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Proquest Dissertations RICE UNIVERSITY RE-INVENTING EUROPE: CULTURE, STYLE AND POST-SOCIALIST CHANGE IN BULGARIA By Elitza Stefanova Ranova A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE Doctor of Philosophy APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE: i/uViL'i (nji— fames Faub 'rofessor, Director Anthropolo; Amy ISfinettcJ, Assistant Professor Anthropology rcia Brennan, Associate Professor Art History "L C Dominic Boyer, Associate-Professor Anthropology Hannah Landecker, Associate Professor, Sociology, UCLA HOUSTON, TEXAS MAY 2010 UMI Number: 3421421 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Dissertation Publishing UMI 3421421 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uestA ® ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Reinventing Europe: Culture, Style and Post-socialist Change in Bulgaria By Elitza Stefanova Ranova On the basis of extended field research in Sofia, Bulgaria, between 2004 and 2006, this project provides an ethnographic account of the predicament of art and culture producers after the end of socialism. The end of socialism deprived the Bulgarian intelligentsia from its economic security, prestige, and a sense of clear moral mission. Now young cutting-edge artists, writers, designers, theater directors and other culture producers seek a way out of this predicament and aspire to become moral leaders of the nation. Through ethnographic participant-observation at the lifestyle magazine Edno, a mouthpiece for this social segment, and through research radiating from the offices of the magazine to the fringes of contemporary Bulgarian art and culture, this project demonstrates that the new culture producers comprise a social segment in a state of flux, an elite in-the-making. While its future is uncertain—it could solidify in a new dominant faction of the intelligentsia, could disintegrate or could take the shape of a qualitatively new configuration—its present condition sheds light on post-socialist debates about artistic merit, the importance of national versus international recognition, and the changing value of cultural capital. The dissertation investigates how the young culture producers strategically code their artistic preferences and ways of life as "European," and demonstrates that they strategically capitalize on a historical local anxiety that Bulgaria is deficient and less modern than an imagined "Europe." The project is indebted to a Bourdieusian understanding of the relationship between taste and social class, and pays close attention to aesthetic preferences in two fields: lifestyle and creative work. At the same time, it departs from Bourdieu in recognizing that while well-suited to account for social reproduction, his model is less successful in explaining social production: the emergence of new social groups and the re-ordering of existing social relations in the context of rapid social change. The project addresses this problem through the prism of Foucauldian ethics. It suggests that the young culture producers have an at least partially correct understanding of their objective circumstances and consciously reflect on the mismatch between their expectations, and the reality of post-socialist Bulgaria. Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the help and support of many people and several organizations. I am grateful to the following for their financial support: the Rice Department of Anthropology for funding the preliminary research and providing other travel funds; Rice University for a Wagoner Fellowship; the Rice Humanities Research Center for a Dissertation Fellowship; and the Marie Curie SocAnth for an Interlaboratory Visitor Fellowship. Many people have read drafts of parts of this text and have offered invaluable comments. I would most like to thank James Faubion, my director, as well as Dominic Boyer, Marcia Brennan, Hannah Landecker, and Amy Ninetto, who as members of the dissertation committee have been most patient and most generous with their time, encouragement and insights. I am grateful to many other current and former members of the Rice anthropology department who have provided warm support, advice and inspiration: Angela Rivas, Anthony Potoczniak, Ayla Samli, Ebru Kayaalp, Elise McCarthy, Elizabeth Vann, Lina Dib, Nahal Naficy, Tarek Elhaik, and Valerie Olson, as well as the members of the Humanities Research Center Dissertation Writing Seminar in the spring and fall of 2009. This project benefited from feedback by Pamela Ballinger, David Graeber, Deema Kaneff, and Chris Wirght, as well as the participants in the Goldsmiths College dissertation writing seminar in the fall of 2008. Houston-based Stephanie Martz, Synthia Wilson and Laurie Lambeth brought their own creativity to bear on various parts of this project. In Bulgaria, I am grateful to the many people who agreed to give me their time, talk to me and help me with this project in innumerable ways. I will not list them by name to protect the anonymity of those who requested it. Special thanks to Radmila Mladenova for many wonderful conversations and for her interest in this project. I am also grateful to Jordan Ivanov for his technical skills and for making my life so much easier; Valia Yzunova for providing shelter and hospitality in the least likely and most needed moments; Denislava Nikolaeva for always being there, for listening and prodding me on; and to my family, Kalin and Rose Ranov, Mama Ani, and Sonia and Stefan Ranovi for their unreserved and unfailing support always. Sonia and Stefan have gone to absolutely remarkable lengths to support me and to help this project, and I am profoundly grateful for this and for so much more. For Kevin, with love and deepest gratitude for more than I can put in words. 2 Table of Contents Abstract A cknowledgements Introduction 1 Chapter One: Strangers at Home or an Elite In-the-Making 14 Chapter Two: Aesthetic Individualism: Historic Precedents and Predicaments 62 Chapter Three: The Heavy Burden of Nostalgia 85 Chapter Four: Glamour, Trashy Pictures and the Power of Irony 118 Chapter Five: A Transnational Imaginary 147 Chapter Six: The National Inferiority Complex or the Politics of Cultural Production at the Doorstep of Europe 186 Works Cited 211 Introduction This dissertation is motivated by the question, what is happening to art and culture in Eastern Europe after the end of socialism? Much has been written about the political, economic and social dimensions of the transition, but significantly less about the changes in artistic practices and aesthetic preferences. Art and culture before the end of socialism have been studied closely (Konrad and Szelenyi 1979; Verdery 1991; Yurchak 2006) as well as the fate of socialist intellectuals after the end of socialism (Boyer 2005; Elfimov 2004; Eyal, et al. 1998; Ninetto 2005) but significantly fewer studies look at the fate of the next generation of Eastern European intellectuals and artists. This is especially true in the case of Bulgaria as the body of anthropological work on this country is tiny. Some of its most prominent themes are village life (Creed 1998; Kaneff 2004), folklore and ritual (Roth and Roth 1990; Silverman 1983; 1992), and women and the Muslim minority (Ghodsee 2005; 2009). Yet historically, intellectuals and artists have had a special place in the societies of Central and Eastern Europe as modernizers and leaders of the nation (Boyer 2006; Daskalov 1996; Eyal, et al. 1998). It is important to ask whether the radical changes following the end of socialism and the rapid market liberalization are affecting the historical role of culture producers, their place in society and the aesthetics of their creative work. The goal of this study is to begin to answer these questions through the particularities of the Bulgarian context. Specifically, the dissertation suggests that a new generation of Bulgarian culture producers has come into being in the last 20 years and that it struggles to make its presence recognized and respected within the field of cultural production and in the society at large. The character of this social segment is defined primarily by the way in 1 which it deals with the competing forces of national belonging, on one hand, and transnational and pro-European aspirations, on the other. This new generation seeks recognition by coding its work and lifestyle as "European" and so superior, and contrasts them to other locally available options that are coded as backward and inferior. In this process, "Europe" is imagined as a standard of normative modernity and as one of the centers for global innovation in culture and style. This proposition determines some of the overarching themes of the dissertation. The text returns over and over to the idea of the nation and the question of its relevance as a framework for the interpretation and evaluation of creative work; to the ways in which "Europe" and the world beyond Bulgaria's borders is imagined by the sons and daughters of the socialist intelligentsia; and to the significance of social privilege in the cultivation of new artistic practices. One of the main theoretical preoccupations of the text is the question of how social change happens, and of how new social segments emerge in conditions of rapid social change, such as those which took place after the end of socialism. The dissertation describes a new generation of Bulgarian art and culture producers as an elite in-the-making or an emergent elite to suggest that this social segment aspires to achieve an elite status which at present it does not have. In the following chapters, I examine how this social segment comes into being, and I explore the specific practices, preferences and discourses that characterize its members and set them apart from other Bulgarians.
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