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Nebojsa
Vilic
Imagining
the [Unimaginable] Balkans
[The
paper tends to approach a critical review
of the referential book on the Balkans – Imagining the Balkans
written by Maria Todorova.]
The
main interest of the paper is addressed directly to the
stereotypes that are either produced by or surrounding Balkans’
cultural contexts. The reason and cause of this situation is both
produced as much by the outer factors that much as inner ones. It
is almost very significant how much these stereotypes are
‘sticky’ for the most of Balkanians and how they implement
them and recognize themselves in them. It is a matter of
stigmatization in a way, but the more problematic is that they
[may be] would like to be stigmatized. Being between the pressure
to stigmate and to be stigmatized and the acceptance of that
stigmatization it seems that there is only a very thin line.
Should one say that there is a joy in this never-ending game?
Special
attention will be addressed to the ‘Balkanian myth’ on the
‘West’ and its consequences on the particular cultural scenes.
Being obsessed by the image of the ‘West’, the Balkans was
always pretending or arguing that it is more ‘Western’ than
‘Eastern’, or better to say more occidental than oriental. It
is strange that this double identity of the Balkans is produced by
the Balkanians them selves rather than the whole stigmatization
from the side of the ‘West’. Even that conditions are like
this, there is still the tendency of presenting them selves like
‘Westerners’. This presentations often has the outlook of
pretending, the point that was always criticized by the
‘West’. It is still unclear whether this pretending aims to
criticize or to achieve the West.
In
other words, the paper tends to deconstruct all of these
prejudices and biases in the cultural scenes at the Balkans
tending to produce an other approach towards the ‘promising, but
not accepting’ West. |
