Balkan is beautiful: Balkanism in the political discourse of tucrossed d signman's Croatia

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 628-650

  Razsa, Maple ^b   Lindstrom, Nicole ^a  

^a CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Balkan; Balkanism; Croatia; Franjo Tucrossed d signman

Indexed keywords

EID: 8844270215     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404266939     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1993), 20.
2. Croatia's GDP per capita, in $U.S. at PPP, in 2001 was 9,760 (40 percent of the EU average), compared to 6,290 in Romania (25 percent of EU average) and 6,840 in Bulgaria (27 percent of EU average). Romania and Bulgaria signed accession partnerships with the European Union. World Bank Development Indicators 2000 to 2002, cited in Blue Bird Agenda for Civil Society in Southeast Europe, in Search of Responsive Government: State Building and Economic Growth in the Balkans (Budapest, Hungary: Center for Policy Studies, Central European University, 2003), 14.
3. Croatia signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union in October 2001. The European Union's relations with South East Europe is outlined at http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/see/.
4. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (London: Oxford University Press, 1997), 88.
5. Milica Bakić-Hayden and Robert Hayden, "Orientalist Variations on the Theme 'Balkans': Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics," Slavic Review 51 (Spring 1992): 1-10.
6. See Susan Gal, "Bartók's Funeral: 1991 Representations of Europe in Hungarian Political Rhetoric," American Ethnologist 18:3(1991): 440-58. Gal suggests the rhetorical slogan "return to Europe" implies such a duality, for one must return to a place where one currently does not belong.
7. Other works in this tradition include Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić, Balkan as Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); K. E. Fleming, "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography," American Historical Review 105:4(2000): 1218-33; Patrick Hyder Patterson, "On the Edge of Reason: The Boundaries of Balkanism in Slovenian, Austrian, and Italian Discourse," Slavic Review 62:1(Spring 2003): 110-41; Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
8. Other works in this tradition include Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić, Balkan as Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); K. E. Fleming, "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography," American Historical Review 105:4(2000): 1218-33; Patrick Hyder Patterson, "On the Edge of Reason: The Boundaries of Balkanism in Slovenian, Austrian, and Italian Discourse," Slavic Review 62:1(Spring 2003): 110-41; Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
9. Other works in this tradition include Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić, Balkan as Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); K. E. Fleming, "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography," American Historical Review 105:4(2000): 1218-33; Patrick Hyder Patterson, "On the Edge of Reason: The Boundaries of Balkanism in Slovenian, Austrian, and Italian Discourse," Slavic Review 62:1(Spring 2003): 110-41; Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
10. Other works in this tradition include Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić, Balkan as Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); K. E. Fleming, "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography," American Historical Review 105:4(2000): 1218-33; Patrick Hyder Patterson, "On the Edge of Reason: The Boundaries of Balkanism in Slovenian, Austrian, and Italian Discourse," Slavic Review 62:1(Spring 2003): 110-41; Vesna Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
11. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 7.
12. Maria Todorova, "The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention," Slavic Review 53 (Summer 1994): 453.
13. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 3.
14. Todorova, "The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention," 455.
15. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 17.
16. Bakić-Hayden and Hayden, "Orientalist Variations," 8. Milica Bakić-Hayden, "Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of the Former Yugoslavia," Slavic Review 54 (Winter 1995): 920.
17. Bakić-Hayden and Hayden, "Orientalist Variations," 8. Milica Bakić-Hayden, "Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of the Former Yugoslavia," Slavic Review 54 (Winter 1995): 920.
18. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 18; Todorova, "The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention," 482.
19. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 18; Todorova, "The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention," 482.
20. Alojz Šešik, ed., Warikatura Croatica (Zagreb, Croatia: Hrvatska tiskara, 1992), 122.
21. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 39.
22. Bridget Bereton argues that in a poly-ethnic hierarchy, the less powerful group undercommunicates its distinctiveness in relation to the more powerful group, while the more powerful group tends to overcommunicate its difference. One could argue a similar dynamic has occurred in southeastern Europe, where Croatians undercommunicate their difference vis-à-vis more powerful Europe but overcommunicate their differences vis-à-vis the less powerful Serbian (or Bosnian Muslims or Roma). Bridget Bereton, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 32.
23. The cover of a 2000 Croatian tourist brochure declares Zagreb "The New European Metropolis."
24. The Croatian weekly Feral Tribune declared, for example, that Herzegovinian Croats were the "new Serbs." Toni Gabrić, "Hercegovci su na?i novi srbi" [Herzegovinians Are Our New Serbs], Feral Tribune, 24 August 1997. The nationalist Hrvatski Obzor acknowledged that the West now identified Croatia with its less developed counterparts in Bosnia. Its 1999 cover, with white socks hanging from a clothesline (white socks symbolizing gauche, and decidedly non-European, fashion), declared, "Svi smo mi Hercegovci" [We are all Herzegovinians now]. Hrvatski Obzor, 21 September 1999.
25. Boris Buden, "Ne, ne volim hrvatsku!" [No, I Don't Love Croatia!], Arkzin, 6 June 1997.
26. Bastard Intellectual Cooperative, "Na grobu živa predsjednika," http://www.arkzin.com/5/pusic.html.
27. Zvonko Maković, Feral Tribune, 13 January 1997.
28. Both the EU and the United States insisted that membership in the Southeast European Cooperation Initiative (SECI) would be voluntary. Ivo Banac, professor of history at Yale University and frequent commentator on Croatian politics, stated in an interview for a Croatian weekly, "I really don't see anyone in the West who would force the renewal of Yugoslavia or the creation of some sort of Balkan confederation. That is completely unrealistic." Feral Tribune, 13 January 1997.
29. "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 20 January 1997, www.urpr.hr. Tucrossed d signman reiterated his opposition to the agreement again in his 1999 address: "It should be noted that certain, influential European and American circles insist on a program of regional Balkan integration. That would actually mean the revival of the former Yugoslavia without Slovenia and with Albania, and that goal should be opposed at all costs and by using all available means." "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Dr. Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 21 January 1999, www.urpr.hr/ad012099.htm. On 8 March 1999, the Croatian National Parliament passed a declaration objecting to the European Union's "regional approach" and rejecting "all attempts for Croatia to be included in some sort of regional integration of south-eastern Europe and the Balkans." Croatian Foreign Press Bureau's Daily Bulletin 36/99, 8 March 1999.
30. "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 20 January 1997, www.urpr.hr. Tucrossed d signman reiterated his opposition to the agreement again in his 1999 address: "It should be noted that certain, influential European and American circles insist on a program of regional Balkan integration. That would actually mean the revival of the former Yugoslavia without Slovenia and with Albania, and that goal should be opposed at all costs and by using all available means." "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Dr. Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 21 January 1999, www.urpr.hr/ad012099.htm. On 8 March 1999, the Croatian National Parliament passed a declaration objecting to the European Union's "regional approach" and rejecting "all attempts for Croatia to be included in some sort of regional integration of south-eastern Europe and the Balkans." Croatian Foreign Press Bureau's Daily Bulletin 36/99, 8 March 1999.
31. "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 20 January 1997, www.urpr.hr. Tucrossed d signman reiterated his opposition to the agreement again in his 1999 address: "It should be noted that certain, influential European and American circles insist on a program of regional Balkan integration. That would actually mean the revival of the former Yugoslavia without Slovenia and with Albania, and that goal should be opposed at all costs and by using all available means." "Address of the President of the Republic of Croatia Dr. Franjo Tucrossed d signman on the State of the Nation at the Joint Session of Both Chambers of the Croatian National Parliament," 21 January 1999, www.urpr.hr/ad012099.htm. On 8 March 1999, the Croatian National Parliament passed a declaration objecting to the European Union's "regional approach" and rejecting "all attempts for Croatia to be included in some sort of regional integration of south-eastern Europe and the Balkans." Croatian Foreign Press Bureau's Daily Bulletin 36/99, 8 March 1999.
32. The West's gravest mistake, according to a column in Vjesnik, the largest state-run daily newspaper, is its failure to recognize that Croatians have a "deep consciousness of their belonging to Western civilization" and a commitment to modernization in contrast to Serbia with "its links to fanatical nationalism, its support for preserving the old socialist system, and its inability to enter the information revolution." Marinko Bobanović, "Duboka je svijest o pripadnosti zapadu" [Consciousness of Western Belonging Runs Deep], Vjesnik, 12 June 1995.
33. Datibor Foretić, in the independent daily Novi List, captures this dynamic: "The world would like to push us into some kind of Balkan hole but we will not allow them. We want to be everything-Central European, Mediterranean, Transcarpathian-and not just a Balkan country. The West is constantly inventing some kind of initiative to push us where we do not belong. But we will not let them! Our leaders persistently and bravely shout that Croatia will not enter some new Balkan integration," 6 October 1996, quoted in Dunja Rihtman-Auguśtin, "Zašto I otkad se grozimo balkana?" [Why, and since When, Are We So Afraid of the Balkans?], Erasmus 12:4(1996, 45).
34. Novi List, 6 June 1997.
35. Buden, "Mission Impossible," 9. Palanka is a term coined by the Serbian philosopher Radomir Konstantinović, which is related to the English term "provincialism" but carries only its negative connotations of prejudice, close-mindedness, and cultural isolation.
36. Referring to the recent display of Serbian civil disobedience, Buden writes that "until such demonstrations and things like it happen in our city, Zagreb will not be symbol of freedom, democracy, Western culture and European civil identity, but will remain a small, shitty, beat-up, Balkan 'Palanka'." "A tko to Zagreb šini palankom?" Arkzin, 14 January 1997.
37. Buden, "A tko to Zagreb šini palankom?" 24.
38. Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 11.
39. Martina Stažnik, "Kontrapunkt balkanu je europa, a ne Tucrossed d signman" [The Alternative to the Balkans Is Europe, Not Tucrossed d signman], Studentski List, 24 February 1997.
40. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 139.
41. Notable examples include Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (New York: Vintage Books, 1993);
42. George Kennan, "Introduction: The Balkan Crises: 1913 and 1993, " in The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect with a New Introduction and Reflections on the Present Conflict by George F. Kennan (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993).
43. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 29.
44. Slavoi Žižek, The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verse, 1994), 13.
45. Examples of research on this relationship include Petr Drulák, ed., National and European Identities in EU Enlargement: Views from Central and Eastern Europe (Prague, Czech Republic: Institute of International Relations, 2001); Lene Hansen, "Slovenian Identity: State Building on the Balkan Border," Alternatives 2:4(1996): 473-95; Merje Kuus, "European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security," Journal of Peace Research 39 (2002): 91-108; Mikko Lagerspetz, "Postsocialism as a Return: Notes on a Discursive Strategy," East European Politics and Societies 15 (1999): 377-390.
46. Examples of research on this relationship include Petr Drulák, ed., National and European Identities in EU Enlargement: Views from Central and Eastern Europe (Prague, Czech Republic: Institute of International Relations, 2001); Lene Hansen, "Slovenian Identity: State Building on the Balkan Border," Alternatives 2:4(1996): 473-95; Merje Kuus, "European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security," Journal of Peace Research 39 (2002): 91-108; Mikko Lagerspetz, "Postsocialism as a Return: Notes on a Discursive Strategy," East European Politics and Societies 15 (1999): 377-390.
47. Examples of research on this relationship include Petr Drulák, ed., National and European Identities in EU Enlargement: Views from Central and Eastern Europe (Prague, Czech Republic: Institute of International Relations, 2001); Lene Hansen, "Slovenian Identity: State Building on the Balkan Border," Alternatives 2:4(1996): 473-95; Merje Kuus, "European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security," Journal of Peace Research 39 (2002): 91-108; Mikko Lagerspetz, "Postsocialism as a Return: Notes on a Discursive Strategy," East European Politics and Societies 15 (1999): 377-390.
48. Examples of research on this relationship include Petr Drulák, ed., National and European Identities in EU Enlargement: Views from Central and Eastern Europe (Prague, Czech Republic: Institute of International Relations, 2001); Lene Hansen, "Slovenian Identity: State Building on the Balkan Border," Alternatives 2:4(1996): 473-95; Merje Kuus, "European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security," Journal of Peace Research 39 (2002): 91-108; Mikko Lagerspetz, "Postsocialism as a Return: Notes on a Discursive Strategy," East European Politics and Societies 15 (1999): 377-390.
49. Slavoj Žižek, The Spectre Is Still Roaming (Zagreb, Croatia: Arkzin, 1999)
50. Eugen Kvaternik, Istoćno pitanje i brvati, (Zagreb, Croatia: Dom i svijet, 1999 [1868]), 3.
51. crossed D signurcrossed d signa Knežević, The Enemy Side of National Ideologies: Croatia at the End of the 19th Century and in the First Half of the 20th Century, History Department Working Paper Series II (Budapest, Hungary: Central European University, 1995), 107.
52. Stephen Slemon, "Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second World," World Literature Written in English 30 (1990): 30.
53. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 59.
54. Sherry Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in Social History 26:1(1984):126-66, quoted in Mattijs van de Port, Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), 93.
55. Sherry Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in Social History 26:1(1984):126-66, quoted in Mattijs van de Port, Gypsies, Wars and Other Instances of the Wild: Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998), 93.
56. David Theo Goldberg writes of race, but which could be true of the Balkans, "although race as tended historically to define conditions of oppression, it could, under a culturalist interpretation-and under some conditions perhaps-be the site of a counterassault, a ground or field for launching liberatory projects or from which to expand freedom(s) and open up emancipatory spaces." David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philoxophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 211.