National Megalomania and Imagination of the Ancient World

This book juxtaposes the nationalist megalomaniac fantasies in imagining ancient histories in Global Easts—namely, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Middle East. Those delusions not only feed historical fabulations and memory wars, but also elevate epistemological conflicts into physical violence. Very often, today’s genocidal wars and military clashes cannot be perceptible without knowing the delusive nationalist megalomania about the past. Despite the long distance between Eastern Europe and East Asia, the ways of imagining ancient history are surprisingly close. For instance, the racist German “Volk” is synonymous with the postcolonial Korean “.. (minjok),” which is again close to the primordialist concept of nation in the communist regime. An examination of the uncanny similarities of the megalomanic fantasies about the ancient past in Poland, both Koreas, Germany, Yugoslavia, Israel, and imperial France will shed new light on the Global Easts as a problem space.