[Commlist] New book: Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians' Asymmetrical Concepts in European Discourse

*Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians': **Asymmetrical Concepts in European 
Discourse
*

*Edited by Kirill Postoutenko*


*Description*:


Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion 
of ‘asymmetrical concepts’, pointing at the asymmetry between standard 
self-ascriptions, such as ‘Hellenes’ or ‘Christians’, and pejorative 
other-references (‘Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’) as a powerful weapon of 
cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck’s 
approach, /Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’/ explores the use of 
significant conceptual asymmetries such as ‘civilization’ vs. 
‘barbarity’, ‘liberalism’ vs. ‘servility’, ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ or even 
‘masters’ vs. ‘slaves’ in political, scientific and fictional discourses 
of Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day. Using an 
interdisciplinary set of approaches, the scholars in political history, 
cultural sociology, intellectual history and literary criticism bolster 
and extend our understanding of this ever-growing area of conceptual 
history.


**Contents:


**

*
Introduction. ‘Asymmetrical Counter-Concepts’: Chances and Challenges
Kirill Postoutenko

Chapter 1. Treason as Touchstone:
Asymmetrical Relations between ‘Heathens’ and ‘Christians’ in Middle 
High German Epic
Literature
Paul Paradies

Chapter 2. ‘Blond Flowing Hair’, ‘Tumid Lips’, ‘Rigid Posture’ and 
‘Choleric Temperament’:
Universal Aspirations and Racial Asymmetries in Linnaeus’s Descriptions 
of Homo Sapiens
Monica Libell

Chapter 3. The Contribution of Asymmetrical Concepts to the Building of 
Spanish Liberal Discourse in the First Half of the NineteenthCentury: 
Methodological Reflections and Applications 85
Ana Isabel González Manso

  Chapter 4. ‘Kultur’/‘Bildung’ vs ‘Civilization’:
A Close Look at One Conceptual Asymmetry in the Early Nineteenth-Century 
Finnish Discourse
Heli Rantala

Chapter 5. Liberales vs Serviles: Symmetrization of Asymmetrical 
Counter-Concepts and Political Polarization in Spain and Portugal (1810–34)
Luis Fernández Torres

Chapter 6. ‘Hellenes’ Revisited: Asymmetrical Concepts in the Language 
of the Greek Revolution 149
Alexandra Sfoini

Chapter 7. ‘Civilization’ and ‘Barbarity’ in French Liberal Discourse during
the Conquest and Colonization of Algeria 181
Nere Basabe and María Luisa Sánchez-Mejía

Chapter 8. ‘People’, ‘Plebs’ and the Changing Boundaries of the Political:
Asymmetrical Conceptualizations in Spanish Liberalism from a Comparative 
European Perspective
Pablo Sánchez León

Chapter 9. ‘Order’ vs ‘Chaos’:
Asymmetrical Counter-Concepts and Ideological Struggles in Early 
Twentieth-Century Russian Poland
Wiktor Marzec 225

Chapter 10.
Dutch McCarthyism? The Asymmetrical Opposition of ‘Democracy’ and 
‘Communism’ in Holland between 1920 and 1990
Wim de Jong

Chapter 11.
Asymmetrical Oppositions and Hierarchical Structures in Soviet Musical 
Criticism: The Case of the Essay Collection Za rubezhom(Abroad) (1953)
Kirill Kozlovski

Chapter 12. ‘We the Basques’, and the ‘Other(s)’:
Ethnic Asymmetries in Basque Nationalist Discourse
Iñaki Iriarte López

Conclusion. Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’
Kirill Postoutenko

*



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