Balkanism in Aleksandar Hemon's The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man

<ad:p>Balkanism as a paradigm was first introduced by Maria Todorova and refers to historical representations of this region and its people by the West in a negative and stereotypical manner, typically as a place marked by backwardness, violence, savagery and ethnic conflicts. The term is associated with Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism that relies on stereotypes, generalizations, and simplifications of Oriental cultures and peoples, depicting them as exotic, irrational, mysterious, or inferior. In her work Imagining the Balkans, Todorova draws some parallels, but she also points out the differences between the two paradigms. However, she agrees that both paradigms have been linked to reinforcing stereotypes and biases about the regions and their people, depicting them as an inferior Other that is binary to the superior West. In several of his literary works, the Bosnian–American author Aleksandar Hemon addresses this negative construction of a narrative and image of the Balkans that misrepresents the region and its people. He does this by introducing characters who are Westerners practising Balkanism in their relationships with characters, who are often involuntary migrants as a result of the Balkan war in the 1990s. By so doing, the author attempts to demythologize the Balkans and its people. The paper analyses the manner in which the author attempts to deconstruct this negative narrative that does not accurately reflect the complexity and diversity of the region in two of his works, The Question of Bruno (2000) and Nowhere Man (2002). In addition, the paper also attempts to identify how these stereotypical, negative views of the Balkans affect the identity of the Balkan exiles that populate these two works.</ad:p>