A Dismantled Otherness
But, that which has decided to gain a certain status – albeit a status of ‘objet petit a’ – should consider its future; if not, it would only be recognized as someone else’s fate. It calls to play the mechanisms of anamnesis which help us remember the past in order to discover that which we carry within ourselves as an ‘objet petit a’.
It is usually said that the Fourth World countries belong to the border cultures, the cultures of borders which stand as a metaphor for the contact with the First World countries. But, cultures are open, and the dialogue between them does not involve a common metalanguage; it recognizes the difference, not the mimicry. Yet, should we polarize in order to polemize (Baba; 2004:50); should we stand behind our civilization borders and create myths about impossible identities? Each culture in non-identical to itself, and so are her subjects: dislocated from the inside, they possess an ‘internal blind spot’ which does not give one peace. Yet, “where the Other has been dismantled into itself, where it has not been contextualized completely, only there can we face it, says Terry Eagleton. “I understand the Other only when I become aware of what is troubling me – its mysterious nature, which is its concern as well.” Also, as Žižek says: “That is how the dimension of the Universal is set into motion – when two lacks, mine and of the Other – coincide… the common denominator to us and the unreachable Other is the empty one, the one replacing the X which eludes both sides” (Eagleton; 2002:118).
Therefore, each search for an identity is a search for one’s own discourse, for the discovery of the narratives for oneself – those which help us define ourselves, and tell our story of the twisted Balkan reality. The cunningness of our local mind no longer allows someone else to do that in our stead. It is the most legitimate and natural attempt to cross over from a lower to a higher status point, from an ‘object’ to a ‘subject’.
However, since each attempt to understand ourselves and the others originates in the understanding of one’s own insufficiency, in the realization of the inner schism – the fracture which, although not allowing one to identify with one self, does serve as a crossing into a different ontological order – it becomes apparent that the key to understanding the Other (other culture, other heading) – is, actually, a step out into oneself. Needless to say, that does not assume one should not insist upon ethnicity; on the contrary, but only in the frame of a universal, cultural identity in which we have to struggle for a dialogue with the point of view of the Other.
In this world of values, the future of the small Balkan ethnicities is of one such identity – universal, cultural – the one which will enable the return to the whole, the return to the lost unity. The only thing to be done is to learn its language, with all the surrounding archetypes, in order for us to be able to – while enjoying the inborn need for self–irony16F – deconstruct the stereotypes of the common imago, thus realizing the dream we have been longing for: the dialogue between the East and the West, nature and culture, the somatic and semiotic, the body and the spirit. Without traumas and complexes, without fear of altercations…
Translated by: Ana Kecan
Reference list (translated):
1. Rougemont, Denis De (1997): Twenty Eight Centuries of Europe: the European Consciousness Through the Texts from Hesiod Until Today, Kultura, Skopje
2. Derrida, Jacques(2001): The Other Heading, Templum, Skopje
3. Eagleton, Terry (2002): The Idea of Culture, Naklada Jesenski i Turk, Zagreb
4. Babha, Homi K. (2004): The Location of Culture, Beogradski Krug, Beograd
5. Žižek, Slavoj (2001): Less Love, More Hatred! Or, Why Is the Christian Heritage Worth Fighting For, Beogradski Krug, Beograd
6. Ugrešić, Dubravka (2002): ‘In Better Houses Such Things Are Not Spoken Of’ in: The Culture of Lies: Antipolitical Essays, Konzor, Zagreb; Samizdat B92, Beograd
7. Buden, Boris (2002): “Inconscientia Iugoslavica“ in: The Kapitol Train Station (Kaptolski kolodvor): Political Essays, Centar za savremenu umetnost, Beograd
8. Kristeva, Julia (1989): The Power of Terror: An Essay on Abjection, Naprijed, Zagreb
9. Lacan, Jacques (1986): Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Naprijed, Zagreb
10. Jevremović, Petar (2000): ‘The Topology of Identity’ in: Lacan and Psychoanalysis, Plato, Beograd
11. West, Rebecca (1990): Black Lamb, Grey Falcon: Travels through Yugoslavia, BIGZ, Beograd
12. Goldsworthy, Vesna (2005): The Invention of Ruritania, Geopoetika, Beograd
13. Todorova, Marija (2001): Imagining the Balkans, Magor, Skopje
14. Muhić, Ferid (20/2000): ‘A Critique of the Balkan Mind’, Lettre Internationale: A European Cultural Review, Skopje
15. Cioran, Emil (1996): An Essay on Decomposition, Kultura, Skopje
#b
16. “… faced with ethnic hatred and violence, we should completely reject the standard multicultural idea that, aside from ethnic intolerance, we should learn to respect and live with the Otherness of the Other, developing tolerance toward different lifestyles. The way to really fight against ethnic hatred is not through its direct opposite, ethnic tolerance. On the contrary, what we truly need is even more hatred, but real, political hatred; hatred directed toward the common political enemy”, says Slavoj Žižek in his essay Abandoning the Balkan apparitions (2001:159). Sounds cruel, yet true. One should just carefully read his ironic discourse of genius.