Lietuvos-Baltarusijos pasienio kultūrinė erdvė: fenomenologinis vaizdas

ENThis article situates a growing interest in eastern "borderlands" in a set of overlapping contemporary cultural and theoretical concerns. On such a small territory as the Lithuanian-Pohsh-Belarusian borderland it is possible to investigate two opposite, reciprocal processes: the disappearance (the Lithuanian-Polish) and strengthening of the border (the Lithuanian-Belarusian and Polish-Belarusian borderlands). Borders as markers of division have different functions. The main research methods include reconstruction and phenomenological analysis of the cultural space of the borderland. A method of a free narration about a life on the border will allow to create a generalized image of the inhabitant of a border zone and their way of life, and to reveal their peculiar features. These peculiar features are analyzed by the case of the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderland. Through a focus on the informal, everyday aspects of frontier's life it is possible to investigate the border's invariance: a simultaneous focus on what borders separate, and what they bring together.These narrative stories are about the past life, the changes of borders and states, divided cemeteries, religious and language communities and families. Borderland's inhabitants have some peculiar features: domination of local, regional self-identification; simultaneously in a few cultures; knowledge of the neighbor s languages (Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Polish); the presence of otherness as a daily norm. For them, the place where people cross the border was a "bridge", an "opportunity", a "wet-nurse" At the same time, they constantly feel border "tension and distance" The re- designed European border regime (Schengen and non-Schengen zones) has influence on and changes the daily life of the people on the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderland. The use of phenomenological reconstruction through analysis of a "free narrative" allowed borderland residents to give concrete meaning to such categories as "beingness" "life-world", "daily life", "the sense of separateness", "distance from the inner circle" and "border tension".