Reconsidering a lost intellectual project. Exiles’ reflections on cultural differences

The panel presents different surveys about effects of trans-national experiences on the views of emigrants and exiles concerning their own –old- academic and intellectual cultures. Intellectuals and scholars living in foreign contexts asked themselves often about the lost projects of the inter-war European elites: the –academic and cultural- modernization of Spain, Romania and Poland, that was stopped by the beginning of the war period, left a nostalgic feeling for this exiles but the experiences in the USA, England, Spain or France took then to a questioning of their old views. We focus on reflections by people who left their countries in the period 1936-1945 and who were reconsidering their own past in the old country and comparing it with the actual experiences in the new fatherland. The panel will bring together papers on concrete cases, but embedded in a similar theoretical framework. We want to know more about meta-reflections on academic cultures and about the way this reflections –if even- made their way back to the dictatorships of the post-war Europe.

José M. Faraldo / Carolina Rodríguez-López (Complutense University, Madrid)

José M. Faraldo: jm.faraldo@ghis.ucm.es
Carolina Rodríguez- López: carolinarodriguez@ghis.ucm.es