Aleksandra Tobiasz

This project’s overarching aim is to problematize the concept of (Central) Europe in a transregional, global perspective in relation to (Latin) America, Russia, and Asia, through the phenomenological prism of individual experiences of travel and life in exile (the self as mirrored by the other). Aleksandra Tobiasz’s research distances itself from a geopolitical approach to East-Central Europe founded on region-building ideas and identity politics. Instead, she places emphasis on geopoetics and the literary self-identifications of several Central European writers (Czesław Miłosz, Andrzej Bobkowski, Joseph Roth, and Alma Karlin) reshaped by changeable places, cultures, and plural temporalities. Tobiasz addresses the turn from spiritual culture toward somatic experiences and the culture of everyday life in defining Central European identity. Drawing on the interdisciplinary area of sensory studies, her research aims to present the region’s sensory topographies, which are replacing the horizontal geopolitical dichotomy between the coveted culture of the West and the spurned politics of the East with vertical geopoetic north-south vectors.