Unstable identities and multiplied histories
—
a step towards Balkania

"We need to free the Balkans from its leg irons. Our history is our biggest imprisonment." writes Melentie Pandilovski in his text "The Balkans to the Balkanians", which has been one of the inspirations for the project "The Future State of Balkania". It seems to me that this provides an excellent start for trying to sketch a subversive and antagonist strategy to fight against the "chains" which are "our biggest enemy" (Melentie). On the constantly morphing political map of the Balkans, it is easier than in most other places to visualize how arbitrary the writing and teaching of "history" is, and to draw the conclusion that there are "histories" rather than "history", each written in a time and place and context for a purpose rather than following logically from a sequence of events that intrinsically relate to each other. Each an attempt at designing and molding the past to fit the interests of a ruling class. In a broader context, feminist theorists and historians have shown how official history-writing in the countries of the imperialist center ignore the active role played by women and otherwise works to perpetuate gender stereotypes and impose gendered social roles. Writers and historians from antagonist movements have shown that this same history-writing extensively deals with the interaction between people (men) from the ruling classes while ignoring the struggles of other people against the control mechanisms installed by the former. Similarly, critical historians and activists from countries of the periphery have shown how official history-writing takes on an imperialist perspective, legitimizing colonialist and imperialist control and access to people and ressources.

Among the countries of the center, where a common interest as imperialist powers prompted the respective historians to streamline and integrate the various historical narratives, differences in history-writing are often minor. German and French official history-writing, for instance, has apparently come to agree even on the interpretation of the various contentions around Alsace-Lorraine. Especially in the era of television and new electronic media, it is necessary for the countries of the center to align their narratives, as became clear during the war of Nato against Yugoslavia and Kosov@ this year. An example of this is Sweden, where the usual lies adapted to US and German consumption did not work well, and where it was not possible to invent others, so that the media had no choice but to stop reporting about the war and leave their role of legitimizing it unfulfilled. The Balkans are more interesting in this respect, since no "history" has reached hegemonic status, and often the same historical characters are seen as "ours" by several current-day "nations", a phenomenon that makes transparent the inherently constructed and artificial nature of the "nations" under scrutiny and hints at the constructed and artificial nature of "nations" in general and their founding myths, or "histories".

One of the moments in which the richness of contradictory and subversive potential of Balkan "histories" became apparent was a series of night-long discussions between Luchezar Boyadjiev (from Sofia) and Melentie Pandelovski (from Skopje), with the involvement of Amos Taylor (from the UK, living in Finland) some of the time, at the ISEA 98 (Inter-Society for Electronic Arts) meeting in Manchester/UK in the first week of September 1998, in the context of the temporary media lab Revolting. The two started discussing the respective histories on which the notion of the Bulgarian and the Macedonian nation are constructed. What they found is that the same events were often described with completely different connotation in one or the other historical construct, that the same people were sometimes claimed as part of the respective "nation" by both official histories, and that the histories varied in which stories, events and relations they left unreflected and untold. Each official history builds a narrative in order to create a necessary, a "logical" order between single events. This narrative including its omissions is one of the important building blocks of the concept of "nation".

Talking to friends in Bulgaria (where I live) who are not afficionad@s of deconstruction or radical critics of state power, I found that often my objections to essentialisms linked to "nation" are countered by pointing out the need of each and every one for an identity. It seems, apparently to many people, that firstly, one needs a more or less stable identity, a fixed point to cling to in one’s frailty perhaps, secondly, this identity is necessarily defined through belonging to a group, i.e., in reference to a group identity, and thirdly, that this group is naturally one’s "nation", linked to the place one was born in, to the culture one has been exposed to, to the "history" that has led to the current situation of said "nation". In such discussions I find that it is not so easy to make it clear what bothers me with the concept of "nation" and of "history", if my friend does not as a reflex connote "essentialism" negatively, or does not see at first what I mean by it at all. In fact, I would not challenge their first point. If someone feels a need for some sort of stability provided by identity, this is their subjective need, and there seems to be little point in interfering or denying it. The second objection I may not dismiss at once either. Precisely this point seems worthy of an in-depth discussion: How does a group identity, once constructed, serve as a means of controlling people? How does it serve to conceal social struggles and exclude "others" who do not fall under the construction of the group identity? Finding myself outside the cozy political environment of the remainders of an autonomist movement that I am used to, in which I am likely to find agreement even when I merely sketch my ideas, I am forced to look at the premises of my arguments more carefully.