Normalizing the Balkans

by Dušan I. Bjelić

Normalizing the Balkans argues that, following the historical patterns of colonial psychoanalysis and psychiatry in British India and French Africa as well as Nazi psychoanalysis and psychiatry, the psychoanalysis and psychiatry of the Balkans during the 1990s deployed the language of psychic normality to represent the space of the Other as insane geography and to justify its military, or its symbolic, takeover. Freud's self-analysis, influenced by his journeys through the Balkans, was a harbinger of orientalism as articulated by Said. However, whereas Said intended Orientalism to be a critique of the historical construction of the Orient by, and in relation to, the West, for Freud it constituted a medical and psychic truth. Freud's self-orientalization became the structural foundation of psychoanalytic language, which had tragic consequences in the Balkans when a demonic conjunction developed between the ingrained self-orientalizing structure of psychoanalysis and the Balkans' own propensity for self-orientalization. In the 1990s, in the ex-Yugoslav cultural space, psychoanalytic language was used by the Serb psychiatrist-politicians Drs. Raškovic and Karadzic as conceptual justification for inter-ethnic violence. Kristeva's discourse on abject geography and Zizek's conceptualization of the Balkans as the Real have done violence to the region in an intellectual register on behalf of universal subjectivity. Following Gramsci's and Said's 'discourse-geography' Bjelic transmutes the psychoanalytic topos of the imaginary geography of the Balkans into the geopolitics inherent in psychoanalytic language itself, and takes to task the practices of normalization that underpin the Balkans' politics of madness.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Dušan I. Bjelić is Professor in the Criminology department at University of Southern Maine. He received both his B.A. (1976) and M.A. (1981) in Sociology from the University of Belgrade. He earned his Ph.D in Sociology from Boston University in 1989, joining the University of Southern Maine faculty in 1990.

He has taught sociology at the University of Belgrade, Boston University, Tufts, Bentley, and Emerson College. His areas of interest are ethnomethodology, Balkan studies, and critical studies of psychoanalysis and psychiatry.

Reviews

[Will L]

Stunning. Great on the history of the breakup of Yugoslavia, also great as a general, total critique of psychoanalysis.

[tara bomp]

Somewhat interesting stuff about the imperialist/orientialist origins of psychoanalysis and their applications to the Balkans. Contains stuff specifically criticising Zizek and Kristeva as well as elucidating the role of psychiatry in the ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia. The stuff about Kristeva and Zizek is probably most interesting for revealing some of the thoroughly nasty side of their philosophies. The stuff about Yugoslavia is interesting too and really exposes how supposedly "apolitical" ideas can be very politically dangerous. I appreciated the (limited) critique of psychoanalysis, which has implications for today given how popular Zizek is, for showing the use of psychoanalysis for an imperialist project. Although the ending was a bit wishy-washy, I did appreciate the idea of a more positive view of difference and unity.

Although there's some critique of psychoanalysis, it never really went that far. I don't know what his background is but a lot of it uses the same language of psychoanalysis he elsewhere criticises. There's a lot of "academic" terms and I found some of it confusing - I'm not too familiar with all the stuff he talks about and I'm sure someone who knows psychoanalysis more would understand. In general, although he does an admirable job connecting the theory to the material, I found the more theoretical bits pretty confusing and not always clear. He doesn't really have a conclusion or obvious thesis he's putting forward which is confusing. There's quite a lot about Freud's life in the first few chapters which feels like psychoanalysis of him and I don't really feel is convincing or valuable.

Ultimately, an interesting but non-essential book that's probably most valuable for the stuff on Zizek and Kristeva but will appeal more if you're looking for criticism of psychoanalysis and have some familiarity with it.