The article describes the approach to and condenses some of the main arguments presented in the author’s book Beyond Balkansim: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making. It charts the main phases in ...the scholarly conceptualization of the Balkans and its characteristics and, against this background, tackles the question: What can we learn from the Balkan case about the actual production of regions?
Zenitism and orientalism Glišić, Iva; Vujošević, Tijana
Zbornik radova Akademije umetnosti (Online),
2021, Volume:
2021, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Reflecting on the centenary of the birth of Zenitism, this essay examines how the movement engaged with stereotypes about the Slavic Orient, and in particular the discourse on Balkanism. The European ...orientalist reading of the Balkans became especially profound in years surrounding the World War I. Seeking to invert derogatory characterisations of the Balkan Peninsula, Zenitists would embark on a mission to "Balkanise Europe" by presenting the artist from the East as a rejuvenating, revolutionary force emerging from a cultural tabula rasa. Zenitism sought to destabilise the dominant Orient-Occident discourse by establishing parallels between existing negative stereotypes of the Balkans and the aesthetic tropes of the European avantgarde. Specifically, Zenitists established the Balkan "Barbarogenius" as the archetypal modernist primitive - precisely the figure conjured by the European intelligentsia as the saviour for its listless modern condition. In addition, the Zenitist movement established an analogy between the hallmark fragmentation of the Balkans and the cultural cacophony of the avant-garde. The political and aesthetic strategies of the movement, the authors assert, bear a striking similarity with those of the Black Atlantic, and its 'in-betweenness'-its ambition to straddle two opposing worlds. Organised around its eponymous journal Zenit, which was conceptualised as "the first Balkan journal in Europe and the first European journal in the Balkans," Zenitism employed European avant-garde aesthetic strategies while simultaneously rejecting European claims to cultural supremacy. For Yugoslav, Soviet, and Western European audiences, the journal had two parallel goals: the creative "Balkanisation" of Europe, and a commitment to dismantling Yugoslav "nesting orientalisms" by fighting against the reproduction of negative stereotypes among the region's own inhabitants. Against a backdrop of European crisis and a global demand for a renewed emancipatory struggle, the ambition of Zenitism holds strong appeal today.
This paper analyses two war travelogues from World War I whose authors served in the Serbian Army on the Macedonian front, Ruth Farnham's A Nation at Bay: What an American Woman Saw and Did in ...Suffering Serbia and Douglas Walshe's With the Serbs in Macedonia. Farnham's duty was to take charge of the medical stores brought to Serbia from various English and American sources and Walshe was a driver in a Light Supply and Ammunition Column of Ford vans attached to the Serbian Army. Apart from offering detailed descriptions of their duties, Farnham and Walshe convey through their travelogues a very favourable picture of Serbia and its people, thus distancing themselves from the discourse of Balkanism, predominant in Great Britain and the United States during World War I. With due respect they write about Serbian soldiers, their ethics and humane attitude towards the Austrian and Bulgarian prisoners of war, whereas they do not hesitate to condemn the Allies' treasonous response towards the Serbian Army in times of its greatest need. Having come to the Macedonian front to learn about Serbia and help it, Ruth Farnham and Douglas Walshe can be said to have challenged the negative reputation Serbia had in the British and American public. Their war travelogues clearly show that what they saw and experienced is in many ways incongruous with the then predominant discourse of Balkanism. That is why Farnham reveals to her reader that she feels "the highest regard for that brave little nation, Serbia, and its gallant and heroic people" and Walshe ends his book in a simple and memorable sentence: "It has been a privilege to serve them".
EU har gjort en stor feil ved ikke å drive gjennom EU-medlemskap for Bosnia-Hercegovina. De stadige utsettelsene skyldes flere ting, blant annet nasjonale hensyn i EUs medlemsland og en fastlåst ...politisk situasjon i Bosnia-Hercegovina, som gjør nødvendige reformer vanskelig. Dette har skapt håpløshet i befolkningen og bidrar til fortsatt politisk ustabilitet. Rask integrering i EU og Nato er den eneste sikre veien til fred og utvikling i Bosnia-Hercegovina – og på Vest-Balkan generelt. Abstract in English: Europe’s Betrayal of Bosnia and Herzegovina The EU has made a major mistake by not driving through EU membership for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The constant delays are due to several things, including national considerations in EU member states and a deadlocked political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, making necessary reforms difficult. This has created hopelessness in the population and contributes to continued political instability. Rapid integration in the EU and Nato is the only safe path to peace and development in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the Western Balkans in general.The EU has made a major mistake by not driving through EU membership for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The constant delays are due to several things, including national considerations in EU member states and a deadlocked political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, making necessary reforms difficult. This has created hopelessness in the population and contributes to continued political instability. Rapid integration in the EU and Nato is the only safe path to peace and development in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the Western Balkans in general.
Talking about Balkanism in Romanian contemporary poetry means to betray, to a certain extent required by degradation or alteration, some literary themes and motifs. Finding ourselves in a ...geographical area of cultural contaminations, the influence of other peoples in Balkans comes naturally: the nostalgia of Byzantium perfection, continuous reporting at an ideal time, abstraction of the chronology. Balkan themes and motives in poetry are identifiable from the early writings of Romanian literature, including the folklore, with Anton Pann, the Vacarescu and Conachi poets – and their ludic descriptivism – , to Ion Barbu, who strikes a metaphysical note in the Balkan motifs, and later, in the second part of twentieth century, with the species of parody. The Romanian native receptivity allowed continuous assimilations without creating an unpleasant heterogeneous feeling. This openness has contributed decisively in a formative way to bring Byzantium on a new soil in a perfect and saturated array; the perfectibility is not possible anymore, so the failure was natural, in a degraded status – Constantinople. Oriental-Byzantine gravity becomes in Oriental-Balkan tragedy or comedy, balance slid to one extreme, sometime becoming ridiculous. Contemporary poetry does not express any more a true lament, but a kind of parody (in ludic poetry) or sheer contempt (in the solemn poetry). The Balkan intelligence is not critical, but creative, with the risk of perpetuating monstrous forms, beyond good and evil. Byzantium established itself through a double filter – for the East and for the West – influencing and being influenced, in turn. Romanian poetry has the full sequence of themes and aesthetic formulae, from tragic to comic, often switching rapidly from one edge to the other, taking into account the old Thracian solemn part, then the proud Byzantium and its absorption in Constantinople – all rolling in a series of formal expressions reflected in themes and vocabulary.
This paper analyzes the use of Future I to denote habitual actions in the
vernacular of Sirinic. The analysis shows that Future I is a high-frequency
unit when it refers to effects of what happened ...in the past as a custom,
habit or part of a sequence. The use of Future with this meaning developed
as its secondary trait, but this form was eventually suppressed from other
domains of use and it was narrowed down to denoting a habitual action. The
basic syntactic and semantic features of this future form with this time
reference are its reference to a repeated action or a succession of events
and its ability to denote the timeline of the effects of the action and its
reference to wishes and commands more clearly. Furthermore, a future
referring to the past is stylistically marked and thus appears as an
expressive unit within the system, which is why it is typical of emotional
discourse. In the Shtokavian area, Future I for habitual actions is only
known in the Sirinic vernacular and in a few neighboring ones concentrated
around the Sar Mountains. On the other hand, this unit is also frequent in
Macedonian and Bulgarian and in some non-Slavic languages spoken in the
Balkans, which is why the authors also investigate the presence of this
feature in those languages.
Byzantinism, a not sufficiently explored field, is still today a fundament of the pejorative explanation of the terms "Balkanization" and "Balkanism". Byzantinism, the Hellenic one, actually ...represents the whole idea for the Balkans ; the idea of how, due to the hegemonization of an ethnic identity, an empire chat persisted for about a millennium could collapse. The idea of this text is to show the connection between Byzantinism and Balkanism and by using synthesis and comparative analysis to prove the thesis chat : The hegemonization of the Byzantine-Greek identity in the past contributed to the birth of today's Balkan nationalism -Balkanism. In this text, the author analyses the appearance of Byzantium as a par excellence addition to ancient Hellenism, especially its conversion into hegemonic Hellenism, which was intended to submerge and assimilate all the other non-Greek identities in Byzantium. In fact, the author will prove chat Byzantinism, which is a product of Hellenism, is the source ofBalkanism, which icselfleads to the idea chat the fundament of today's Balkan nationalism, chat is, Balkanism, is nothing but the hegemonic Hellenism during the Byzantine Empire.
Conev Blagoj. Byzantinism as a Fundament of the Balkanirni. In: Hiperboreea. Journal of History, vol. 5, N°1, 2018. pp. 17-32.
This study critically discusses the entanglements between World Heritage and geo-politics. It deconstructs the geo-political gaze which, it is argued, characterises the articulation of the UNESCO ...World Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) programme in the Republic of Croatia. The study of ICH specific to the case of Croatia is significant in political geography because it entails how cultural heritage is instrumentally used to promote nation-building while seeking to overcome past suppression of its culture. The article takes the Foucauldian concept of governmentality and Todorova's notion of Balkanism as epistemological frameworks. The aim is to understand what discourses are in play for Croatia as an independent nation to self-reflexively represent itself in the UNESCO international community and establish its geo-political positioning among other European nations through the transactional device of ICH. We argue that UNESCO acts as a supranational body which interacts with Croatia in the matter of ICH safeguarding. It therefore contributes to an emphasis on a governmentality discourse; at the same time, Balkanism can be regarded as a backdrop against which Croatia has constructed its own identity and legitimised its European aspirations.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The South Slavic languages belong to the wider Slavic language family and as far as we know, the similarities among them are very extensive. On the other hand, there are many differences between the ...South Slavic languages and other Slavic branches (the East and the West Slavic languages). To mention just one of them, it is the influence of the Turkish or Ottoman Turkish language. The influence of the Turkish language is very extensive among the South Slavic languages, but not so among the East and West Slavic languages. Nevertheless, the influence of the Turkish language is not consistent even among particular South Slavic languages. The purpose of this paper is to present the differences between the South Slavic languages which are based on the different usage of exclamations ‘ajde’ and ‘hajde’ among particular South Slavic languages, as from our experience this seems to be significant. The aim of this paper is to explore the contexts of these two exclamations in the three South Slavic languages, to compare the contexts, and to highlight the different usage of these two words not just among particular South Slavic languages, but also within individual language systems. We have found that the dictionaries of the researched languages do not contain the differences we found out by our comparison. For precise use of these words in identical contexts, we decided to use a comparative analysis of interlingual translations. We have chosen three translations of the children’s book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling, the Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian ones. We have compared the contexts in which these words occur, and we found fundamental differences, whose explanation we offer in this article.
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