Todorov’s Legacy. The Debate on the Clash of Civilizations, the New World Disorder, and Europe

Abstract

Tsvetan Todorov’s death opens a big void and leaves a great legacy at the same time. The Bulgarian-born and French-national writer and philosopher passed away in February 2017, shortly after – certainly a coincidence, but perhaps a sign of the times – two other authoritative intellectuals born in Eastern Europe at the time of communism: Zygmunt Bauman, a sociologist born in Poland and then relocated in the United Kingdom, and Predrag Matvejevic, of a Russian father and a Croatian mother, who was born in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and lived later in Italy for a long time, an extraordinary“poet of the Mediterranean”, which he regarded as a place of dialogue and civilization.