The Hungarian Transylvania: Symbolic reconstruction of lost territories
The Hungarian Transylvania: Symbolic reconstruction of lost territories

Summary/Abstract: This study is about how Transylvania, the multiethnic region that was once part of the Hungarian Kingdom and later the Habsburg Empire and the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy and which since 1920 has been part of Romania, was rediscovered by Hungarians over the past twenty years. More precisely, it examines what the Transylvania that citizens of Hungary discovered and created was like in Hobsbawm’s sense of the invention of traditions. The theoretical focus of my analysis is the symbolic construction of places through discourses and performative acts of identification and occupation. My primary claim is that the restoration of a territorial approach to the nation, a national re-territorialization, is taking place in rediscovered Transylvania, accompanied by a new discourse of national authenticity.

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