>Germany and France are the historic centers of
>Western academia and Western thought is largely
>based on French and German writing.
And Zizek is part of that center. What's your point?
>A book written in Thai is far less likely to be
>translated, no matter how brilliant it is.
How did we get to Thailand? We were talking about Slovenia. One of the things Zizek wants to get across is the "imaginary cartography" determining how the Balkans are discussed.
>English-speaking academics to a large extent
>know French and German (both being required
>languages when I was in grad school) and
>therefore read, are influenced by, and translate those books
Zizek, like Foucault and many others, is read and discussed by an audience far broader than grad students.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n06/zize01_.html
[...]
>We are dealing with an imaginary cartography,
>which projects onto the real landscape its own
>shadowy ideological antagonisms, in the same way
>that the conversion-symptoms of the hysterical
>subject in Freud project onto the physical body
>the map of another, imaginary anatomy. Much of
>this projection is racist. First, there is the
>old-fashioned, unabashed rejection of the Balkan
>Other (despotic, barbarian, Orthodox, Muslim,
>corrupt, Oriental) in favour of true values
>(Western, civilised, democratic, Christian). But
>there is also a ‘reflexive’, politically correct
>racism: the liberal, multiculturalist perception
>of the Balkans as a site of ethnic horrors and
>intolerance, of primitive, tribal, irrational
>passions, as opposed to the reasonableness of
>post-nation-state conflict resolution by
>negotiation and compromise. Racism is a disease
>of the Balkan Other, while we in the West are
>merely observers, neutral, benevolent and
>righteously dismayed. Finally, there is reverse
>racism, which celebrates the exotic authenticity
>of the Balkan Other, as in the notion of Serbs
>who, by contrast with inhibited, anaemic Western
>Europeans, still exhibit a prodigious lust for
>life. Reverse racism plays a crucial role in the
>success of Emir Kusturica’s films in the West.
>
>Because the Balkans are part of Europe, they can
>be spoken of in racist clichés which nobody
>would dare to apply to Africa or Asia. Political
>struggles in the Balkans are compared to
>ridiculous operetta plots; Ceausescu was
>presented as a contemporary reincarnation of
>Count Dracula. Slovenia is most exposed to this
>displaced racism, since it is closest to Western
>Europe: when Kusturica, talking about his film
>Underground, dismissed the Slovenes as a nation
>of Austrian grooms, nobody reacted: an
>‘authentic’ artist from the less developed part
>of former Yugoslavia was attacking the most
>developed part of it. When discussing the
>Balkans, the tolerant multiculturalist is
>allowed to act out his repressed racism.
[...]