Danijel Dzino: "Dissecting 'Balkanist' discourse in the present and the past: Review of N. Raspudić, Jadranski (polu)orijentalizam and V. Drapac, Constructing Yugoslavia"

Understanding the past is today not only limited to understanding and interpreting historical events, but also on the study of knowledge, understanding how and why we know what we know about the past. The ideas of Michel Foucault about the close relationship between discourse and power and, even more, Said’s Orientalism and the ways the cultural ‘Other’ is perceived in literature, represent the most significant foundation-stones of contemporary postcolonial discourse. Postcolonial readings of early modern and 19 th /early 20 th century Western literature related to Eastern and Southeastern Europe show very specific literary techniques used to describe and perceive these regions as European internal ‘Others’. Such accumulated ‘knowledge’ about Eastern Europe and the ‘Balkans’ significantly affected the ways these regions were perceived, not only in literature, but also in politics and historiography. Both books reviewed here are firmly rooted in bodies of works and ideas developing from these initial works. More specifically, they explore two distinct and attractive topics, which both belong in the wider context, famously called ‘Balkanist’ discourse by Todorova. Raspudic’s study focuses on the perception of the Croats in early modern and modern Italian literature, while Drapac deals with the origins and changing perceptions of Yugoslavia from outside perspectives, focusing on Anglophone and francophone writing. Nino Raspudic is lecturer of Italian studies at the University of Zagreb, and is