Oldal 103 [103]
100
Anssi Halmesvirta
Encountering the Hungarian Alterity: An
Analysis of a Narrative by a Finnish Traveller
The approach in this article is historical-analytical: it is well-known that entities
called Identities do not exist without something that is usually called the Oth¬
ers and that their relationship is historically preconditioned. But the contested
nature of common-sensical Identity becomes even more apparent when its more
philosophical pair, Alterity, comes onto the scene, for example, in colonial settings
(Gikandi 1996: introd.). The Alterity denotes a state of challenging, contesting,
or opposing Identity, which is something positive, coherent, and integrated. En¬
countering Alterity can lead to transformation or even disintegration of Identity.
The dichotomy of Identity and Alterity, in any case, implies tension and conflict;
as we hark back into history it can be seen most glaringly in the clash between
Jewish and Aryan identities as formulated in Nazi racist ideology. In it they were
juxtaposed as irreconcilable Alterities, and irrespective of how pseudo-scientific
and mythical they nowadays seem, they were for a long time widely accepted ste¬
reotypes in Europe, the irreconcilability of which led to unprecedented horrors in
its modern history.
Ideas of national awakening and the building of a national state were for a long
time imbued with a “racial” dichotomy of Identity and Alterity also in Finland: for
example, the Finns were often identified in European ethnology and anthropology
as primordially “Mongolian” rather than the more civilized, “Germanic” Swed¬
ish-speaking Finns in Finland, or they were assigned to represent a middle grade
between barbarism and civilization—a position defining Finnish Identity, which
permeated Finnish travel writing and, consequently, directly affected the notions of
Hungarians that were held by the Finnish-minded (fennoman) intelligentsia from
at least the 1860s on. It was as if the Finns had been suffering from an inferiority
complex in their relations with the Swedish speakers, which made them desperately
seek mental and cultural support from such kinship peoples as Hungarians and
Estonians (Halmesvirta 2001: 107-114; 2004: 21-27).
The concept of Alterity also carries with it some concomitant key concepts that
make Identity and Alterity, so to say, work together in reality. For example, there is
boundary, namely, the separating line, the stepping over of which means entering
the realm of the unknown or foreign territory of the Other. Motives for crossing
the boundary may be multifarious, ranging from curiosity to hatred (i.e. war). The
Russians were for the Finns rather “devilish” or, at least, “distasteful” Others from
the end of the nineteenth century and during the interwar years, in particular.
But when Finns and Russians came to meet face to face in postwar peacetime, the