Orientalist Variations on the Theme "Balkans": Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics

Abstract

At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in this clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell you, Irinej, we are doomed by fate to be the East on the West, and the West on the East, to acknowledge only heavenly Jerusalem beyond us, and here on earth-no one.–St. Sava to Irinej, 13th centurySince the early 1980s, the crisis of Yugoslav society has been brought to public awareness through discussions in the mass media, both within Yugoslavia and outside of the country. While the causes of the crisis were initially analyzed within the framework of the ideology of Yugoslav self-management socialism, the past several years have seen increasing use by politicians and writers from the northwestern parts of the country of an orientalist rhetoric that relies for its force on an ontological and epistemological distinction between (north)west and (south)east