Diana mishkova BEYOND BALKANISM

1. Diana mishkovaBEYOND BALKANISM THE SCHOLARLY POLITICS OF REGION MAKING CEU, 13 Nov. 2018

2. BALKANISM: STATE OF THE ART • The Balkans: the favored European “deconstruction site” for contrived geographies and reductionist representations hinging on a hegemonic relationship between Western and Eastern Europe • Balkan studies: an academic field that has most fruitfully adopted and contributed to the analysis of orientalism.

3. BALKANKISM: STATE OF THE ART • Texts produced outside academic confines pace Said’ Orientalism • Sidelining “Balkan” self-understanding • Aplayground of “nesting Orientalisms” whereby each of the Balkan cultures becomes conscious only of its semantic space being created from the outside. • Reducing the signifier “Balkan” to a colonizing western discourse

4. Beyond balkanism: METHOD • reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world • engages with the paradigmatic scholarly conceptualizations of the region in various regional academic and disciplinary subcultures • delves into external, outside-in, scholarly conceptualizations • historical reconstruction of the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages.

5. Beyond balkanism: AGENDA • transfiguring the semantics of balkanism • highlighting the strategies that were used at the Balkan margins to challenge their asymmetric conceptualization by devising subversive regional categories and alternative regional modes of collective identification beyond the east-west binary • the reversal of perspective foregrounds the ways Europe and its “parts” were conceptualized as symbolic spaces from its margins and displays the actual communication between “Western” and “peripheral” concepts and definitions • highlighting the intimate relationship between processes of spatialization and identity formation on a national and transnational scale • ascertaining the extent to which regional approaches have posed a challenge to nation-centered scholarship and methodological nationalism

6. threefold procedure • scrutinizing the ways the Balkans/Southeastern Europe was used as a framework of scholarly interpretation and historical (self-)narration; • assessing the intricate relationship of regional categories with national modalities of representation, particularly national narratives of history, as well as between local and exogenous conceptualizations; and • foregrounding these regional categories’ political connotations and usages. • Reinstating the subjectivity and the agency of “the Balkans” and instating the responsibility of the Balkan elites for the concept and the images it conveys.

7. PERIODIZATION I:late 19th – early 20th centuries • linguistics, literary studies, ethnography • exchange and interaction between nations • the construction of the nation went hand in hand – and was compatible with – the construction of an overarching regional unity • transnational forces participating powerfully in the Balkan nation-formation: Ivan Shishmanov, Jovan Cvijić, NicolaeIorga, NicoŽupanić • Regionalism prompted by national concerns and meant to safeguard the nation

8. PERIODIZATION II:THE INTERWAR PERIOD • Cultural-morphological models for explaining spatial similarities and differences (common cradle, shared structures) • The “new science of balkanology” - the first comprehensive statement of Balkan studies • the nation-state vs. cross-national histories of peoples, ideas, and material cultures; • a blueprint for postwar “area studies”

9. PERIODIZATION ii: THE INTERWAR PERIOD • Systematic rehabilitation and thriving of “the Balkans”asa political and culturalconcept • Construction of a Balkan identification and an alternative balkanism • Backsliding into notions of a Balkan geo-historical destiny and distinct civilization, underpinned by overt racism and couched in moralizing oratory, metaphysical and mystic references

10. PERIODIZATION III:AFTER WORLD WAR II • Disappearance of the Balkans as a political notion and economic region • Balkan academic movement of the 1960s-1970s: entwinement of cultural politics, geopolitics, and national propaganda • State-sponsored institutionalization and politicization of Balkanist research

11. PERIODIZATION: iiiAFTER WORLD WAR II 1. Methodological nationalism: • the Balkans as a mosaic of national spaces; • national/ethnic borders: key dividing lines in the region • agents of interaction are the firmly established and immutable ethnic or national communities fully conscious of their distinct character • nationalism as a progressive force 2. Rigorous normative approach to “Europe” 3. Isolation from the theoretical and methodological debates

12. PERIODIZATIONvi. POST-1989 Theoretical chasm: • the Balkans as a ‘place’ in a discourse-geographyvs. • the Balkans as a historical region (defined in terms of a cluster of historical-structural and cultural characteristics or historical legacies) • The theoretical discussions this schism gave rise to placed the Balkans in the center of the debates on the meaning of regions and the mechanisms for the production of space that has led to interrogating definitions, traits and boundaries.

13. external regionalizations • Sources of outside-in (external) regionalizations: the role of political debates at home and domestic agendas • Discrete national academes participated with different weight and proficiency : - Germany (proximity, expansion, uninterrupted involvement) → extensive study, historical region - Britain → “the Near East” - imperialism ≠ academic engagement (interwar) Italy - Russia → the Slavic world, the Balkans, satellite Eastern Europe

14. internal and external regionalizations: relation • Parallel but not necessarily connected • Convergent or divergent (e.g. “the Balkans” vs. “Southeastern Europe” between the wars) • West-to-East and East-to-West flow of concepts and representations; • Beyond “the Balkans”: e.g. Cvijić’sinfluence on Braudel’sconceptualization of the Mediterranean and the paradigm of histoire des mentalités; Iorga’s contribution to Lamprecht’s project of Weltgeschichte and, in the vein of the “new cultural history,” to Henry Berr’sRevue de synthèsehistorique

15. fusion of regionalist and nationalist schemes • Regional frameworks originating from nationalist agendas • The ambiguous effect of the comparative method: playing down national differences or underpinning the national frame • Scholars typically partaking in both nationalist and regionalist modalities

16. the Balkans as an “active” concept • The Balkan “subaltern” did speak: • local regional narratives conjured up their own mental maps, symbolic geographies and maps of civilization, and pursued their own political-ideological agendas. • they were steeped in the debates on identity and evolved with reference to two main vectors: the nation and Europe. • The “Balkan idea,” • mediated the positioning of the individual nations with respect to Europe, global culture, and international order; • established a liaison between the local cultural-historical heritage and “general” history; • served as a modality for interrogating the premises and the direction of modernization.

17. BEYOND “BEYOND BALKANISM”? THANK YOU!