Preface PREFACE Kata KULAVKOVA (Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts) An Arabesque for the Black Arab, Bolen Dojcin and White Angelina Our research into the subject of The Black Arab as a (Balkan, Mediterranean) Figure of Memory, conducted within the framework of the European project Interpretations managed by the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, was aimed at initiating a new mode of thinking and perception of Slavic and non-Slavic Balkan cultures. This mode of thinking might not be completely new in the general sense of the word, but it is new within the framework of the contemporary Balkan social constellation. For this constellation has long been char- acterised by mutual negations; animosities; exclusive interpretations of the past; immoderate appropriations of the spiritual legacy of neigh- bouring cultures; denials of the right of others to partake in a shared cultural and historical heritage; indicative explications of ethnic cultural identity through the application of historical paradigms; a fi xation on history; adoration of ancient ‘scripts’ of culture; the politicization of our shared spiritual heritage; revision and negation of identities; cultural xeno-skepsis; and the increased prevalence of ethnic or bi-ethnic prin- ciples in the constitution and functioning of states. Our mode of thinking starts from the belief that, at the beginning of the 21st century, in an atmosphere of global crisis and threatened prosperity, the peoples of the Balkans are in need of a scientifi cally based, multi-focal interpretative methodology which will observe his- tory as an intersection of autochthonous and shared constituents. The contemporary hermeneutics of history should be founded upon a com- parative and inclusive epistemological model. To a great extent, the xi Black Arab as a Figure of Memory Preface cultural heritage of various peoples and states is understood in this model as a shared spiritual legacy. This shared legacy is imprinted in the memory of plural ethnicities (it is of a dual, or, more commonly, mul- tiple affi liation) and cannot be the exclusive right of only one culture, nor an exclusively ethnic category. Cultural heritage exceeds ethnic differentiations; our spiritual legacy is a matrix that includes Balkan, Mediterranean, European and universal aspects. Some fi gures of memory are socio-cultural actualizations of ancient universal patterns (archetypes) or substitutes for some older fi gures of remembering. Our spiritual legacy, strongly characterised by collective interests, is not the exclusive possession of any single nation; it belongs to contemporary nations and cultures to the extent to which it has been preserved in their collective memories. Through its multiple affi liation, this legacy delineates the space of the shared contemporary culture and the gen- eral cultural substrate of all Balkan peoples—and not only of theirs but also as a cultural treasure of all humanity. The practice of policies exercising a non-exclusive (shared) right to the communication, commemoration, identifi cation and celebration of existing historical facts is a legitimate priority in the resolution of disputed issues in the Balkans. This new mode of perception of the past will operate as a guarantee of an unbiased and non-confl ictual perception of contemporary reality, which is a prerequisite for the pain- less integration of Balkan states within the European Union. Such an unbiased attitude towards historical reality will resolve, on a scientifi c basis, the misunderstandings and the confl icts continually generated in the more recent history of Balkan states. It will serve as a response to arbitrary appropriations and mythicizations of our spiritual legacy. It is the role of humanistic, societal and culturological discourses to offer an interpretative key which will serve to permanently thwart the factors that generate zones of irresolvable interpretative confl ict, xenophobic anxiety and widen the gap between dominant and minority cultures, integrated and non-integrated states. The project The Black Arab as a (Balkan, Mediterranean) Figure of Memory aims primarily: (1) to be a symbolic forewarning highlighting resistant confl ict zones in the Balkans which are supported by a cer- tain appropriative consciousness through markedly invasive cultural politics; (2) to provide an additional method of argumentation in the in- terpretation of cultural-historic artefacts and ethnic-identity dominants; and, fi nally, (3) to announce the transcending of ethnocentric and eth- nophobic interpretative strategies. By doing so, it will create a gener- Black Arab xii as a Figure of Memory Preface ally acceptable, systemic prerequisite for the revision of ethnologic and exclusivist interpretations of the present/future through the past and will rebuild spiritual bridges between the peoples of the Balkans. Our project starts from the belief that, even at the beginning of the 21st century, strategies of interpretation of the mythical, folkloric and historical cultural heritage which obstruct communication between peoples are still practiced within Balkan states. These interpretative models have become institutionalized models in the course of the last two centuries; as such, they cannot be treated as accidental and tran- sient collective misconceptions, but as the outcome of conceptualized and instrumentalized cultural policies with implications for relations be- tween states. A diabolic vicious circle of mutual negations, appropria- tions and manipulations of our spiritual legacy has been generated and history has been interpreted from the angle of current (political and in- stitutional) interests, whereby ethnocentric historical truths have been constructed which frequently ‘divorce’ history from truth. With regards to this appropriative ethnoculturalism in the Balkans, a series of questions have been raised whose interest is focused on the possessive perspective in the interpretation of cultural history. Unfortunately, they have been left with no relevant scientifi c response. We will cite only some of them: Why is it necessary to negate the right of the other/neighbour to recognize themselves as part of the Balkan cultural-historical heritage and to communicate it in their own specifi c way? Why is it necessary to erase (both from collective awareness and science) the fact that the peoples of the Balkans were, from Antiquity to the 19th century, integrated within shared empires and that, con- sequently, they share the same right to the memories of certain no- table cultural-historical facts? Is historiocentrism the only legitimate approach to reality and the sole argument in favour of national con- structs? Is ethnocentric historicism, as a variant of ethnophobic his- toricism, the only perspective from which to observe Balkan history? Has it been forgotten that there exist historical distances and historical differences (interpretative distances and interpretative differences)? Is an objective evaluation of the greatness of an ancient cultural sys- tem possible through the exclusive employment of the parameters of a completely different system (that of the contemporary nation-state)? Is there nothing which can be identifi ed as a Balkan spiritual heritage which does not recognize rigid ethnic divisions? If there exists a shared spiritual heritage, why should that not become the subject of detailed multidisciplinary and comparative research? Why should there not be xiii Black Arab as a Figure of Memory Preface a comparative hermeneutics of Balkan cultural history? Is it not true that science is immanently and morally obliged to participate in the explication of the shared pragma and fi gures of memory of the Balkan peoples, thus becoming a certain kind of corrective to radicalized and slanted interpretations of our cultural heritage? Offering a scientifi cally-based methodological pattern for the inter- pretation of cultural history and spiritual heritage, the project The Black Arab as a Figure of Memory can be perceived as a response to open questions concerning appropriative Balkan historiographies and as an attempt to restitute a positive stereotype of the Balkans. The actualiza- tion of a stereotype of the Balkans as a centre of civilization can func- tion as a reference for substantiated interpretation of shared events, places and fi gures of memory (mythical and historical). In this manner, those zones which amount to a hypersensitive Balkan Achilles’ heel could be transformed—for the very reason that they are an inherited locus communi of Balkan cultures—into a substrate of a trans-ethnic strategy of interpretation of cultural histories at local, European and international level. It cannot be denied that these motives for initiating a scientifi c research project also involve certain social-cultural implications. Nevertheless, cultural hermeneutics is immanently interdisciplinary and inter-discursive. For this reason, the Interpretations project is fo- cused on an area of interest which goes beyond the limits of literary hermeneutics. This is the area of shared mythical, folkloric and his- torical fi gures of memory, fi gures/constructs which exist in the cultural memory of the Balkan peoples and which have their analogues among Mediterranean peoples, among Slavic peoples, and other cultures of the contemporary world. At the very onset of this project, one issue im- posed itself as a priority: that of the three enigmatic fi gures of the Black Arab, Bolen Dojčin and Lepa Angelina as a tripartite structure of fi gures of memory which