Establishing the cultural identity of the west in the early Cold War: a conceptual approach
Published:
Jan 5, 2014
Keywords:
antitotalitarian discourse western political thought semasiological analysis community of readers communist experience national identities
Abstract
This article examines the conceptual features of the semantic field constructed in the west in the early Cold War and the basic concepts and notions that framed the Cold War ideologically in the west, such as democracy versus totalitarianism; universal freedom and freedom of the spirit versus totalitarian oppression; welfare democracies versus poverty and exploitation; and Christianity, family and traditions versus communism. The transnational character of the antitotalitarian discourse under investigation followed the linear border of the universal ideological division as opposed to the horizon of the various enduring realities in the domestic scene.
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Papadimitriou, D. (2014). Establishing the cultural identity of the west in the early Cold War: a conceptual approach. Historein, 14(2), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.169
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Rousso, Henry, ed., Stalinisme et nazisme: histoire et mémoire comparées. Paris: Editions Complexe, 1999.
Scott-Smith, Giles, and Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Scott-Smith, Giles, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-war American Hegemony, London: Routledge, 2002.
Scott-Smith, Giles. “A Radical Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.” Journal of Contemporary History 25/2 (2000): 263–280.
Sebastian, Javiér Fernández and Juan Francisco Fuentes. “Conceptual History, Memory and Identity: An Interview with Reinhart Koselleck.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 2/1 (2006): 99–127.
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Wieviorka, Αnnette. L’Ere du témoin. Paris: Plon, 1998.
Wilford, Hugh. The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Arendt, Hannah. “We Refugees.” In The Jewish Writings. New York: Schocken Books, 2007.
Aron, Raymond. Démocratie et totalitarisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
Bozo, Frédéric. “France, ‘Gaullisme’, and the Cold War.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Vol. II, Crises and Détente, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Buck-Morss, Susan. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000.
Carruthers, Susan L. “Between Camps: Eastern Bloc ‘Escapees’ and Cold War Borderlands.” American Quarterly 57/3 (2005): 911–942.
Copfemann, Emile. David Rousset. Une vie dans le siècle. Paris: Plon, 1991.
Crossman, Richard. Introduction to The God that Failed, edited by Richard Crossman, Arthur Koestler et al., 1–10. New York: Bantam Books, 1965.
Diner, Dan. America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996.
Dönhoff, Marion. “Germany puts Freedom before Unity.” Foreign Affairs 28/3 (1950): 398–411.
Ehrman, John. The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1994. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Engerman, David C. “Ideology and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1962.” In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, 20–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Fousek, John. To Lead the Free World. American Nationalism and the Cultural Roots of the Cold War. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Freeden, Michael. “Editorial: The Comparative Study of Political Thinking.” Journal of Political Ideologies 12/1 (2001): 1–9.
Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Geyer, Michael, and Shelia Fitzpatrick, eds., Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.
Gleason, Abbott. Totalitarianism: The Inner Story of the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
Graebner, Norman A. “Myth and Reality. America’s Rhetorical Cold War.” In Critical Reflections on the Cold War. Linking Rhetoric and History, edited by Martin J. Medhurst and HW Brands, 20–37. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
Grémion, Pierre. Intelligence de l’anticommunisme. Le Congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris, 1950–1975.Paris: Fayard, 1995.
Grémion, Pierre. Preuves: Une Revue Européenne à Paris. Paris: Julliard, 1989.
Ignatieff, Michael. Isaiah Berlin: A Life. London: Chatto and Windus, 1998.
Judt, Tony. “The Past is Another Country: Myth and. Memory in Postwar Europe,” In Memory and Power in Post-war Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, edited by Jan-Werner Müller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. New York: Penguin, 2005.
Judt, Tony. Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century. New York: Penguin, 2008.
Kates, Gary, ed. The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies. London: Routledge, 1998.
Kershaw, Ian, and Moshe Lewin, eds., Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003.
Koriakoff, Michel. Moscou ne croit pas aux larmes, translated by Korine Roma. Paris: Monde Nouveau, 1951.
Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated by Kenneth Tribe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
Krabbendam, Hans and Giles Scott-Smith. “Introduction: Boundaries to Freedom.” In The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, edited by Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, 1–9. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Kravtchenko Andreievitch V. J’ai choisi la liberté. Paris: Editions Self, 1947.
Kuisel, Richard. Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Lefort, Claude. La complication. Retour sur le communisme. Fayard: Paris, 1999.
Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen. “Conceptual History and Conceptual Transfer: the Case of ‘Nation’ in Revolutionary France and Germany.” In History of Concepts. Comparative Perspectives, edited by Ian Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans and Frank van Vree, 115–128. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press: 1998.
Malia, Martin. Histoire des Révolutions. Translated by Laurent Bury. Paris: Tallandrier, 2008.
Malia, Martin. Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999.
Maulnier, Thierry. La Face de Méduce du “Communisme.” Paris: Gallimard, 1959.
Mausbach, Wilfried.“‘Burn, warehouse, burn!’ Modernity, Counterculture, and the Vietnam War in West Germany.” In Between Marx and Coca-Cola. Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980, edited by Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, 175–202. New York: Berghahn, 2005.
McMahon, Robert J. “‘By Helping Others, We Help Ourselves.’ The Cold War Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy.” In Critical Reflections of the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History, edited by Martin J Medhurst and HW Brands, 233–246. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Les Aventures de la dialectique. Paris: Gallimard, 1955.
Michéa, Jean-Claude. Orwell, anarchiste Tory. Paris: Climats, 2008.
Miłosz, Czesław. La pensée captive. Essai sur les logocraties populaires. Translated by André Prudhommeaux; foreword by Karl Jaspers. Paris: Gallimard, 1953.
Monnerot, Jules. Sociologie du Communisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1949.
Myrivilis, Stratis. Ο Κομμουνισμός και το Παιδομάζωμα [Communism and child-gathering]. Kalamata: Laiki Vivliothiki, 1948.
Porter, James E., “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.” Rhetoric Review 5/1 (1986): 34–47.
Pudal, Bernard et al. Introduction to Le siècle des communismes, edited by Michel Dreyfus et al., 9–19. Paris: Les Editions de l’Atelier/Éditions ouvrières, 2004.
Richter, Melvin. “More than a Two-Way Traffic: Analyzing, Translating, and Comparing Political Concepts from Other Cultures.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 1/1 (2005): 7–20.
Ricœur, Paul. “The Model of the Text.” Social Research 38 (1971): 526–555.
Rioux, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-François Sirinelli,. La France d’un siècle à l’autre, 1914–2000. Paris: Hachette, 1999.
Rousset, David, Théo Bernard and Gérard Rosenthal. Pour la vérité sur les camps concentrationnaires. Un procès antistalinien à Paris. Paris: Edition Ramsay, 1990.
Rousso, Henry, ed., Stalinisme et nazisme: histoire et mémoire comparées. Paris: Editions Complexe, 1999.
Scott-Smith, Giles, and Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Scott-Smith, Giles, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-war American Hegemony, London: Routledge, 2002.
Scott-Smith, Giles. “A Radical Political Offensive’: Melvin J. Lasky, Der Monat, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.” Journal of Contemporary History 25/2 (2000): 263–280.
Sebastian, Javiér Fernández and Juan Francisco Fuentes. “Conceptual History, Memory and Identity: An Interview with Reinhart Koselleck.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 2/1 (2006): 99–127.
Shaw, Tony. Hollywood’s Cold War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Sirinelli, Jean-François, and Georges-Henri Soutou, eds. Culture et Guerre froide. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008.
Sirinelli, Jean-François. Deux Intellectuels dans le siècle, Sartre et Aron. Paris: Fayard, 1995.
Stephan, Alexander. “A Special German Case of Cultural Americanization.” In The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945, edited by Alexander Stephan. New York: Berghahn, 2007.
Stephanson, Anders. Fourteen Notes on the Very Concept of the Cold War. H-Diplo. Accessed 19 October 2014. http://h-diplo.org/essays/PDF/stephanson-14notes.pdf.
Stora, Benjamin. Preface to Les guerres de mémoires. La France et son histoire, edited by Pascal Blanchard and Isabelle Veyrat-Masson. Paris: La Découverte, 2008.
Talmon, Jacob L. The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. London: Secker & Warburg, 1952.
Thom, François. “La campagne contre ‘l’adulation de l’Occident’.” In Culture et Guerre froide, edited by Jean-François Sirinelli and Georges-Henri Sotou, 11–26. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008.
Traverso, Enzo. “Judéité et politique chez Hannah Arendt.” Revue Française de Science Politique 59/5 (2009): 895–914.
Traverso, Enzo. Le Totalitarisme. Le XXe siècle en débat. Paris: Seuil, 2000.
Wieviorka, Αnnette. L’Ere du témoin. Paris: Plon, 1998.
Wilford, Hugh. The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? London: Frank Cass, 2003.
