Imagined identities and mechanisms of legitimation in the discourse of the Lithuanian art of 1990s

The present article attempts to discuss probably the most significant aspect of the Lithuanian art discourse in the 1990s – the struggle between the competing ideologies and dominant interest groups, as well as the specific mechanisms for legitimizing art and certain forms of struggle formulated by these groups. At the same time, the article attempts to reveal how ideological means were used within the context of artistic discourse to formulate and strengthen the „imagined“ identities or subordination to one of the dominant forces of artistic field. The transformational problems felt by the post-soviet society – traumatic experience and “post-socialist condition” – which marked the 1990s, incited discussions within the cultural discourse about the crisis of values, the search for identity, and the spread of nationalistic ideas. The development of culture after 1990 not only encouraged active discussions about the cultural “crisis” but also revealed the ambitions of the cultural elite to retain the mystical role of the nation‘s “guide”, and “mentor”. The moralistic discourse articulated by the artists of oldergeneration established nationalistic rhetoric. „Nationality“ and Christianity – central factors of cultural identity which sustained the tradition of romantic nationalism and patriotic monumentalism – became the main concepts of the Lithuanian cultural paradigm. However, social tensions and historical developments induced active rearticulation of the symbolic field, search and establishment of new identities, as well as new mechanisms of self-legitimation for the participants of artistic field. [...]Vytauto Didžiojo universiteta