Nešto između: simbolička geografija Srbije
Something in between: the symbolic geography of Serbia

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I situate what I call the “stories Serbs tell themselves (and others) about themselves” within the wider framework of geo-political imaginings and symbolic geographies. I rely in part on the richly documented historical studies of European images of Eastern Europe and the Balkans done by Eric Wolff and Maria Todorova, but emphasize the types of reactions to these stereotypical representations. This paper focuses on the specific position of Serbia within West and Central European cultural hierarchies and Balkan “gradients of depreciation,” as well as the ways Serbs manage what Goffman calls “spoilt identity.” As I consider them particularly relevant in this context, I rely a great deal on comparisons between Croatia and Serbia. Drawing on literature, everyday life, popular culture and public discourses, I show how management of spoilt identity crystallize in the images of Gypsies and Germans as representatives of the lowest and the highest poles, respectively, of recursive Balkan hierarchies. Finally, in this paper I try to uncover the semiotic logic of the feeling many peripheries share of being “somewhere in-between,” as well as some of the idioms in which this feeling is expressed in Serbia such as magic realism or metaphors of amorphous substances.

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