SPACE AND PLACE OF THE BALKANS: A GEOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Dr. Sanja Lazarević Radak

Abstract

The literature that explores the representations of the Balkans is based on the assumption that the Balkans were constructed, imagined or invented. This claim is usually accompanied by the attempts to highlight the discrepancy between physical and imaginary geography and to point out the gap in semantics between the Balkan Peninsula and the Balkans. While the first one functions as physical geography, the other one refers to a place populated by representations, rather than people. Following the trend of linguistic and spatial turn, they hold the binary logic that insists upon the duality of the spatial. Some of the most important studies in this field can be read and interpreted as another in a series of texts about the Balkans. Thus, the aim of this paper is to: 1. Point out the places and passages where academic discourse on the Balkans separate physical and symbolic geography; 2. Highlight the political implications of this approach; 3. Suggest a geocritical aim that provides a sort of ballance between the material geography („real“) and imaginary spaces.

References

• Bakić-Hayden, M. Hayden, Robert M. (1992) “Orientalist Variations on the Theme Balkans: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics”, Slavic Review, Vol. 51, (I): 1-15. London, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Barney W., Santa, A. (2009) “Introduction: The Reinsertation of Space in the Humanities and Social Sciencies”, In: Warf, B., Santa, A. (eds) The  Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,  London: Sage, pp. 1-17.
• Bjelić, D. (2011) Normalizing the Balkans, London, New York: Ashgate
• Campbell, C. J. (2018) “Space, place and scale: human geography and spatial history in past and present”, Past & Present, 239 (1):23–45. London: Oxford University Press
• Cvijić, Jovan. 1991.  Balkansko poluostrvo i južnoslovenske zemlje, Beograd: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti.
• Cross, F. A. (1878) Round About the Carpatians, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons.
•  Child, T. (1893) Summer Holidays, London:Harper and Brothers.
• Chen,  X., Orum, Anthony, Paulsen, K., (2013) Introduction to Cities: how place and space shape human experience, Chichester: Willey-Blackwell.
• Czarniawska, B., (2008) ,,Alterity/Identity. Interplay in image construction”, In: Barry, D., Hensen, H. (eds) The Sage Handbook of New Approaches to Organization Studies, London:Sage, pp. 49–67.
• Douglas H. (1842) Excursions in Albania: comparing a description of the wild boar, deer and woodcock shooting, London: W.H. Allen and Co. Leadenhall Street.
• Dvorniković, V. (2000) Karakterologija Jugoslovena, Beograd: Prosveta.
• Doreen M. (1994)  Space, Place and Gender, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Dix H. (2015) “On Balkanism and Orientalism: undifferentiated patterns of perception in literary and critical representations of Eastern Europe”, Textual Practice, Vol. 29 (5):973-991.
• De Vindt, H. (1907) Through Savage Europe, London: T.F. Unvin.
• Edwards, R,  Usher, R. (2008) Globalisation and Pedagogy: space, place and identity, London and New York: Routledge.
• Forester, T. (1857) Danube and the Black Sea, London: Edward Stanford Charing Cross.
• Goldsvorti, V. (2005) Izmišljanje Ruritanije, Beograd: Geopoetika.
• Goldsworthy, V. (1999)  “The last Stop on the Orient Express : The Balkans and the Politics of British In(ter)vention”, Europe du Sud-Est : histoire, concepts, frontiers, Balkanologie, Revue d’etudes pluridisciplinaires, 3 (2): 142-158.
• Graan,  A. (2009)“Book Review of Europe and Its Others: Notes on the Balkans”, Anthropological Notebooks. 25(2): 85-87.
• Hodges, A. (2017) Cosmologies in Transition: Science and Politics of Academia after Yugoslavia, Podgorica: Aquamarine Press
• Jezernik, B. (2007) Divlja Evropa, Beograd: XX vek.
• Kinglake, A. (1848) Eothen or Traces of Travel from the East, New York: Goerge P. Putnam.
• Kulavkova, K. (2009) Civilizacijska oska, In: Balkanska slika na svetot, Kata Kulavkova,  (ur.) Skopje: Manu, str. 9-12.
• Lazarević Radak. (2014) Nevidljivi Balkan: prilog istoriji postmodernih geografija, Pančevo:Mali Nemo.
• Lazarević Radak, S. (2013) Otkrivanje Balkana, Pančevo:Mali Nemo.
• Lazarević Radak, S. (2016) Film i društveni kontekst: o srpskom i jugoslovenskom filmu, Pančevo:Mali Nemo.
• Lazarević Radak, S. (2011)“Orientalization of Serbia in the Period of Crisis”, Cultural Changes in Central an South East Europe after 1989, Der Donauraum, 3/4 (I): 255-269.
• Lefebvre, H. (1994) The Production of Space, Cambridge: Blackwell.
• Low, S. (2017) Spatializing Culture: the ethnography of space and place,London, New York: Routledge
• Marić, J (1998) Kakvi smo mi Srbi? Beograd:Grafos.
• Mishkova, D. (2018) Beyond Balkanism. The Scholarly Politics of Region Making, New York and London: Routledge.
• Pageaux, H. D. (2009)  “Od kulturnog imaginarija do imaginarnog”, U: Kako vidimo strane zemlje , (ur.) Davor Dukić, Zrinka Blažević, Lahorka Plejić Poje, Ivana Brković, Zagreb: Srednja Europa, str 172-188.
• Pjanović-Luković, O. (1994)  Srbi narod najstariji, Beograd.
• Rajs, A. (2008)  Čujte Srbi, čuvajte se sebe, Beograd:Grafid
• Rohkramer, T., Schulz, R. (2009)  “Space, Place and Identities”, History Compas 7 (5): 1338-1349. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Robert T. (1999) “The World, the In the Geocritic” In: Tally, R. (ed) The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said: spatiality, critical humanism and comparative literature, (ed)  Tally, R.,New York, London: Macmillan, 1-16.
• Said, E. (2009) Orijentalizam, Beograd: XX vek.
• Svilar, P. (2011) Medijska konstrukcija Zapadnog Balkana, Novi Sad:Mediterran Publishing
• Soja,  E. (1999) “Thirdspace: Expanding the scope of the geographical imagination”, In: Human Geography Today, Massey, D., Allen J., Sarre, P. (eds) University of Michigan Press, pp. 260-278.
• Schmidt, B. (2015) Geography, Globalism and Europe’s Modern World, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Sen, A., Silverman, L. (2014) “Embodied Placemaking: An important Category of Critical Analysis”, In Making Place,  Sen, A., Silverman, L., (eds) Bloomington and Inidanapoliss: Undiana University Press, pp. 1-18.
• Tally R. T. (2015) “Introduction: The world, the text, and the geocritic”, In: The Geocritical Legacies of Edward Said: spatiality, critical humanism and comparative literature, Tally, R (ed) Jr., 1-16. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Tally Robert. T. Jr. (2011) ,,On Geocriticism”, In:  Geocritical Explorations: space, place and mapping in literary and cultural studies, Tally, Robert (ed) Palgrave, Macmillan, pp. 1-12.
• Tuan, Y. F. (2011) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, London, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• Todorova, M. (1999) Imaginarni Balkan, Beograd: XX vek
• Tcherson, P. (1855) A Trip to Turkey and Travellers Guide to the Turkish Capital, London: Houlston and Stoneman
• Unwin, T. (2000) ,,A Waste of Space? Towards a Critique of the Social Production of Space”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, The Royal Geographical Insitute with the Institute of British Geographers, London, 25 (I): 11-29.
• Urry, J, Tuan Y. F. (2011) ,,Biographical Details and Bibliographical Content”, In: Key Thinkers on Space and Place, Phil Hubbard, Rob Kichin, ed. London: Sage, pp. 426-431.
• Vukasović, D. (2020) Constructing a (EU)ropean Identity. The Balkans and the Western Balkans as the Other, Beograd: Institut za političke studije.
• Westphal B. (2011) “Foreword”, In: Geocritical Explorations: space, place and mapping in literary and cultural studies, Tally R. (ed) Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-17.
• Westphal,  B. (2007) Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces, New York: Palgrave, Macmillan
• Wolf, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford University Press
• Žižek, S. (1991) For They Know not What They Do; Enjoyment as a Political Factor, London, New York: Verso.