Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans.Pdf

Preface Imagining the Balkans This page intentionally left blank Imagining the Balkans Updated Edition Maria Todorova 1 2009 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With Offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Todorova, Maria Nikolaeva. Imagining the Balkans / Maria Todorova.—updated ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0-19-538786-5 1. Balkan Peninsula—Historiography. I. title. DR34.T63 1997 96-7161 949.6—dc20 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my parents, from whom I learned to love the Balkans without the need to be proud or ashamed of them. This page intentionally left blank Preface The hope of an intellectual is not that he will have an effect on the world, but that someday, somewhere, someone will read what he wrote exactly as he wrote it. Theodor Adorno his book, more than any other project I have worked on, has been with me for- T ever. Therefore, it is difficult to arrange in any meaningful way (chronologically or by importance) all the different individuals, works, and events that have shaped my thinking on the subject. Since, in the course of this work, I have, of necessity, repeat- edly trespassed into fields where I have little or no expertise, I might fail to acknowledge important influences. This is by no means the result of intellectual arrogance but is chiefly the result of the wild and often unsystematic forays into unknown terri- tory that have, however, always been informed with curiosity and deference for the achievements of others. The ambitiousness of what I am trying to address in this book is apparent. It pre- supposes an immensely elaborate secondary literature as well as the fullest possible primary source coverage. In its ideal form, this should be the undertaking of an inter- disciplinary team of scholars and the result of long periods of discussion. That this is impossible for the practical purposes of the present project is quite clear. I am com- pelled to begin with one of a great number of proleptic remarks with which this work is fated to abound, namely that I am clearly and painfully conscious of being unable to produce what, to me, has for a long time been the ideal scholarly work, a complex tapestry of captivating and meaningful design executed with full and rich embroi- dery in all details. Of necessity, I will have to resort to patches, cursory compositions, and eclectic style. I see my principal task as construing an acceptable framework and suggesting possible lines of debate. Even if it merely triggers argument, this book will have fulfilled its purpose: I am convinced that the problem merits a whole genre of works on “balkanism.” It is part of the comme il faut manner of many American academic books to begin with theory, to situate themselves consciously at the outset of their work so as to addi- tionally frustrate their readers’ efforts: not only will they have to cope with the flow of the author’s narrative or argument, but they are also bound to be (at least unconsciously) vigilant as to how much the professed theoretical context is genuinely internalized, viii Preface how much is simply an indication of intellectual sympathies and political loyalties, how much is just lip service, the citation syndrome. Mercifully, readers follow their own strategies. Some skip the theory claims entirely and look for what they consider to be the sound substance; others, quite in reverse, read only the theory and treat the rest as trifling empirical illustration. Only a handful of dedicated and intrepid profes- sional readers approach the work as is in its professed or manifest intertextuality. I am only partly conforming to this style tongue in cheek (I am not quite sure whether the stress should be on conform or on tongue in cheek). This is not because I am not serious about theory: on the contrary, I hold it in enormous respect. However, to do an exhaustive and honest self-analysis of one’s eclectic “Hotel Kwilu,” to borrow Mary Douglas’s metaphor for grand theory, requires a tortuous and possibly futile investigation. I will confine myself here to simply acknowledging my debt to many theorists from whom I have absorbed and applied a number of useful notions, or who have given me solace with their clear articulation and masterful treatment of many hazy doubts that have befallen me. I hope that how I have used them or how they have discreetly influenced my own argument does them much more credit than reiterating their main points, especially insofar as I neither wish to have followed, nor claim to have mastered, their thought in toto: Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Ander- son, Tom Nairn, and the whole rich exchange of ideas around nationalism, moder- nity, and “the invention of tradition”; the work on the phenomenology of otherness and stereotyping; Erving Goffman on stigma and the wide and fruitful discussion his work triggered among his followers; Mary Douglas on everything from culture through objectivity, skepticism, and wager to libel and especially liminality; the growing literature on marginality; the whole postcolonialist endeavor, with all my due admira- tion for it but mostly for forcing me to articulate more intelligibly to myself my main points of skepticism and disagreement with the help of Arif Dirlik and Aijaz Ahmad; Fredric Jameson about his overall orientation in what he calls the “era of multina- tional capital” and “the global American culture of postmodernism”; the latest literature on empire and imperialism from Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt to Wolfgang J. Mommsen; Pierre Bourdieu on describing, prescribing, representation in general, and particularly the political power of “naming”; the new writings on tax- onomy (categories, naming, labeling, similarity, projection); notions like “discourse” and “knowledge as power,” which by now have become so powerfully entrenched that it would be superfluous to invoke the larger framework of Michel Foucault; and, above all, David Lodge whose Changing Places, Small World, and especially Nice Work have been the best introduction to the world of critical theory, semiotics, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, aporia, and the perpetual sliding of the signified under the signifier. Because I am situating myself within the rich and growing genre of “the invention of tradition” and because of the obvious analogies between my endeavor and “orientalism,” early on in my work I was advised to avoid direct intellectual alignment with Edward Said so as not to carry the baggage of the increasing criticism against his ideas. Not least because of an inborn anarchist streak, I wish at this point to acknowledge my intellectual indebtedness to Said. I would certainly not declare that his has been the single most stimulating or most fruitful influence but it has been undeniably important. I think I have distanced myself enough and have shown the basic distinc- Preface ix tions (but also correspondences) in the treatment of my own concept of “balkanism” from Said’s “orientalism.” It would be, however, a sublime intellectual dishonesty not to acknowledge the stimulating and, indeed, inspirational force of Said’s thought or emotion. His impassioned critique has produced followers as well as challengers, which in the end is supposed to be the effect of any genuine intellectual effort. There has ap- peared, in the past few years, a whole body of important studies on the region informed by the same or similar concerns as my own. Some of these studies have been written by friends, and I have profited from the fruitful dialogue with them; others are the work of colleagues I have not met but whose scholarship I admire. I have duly recognized their influence in the text. It goes without saying that, in the end, I am solely responsible for all the errors of commission and omission. To acknowledge means also to confess. My motives in writing this book have been complex and diverse but, first and foremost, this is not supposed to be a moral- ity tale, simply exposing Western bias in a framework either of imperialism or orientalism (although something could be said in favor of each perspective). By reacting against a stereotype produced in the West, I do not wish to create a counterstereotype of the West, to commit the fallacy of “occidentalism.” First, I do not believe in a homogeneous West, and there are substantial differences within and between the different “western” discussions of the Balkans. Second, I am convinced that a major part of Western scholarship has made significant, even crucial contributions to Balkan studies. Biases and preconceived ideas, even among those who attempt to shed them, are almost unavoidable, and this applies to outsiders as well as to insiders. Indeed, the outsider’s view is not necessarily inferior to the insider’s, and the insider is not anointed with truth because of existential intimacy with the object of study.

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