Bulgarian National Culture: Debates during the National Revival Period “Ex-centrism”, “ego-centrism”, Ottoman Context

Özet

Öz The paper is focused on the problem of conceptualization of the National Culture which took place during thesecond half of XIX c. That period coincided with so called National Revival Epoch – an emotional concept,particular for Bulgarian popular and academic publicity. The analysis is based on the key notions “egocentricnationalism” and “ex-centric nationalism”, forged by Nikolay Trubetskoy. The intellectuals, whichfollowed the conception of the “ex-centric nationalism”, used to imagine the national culture representationsin accordance with the images of the French culture, dominant that time. Intelligentsia, related to the conceptsof the “ego-centric nationalism”, insisted on the representation of national culture as having its own center,and could be defined as oriented to the ideas set of the autochtonism. Thus, the second group is famous withinitiatives, related to folklore researches and popularizing the medieval heritage, regarded as “Golden Era”.These two ideological tendencies are marked with one initial paradox. From one side, nationalcultural policy making emerged in the context of so called National Revival period as an intellectualinstrument to establish symbolical distance between the national essentiality and the Ottoman heritage,using Russian culture, the cultures of the Western Europe or of the local “authenticity” and “people’s’tradition” as they were accessible through accessible representations of them. From the other side, thesedebates were born during the Tanzimât era as direct outcome of the modernization projects whichwere taking place in the Ottoman Empire that time: a context, where so called National Revival Epochwas installed. There is one more paradox: these discussions remained underrepresented and distancedfrom the mass cultural taste. Peoples’ attitudes towards the image of the national culture, incompatiblewith the visions by the intelligentsia, neglected the options for civilization orientation and struggles fornational essentiality, keeping on numerous Ottoman key cultural elements.