Normalizing the Balkans

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'An extraordinary success at framing what the Balkans? have meant for Balkan? thinkers from Julia Kristeva to Slavoj Zizek. Given the role that psychoanalysis plays in such thinkers' imaginary it is striking how this original book accesses the inner life of these images to help all of us grasp how identity is shaped, even our own, through images.' Sander L. Gilman, Emory University, USA 'In this ground-breaking work, DuA!an Bjelic finds in "the Balkans" the roots/routes of an ongoing trauma. Through their discovery, a new reading of the legend of psychoanalytic politics becomes possible. From Freud's own difficult relationship with his father's history to a certain French-Freudian disavowal of "being on location," Normalizing the Balkans applies a unique brand of analytic sociology to "the Nazi symptom".' Laurence A. Rickels, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden KA1/4nste Karlsruhe, Germany / University of California, Santa Barbara, USA 'What should we make of the fact that ideological architects of the Bosnian Genocide were psychiatrists well acquainted with psychoanalytic theory? This discomfiting question reverberates throughout DuA!an Bjeli's fierce and learned book.' Journal of Modern Greek Studies 'There is a sorrow and an anger to DuA!an I. Bjeli's most recent book, neither of which is misplaced. Nor are they made explicit. Normalizing the Balkans is neither emotional nor emotive. It is, in the most classical sense of the term, scholarly. It is well researched and well documented. It covers vast yet always necessary ground - from Carl Jung's dalliances with a Russian analysand and Sigmund Freud's traumatic travels through the Balkans, to Julia Kristeva's and Tzvetan Todorov's very different voyages of return to Bulgaria.' Slavic Review