Edward Said’s epochal work Orientalism, from 1978, with its appearance launched not only the critical-theoretical field of postcolonialism and the issue of cognitive privilege, but also a kind of scientific domino effect in the research of the concept of “otherness”. Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova, in her work The Imaginary Balkans, applies Said’s concept of Orientalism to the Balkans - where, due to the centuries-old activities of the Ottoman Empire, it is viewed as an Ottoman legacy, or rather a European, internal “other” - defined by Todorova as “Balkanism”. The paper summarizes previous research done by other authors in the field of Balkan imagology obtained through the analysis of narratives and travelogues about the Balkans, but also points to the presumed influence of Said’s theory of Orientalism, first on the development of Balkanism and stereotypes about the Balkans, and somewhat later on the emergence of a new subcategory of auto-stereotyping - defined as “Serbian Balkanism”.
Danijela Puhača (Thu,) studied this question.