Serbian Dreambook: National Imaginary in the Time of Milošević

429 Pages·2011·4.794 MB·English

by  Marko Živković

Serbian Dreambook
New Anthropologies of Europe
Serbian
Dreambook
National Imaginary
in the Time of
MiIoevic

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I iX
Introduction / 1
ONE
Belgrade / 15
TWO
Serbia's Position in European Geopolitical Imaginings / 42
THREE
Highlanders and Lowlanders / 76
FOUR
Tender-hearted Criminals and the Reverse Pygmalion / 94
FIVE
Serbian Jeremiads: Too Much Character, Too Little Kultur / 115
six
Glorious Pasts and Imagined Continuities: The Most Ancient People /
144
SEVEN
Narrative Cycles: From Kosovo to Jadovno / 168
EIGHT
"The Wish to Be a Jew'; or, The Power of the Jewish Trope/ 198
NINE
Garbled Genres: Conspiracy Theories, Everyday Life, and the Poetics
of Opacity / 211
TEN
Mille vs. Transition: A Super Informant in the Slushy Swamp of
Serbian Politics / 237
Conclusion: Chrono-tropes and Awakenings 1249
NOTES / 259
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 281
FILMOGRAPHY / 299
INDEX / 301
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has been long in coming. Some people influenced it directly by
reading and commenting on the text as it slowly unfolded, others by
providing models of how to think which I absorbed along the way, and still
others by supporting and nurturing me in many material and nonmaterial
ways. Visibly or invisibly they are all present in the text.
I was blessed with extraordinary teachers. Miloljub Peric, my high school
philosophy professor, gave me the first lesson in the art of teaching; Jovica
Stanojevic, my first aikido instructor, taught me about laughing; Dejan Razic
taught me Japanese as if it were an easy language; Elemire Zolla, the master
of delicate and luminous imagination, graced me with his friendship; and
Kostas Kazazis, a Balkan linguist extraordinaire, guided my first steps in this
project. Daphne Berdahl was my elder sister at the University of Chicago.
They are no longer with us, but they are a part of who I became.
At Chicago George W. Stocking Jr. and Carol Stocking first took me
under their wing. George guided me through my entire graduate career both
firmly and with great generosity. He was the only one to steer my English
toward greater economy (I am not there yet); his seminars were the best I
ever had; and he fed me for more than a decade. His cooking is superb. With
James W. Fernandez I found the most congenial way to practice
anthropology. I basked in his and Renate Fernandez's abundant conviviality
and partook of many a legendary garlic soup at their home. Raymond D.
Fogelson kept me connected with psychology and lavished upon me his time
and his encyclopedic mind. Susan Gal understood, often better than I could,
what I wanted to do, and then helped me do it better. Victor Friedman, with
his prodigious knowledge of all things Balkan, provided guidance and
generosity that extended much beyond academic advising. Outside my
doctoral committee, Don Levine was my Sensei and friend both on and off
the mat. He gave me my first lessons in teaching Chicago-style in the College
Social Science Core course Wealth, Power and Virtue, but it was in the