Balkan as Metaphor Between Globalization and Fragmentation

by Bjelic, Dusan I.; Savic, Obrad

• ISBN13: 9780262524483
• ISBN10: 0262524481
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-23
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Balkan. Somewhere between a tragedy and a myth, a place and a condition, the term is perhaps best understood as a metaphor. It has been used and abused in academia by proponents of opposing political views. Multiculturalism has appropriated it, as have postmodernism and postcommunism. It is used pejoratively to refer to excessive specialization and nostalgically to refer to Europe's lost people-its wild warriors and passionate geniuses. This book explores the idea of the Balkan as metaphor and the meaning of Balkan identity in the context of contemporary culture. Focusing on Balkanism both as a body of knowledge and as the critical study of that discourse, this book does for the Balkans what Edward Said's Orientalism did for "the Orient." The sixteen authors, most of whom were born and educated in the Balkans, apply the Western academic tools of postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and critical multiculturalism to topics as varied as the rhetoric of Balkanization, the war in Kosovo, Western demonization and erotization of the Serbs, Balkan film, human rights legislation, Byzantinism, the vampire as an image of Balkan violence, envy of the political and moral capital of victimhood, the tendency of the Balkan psyche toward depression, Serbian machismo and homosexuality, and wartime rape. The book both lays the groundwork for a new field of study and serves as an act of resistance against the many forms of representation that break the Balkans into fragments such as NATO army bases and digital maps in order to wire them into the global market.

Author Biography

Dušan I. Bjelic is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Southern Maine.

Obrad Saviæ is Professor of the History of Social Theory and Philosophy at the University of Belgrade and Acting President of the Belgrade Circle.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Michael Herzfeld
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: Blowing Up the ``Bridge''	1	(22)
Dusan I. Bjelic
Part I: Orientalism, Balkanism, and Occidentalism	23	(140)
Invention and In(ter)vention: The Rhetoric of Balkanization	25	(14)
Vesna Goldsworthy
Vampires Like Us: Gothic Imaginary and ``the serbs''	39	(22)
Tomislav Z. Longinovic
What's So Byzantine About the Balkans?	61	(18)
Milica Bakic-Hayden
The Balkans as an Element in Ideological Mechanisms	79	(38)
Rastko Mocnik
Carl Schmitt on Kosovo, or, Taking War Seriously	117	(46)
Grigoris Ananiadis
Part II: Balkan Identity and Nationality	163	(88)
The Dark Intimacy: Maps, Identities, Acts of Identifications	165	(26)
Alexander Kiossev
South Slav Identity and the Ultimate War-Reality	191	(18)
Ugo Vlaisavljevic
The Impossible Escape: Romanians and the Balkans	209	(26)
Adrian Cioroianu
The Eros of Identity	235	(16)
Ivaylo Ditchev
Part III: Sexuality, Trauma, and Myth	251	(114)
Queer Serbs	253	(26)
Branka Arsic
Sexualizing the Serb	279	(32)
Dusan I. Bjelic
Lucinda Cole
Muslim Women, Croatian Women, Serbian Women, Albanian Women . . .	311	(12)
Vesna Kesic
Hypnosis and Critique (Film Music for the Balkans)	323	(28)
Stathis Gourgouris
Simonides on the Balkans	351	(14)
Petar Ramadanovic
List of Contributors	365	(4)
Index	369