EU, Europe Unfinished. Mediating Europe and the Balkans in a Time of Crisis

The relationships between the different sides of Europe (East and West, North and South), historically represent a very challenging subject of discussion, whether from a political, economic, social or cultural perspective, whether accepting each other or not, whether really knowing the realities or only fabulating or starting from some given realities.

This book is co-edited by Zlatan Krajina and Nebojša Blanuša and, as the title informs us, is about the relationship between two different sides of Europe, the East and the West, attempting to find the middle way between two such different flanks of the same continent. As Zlatan Krajina announces in his introductory study, the volume refers to the mutual European Union (EU)—Balkans relationship in a sensitive period for both sides, that of the economic crisis. However, the economic perspective is not the recurrent topic of this volume, but only the basis on which to study some different realities of the region, and especially ‘the cultural relationships between Europe, the EU and the Balkans’ (15).

Hence, in the part entitled Europeanising, we find two articles, one by Paul Stubbs and Noemi Lendvai and one by Monika Metykova. The first paper is a critical approach to the EU discourse and policies toward the new Member States and/or the candidate states (both seen as the ‘periphery’) during the economic crisis. Considering the EU and the Europeanisation process as having a postcolonialist/neocolonialist/imperialist basis and interests (one subtitle is ‘Europeanisation—postcoloniality, disciplinarity and power’, 34), the authors consider that this way of approaching the ‘periphery’ and, at the same time, the economic crisis is responsible for the increasing lack of confidence of the Eastern states in the European project and the emergence of a structural, political opposition toward the EU, on the one hand, and the failure of the concept of ‘social Europe’ and, implicitly, the unreliability and lack of legitimacy of the EU on the other. In the same key, in the following paper Monika Metykova considers that the EU has failed to develop some supranational capacities to manage the matter of local media in terms of its role related to ‘democratic, social and cultural’ (59) issues, and that this incapacity of the EU has engendered a certain conservatism amongst the local decision-makers in the field and the success, in some cases, of particular private initiatives (though not the most reliable in terms of their capacity to play a valuable cultural role).

The following part comprises two papers, one related to the mater of renaming the states, which arose following the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, and one focused on the mater of kitsch that appeared in the process of modernisation of the Balkans and Eastern European states from the beginning of the twentieth century. The first paper, written by Suzana Milevska, highlights the passion for (or rather fury about) the change that came over the states resulting from the dissolution of Yugoslavia, whether at the personal, private level (especially names) or at the public, state level (institutions, streets, toponyms, etc). The author largely addresses this phenomenon using Macedonia as a case study and putting the accent on the power that the subjects (and objects too) of this richly symbolic renaming process are considered to have obtained in the end. The second paper, by Ivaylo Ditchev, is focused on the way that Balkan states tried to fill some white pages in their history, cultures, traditions, etc. The author offers as examples Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Albania, states that in the process of ‘digging for identity’ (99) created some national myths and symbols (very appropriate for the use the nationalist forces, when the time arrived), even when they did not find the necessary proofs as being historically theirs, and in many cases materialised these symbols in some more visible way, usually as statues and monuments (as Suzana Milevska presents in detail with regard to Macedonia) with a dual role: to boost self-esteem and to impress visitors.

The section titled Representing comprises three papers discussing three different aspects of representation in the Balkans area. The first, by Eunice Castro Seixas, provides an analysis of the 2014 accounts of protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the international media. As the author announces in the methodology, she follows the main characteristics (violence) and themes (‘war zone’, ‘war legacy’, etc., 109) attributed to the protests, and highlights the intended relationship established by the newspapers between the protests and events from the recent past of Bosnia and Herzegovina or that occurred at the time at national and international level. The following paper, by Milena Marinkova, suggests, as one of subtitles of the paper states, an analysis of the postsocialist ‘variations’ on the theme of the Balkans. Starting by recalling some jokes at the expense of the Balkans, with the aim of revealing how stereotypes and clichés are used in order to quickly describe the region, the author continues by presenting a historiography of (sometimes stereotyped) investigations related to the region, and ends by referring to a novel (Mikhail Veshim, The English Neighbor) as a possible framework for analysis of some realities in the Balkans. The final paper of the section, as the author, Piro Rexhepi, writes, ‘explores the intersections of Islam and sexuality in cultural text in Albania and Bosnia’ (146) in order to reveal how these texts support or deny ‘the idea of belonging to Europe’. As a framework for analysis, the author uses some novels by Albanian authors (Ismail Kadare and Ben Blushi) and some movies (Go West, Before the Rain, Underground) where the homosexuality of the Muslim characters is the theme around which is shaped the East–West cultural opposition.

The first paper of the final part of the volume (Accessing), by Uroš Čvoro, is a foray into the world of two artists from the Balkans, Katarina Zdjelar and Tanja Ostojić, who reveal in their work some aspects of the postsocialist on-going transition of the Balkans, as well as the different uncertainties (‘in-betweenness’) of the region and of its people on the road to Europeanisation. On the other hand, Orlanda Obad’s article is focused on the mater of the Europeanisation of Croatia during the accession process, from a social-anthropological perspective. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the Karl Manheim theory of utopian mentality, and the author considers the EU as a representative example of ‘liberal-humanitarian mentality’. In conclusion, the author asserts that Europeanisation is not a linear and completely homogenous process, as the social-peripheral groups are difficult to access and to engage in the process. Claudia Ciobanu, in the final paper of this section, adopts a personal and very emotional approach of uprooting and dislocation, featuring the dragged-down feelings that could appear amongst the former Erasmus students.

The chapter dedicated to conclusions is a dialogue between the editors and two very well-known writers and active observers on European matters, Slavenka Drakulić and David Morley, and has a very suggestive title: Can Western Europe Be at Home in the Balkans? The authors discuss matters of identity, related to the Balkans and/or Europe, gliding between various historical and actual subjects concerning Europe and its ‘peripheries’.

This volume is a heterogeneous mix of papers pointing out different social and cultural aspects of relations between EU, Europe and the Balkans, focused mainly on the differences between the East and the West of the continent, differences that at some moments seem to be insuperable. It is a volume concerned with questions related to the Balkans and EU/Europe, about change or even lack of change, about self and difference, that merits being read with patience and using the pen, not only to understand the opinions of the authors, but also to reflect on some questions that the different texts could reveal in our mind, or some answers to our own questions.