Vangelis Calotychos, The Balkan Prospect: Identity, Culture and Politics in Greece after 1989 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) (original) (raw)
Related papers
ΧΡΟΝΟΣ online magazine, 2016
Vangelis Calotychos's new book is a study of the negotiations and metamorphoses of images of the Self and the Other in the changing post-1989 contexts of Europe and the Balkans. Read against the background of Greece's position in the immediate Balkan vicinity as well as within the broader European project, Calotychos analyses how semantics of sameness and difference and their corresponding "gazes" of recognition and distance were generated in Greek society in the late 1980s propelled as much by the shifting contours of the regional and geopolitical contexts as well as by the inflow of mass immigration from neighboring countries. The book's analytical standpoint is rooted in the tradition of postcolonial studies dealing with the colonization of the imaginary and a strand of research inquiring into the historical contingencies against which the colonization of the mind took place. Taking the year 1989 as a watershed, Calotychos' central argument claims that the fundamental negotiations in Greek society concerning issues such as modernization and Europeanization were made through and by reference to Balkan themes and contexts of signification, a point that is convincingly argued throughout the whole book. Indebted to cultural studies, Calotychos' includes in his analysis political and popular discourses, literature and film. His take demonstrates an interdisciplinary engagement and includes next to cultural theory and comparative literature, the social sciences and anthropology, history, politics and psychoanalysis.
2005
Journal of Modern Greek Studies 25:1 (May 2005): 204-208. This multidisciplinary volume draws from a conference entitled "Greece and the Balkans: Cultural Encounters since the Enlightenment," held at Birmingham University in the United Kingdom, on June 28–30, 2001. It explored cultural relationships between Greece and other Balkan countries in the areas of language, literature, history, dress, religion, translation, and music (but notably not film). Issues prioritized related to identity and perception among Balkan peoples since the Enlightenment at a time when the historical legacies of nationalism and Cold War communism have seen to it that these peoples look to Europe for a common future and (self)recognition and less so to each other. If, today, Greece sees itself (again) as a guide for its neighbors' European progress and modernization, such posturing seems imperious to recipients of such assistance. While for many Greeks, the desire to relate to the Balkans is seen as taking a step backwards to a prior stage in Greek development. Consequently, the Greek financial, cultural, and political demarche to the Balkans since the 1990s hardly captivates the Greek popular imagination. In a succinct introduction, the editor, Dimitris Tziovas, lays out the cultural, social, and political significance of the Balkans and the scholarly parameters for pursuing its analysis.
(Mis)understanding the Balkans: Greek Geopolitical Codes of the Post-communist Era
Geopolitics, 2006
For most Greeks, neighbouring countries like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania formed a terra incognita for almost half a century since the end of the Second World War. In the early 1990s communism collapsed in all four countries and despite the three bloody wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, information, goods and people crossed Balkan boundaries in unprecedented speed. The paper examines three geopolitical codes about the Balkans that successively dominated Greek views and policies in the last fifteen years: the idea of a menacing 'muslim arc', the image of the Balkans as a Greek 'natural hinterland' and the idea of the Balkans as an undisputed part of Europe. All these geopolitical ideas were introduced by the Greek political elite and influenced decisively both Greek foreign policy and public attitudes for about half a decade each. A man encounters an unfriendly group of warriors in the jungle. "Are you with us or with the others ?" the warriors ask. "With you" is the man's immediate answer. "Sorry", the warriors' retort, "we are the others." (Story told by Greek Ambassador Loucas Tsilas 1
The Problem of Modern Greek Identity: From the Ecumene to the Nation-State
The question of Modern Greek identity is certainly timely. The political events of the previous years have once more brought up such questions as: What does it actually mean to be a Greek today? What is Modern Greece, apart from and beyond the bulk of information that one would find in an encyclopaedia and the established stereotypes? This volume delves into the timely nature of these questions and provides answers not by referring to often-cited classical Antiquity, nor by treating Greece as merely and exclusively a modern nation-state. Rather, it approaches the subject in a kaleidoscopic way, by tracing the line from the Byzantine Empire to Modern Greek culture, society, philosophy, literature and politics. In presenting the diverse and certainly non-dominant approaches of a multitude of Greek scholars, it provides new insights into a diachronic problem, and will encourage new arguments and counterarguments. Despite commonly held views among Greek intelligentsia or the worldwide community, Modern Greek identity remains an open question – and wound. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016
Between Culture and Politics: Identity, the Balkan Enlightenment, and the Greek War of Independence
In 1935, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga published Byzance après Byzance. In this text, Iorga argued that the Ottoman conquest did not erase all traces of Byzantine civilization. Instead, he contended that from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 on, Byzantium’s legacy shaped cultural, religious, and political institutions in the Balkans. Profoundly impacted by the Balkan Wars, Iorga thesis sought to emphasize the historical and cultural unity of the region over the divisions created by nationalist ideology. In some ways, Iorga’s paper, and the monograph he later published, prefigured contemporary historians’ reassessment of the national paradigm. In more recent decades, Paschalis Kitromilides has championed a similar line of thinking. Kitromilides points not only to the region’s shared traditions, but also to the ideological uses of a Byzantine ideal from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries and has called for a reexamination of the Balkan history from a transnational perspective. At the same time, Kitromilides has characterized the Balkan Enlightenment as a confrontation between tradition, based to a large extent on the Byzantine ideal and Christian Orthodoxy, and West European thought in the region. The Greek War of Independence brought this confrontation to a head. This paper explores if either the Byzance après Byzance or tradition-modernity model can help historians make sense of individuals’ motives and their complicated public and private personas during this period. To do so, it examines the biographies and political, economic, and philanthropic, endeavors of Iordache and Nicolae Rosetti-Roznovanu. The Rosetti-Roznovanus belonged to a “Phanariot” family that settled in Moldova in the seventeenth century. By the late eighteenth century, they were among the wealthiest and most political well-connected men in the Principality and were active in the Moldovan administration and commerce. Benefiting from a broad network of professional and personal contacts across the region and Europe, they attempted to shape local and international politics. They also lived through the Greek War of Independence, a moment that brought profound political, cultural, and social change to the Principalities and the Balkans. As educated individuals who left a wealth of archival records, the pair offers historians an interesting case study.