This paper examines the ground between historical reality and Western imagination regarding the Balkans by focusing on Balkan identity as conflicted between East and West, and explores the extent to which Balkan scholarship as ‘Orientalised ’the region, where upon the Balkan nation-states began to disassociate themselves from the Balkan label to appear more ‘European.’ The paper will argue it is because of this complexity–the divide between East and West–that the Balkan region is, paradoxically, fully known yet wholly unknowable: known to Europe, yet distant from it due to its Oriental past and tendencies…
Source: Australian Journal of Islamic Studies
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