The foreclosure of the Balkans' postcoloniality is a fragment of a much larger strategic manoeuvring inside a European historiography ruled by the national paradigm aimed at disowning colonial ...history. Because the European Union is a new political entity without a previous history, and because it has formally denounced colonialism and anti-Semitism, there is a creeping assumption that it somehow deserves a clean slate and the right to shift the ownership of its colonial histories to its former colonial subjects. As an effort to 'de-provincialize' Europe from the position of the Balkans' marginal history, Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova, the leading scholar in the critical studies of Balkanism, insists on the incommensurability between Orientalism and Balkanism on the grounds that the Balkans, unlike the Orient, 'lacks colonial predicament'. The history of Bulgarian Zionist settlers in Palestine challenges Todorova's claim. Bulgarian Zionists were agents of a double colonization, in Bulgaria as subjects of internal colonization, and in Palestine as colonizers.
In this article, we explore the ways in which from the beginning to the end of twentieth century different temporalities and historicizations stemming from different narrative perspectives on the ...Balkan wars have constructed different commonplace, timeworn and enduring representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives, such as the sensationalism of media industry, the essentialization of collective memory, the securitization of imaginary threats and the pacifist activism of normative transformations. It is our contention to argue that they historicize certain moments of rupture, which are subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe that may conceal hidden interests. Contrastingly, an alternative narrative that emphasizes a “history from below” as an apperception of the temporality of being can offer a revisionist approach that may show the futility of ahistorical accounts.
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The article presents the perceptions of global and internal developmental hierarchies in Romania. According to our empirical results, the Western-centred developmental paradigm has deeply penetrated ...the worldviews of ordinary people in Romania. As a consequence, national self-perceptions, respectively, constructions of internal regional and ethnic differences in Romania, are powerfully shaped by the idea of East–West developmental hierarchies. Melegh introduced the concept of an “East–West slope” to denote a discursive construction used since the eighteenth century. This construction suggests that there is a gradual decline of development (or “civilization”) as one moves from the West (North West) toward the East (South East). The author argues that this framework not only defines how Romanians position themselves in the global developmental hierarchy but also how they define their internal (regional and ethnic) hierarchies. The article also discusses Todorova’s concept of Balkanism. This interpretive framework not only defines the perceptions of external observers but (following a process of cultural penetration) may also shape the self-perceptions of those involved. This article argues that Romanians have succeeded in avoiding—at least partially—the most severe consequence of the “Balkanizing gaze,” which is a constant sense of inferiority. It is also important, however, that this Balkanizing gaze can be reproduced at a national/local level and (in interrelation with other types of developmental discourses) can organize internal hierarchies.
The term “Balkanism” has two meanings, referring to both something objective and strictly geographic, as well as something subjective – a meaning that describes a certain mentality, a certain manner ...of thinking and behavior embraced in the Balkans. This article sets out to analyse the elements that are considered to define the cultural identity of the communities from the area of the Balkans. Their historical events, their linguistic differences and peculiarities, their art (music, cinematography, etc.), their culinary p references and other elements are approached and described from the perspective of the “cultural crevice” theory.
In this article I put forward the concept of subversive infantilisation to designate a phenomenon in contemporary Bosnian literature, which by using a certain kind of childish outlook on the world ...undermines paternalistic and balkanist Western discourse on Bosnia and Herzegovina. By analysing primarily the portrayal of the role of mass media in a few literary texts, principally books by Nenad Veli?kovié and Miljenko Jergovié, I highlight the way in which these texts “re-rig” and by means of irony and exaggeration illuminate the problematic logic inherent in the subject position from which one represents the other. Textual characteristics of subversive infantilisation are contextualised further and seen as a discursive continuation of experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In this article I put forward the concept of subversive infantilisation to designate a phenomenon in contemporary Bosnian literature, which by using a certain kind of childish outlook on the world ...undermines paternalistic and balkanist Western discourse on Bosnia and Herzegovina. By analysing primarily the portrayal of the role of mass media in a few literary texts, principally books by Nenad Veličkovié and Miljenko Jergovié, I highlight the way in which these texts “re-rig” and by means of irony and exaggeration illuminate the problematic logic inherent in the subject position from which one represents the other. Textual characteristics of subversive infantilisation are contextualised further and seen as a discursive continuation of experiences of the 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This paper is concerned with re-imaginings of 'Europe' following the accession to the European Union (EU) of former 'Eastern European' countries. In particular it explores media representations of ...post-EU accession migration from Romania to the United Kingdom in the UK and Romanian newspaper press. Todorova's (1997) notion of Balkanism is deployed as a theoretical construct to facilitate the analysis of these representations as first, the continuation of long-standing and deeply embedded imaginings of the 'East' of Europe and, second, as a means of contesting these discourses. The paper explores the way in which the UK press construct Balkanist discourses about Romania and Romanian migrants, and then analyses how the Romanian press has contested such discourses. The paper argues that the idea of the 'East' remains important in constructing notions of 'Europe' within popular media geographies.
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