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Identity of the Balkans Created Through Perspectives of the Others (Intersubjectivity: Identities Between Self and Others)

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Identity of the Balkans Created Through Perspectives of the Others (Intersubjectivity: Identities Between Self and Others) ICES-2018 1st International Congress on New Horizons in Education and Social Sciences CITATION: Proceedings of ICES 2018 – 1st International Congress on New Horizons in Education and Social Sciences, April 9-11, 2018- Istanbul, Turkey ISBN: 978-605-2132-22-7 DOI: 10.21733/ibad.423417 IDENTITY OF THE BALKANS CREATED THROUGH PERSPECTIVES OF THE OTHERS (INTERSUBJECTIVITY: IDENTITIES BETWEEN SELF AND OTHERS) Slavica Srbinovska Prof., “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University Skopje, Macedonia, [email protected] Abstract The cultures of the Mediterranean countries have a long and rich tradition; therefore, the practice of image studies of the aesthetic, ethnic, and specific cultural features and the multilateral reception of the individual bodies of literature are very important for the promotion of different anthropological entities of the Balkans within the global cultural systems. Through a balanced confrontation of the various discourse practices, I will look at the text as a hierarchical structure, specific cultural form of representation with an emphatic ideological and sociological import. In addition, it will stimulate the discussion of the potential subversives of the Other, its marginality and decent ring. By encompassing the fields of Balkans literatures, mythology, religion, philosophy, history, etc., I will analyze its significance within a wider and contemporary social and cultural context of Europe. Intercultural and intertexual Dialogue (M.Bakhtin/ concept of “dialogism”) proposes to address the issue and representation of the Balkans identities within a wider body of the culture from the point of view that is created by the Western European discourse of culture. By means of the application of comparative and intertextual methods, I will point out that inter-cultural dialogue is one of the key elements of the “co-habitation”. My researches would, in the long run, stimulate the questions and the problems of identity and alterities. The importance of the encouragement of the intercultural dialogue between civilizations, cultures, religions and various bodies of literatures that exists on the Balkan, as well as the cultural development of the Balkan and Mediterranean countries imposes the need for the establishing of cultural links between different cultural backgrounds. It is undoubted that my researches would promote a better understanding of the cultural differences that these various backgrounds embody. The understanding depends, not on the reconstruction of the past, but on recognition and critique of the past actually presence in the contemporary works of the culture. That is also a problem of the Other in the discourse of nowadays. The main goal of my research will be the decentering of the categories of identity or subject by including the category of “otherness”. Also, I would like to draw attention to the manner in which the Balkans are represented in the different genres and areas of the Western European culture accepted as the central point of view. Through the application of relevant literary, theoretical, critical and cultural approaches (Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “the speech of the Other”), this study hopes to raise the awareness of the Balkans and the ways in which the image of them is created/ represented through the perspectives of the European cultures. The objectives also include the promotion of the cultural April 9-11, 2018 Istanbul, TURKEY 1 ICES-2018 1st International Congress on New Horizons in Education and Social Sciences achievements of the authors from this region who deal with the theory of subject, criticism, sociology, history, philosophy etc. Bearing in mind that inter-cultural and inter-literary projects represent an outstanding opportunity for the development of social and cultural exchange in multi-ethnic regions, I will focus on the field of contemporary literary output at the beginning of the 21st century from the aspect of the study of the image of the Balkans. The objective of my interest is essentially interdisciplinary, and the area it covers includes the ties between European national literature on the one hand, and Balkans literature and other spheres (mythology, religion, philosophy, art, etc.) on the other. In this respect, my research encompasses segments that focus on the European literary and cultural awareness; by combining the methods of the history of literature and contemporary critical theories, it also focuses on the mechanisms of their bringing together and intertwining with various cultural and scholarly paradigms. Keywords: identity, Balkans, Others, culture. 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF DIALOGUE AS PROCESS OF CREATING THE IDENTITY AND ALTERITIES By comparing the concept of the Other, according to M. Bakhtin with the concept of Differance, according to J. Derrida, we are very close to the specific analyzing of the problem of identification and its alterities. These concepts, created upon the specific point of view of the Being, include its understanding through the movement, activity and origin situated in the primordial spatiality. The concept of Differance is a middle voice; it precedes and sets up the opposition between passivity and activity. According to M. Bakhtin, polyphony imports the differentia specifica of the discourse in the novel. That plural identification of this genre advanced in a problematic of the active and passive (implicate) voices in the realities that create the specificity of a dialogue between the individuals in an active position of representing the beings. The problem of including the letter “a” instead of “e” in the word “differance” change the meaning of the word “difference”. It makes a new philosophical word key explained by J.Derrida: “With it’s a, differance more properly refers to what in classical language would be called the origin or production of differences and the differences between differences, the play of differences. Its locus and operation will therefore be seen wherever speech appeals to difference.”(Derrida, 2002, 555). On the other side, according to M. Bakhtin, the establishing of the ontology of Being usually goes through the language as an instrument of mediation and as a system of signs of representation. Acceptance of the speech as a signification and referring instrument with which we can make identification includes the temporal and spatial position of the subject. It represents the senses from his point of view and by that way, he/ she usually imports the social and ideological aspects in his/her utterances (Bahtin, 1980, 20). Our theses are that it is a simple process of identification if we insist to accept only a clear concept that understands and constructs the image of the Being with some specific qualities that usually bordered its existence, and excluded the other qualities that are also parts of the existence about we are talking about. The acceptance of this new construction of the meaning in the discourse of philosophy by including the term of the Other or of the DIFFERANCE solves the problem of integration of differences between complex elements and qualities of the Being. This problem is explained by Derrida on this way: “But the word ‘difference’,” he said,” (with an e) could never refer to differing as temporal zing or to difference as polemos. It is this loss of sense that the word differance (with a) will have to schematically compensate for. Differance can refer to the whole complex of its meanings at once, for it is immediately and irreducibly multivalent, something which will be important for the discourse I’m trying to develop.” (Ibid. 2002,557). If the explanation of the Baktin’s concepts of intersubjectivity and dialogism start with the polemic of presence and absence of meanings and with the idea of trace or chain, system in which every concept refers to the others and, they continue to point out to another concepts, than we think about the system of playing with the differences. Because of it, as Bakhtin points out, we can speak only about the possibility of conceptualizing, and not for the stabile and fixed concept of Being. (1991, 117). If we accept this kind of play of the differences, we could not speak about the summation of elements inscribed in our epoch, but about the juncture, about the functioning of the present Being on the trace of transformations and movements. Being is unacceptable as a close concept, but as an active and diverse existence, always in connection with its past and future elements (Manfred Frank, 1994, 303). That kind of understanding activates the utterances as the instruments of representation and constructing the images. However, they are never stabile and fixed. Differance is the movement through which the signification becomes possible but in a special way of making the correlations: each element that is said to be April 9-11, 2018 Istanbul, TURKEY 2 ICES-2018 1st International Congress on New Horizons in Education and Social Sciences present, appeared on the stage of presence, but always in a correlation with the other as a retained element from the past, and with its projection that belongs to the future. That is the problem of Bakhtin’s concept of space and time or “hronotop” or the problem that concerns the relations of “I” and “I”. (Bahtin, 1991, 71). Leaving the philosophy of precise concepts, we involve the dialogue as an instrument of making the trace of constant playing between the past and the future, we include in the system of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of the elements separated in the space, and differ one of another. By this kind of understanding the world, we are in a position to speak about the problem of constructing the images through the multicultural dialogue. (Bahtin, 1991, 135) The phenomenon of individuality does not express the feeling of fullness, instead of that it is the feeling of individual emptiness and strong dependence of the other. According to Bakhtin, there is no natural meaning through which the identity could be defined, only the other is the one who can utter his understanding by creating and identifying the true of the” I” and its individuality.
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