Duke University Press Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (The Cultures and Practice of Violence)

Vampire Nation is a nuanced analysis of the cultural and political rhetoric framing ‘the serbs’ 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. Longinović 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 ‘the serbs’ as a vampire nation, a bloodsucking parasite on the edge of European civilization. Interpreting oral and written narratives and visual culture, Longinović traces the early modern invention of ‘the serbs’ and the category’s twentieth-century transformations. He describes the influence of Bram Stoker’s nineteenth-century novel Dracula on perceptions of the Balkan region and reflects on representations of hybrid identities and their violent destruction in the works of the region’s most prominent twentieth-century writers. Concluding on a hopeful note, Longinović considers efforts to imagine a new collective identity in non-nationalist terms. These endeavors include the emigrant Yugoslav writer David Albahari’s Canadian Trilogy and Cyber-Yugoslavia, a mock nation-state with “citizens” in more than thirty countries. Review " Vampire Nation... offers a unique deconstruction of Serbian nationalism through a detailed textual analysis of the "vampire" metaphor.... The intelligent and eloquent prose makes Vampire Nation a thoughtful and distinctive study of Serbian identity and the cultural "vampire." The book can be described as a different and unique ethnographic study of violence in the former Yugoslavia."--Anastasia Karakasidou "Anthropological Quarterly" " Vampire Nation: Violence as a Cultural Imaginary is a welcome and needed contribution to the conversation on the post-Yugoslavia reality and the future construction of the Balkans for scholars of the region and the literature and culture. Longinovic does a remarkably skillful job in navigating the turbulent and, for many, dangerous political and cultural waters following the collapse of Yugoslavia and the aftermath of the Balkan wars, creating a highly readable and engaging volume."--Thomas J. Garza "Slavic and East European Journal" "Given the elastic qualities of vampirism, it is not surprising that the book comes together as a collage of artistic and literary artefacts that are rather impressive in their range. Longinovic has at his disposal, it seems, the entire cultural repository of the South Slavs, drawing on oral literature, popular music, contemporary novels and even political speeches. His crossings between genres and forms aptly demonstrate the entrenched overlap between, say, populist political rhetoric and literary tropes. . . . [T]here is plenty to bite into in this book."--Dragana Obradovic "Times Higher Education" "Longinovic's study will be stimulating both to vampirology and to Balkan studies, particularly in its thought provoking analogy between the post-Oriental and post-Communist condition. The study is also a valuable contribution to the tradition of critique: Longinovic's sustained censure of concealed forms of cultural racism and political imperialism will find favour with deconstructionist scholars and critical thinkers."--Vladimir Zoric "Modern Language Review" "Overall, however, employing psychoanalytic discourses to explore how the concept of vampirism figures in contemporary national imaginaries to justify violence opens up exciting new avenues of critical inquiry -- a welcome theoretical extension of a concept that has become an overused, oversimplified pop-cultural cliché." - Natasa Kovačevic, Slavonic and East European Review "[T]he specific issues Longinovic addresses and the book's main arguments are... convincing, offering an insider's view of the cultural-historical creation of the Serbian identity, and juxtaposing i