Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders between the Balkans and Europe: The Geopolitical and imaginary borders between the balkans and Europe: 47 (Austrian Culture)

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? takes up one of the most fraught areas of Europe, the Balkans. Variously part of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Byzantine empires, this region has always been considered Europe’s border between the Orient and the Occident. Aiming to clarify the politics of drawing cultural borders in this region, the book examines the relations between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans as an intermediate space between West and East. It demonstrates that the dichotomy Orient versus Occident is insufficient to explain the complexity of the region. Therefore, cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence of identities and conflicts are proposed to be «the essence» of the Balkans. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? depicts the fictional imagination of the Balkans as a «utopian dystopia». This oxymoron encompasses the utopian projections of the Austrian/ Habsburg writers onto the Balkans as a place of intact nature and archaic communities; the dystopian presentations of the Balkans by local authors as an abnormal no-place (ou-topia) onto which the historical tensions of empires have been projected; and, finally, the depictions of the Balkans in the Western media as an eternal or recurring dystopia. There is at present no other study that distinguishes these particular geographical reference points. Thus, this book contributes to the research on Europe’s historical memory and to scholarship on postcolonial and/or post-imperial identities in European states. The volume is recommended for courses on Austrian, German, Balkan, and European studies, as well as comparative literature, theater, media, Slavic literatures, history, and political science. Cover Table of Contents Acknowledgments I. Introduction: The Balkans’ Postmodern Geography Traditions Constituting European Identity Geographical, Geopolitical, and Cultural Borders of the Balkans Colonial/Imperial Legacies and Postcolonial Struggles Notes II. Travelogues of War and Peace Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts: The Balkans as Europe’s Twin “Br/Other” Milo Dor’s Larger Homeland: Paradigm for an Inclusive Europe Peter Handke’s Once Again for Thucydides: Narrative Islands of Peace amidst of War Notes III. Serbia: Between East and West Serbian Identity between Conflicting Ottoman, Habsburg, and Slavic Orthodox Influences The Role of the Theater in the Construction of National Identity Vojvodina in the Age of Linguistic Misunderstanding Modernizing Western Influences Threaten to Change Ottoman Serbia Creating the Nation in the Revolutionary Turmoil of 1848 Notes IV. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Where Orient and Occident Meet Colonialism and Imperialism in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans Bosnia-Herzegovina’s “Uncanny” Geography: The Sense of National Identity The Conflict between Habsburg Supranational and Local National Identity Politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina Habsburg Resonances in the Former Yugoslavia and Present Day Bosnia-Herzegovina Badger in Court: Dialogue of Misunderstanding between the Subaltern and the Colonizer Ivo Andrić and the Habsburg Language Politics for Bosnia-Herzegovina The Bridge on the Drina: A Narrative of Consolidation or Disintegration? The Literary Reception and Political Interpretations of Andrić’s Fiction Not a Clash of Civilizations, but a War between Nations Notes V. Slovenia and Croatia: Between the Balkans and Europe The Slovenian and Croatian National Paradigms in the Habsburg Period Habsburg versus National Identity Hofmannsthal’s Arabella: Nineteenth Century Slavonia as a Utopian Chronotopos of an Ideal Future Society The Radetzky March: Habsburg Identity between Irony and Utopia Notes VI. The Balkans between Utopia and Dystopia The Beginning of Hostilities between Serbia and Austria-Hungary Roda’s Serbian Diary: War between a Nation of Engineers, Painters, and Poets and a Nation of Peasants The Last Days of Mankind: Drama as a High Court of Justice Austrian Spectators Become Actors in the Theater of World War I Handke’s Voyage by Dugout: The Balkans as a Dystopian Utopia The Balkans and Europe in the Axis of Utopia and Dystopia Notes VII. Myth and Memory in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans Joseph Roth’s Ambivalent Reminiscence of the Habsburg Myth Tito and Me: A Late Example of Poetic Resistance to Idolatry From Habsburg to Tito and Beyond Notes Bibliography Index