Part I: Tracing the Balkans or Mission Possible: Fallout

No, it is not a mistake. The titles of this year's IWM Lectures in Human Sciences allude to Mission Impossible, the Tom Cruise film series. While it is impossible to perform his physical stunts, the tricky mountainous terrain of the Balkans and their trickier history offer enough vertigo. Still, there is nothing comparable to looking down from a mountain peak in the Balkans. But Gadamer is there, with his defense of humanities, with his thoughts on tradition, prejudice, experience, dialogue, negotiation, reciprocity, situatedness, and the fusion of horizons. In three consecutive lectures, Maria Todorova will attempt to take stock of her own shifting horizons as she has both experienced and contemplated the Balkans over the course of her life.

The first lecture – Tracing the Balkans or Mission Possible: Fallout – tracked the beginnings and fading of the Balkans, and the fallout from this, by trying to address some of the omissions and insights coming with the span of several decades, particularly the pertinence of the category of race. It argued that the Balkans have a transient lifespan and follow the vicissitudes of their dynamic history across several centuries, from their appearance to their foreseeable cessation as a geopolitical construct to their legacy as a signifier.

Maria Todorova is a Bulgarian historian specializing in the Balkans. She publishes extensively on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Communism. Imagining the Balkans (1997) is her most influential book. Todorova is Edward William & Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Currently, she is Guest of the Institute at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna).

Misha Glenny, rector of the IWM, moderated the evening.

The video recording of the lecture is available below.