Švejkian geopolitics: Subversive obedience in Central Europe

Geopolitics

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 257-277

  Kuus, Merje ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOPOLITICS; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; NATO; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; WAR;

BALTIC STATES; CENTRAL EUROPE; CZECH REPUBLIC; ESTONIA; EURASIA; EUROPE; NORTHERN EUROPE;

EID: 46749096366     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040801991506     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. Central Europe is a malleable term. In the early 1990s, it generally denoted the three Visegrad states. Over the decade, several other formerly socialist states started branding themselves as Central European, and common usage of the term gradually expanded to all former satellite states of the Soviet Union. Today, Central Europe connotes the east-central European states that acceded into either the EU or NATO in 2004. For analyses of the discourse of Central Europe, see M. Kuus, 'Europe's Eastern Enlargement and the Re-inscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe', Progress in Human Geography 28/4 (2004) pp. 472-489.
2. S. Moisio, 'EU Eligibility, Central Europe and the Invention of Applicant State Narrative', Geopolitics 7/3 (2002) pp. 89-116.
3. I. B. Neumann, The Uses of the Other: 'The East' in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1999).
4. C. Haerpfer, C. Milosinski, and C. Wallace, 'Old and New Security Issues in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Results of an 11 Nation Study', Europe-Asia Studies 51/6 (1999) pp. 989-1011.
5. see also BBC News, '"Newcomers" Joy at Nato Invitation' (22 Nov. 2002).
6. C. Domozetov, 'Public Perceptions of Euro-Atlantic Partnership: Issues of Security and Military. The Case of Bulgaria', NATO_EAPC Institutional Research Fellowship 1988-2000 (Brussels: Office of Information and Press, NATO), available at , accessed 12 Aug. 2004. Maria Todorova remarks that in Bulgaria, the governmental pursuit of NATO accession was euphemistically referred to as 'the civilizational choice of our country'.
7. M. Todorova, 'Isn;t Central Europe Dead?', in C. Lord (ed.), Central Europe: Core or Periphery? (Copenhagen, Denmark: Copenhagen Business School 2003) pp. 219-231. Andrew Stroehlein notes that in the aftermath of the Kosovo bombings in 1999, soon after the Visegrad states had entered NATO, Czech politicians 'were all stumbling over each other' to politically capitalise on public ambivalence on NATO.
8. A. Stroehlein, 'Land Corridor Brings Clearer Roles', Central Europe Review 31 (26 April 1999), available at , accessed 13 June 2005.
9. There were (unsuccessful) calls for popular referenda on accession in several Central European states, including Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Estonia. A. Gaube, 'Snubbing NATO', Transitions Online (13 Dec. 2002).
10. C. Wallander, 'NATO's Price: Shape Up or Ship Out', Foreign Affairs 81/6 (2002) p. 2-8.
11. J. Hašek, The Adventures of Good Soldier Švejk in the World War (London: Penguin 2000 [1923]).
12. Ibid., p. 30
13. R. Pytlik, Jaroslav Hašek and the Good Soldier Schweik (Prague: Panorama Publishing House for the Ministry of Culture 1983) p. 2.
14. M. Keith, 'Conclusion: A Changing Space and a Time for Change', in S. Pile and M. Keith (eds.), Geographies of Resistance (London: Routledge 1997) p. 286.
15. M. Rose, 'The Seductions of Resistance: Power, Politics, and a Performative Style of Systems', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20/4 (2002) pp. 383-400.
16. J. Edkins and V. Pin-Fat, 'Introduction: Life, Power, Resistance', in J. Edkins, V. Pin-Fat, and M. Shapiro (eds.), Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics (New York: Routledge 2004) pp. 1-22.
17. Sharp, P. Routledge, C. Philo, and R. Paddison, 'Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance', in J. Sharp, and P. Routledge (eds.), Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/ Resistance (London: Routledge 2000) pp. 1-42.
18. T. Mitchell, 'Everyday Metaphors of Power', Theory and Society 19/ 5 (1990) pp. 545-577.
19. J. Dittmer, 'The Tyranny of the Serial: Popular Geopolitics, the Nation, and Comic Book Discourse', Antipode 39/2 (2007) pp. 247-68.
20. K. Dodds, 'The 1982 Falklands War and a Critical Geopolitical Eye: Steve Bell and the if ⋯; Cartoons', Political Geography 15/6/7 (1996) pp. 571-592.
21. K. Dodds, 'Enframing Bosnia: The Geopolitical Iconography of Steve Bell', in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998).
22. K. Dodds, 'Licensed to Stereotype: Popular Geopolitics, James Bond and the Spectre of Balkanism', Geopolitics 8/2 (2003) pp. 125-156.
23. K. Dodds, 'Popular Geopolitics and Audience Dispositions: James Bond and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31/2 (2006) pp. 116-130.
24. P. Routledge, 'Going Globile: Spatiality, Embodiment, and Mediation in the Zapatista Insurgency', in G. Ó Tuathail and S. Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998).
25. P. Routledge, 'Anti-Geopolitics', in K. Mitchell, J. Agnew, and G. Toal (eds.), A Companion to Political Geography (London: Blackwell 2002).
26. J. Sharp, 'Hegemony, Popular Culture and Geopolitics: The Reader's Digest and the Construction of Danger', Political Geography 15/6/7 (1996) pp. 557-570.
27. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000).
28. T. Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1996).
29. Routledge, 'Anti-Geopolitics' (note 11).
30. Dodds, 'The 1982 Falklands War' (note 11) p. 575
31. Dodds, 'Enframing Bosnia' (note 11).
32. G. Ó Tuathail, 'An Anti-Geopolitical Eye: Maggie O'Kane in Bosnia, 1992-93', Gender, Place and Culture 3/2 (1996) pp. 171-195.
33. Routledge, 'Going Globile' (note 11).
34. An in-depth analysis of agency and resistance in Foucauldian analyses is beyond the scope of this paper, but see Edkins and Pin-Fat (note 9).
35. T. Mitchell (note 10). Rose, 'The Seductions of Resistance' (note 8).
36. J. Sharp, P. Routledge, C. Philo, and R. Paddison, 'Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance', in J. Sharp, and P. Routledge (eds.),Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/ Resistance (London: Routledge 2000) pp. 1-42.
37. Z. Šabix and L. Jelušix, 'Slovenia and NATO Enlargement: Twists, Turns and Endless Frustrations', in C. Krupnick (ed.), Almost NATO: Partners and Players in Central and Eastern European Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2002) p. 98.
38. Šabix;s and Jelušix;s description of Slovenia is well applicable across Central Europe.
39. See M. Kuus, '"Love, Peace and Nato"?: Imperial Subject-Making in Central Europe', Antipode 39/2 (2007) pp. 269-290.
40. Central Europe also illuminates the ambivalent position of elites, especially intellectuals, in the entanglements of submission/resistance. Conventional understanding of that role is heavily influenced by George Konrad's influential formulation, in which intellectuals were among the key agents of resistance anti-politics. The history of anti-Soviet dissidents has contributed to romanticised image of Central European intellectuals of statecraft as 'speaking truth to power'. G. Konrad, Anti-Politics (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1984).
41. That image was perhaps always naïve. G. Eyal, The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From Prague Spring to the Breakup of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2003).
42. K. Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991). In the post-Cold War era, moreover, Central European intellectuals for the most part do not bear out their romanticised image as agents of resistance. As noted above, many of the intellectuals famed for their resistance to Soviet domination are now key proponents of NATO accession. At the same time, Central European intellectuals also feel disempowered by the West that they support. It makes them curious supporters of Western rhetoric: A support that isn;t as strong as it first seems, but does not crystallise into opposition either.
43. See M. Kuus, 'Intellectuals and Geopolitics: The "Cultural Politicians" of Central Europe', Geoforum 37/2 (2007) pp. 241-251.
44. E. Dunn, Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2005).
45. E. Dunn, 'Standards and Person-Making in East-Central Europe', in A. Ong and S. Collier (eds.), Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (Oxford: Blackwell 2005).
46. G. Feldman, 'Essential Crises: A Performative Approach to Migrants, Minorities and the European Nation-state', Anthropological Quarterly 78/1 (2005) pp. 231-246.
47. M. Kuus, Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe's Eastern Enlargement (New York: Palgrave 2007) ch. 6.
48. J. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave 2001).
49. Dunn, 'Standards and Person-Making' (note 20) p. 51.
50. Wedel (note 20) p. 3.
51. M. Simecka, 'The Havel Paradox', Transitions Online (21 March 2003).
52. A. Krzeminski, 'First Kant, Now Habermas: A Polish Perspective on "Core Europe"', in D. Levy, M. Pensky, and J. Torpey (eds.), Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations After the Iraq War (London: Verso 2005) p. 147.
53. J. Habermas and J. Derrida 'February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together,' in Levy, Pensky, and Torpey (note 24), pp. 3-13 (2003).
54. P. Esterhazy 'How Big is the European Dwarf?' in Levy: Pensky, and Torpey (note 24), pp. 74-79 (2003).
55. A. Stasiuk, 'Wild, Cunning, Exotic: The East Will Completely Shake Up Europe', Süddeutsche Zeitung (20 June 2003), reprinted in Levy, Pensky, and Torpey (note 24) pp. 10-104.
56. Krzeminski (note 24).
57. Stasiuk (note 25). The book Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe (note 24) collects thirtytwo responses to the Habermas and Derrida declaration from major European newspapers. The book is selective of course, and it may well exclude some essays by Central Europeans. It nonetheless highlights the key role of irony in Central European responses to the declaration. Stasiuk's satire has two targets here: He mocks not only Western stereotypes of Eastern Europe but also Westerners' inability to see the traits that they assign to the East (in this case religious belief and sub-state nationalism) in the West itself.
58. Cf. Wedel (note 20).
59. Keith (note 7) p. 286.
60. see also S. Pile, 'Introduction: Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance', in Pile and Keith (note 7) pp. 1-32, p. 6.
61. J. Bennett, 'Kundera, Coetzee, and the Politics of Anonymity,' in J. Seery and D. Conway (eds.), Politics and Irony: Essays in Self-Betrayal (New York: St. Martin;s Press 1992) pp 151-170, p. 152.
62. The novel was published unfinished in 1923 after Hašek's death from tuberculosis.
63. Quoted in H. Cervinková, Playing Soldiers in Bohemia: An Ethnography of NATO Membership (Prague: Set Out 2006) p. 31.
64. C. James, 'The Model of a Soldier (but No Model Soldier)', The New York Times (17 Nov. 2004). The New York Public Library's list came out in 1996; it names the most influential books of the past 100 years.
65. I will give examples of Švejk's popularity in the section on Estonia.
66. Hašek (note 4) p. 3.
67. Ibid., p. 58.
68. Ibid., p. 58.
69. Ibid., p. 213.
70. Ibid., p. 168
71. Ibid., back cover
72. Pytlik (note 6) p. 36.
73. I. Johnston, 'On Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk', Lecture notes, available at , accessed 16 Nov. 2006, p. 13.
74. Ibid., p. 3.
75. P. Fleming and G. Sewell, 'Looking for the Good Soldier, Švejk: Alternative Modalities of Resistance in the Contemporary Workplace', Sociology 36/4 (2002) p. 860, emphasis in original.
76. P. Steiner, 'Tropos Kynikos: Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk', Poetics Today 19/4 (1998) pp. 469-498, pp. 470-471.
77. It is absurd obedience, one which involves not simply following orders but executing them to an absurd extent, that distinguishes Švejk from 'regular' conformists. For excellent analyses of 'regular' banal conformism, see H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin 2006[1964]).
78. V. Havel, 'The Power of the Powerless' (1978), available at , accessed 8 Nov. 2007.
79. Fleming and Sewell (note 43) p. 859.
80. Ibid., p. 867.
81. Ibid., p. 868.
82. It is particularly because of its use of the absurd as a medium of critique that The New York Times calls Švejk 'the 20th century's great template for comic antiwar novels'. James, 'The Model of a Soldier; (note 32). Švejk has been made into 16 films, especially in Eastern Europe.
83. A. Ermel, 'Josef Švejki juhtumised kino- ja teleekraanil' [The Adventures of Josef Švejk on the Big Screen and on Television], Postimees (5 May 2006); Pytlik (note 6) p. 50.
84. Pytlik (note 6) p. 59.
85. Stroehlein (note 2).
86. Cervinkovǎ (note 31).
87. Ibid., pp. 26-30.
88. Ibid., p. 31.
89. M. Shafir, 'Švejkism and the Czech Accession to the EU', Radio Free Europe: RFL/RL Newsline (9 July 1999).
90. see also W. L. Webb, 'Retreat into Stoicism as the Darkness Descends', The Guardian (22 Aug. 1968).
91. L. Meri, 'Lauakõne Tšehhi presidendile Václav Havelile' [Toast to Czech President Václav Havel], Prague, 30 May 2000, in L. Meri, Riigimured [Concerns of the State], Speeches 1996-2001, ed. by T. Kiho (Tartu: Ilmamaa 2001) p. 495.
92. All translations from Estonian are mine. Švejk fits well with Estonia's comedic tradition of self-deprecating humour: The popular cartoon representation of an Estonian is an unpolished peasant simpleton. See E. Berg, 'Some Unintended Consequences of Geopolitical Reasoning in Post-Soviet Estonia: Texts and Policy Streams, Maps and Cartoons', Geopolitics 8/1 (2003) pp. 101-120.
93. J. Hašek, Vahva sõdur Švejki juhtumised maailmasõja pwevil (Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 2007[1923]). The previous edition was published in 2003. Product description at one Estonian bookstore calls The Good Soldier Švejk 'undoubtedly one of the most beloved and most entertaining books [ever]', (Apollo Raamatumaja, , accessed 14 May 2007). Such a description may seem overdone from the North American perspective, but it is fairly accurate in the Central European context.
94. 'Meie NATO' [Our NATO], Postimees (22 Nov. 2002).
95. K. Karpa, 'NATO'st, emotsioonidega' [On NATO, with Emotions], Eesti Päevaleht (22 Nov. 2002).
96. Karpa, 'NATO's, emotsioonidega' (note 57).
97. K. Karpa, 'Suursaadik Kannike kuulas NATO otsust pisarsilmil' [Ambassador Kannike Listened to NATO's Decision with Teary Eyes], Eesti Päevaleht (22 Nov. 2002).
98. P. Hõbemägi, 'Tuimad tähtsündmused' [Bland Special Occasions], Eesti Päevaleht (23 Nov. 2002).
99. K. Liik, 'NATO, puud ja ajutisus' [NATO, Trees and Temporality], Postimees (19 June 2004). Liik wrote the editorial to celebrate the accession in 2004 (rather than the invitation in 2002).
100. See also Kuus, '"Love, Peace and Nato"?' (note 18).
101. J. Kaplinski, 'Keegi peab tõtt rä-dsakima' [Someone Has to Speak the Truth], Eesti Ekspress (11 Feb. 2003).
102. A. Kivirl̃d;ahk, 'Pärast Prahat' [After Prague], Eesti Päevaleht (23 Nov. 2002). Becherovka is a popular Czech bitters.
103. A. Kivirähk, 'Halb ilm ei häiri enam' [Bad Weather No Longer Bothers], Eesti Päevaleht (23 Nov. 2002).
104. V. Frits, 'Drang nach Osten', Eesti Ekspress (28 Nov. 2002). The German expression 'Drang nach osten; translates as 'Draw to the east; and is generally used to evoke the conquests of the Teutonic Knights in the Middle Ages.
105. 'NATO kutsub, Eesti kratsib alles pead' [NATO is Calling, Estonia is Still Scratching His Head], Eesti Ekspress (21 Nov. 2002).
106. Elviste's job title invokes the notion that Estonia's Russian-speaking population is disloyal to the Estonian state and could form a fifth column to destabilise the country.
107. 'NATO kepp Eesti sipelgapesas' [NATO's Stick in the Estonian Anthouse], Eesti Ekspress (28 Nov. 2002).
108. V. Frits, 'Sõda ja rahu' [War and Peace], Eesti Ekspress (11 Feb. 2003). Starting in 2002, Eesti Ekspress has occasionally titled a part of its humour section as the 'War and Peace', 'War' or 'North Atlantic' column. The column functions as a venue for mocking Estonia's foreign and defence policy. In terms of its political orientation, the weekly Eesti Ekspress is centre-right/libertarian like most Estonian media. These are just some examples of the overall coverage of NATO accession (as a decade-long process, not as a one-time event). The examples are selected in part because they translate better than others, which are more intertextual and dig deeper into Estonian history as well as its folk and popular culture. NATO accession was not the only policy represented in this way; numerous other 'serious' issues, such as European Union (EU) accession, have likewise received Švejkian coverage.
109. See A. Kivirähk, Vargamäe vanad ja noored lähevad Euroopasse [The Young and the Old of Vargamäe go to Europe] (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe Kirjastus 2004). The present paper focuses on NATO accession because of the stark contrast between the official story and the Švejkian parody of it.
110. V. Luik, E. Nüganen, J. Arrak, J. Englebrecht, H. Surva, and A. Kivirähk. 'Eestlaseks jääda saab vaid eurooplasena' [Only as Europeans Can We Remain Estonians], Postimees (8 Aug. 2003).
111. Eiki Berg makes a similar point about market considerations in his analysis of political cartoons in Estonia. Berg (note 55).
112. Bennett (note 29) p. 166.
113. Steiner (note 44) p. 496.
114. Bennett (note 29) pp. 152-153.
115. Ibid.