Rethinking Serbian-Albanian Relations: Figuring Out the Enemy

Identifying and explaining common views, ideas and traditions, this volume challenges the concept of Serbian-Albanian hostility by reinvestigating recent and historical events in the region. The contributors put forward critically oriented initiatives and alternatives to shed light on a range of relations and perspectives.

The central aim of the book is to 'figure out' the problematic relations between Serbs and Albanians - that is, to comprehend its origins and the actors involved, and to find ways to resolve and deal with this enmity. Treating the hostility as a construct of a long-running discourse about the Serbian or Albanian 'Other', scholars and intellectuals from Serbia, Kosovo and Albania examine the origins, channels, agents and mediums of this discourse from the 18th century to the present. Tracing the roots of the two ethnic groups' political divisions, contemporary practices and actions allows the contributors to reconsider mutually held negative perceptions and identify elements of a common, shared history. Examples of past and current cooperation are used to offer a critical analysis of all three societies.

This interdisciplinary publication brings together historiographical, literary, sociological, political, anthropological and philosophical analyses and enquiries and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of sociology, politics, cultural studies, history or anthropology; and to academics working in Slavonic and East European studies.

Aleksandar Pavlovic is a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade. He obtained his PhD in Southeast European Studies from the University of Nottingham, and got his BA and MA in Comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Belgrade. He published Epika i politika, and co-edited Politics of Enmity: Can Nation Ever be Emancipatory (2018) and a volume on Serbian-Albanian relations in Serbian and Albanian.

Gazela Pudar Drasko works as a Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. She was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies in Graz and the Centre for East European Studies in Warsaw. She writes on the intellectual engagement, movements and gender.

Rigels Halili is an assistant professor at Centre for East European Studies at University of Warsaw. He has studied philology, cultural anthropology and international relations at the University of Warsaw, where he has also earned his PhD. His research interests include orality and literacy, especially in the Balkans, history of modern nationalism, interaction between memory and culture, and normative customary practices in the Balkans and Central Europe. His latest research project was focused on social and cultural memory of communism in Central and South-east Europe. He published a monograph based on his PhD dissertation in 2012 and co-edited four books in Polish, Serbian and Albanian.

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