Hungarian Westsplaining

The ‘Black Lives Matter statue’ of Hungarian artist Péter Szalay in the 9th District of Budapest erected in 2021. Photo: István Huszti / Telex

Revisiting the Westcentric Geographies of Colonial Difference in Competitive Exceptionalism, Non-comparativism, and Victimhood in the Hungarian Colony

This paper travels through a non-logocentric fluidity of epistemically disobedient nomadism to deconstruct the geographies of coloniality/modernity behind colony:race cultural politics in a strategically essentialized ‘Hungary’ from a (counter-)self-reflexive, politically incorrect, canceled under-empowerment of ‘not-quite-whiteness’ in hybrid subaltern Hunglish. Museum collections, cultural festivals, and art exhibits systematically erase ‘coloniality’ in ‘exceptionalist Hungary’, a Zaubergarten outbraving the Iron Cage of one-way omniliberal universalism. Yet a strange ambivalence lurks behind how Hungarian politics forcefully captured ‘coloniality’ vis-á-vis the ‘West’, while ‘West’-oriented anti-colonialism rejects any systemic criticism of Hungary-centered global colonialism(s). On the full political spectrum, Hungarian culture became a hotbed of self-colonizing mimicry, a staged ‘West simulacrum’ populated by turn-key imports of ‘the West’. However, nobody addressed the geographies behind ‘West imaginaries’, the divisions of labor in ‘colonizer/non-colonizer’ difference-making, the non-comparative ‘colonial identity politics’ of competitive nativist victimhood, and the controversial, multi-layered, imagined, yet unitary concept of ‘the West’. This competitive denial of comparative, dialogical, and geographical critique is also true for recent ‘decolonial’ exhibitions. Decolonizing cultural heritage in Europe produced a posh vanguard of exhibiting socialist era relations with the Global South, uncovering ambiguous continuities in colonialism and racism, coupled with commodified postsocialist nostalgia. Berlin, Kaunas and Ljubljana recently hosted such state-supported exhibitions that are unimaginable in Hungary. Yet there is no regional dialogue, only competition for ‘decolonial capital’, Global South artists and cultural relations. In Hungary, the George Floyd incident in 2020 spawned a dubious ‘decolonial’ art project and a ‘BLM statue’, while a waning ‘West’ and Hungarian ‘freedom’ was addressed at ‘Hungarian Indian’ exhibitions or Turanic festivals. ‘Westsplaining’ discourse follows a false moral compass of either embracing or denying ‘Western’ recognition, obscures the material interests behind the Hungarian ‘culture war’, and silences the complicated Hungarian global positioning strategies articulated in coloniality and race.

Abstract submitted to the proposed workshop ‘Westsplaining’ Art History.

© Citation: Ginelli, Z. (2024): Hungarian Westsplaining: Revisiting the Westcentric Geographies of Colonial Difference in Competitive Exceptionalism, Non-comparativism, and Victimhood in the Hungarian Colony. zoltanginelli.com