Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
This paper examines, by means of some concepts and methodological tools offered in the great œuvre of Lévi-Strauss, the mytho-logical ideologemes of certain forms of orientalism, using the example of Austria. A so-called “frontier orientalism” is contrasted against classic colonial orientalism, in order to identify its particularities. The figure of the “nearby stranger” jeopardizes the boundaries of the own, ever uncertain national identity and serves right-wing populists and neo-nationalists as an indispensable ingredient of their own aspirations.