On Leksykon Tradycji Chorwackich [Lexicon of Croatian Traditions] by Joanna Rapacka

Principles and Foundations of the Nation - Between Traditions and Modernity

Abstract

The paper presents the theoretical and methodological reliance of Leksykon tradycji chorwackich [Lexicon of Croatian Traditions] on the context of Polish sociological, historiographical, philosophical, and philological science from the late 1960s to the end of the 20th century. The possibilities of connecting the theoretical and methodological framework of the Leksykon with the theories of collective memory and with the so-called (post)modernist theories of nation and nationalism are indicated, as well as the significance of its publication in the original and in the Croatian translation immediately after the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Homeland War, and the establishment of Croatian sovereignty. The author concludes that Leksykon tradycji chorwackich [Lexicon of Croatian Traditions] proves that the questions concerning the interaction between modernity and tradition (traditional conditions of modernisation and modernisation’s inheritances, transformations or generations of tradition or traditions) are much more intriguing and fundamental than the questions about their break.