІХ и началото на ХХ век

Abstract

In everyday communication “generations” are imagined as groups or communities based on similar years of birth, similar experiences of significant social changes, shared school and university memories, common lifestyles, etc. The humanities scholarship traditionally defines generations through the categories of life cycle transition and of social, political or cultural changes. The theoretical refutation of these two interpretations of the phenomenon raises several important questions. How could we overcome the routine and inertia of the classical sociological and historical models of the generation? What if we substitute the concept of “generations” with the concepts of “generational discourses” and “collective times”? What kinds of politics of representation do kinship metaphors construe? In the search for answers to these questions the dissertation first discusses the problem of generations in the terms of social constructivism, the concept of social time and the identity theory. Mannheim’s heritage is considered as a valuable epistemological ground for linking the “semantic orders” of the culture circles (Michael Korsten) to “the places of memory” (Pierre Nora). The main hypothesis of the study is that generations could be examined as public discourses and chronopolitics which temporalize certain group ideologies, while at the same time ideologizing the temporal dimensions of the past, present and future. Furthermore, the thesis examines the uses of generational divisions in Bulgaria during the period from the second half of the XIX to the beginning of the XX century by members of different political and cultural groups, which as a whole did not belong to the same cohorts, but shared identical social goals, worldviews and legitimization strategies. These groups included emigrants, charity and revolutionary organizations from the late National Revival period, the earliest Bulgarian parties, memoirists’ circles, veterans’ societies, literature circles, such as Misal [Thought]. These communities, self-identified as generations, supported particular models of social development and public behavior, and gave new meanings to the dimensions of social time, thus presenting themselves as alternatives of the current state authorities and elites. The analysis of their ideological platforms, all articulated in generational terms, sheds light upon key features of Bulgarian modernity such as the constructing of the national utopia, the shaping of the public spaces and the local versions of European liberal citizenship.