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.
