nationalism

The Historical, Folkloric and Literary Life of Indzhe Voivoda According to documents Indzhe voivoda (died 1821) was the leader of a band of kurdjali (robbers) and a freelance in the Greek uprising. Cultural memory, however, makes him a hero and "people's protector", praised in many songs, stories and works of art. The text analyzes two story lines of Indzhe"s folk biography: the "transformation" of the robber into a protector and his death, localized in various places, but always - in Bulgarian lands, not where it actually happened. Along with the folk and artistic interpretations of the hero, family memory is also traced: the author has interviewed (with a gap of 32 years) two generations of the descendants of the "killer" of Indzhe - Yanko from the village of Urum kyoy (now, of course - Indzhe voivoda in South-eastern Bulgaria). Completely different stories and different positioning of the hero along the scale good/evil gives reasons to outline the great influence of cultural memory thought of - however - as family one. If in the 1980s of the 20th century the cultural and family memory existed in parallel, now the cultural memory is been increasingly forming, manipulating, and substituting the family one. It seems possible to reinvent not only the collective memory - a procedure that is hardly been questioned now, but also the family memory which does not seem so significant for the formation of mentality, and therefore - conceived as constant.

The article considers a specific tendency in the newest Bulgarian literature, related to the historical novel, at that in its large-scale type, close to the traditions of the classical national epopee: "Refugees" by Vesela Lyahova (2013) as well as some novels by Vladimir Zarev on contemporary themes, but finalizing a multivolume epical narrative - "The Law" (2013) and "Destruction" [Downfall]. These are voluminous works, which by its own way refresh the experience of the historic novel-epopee in its classical type, seemingly tendentiously ignoring the topical postmodern context. - From the other hand, a central position in this tendency is occupied by Milen Ruskov's novel "Summit" (2011), which openly is in this postmodern context, culminates and closes the accumulations of the "high" Bulgarian postmodernism of the poetry of the 1990s: language plays, rewriting of the History, de-monumentalizing of the national-ideological metanarrative as well as of the literary canon which produced it. Despite its difference, these novels are seen as a collective attempt for the long awaited epical reflexion on the radical changes after 1989 year, as a literary philosophy of the history through the national idea's lens. The study undertakes a wide socio-historical and philosophical excursion in order to consider the crisis of the national state as a symptom of the crisis of all grand narratives, historical by character, which are a representation of a general crisis of the collective identity, designating the end of the Modernity. The neo-nationalistic wave after 1989 year is commented on and especially from the beginning of the 21st century - nationalism of new, after-post-modern type, severely fragmented and mixed with neighboring realms such as the religious one, which sweeps away all kinds of prophecies for some Hegelian end of History and designates a renaissance of the collective identification. Through a historical-nationalistic prism, the discussion about the "high" and "low" postmodernism, about their incompatibility end even antagonism, is deepened and adduced in a maximum wide field - simultaneously as substantial qualities in a common dialectical subject and in their historical-developmental sequence. As a shift from the language of the "high" postmodernism toward the next stage of "low", popular after-postmodernism. A stage, which is simultaneously post-, but also (contra-)regressing back toward one pre-modern authenticity. In this way the novels of Zarev and Lyahova are seen simultaneously as non-postmodern and post-postmodern in their dialectical, uroboric coincidence: whether and to what extent their traditional, "classical" language is a deficiency or a surplus, overreaching, stepping across? - Do we have to deal with an authentic naivety, or with irony raised to the second power, i.e. masked as a naivety? Are there quotation marks? (The quotation marks in the "Summit" are more than obvious.) - The answer is in the lack of answer. In the slipping out oscillation between two positions, between original and copy. The identity itself is this, which creates the difference. The same paradox is projected in a wider scheme over the nature of the "low", late post-postmodernism of the mass culture. A (possible) paradox of the language dialectic is enacted - about the relative boundary between post- and pre-, which exactly one second post- may possibly realize.

This paper presents the collective volume “Entangled Histories of the Balkans” edited by Roumen Daskalov and Tchavdar Marinov and published first in English by Koninklijke Brill (Leiden) and then by New Bulgarian University (Sofia). Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume take a different approach. They all seek to treat the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers and crossings. This goes along with an interest in the way ideas, institutions, and techniques were selected, transferred and adapted to Balkan conditions and how they interacted with those conditions. The volume also invites reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation and consecutive transformations rather than taking them as givens.

This paper presents volumes 2 and 3 of the collective research project “Entangled Histories of the Balkans” dedicated to the “Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions” (edited by Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova) and to the “Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies” (edited by Roumen Daskalov and Alexander Vezenkov). Modern Balkan history has traditionally been studied by national historians in the terms of separate national histories taking place within bounded state territories. The authors in this volume apply a different approach. They all seek to study the modern history of the region from a transnational and relational perspective in terms of shared and connected, as well as entangled, histories, transfers, and crossings. This goes along with an interest in the way ideas, institutions, and techniques were selected, transferred and adapted to the Balkan conditions and how they interacted with those conditions. The volumes also invite reflection on the interacting entities in the very process of their creation and consecutive transformations rather than taking them as givens.