Normalizing the Balkans
Normalizing the Balkans

Author: Dušan I. Bjelic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1317086716

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Normalizing the Balkans argues that, following the historical patterns of colonial psychoanalysis and psychiatry in British India and French Africa as well as Nazi psychoanalysis and psychiatry, the psychoanalysis and psychiatry of the Balkans during the 1990s deployed the language of psychic normality to represent the space of the Other as insane geography and to justify its military, or its symbolic, takeover. Freud's self-analysis, influenced by his journeys through the Balkans, was a harbinger of orientalism as articulated by Said. However, whereas Said intended Orientalism to be a critique of the historical construction of the Orient by, and in relation to, the West, for Freud it constituted a medical and psychic truth. Freud’s self-orientalization became the structural foundation of psychoanalytic language, which had tragic consequences in the Balkans when a demonic conjunction developed between the ingrained self-orientalizing structure of psychoanalysis and the Balkans' own propensity for self-orientalization. In the 1990s, in the ex-Yugoslav cultural space, psychoanalytic language was used by the Serb psychiatrist-politicians Drs. Raškovic and Karadzic as conceptual justification for inter-ethnic violence. Kristeva's discourse on abject geography and Zizek's conceptualization of the Balkans as the Real have done violence to the region in an intellectual register on behalf of universal subjectivity. Following Gramsci’s and Said’s 'discourse-geography' Bjelic transmutes the psychoanalytic topos of the imaginary geography of the Balkans into the geopolitics inherent in psychoanalytic language itself, and takes to task the practices of normalization that underpin the Balkans’ politics of madness.

Normalizing the Balkans
Normalizing the Balkans

Author: Professor Dušan I Bjelic

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-01-28

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1409494721

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Normalizing the Balkans argues that, following the historical patterns of colonial psychoanalysis and psychiatry in British India and French Africa as well as Nazi psychoanalysis and psychiatry, the psychoanalysis and psychiatry of the Balkans during the 1990s deployed the language of psychic normality to represent the space of the Other as insane geography and to justify its military, or its symbolic, takeover. Freud's self-analysis, influenced by his journeys through the Balkans, was a harbinger of orientalism as articulated by Said. However, whereas Said intended Orientalism to be a critique of the historical construction of the Orient by, and in relation to, the West, for Freud it constituted a medical and psychic truth. Freud’s self-orientalization became the structural foundation of psychoanalytic language, which had tragic consequences in the Balkans when a demonic conjunction developed between the ingrained self-orientalizing structure of psychoanalysis and the Balkans' own propensity for self-orientalization. In the 1990s, in the ex-Yugoslav cultural space, psychoanalytic language was used by the Serb psychiatrist-politicians Drs. Raškovic and Karadžic as conceptual justification for inter-ethnic violence. Kristeva's discourse on abject geography and Žižek's conceptualization of the Balkans as the Real have done violence to the region in an intellectual register on behalf of universal subjectivity. Following Gramsci’s and Said’s 'discourse-geography' Bjelic transmutes the psychoanalytic topos of the “imaginary geography” of the Balkans into the geopolitics inherent in psychoanalytic language itself, and takes to task the practices of normalization that underpin the Balkans’ politics of madness.

Normalizing the Balkans
Normalizing the Balkans

Author: Dušan I. Bjelić

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1409433161

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Normalizing the Balkans argues that, following the historical patterns of colonial psychoanalysis and psychiatry in British India and French Africa as well as Nazi psychoanalysis and psychiatry, the psychoanalysis and psychiatry of the Balkans during the 1990s deployed the language of psychic normality to represent the space of the Other as insane geography and to justify its military, or its symbolic, takeover. Freud's self-analysis, influenced by his journeys through the Balkans, was a harbinger of orientalism as articulated by Said. However, whereas Said intended Orientalism to be a criti.

‘Balkanization’ and the Euro-Atlantic Processes of the (Western) Balkans
‘Balkanization’ and the Euro-Atlantic Processes of the (Western) Balkans

Author: Liridona Veliu Ashiku

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-30

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 104012724X

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This book explores how ‘balkanization’ as a discourse underpins the policies of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Western Balkans. It shows how EU and NATO policies have emerged from, and led to, the constant reinvention of the unity of the West through ‘balkanizing’ the region and illustrates how this dynamic is maintained by and instrumentalized for the political elites. Through a genealogical analysis that stretches from the Balkans Wars to more recent events such as North Macedonia’s change of name in 2018, the author shows how Western policies have aimed at recreating the united West on the back of the ‘broken’ Balkans. The book will appeal to scholars and students of Southeast Europe, International Relations, Political Science, Peace and Conflict Studies and History.

Balkan Transnationalism at the Time of Neoliberal Catastrophe
Balkan Transnationalism at the Time of Neoliberal Catastrophe

Author: Dušan I. Bjelić

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-27

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0429594003

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Offering a fresh look at the ways in which neoliberalism has claimed to cure the Balkan region of its ethnic particularities under the pretext of Europeanization, this book shows how the reconfiguration of the economic, political, and cultural landscape of the region has resulted in its functioning as Europe’s neocolony. The contributors to this volume engage in postcolonial analysis of the Balkans’ past and present coloniality by way of interrogating race, racism, trauma, film, and global capitalism. They challenge the idea of a United Europe that rests on the assumption that the European Union’s ‘newness’ represents both a clean slate and the right to shift ownership of its colonial histories to former colonial subjects and their national histories. Taken as a whole, the volume seeks to transform Europe’s colonial amnesia into postcolonial awareness and to speak from within the Balkans as a site of Europe’s neocolony. As it critically interrogates a neocolonial reconfiguration of the Balkans as a massive social overhaul, which includes at once global integration and local social disintegration, this book will be of interest to those studying the region, as well as postcolonialism in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Therapeutic Fascism
Therapeutic Fascism

Author: Ana Antić

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0198784589

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During World War Two, death and violence permeated all aspects of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Eastern Europe. Throughout the region, the realities of mass murder and incarceration meant that people learnt to live with daily public hangings of civilian hostages and stumbled on corpses of their neighbors. Entire populations were drawn into fierce and uncompromising political and ideological conflicts, and many ended up being more than mere victims or observers: they themselves became perpetrators or facilitators of violence, often to protect their own lives, but also to gain various benefits. Yugoslavia in particular saw a gradual culmination of a complex and brutal civil war, which ultimately killed more civilians than those killed by the foreign occupying armies. Therapeutic Fascism tells a story of the tremendous impact of such pervasive and multi-layered political violence, and looks at ordinary citizens' attempts to negotiate these extraordinary wartime political pressures. It examines Yugoslav psychiatric documents as unique windows into this harrowing history, and provides an original perspective on the effects of wartime violence and occupation through the history of psychiatry, mental illness, and personal experience. Using previously unexplored resources, such as patients' case files, state and institutional archives, and the professional medical literature of the time, this volume explores the socio-cultural history of wartime through the eyes of (mainly lower-class) psychiatric patients. Ana Antic examines how the experiences of observing, suffering, and committing political violence affected the understanding of human psychology, pathology, and normality in wartime and post-war Balkans and Europe.

The Balkans
The Balkans

Author: D. Hupchick

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-01-11

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0312299133

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The tragedies of Bosnia and Kosovo are often explained away as the unchangeable legacy of 'centuries-old hatreds'. In this richly detailed, expertly balanced chronicle of the Balkans across fifteen centuries, Hupchick sets a complicated record straight. Organized around the three great civilizations of the region - Western European, Orthodox Christian and Muslim - this is a much-needed guide to the political, social, cultural and religious threads of Balkan history, with a clear, convincing account of the reasons for nationalist violence and terror.

The Re-Institutionalization of Higher Education in the Western Balkans
The Re-Institutionalization of Higher Education in the Western Balkans

Author: Brankovic Jelena

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2014-04-30

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 3631641486

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Higher education in the Western Balkans is currently undergoing substantial changes as a result of European reform ideas, new domestic policy initiatives as well as universities and colleges in the region trying to adapt to new expectations and challenges. The book analyzes the changes in both policy and practices in various countries in this region predominantly through a comparative approach. Through a number of empirical studies in which new data was collected and systematized, the book shows how countries in the Western Balkans are struggling to maneuver between adapting to broader European reform ideas while at the same time handling domestic challenges. Hence, the book is a valuable contribution to those interested in studying how various higher education systems are developing in the different European regions.

Balkan Transnationalism at the Time of Neoliberal Catastrophe
Balkan Transnationalism at the Time of Neoliberal Catastrophe

Author: Dušan I. Bjelić

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-03-27

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0429595298

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Offering a fresh look at the ways in which neoliberalism has claimed to cure the Balkan region of its ethnic particularities under the pretext of Europeanization, this book shows how the reconfiguration of the economic, political, and cultural landscape of the region has resulted in its functioning as Europe’s neocolony. The contributors to this volume engage in postcolonial analysis of the Balkans’ past and present coloniality by way of interrogating race, racism, trauma, film, and global capitalism. They challenge the idea of a United Europe that rests on the assumption that the European Union’s ‘newness’ represents both a clean slate and the right to shift ownership of its colonial histories to former colonial subjects and their national histories. Taken as a whole, the volume seeks to transform Europe’s colonial amnesia into postcolonial awareness and to speak from within the Balkans as a site of Europe’s neocolony. As it critically interrogates a neocolonial reconfiguration of the Balkans as a massive social overhaul, which includes at once global integration and local social disintegration, this book will be of interest to those studying the region, as well as postcolonialism in general. This book was originally published as a special issue of Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies.