The Exotic Other The Balkan Peninsula: A Western Distortion of the Balkan’s Myth?
The Exotic Other The Balkan Peninsula: A Western Distortion of the Balkan’s Myth?
Jelena Vukovic 19000217 CP6019 BA Graphic Design ADD Dissertation May 2021 19000217 CP6019 BA Graphic Design ADD Dissertation May 2021
Jelena Vukovic
Page 1 of 36 Jelena Vukovic. 19000217. Dissertation. Level 6.
Extracts from Jelena Vukovic, The Exotic Other: The Balkan Peninsula – A Western Distortion of the Balkan’s Myth?
Dissertation Studio 5 This is My Truth; Show Me Yours: Post-truth, Propaganda and Bull***t Tutor: Jeremy Collins
School of Art, Architecture and Design London Metropolitan University 2021
Maria Todorova and Balkanization ‘Balkanization, not only had come to denote the parcelization of large and viable political units, but also had become a synonym for reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian.’ (Todorova, 2006, page 1). Balkanization, a term established at the start of the 19th century, broadcasts a socio-political fragmentation of countries into even smaller geographical units, the most recent example would be the breakup of Former Yugoslavia. Completely negative in its context, due to gruesome wars that followed such desolation. Balkanization is also a superimposed legacy fetched from an already obstructive image formed by various intellectuals. One example would be Karl Marx, having described the Southern Slavs as ‘the human trash of people.’ (Jovic Humphrey, 2014, pg 1141.) His viewpoint would influence many others in achieving such prejudices. In Imagining the Balkans, a report had to be made in order to disaffiliate the conflict of a humanitarian crisis that was happening on Balkan land with the true nature of said demographic. ‘The real culprits in this long list of executions, assassinations, drowning, burning, massacres and atrocities furnished by our report, are not, we repeat, the Balkan peoples.’ (Todorova, 2006, pg. 4). Nevertheless, the words of Marx, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Harry de Windt, would also enforce numerous expeditions in attempt to fully discover the land of the Balkans, which was deeply obscure at the time. Their expedition depicted alternative stories. Rebecca West, embarked on a journey to Yugoslavia in the 1940s. Previously, she was completely unaware of what was truthfully proceeding in Yugoslavia, during war time, getting glimpses of prejudices and subjective news reports. All she knew of the Balkans was
savagery, ‘violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans- all I knew of the South Slavs.’ (West, 1941, Part I). Orientalism, on the other hand, comes into play as an alternative form of comparison. The Balkans being, an Ottoman legacy, as most research papers claim, as well as Todorova, are trying to explicate the exclusion in which oriental influence had in creating the Balkan Identity. In order words, they are trying to draw a line in which, said Orientalism holds a separate existence to Balkanism. ‘One can readily agree that there is an overlap and complimentary between the two rhetorics, yet their similar rhetoric overlap with any power discourse; the rhetoric of racism, development, modernization, civilization, and so on.’ (Todorova, 2006, pg. 10). While being a vivid force of sway, the Oriental influence had to merge or accumulate the energies that have already settled within the Peninsula, prior to the Ottoman Yoke. The then autonomous European land, drenched in Christianity, found itself in a crossfire between religions, being as half of its population has succumbed to Roman Catholics while the other half has held Eastern Orthodoxy as their primal religion. That being said, Todorova expresses that a solid European essence can be found in the Balkans, before the ultimate clash; five centuries under Ottoman rule and the evolution that followed. ‘In the first place, there is the historical and geographical concreteness of the Balkans as opposed to the intangible nature of the Orient.’ (Todorova, 2006, page 10). Balkanism is clearly attached to the Peninsula, and only ever exists there, while the Orient being intangible can be found in various places, all around the world. Todorova attempts to firstly disclose the similarities in both Balkanism and Orientalism, by calling upon their similarities, or in a way in which they were both viewed by external examiners. Noting them as unrefined, alien, barbaric and somewhat exotic, which further commemorates the idea of the
Balkans being an exotic other, surprisingly enough on European soil. ‘What we are up against is the sad fact that developments of those earlier ages, not only those of the Turkish domination but of earlier ones as well, had the effect of thrusting into the southeastern reaches of the European continent a salient of non-European civilization which has continued to the preserve many of its non-European characteristics.’ (Todorova, 2006, page 4). George Kennan’s statement in Imagining the Balkans, fully depicts the denial in which both cultural and historical events were showcased as. They were so utterly misunderstood at the point of being completely unfathomable. However, only in their said monstrosities, were the Balkan always preserving and broadcasting something that is non-European, because something barbaric couldn’t possibly belong to Europe or its cultural heritage, according to George Kennan and the rest. ‘Kennan has been echoed by a great many American journalists who seem to be truly amazed at Balkan savagery at the end of the twentieth century. Roger Cohen exclaimed “the notion of killing people…because of something that may have happened in 1495 is unthinkable in the Western World. Not in the Balkans.”’ (Todorova, 2006, page 4.)
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