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Prof. Mircea Malitza: Reflections on the Cultural Dimension of the East European Society

Prof. Mircea Malitza from Bucharest, Romania stressed in his paper on "Reflections on the Cultural Dimension of the East European Society" the aspects of cultural failures. This he explained by comprehending culture to being a mere extension of a religious or ideological basis. As such it is not durable enough to sustain political institutions. In short, factors of civilisation have to be used as building stones for these institutions - a distinction no one made so far during the seminar and to which no one really responded in earnest.

An interesting note he gave to interpretations of conflicts in Eastern Europe. He mentioned that conflicts are of cultural nature and have little to do with clashes of civilisation. Thus, his position can be understood as trying to defend civilisation with "its technical and scientific core and rational base" against discreditation by fashionable arguments claiming this scientific and rational civilisation having only contributed to uniformisation and dehumanisation. In the wake of such efforts to discredit civilisation, he sees much more cultural fragmentation and hence cultural conflicts with various outcomes: "Slovakia separates from Czech in non-violent terms; Yugoslavia tears herself violently into ethnic pieces".

He outlined various other settings and came to the final point, as an example, of how entry into Europe was being discussed in Eastern Europe. Given the fact, as he stated it, that the "balance of the debate" is not even, there exists nevertheless a consensus in Eastern Europe what the main objectives of 'entry' are:

"Democracy, Market Economy and Europeanization".

Prof. Mircea Malitza who had worked as a diplomat under Ceausescu, went on to remark: "But many people ignore the fact that democracy and market economy are attainments of civilisation and that European unity was reached through economic and technical purposes". He sees, therefore, the danger that "the demonstration of Europeanization is made with historical and cultural arguments as if these could grant them an affiliation to the European certificate and that no further efforts are required".

Comments

Indeed, this wish for a quick entry at only the cultural level, to stick to his terminology, may turn out to be not only an illusion, but in fact an endorsement of the 'consumption culture' without realising the need to fulfil economic and infrastructural requirements. Without the latter substance a high standard of living is unsustainable. Indeed, the demands of the Western Civilisation are to be considered as quite high; the very mentioning of 'rationality' indicates that there is something required of people living in such a system which is not natural nor necessarily culturally given. Here his distinction between culture and civilisation becomes an important matter to be taken up by the Athens seminar, in particular due to the closeness there to the roots of Western Civilisation: Ancient Greece and its culture. In terms of what is needed to support 'political institutions', here some contention could be made, for the argument presented fails to explain the negligent attitude of diplomats or politicians towards culture, when the very absence of a 'political culture' would make them face very quickly quite a different audience: not one willing to listen, to follow the art of critical dialogues, but ready to shout down the speakers and to drown in all the noise 'the voice of reason'. Furthermore, when it does come to a break-out of violence, it seems that the process of civilisation had very much to do with that, for culture and civilisation are interlinked, not to be separated as eloquently as presented by Prof. Malitza. If is, of course, interesting to see such a reverse of the usual argument, including that of the Flemish government with its claim that European integration has failed due to the major neglect of culture; instead, the Eastern European view presented, still sees the achievements of European integration as being most positive and based not on culture, but on economic and technical factors derived from Western Civilisation.

By then many speeches and thoughts had filled the ears of the delegates. In that sense, it was refreshing that the next speaker, the American writer Conlin Wagner stood up suddenly and shouted with all the dramatic gestures someone is capable of when familiar with the theatre: 'all right everybody, you can stand up for five minutes and stretch, in order to relax a bit from all these speeches'. The chairperson A. Puissant gave also Mr. Wagner the permission to leave the stage on which the panel was seated and to take up standing position at the pulpit up front.

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