Immigrants as the Enemy: Psychoanalysis and the Balkans' Self-Orientalization

Maria Todorova claims that Edward Said's orientalism differs from balkanism since the Balkans were never colonized in the traditional (political and economic) sense. Yet the colonial politics of representation and colonial psychology have been fully operational there. This article interprets the work of two world-renowned psychoanalysts from the Balkans, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek, as part of a continuum of centre-to-periphery representation predicated upon the West/East geopolitical split. Their respective work thus becomes relevant not only to Said's orientalism but, more specifically, to Todorova's concept of balkanism, as elucidated in her seminal work, Imagining the Balkans.