TY - JOUR
T1 - Eurasianism versus IndoGermanism
T2 - Linguistics and mythology in the 1930s’ controversies over European prehistory
AU - Geroulanos, Stefanos
AU - Phillips, Jamie
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: We are grateful for support from the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CNRS/NYU UMI 3199) that facilitated some of the research that went into this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018/6/1
Y1 - 2018/6/1
N2 - In 1935, the Russian linguist Prince Nicolai S. Trubetskoi and the French mythologist Georges Dumézil engaged in a vicious debate over a seemingly obscure subject: the structure of Northwest Caucasian languages. Based on unknown archival material in French, German, and Russian, this essay uses the debate as a pathway into the 1930s scientific and political stakes of IndoEuropeanism – the belief that European cultures emerged through the spread of a single IndoEuropean people out of a single “motherland.” Each of the two authors held strong commitments to visions of European order and its origins – in “Eurasia” for Trubetskoi and a Northern European Heimat for Dumézil. The North Caucasus, long a privileged site for Russian and European scholars, now became key to the renegotiation of the origins and reach of imagined prehistoric IndoEuropean conquerors, but also the 1930s’ debate over the value of different disciplines (linguistics, mythology, archaeology, folklore studies) for the origins of language, myth, and the European deep past. As a moment in the history of modern speculations about prehistory, pursued in the shadow of Nazi scholarship, the debate transformed fields of research – notably linguistics, comparative mythology, and structuralism – and the assumptions about the shape of Europe.
AB - In 1935, the Russian linguist Prince Nicolai S. Trubetskoi and the French mythologist Georges Dumézil engaged in a vicious debate over a seemingly obscure subject: the structure of Northwest Caucasian languages. Based on unknown archival material in French, German, and Russian, this essay uses the debate as a pathway into the 1930s scientific and political stakes of IndoEuropeanism – the belief that European cultures emerged through the spread of a single IndoEuropean people out of a single “motherland.” Each of the two authors held strong commitments to visions of European order and its origins – in “Eurasia” for Trubetskoi and a Northern European Heimat for Dumézil. The North Caucasus, long a privileged site for Russian and European scholars, now became key to the renegotiation of the origins and reach of imagined prehistoric IndoEuropean conquerors, but also the 1930s’ debate over the value of different disciplines (linguistics, mythology, archaeology, folklore studies) for the origins of language, myth, and the European deep past. As a moment in the history of modern speculations about prehistory, pursued in the shadow of Nazi scholarship, the debate transformed fields of research – notably linguistics, comparative mythology, and structuralism – and the assumptions about the shape of Europe.
KW - Comparative mythology
KW - Fascism
KW - Georges Dumézil
KW - History of structuralism
KW - IndoEuropean linguistics
KW - Linguistics
KW - Nicolai S. Trubetskoi
KW - Nikolai Marr
KW - North-West Caucasian languages
KW - Prehistory
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U2 - 10.1177/0073275318776422
DO - 10.1177/0073275318776422
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049621025
SN - 0073-2753
VL - 56
SP - 343
EP - 378
JO - History of Science
JF - History of Science
IS - 3
ER -