Explaining the Balkans West

Two decades after Maria Todorova wrote “The imagination of the Balkans”, perceptions of the region remain based on stereotypes, violence, poverty and racial experience.

Twenty years ago, while war coals in Bosnia and Croatia were still on fire, Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova published “The imagination of the Balkans”. In this crucial work, it detailed how the Balkans have been perceived and documentaryed for centuries both inside and abroad, primarily as a somewhat brutal and not civilized courtyard of Europe.

Todorova called this “Balkanism” as a tribute to “Oriantism” of Edward Said ʹ a term applied in a similar exotic coverage of researchers, writers and artists” of the East” from the “West”.

It followed the numerous forms of Balkanism in sources ranging from 16th century Venice's commercial chronicleries to the opinions of the 1990s published in the New York Times and to 19th century Serbian dramas.

Although the coverage differed from the country and the time period of the source, she noticed a strong thread of contempt towards the Balkans and its people.

She identified the British as traditionally a little impressed by the Balkans, saying that while the reason was partly geopolitical, as the British backed the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan independence wars, even the Victorian notions of “civilization” played a role based on the ideas of social Darwinism, scientific and colonial racism.

At the end of the 19th century, George Bernard Shaw angered Bulgarians with his “Armat and Man” describing the people as ignorant and barbarous. Edith Durham, a British who travelled the region at the beginning of the 20th century, described Serbs as “paraparasites” and called on all educated nations to rise up against the “the Balkan republics” and their Christianity.

Some travel journals from the same period contained racist parts, assessing the rich mix of cultures, languages and ethnicities in the region as detestable. Even when foreign reports were positive, they stereotyped locals as wild “fiscre”, frequently falling into the confessional trap of “white rescuer”.

Even after World War II and increasing sensitivity to stereotypes of all nations and peoples, they continued in the Balkans.

Todorova stressed that in the 1990s, a New York Times columnist in a way forgot the Holocaust in Western Europe when he criticised the Balkans as the only “country in Europe”, where people could be killed because of events from centuries ago.

Consumed in instability at the end of the last century, the Balkan turquoise, as non-told and violent, turned back to the point that American journalist and writer Robert Kaplan blamed the Balkans for Nazism, claiming that “Hitler learned to hate as he did” from southern Slavs. Despite the intense anger caused by some scholars in the region, Kaplan's work had influence and was widely read in the 1990 ' s.

Two decades after the “imagine of the Balkans” and after stability has returned to the region, does it still have meaning to discuss the Balkans?

Several Balkan states, such as Croatia and Bulgaria, have already joined the EU, while others wait as potential candidates. Membership is often perceived as a sign of civilization and even in the non-member states, politicians repeat EU messages of tolerance, stability and progress.

Key figures have raised interest in Western media, Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister hung his drawings at Venice's Bienenalen Art this year, while Ana Brnatic, Serbia's gay prime minister, became a hot topic in June (on charges that Serbia “is covering its domestic policy with pink”

A regional tourism boom prompted by flights, accommodation and cheap beer prompted hopes for familiarisation. Millions of tourists each year find that waiters in the Balkans are no more fierce than those in Spanish cities or British coastal resorts. Various local art scenes gather annually as Sarajevo Film Festival DokuFest in Prizren and the Trumpet Festival in Guca.

However, unreasonable references to war, violence, or poverty still characterize the articles on the modern Balkans especially for the states that once made up Yugoslavia. News reports mention violent men and women covered in money - seeking toilets.

Before Bulgaria entered the open labour market in 2014, British painters worked hard to describe other Europeans as labour thieves.

Last year, on the eve of the Brex referendum, a series of articles announced voters in the United Kingdom for the consequences of EU enlargement, constantly suggesting rising violence.

In April 2016, The Sun published an article on possible Bosnian EU accession with the title “don't put it in”, describing how Bosnia is a ground for radicals, with I flags. SIS flying everywhere, showing pictures of armed jihadists.

While The Sun is not considered an incarnation of high analysis, confessions for the Balkans are not limited to the narrow-minded media.

An article in The Economist entitled “Fighting and robbing” analysed a book on the history of Montenegro, which left the author asking whether “fights and plunders were determined by history”, which the nation's fathers had made and would again ask their sons”.

Even in liberal circles, Melanie Trump is described according to the stereotypes of <x0 minuses by post” because of its Slovenian origin. Recently, highly revered Mrs. Helen Mirren made comments to the Yugoslav “dark Slovenian spirit” of Trump, while Joy-Ann Reid, a MSNBC journalist, used the Yugoslav <x4-soviet legacy” of Donald Trump's women as evidence of his ties with Russia.

If we leave the celebrities unknown, even those who know the region occasionally pass through the waters of Balkanism. I couldn't hold back after reading a recent Balkan Insight article from a long-term writer in the region who referred to Serbian men as a <x0-footed mythcat” while discussing the obsession of Serbian women with makeup.

Besides being badly formed and intellectually lazy, international Balkanism unfortunately has real double consequences led to personal banal interactions.

Balkanism creates the worst kind of tourists -- the kind that after reading a book and spending several days in the region starts explaining to locals the history and politics according to the West.

It also enables other kind people to ask young ones constantly if they hate their neighbors or if they have any family members in the mafia.

Like all stereotypes, it stifles individual shades and stories by defining them thick. People in the Balkans must work hard to show the world themselves, despite shortcomings, they deserve respect and understanding.

However, this kind of external Balkanism can be compared and even surpassed by the one that continues within the Balkans itself. Internal Balkanism manifests itself in regional print of the term “Balkan”. People insist they belong to the “Central European” and constantly design negative stereotypes about their neighbours, with which they share a story and a good part of culture.

Liberal Serb circles regularly blame the Balkan “mentality” as the reason for our problems.

Traditionals often wear the stereotype as the reason to justify extreme machim and patriotism, and increasing tourism implies increasing opportunities to brand identity through “ ”, such as getting drunk with raki to “Safarit” shyly in small Roma cities.

Unfortunately, Balkanism survives because it is very useful. As a German essayist Herman von Keyserling wrote, (programming Volterin): “If the Balkans did not exist, it would be invented”.

Todorova speculated that for foreign Balkans, the region serves as a canvas to design its own ideas, whether about poverty, violence or intolerance. Or it can be used as a covering for all aspects of the inner culture of someone who may be opposed to the agenda that they may not want to deal with.

Unfortunately, as the cracks in the current liberal democratic order begin to become evident, from the Brax to Charlesville, Balkanism can disappear not because the Balkans will become in the Western “”, but because <x2 minus3> will realise it is more like “Balkan”.