SPACE AND PLACE OF THE BALKANS: A GEOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The literature that explores the representations of the Balkans is based on the assumption that the Balkans were constructed, imagined or invented. This claim is usually accompanied by the attempts to highlight the discrepancy between physical and imaginary geography and to point out the gap in semantics between the Balkan Peninsula and the Balkans. While the first one functions as physical geography, the other one refers to a place populated by representations, rather than people. Following the trend of linguistic and spatial turn, they hold the binary logic that insists upon the duality of the spatial. Some of the most important studies in this field can be read and interpreted as another in a series of texts about the Balkans. Thus, the aim of this paper is to: 1. Point out the places and passages where academic discourse on the Balkans separate physical and symbolic geography; 2. Highlight the political implications of this approach; 3. Suggest a geocritical aim that provides a sort of ballance between the material geography („real“) and imaginary spaces.