Технология на дисиденството: действие, страдание, поглед
Technology of Dissidence: Action, Passion, Gaze

Summary/Abstract: The article applies a constructivist approach to the idea of dissidence and the ‘figure’ of the dissident. Its first thesis is that it is not only action (i.e. expressions of dissent), which is constitutive of dissidence, but also the price paid for non-conformity: being censored, marginalised, repressed, exiled, even murdered. Therefore suffering (passion in the Christian sense) is no less important than active dissent. The second and main thesis is about the crucial role of the recognition, i.e. ‘gaze’ – from outside, through transnational contacts and presence in Western media, and from inside, in the local dissident publicity (insofar as it existed). These ideas are employed to make sense of the Bulgarian debate on dissidence in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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