Borderline Culture. The Politics of Identity in Four Twentieth-Century Slavic Novels (review)

REVIEWS book provides "everything you ever wanted to know about adolescence (European, turn-of-the-century), but would not have thought to ask," to paraphrase the weU-known cuché. Having read The Fin-de-siècle Culture ofAdolescence, I cannot imagine ever again teaching in the same way a Uterary text in which an adolescent appears, whether it be Grass' Katz und Maus, Beauvoir's Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, or perhaps a film such as "Mädchen in Uniform." One also gains a different understanding ofthe sociaUzation and resulting mentaUty ofthe generation sacrificed in the battles of World War I. For those seeking more information on the subject ofadolescence in this period, Neubauer provides an extensive bibliography and an appendix of"PubUcations onAdolescence 1881-1925," Usting works from numerous Western countries. In Fin-de-Siècle Vienna John Schorske embedded several authors (Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal) qua cultural figures in what is foremost a cultural study of the period. Neubauer by contrast gives equal weight in his book to Uterary and cultural aspects of his topic, and offers close and detaUed textual readings of the literary works. Although he does not draw expUcit connections between Uterary and cultural phenomena, he does juxtapose the two analyses, and an astute reader automaticaUy makes the links in the reading process. For this reason the pubUcation of Neubauer's book is timely: it provides an exceUent pioneering example of how cultural studies can fruitfuUy be combined with comparative Uterary study at a time when that relationship (seen by some as representing mutuaUy exclusive elements) is undergoing intense debate. Not only does it contribute in a concrete way to the ongoing discussion, but it does so admirably: it is exemplary in its interdiscipUnarity and inter-nationaUsm. Elaine Martin University ofAlabama TOMISLAV Z. LONGINOVIC. Borderline Culture. The Politics of Identity in Four Twentieth-Century Slavic Novels. Fayetteville: U ofArkansas P, 1993. 197 pp. The field ofSlavic studies has traditionaUy been the realm of great works of comparative analysis. Names such as Iurn Tynianov, MikhaU Bakhtin, or Iurii Lotman in Russia, or René Wellek and Roman Jakobson in this country, immediately caU up some of the cornerstone works ofcomparative Uterature. In recent years, nevertheless, the Slavic field has largely turned towards topics limited by the boundaries of national Uteratures (paying its due to the ever-growing pressures of speciaUzation), and therefore away from what is probably the most inspiring work in its analytical tradition. The move is aU the more surprising since Slavic cultures and Uteratures form an immensely rich Vol. 19 (1995): 146 THE COMPAKATIST and interconnected network of ideas, influences, poUtical and historical bonds or antagonisms, ambivalent dialogues, and master-slave relationships , so that a comparative approach seems the methodology best suited for analyzing not only Slavic cultures among themselves, but even phenomena within the borders of any single culture that is always already "contaminated" by an often problematic relationship to other Slavic traditions or to the West. Borderline Culture by Tomislav Longinovic continues very productively the aforementioned comparatist tradition within the Slavic field. Borderline Culture focuses on the works of four authors (Mikhail Bulgakov, Witold Gombrowicz, Danüo Kis and MUan Kundera) from four different Slavic backgrounds, but with a similar marginalized, or dissident poUtical destiny, in order to discuss the marginalized position of Slavic cultures vis-à-vis Europe and the West in general. The marginaUzation of Slavic culture occurs, in Longinovic's view, in several ways: the borderline identity of the Slavs "geo-graphicaUy reflects a coUective identity of Slavic peoples who inhabit the borderlands between the Asian cultures in the East and the European culture proper in the West," producing an outlook which always exists within itself in a diaspora between the two, which is thus "in denial of its 'easternness" and therefore "never equal to itself, never able to stabilize culturally, since it perceives itself as a lack" (26). The authors chosen represent the borderline position of Slavic cultures; each ofthe authors has been oppressed by or within the already internaUy divided culture, making him well suited to formulate the symptoms ofthe culture's marginalization: "Borderline poetics produces an image of reality that...