Vampire Nation : Violence as Cultural Imaginary

Vampire Nationis a nuanced analysis of the cultural and political rhetoric framing #x18;the serbs#x19; as metaphorical vampires in the last decades of the twentieth century, as well as the cultural imaginaries and rhetorical mechanisms that inform nationalist discourses more broadly. Tomislav Z. Longinovic points to the Gothic associations of violence, blood, and soil in the writings of many intellectuals and politicians during the 1990s, especially in portrayals by the U.S.-led Western media of #x18;the serbs#x19; as a vampire nation, a bloodsucking parasite on the edge of European civilization. Interpreting oral and written narratives and visual culture, Longinovic traces the early modern invention of #x18;the serbs#x19; and the category#x19;s twentieth-century transformations. He describes the influence of Bram Stoker#x19;s nineteenth-century novel Draculaon perceptions of the Balkan region, and reflects on representations of hybrid identities and their violent destruction in the works of the region#x19;s most prominent twentieth-century writers. Concluding on a hopeful note, Longinovic considers efforts to imagine a new collective identity in non-nationalist terms. These endeavors include the emigrant Yugoslav writer David Albahari#x19;s Canadian Trilogyand Cyber Yugoslavia, a mock nation-state with #x1C;citizens#x1D; in more than thirty countries.

Tomislav Z. Longinovic is Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of Vampires Like Us and Borderline Culture, as well as the novels Sama Amerika and Moment of Silence.