Balkan As Metaphor ─ Between Globalization And Fragmentation

Balkan. Somewhere between a tragedy and a myth, a place and a condition, the term isperhaps best understood as a metaphor. It has been used and abused in academia by proponents ofopposing political views. Multiculturalism has appropriated it, as have postmodernism andpostcommunism. It is used pejoratively to refer to excessive specialization and nostalgically torefer to Europe's lost people -- its wild warriors and passionate geniuses. This book explores theidea of the Balkan as metaphor and the meaning of Balkan identity in the context of contemporaryculture. Focusing on Balkanism both as a body of knowledge and as the critical study of thatdiscourse, this book does for the Balkans what Edward Said's Orientalism did for "the Orient."Thesixteen authors, most of whom were born and educated in the Balkans, apply the Western academictools of postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and criticalmulticulturalism to topics as varied as the rhetoric of Balkanization, the war in Kosovo, Westerndemonization and erotization of the Serbs, Balkan film, human rights legislation, Byzantinism, thevampire as an image of Balkan violence, envy of the political and moral capital of victimhood, thetendency of the Balkan psyche toward depression, Serbian machismo and homosexuality, and wartimerape. The book both lays the groundwork for a new field of study and serves as an act of resistanceagainst the many forms of representation that break the Balkans into fragments such as NATO armybases and digital maps in order to wire them into the global market.

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