Maria Todorova Research Articles

Revenge of the tampon: Gender and materialisms (new and old) in the 20th century Central and Eastern Europe

I wrote this talk specifically for this conference and so my ideas are still raw. I am also not an historian, although my ethnographic research is deeply inflected with the oral historical narratives of my subjects. This is an exploratory text, still very much in progress, and I hope you will forgive the tentative nature of my reflections. This full text was first delivered as a keynote address on October 1, 2021, to the “Gender and materiality in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century conference” at Sciences Po in Paris. A shorter version of the text was published in a Festschrift for the Bulgarian historian, Maria Todorova (see Ghodsee 2023, 235-246), with the support of the Leibniz Institute of Eastern and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany.

THE NOT-SO-NOBLE SAVAGE: BALKANISM IN MARY EDITH DURHAM’S THROUGH THE LANDS OF THE SERB

This paper deals with the representation of the Balkans in Mary Edith Durham’s travel novel Through the Lands of the Serb. It aims at analaysing the novel from a postcolonial perspective to expose instances of constructing the Balkans as ‘the other’ within Europe. Maria Todorova’s concept of Balkanism provides a useful theoretical framework to engage with western stereotypes about the Balkans critically. The paper's first part concerns the literary conventions of travel writing, and the second part critically examines some examples of Balkanism. The examples of Balkanism investigated include the depictions of the region as primitive, stuck in the past, impure, infantile, violent, and animal-like. Even though most of the stereotypes are negative, it should be noted that Durham also creates positive stereotypes that are not less harmful.

Maria Todorova. The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Pp. 384.

Maria Todorova. The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Pp. 384.

The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. By Maria Todorova. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xiii, 363 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. Abbreviations. $115.00, hard bound.

The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. By Maria Todorova. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xiii, 363 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. Abbreviations. $115.00, hard bound. - Volume 81 Issue 1

Image of the Balkans in the works by Andrzej Stasiuk and Małgorzata Rejmer

The history of the term the Balkans and stigmatising images of the Balkan area, created by travellers and writers from Western Europe, have been described in works by Maria Todorova and Božidar Jezernik, which can already be considered classical. After 1989, the image of the countries of Southeast Europe in Poland was shaped under the infl uence of the Western discourse, but it also had distinguishing features. These included the positioning of the Balkans against of the myth of Central Europe and, to an extent, against the common experience of communism. The most interesting (and infl uential) narratives of Polish writers about the countries of this part of Europe are related to the literary works by Andrzej Stasiuk and Małgorzata Rejmer. They also fi t into the discussion about the boundaries of reportage that took place in Poland in the 21st century after the death of Ryszard Kapuściński.

Abolition of a National Paradigm

The “geography” of the Balkans is “prisoner” to a double discursive “incarceration”: externally, within the field of balkanism and internally, within the national paradigm. “Geography” is a symbolically inscribed region, and the Balkans’ historical legacy defines the region as a specific “geography,” however national paradigm defines historical legacy. If the national paradigm were abolished, this would rupture the chain of top-down signification and leave the geography open to a multitude of intersecting histories. To this end, this essay examines two canons of national paradigms: those of Benedict Anderson and Maria Todorova. Central to each paradigm is the incommensurability thesis of nationalism and racism, race, and nationality. To argue the opposite to their thesis – that modern nations are racial formations, that nation is not imagined but rather racialized communities – this essay strategically uses “race” to show how the national paradigm recycles Eurocentric colonial amnesia and inscribes the Balkans “geography” as raceless.

The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. By Maria Todorova. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 364 pp.

The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s–1920s. By Maria Todorova. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 364 pp.

Todorova M. The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s – 1920s. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 384 p. ISBN 978-1-3501-5033-1

This monograph by Maria Todorova discusses the establishment and mutual acceptance of the international socialist movement in Bulgarian social democracy. The main features of the socialist movement in Bulgaria are highlighted and the penetration of socialist ideas into the socio-political environment of the country is presented. The attitude of the Bulgarian socialists to the national question and the issues of war and peace during the Balkan Wars and the First World War are considered. Bulgarian socialists are presented as consistent internationalists and pacifists who did not change their positions even under the influence of the outbreak of the First World War. The problem of the imitativeness of Bulgarian socialism is analyzed as an integral part of the issue of Russian or Western European influence upon Bulgaria. Despite the fact that Todorova does not deny the prevalence and cultural influence of the ideas of Russian populism in Bulgaria, she comes to the conclusion that both Western European and national historiography tend to exaggerate the Russian influence on the formation of the Bulgarian socialist tradition. Features of the two political generations identified by Todorova that operated in Bulgaria during the period under consideration are presented and the typical places of education of Bulgarian socialists are revealed. Analyzing a large volume of historical sources, the author uses the biographical method to acquaint readers with numerous socialists forgotten or bypassed by the national communist historiography. Considering the individual experience of socialists, Todorova demonstrates the various paths that led people to this political camp. Attention is paid to the women's socialist movement in Bulgaria and the history of women's participation in the social and political life of the country.

Development, Balkanism, and new (im)moralities in postsocialist Bosnia-Herzegovina

AbstractDespite considerable analysis of development policies in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, local-internationals encounters have received less attention. In an attempt to fill this gap, this article traces the discursive processes through which development professionals frame their narratives about Bosnian society, and in turn, how its inhabitants experience the internationals staying in the country. Applying Maria Todorova's framework, I show how Western “expatriates” tend to incorporate the Balkans’ liminality into their social constructs to depoliticize development practices. On the other hand, I approach emic understandings of Europeanness and Balkanism as a situationally embedded and contested process that comes into play to (re)draw social and moral boundaries in Bosnian society. I conclude by considering local-international encounters as a privileged site for exploring the postsocialist state but also new political subjectivities in contemporary Bosnia.

‘Regions of unthought’ – the danger and the freedom of film archiving and (trans) national film heritage in the Balkans

The ‘Balkan imaginary space’ and its characteristics – fragmentation, fluidity, and flexible contours, not only apply to scholarly perspectives (Todorova, Iordanova, Bakić-Hayden, Glenny, Goldsworthy, Kaser) and hegemonic understanding of the geopolitical designations of the region, but could also be true of national film archives and national film historiography. Taking Maria Todorova’s cue of being ‘in and beyond the West’, and looking toward ‘regions of unthought’ ([1997] 2009), this paper aims to provide a fresh perspective on the discursive meanings and unique positioning of national film archives and heritage in the Balkans, and how these contribute to the shaping of a (trans) national film historiography. When observing the trajectories of filmmakers and cinema exhibition and distribution activities across the Balkan region, and in particular, the cinematographer and film entrepreneur Louis Pitrolf de Beéry, and the ‘Balkan cinema pioneers’, the brothers Ienache and Milton Manakia, allows for the emergence of the cosmopolitan and transnational character of early cinema. Consequently, due to the mutation of borders, the dissolution of empires and the fragmentation of previously constituted federal nations, the notion of ‘national’ itself becomes complex and not easily discernible, leading to questions of who keeps the memory, where memory is kept and for whom. Ultimately, this leads to the necessity to reconsider the development of early cinema in the countries of the Balkan region through an increasingly transnational and perhaps global framework.

Together divided–divided together: Intersections of symbolic boundaries in the context of ex-Yugoslavian immigrant communities in Vienna

The inspiration for the following research arose from an identified ambivalence regarding the question of how relevant ethnic belonging – being Bosniak, being Croat, being Serb – is in everyday life of ex-Yugoslavian Viennese people. A qualitative analysis of narrative interviews as well as participant observations on Vienna’s Ottakringer Straße, a neighbourhood highly frequented by immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and their descendants, indicates that ethnicity indeed matters, particularly when it comes to questions of partner choice. The research, however, also reveals that there are further, intersecting boundaries encompassing or dividing the ‘ex-Yugoslavian community’: In light of being othered by the Austrian majority society and defined as ‘incomplete self’ Maria Todorova, i.e. as representatives of a sphere between the own and the foreign, educationally alienated young adults across ethnic boundaries notably celebrate the culture of ‘turbo folk’ on Ottakringer Straße – a lifestyle that emphasises their own ‘glamour and passion’ as opposed to Austrian ‘bleakness’. Therewith they reinforce the image of the ‘Balkan Other’. Simultaneously, ‘ex-Yugoslavian’ Viennese with higher education levels exhibit a substantial need to not only distinguish themselves from turbo folk and (night-)life on Ottakringer Straße, but also from the image of the ‘Balkan Other’. By emphasising their own ‘more sophisticated’ taste, they express their social position in terms of a specific lifestyle and set themselves apart from the ‘uneducated and common immigrants’. Hence, the analysis shows that, with regard to the ‘ex-Yugoslavian communities’ in Vienna, different symbolic boundaries are at work: the ethnic boundaries – (re-)constructed and (re-)enforced by the wars in the former Yugoslavia – the ‘Balkanised’ symbolic boundaries between ex-Yugoslavian minorities and the Austrian majority as well as the milieu-specific symbolic boundaries within the community itself.

Religion and Ethnicity: Muslim Turkish and Tatar Identity in Dobruja (Romania) throughout the 20th Century

In my study I approached Turkish and Tatar communities in Dobruja (Romania) in the context ofthe ethnic and religious diversity in the Balkans, which Maria Todorova considers to be as theonly continuous traces of a common continuous Ottoman heritage. Using the field research anddocumentary research, I tried to identify the political, economic, cultural and social factors that havedetermined the evolution of the collective mentality of the Muslim Turks and Tatars in Dobruja fromperceiving themselves as a religious community to a self-perception as ethnic community throughoutthe 20th Century. Finally, I tried to identify the present overlays between the two hypostases (religiousand ethnic) in the collective imaginary of the Turkish and Tatar Muslims in Dobruja.

Postcoloniality Without Race? Racial Exceptionalism and Southeast European Cultural Studies

The black Dutch feminist Gloria Wekker, assembling past and present everyday expressions of racialized imagination which collectively undermine hegemonic beliefs that white Dutch society has no historic responsibility for racism, writes in her book White Innocence that “one can do postcolonial studies very well without ever critically addressing race.” Two and a half decades after the adaptation of postcolonial thought to explain aspects of cultural politics during the break-up of Yugoslavia created important tools for understanding the construction of national, regional, and socioeconomic identities around hierarchical notions of Europe and the Balkans in the Yugoslav region and beyond, Wekker's observation is still largely true for Southeast European studies, where no intervention establishing race and whiteness as categories of analysis has reframed the field like work by Maria Todorova on “balkanism” or Milica Bakić-Hayden on “symbolic geographies” and “nesting orientalism” did in the early 1990s. Critical race theorists such as Charles Mills nevertheless argue that “race” as a structure of thought and feeling that legitimized colonialism and slavery (and still informs structural white supremacy) involved precisely the kind of essentialized link between people and territory that Southeast European cultural theory also critiques: the construction of spatialized hierarchies specifying which peoples and territories could have more or less access to civilization and modernity. Southeast European studies' latent racial exceptionalism has some roots in the race-blind anticolonial solidarities of state socialist internationalism (further intensified for Yugoslavia through the politics of Non-Alignment) but also, this essay suggests, in deeper associations between Europeanness, whiteness, and modernity that remain part of the history of “Europe” as an idea even if, by the end of the twentieth century, they were silenced more often than voiced.

“Everybody Loved Each Other There”: Roma Memories of the One-Time Cinka Panna Colony in Oradea and Its Liquidation during the Communist Times

This article is part of the special cluster titled Social practices of remembering and forgetting of the communist past in Central and Eastern Europe, guest edited by Malgorzata Glowacka-Grajper This study deals with the liquidation of a Roma colony from the Romanian town of Oradea during the 1970s. Colony life, as well as the process of removal, demolition of the houses, and relocation of the inhabitants into blocks of flats, is mainly grasped through Roma narratives collected from 2011 onwards. But here we do not narrow down remembering communism to a mere collection of untold stories from the past. Based on the framework developed by Maria Todorova for the study of remembering communism, the following questions are addressed: How is the pre-1989 condition of the Roma revealed through their narratives? What do these say about the condition of the Roma during state socialism? How do past events influence the present-day marginalization of the group? A comparison of the socialist and post-socialist conditions of the Roma could be considered an important issue in forming an account of this ethno-racial group in Eastern Europe. It is so, as—despite the current research, which is small in number, various interpretations exist, raising the demand for scholars to address this issue.

Europe as Other in Contemporary Balkan Literatures

The Balkans are a region where different images of the world have continuously been offered, as well as different points of view regarding the idea of Europe itself. The richness comes from the diversity of nations, people, languages and cultures, and is the basic characteristic of this particular region. However, some ideas have already grown as a «regional» concept, created and developed within the above-mentioned diversity. Although the Balkans belong to Europe, both geographically and historically, from the moment the concept of «Other Europe» was invented for them, the distinction was already made. Usually seen by Europeans as Others, the Balkan people started to create their own idea of Europe as Other. Balkan nations have mostly supported the idea of Europe, as a dream, desire, or reality, longing to join (or to return to) the big European family. Some of them have recently become Member States of the European Union; others are still waiting their turn. But, another concept is also present, very close to the idea of Occidentalism, created as an answer to Edward Said’s Orientalism or Maria Todorova’s Balkanism. This is mostly related to the new social circumstances during the post communist period of transition. Different stereotypes and prejudices of Europe have been created, and can easily be found in literature works, too. In our paper we deal with some of these imaginary concepts, which are present in different works of fiction, published in the last few years in several Balkan countries: Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Turkey.

Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe. Edited by Maria Todorova, Augusta Dimou, and Stefan Troebst. Leipzig Studies on the History and Culture of East-Central Europe, volume 1. Edited by Christian Lübke and Stefan Troebst.Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014. Pp. xii+626. $80.00.

<i>Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe</i>. Edited by Maria Todorova, Augusta Dimou, and Stefan Troebst. Leipzig Studies on the History and Culture of East-Central Europe, volume 1. Edited by Christian Lübke and Stefan Troebst.Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014. Pp. xii+626. $80.00.

Europe, Le Corbusier and the Balkans

The Balkans have been mythologized as the “non-European part of Europe,” their edge geography exploited as a barbaric outpost against Europe’s foundational myth as “civilization.” Balkanism as a synonym for backward, tribal, and uncivilized reappears in the tragedy of Yugoslavia, generalized by the West as a brutal Balkan War. Narratives of industrialization, modernization, and urbanization have defined twentieth-century Europe, but in Imagining the Balkans, Maria Todorova reminds us that mod...

Remembering Communism, Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe. Ed. Maria Todorova , Augusta Dimou and Stefan Troebst . Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014. xii, 640 pp. Appendix. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $80.00, hard bound.

Remembering Communism, Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe. Ed. Maria Todorova , Augusta Dimou and Stefan Troebst . Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014. xii, 640 pp. Appendix. Notes. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Maps. $80.00, hard bound.

“STILL”

Portfolio pages 1 - 2: A general map of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as it existed in 1945-1991 Created: 28 February 2011, and distributed under CC BY‑SA 3.0 license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sfrj.png (accessed 24 April 2016). Portfolio page 3: FreeImages.com/Piotr Adamiak. I still / adverb / always, continually; in the future as in the past In her book Imagining the Balkans, Maria Todorova refers to the concept of balkanism, discussing its creation in relati...

Bulgaria's Zionism, The Colonization of Palestine and The Question of Balkan Postcoloniality

The foreclosure of the Balkans’ postcoloniality is a fragment of a much larger strategic manoeuvring inside a European historiography ruled by the national paradigm aimed at disowning colonial history. Because the European Union is a new political entity without a previous history, and because it has formally denounced colonialism and anti-Semitism, there is a creeping assumption that it somehow deserves a clean slate and the right to shift the ownership of its colonial histories to its former colonial subjects. As an effort to ‘de-provincialize’ Europe from the position of the Balkans’ marginal history, Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova, the leading scholar in the critical studies of Balkanism, insists on the incommensurability between Orientalism and Balkanism on the grounds that the Balkans, unlike the Orient, ‘lacks colonial predicament’. The history of Bulgarian Zionist settlers in Palestine challenges Todorova's claim. Bulgarian Zionists were agents of a double colonization, in Bulgaria as subjects of internal colonization, and in Palestine as colonizers.