"Balkan Is Beautiful"

As a naïve American, I thought that the Balkans were simply a region of Europe. Six months in Croatia has driven home the point that the difference between the Balkans and Europe is not a geographical one in the simple sense of the word.

The award for the most blatant recent (mis)use of the discursive pair Balkan /Europe would have to go, of course, to Tudjman with the campaign slogan "Tudjman, not the Balkan." This slogan keys into what has now become al most a state-run media ritual. It is nearly impossible to turn on the television or radio, or to open a newspaper without learning of the immanent danger of a new Yugoslavia, the sinister SECI (Southeast European Cooperation Initiative).¹ Tudjman is always quoted as sternly resisting this seemingly global conspiracy. His rhetoric of immanent danger, of a world conspiracy to force Croatia back onto the Balkan, as well as the accompanying notion of external and internal enemies is quite transparent. A recent cover of Hrvatski Obzor ² was illustrative- the cover was dominated by a closeup of a Yugo and the main headline read "Will We Drive Yugos ³ Again?" in reference to SECI. In the upper right hand corner was a picture of Tudjman, its caption made the conclusion for us, "Croatia still needs Tudjman" There is still danger, still a crisis, Croatia still needs an authoritarian leader.

But Tudjman's overblown threat of SECI does not rely only on the very under standable Croatian fear of renewed association with its eastern neighbors, and especially Serbia. When the state-run press mention Balkan integration it is always quickly followed by assertions that Croatia culturally does no belong with this group. Buden points this out very clearly when he criticizes Tudjman on precisely this point, quoting Tudjman :

"By its geopolitical position, by all of its fourteen century history, by its civilization and culture, Croatia belongs to the Central European and Mediterranean Circle of Europe"

The elections are defi nitely near.

But, at first, I wasn't sure what was so disturbing about Tudjman's rhetoric against SECI. No, why do you ask, it wasn't the anti-American element. Well, actually, it was. What was so disturbing was that I agreed in part with Tudjman. His anti-imperial cries to not let Croatia be pushed pushed around by the West struck a chord of sympathy in me for smaller, less-powerful states in the new world order. However, I was dismayed to see a discourse of anti-colo nialism, (one which will probably be increasingly important for defending Croatia's interests in the face of a staggering power differential with its West ern neighbors) stolen and maimed by Tudjman. In this sense there is a paradox not unlike that which Bastard ⁴ pointed out in the last issue regarding lan guage: "in the name of the autonomy of the Croatia Language total state con trol is demanded over it"⁵

Tudjman is certainly not appealing to domestic nationalism to defend local particularism from global market forces and the World Bank, but rather to merely centralize his own local authority. Media such as Bumerang, Feral, Homo Volans, Studentski List , voices fundamentally opposed to Tudjman, allow him to dictate their approach, they frequently resist Tudjman with a Europhile approach. And among many Croats, despite their insistence on their European identity, this Europhile approach is discredited and rings false because their experience of Europe during the last five years teaches quite clearly that everything is not well within Europe.

Meanwhile, Vlado Gotovac ⁶ struggles with a Balkan demon of his own, but with obviously very different political goals. He accuses:

"the behavior of the government leads towards the total balkanization of Croatia, this ideological program stirs up violence against institutions, parties and individuals."

He argues that Tudjman's authoritarian regime, with its violations of human rights, its rhetoric of internal enemies, its nepotism and its increasing international isolation, not the "West", are what are "pushing Croatia onto the Balkan."

But back to Boris Buden.⁷ Buden also frequently mentions the opposition Balkan/Europe. But surely his use of such terminology could not be related in anyway to these earlier examples, right?

In issue 83 of arkzin Buden proclaims that Zagreb is a "Balkan Palanka." ⁸ You'd certainly never catch Tudjman or Gotovac calling Zagreb Balkan, (let alone using the terminology of Serbian philosopher). But what is Buden trying to do with this critique, saying, of all things, that Belgrade is more European than Zagreb? He is not arguing that Zagreb is actually more primitive, he con cedes that there is a "possible objection, that not everyone in Zagreb is a primitive Balkan and that there are absolutely and relatively far more of that kind in Belgrade..."

He shocks, and with this shock effect, he tries to incite more dra matic action, tries to spark more creative resistance to the Tudjman regime because, he states, referring to the creativity of recent Serbian resistance to Milosevic,

"And while that and things like it don't happen in our city, so that it is symbol of freedom, democracy, Western culture and European civil identity, Zagreb will be a small, shitty, beat-up, Balkan Palanka."

But what is the element that is so shocking? It is precisely shocking to think of a comparison to Belgrade, let alone a negative one. It is shocking to think of Zagreb as Balkan. So Buden shares the underlying orientation that that which is "Balkan" is associated with all that is dark and, conversely, "Europe" with all that is light. Even those who offer pointed, creative critiques cannot escape this framework for discussing Croatian identity as it is delimited by the domi nant discourse.

All three of these examples, Tudjman, Gotovac and Buden mobilize sentiments of national pride for antithetical political goals. Their underlying argu ment is that as proud Croatians they should not permit their country to slip into association with the Balkans. All three of these examples use the important touchstone of Croatian identity that Croatia is, or at least ought to be, European and not Balkan, Western and not Eastern. We see once again that nation alism can be used for extremely disparate political goals, from Hitler's European project to Franz Fanon 's "third world" liberation.

There are obvious reasons why Croatia should be sensitive to its classification as Eastern or Western. Croatia has fallen on both sides of the important histori cal divides of East and West, divided Christianity, Europe and the Balkans, the communist and the "free" world. Even Yugoslavia itself belonged to an ambigu ous world where it was East to the West and West to the East. More impor tantly, Croatia is painfully aware that it is perceived as Eastern and Balkan in the only place where that judgment ultimately counts, in the West. For example, when Tudjman, Milosevic and Izetbegovic meet, the Western headlines do not read "Two Balkan Leaders and a Central European Leader Meet," rather, they speak of "Balkan Leaders."

And it is of deadly importance where one falls on the East/West divide because ever since the Balkan wars, if not earlier, the term Balkan has been a pejorative. As Maria Todorova points out:

"'Balkanization' not only had come to denote the parcelization of large and viable political units but also had become a synonym for a reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian."

(Croats are seen a guilty of both by the West) This term is hence connected to other pairs, East/West, Byzantine/Western Catholic, Oriental/Europe, Primitive /Civilized. All pairs by which West Europeans, in the process of imperialism and colonialism defined themselves in opposition to the East. Todorova points out that while they are inextricably a part of Europe

"yet constructed as 'the other,' the Balkans became, in time, the object of a number of externalized political, ideological and cultural frustrations and have served as a repository of negative characteristics against which a positive and self-congratulatory image of the "European" and 'the west' has been constructed."

As an American I feel sensitive to this tendency because I believe that part of the underlying roots of American racism is the crucial role which Native Americans and African Ameri cans play(ed) as the primitives in the construction of white "civility." Slavoj Zizek sees a contemporary equivalent in Western governments attacks on, for example, freedom of press in Croatia. When the West goes on the offensive it, by implication, instantiates its own freedom of the press, its own democracy.

Croatia's use of negative Balkan rhetoric is not at all surprising (especially con sidering recent events). Croatia's view of those cultures to its south and east quite precisely mirrors the views which Croatia's western and northern neighbors hold of Croatia itself. Milica Bakic-Hayden also uses Edward Said's notion of "orientalism" from his classic application of Foucaultian "ar chaeology" on the British and French construction of the "East" during their colonial acquisition . She argues that the

"phenomenon of nesting orientalisms is evident in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states where the designa tion of "other" has been appropriated and manipulated by those who have themselves been designated as such in [West European] orientalist discourse."

For me the question becomes obvious: who defined Europe so that it only meant pluralism, democracy and tolerance?

Who decided that the Western "essence" was its ostensible Christian values and not the crusades and the inquisition, the supposed values of the Enlightenment and not colonialism and the Holocaust.

Who does this definition serve?

Who decided that the Balkans meant only the worst moments in Balkan life and not its many beautiful sides?

Were the Balkans allowed to name themselves?

The Balkan/Europe distinction is part of system which labels societies as "primi tive," and, by implication, others as "civilized." To accept it is to accept a whole hierarchy of cultures. For Croatia this seems to me an especially danger ous paradigm to accept without further inspection. This paradigm is intimately linked to a hierarchy of societies which judges cultural value on the basis of bureaucratic and economic efficiency, a hierarchy conceived by the West from a position of great strength and confidence, empowered by both industrial revolu tion and colonial acquisition. This prejudice for efficiency self-servingly created a system of value in which the West couldn't help but win.

The troubling part about Croatia accepting this system so wholly is that while it can comfort itself with the certainty of being more efficient and "rational" than its south and east, it has accepted a system which will make it permanently second rate to the West, a system which forces it to have an enormous inferior ity complex about its identity.

(As regards this complex I can't help but wonder if even the acceptability of anti-Hercegovina prejudice is not only a reflection of resentment about nouveau riche behavior and dirty politics but self-loathing at seeing the Balkan side of Croatian culture, a side which problematizes their own supposed "Central European" souls, ⁹ I will not even get into the role of old -fashioned snobbery in all this.)

Stated bluntly, Croatia is not second rate to the West, and, in fact, has many advantages over it. But neither is it superior to the Balkans.

To accept this paradigm of prejudice towards the Balkans is to allow the worst kind of colonization of Croatia, the colonization of Croatians very self-conception. Croatians would be missing the opportunity for all that is noble in Nietzschean notion of self-creation through self-definition and self-naming, the purported autonomy for which the recent war was fought.

Now, if the term Balkan were simply a metaphor for the dark possibilities of Croatian politics, for that which opposed freedom and strengthened the forces of oppression it would not have to be considered in a negative light. But the term Balkan is directly connected to a territory and its peoples, this is not sim ply a descriptive term for what is "evil" in Croatian politics. It is a term which describes her neighbors and her largest minorities. In Croatian consciousness the pejorative Balkan is probably linked most obviously with Serbians, is part of a differentiation of Croats from Serbs. That kind of differentiation, as Seyla Benhabib pointed out in "The Fundamentals of Nationalism", is one of the basic processes of creating a new nation-state. The insistence on being European rather Balkan is part of the process of distinguishing Croatia from Serbia, a process seen most clearly in new Croatian (language). One of the reasons that Croatians so stridently insist on their European character is that they cannot silence their own legacy of Croatian unitarist thought, from Ljudevit Gaj, through J. J. Strossmayer, to Ivan Mestrovic and beyond who believed that Croatians and Serbians were halves of the same whole.¹⁰ The implications for Croatians of defining themselves in opposition to their own neighbors will make any new dialogue with Serbians even more difficult than it already will be.

The last thing I would want to do is undermine critiques such as those offered by Buden. He makes crucial observations, but I would call on him to take a self critical look at his writing to be sure that, in regards to the East/West divide, he is not trapped within the cage of the reigning discourse, is not reinforcing old stereotypes. In his article "Mission Impossible" Buden is clearly conscious of Croatians' relation to the idea of the Balkans and his essay is clearly critical of the rhetorical flight from the Balkans. However, his critical approach is to beat his readers over the head with the

"the sad story of the failure of Croatia to leave any kind of impression on a foreigner of being a civilized European country. Flea-market kitsch , clumsiness, amorality, primitive sexist shamelessness, lying opposition, intellectual meaninglessness and servility, and plenty of it, was clear to the Swiss journalist on the first glance."

It is not that all the above should not be criticized but rather they shouldn't be criticized as Balkan. I believe that Derrida fatally problematized such binary oppositions as early as the 1970s. Anyone with pretensions to a postmodern cultural critique of society ought to drive a fist through tendencies to privilege West over East.

If anything, Croatia, with its splendid mix of influences, problematizes the very possibility of opposing Balkan to Europe, East to West, the possibility of delimiting essentialized cultural space. Perhaps she shouldn't imitate the West nor curse the Balkan, but, rather choose selectively from the strengths of all her heritage, Central European, Mediterranean, and, yes, Balkan. In the process she may have to self-confidently challenge Western Europe's very identity struc ture.

"Balkan is Beautiful!"