Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture Jagiellonian University in Krakow University of Groningen

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Master of Arts Thesis

Euroculture

Jagiellonian University in Krakow

University of Groningen

The Quest for Truth:

Images of the Balkans in Slobodan Selenić’s “Fathers

and Forefathers” and “Premeditated Murder”

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MA Programme Euroculture

Declaration

I, Olja Radlović, hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “The Quest for

Truth: Images of the Balkans in Slobodan Selenić’s “Fathers and

Forefathers” and “Premeditated Murder”, is my own original work and

expressed in my own words. Any use made within it of works of other

authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly

acknowledged in the text as well as in the List of References.

I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations

pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the

general completion rules for the Masters of Arts Programme Euroculture.

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Acknowledgements

I greatly appreciate help of my supervisors, Prof. dr hab. Czesław Porębski and Dr. Stefan van der Poel, who advised and encouraged me during the writing of this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to my family for all the love and support they provide.

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Introduction

A city where civilised people play music, read, discus politics and social crisis, but conduct all those activities in an environment that is Oriental – this is how one of Slobodan Selenić’s characters describes the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, in the period between the two World Wars. That was an image of the Balkans' Belgrade in foreign gaze then, but it exists unchanged in present as well. The Balkans are seen as a transitional space between the West and the East, having attributes of both but being neither one completely. This ambivalent position of the region is what makes it contradictory but also a fruitful ground for literature. It is not Europe, but it is close enough to be familiar; it is not Orient, but it was under the Ottoman influence for centuries so its legacy is still present.

This MA thesis paper deals with the issue of the image of the Balkans and their representations in the Balkans' literature, meaning that the emphasis is on the Balkans' intellectual elites' self-perception. More precisely, the question that provoked this text is: How does Slobodan Selenić portray the Balkans in novels “Fathers and

Forefathers” and “Premeditated Murder”? The aim of answering this question is to

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war in the Balkans was certainly not the only one in the world at the time. Huntington (35) provides information that in the year of 1993, an estimated forty eight ethnic wars were occurring around the world as well as additional 164 territorial-ethnic claims and conflicts concerning borders in the former Soviet Union, of which 30 had involved some form of armed conflict. The most notorious example of the conflict that did not take place in the Balkans is the one in Rwanda, but still no conflict has got so much media attention as the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. One of the reasons for such media coverage, and the most important one for the issue of Balkans’ representations, was that these conflicts were not taking place in Asia or Africa, but on the ground of European continent. They took place on a doorstep of Europe.

Selenić offers the perspective on the Balkans’ culture that is different than the one provided in Western travel literature and journalism reports and books, because he is the writer that comes from the region and who surely dealt with problematic of self-stigmatisation. By doing that, he neither defends nor attacks the Balkans. Furthermore, he uses the images of the Other in his novels, that sometimes present European Other and sometimes even the Other within, as he also juxtaposes diverse cultures within the Balkans themselves. Pantić (15) notices that exactly this relation to the Other that he calls the “concept of antithesis” is what makes the basic structural and thematic concept in the works of Slobodan Selenić adding that each character in his novels is stigmatized by the relationship with the “Others”. This relationship is at the same time a key cause for social and historical tragedy.

The second reason for choosing Selenić is the quality of his work. There is not a lot of academic work written that addresses the Balkans and their social and historical tragedies. Selenić's novels are works of fiction but their leitmotifs are authentic historical events. His novels are written with such a profound examination of cultural patterns that can be considered as a meaningful contribution to the academic texts dedicated to the region.

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towards the current political events and various ideological bans or taboo-subjects. That relation operates in the wide range, from the sphere of erotic to the historical and political thematic. Nenad Prokić (69) is of the opinion that Selenić is in many senses an “unusual phenomenon of Serbian cultural scene”. In his words, Selenić was distinguished from the Balkans’ background with his appearance, education, cosmopolitism, and his work. His talent, systematic and hard work make him unforgettable.

Selenić was a drama professor at the University of Belgrade. Marković (156) cites Selenić in saying that his profession is professorial but his relation to writing is the most significant thing in his work like. He started writing relatively late, aged 35, which, in Vojin Dimitrijević’s opinion (1), gave him urban life experience of a formed man. His first publication was a novel “Memoirs of Pera the cripple” that was awarded with October award of city of Belgrade. Already in his first novel the basic narrative principles are established. Jovan Delić (110) notices that the relation to the truth as to ambiguous concept is an indubitable important attitude of Selenić’s narrator with which he opposes unilateralism, and especially the social realistic prose. This proved correct in all of his novels. The second Selenić’s novel is entitled “Head-Tail”1. It deals with the trauma of Goli otok – island in the Adriatic Sea where political prisoners, accused of being Stalinists, were sent to and tortured by communists from 1949 till 1956. The novel was printed in 1971 but forbidden because of its sensitive thematic and the danger for the establishment it imposed. It was published ten years later. Selenić said (Marković 157) he believes that the fate of his novel would be completely different if it were published the first time it was printed. In the 1970’s, he is under such a political pressure that he decides to focus on writing theatre critiques only. Besides the fact that his book was forbidden, his passport was taken from him and his name was not mentioned in the public. In 1980, he published the novel “Friends” for which he gets two national awards; two years later novel appears on the theatre stage as a play. It addresses the unique relationship between a representative of Belgrade’s civil class, Vladan and an Albanian newcomer to Belgrade, Istref. In 1985 he published “Fathers and Forefathers” and a year later his play “Spitting the Nation” is performed in Yugoslav Drama Theatre. In the year of 1989, when he already “sensed the break-up, war and was possessed with the fear of insanity and hate” (Marković 158), he published

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the novel “Timor Mortis” that addresses the subject of mutual intolerance between Serbs and Croats. The novel provokes accusations from both sides. After finishing the play “Prince Pavle”, in 1993, he wrote “Premeditated Murder” and began work on the novel “Malajsko ludilo”. He died soon after that, in October 27 1995.

David A. Norris calls Selenić in the Obituary published in “The Independent” one of the greatest Serbian writers of recent times:

Always a realist, both by intellectual constitution and in his narrative designs, he never lost sight in his fictional world of the fact that these changes are difficult; and his characters frequently bear the imprint of two worlds. They are caught between the European future and the weight of the Balkan past, trying to balance them (Norris).

Apart from all the critics that wrote about his work, the fact that confirms his greatness is the number of sold novels that does not stagnate even today, fifteen years after his death.

Although his work is definitely recognized as significant contribution to Serbian literature, it is even more important to stress the fact that Selenić deals with the issues

of culture and cultural patterns, which make his work suitable for the analysis of

constructing the image of the region in the literature. He graduated in English language and literature at the University of Belgrade in 1956 and continued his postgraduate education at the University of Bristol, Drama Department. It is interesting that the character from “Fathers and Forefathers”, Stevan Medaković, also went to Bristol for postgraduate studies and met his future wife Elisabeth there. Another character, Jelena Aranđelović from “Premeditated Murder” studied in London. That fact is barely mentioned as it is only implied when her granddaughter finds her student identification card, but it is sure that Selenić had a personal connection with England and used it in his writing.2 This can be seen not only through the characters of English cultural background or characters that studied in England, but also through the usage of

language. Some parts of the texts are written entirely in English with translation to

Serbian in footnotes, like in “Fathers and Forefathers”. On the other hand, some characters, like Jelena Panić from “Premeditated Murder”, use English words but spell

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them phonetically in Serbian Cyrillic, which makes a very interesting contrast for the Serbian reader, but also points out to the special relation that the author has with England and English language. Selenić uses the English culture as the Balkans’ counter culture and emphasizes the diverseness between them with language, but he also uses the same tool to contrast various cultures within the Balkans. He does that by showing different lingoes, accents, dialects and the ways people verbalize their thoughts – deliberatively or spontaneously, fluently or inarticulately.

Language is used by Selenić as an obvious tool for expressing contrasts among cultures. Another literature tool characteristic for his writing is intertextuality i.e. using sections or dialogues from other texts or from his own previous texts. Two examples of intertextuality will be addressed in this thesis; one in the introduction and the second one after the both novels’ analysis.

Selenić adapts certain text parts from Rebecca West’s travelogue from 1930’s in Yugoslavia - “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon”, into the text in “Fathers and Forefathers”. David A. Norris says that the influence of West’s attitudes and writing is sensed in Selenić’s novels in many ways. Most likely, the average reader does not notice this intertextuality but Selenić did not deny it. This shows that he was very familiar with the literature about the Balkans that shaped their image to the large extent. Precisely this travelogue is a very significant element of the literature discovery of the Balkans in the early twentieth century. However, it is interesting what Selenić does with the text. He uses the part of West’s text in which she explains her reaction when the lace dresses she got in Macedonia are ruined by the maid in Vienna’s hotel during the washing. She tells her husband how important those dresses made by poor people are to her: The people who made these dresses looked as they had nothing at all. But if these imbeciles here had not spoiled this embroidery you would see that whoever did it had more than we have (Norris 74, Selenić 117).

Selenić copies the dialogue between Rebecca West and her husband but in the way that the actors of the same dialogue inversed their parts - Rebecca’s text was attributed to the English woman to which Selenić’s characters, Serbian man and his English wife Elisabeth who already lives in Belgrade, talked to. The meaning of dialogue changes with the simple inversion of the text.

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falseness of outspread Balkan myth. She wants to clarify her point of view to her husband but he questions it:

She writes: “I could not tell him at all clearly”. However, from another perspective, when Elisabeth says “She could not tell me at all clearly”, words get completely different value. Rebecca West’s praise is reduced to the imbecile fabrication, imbecile in the meaning she gave to that expression, as important things get the meaning through their relationship with her personal life. Her personal life, her lace dresses from Macedonia, are projected as the unreachable area to Stevan and Elisabeth, as the useless baggage of someone else’s cultural blindness. The image of distraught and sensitive Rebecca West faced with sceptical rationalism of her husband transforms into burlesque tableau that shows the Westerner besotted with Oriental exotics before the vivid evidence of its falsity (Norris 75). 3

Why does Selenić use West’s text in such a way? Norris is of the opinion that the story of family tragedy in “Fathers and Forefathers” transforms, through this intertextual contact, into a universe of cultural misunderstanding. That universe is a place where all of the Selenić’s novels take place in; characters are divided with the abysm of differences that can never be crossed, no matter how much of honest effort and love is involved.

The third kind of tools Selenić uses to show the lack of understanding but also the division between the cultures are numerous dichotomies. Some of them are: rural/urban, primitive/progressive, traditional/modern, backward/civilized etc. They are mostly embodied in his characters but also in the places, like Belgrade or Bristol. The reasons for the tragedy in the Balkans can be partly found in the numerous dichotomies within them. Those dichotomies create parallel worlds that, once they meet, cause conflicts, and sometimes violent ones. There is no possibility of co-existence.

It can be argued that the Balkans’ and particularly Serbia’ cultural, social and political reality today is shaped by three major historic factors: occupation by the Ottomans, the

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communism era and radical nationalism and conflicts that followed. The set of those events is certainly the element that divides the Balkans from the rest of the Europe. Two of those events are the main theme of Selenić’s novels. Novels by Slobodan Selenić are civilized textbook about the civil relations in Belgrade in the last fifty years (Makajev 29) and, more importantly, his writing is a quest for the truth. It is yet to be seen will the truth be discovered.

The reasons for such a persistent re-examination of history as an endless crusade for the truth could be found in Selenić’s personal life. Selenić’s father Sava, a lawyer, was secretly cooperating with partisans and decided to join them actively in 1944, after which he disappeared forever. Slobodan Selenić’s high school friend Dušan Simić explains that all the indications led to the conclusion that he4 was not killed by the enemy but by the ones he joined:

Boba5_{rarely talked about it but, as far as I know, he tried to reveal who killed his father and} why, for a long time. Based on the letter of his father’s comrades which he collected, he drew a conclusion that Sava Selenić was arrested soon after he came to the partisans’ territory and that he was executed a few days later, under unclear circumstances.

The most probable cause for it, as in other similar cases at the time, was the dread that he, as a popular and liberal civil intellectual, could pose a threat to the establishing of communistic power in the country, once when the war ends (Simić 34). 6

Furthermore, Selenić’s aunt died under mysterious circumstances, also most likely killed by her partisan comrades. Without doubt, these traumatic events significantly influenced his work, which is obvious in his constant effort to discover the truth. That is why he uses several narrators and why there are always some gaps in storytelling, with some segments only implied, never confirmed – the absolute truth is out there, and it is possible to come close to it but never to touch it.

4_{Sava Selenić.}

5_{Slobodan Selenić's nickname.}

6_{In original: “Boba je o tome retko govorio ali, koliko znam, dugo je pokušavao da odgonetne ko je i} zašto ubio njegovog oca. Po pismima nekih očevih saboraca koja je prikupio, zaključio je da je Sava Selenić uhapšen ubrzo pošto je došao na partizansku teritoriju i nekoliko nedelja kasnije, pod nejasnim okolnostima, likvidiran.» Translated by the author of the thesis paper.

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As most probably everyone that comes from this part of the Balkans, the author of this MA thesis paper deals with the similar issues. From one point, this closeness to Selenić’s subject makes it easier to relate to it and to understand it. On the other side, the relation to the Balkans is emotional which makes the effort to write in objective manner challenging. If simplified, those emotions might be defined as harsh criticism with feeling of disgust towards narrow minded and uncultured elements but also pride of who “we”, Balkanites are. The first “set” of emotions is present when author is in the Balkans, especially emphasized when observing all the corruption, crime and poverty still present. The second set is displayed when the author is outside of the Balkans, especially when the region is criticised by someone who does not come from there. Even if the author on the rational level agrees with observations, the emotions and desire to defend prevail. The desired aim is to find a point of acceptance of Balkans’ culture and its implications.

Even though this paper deals with the issue of representations of cultures in literature and the focus is not on history, it is important to note that it is difficult to take an objective stand about historic events that took place in twentieth history. Although personal experience can be observed as one of the obstacles, the more significant one is the obstacle of historic truth. History is written by the winners, the saying goes, and this could not be truer than in the case of the Balkans as the official versions of it were modified and sometimes completely inverted. That is why the historical background of the novels will be presented shortly, without deeper analysis and interpretation, and Selenić’s point of view will be stressed.

Before the interpretation of “Fathers and Forefathers”, two chapters will be dedicated to the theoretical background as the basis for the further analysis.

The region of the Balkans will be explained, from their geographical and metaphorical location, their naming and connotative meaning of the most famous word deriving from the word Balkans. Theoretical framework will be presented through the work of Maria Todorova and other authors that covered the region.

The stress will be given to the self-perception of the Balkans and Serbia. The question of the extent of the acceptance of Balkans’ stigma by the people of the Balkans and of the implications of such a process will be answered.

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above stated questions is not to discover final solutions for preventing the future tragedies in the region as that would be pretentious, but to show the significance of

asking questions as the way of escaping the ideologies that led to the long interruptions

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Balkans

Geographically, the Balkans are undeniably a part of Europe, being one of its three peninsulas, together with the Iberian and the Apennine, but the connotative meaning of the word Balkans implies different understanding of its “Europeanness”. The word Balkans designates much more than what arises from its geographical position. If general conclusions were made about the sum of the representations of the Balkans by the West, one might argue that some negative characteristics deriving form the human nature and thus common for the humankind, are being attributed to the Balkans and made exclusively Balkanite. The Balkans serve as a junkyard for the attributes that the West perceives as uncivilized and undesirable for itself. They are the dark side of Europe that becomes even darker and more shameful because of its familiarity.

Naming the Balkans

The important part of the process of constructing the image of the Balkans is how they got their present name and how it changed in time. Even more important is the meaning implied from the adopted name. Authors dealing with those issues agree that the name Balkans represents more than a simply geographical designation.

The ancient term for the region was Haemus which refers to the mountain chain that divides Bulgaria and Romania, known today as Balkan Mountains. It was also referred to as Hellenic peninsula, Greek peninsula, Illyrian peninsula, Byzantine peninsula, Thrace. The more recent terms, from the XIX century, were ‘European Turkey’, ‘Turkey in Europe’, etc.

Another significant name used for the region was Rumelia, introduced by the Ottoman rulers. David A. Norris explains the importance of name giving for the colonizing powers:

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The word Rumelia is of Byzantine origin, as the Byzantines called themselves “romaioi”.

Maria Todorova, one of the most prominent scholars who have dealt with the complex issues of Balkans and Balkans’ identity, says that the first mention of the name ‘Balkan’ was in fifteenth century by the Italian writer and diplomat Callimaco who wrote in the memorandum to Pope Innocent VIII that the local people used the word Balkan for the mountain (Todorova 22).

The word Balkan was used instead of word Haemus in the British travel literature, in the late eighteenth century, and it also referred to the mountain chain. Those words were both used throughout eighteenth century but with the beginning of the nineteenth century, the word Balkan became preferred by the writers.

Todorova mentions German teacher August Zeune as the “name giver of the peninsula” (26). She states that his inaccurate belief that the Balkan Mountains consist a northern border of the peninsula inspired him to name the whole peninsula Balkan. However, this name was increasingly used in time and today is widely accepted.

Balkanization

In the beginning, the word Balkan had only a geographical significance, marking the mountain chain or later the whole peninsula, and it was neutral in its broader, cultural sense. Gradually, it evolved into the word that implies the static set of characteristics for the countries that are considered a part of the Balkans.

Maria Todorova states that at the same time that the “Balkan” was being accepted and widely used as geographic signifier, it was already becoming saturated with a social and cultural meaning that expanded its signified far beyond its immediate and concrete meaning (21).

Once widely accepted, the word Balkan had its derivations and the most famous one is “balkanization”. Andrew Hammond remarks that:

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Todorova describes the various uses of the word “balkanization” and asks the rhetorical question: why is the word Balkan “snatched from its ontological base and recreated as an abstract demon?” (36) She explains that while this notion is “most often used to denote the process of nationalist fragmentation of former geographic and political units into new and problematically viable small states” (32), it also became a “synonym for a reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian” (3). Term “balkanization” is widely used and at one point it even become “synonymous with dehumanization, deaesthetization, destruction of civilization” (Todorova 36).

Nationalism and dissolution of states are hardly phenomena unique to the Balkans so it is unclear why the word “balkanisation” was made. This question becomes even bigger when one has in mind that this word, like Todorova notices, was coined only at the end of World War I and all the Balkans states except for Albania were formed during the nineteenth century. What is certain is that this term has a strong, negative political connotation. Further, even when the obvious fragmentation of geographic and political unites into small states happens, term “balkanization” is attributed only and exclusively to the states that are perceived as Balkans in cultural sense. Milica Bakić-Hayden and Robert M. Hayden illustrate this inequitable usage of the term on the example of separation of Slovenia and Croatia from former Yugoslavia:

The parts of Yugoslavia that are not physically in the Balkans have been attempting to “balkanize” the country (i.e., “divide it into small, mutually hostile segments”) , while blaming this development on the putative “Balkan mentality” of those whom they wish to exclude; and this effort has been accepted at face value by many western observers (13).

Slovenia and Croatia presented themselves in the process of gaining independence as countries that are truly European and therefore do not belong to the Balkans and that is the reason that their actions were not labelled as “balkanization”. Norris (11) notes that balkanization is a product of the West’s fears of the cultural Other. Put simply, Slovenia and Croatia were not the cultural Other so the West was not afraid of the implications of their separation.

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balkanization has repugnant connotation but is also widely used. Therefore, Balkans’ image was built, among other, on the premises that are not completely accurate but repeated to the point where they became unquestionable.

Balkanism

Maria Todorova coined the new term that also derives from the word Balkan - “balkanism” and in her book “Imagining the Balkans” she explains how this discourse has been negatively constructed in the past three centuries. Balkanism represents the existing stereotypes about the Balkans. She describes the process of evolution of the discourse by stating that it began with inaccuracies coming from the imperfect geographical knowledge about the region transmitted through tradition. After the Balkan wars and especially after World War I, Balkans became saturated with political, social, cultural, and ideological overtones. Selenić writes about social changes that took place in that time that shaped the image Balkans have today. The most significant one was the arrival of communists. However, Todorova (7) says that the final step of the process was the complete dissociation of the designation from its object and the subsequent reverse and retroactive ascription of the ideologically loaded designation to the region, particularly after 1989.

Todorova does not wish to create some kind of “counterstereotype of the West” by committing the fallacy of “Occidentalism”, because she does not believe in the homogeneous West and thinks that a major part of Western scholarship has made significant, even crucial contributions to Balkan studies. In her own words, she does not want to depict Balkan people as innocent victims. Todorova describes her position as a researcher of this matter in relation to the fact that she is from a country considered to be part of the Balkans – Bulgaria - by saying that she is perfectly aware of her ambiguous position, of sharing the privilege and responsibility to be simultaneously outside and inside both of the object of inquiry and the process of attaining the knowledge about it.

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land passage from Europe to Asia, into a cultural sign. He describes this process as a creation of the “Balkan myth”.

It is impossible to discuss the discourse of balkanism without mentioning Edward Said’s orientalism. When discussing about constructing the Balkans, authors always mention Edward Said and his influence in the area of Western imaginative geography at some point. Even though often criticized, Said’s influential position in this field is undeniable. Authors dealing with the issue of balkanism have various opinions about the influence of Edward Said’s orientalism on this discourse. Some of the Balkan historiographers have adopted the premises of orientalism and used them in writing about the Balkans and some have rejected them and treated balkanism as a distinctive discourse.

Andrew Hammond and David Norris agree that the two discourses have some points in common. According to Hammond (202), the most obvious one is the tone filled with moral outrage used in describing both Balkans’ and Orient’s peoples with the purpose of portraying them as inferior to the Western ones. This kind of portrayal is party present in Selenić’s “Fathers and Forefathers” as he sometimes seems to present Western people, namely English, as the representatives of the culture superior to Serbian. Hammond is, however, of the opinion that the elements of mystery, degeneracy, savagery, immorality and chaos found in orientalism are also present in balkanism, which leads him to conclude that the two representational forms have been structured according to the exact binarist logic, making South-East Europe as much of the antitype for the enlightened, progressive, imperial West as the Islamic East is. Similarities between the discourses that are mentioned by Norris are the portrayal of both the Orient and the Balkans as naturally inferior to the West as well as the West’s political, economic and military superiority over the two regions, which makes impossible for them to shed off the negative images produced.

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it and perhaps even reject it and, by doing so, to bring Balkan historiography into dialogue with other, more established and dominant fields.

Following the discussion about similarities and differences between the above mentioned discourses, one can note that some issues related to the distinctiveness of the Balkans are mentioned more than the other. One of the most common ones is the issue of colonial legacy. Authors agree that historic concreteness of the Balkans makes the significant difference from the one of the Orient. Byzantine and Ottoman empires left their legacies in the region as well as the imperial rule of Habsburgs. Fleming is of the opinion that these facts created the conditions incomparable to the ones created by the history of Western colonialism in the Orient. Todorova says that the Balkans did not have a colonial legacy as Orient did and they were treated by Western Europe within a paradigm that had already been set as separate from the oriental. The Balkans have a semi-colonial, rather than a colonial status and she stresses that what is also important is that Balkans are not colonial in their self-perception either. Vesna Goldsworthy, the author of “Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination” has a different approach to the question of issue of colonial legacy in the Balkans. She explores the “imaginative colonisation” – the way in which the British authors were exploiting the resources of the Balkans to supply their literary and entertainment industries. She argues that this kind of colonisation is as powerful as the traditional economical colonisation or imperialism because it can impact the processes of decision-making in the areas of international politics and economics.

The Balkans might not have been a colony in a sense the Orient was but the influence of foreign rules and cultures is undeniable which leads to their next particularity – their

transitory status. The Balkans are not treated by the West as an ultimate Other. They

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– Eastern Orthodox Christianity (like a cultural and political category) as opposed to the “Western” Catholicism, and the second one is their racial ambiguity.

The Balkans are not Europe’s clear opposite because their location is within the European continent but, on the other hand, their location suggests borderline with the Orient. Hammond (205) explains the Balkans’ ambiguous position by saying that contrary to the Orient’s role as a contiguous or exterior other, the Balkans have become the other within, a liminal self that undermines continental unity and stability by more subtle erosion. He adds that “in Western imaginative geography, the Balkans represent a Europe disfigured by the presence of the “non-European,” serving to illustrate the ease with which the self can be subverted” (206). In his opinion, cultural hierarchies within the Europe exist and it is the Balkans’ role to remind the West of the need to maintain them but also to remind the West that those boundaries are not fixed. Goldsworthy states that the perceptions of the Balkans’ identity oscillate between “Europeanness” and “Oriental difference”.

Norris (5) also confirms the Balkans’ transitory status and calls it “bastard borderland”, Eurasia, the ambivalent lands between what is properly East and what is properly West. At the same time, he regards it as West’s cultural Other. He states that the Balkans, unlike the Orient which has been in Said’s opinion an integral part of the European material civilization and culture, may be regarded geographically as European territory, but they have been written out as part of European culture. It is the empty side of European consciousness of itself, determined by lack and ambiguity. And yet, it functions to reinforce the West as self-confidently “progressive”, “modern” and “rational” (12).

Thus, one could say that the authors agree that the Balkans’ position in relation to Europe is unclear because of its proximity to both Europe and Orient. This doubt about the Balkans’ position is not a new one. Fleming, Vesna Goldsworthy and Milica Bakić-Hayden use in their arguments a quotation from the thirteenth century – the one of the founder of Serbian Orthodox church St. Sava who wrote in the epistle:

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Fleming states that “the concept of liminality, both physical and “imagined”, is the single most provocative and promising theoretical terrain for the Southeast Europeanist, and the one through which scholars of the Balkans can contribute most to the theoretical frameworks of inquiry used by a broad array of fields and disciplines” (1231).

Transitory status of the Balkans’ is probably their most distinguishable feature, but there are some more characteristics of the region that are often emphasized. One of them is the Balkans’ masculinity. While Orient and other territories are subjected to feminization by the West, the Balkans are not. Feminization led to portraying subject territories as exotic and sensual places for the pleasures that are forbidden in the West. Those attributes make the explored regions attractive for the observers. Concretely, Todorova (13) thinks that the Orient, imagined in that particular manner, has the role of a refuge from the alienation of a rapidly industrializing West but it also serves as a metaphor for the forbidden. The Balkans do not posses that particular role of feminized object, but furthermore, even their masculinity provokes the negative attitude, being in most of the cases represented as with almost total lack of wealth and unimaginative concrete. The standard Balkan male was portrayed as uncivilized, primitive, crude and cruel. Selenić also portrays typical Balkan male as such. He even compares one of the characters with a horse, emphasizing his lack of sophistication and alluding to his wild sexuality. The author who finds some positive accounts of Balkan maleness is Hammond and he illustrates them by the examples in some British writings on Albania. The feminization of certain territories by the West implies the eroticization of the object. Subsequently, the portrayal of the Balkans as masculine but only in negative sense implies, in Hammonds opinion, that travellers writing about the region did not find any sexual allure in the region. He continues by saying that in descriptions of the Balkans even the female is defeminised. While Todorova argues that the region was devoid of its exotic, he states that the romance of Balkan travel was not focused on amorous pursuits but it was rather connected to the adventure of geographical exploration.

The Balkans, in the descriptions by the West, lack in femininity as well as in wealth and culture of leisure. But their alleged disadvantages do not end there but spread even to the higher stage so the Balkans are in many cases portrayed as the place of complete

lack of higher culture. Balkanism does not presume the existence of paradigm of

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side, the Balkans’ culture had nothing interesting to offer and was certainly not worth almost any admiration. Ironically, the only cultural signifiers worth mentioning were built by Ottomans but still, viewed by the eyes of the Westerners – indifferent, mediocre. Norris (6) mentions that in the eyes of the British travellers who visited the Balkans during the Ottoman rule, Turks held higher position on the cultural scale than the local Christian occupation. One might ask how this is possible, having in mind that British were Christian but the answer shows that this issue has nothing to do with religion. Norris explains that British could relate to the Ottomans more easily than to the indigenous population because they had one element in common with the occupiers: belonging to the imperialistic nations. Not only was the Christian population excluded from the cultural and public life but the whole peninsula skipped marking changes in eighteenth century that in many ways shaped Europe as it is today – the Enlightenment. The Balkans were not the part of the mainstream western philosophy and cultural life at the time and lack of ideas produced during the Enlightenment presumed that the Balkans did not, like Europe, orientate to progress. Norris states that the Enlightenment accredited positive values to the West and negative values to the East and that pattern can be easily applied to the Balkans because they are indeed East to Europe. Furthermore, some authors claim that today’s idea of Europe is a product of particular way of thinking emerged in this fruitful era in Western philosophy, which brings the Balkans even further away from being culturally part of Europe. The fact that the ideas of Enlightenment, that in many ways contributed to shaping of the present meaning of Europeanness did not have a lot of influence on the development of philosophical, intellectual and cultural life, adds to the perception of the Balkans as stagnant.

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culture of the Balkans. Whenever the Balkans appeared to reject Western authority, they were deemed to constitute a threat to the West so what was perceived as ridiculous before, becomes dangerous afterwards. While the Orient was dangerous because of its supposed tyranny and despotism, the Balkans were because of the chaos and the fragmentation it represented. But when Balkans’ people struggled against the tyranny, the kind of tyranny the West was appealed by in the Middle East but imposing in the Balkans, they were described as barbarian.

The Balkans are indeed often perceived as dangerous for the West, not just because of their proximity to it and not only when rejecting Western authority. Todorova (3) explains how the self-proclaimed “civilized world” was first seriously upset with the Balkans at the time of the Balkan wars at the beginning of the twentieth century. She uses the report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s commission as an illustration of how these events were portrayed by the West and compares it with the 1993 report where Kennan “stressed that the strongest motivation factor (for the war) “was not religion but aggressive nationalism. But that nationalism, as it manifested itself on the field of battle, drew on deeper traits of character inherited, presumably, from a distant tribal past. And so it remains today”.

Fleming (1229) argues that the Balkans were also seen as a cause of a global conflict, even though they were seemingly irrelevant part of the world. The Balkans had the ability to dramatically affect Western history and was held responsible by numerous authors for starting the First World War. Todorova mentions the European and American savagery in the XX century’s wars and concludes that whether the Balkans are non-European or not is mostly a matter of academic and political debate, but they certainly have no monopoly over barbarity. What is specific about the Balkans is that their negative image stayed “frozen”, unchangeable.

Balkans’ countries

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there is no clear natural border between the peninsula and the rest of the European continent, but it still remains clear that the question of belonging to the region is the matter of broader, cultural meaning.

Geographically, countries of the Balkan Peninsula are: Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and countries of former Yugoslavia – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Or rather, that is what the most of the maps show. Looking at the maps of the Balkans, it is noticeable that they differ in countries they include. For example, some of the maps completely exclude Romania but include small part of Turkey or some of the maps include whole Slovenia, some part of it and some do not include it at all. On the other hand, Serbia is always part of the map of the Balkans, which is important fact for this research.

All the above mentioned countries have somewhat different self-perceptions about being Balkanite but it is certain that their identity is built to an extent in relation to the Balkans, either completely denying it like Slovenia or accepting it like Greece.7

What is interesting is that while the Balkans’ countries self-perceptions are very diverse, to the outside observers all of them are more or less – the same. Fleming is of the opinion that there are two paradoxes in the way the Balkans are represented, perceived and studied. The first is that they are simultaneously and tautologically both fully known and wholly unknowable. The second paradox is that while it is difficult to outside observers to distinguish between Balkan peoples and states, it is even more difficult for Balkan peoples to stop making distinctions between themselves and to stop killing one another senselessly over those distinctions (1219). What makes the Balkans the Balkans, to the outside observer, is that they can neither be told apart nor put together (Fleming 1219).

Indeed, the Balkans’ countries are seen as almost identical in many cases. Goldsworthy devoted the whole book to the exploration of fiction novels whose plots take place in the imaginary Balkans’ countries. Creation of such imagined countries with the defining characteristic of being Balkanite would not be possible if being located in the Balkans was not considered enough to create a complete (maybe superficial, but it is fiction writing so it can be) image of the country in question. Fleming says that the

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imagined Balkan “everycountries”, composites in name and character are based on several assumptions: that Balkan countries are more or less interchangeable with and indistinguishable from one another, that there is a readily identifiable typology of politics and history common throughout the Balkans, that there is such a thing as a Balkan ethnic or racial “type” (1218). This brings us back to the conclusion that being identified as Balkanite implies much more than recognizing geographical location one comes from.

The first mistake the image of the Balkans was built upon was their name. The whole process of naming the region was basically out of the control of the Balkan countries as the name and the associations that go with it were imposed to them. Furthermore, as the word Balkan is of Turkish origin and it sounds exotic to Europeans, it is possible that its exoticness was another additional factor that for further alienation of the region. The second mistake was the coining and usage of the term “balkanization”. It was coined at the time when all the Balkan states except for Albania were already independent, so its meaning does not reflect the reality at the time.

Not only that balkanization is not a neutral geopolitical term, but it is, to say at least, a chauvinistic term. It is used very selectively, displaying double standards. For example, when Kosovo proclaimed independence, nobody talked about the further balkanisation of the region, although such a sensitive issue could easily provoked further conflicts. On the other hand, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has used the expression, talking about the rise of support for Scottish independence, calling it “Balkanisation of Britain”.8 Why is Kosovo not a threat for causing balkanisation and Scotland is? Because the usage of the word “balkanisation” is not logical, but rather politicised. So, the double standards definitely do exist, and the prejudices are being re-confirmed over and over again. The Balkans are caught in their status quo, labelled as semicivilised, semideveloped but completely wild and unpredictable. Balkan countries are in Western gaze equalised with one another, while ignoring all the differences that exist in their languages, religion, histories, and lifestyles. That is why it is not surprising that not only do they wish to be excluded from the world of the Balkans but also they try so hard to show that they are different from their neighbours.

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Balkans and Serbia: Self-perception

As shown in the previous chapter, the West created a certain image of the Balkans that stays mainly unchangeable. This image can be equally applied to all the countries with the “Balkan” label as they are practically, in the eyes of the outsider, indistinguishable from one another. The Balkans are the European “Other”, but the intimate, familiar Other is located at the doorstep of Europe. Dickie Wallace (37) points out to these differences in nuances and notices that Eastern European and Balkan people are in the social construction of race called “white” but part of the so-called “Slavic race”. They are seen as Christian but slightly exotic in their Orthodoxy.9

So, Balkan people are perceived as almost European as they, after all, posses the negative attributes the Europeans would not like to have. But this is certainly not the first time that the image of the Other is distorted – the distortion happens often in the process of creating the Other. Somewhat different opinion on the reasons why the constructing of the common Balkan identity as primitive and wild is presented by Nadežda Čainović in the article “An Envious Look” (note). She argues that it is politically correct to describe people from the Balkans as tribal and that the outside observer might be projecting his of her own unfulfilled wishes on to presumably different human beings, after meeting them in a specific set of circumstances. What Balkan people have and the Westerners might not have is the intensity of experience coming from the complicated social and political atmosphere.

However, all the diverse points of view concerning Balkan identity assume the same – a common Balkan cultural identity exists. But is that true?

Balkan identity

Alexander Kiossev tries to answer the question about the existence of a common Balkan cultural identity in an article published in “Eurozine”- network of European cultural journals (note). He says that the usage of the name Balkan indicates that the

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Balkans exist as a region with a certain identity established by certain common features, but the label “Balkan” itself, like other clichés, has an automatic essentialism. To claim that there is a common Balkan identity, therefore, would be ambivalent. However, explaining what the common anthropological Balkan type might be, Kiossev points out to the similarities born of common natural and social conditions and the shared "heroic forms of life" or the "common cultural heritage". He adds that the reason for these similarities is that the entire region shares a common macro-social frame which originated in Byzantine and Ottoman legacies.

When talking about the historical legacies in the Balkans, after mentioning the period of Greek antiquity, the short Hellenistic period, the Roman period and the millennium of the Byzantine period (in which the peninsula was politically fragmented), Todorova states that the Ottoman period was the longest period of political unity in the region. Therefore, she concludes, the Balkans is an Ottoman legacy and adds that there are two different interpretations of it. The first one views it as religiously, socially, institutionally, and even racially alien imposition on autochthonous Christian medieval societies (Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian and so on). The second interpretation treats the Ottoman legacy as the complex symbiosis of Turkish, Islamic, Byzantine/Balkan traditions (Todorova 162-166). Ottomans influenced the political, social, economic and cultural spheres of life. Five centuries of the rule of Ottoman Empire in the Balkans are often compared with the European “Dark Ages” as it is perceived as backwards and the factor that stopped the development in the region.

In this respect, the arrival of the Ottomans was a calamity of unparalleled consequences because it disrupted the natural development of southeast European societies as a substantial and creative part of the overall process of European humanism and the Renaissance. The consolidation of Ottoman rule in the Balkans definitely isolated the peninsula from European developments and left it untouched by the great ideas and transformations of the Renaissance and the Reformation. It further brought deep cultural regression and even barbarisation and social levelling out (Todorova 182).

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separate the Balkans from more civilized Europe. However, the fact that they were under the Ottoman occupation for so long, produced the feeling of common identity based on the same historic elements.

Todorova (172 -180) mentions the absence of a landed nobility, the existence of a relative free peasantry and a weak bourgeoisie which led to a certain commitment to egalitarianism; minority problems solved by emigration or assimilation, etc. She also emphasizes that the Balkans represent a cultural region.

While Balkan countries show a certain level of sameness between them, at the same time there are some differences between them that cannot be disregarded. Kiossev names confessional differences as possibly the most important ones as they do not only imply diverse doctrines but they underline differing practices as well. Equally important variances are among the regions within peninsula that have various types of trade and cultural communication. He states that the interplay of these similarities and differences is unresolved and multidimensional.

The fact that in discussing common Balkan cultural identity words as “similarity” and “sameness” are used as synonyms but in fact they are not (similarity implies the existence of difference, even the smallest) is not accidental. The reason why the sign of equation is put between the two words is that it is indeed sometimes very challenging to decide which elements of the culture two or more Balkan countries share. Kiossev clarifies this phenomenon with the example of food but the rule applies to the other aspects as well.

Still, no matter how identical the characteristics that Balkan countries posses are, and no matter how significant their differences might be, the West still holds a frozen Balkan image based on generalisations and simplifications, which are described in the discourse of balkanism. But, for this research, the even more important question would be, how the Balkans’ countries perceive themselves?

Feeling Balkanite

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by the notion of “Balkanness”, either rejecting it, or accepting it or being proud of it. Simply, the image that the Balkans posses is so powerful that it cannot be avoided. The Balkans are mostly present in the Western media in times of crisis or when discussing matters that are consequences of the past events in the times of crisis. As a result, their bad image is reinforced. But what is even more relevant for the analysis of Slobodan Selenić’s novels is the extent of adopting the negative image in the region itself. It is enough to look at every day vocabulary to conclude that the Balkan peoples often share the opinion of their Balkanness with the Westerners. For example, in Serbian language it is enough to call one “Balkanac”10 to get a full mental image with that person’s characteristics. The often used expression implies that the man in question is primitive, backward, narrow-minded and chauvinistic. Other example would be the obstacles one has to face with the complicated, slow and sometimes pointless bureaucracy. The whole process, including arrogant and rude staff eating greasy food while working on their desks would be characterized with one word – balkanski11. One word referring to the stigmatized region is more than sufficient for the illustration of contempt one feels.

Derivations from the word Balkans in Serbian language spread to the attitude towards the whole society, when describing the elements of its backwardness or aggressiveness. At the beginning of the civil wars in former Yugoslavia, the reasons for conflict were not rationalized by the West, but rather mystified and described as the Balkans’ calls for soil and blood. One could conclude that there were no wars before in human’s history and that military conflicts are Balkans’ invention.

Todorova (38) is of the opinion that it is virtually axiomatic that, by and large, a negative self-perception hovers over the Balkans next to a strongly disapproving and disparaging outside perception. Answering the question where this self-perception originates from, is it an independent product of self-reflection or was it prompted and shaped exclusively by the outside view, she states that the Balkan people are not passive recipients of this label and libel and that it is her goal to emphasize the extent to which the outside perception of the Balkans has been internalized in the region itself.

At the same time, it is possible to demonstrate that the critical self-reflection was, at least initially, a relatively independent component provoked by comparison and informed by

10_{Balkanac- man from the Balkans.}

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expectations, values, and ideas shared by both external and internal observers, but by means of common cultural sources, not through direct exchange. Therefore, many of the critical self-evaluations predated the hardening of the Balkanist discourse in the second decade of the twentieth century (Todorova 39).

This research will confirm this statement by showing how much Selenić himself contributes to the negative notion of the Balkans. Prototypes of typical Balkanites are present in Balkan’s literature and all of them have one in common – they represent anti culture, or low culture in opposition to the high, European culture. What the intellectual elites of all of the Balkan countries have in common are feelings of shame and frustration when facing their Balkanness.

Todorova (54) says that, among all the Balkan countries, Bulgaria is the only one that seriously considers its Balkanness and probably for the reason that the Balkan range entirely on its territory. There are a lot of literary proofs for this claim but maybe more obvious ones can be found in the names of Bulgarian airlines “Balkan”, tourist agencies “Balkantourist” and “Balkan holidays”, record-making industry “Balkanton” et cetera. On the other hand, Todorova emphasizes that even among Bulgarians, a Balkan name and a Balkan identity is ambiguous and subordinated to their claim of Europeanness. From this example, it can be concluded that even the people who embraced their Balkanness the most – Bulgarians, do not except their Balkan identity without feeling inferior to the Europeans at the same time. Therefore, feelings of belonging to the Balkans are always mixed and controversial. It is not unlikely that both pride and shame are present at the same time.

Even though the answer to the question of the existence of common cultural Balkan identity might not always be straight forward and simple in theory, practice and personal experience show differently. Kiossev writes about the “a-ha” experience or impression a person from the Balkans gets when introduced to the other individual also coming from the region.

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The key words in the quoted text are “eager to avoid”. When one sees their image in the mirror, they become even more aware of its unwanted features. Todorova shares the opinion with Kiossev about the desire to separate from the created image:

Despite the fact that some accept, although reluctantly, their Balkanness while others actively renounce any connection with it, what is in common for Balkan countries, all the Balkan nations accept that there is something that can be defined as Balkan, although it might not be desired region. The other common characteristic of Balkan nation is the urge to prove that they to not belong to the repellent image that has been constructed (Todorova 57).

Therefore, in the matter of the Balkans’ peoples’ self-perception three factors stand out: they are very much aware of their repugnant image in the West; to the large extent, they reinforce that image; consequently, they would prefer not to be labelled as Balkanite.

Serbian national identity

Regional identity is built on the feeling of sameness and the recognition between the individuals belonging to the same region. National identity is also built on the feeling of belonging, sharing common myths, history, language, culture et cetera.

The sense of being a part of a certain nation can be very strong and sometimes a defining element of a personal identity. Feelings for one’s nation can be so powerful that the one can be willing to die for it. Benedict Anderson presents a new concept of a nation in a groundbreaking “Imagined communities” (note). He proposes a new definition of a nation as a social construct, stating that it is an imagined political

community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Andersen 6). It is

imagined because even though the members of a nation will never get to know most of their fellow-members, the image of their communion lives in their minds.

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Equally important to the concept of inclusion is a concept of exclusion. If the idea of

“us” exists, then there has to exist the idea of “them”. The Other defines not only the

limits of one’s nation (in a sense of physical boundaries if nation is connected to the certain territory) but also distinguishing characteristics. Both of these elements are essential for the formation of national identity. Anna Triandafyllidou says that national identity may be conceived as a double-edged relationship:

On the one hand, it is inward-looking, it involves a certain degree of commonality within the group. It is thus based on a set of common features that bind the members of the nation together. On the other hand, national identity implies difference. Its existence presupposes the existence of ‘others’, other nations or other individuals, who do not belong to the ingroup and from which the ingroup must be distinguished (Triandafyllidou 599).

She explains that national consciousness involves both self-awareness of the group and awareness of others from which the nation seeks to differentiate itself.

Ambjornsson (84) is also of opinion that identity is based upon differentiation: An “us” requires “them”. He explains that the dark side can be willingly projected to the Other. Thus, without interaction with the member of the other nation, the one would not be aware of their own national identity. In other words, if there was no contact with the “others” or foreigners, there would be no concept of nation and vice versa.

Selenić uses the idea of “us” and “them” to emphasize intercultural differences in his novels. He opposes English and Croatian nations to Serbian. However, he goes further in presenting cultural diverseness by portraying misunderstandings between people of various cultural backgrounds within one nation. The differences between them are so strong that the reader has the impression that incomparable worlds collide.

It is clear that the division of Us and Them often has the component of attributing undesirable cultural characteristics to the out-group. In the case of regional Balkan identity, Them or the Europeans are often perceived as of higher culture and Us – Balkanites were reconfirmed as primitive and wild. At the same time, Balkanites have their own stigmatized Other, and that is the Orient.

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opponent like the Ottoman Empire and Turkey12 but, more importantly, as Todorova notices, the Other can be found within the region itself. She continues with the observation that East is a relational category and in that spirit all Balkan countries have renounced what they perceive as East and think of themselves as, if incompletely Western, certainly not Eastern.

It is apparent that the Western attitude towards Balkans’ countries is replicated in the attitude that the Balkans have towards countries further East. It is as every region has their own Balkans that serve as the storage in which all the unacceptable features are put in.

Even more relevant is how Balkan countries label themselves. Milica Bakić-Hayden (918) explores the phenomenon of nesting orientalisms or the gradation of “Orients” as a pattern of reproduction of the original dichotomy upon which orientalism is premised.

In this pattern, Asia is more “East” or “Other” than Eastern Europe; within Eastern Europe itself this gradation is reproduced with the Balkans perceived as more “eastern”; within the Balkans there are similarly constructed hierarchies (Bakić-Hayden 918).

Newly founded countries of former Yugoslavia serve as a perfect example of nesting orientalisms as countries that were subjected to balkanism and stigmatized as such, replicate the same stereotypes to the neighbouring countries. Bakić-Hayden explains the distinction is made between the countries who were formerly part of Habsburg monarchy and the ones that belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, Eastern Orthodox peoples perceive themselves as more European than those who assumed identities of European Muslims and who further distinguished themselves from the ultimate Orientals, non-Europeans.

This line of division among the former Yugoslav Republics goes from the northwest to the southeast. The scale from the most European people to the most Eastern or Balkanite people would be: Slovenians – Croats – Montenegrins – Serbs – Macedonians – Muslims. Slovenians are perceived as Central Europeans, Croats as Central Europeans aspirants, Montenegrins claim their Mediterranean identity,

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Macedonians are purely Balkanite and Muslims are, because of their religion, the most Eastern ones and therefore hold the last position on this scale. Serbs are, to quote Marko Živković, “somewhere in between”. As it is not enough that the Balkans are seen as located between the East and the West, now Serbia is positioned in between “Western” and “Eastern” Yugoslav republics, which makes its position even more specific. Furthermore, as sometimes the river Sava, that runs through the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, is designated as the natural northern border of the Balkans, the Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina might be considered Central European and not Balkanite, due to its long period under Hungarian rule.

However, as one national identity is mostly crystallised when in opposition with the other national identity, the Serbian national identity from Croatian perspective has to be addressed.

In the process of gaining independence from the former Yugoslavia, Croatian political and intellectual elites were claiming the return to their real, European identity, which was, in their opinion, taken from them when Croatia became part of Yugoslavia. Basically, they wanted to “shake off” their Balkanness which was allegedly imposed to them and never a true part of their identity. The same is valid for Slovenia as well.

From the standpoint of the “northern republics”, Slovenia and Croatia, centuries under the Habsburg rule have qualified them to “join Europe” at the present time. Historical circumstances which led to industrial development in Western Europe have been appropriated by Slovenes and Croats as the product of their superior qualities, and western-like participation in the cultural circles of Mittel Europe is stressed, without consideration on how they participated – as equal actors or otherwise (Bakić-Hayden 924).

The fact is that these former Yugoslav republics were not equal participants in Habsburg Empire but rather second-class provinces, but that was not as much important as the desire of their intellectual elites to escape their Balkan identity. How is this relevant to Serbian identity?

Serbs are in the eyes of those intellectuals true Balkanites and do not belong to Europe in any, and especially not in cultural sense. They were never even discussed in terms of Central Europe (except for Vojvodina, but rarely).

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from their neighbours to the south and east. They say that among Croats, Serbs are seen as the epitome of a Balkan people and explain the outcomes of such opinion:

Croatia may always take comfort in its superiority over Serbia when it perpetuates Balkanist stereotypes; but by the same criteria, Croatia’s disadvantaged position vis-à-vis Europe gives them little protection when this same Balkanist rhetoric is directed towards them (Lindstorm, Razsa 16).

In Croatian media nowadays the expression “Eastern neighbours” is used for Serbs, which confirms that Croatia’s Western geographical position in relation to Serbia is emphasized. That position is one additional argument to Croatia’s Europeanness and Serbia’s Balkanness.

The interesting conclusion can be drawn from this example of replicating stereotypes. That is that the national identity is in the middle of two opposites. The one is the perception of how we are seen by the ones that we consider as desirable, higher culture and the other is how we see our other in relation to whom we hold a superior position. Samuel Huntington (32) says that the tendency to think in terms of two worlds recurs throughout human history: “People are always tempted to divide people into Us and Them, the in-group and the Other, our civilization and those barbarians” (note). He declares that the future world conflicts will be based on the differences between civilizations as broadest cultural entities. However, he states that the unity of non-West and the East-West dichotomy are myths created by the West and that instead of East and West, it is more appropriate to speak of the “West and the Rest” which implies the existence of many non Westerners. He illustrates this division in the three maps called “The West and the Rest”.

The first one shows the world from this perspective in 1920. Countries are divided between the ones that are ruled by the West and the ones that are actually or nominally independent from the West. In this map, Serbia is (with Montenegro and Macedonia) positioned among the independent countries while Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia belong to the countries ruled by the West13.

The second map dates from 1960 and it is entitled “The Cold War”. In the spirit of the strong political divisions in that time, countries are either part of “free world” or

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“communistic block” or “unaligned nations”. Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s president Josip Broz Tito was one of the initiators of establishing a Non-Aligned Movement and therefore all the Yugoslav republics belong to the third group of countries on the map.

The third map shows the “World of Civilizations: Post-1990”. According to Huntington, there are nine different civilizations: Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese. Slovenia and Croatia are shown as Western while Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina14, Macedonia and Montenegro are part of Orthodox civilization.

In all of three maps provided by Huntington, Serbia is clearly marked as non-Western and explicitly labelled as Orthodox. Answering the question of European borders, Huntington (159) claims that the mainstream opinion is that Europe ends where Western Christianity ends and Islam and Orthodoxy begin. Therefore, Serbia is not a European country.

Even though division of world to the different civilizations might be challenged, it serves as an illustration of Serbia’s specific location in the world’s symbolic geographical maps.

Firstly, the notion of Serbia as a fortress that protected Europe against the barbarian Turks is fundamental for the construction of national identity. The feeling that the Turks did injustice to Serbs as they abruptly stopped their cultural development is omnipresent.

The defeat of the medieval Serbian state by the Ottomans at the field of Kosovo in 1389 was transformed during the subsequent centuries of Ottoman rule into what has been variously called a cult, a legend, or a myth of Kosovo. The epic was transmitted both orally by illiterate bards and as a written tradition by the Serbian Orthodox Church. In its fully developed version, the myth incorporated themes of heroism, betrayal, martyrdom, and the Christian theme of the choice of the Heavenly Kingdom over the Earthly one--this is the Kosovo Covenant. Kosovo became the archetype not so much of a battle lost and then forever mourned, as of the eternally recurrent defeat and "decapitation" of the nation (the perishing of the entire elite), as well as its recurrent resurrection and "battle unrelenting" against the oppressor (Živković 3).

Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture Jagiellonian University in Krakow University of Groningen