Rural Apocalypse: The Other as Enemy in South East Europe

Davor Beganović (University of Konstanz)

Email: Davor.Beganovic@uni-konstanz.de

 

ABSTRACT:

In The Fateful Question of Culture (the title itself is symptomatic!) Geoffrey H. Hartman stresses that “in Europe, the pernicious influence of politics of converging pastoral and apocalyptic perspectives usurps the concept of culture and reinforces an anti-urban provincialism, or a sentimental belief in a golden age, or other resentful evocations of a prior and original greatness.” Following this Hartman’s presupposition, my paper tries to locate the discourse of cultural inclusion/exclusion created as a protective shield to keep the unwanted influences away from one’s own culture. These strategies are always directed against demonstrating an inability to create a positive desideratum. The Other is an enemy to be eliminated in order to keep one’s culture pure. Brilliant analyses by the Serbian philosopher Radomir Konstantinovic in his study Filozofija palanke (Philosophy of the Parochial) will be taken as the point of departure to demonstrate how the melting of political, ideological, and cultural dimensions can be used to effect national coherence and form the basis for “Blut und Boden” ideology. Finally, this cultural exclusion of others initiates their physical annihilation in an arbitrary act of “rural apocalypse.”