Abstract: This essay explores Andrea Smith’s concept of the privilege of self-reflexivity and Larry Wolf’s writings about philosophic geography and Eastern Europe in conversation with my study abroad experiences in Romania in 2013 and the Czech Republic in 2014. I use these writers to critique my practice of approaching the people I met while studying abroad as an occasion for the development of my own self-reflexivity, as well as my tendency not to consider them as being in possession of same kind of post-identity as myself. I then connect this critique to the tradition of intellectual cartography in Eastern Europe and the problematic mental mapping of the other that scholars have long undergone in this area. Finally, I consider alternatives to these epistemological stances and reflect on how I attempted to implement them during my time in the Czech Republic.
Shannon Foss is a double major in Communication and the Comparative History of Ideas and a tutor at Odegaard Writing and Research Center.
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