CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Lomonosov, Matvey |
|---|---|
| Title | National Myths in Interdependence: The Narratives of the Ancient Past among Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia after 1991 |
| Summary | The scholarship on national mythology primarily focuses on the construction of historical narratives within separate “nations,” and oftentimes presents the particular nationalist elites as single authors and undisputable controllers of mythological versions of the past. However, the authorship and authority of the dominant nationalist elites in designing particular narratives of the communal history is limited. The national past, at least in non-totalitarian societies, is widely negotiated, and its interpretation is always heteroglot. The particular narratives that come out of the dominant elites’ “think-tanks” get into a polyphonic discursive milieu discussing the past. Thus they, become addressed to alternative narratives, agree with them, deny them or reinterpret them. The existence of those “other” narratives as well as the others’ authorship constitutes a specific factor in shaping mythopoeic activities of dominant political and intellectual national elites. Then, achieving personal or “national” goals by nationalists usually means doing so at the expense or in relations to the others. If in this confrontation the rivals use historical myths, the evolution of the later will depend on mutual responses. Thus national historical myths are constructed in dialogue, contain voices of the others, and have “other” “authors” from within and from without the nation in addition to “own” dominant nationalist elite. They interact, interplay, interpenetrate, and determine to certain extant the content of one another. Macedonian and Albanian mythmaking in the Republic of Macedonia represents one indicative example of mythopoeic dialogue, and interdependence of historical myths. Macedonian intellectuals designed the narratives of ethnic origins from Ancient Macedonians and myths of Macedonian antiquity in response to the Greek nationalist opposition to recognize the new state under its constitutional name on the grounds that the “real” Macedonians and “real” Macedonia were and are ethnically Greek. Afterwards, confronting the launched Macedonian myths of antiquity Albanian intellectuals and politicians in the republic produced their own narratives about the Ancient Macedonians, and Ancient Macedonia claiming that the two belonged to the ancient Illyrian ancestors of the Albanians. It profoundly influenced Macedonian historical mythmaking. Macedonian professional and amateur historians now adopted a new, “ancient” Macedoniasm as their doctrine. They claimed that the ancient forebears of moderns (Slavic) Macedonians were a sui generis “ethnos” completely distinct not only from Hellenes, but also from Illyrians and any other paleo-Balkan “ethnic groups.” |
| Supervisor | Kovacs, Maria |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/lomonosov_matvey.pdf |
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